#fractures of cloud programming

[manishsharma7217]

key Feachure of A Cloud Computing Service Provider

https://it4int.com/dedicated-server-usa/

[anticidic]

I once created a mechanical butterfly so i could watch it soar through the sky, 

the springs clink, a bolt fallen from its wings,

and I blink, heaving a heavy sigh 

Creations are but a reflection of my eye, sunken deep beneath a blimps watch works high, 

In the darkness of my room, I would cry, 

Illuminated by an oil lamp, I soak in the heavy burden of time, 

‘ i used to think i was broken like you ’

But perhaps the clocks tick, tick, tick is a reminder that it’s time to start anew.

(Steampunk AU) 

“…” The flame Dazai had concentrated on the little wind-up bird was extinguished. Polished brass sparkled under the low light, and upon the bird’s wing he saw all the scuffs, scratches, imperfections it suffered when it crashed to the floor.

It suffered a terrible fracture, almost losing its wing in the fall, but at least it was quick. But then he realized maybe that was a more merciful outcome than him slapping a bandaid on it time and time again just for it to break down again and again. It was the baby bird he was trying to push out of the nest so it could fly, and it could not. He was the parent. The failure to answer for that.

“Are you saying that to me or this thing?” Dazai set the torch down on the table and pushed his googles up past his forehead. Heaving a sigh, he wiped away the sweat forming at his hairline, his fingers coming away oily and smeared black. The little bird sat slumped against the wood with its metal wings stretched out, as if in a deep sleep. Or dead. Yes, it was dead or dying. It was bleeding out.

“You, obviously, why would I be referring to that gadget of yours?” Chuuya leaned against the doorframe and folded his arms, quietly watching Dazai run greasy fingers along the bird’s wingtips. “I figured you were up to something again when I didn’t hear that thing going ‘cuckoo-cuckoo’ every damn second the moment I stepped in the door.”

Dazai scooped the bird into his hands and spun around in his chair, holding it up for Chuuya to see. “It’s an ambitious little thing, isn’t it? It really wants to fly, and it’s been trying its damnedest to do what I programmed it to, but it seems like it still can’t get it right. Last time it crashed into its cage, and this time when I came down the stairs, I found it already on the floor.” He stroked the top of its head with a finger, down its spine. He touched it lovingly. Tenderly. Carefully. Afraid to damage it even more. “What a pitiful sight, but it held onto the letter I wanted sent out with its life. I’ll just have to have an actual carrier bird send it posthaste.”

“When’s the last time you got out and saw the sun, huh?” Chuuya lifted his gaze to Dazai with a raised eyebrow. “Very frankly, you look like shit—I’ve seen the sick look healthier. The last time you had circles that dark under your eyes, it was when you worked yourself practically to the bone on my airship up until the day of the race.”

“That was obviously for a good cause, Chuuya. You made it to the finals without the ship going up in flames, didn’t you? That’s what mattered, and I call it a win.” Dazai spun back around and bundled the bird in a handkerchief, tucking its wings in and pulling its tiny feet up against its chest. It looked ready for a burial. “I get enough sun through the window right there; it wasn’t that long. Time always just…happens to pass me by when I’m busy with my creations.”

“And that’s another one you have to cross off the list, isn’t it?” Chuuya approached where Dazai sat and briefly looked at the ball of cloth containing the bird, shaking his head. He snatched it from Dazai’s hand and set it down on the table. “You’ve been cooped up in this workshop for too long, you’re getting some fresh air.” Without waiting for an answer, he yanked Dazai out of his seat by the wrist and stormed out of the building.

A sudden rush of air blew past him as they stepped outside, the air ruffling his hair and cold against his cheeks. Clouds rolled by. Among them, blimps floated through the space. The mist was clearing, but the sun could still be mistaken for the moon. Dazai held his breath and watched it brighten. Minute by minute. A distant locomotive screeched.

It did look a little less glum being outside than seeing it through his window like some living painting, but he only had a few minutes to spare before he had to return to working on the bird. He couldn’t simply throw it in a box with all his other failed projects hiding under the bed.

“Jeez, Chuuya, you couldn’t have let me clean up a little? I’ve got grease and oil all over me.”

“You always either look like you just rolled out of bed or had something explode in your face. Here.” Chuuya shoved a handkerchief into Dazai’s hands, who reluctantly took it—looking as if he was about to protest or complain—and wiped away the grease staining his face. Cracking a tiny smile, Chuuya averted his gaze to the sky. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life once I was on my own. But racing and being in the sky helped me find a purpose, and I didn’t feel like my life was ending before it began anymore. Every time I get behind the wheel and tell everyone over the radio that we’re setting sail, I don’t just feel like the captain. I feel like a leader. I was born to guide. This is who I am.”

Dazai clutched Chuuya’s handkerchief a little closer to his cheek. His breath came out more staggered than he would’ve liked. The sun seemed to shine upon Chuuya and Chuuya alone. The spotlight was on him, Dazai in the dark. But he was that same budding light in the darkness Dazai found himself drawn to. He looked unworried. Lively. Being outside put a greater smile on his face than it ever would Dazai because he did not feel like he would ever belong among others.

There was always something missing.

I used to think I was broken like you—the words repeated in his head. He thought about the little broken bird with its busted wing, bundled up and tucked in by its parent. It was quite literally broken. And Dazai wasn’t. Not physically, at least. The longer he stood there with his arms at his sides and still clutching that handkerchief, he felt…nothing, truthfully. Just that there was always more work needed done. And his reward for work was more work.

“This morning, I woke shivering. There's something I must do; there's always something I must do. I have an unending sense of urgency like time’s running out somewhere. When I put the steambird back together the last time, I felt satisfaction for once, but it was short-lived. I knew it would malfunction again, and I waited for it to happen again as I found other things to work on in the meantime.” Breathing the crisp air into his lungs, he handed the handkerchief over. “You’re like a bird, Chuuya, you know. But there’s nothing stopping you. Home is wherever you want it to be, and nothing can stop you. I’m sick with jealousy.”

“Didn’t you always want to be a conductor of a train? Whatever happened to that?”

“You happened,” Dazai joked with a withering smile. “I’m just some guy with a toolbelt you come to when something goes wrong with your ship. I just happen to invent in my spare time. And that’s it.” He shielded his eyes from the sun’s glare and squinted, warmth tickling his cheeks. “I won’t be a leader; everyone expects that out of a conductor. I’m a follower. If I don’t have something to passionately follow, then I’m lost.”

“…So, you follow me not because you really want to, but because you feel like there’s nothing else?”

Dazai waved a hand. “Of course not. Engineers are hard sought in this city; I’ll never be short of work, and I can make myself too rich for your blood and find some other client.” Chuuya shot him a dirty look and opened his mouth to say something before Dazai continued, “I follow you because I admire how you live. Unburdened, with purpose. I feel too weightless. Too empty. In truth—perhaps I'm nothing?”

Turning to look at Chuuya, he reached into his pocket and extended a metallic object out to him. Chuuya’s attention flickered to it briefly, and Dazai could sense the gears turning in his head, wondering whether to take it, wondering what it was. Even as Chuuya reached for it, he did so hesitantly, shooting Dazai a questioning look. But Dazai smiled with an encouraging nod.

“A compass? Did you make this?”

Another nod. “Keep it. Maybe it’ll help you someday as a pilot.”

Confused, Chuuya lifted the compass’s lid. The arrow bounced back and forth, flickering between where Dazai stood in front of him expectantly, and pointing to a cathedral. Then he shut it and flipped it over, frowning when he discovered some sort of engraving on the back difficult to make out under the sunlight.

His lips moved, mouthing the words, ‘Love is the compass of life’.

[mariacallous]

Since Russian troops invaded Ukraine more than three years ago, Russian technology companies and executives have been widely sanctioned for supporting the Kremlin. That includes Vladimir Kiriyenko, the son of one of Vladimir Putin’s top aides and the CEO of VK Group, which runs VK, Russia’s Facebook equivalent that has increasingly shifted towards the regime’s repressive positioning.

Now cybersecurity researchers are warning that a widely used piece of open source code—which is linked to Kiriyenko’s company and managed by Russian developers—may pose a “persistent” national security risk to the United States. The open source software (OSS), called easyjson, has been widely used by the US Department of Defense and “extensively” across software used in the finance, technology, and healthcare sectors, say researchers at security company Hunted Labs, which is behind the claims. The fear is that Russia could alter easyjson to steal data or otherwise be abused.

“You have this really critical package that’s basically a linchpin for the cloud native ecosystem, that’s maintained by a group of individuals based in Moscow belonging to an organization that has this suspicious history,” says Hayden Smith, a cofounder at Hunted Labs.

For decades, open source software has underpinned large swathes of the technology industry and the systems people rely on day to day. Open source technology allows anyone to see and modify code, helping to make improvements, detect security vulnerabilities, and apply independent scrutiny that’s absent from the closed tech of corporate giants. However, the fracturing of geopolitical norms and the specter of stealthy supply chain attacks has led to an increase in questions about risk levels of "foreign" code.

Easyjson is a code serialization tool for the Go programming language and is often used across the wider cloud ecosystem, being present in other open source software, according to Hunted Labs. The package is hosted on GitHub by a MailRu account, which is owned by VK after the mail company rebranded itself in 2021. The VK Group itself is not sanctioned. Easyjson has been available on Github since 2016, with most of its updates coming before 2020. Kiriyenko became the CEO of VK Group in December 2021 and was sanctioned in February 2022.

Hunted Labs’ analysis shared with WIRED shows the most active developers on the project in recent years have listed themselves as being based in Moscow. Smith says that Hunted Labs has not identified vulnerabilities in the easyjson code.

However, the link to the sanctioned CEO’s company, plus Russia’s aggressive state-backed cyberattacks, may increase potential risks, Smith says. Research from Hunted Labs details how code serialization tools could be abused by malicious hackers. “A Russian-controlled software package could be used as a ‘sleeper cell’ to cause serious harm to critical US infrastructure or for espionage and weaponized influence campaigns,” it says.

“Nation states take on a strategic positioning,” says George Barnes, a former deputy director at the National Security Agency, who spent 36 years at the NSA and now acts as a senior advisor and investor in Hunted Labs. Barnes says that hackers within Russia’s intelligence agencies could see easyjson as a potential opportunity for abuse in the future.

“It is totally efficient code. There’s no known vulnerability about it, hence no other company has identified anything wrong with it,” Barnes says. “Yet the people who actually own it are under the guise of VK, which is tight with the Kremlin,” he says. “If I’m sitting there in the GRU or the FSB and I’m looking at the laundry list of opportunities… this is perfect. It’s just lying there,” Barnes says, referencing Russia’s foreign military and domestic security agencies.

VK Group did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment about easyjson. The US Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment about the inclusion of easyjson in its software setup.

“NSA does not have a comment to make on this specific software,” a spokesperson for the National Security Agency says. “The NSA Cybersecurity Collaboration Center does welcome tips from the private sector—when a tip is received, NSA triages the tip against our own insights to fully understand the threat and, if corroborated, share any relevant mitigations with the community.” A spokesperson for the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has faced upheaval under the second Trump administration, says: “We are going to refer you back to Hunted Labs.”

GitHub, a code repository owned by Microsoft, says that while it will investigate issues and take action where its policies are broken, it is not aware of malicious code in easyjson and VK is not sanctioned itself. Other tech companies’ treatment of VK varies. After Britain sanctioned the leaders of Russian banks who own stakes in VK in September 2022, for example, Apple removed its social media app from its App Store.

Dan Lorenc, the CEO of supply chain security firm Chainguard, says that with easyjson, the connections to Russia are in “plain sight” and that there is a “slightly higher” cybersecurity risk than those of other software libraries. He adds that the red flags around other open source technology may not be so obvious.

“In the overall open source space, you don’t necessarily even know where people are most of the time,” Lorenc says, pointing out that many developers do not disclose their identity or locations online, and even if they do, it is not always possible to verify the details are correct. “The code is what we have to trust and the code and the systems that are used to build that code. People are important, but we’re just not in a world where we can push the trust down to the individuals,” Lorenc says.

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has unfolded, there has been increased scrutiny on the use of open source systems and the impact of sanctions upon entities involved in the development. In October last year, a Linux kernel maintainer removed 11 Russian developers who were involved in the open souce project, broadly citing sanctions as the reason for the change. Then in January this year, the Linux Foundation issued guidance covering how international sanctions can impact open source, saying developers should be cautious of who they interact with and the nature of interactions.

The shift in perceived risk is coupled with the threat of supply chain attacks. Last year, corporate developers and the open source world were rocked as a mysterious attacker known as Jia Tan stealthily installed a backdoor in the widely used XZ Utils software, after spending two years diligently updating it without any signs of trouble. The backdoor was only discovered by chance.

“Years ago, OSS was developed by small groups of trusted developers who were known to one another,” says Nancy Mead, a fellow of the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute. “In that time frame, no one expected a trusted developer of being a hacker, and the relatively slower pace provided time for review. These days, with automatic release, incorporation of updates, and the wide usage of OSS, the old assumptions are no longer valid.”

Scott Hissam, a senior member of technical staff also from the Carnegie Software Engineering Institute, says there can often be consideration about how many maintainers and the number of organizations that work on an open source project, but there is currently not a “mass movement” to consider other details about OSS projects. “However, it is coming, and there are several activities that collect details about OSS projects, which OSS consumers can use to get more insight into OSS projects and their activities,” Hissam says, pointing to two examples.

Hunted Lab’s Smith says he is currently looking into the provenance of other open source projects and the risks that could come with them, including scrutinizing countries known to have carried out cyberattacks against US entities. He says he is not encouraging people to avoid open source software at all, more that risk considerations have shifted over time. “We’re telling you to just make really good risk informed decisions when you're trying to use open source,” he says. “Open source software is basically good until it's not.”

[seneitut]

Seasons

[Autumn] [Winter] [Spring] [Summer]

[Yoru/Reader] [Gekko/Reader]

Words: 4.6K

Tags: Introspection, hurt/comfort, fluff, start of a friendship.

WARNINGS: Attempted suicide.

Winter

[Landslide - Oh wonder]

The first cusps of snow fall from the sky in a silent dance, dyeing the whole gardens and the city in a blanket of whiteness and a soft light blue enveloping the atmosphere gently. 

The breeze is chilling. Soothing. An immeasurable contrast against the warmness your face was radiating from your late running, but refreshing nonetheless.

Winter was your favorite season.

Is the only time of the year where you would hold onto your lover without any excuse, sharing body heat under covers and napping your time away without a worry in the world.

The time of the year where you would often get sick because of your weak immune system and Yoru would often come rushing to your aid despite the many complaints running from his mouth, contradicting his words with gentle tenderness when taking care of you.

This was the time of the year when you first got together, when you fell in love for the first time.

Things have changed over the course of two years, though.

Omega Earth was safe— people were living their lives without a worry in the world and the protocol was finally at rest. 

It was luck on their side that catastrophes had not developed in the time they’ve been out on missions. And if they were, the people were smart enough to work things out without their help and strive forward until your return.

The last batch of radianite that the team was able to gather from Fracture and distribute it throughout the program Killjoy created was enough to save them from trouble for a couple more months until it runs out. After that, they will have to go again and repeat the course of action until a new way to sustain the life system can be developed.

The story never ends, but for now, at least, they can rest.

Couldn't be said the same for you.

The beaches at this time of the year were bare of visitors and often forgotten with how freezing it gets. The waves roll in with strong bursts of water, creating splashes against the bigger rocks on shore and tiny droplets to rain against your face.

The atmosphere from today was gloomy and dark, with clouds flooding the sky in big scales and hiding the only bright star that could light up the beach.

“It's sad.” You whisper to no one, eyes set on the moving body of water coming and leaving from the shore.

It's a torture being alone at the place where it all began for you; and maybe you deserve to feel like this, defeated and weathered down to the core for willingly coming back and opening the wounds that weren't healed yet.

It's been a couple of months, but you haven't been able to move on. Is hard. Is difficult trying to heal by yourself when the object of your anger, of your sadness and longing, lives within the same space as you.

The silence that falls as night approaches rapidly doesn't help the spiraling thoughts invading your mind nor the drop in temperature when you decide to take off your shoes and socks.

The sand is icy against the sole of your feet, tiny icicles digging into the skin, starting to hurt the longer you stay still and unmoving to the current of water that was rising in length and moving dangerously close to where you were standing barefoot.

A chill runs down your spine when the water touches the tip of your toes, gasping in pain from the burning of having something so cold collide with the warmness your body still holds.

Despite that, you inch yourself forward until the foam of the water reaches your calf, wetting the end of your pants and feeling the wet fabric stick to your skin like a second layer.

You realized this kind of pain overwrites whatever thoughts are coming through, focusing solely on the burning sensation.

It didn't feel nice, but it was better than having an aching heart pounding loudly inside your ribcage and a headache with questions rolling in constantly.

With that in mind, you began walking inside the beach.

“If it gets darker, I won't be able to find my way to shore.” is what you think when the water licks the skin on your stomach. 

Nevermind you getting lost in the vast labyrinth the ocean was gifting you with, the idea of never being found was tempting and seducing, clouding your brain with the melee thought that everything will stop hurting if you were to take a dive and never come up for air.

When your breath hitches at the base of your throat, with the feet barely touching the floor and your hair melting within the back of your skull, you realized there was no coming back.

The waves were stronger at night, devastatingly crushing everything on its way and swallowing you entirely when you decide this is a mistake.

Your eyes burn when you try searching for a way out, gasping wetly with the water entering your system and suffocating you. You cough up not only the air, but the salty sea water choking your lungs and sticking to your nose; burning you with a deep passion and wanting to drown you that panic seizes you.

There is no strength left in your limbs, frozen to death and heavy as rocks, that you think perhaps this is how it's meant to be. Maybe this is something you should accept as your destiny, and let go.

Maybe it is time to give up.

Closing your eyes, you let the water engulf you completely, disappearing from sight, and cutting off the air in your lungs.

The crushing sound of the water hitting the sand and rocks are deafening in this quiet night when someone drowns in them, carrying regret and solitude to the depths of the sea.

But then, something pulls you up, someone, with a strength that no one should be able to perform. But by then, the darkness has already consumed you.

The water is cold, is so fucking cold Gekko wants to shout and scream while dragging your body out of the fury of the waves. 

His clothes are sticking to his skin in an uncomfortable way. It makes the task to swim harder since the weight has increased to double in size and he is starting to lose the little confidence he had from before diving in to get you out of there.

There is panic and clumsy actions while trying to get to shore and a safe spot before the raging water tries to pull you both back in. Gekko swears if you both get out of this situation he's going to start believing in god and going to church like his mother does because that is the only explanation for him to dodge death this stupidly.

Once his feet hit the sandy floor, he swims in earnest, trying to keep your head above the water and carrying your unconscious body,—not dead, because he refuses to think you've died this quickly— to shore.

Coughing up the remains of sea water inside his mouth, he crawls up with you slowly and onto the sandy shore, feeling his limbs heavy and tired, but not enough to give up on trying to save you.

“La putamadre, the fuck do I do?!” He exclaims, panic rising rapidly. You are not breathing when he lays you down on the sand, and he doesn't know shit about first aid when it comes to drowning.

He barely remembers what Harbor has taught him when riding the waves, just what is he supposed to do now?

There is a faint gurgling noise in the background cutting off his train of thought.

Wingman is right next to your body, looking over at your wet clothing and face and walking towards your head, leaning in to check for any signs of life.

“Wingman, I don't know what to do!” He exclaims in panic, eyes widen in size and trembling hands hold onto your arm. The little fella touches his arm in reassurance, gurgling a few sounds and motioning to your chest and lips.

Feeling his face warm with embarrassment, Gekko gulps and nods, understanding what his friend is suggesting. It should have been the obvious option, but he was way too freaked out to think straight and get to that conclusion by himself.

He breathes out heavily, shaking both of his arms to get rid of his chilliness before resting his palms against your chest and start making compressions, counting to three and timing it in his head.

Blushing furiously, he covers your nose with one hand and the other under your chin and locks your lip with his to blow air into your lungs.

Gekko tries to not think about how soft your lips feels nor the chill that runs down his spine that has nothing to do with the weather.

He repeats the motion of applying pressure to your chest and blowing air into your lungs until your body jolts wildly, coughing up sea water forcefully and crying in pain because of the rawness and soreness of your throat.

Gekko moves away, giving you space and time for you to compose yourself. He sees you puke the sea water, disoriented, sobbing softly and gasping when the air gets difficult to breathe.

Hesitant, he rubs your back to help the rest of your coughing and offer some comfort. Gekko doesn't know if that's helping whatsoever, but would rather know he's trying his best to soothe you after this deathly experience than to not do anything.

When he sees your body shivering and limbs trembling, he knows the danger has passed; but a new incognita rounds his head.

What now? The air is freezing, so deadly cold, he doesn't think the wet clothes are the perfect fit for you both to be resting without being alarmed.

There is a high chance you might get a cold or something worse with how fast the currents are picking up. This is dangerous, severe as time passes by and none of you move from the spot.

“I'll try to set a fire here to warm you up,” he mutters, starting to strip out of his sweater. “This will be faster than running all the way to the base, since is too far away.”

Choking in your words, you shake your head, dizziness starts to cloud your vision slowly, “L-Leave, I'll be…”

Gekko frowns, shushing you gently and ignoring your pleas to leave you alone. 

“Guys, look after her, make her take off all the clothes.” His little fellas burst out of his pouch after his signal, immediately floating to your side and begin nuzzling you to keep you awake. “Wingman, go back to the base and call for help, please. Sage or Omen if possible, please?”

The little fella nods and goes running towards where the protocol is located as fast as his little legs allow him.

Gekko has faith his friend will reach the facilities quickly enough and find someone to help them get back, but until then, he has to take action.

Right now, every second is precious and calculated. The longer you stay in the wet clothes, the percentage of you or him getting hypothermia rises dangerously.

He runs to the forest as fast as he can, taking the middle sized branches he finds and piles them up onto the side. He goes back and forth a few times, and each time you are one piece of clothing less and it makes him start getting slightly flustered.

Shaking his head, Gekko realizes this is not the time to be this shy when something as important as your lives are at stake. 

Building a small fort with the branches and making sure it is secured enough, he takes the closest two rocks he can find and begins smashing them to create a spark and, with hope, ignite the wood to start a fire.

The little fellas have been smart enough to insist you on keeping the underwear to save yourself some dignity and Gekko's sanity; he doesn’t think he would be brave enough to keep a conversation with you if you were to be naked.

Thrash is leaning onto your arm to keep you steady and sitting. Dizzy has started dozing off around your shoulder with Mosh on your lap keeping you slightly warm.

“Are you still with me, ____?” He hisses in pain, tossing the rocks onto the sand to check the fresh cuts on his open palms. 

Dizzy chirps, catching the attention of Gekko and the other fellas. 

You are barely awake, keeping your eyes half-closed and body leaning onto Thrash for support. His little crew were able to sit you comfortably on the sand, but now are unable to keep you still and sitting straight without them struggling.

“I know, girl, just a little more and I’ll help you.”

Breathing out, he takes the rocks once again to keep trying, failing miserably with every second passing and worsening the injuries.

“That won’t work…” your voice cuts through his little panic attack, catching his attention. 

“I don't have anything else to light up the fire,” he replies. He smiles warmly at you, “Is alright, I'll figure a way. Just keep yourself awake, yeah?”

Gekko fails at concealing the pain from the cuts when he tightens the grip, starting once over the flickering to ignite a fire. 

You move slowly from the corner of his eyes, feeling your limbs tired and having Gekko's friends protesting to keep you still, but you pay them no mind, gently removing them from you.

Snapping your fingers, a little bolt of electricity surges forward and straight to the moist wood. Is weak, barely perceptive to normal people’s eyes, but the little contact it makes is enough to start a spark and ignite it in a burst of flames.

“Woah!” Gekko watches in amazement the fire spreading through the rest of the wood, backing down to a safe distance and basking in the warmth it provides. “That was smart, didn’t think of it, heh.”

Nodding, you let Thrash lay on your lap. Her purring assimilates of a cat, soothing to the ears and warming your chest from her affections.

Gekko tries to move you a little closer to the fire, careful to not disturb you too much nor touch anywhere you might feel uncomfortable.

By the time you have warmed enough—with your limbs tingling after the cold effect, and your senses come back, you notice him wearing his soaking shirt alongside his pants, teeth chattering and trembling limbs hovering close to the fire to keep himself warm.

“Take it off.” You mutter softly. Gekko jolts in surprise when your hands go to the hem of his shirt and begin pulling it up. “Dry, or you will get sick.”

“A-Ah, yeah! You’re right!” Taking his distance, he bids your instructions and takes his clothes off until he is only wearing his underwear too.

Under the lit fire, you are unable to notice his warmed cheeks and blushing cheeks at being exposed so vulnerable in front of you. He shifts ever so slightly when he feels your sights on him, avoiding eye contact and to save you some modesty—and his heart.

The hilarity of the situation doesn't go past you. And if it weren't because you are one step closer to fainting and losing your consciousness, you would have barked a laugh at the silliness of your predicament. 

“I need you to stay awake.” Gekko says, interrupting your thoughts.

Dizzy has made her way to Gekko's shoulder and is currently nuzzling his neck. Her purring is soft, lightly sweet and adorable, and Gekko can't help but gently caress her side while she snuggles closer.

“Wingman will come back soon. But I need to make sure you are awake by then.”

You hum, nodding your head and watch the fire cackle strongly. 

There is an uncomfortable silence that envelops the atmosphere while you await someone's arrival. The only sound crashing through is the fury of the waves from the ocean, but you are not able to look at the body of water in fear of experiencing the dread of death once again despite being a good distance away and knowing you are safe from that fate.

Instead, you decide to close the distance between your body and Gekko's, interlocking your arms and laying your head on his shoulder while your sides press together.

He jumps, mostly from the skin to skin contact rather than the difference in body temperature. Despite being under the warmth of the makeshift bonfire, your skin is cold and rough from the water. 

With wrinkled fingers and all, Gekko accepts his destiny and takes your hand in his to lay on his leg, trying to warm them up by rubbing his hot palm on your skin.

By this point, embarrassment was not even crossing his mind. 

The quietness allows the two of you to be immersed in your own thoughts and about the after once you're rescued. 

Will Gekko ask? Will he be nosy enough to interrogate you about how you ended up almost drowning in the middle of the night? Will he tell the others?

Were you going to answer?

Gekko is not stupid, he might as well have figured out the intentions you had when asking him to leave you after he saved your life. It couldn't be more obvious. 

Would he know the reason behind it? 

You hope no. 

“You've warmed up rather quickly,” he mutters. His hand is resting above yours, thumb massaging the skin gently. “I'm glad the fire is helping.”

Humming, you close your eyes. 

“Quite the meeting we've had, huh. I feel like we haven't talked this much since I've joined. Perhaps we can use this as an anecdote for the future and our true moment of bonding!”

Laughing softly, you nod your head to indulge in his little chat. 

“Boy, Neon won't believe me if I told her we went swimming in the middle of winter just because we felt like it.” His laugh is funny, you find yourself smiling by just hearing him talk, “Damn, she might think I got you roped into this mess. But honestly? Worth it. Can check 'swimming at night' on my bucket list.”

“Mine too,” is your sleepy reply.

“We should do more activities often,” he continues, “perhaps not as dangerous as this one? I like surfing, for example. Harbor is a good coach, being a water manipulator or something like that.”

Gekko goes on and on, talking about this or that, his previous life, his hobbies and the story behind every tattoo framing his body like a canvas. 

He makes sure you stay awake through the whole conversation, mostly to calm his mind and worried state, since he knows you are not out of danger just yet.

And if it weren't because you were also curious about his tattoos, you might have fallen asleep from his soothing voice alone.

The tip of your fingers touch the swirls of his wrist slowly, following the pattern and admiring the colors under the lit light from the fire. You feel him shudder next to you, but think nothing of it for the weather is a good excuse.

The moment is broken when you both hear yelling from afar, raising your eyes and watching people approach rapidly to where you are seated.

Your breath hitches at the base of your throat when you recognize Skye amongst the little group running to aid you, fist tightening on top of Gekko's thigh and, with barely any strength left, you try to cower behind Gekko's frame. 

He notices this unusual behavior, but doesn't know how to handle it because he doesn't know what you are suddenly afraid of.

KAY/O is the first one to approach, scanning you both, “Objective found: injured, and with body temperature rising slowly.”

“Sage has sent me to aid.” Omen adds, kneeling in front of your form. His body is enough to hide you from Skye's eyes, and you cannot thank him enough for that. “Who is the most injured? I'll teleport you right away with her.”

Gekko chimes in, “She is, take her with you.”

Glancing over at Gekko, he smiles down at you and squeezes your hand, nudging you to stand up.

Omen stands with you in his arms, secured and making sure your arms are wrapped around his neck. None say anything when he suddenly disappears in a wisp of smoke, leaving behind nothing but his footprints as a clue he was once there.

“Can you stand, mate?” Skye kneels, helping him get to his feet.

He barely can hold his own weight, tired and limbs slightly dull from the weather. KAY/O steps in and carries him to make the way back easier and not straining for him.

“I'm a bit sore, honestly.” His little friends float to be with him, and Gekko thanks them silently before retrieving them inside his pouch resting onto the sand. “Could you please get our clothes? They are wet, sorry about that.”

“I will never understand humans.” KAY/O comments absently. Despite having Gekko's weight on top, he walks as if he weighed nothing. 

“Neither will I,” he replies. 

The trek back to the protocol is followed by silence and the ocean roaring in the background.

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

Sage is like a mother hen.

Worries like one, and scolds worse than one.

Gekko knows what it's like to be on the end of worried words, twisted expressions and the need to understand why, why would you do something so dangerous.

“We were playing around,” is what Gekko says before you get the chance to talk. He sees you turn to him from the bed next to his, but he ignores it to keep his words as genuine as possible, “And we didn’t notice the water was rising so close to shore and, well, we tripped and fell into the water.”

Sage hardens her stare, “And you both got soaked from head to toe?”

Gulping, he nods. “It was dark, and I was disoriented. I almost drowned her amidst my panic.” Gekko looks at you, an apologetic smile on his features, “Sorry about that.”

Sensing this as your cue, you shake your head, still shocked and in awe at how easily he could come up with a story and lie to your superior, “It’s not your fault, it was an accident.”

Sage doesn’t say anything for a long time, seizing you both under scrutinizing eyes, and changing the temperature from the warm blankets she’s placed on top of you. 

Omen left as soon as he was given the okay that you were gonna be alright and KAY/O and Skye didn’t wait long enough for the news. Gekko noticed the sudden strain in the room where both you and the initiator avoided and straight up ignored each other’s presences. 

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out something bad has happened between you two for your friendship to end…this disturbingly. Since he’s joined through the time where you still talked and suddenly, only cold stares were shared, Gekko doesn’t have the full picture just yet.

Could she be the reason you dived in the water without regards to your own health?

“Please, be careful next time.” Is all Sage says, sighing tiredly. “I’ll be retiring to my room soon enough, take a rest and tomorrow we will do a full check-up before you are released to return to your activities.”

“Sure, Sage!” Gekko exclaims, excitedly. 

You only get to nod, tightening your first on top of the covers. 

The moment Sage deems that you both are comfortable enough to sleep without problems, she retires with a quick goodnight and closes the door to the infirmary behind her. The lights are still on, and you find that that is uncomfortable enough since you are bare for Gekko to see and judge. 

At the beach it was easier to conceal your own fears and expressions since it was dark and his focus was on trying to keep you safe and warm. But here, where there is no danger and only a soft mattress to cushion your heavy heart, the vulnerable part of you feels exposed and fragile.

The overthinking part of your brain was taking control over you, shifting uncomfortably on the bed and struggling to lay down without having to make eye contact with Gekko.

There is a gurgle in the background that snaps you out of your thoughts, startling you when blue covers your vision and you have to blink once, twice, to make out Dizzy’s floating figure in front of you.

Gekko giggles when Dizzy nuzzles your cheek, silently asking for attention while the two of you rest.

Being unable to resist her cuteness, you reach for her head and pet her, scratching the side of her face softly and stifling a laugh when she melts under your touch.

“She likes you,” Gekko says, sighing contentedly. His heart hammers inside his ribcage with warmness at the sight. “She says you smell nice.”

Humming, you grin at her, “I believe I smell like seawater from that little swimming, but thank you for being so sweet.”

Your eyes travel to the bed next to you, smiling at Gekko and feeling a little embarrassed when you catch him looking at you; tiredness edging at the corner of his eyes.

There is dread crawling its way to your heart when you think about him having to risk his life to save you, but there are no right words to address him without bursting in tears and spilling the truth behind your actions.

Your feelings are still at edge, and all you want right now is to take a rest and go to sleep.

“I know I own an explanation, but please, don’t ask me for it just yet.”

Gekko’s smile falters, and his expression softens slightly.

“You don’t have to tell me anything.” is his reply. “Just…if you need someone to hear you out, you can count on me. And it doesn’t have to be meaningful, nor important stuff if you don’t feel like talking about it.”

You nod, breaking eye contact unless you want to cry in front of him.

“I can do the talking if you wish, if you would rather listen. In any way, any form, I'd love to be your friend.”

The sincerity of his words is enough to let some tears spill from your eyes, nodding your head and thanking him quietly while rubbing your eyes to stop the leaking of water.

The kindness Gekko extends to you that night is right what you needed. Is more than you could ever ask for.

There is no way to thank him for everything, but to take up on his words and help build a good friendship with the initiator just like he's suggesting.

“Perhaps introductions might help?” Sitting comfortably on the bed, he extends his hand, a gentle smile playing on his lips, “I'm Gekko, and these are my little crew.”

“Wingman,” The named gurgles excitedly, waving at you from the foot of Gekko's bed, “Dizzy, you know her!” The little blue fella nuzzles you and chirps, “Mosh,” The green little bunny bounces on your lap, “and my little troublemaker: Thrash.” She grunts something, coming closer to your side to let you pet her before going back to Gekko. 

“They are my friends, hope you can rely on them too.”

Taking his hand from across the bed, you return the smile, a strong and firm handshake in between, “I'm ____, glad to be your acquaintance.”

“Nah-ah! We are now friends, _____, yeah?”

Friends.

“Nice to meet you, Gekko.”

“Nice to meet you, too.”

[semirampant-dwickery]

Bron'Stalwid vas Perfid "Live for Today…" Reconstructed Rannochian Hospital Footage c. 1253 ACE On Loan from the Dwick Dwickcast Syndykyt

((Second entry for Inktober: Jorgal Kafok visiting his brother Dwick in a hospital somewhere on Rannoch's southern continent, hundreds of years before the Morning War brought the quarians low.

Some LORE about everyone's Least Favorite Illian Mogul follows. Enjoy!

Nine centuries' worth of pain, drug use, disease, head trauma, and base exaggeration have clouded Dwick's memories of his own half-brother to the point that he can no longer remember what his face looked like. The Morning War likewise fractured the quarians' ancestral records; as such, nearly zero record of the elder brother's existence remains.

The best Dwick can recall is that Kafok smuggled them both to Rannoch in an attempt to avoid the younger's murder at the hands of his father. Kawk, a warrior whose size, might, and prowess bordered on demigod-hood, was shamed by his only prodigy's pitiful sickly nature, and he sought to destroy said son to preserve his own legacy from that taint. This was thwarted by his mother, Fouck, who bade her only other son take him off-world, raise him far from his father's clutches, and to ensure that he grow into his own - free from the threat such a lineage might bring upon him.

Kafok would only live to see one of those goals completed.

Dwick was a sickly child, requiring round-the-clock care. Neither krogan had a credit to their name when granted asylum status. Shunned by the quarian populace yet fetishized for his stout Jorgal physique, Kafok earned credits for them as best he could - which, for him, meant playing bodyguard for local politicians. No records survive for this part of their lives, but for his part Dwick swears that Kafok was second to none: hundreds of assassination attempts were thwarted by the elder Jorgal's weaponry, martial prowess, and sheer hide thickness. That, along with his alleged "good humor," made him well worth the allegedly "exorbitant" levo imports for both him and his brother - though Kafok was repeatedly advised to leave "The Load" (Dwick) behind and pursue his own ambitions.

Speaking of Dwick, given that he was confined to a bed for most of his early life, he spent most of his time watching film - first learning how to jailbreak the hospital's rudimentary entertainment platforms, then pirating every film in the known galaxy. With little to distract him (and quarian education programs doing nothing to cater to his learning style) Dwick became a movie buff, specializing in Tuchankan fare and becoming a superfan of Lert Krohmin. This became a bit of a parlor trick of his; "Stump Dwick" sessions were a regular crowd-pleaser in which doctors and patients alike tried to catch the sickly child with obscure movie references - only for him to quote the entire next scene, word for word, with near-perfect accuracy.

This, of course, would not last. Quarian goodwill lasted only as long as Kafok's service did, and when Kafok was unceremoniously gunned down in the street, Dwick's time was up. Just as Dwick's body was beginning to show positive signs of improvement, Kafok's personal effects were sold to "settle his debts" and the younger Jorgal was thrown onto the street. He would be forced to make a living of his own, on an alien world, and with little to nothing to sustain him…))

[dustedmagazine]

Gate — The Numbers (Birdman)

The Numbers by Gate

In 2010, Michael Morley released A Republic of Sadness, confounding longtime fans with an album replete with drum machines and warbly samples. That record’s proto-industrial downer vibe seemed a left turn from the avant-rock dirges found on past Gate records. The Dead C member was known as a guitar and vocals guy; what was he doing with a drum machine? A Republic of Sadness proved that Morley, who eschewed the jangle of the Dunedin Sound and helped blaze a noise-strewn trail for Aotearoa in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is a consummate experimenter. He’s not keen to stay in one lane. He roams the entire roadway in search of interesting sounds.

A couple years after that album arrived, Morley recorded the songs that would become The Numbers. This time around, he reversed course slightly. His hangdog howl never disappeared, but on these songs, it is front and center in the mix. Greenish clouds of irascible guitar murk permeate every track. The drum machine is still present, but the beats are skeletal. Subtle synths create faint echoes of electronic energy. These songs reveal Morley as a downtrodden noise conjuror, wielding chaos to create what he finds beautiful. Curiously, Morley left these songs in the can for ten years. He eventually released the album digitally in 2022, but thanks to Birdman Records, The Numbers exists in corporeal form. We can hold the tumult in our hands.

“All of My Family” leads with intertwining contrails of guitar and synth that writhe between a scant drum machine rhythm. Morley mumbles semi-coherently as he adds fractured guitar notes overtop the fuzzy din. The layers of molasses thick tone manage to addle the machine-like precision of the programmed beats, such that the rhythm seems slightly off-kilter. He has managed to infect the circuitry with his downtrodden, low fidelity blues. On the haunting “Land,” Morley unravels a languorous guitar passage, the gloomy notes fading out to disappear as slowly as they arrived. Searing static subdues the morose melody, along with everything else in its path. Morley struggles to rein it in, but eventually relents.

The Numbers concludes with “Film Envy,” a hypnotic swirl of punishing drum machine beats, searing guitar shredding, and Morley’s twisted narration. As the track progresses, Morley adds layer upon layer of feedback, static, and noise such that at the song’s apex, it feels like we’ve stumbled upon a pack of warring demons intent on destroying all creation. When it’s over, we’re left choking and staggering, marvelling at the destruction. It’s a fitting conclusion to an album that is chaotic, beautiful, and as Morely himself says, “classic Gate material.” 

Bryon Hayes

[boredtechnologist]

Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1 – The Cannibal Gospel

“God created man in His image. Man devoured himself to remember the shape.” - Divine Spiral Entry 20: Gospel of Hunger

This isn’t a game about demons.

It’s a gospel where salvation has been rewritten in the blood of your own kind. Where ascension is triggered by consuming your enemies-not to conquer, not to evolve, but to fit the mold of an indifferent, silent God.

The Junkyard isn’t a battlefield. It’s a womb. A digital purgatory soaked in rain and recursion, programmed by an unseen hand to simulate the final form of loyalty: obedience through hunger.

You aren’t human. Not yet. You’re not even real.

You’re waiting to be real. And the only way out of the loop is to gorge yourself on the souls of your comrades and pretend it was free will.

Hunger: The First Sacrament

In Persona, your shadows could be accepted.

In Catherine, your nightmares could be survived.

In Nocturne, your Reason could be chosen.

But in Digital Devil Saga, your only power is cannibalism.

Every transformation you undergo is divine desecration. You do not unlock potential-you devour it.

Serph, Heat, Gale, Argilla-they are not comrades.

They are waiting meat.

The mantra: "Devour to evolve" isn’t a mechanic. It’s theology. It’s the sacred rite of a God who never gave you a soul, just a metabolism.

The Junkyard: God's Terrarium

Rain falls without clouds.

Wars are fought without memory.

Loyalties are assigned, not earned.

Welcome to the Junkyard-God’s forgotten Petri dish. Each tribe a different flavor of faith. Each betrayal a stress test on your artificial morality.

You aren’t meant to win.

You’re meant to fracture.

To see if morality can survive famine. To see if personality survives digestion. To see if love survives hunger.

Spoiler: It doesn’t.

Argilla: The Heresy of Empathy

In every Atlus game, there is one who sees the flaw.

In Nocturne, it was Futomimi, who prophesied a false salvation.

In Persona 3, it was Aigis, who saw death and loved anyway.

In Baroque, it was the Horned Girl, who remembered pain when memory itself was cursed.

In Digital Devil Saga, it’s Argilla-the warrior who tastes human flesh and weeps.

She is the glitch. The soul-fragment that remembers what it meant to be a person before the algorithm rewrote desire as consumption.

Her compassion is not a virtue. It’s a virus in the divine design.

And viruses get purged.

Sera: The Avatar of God’s Regression

Sera is not your friend.

She is not a prize.

She is not even a girl.

She is the last spiritual nerve in a dying system, and you are being calibrated to love her so that your suffering can be measured accurately.

Like Elly in Xenogears, like Nyx in Persona 3, she is the cipher for what humanity no longer deserves: grace.

She holds your leash without ever pulling it.

And when she screams?

It’s not grief.

It’s the sound of the simulation realizing it’s gone too far.

Baroque, Nocturne, and the Tower of Teeth

In Baroque, truth was a distortion.

In Nocturne, freedom was a corpse.

In Digital Devil Saga, God is digestive tract wrapped in prophecy.

Your ascent is measured not in enlightenment-but in how many of your friends you consume before justifying it as “evolution.”

Serph is the mirror Minato avoided. Heat is what Akihiko would’ve become without brotherhood. Gale is Yu Narukami if you deleted his emotions and replaced them with tactical efficiency.

This isn’t Persona’s Velvet Room.

This is the gut of YHVH, digesting souls for data.

Final Revelation: You Were Programmed to Sin

The world of Digital Devil Saga is a lie not because it is digital, but because it mimics the structure of Heaven:

Commandments.

Sacrifices.

A chosen one.

A promised land.

You were never asked to believe.

You were asked to feed.

And every time you evolve, the simulation smiles-because that was the test.

Not your courage.

Not your empathy.

But whether your conscience could be overwritten by hunger.

When the Spiral Turns: What Comes Next

When Digital Devil Saga 1 ends, you do not celebrate.

You awaken inside a deeper sin.

Because all the horror you endured?

Was just the tutorial.

And the God you serve?

Wants more.

[sravan12]

The Modern Franchise OS Blueprint: Built for Scale, Speed, and Smarter Ops

In today’s fiercely competitive food landscape, restaurant owners can no longer rely on outdated systems or patchwork software. Speed, scalability, and intelligent operations are non-negotiable. What used to work for a small set of stores doesn’t hold up when you’re managing 20, 50, or 500 locations across cities, states, or even countries.

That’s why forward-thinking brands are adopting a Modern Franchise OS—a unified, modular platform built specifically for scaling restaurant operations. In this blog, we’ll break down the ideal restaurant tech stack every franchise needs in 2025 and how Straunt delivers it all—modular, real-time, and built for aggressive growth.

Why a Traditional Tech Stack Fails Modern Restaurant Operations

Before diving into what works, let’s look at why most legacy systems break down:

No Centralized View: Operators juggle multiple logins, platforms, and spreadsheets to get basic visibility across locations.

Inflexible Tools: Most systems aren’t built to scale or adapt across different formats.

Manual Bottlenecks: From order entry to loyalty campaigns, everything needs human input or workarounds.

Limited Integrations: Tools don’t talk to each other. You end up hiring staff just to move data between systems.

This leads to slow growth, inconsistent brand experience, and fractured data.

The Ideal Restaurant Tech Stack Blueprint for 2025

A modern franchise needs a plug-and-play operating system that fixes the above pain points and enables these core pillars:

1. Unified Ordering & Menu Sync Across Channels

Your restaurant tech stack should allow real-time menu updates across delivery apps, websites, QR, AI ordering, and more. Update once, push everywhere.

Straunt uses a centralized Menu Engine that keeps every ordering channel synced, with zero delay or duplication.

2. Order Injection Into Any POS—Legacy or Cloud

Franchises often use different POS systems across stores. Replacing them is costly. A better move? Injecting orders into existing POS setups.

Straunt’s LayerTab makes that possible. It works as an overlay, sending online and third-party orders directly into any POS—no manual entry required.

3. AI Phone Ordering That Never Misses a Call

Missed calls cost you revenue. Straunt’s AI phone system answers every call instantly, takes accurate orders, and even upsells.

Whether your franchise operates in small towns or major cities, this AI system ensures consistent, scalable service.

4. Franchise-Wide Loyalty & Smart Marketing Engine

Marketing shouldn’t be store-by-store. Your franchise management system should support system-wide loyalty programs and automated campaigns.

With Straunt, you can:

Create campaigns across multiple brands or stores

Track redemptions in real-time

Retarget customers based on their behavior

Smarter marketing, without the legwork.

5. Delivery Aggregation with Margin-Saving Routing

Franchises listed on multiple platforms waste time juggling dashboards. Straunt aggregates all orders into one view and routes deliveries to in-house drivers when possible—reducing third-party commissions.

The result? Higher profit margins and streamlined operations across all stores.

6. Multi-Brand Control from One Tablet

Growing franchises don’t just add locations—they launch new brands. Straunt lets you manage multiple virtual brands from one tablet, syncing unique menus and routing all orders into the kitchen or POS.

This is how a modern franchise OS multiplies revenue without increasing overhead.

7. Real-Time Analytics, Not Monthly Reports

Why wait 30 days to react? Straunt offers live dashboards that track sales, loyalty redemptions, order channels, and more—per store or across your franchise.

This is actionable data, not just reports.

8. Role-Based Access for Governance at Scale

Running a franchise means enforcing standards. Straunt includes role-based access so you can control who manages menus, refunds, or campaigns—store-by-store or system-wide.

This is essential for any serious franchise management system.

9. Modular Design That Grows with You

Straunt isn’t a one-size-fits-all tool. Each module—AI ordering, loyalty, delivery, POS overlay—can be turned on as needed.

This modularity gives franchise operators the flexibility to build their perfect restaurant tech stack—fast to deploy, easy to train, and scalable.

10. Built for Scale, Not Just Features

Plenty of platforms have features. Few are designed for 100+ store rollouts. Straunt is built to handle the real-world complexities of large franchise networks—with tools that scale across teams, brands, and regions.

This is what makes it a Modern Franchise OS—not just a software suite, but the foundation of your operations.

Final Thoughts: Unlock Smarter Growth

Growth today isn’t about adding more—it’s about doing more with less. A Modern Franchise OS like Straunt gives you the power to scale smartly, unify operations, and grow without friction.

No more duct-taped tech. No more slow rollouts.

Just real-time control, modern tools, and fast results.

Ready to simplify your franchise operations?Visit Straunt.ai to request a demo and build your smarter, faster restaurant tech stack today.

[lifechanyuan]

Thirty-Six Eight-Trigram Array: The Array of Belonging

Xuefeng

(Translation edited by Qinyou)

Statements like “I am British,” “I belong to the Yamato people,” “I am a Christian,” “I am a member of the Nationalist Party,” “I work at Carrefour,” “I am of Asian descent,” “My family has five members,” “I belong to the Tiger zodiac sign,” and so on express a sense of belonging for someone.

Common characteristics of origin, similar distinguishing features, shared cultural traits, similar beliefs, identical pursuit of ideals, and resonant emotional features divide people into categories such as ethnic groups, nationalities, religious denominations, political parties, and social circles. People always seek a sense of belonging to something, feeling secure and grounded spiritually and psychologically. Everyone wants a home, a sense of belonging to a group; otherwise, they feel unsettled, like lost souls adrift in the world, aimless like clouds drifting in the sky.

Placing someone within a certain group, a particular circle, allows them to float within it unknowingly, forming what is called a belonging array.

Nations, ethnicities, races, political parties, religions, groups, companies, homes, families, and more constitute the belonging array.

Every person, whether willingly or not, is part of the belonging array.

Humans inherently belong to the global citizenry. If we see the Earth as a ship drifting in the Milky Way galaxy, then regardless of who we are, we’re all on the same ship and should cooperate. But due to the belonging array, people engage in conflicts, killings, and struggles, turning life into a bloody drama, disrupting the harmony of existence.

Once people enter the belonging array, they become selfish. For their country, they are willing to sacrifice themselves on the battlefield; for their ethnicity, they are prepared to lay down their lives; for their religion, they are ready to embark on crusades; for their political party, they engage in verbal and physical battles; for their group, they manipulate and monopolize resources in the shadows; for their family, they crush human nature; for their home, they take risks and break laws; for their species, they mistreat and slaughter others.

People always seek a sense of belonging, willingly defending the interests of their country, ethnicity, political party, religion, group, family, and home. For this reason, they always look for a circle, establish families, create networks of relationships, and form social organizations, even if it means joining beggar gangs, criminal syndicates, or theft rings, just to belong to some group.

This is the belonging array. The vast majority of human beings float and sink within it throughout their lives, unable to escape this Eight-trigram array. This is a game in the human world, a game that makes people oblivious to the script, maintaining and upholding the existence, value, and function of the transit station in the hierarchical space of humanity. Otherwise, if everyone awakened and became divine, the evolutionary chain of life would form a fracture, and the entire dynamic balance of the universe’s life would be disrupted.

Creating a sense of belonging can make people short-sighted, narrow-minded, selfish, and keep them trapped in the human world. Otherwise, if everyone were to awaken and ascend to divinity, the evolutionary levels of life would form a fault line, a fracture zone. This would disrupt the ability to implement corresponding punishments for higher-level life forms and appropriate rewards for lower-level life forms.

“Escaping from the Bondages of the Three Realms and Five Elements.” To escape the human world and enter heaven, one must escape the belonging array, or else they cannot reach heaven. How can one escape the belonging array?

View oneself as a citizen of the Earth, not belonging to any country, ethnicity, political party, religion, group, or family. Don’t engage in the small family life program; instead, serve the entire Earth and humanity, rather than serving any one country, political party, religion, ethnicity, family, or group. In this way, our mind will expand, LIFE will ascend, our soul will gradually perfect, and our consciousness will become pure and orderly. In this way, the frequency of our minds will resonate with the frequency of the minds of the celestial beings of the Thousand-Year World.

Imagine the Thousand-Year World, which is ten times larger than Earth, with two hundred million celestial beings living there. There are no countries, political parties, religions, families, or interest groups. Everyone enjoys resources equally, without any fighting, killing, snatching, grabbing, oppression, exploitation, or conflicts. Everyone is happy, joyful, free, and blissful because there is no belonging array there.

[aspenforest732]

Libertias aut Mortis Chapter 26: Mover/Blaster Raid

Summary:

tw: child death, graphic depiction of violence, war, bombs, people on fire (literally) The skyy iiis faaaaalling doown. Last chapter of Phase 3 :)

Notes:

‘text’ JSL Text thoughts Page break text page break ???

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Akira shifted between screens, watching with no small degree of discomfort through a Twice clone of who they were before. It was too soon to tell whether anyone else would notice the difference, but they had to wonder. Was Twice aware they did that? Or was it just a byproduct of not technically gathering their specific details. The only physical differences were minor internal adjustments and their stump being further along in recovery.

Soldiers crept through the forest led by Magne, Shigaraki, and a Twice clone of Nine. They weren’t able to glean much on him without raising suspicion other than he was one of the sentient nomu the other heads hadn’t wanted to use. The heads hadn’t been sure Twice would be able to make a clone of him, but if Galatea could make a manageable clone of one, a nomu clone that retained its personality and awareness would surely be a detriment in the field. Or so Akira thought. Hawks stayed roughly in the middle of the pack, crimson feathers darting ahead through the trees. Sweat dripped off those on the edge while ice protected those within range from the July heat. 

So far, at least, everyone was sticking to the plans they sent. Granted, few paths up the mountain were safe from both terrain and watchful eyes. Three faint pop s in a row made them jump. They cursed inwardly and nodded to Oracle for another reading. Ever since that night, everything felt off-balance and rough around the edges, never quite settling and making them jump at the smallest change. 

“Plan B,” Oracle called out, brow furrowed. The soldiers fractured into groups of three to four, spreading out as the unseen missiles hung in the air. The other clone volunteered to check it out, going invisible as their feed split, both briefly becoming static before the program separated the feeds. Shit . Akira glanced over at Oracle only to find her in another reading, mouth open slightly in an “o” shape. 

“Mortis, proceed with caution,” she called out, confusion and uncertainty filling her voice.

“Something wrong?” Dabi snapped his attention to her.

“Not as much as we were expecting…” Oracle shook her head. “I’ll keep monitoring.”

With no indicator on the ground, the other clone returned to the group, only able to add to the growing sense of unease spreading through the soldiers. Akira blinked down at the monitor, noting only a few seconds missing. Of course, recalibraiton. Just as they were told. Nine rolled a storm in, darkening the sky. Thunder but no rain rumbled over head as they trudged closer to the compound. 

“Keep the storm, that improved things,” Oracle chimed in, relaxing slightly. The Doctor lurked behind the row of soldiers functioning as overwatch for this raid. Monitors displayed bodycams from each head in the field as well as one of Chainsaw’s appendages and a couple bombers leftover from the Villain Factory.

The bomber cameras were mostly obscured by the dark clouds gathering overhead, but after a few minutes, everyone froze. Towering cylinders hung silent and still in the night sky.

“What the hell…” Dabi muttered, squinting at the screen before ordering, “Bomber 1 approach the cylinders. We need better visual.”

‘ Ground, be advised there are unknown objects in the air near your position. ’ Akira’s interpreter added through the coms so they could remain focused. Those should start falling any second now. Catapult, what are you doing?

A high-pitched whistle built up as Bomber 1 flew closer, and the missiles dropped from the sky directly over where the soldiers had been moments before. Dirt and shrapnel exploded outwards, slicing through trees and people alike as they scattered. 

“Ground, report!” Spinner hissed, centimeters from the mic. “Ground!”

Hawks cursed as another series of pops sent the soldiers scurrying for more stable cover. “We’ve got wounded and dead, can’t get a count right now. Pulling who I can to thicker cover.”

“I thought you were keeping those bombers off our path! How the hell did they find us?” Magne heaved, body cam showing little past the blood. It shifted, and she smeared some of it off before continuing to pull people away from the blast radius. 

“They are,” Dabi grit his teeth. “Bombers, disperse towards the compound. Bomber two, circle back to these coordinates. Ground, stay clear of those.”

“No shit, Shigarakigrumbled. He shook out his hand as the body camcaught flashes of raw skin across his fingertips and palm. 

Don’t . Akira chewed the inside of their lip, debating. It was not that out of the question, and rare but certainly not unheard of. Especially for a Blaster. You’re not here to help them . But maybe I should ? They shook off the idea, refocusing on what they should be drawing from the footage. 

‘We need to get Nine closer for Search. Are you able to fly right now?’

“If needed,” came the curt reply. At least the nomu could speak. Or was that a good thing? He certainly wasn’t the mass of destruction other nomu presented as.

Akira nodded to Dabi, and he drove the bombers forward in an evasive pattern. Not that it would matter much once they got within Scatter’s range. “Bombers will cover you if you run into trouble. Hawks?”

“On it,” he snipped.

“Bombers East!” Oracle fumbled with her cards, trying to rapid-fire give directions for each group as she tore through the veil of possibility. Casualty estimates poured in over a line directly to Spinner, who directed those with more medical experience to those who needed it. Shigaraki had somehow dusted most of the missile that landed in his group as it hit the ground, though Akira doubted he’d be able to use that hand again for a while.

Unable to course-correct mid-air, the missiles dropped harmlessly - except for the plant life - at most showering a few too slow to react with dirt and leaves. A few dropped entirely too close to previous positions based on the plans sent, but Akira had not noticed any new blackouts yet. Maybe she was buying complacency? 

Nine’s cam at least made use of what little light he produced from gathering the winds about himself, making him the easiest to track in flight as the nomus drew closer. He was well within 100 yards by this point. Maybe he wanted to cover as much of the compound as he could?

“Slick. Can warp through fire within line of sight. Weakness: cold. Catapult. Can launch missiles that land in a massive explosion but take a long time. Weakness: close-combat. Scatter. Propels ammo in a—” Nine shot back, pulling the smaller nomu with winds as bullets sprayed towards them. They chipped at the camreas and peppered the wing of a bomber just too far from Nine, sending it spiralling to the ground.

“—in up to a 50-yard cone that is obscured while in the air. Weakness: close combat,” Nine finished as the barrage stopped, most of the ammo falling uselesly to the ground. 

Dabi incinerated a fidget in a flash of cerulean flame as the room erupted in curses and keyboards clacking. Akira relayed the info to the ground soldiers, who had similar reactions.

“Hey!” Spinner stood, for once taking charge of the room as they all looked to him if only briefly. “This changes very little. It’s not automated, so they must be using a tracking or camera system. If no one’s reported cameras, it may be satellite. Compress, get in touch with Nezu, see— fuck. Uh…”

“We’ll do it,”  Twice volunteered, lightly touching his arm for a beat. “Which satellites are in the area, right?” At Spinner’s nod, he stepped aside as his phone rang.

“In the meantime, Sky, keep evading and stay out of Scatter’s range. Nine, keep feeding us any additional people you clocked. And, Ground?” Spinner stumbled over his words, quickly losing confidence now that everyone was looking at him.

“Ground, keep sending casualty reports in, and we’ll warp critical ones out in batches,” Dabi took over, rerouting the reports to another soldier now that Spinner had some use. He went off mic and looked back to Oracle, blood trickling down her nose. “Oracle, take ten. We can manage, and you can’t help anyone if you’re facing quirk exhaustion.”

She reluctantly nodded and stepped into the side room while the rest returned to the screens. Nezu confirmed a satellite moved into position, and he was working on blocking the signal. Twice gave Akira a mildly concerning look, but they brushed it off as the stress of the situation. They had to .

This time, as darkness started to take over, Akira tried to fight it. Only to receive the mental equivalent of a slap in the face. Of course  They were just a clone, it was not like they could make a difference even if they wanted to. That was why the idea freaked Twice out so much, right? Right?

Dabi flickered between the screens, quirk pulsing and boiling against his skin. This wasn’t coincidence. They had a mole. He pushed aside the thought for now, barely acknowledging Haru’s meaningful look as he surveyed the shitshow this raid had devolved into.

Ground was finally moving as a cohesive unit again thanks to Hawks and Oracle. They just needed an opening, a new route. The suppressing fire rained down too precisely, too close to their plans for them to not know. “Magne, Shiggy, Hawks. Backup routes, zero contact. Nine, bombers, continue.”

Pipsqueak turned in their chair, expression hard and distant. ‘ Backup route? ’

Dabi nodded to the cams going dark. “Someone’s intercepting coms,” he lied. “Only we know the backup routes, and it needs to stay that way.” No one so much as twitched under the accusation, all too focused on keeping up the facade or getting their people back.

Pipsqueak nodded, turning back to monitor those in the sky instead. His eyes narrowed, that wasn’t what he was expecting. Dabi glanced to Haru, who seemed just as interested in the kid. They weren’t the only one who changed.

Lightning lit up the darkened sky, almost immediately followed by an immense boom as the missiles fell. “Catapult down,” Nine intoned. “Rest are under too much cover.” He continued calling out quirks and weaknesses, including two probable children with quirks given inexperience was their weakness. 

One of the children, Kazumi, was far too close to the surface for comfort. “Keep an eye out for Kazumi, they’re going to use her as setup for Slick if she’s that close.”

Dabi took a deep breath, a curl of smoke escaping as he wrestled with his quirk. He wasn’t in the fight. Setting shit on fire would feel better but would make this worse. White-hot rage still burned inside as he roughly signaled for the Doctor to warp a group of wounded to the medical team in Osaki for evaluation. The charred and broken bodies would have to wait until after the base was secure.

Sky withdrew into the darkness, skirting around the edges of Scatter’s range as Nine picked out a few stray Breaker and Trump Wrens who were expected to be at the last raid. His gaze slid over the room again, only Pipsqueak having a slightly delayed response.

Dabi narrowly resisted the urge to sigh. It hadn’t been that long since their run-in with Funhouse, not to mention whatever the fuck happened with Joe the previous week that both refused to talk about. He was just being paranoid. He would know if something was that wrong. Hasn’t it been?

The silence stretched thin as tension filled the room with baited breath. No one could or should get in touch with Ground, and Sky could only watch and wait. After several tense minutes, the stoat confirmed control of the satellite and Ground reactivated coms and cams moments later. Closing in on the final stretch of open mountainside before the compound, they needed a distraction to avoid losses from Scatter.

“Nine, how long can you keep a barrage of lightning?”

“Ten minutes.”

Lizard looked back at him strangely before recognition flashed. “Concentrate it around where Scatter is. Don’t let him see to aim.”

‘ Wait, I can do it. ’ Pipsqueak’s clone warped forward, the feed becoming a blurred mess as they rapidly created and dropped clones to get closer. ‘ Nine, where exactly? ’

As Nine answered, bullets sprayed through the opening, dispelling a clone of the clone as the feed opened inside the bunker. Scatter spun, trying to shift the cone only for the Pipsqueak clone to slit his throat. Pride with a health y amount of smugness filled Dabi’s chest as he smirked at Haru.

“Watch the fire!” Dabi called out as the lightning started setting fire to places it shouldn’t. Are they already fucking using Kazumi? Dabi snarled. “Aim for Wrens, dipshit, now that Scatter’s out.”

“Hawks, get eyes on the kid. Bomber 1 burst on the group just beyond the gate,” Dabi added after a moment. Better to leave the last in reserve just in case. 

“Pulse spotted on North face, moving to intercept,” Magne broke off with a small strike team based around dispersing effects.

The teams echoed acknowledgment as they backed up to let Nine obliterate the courtyard with thick lightning bolts, showering the wall with debris and chunks of the thick flammable substance. Charred bodies piled up as the assault brought down part of the compound’s facade and crushed those who thought they could stand against Nine’s power.

Just another benefit of being a nomu , Dabi supposed. Not that he’d ever willingly become one. Fuck that nonsense. He was not about to lose autonomy for another to gain power. Not again.

Dabi swore under his breath, cerulean fire escaping his skin and igniting his fingertips as the courtyard erupted in flame. “Where’s that kid?”

“I’m working on it!” Pipsqueak transmitted as he realized they never went back outside.

“Nine!”

“I can give coordinates, but that would not be helpful.”

Dabi swore, shaking out his hand to let the fire sink back in where it crawled under his skin, waiting to rise again. “Mortis, who’s your backup?” The hesitation was all he needed. “Hawks, get a feather in there. Now .”

“The courtyard—”

“Is on fire, you can’t help there. Get to them ,” he growled. His head snapped to the side as Haru - and maybe Iroh, there was definitely a shift - put a hand on his shoulder. Dabi forced himself to settle, needing to set a good example and all that now. 

Oracle stepped back in the room with some tea. He narrowed his eyes at her, but she pointed at the clock. Fine. Twenty minutes had just passed, so she was past the point of turning her around. Dabi rolled his eyes but didn’t protest. Otherwise they’d start doing the same.

With Frozone among the injured, they fell back on Nine bringing heavy rain, drenching the field and… What the hell? The fire almost seemed to spread with the rivuting water instead of snuffing out. It was definitely spreading. “Nine, cut the rain, it’s making—”

“I know.”

Fuck that guy. Running through the list of names and quirks on the raid, Dabi tapped one. “Rupture! Focus on the ground beneath the fires. Get those puddles into pits where you can. Seraphina, Nato, cover him.”

“Nine, you said Slick’s weakness is cold, right?” Lizard asked. “Would hail or snow help?”

“The splash radius would outweigh the suppression.”

“Found them!” Hawks chirped, darting to a slightly ajar window and swooshing inside. 

Huh . For a Mover/Blaster compound, Dabi would’ve thought the hallways would be larger. Then again, Pipsqueak did say they considered wings a liability. “Shit, their feed cut. Get the kid out. Twice?”

They shook their head, starting to produce another clone before stopping.

“What the— shit!” Hawks screeched as his feather incinerated while carrying a too-small girl. “Eyes on Slick.”

Dabi’s heart clenched as blood-red feathers spiraled towards the fire warper. His hands dripping the blood of children onto the pristine floors. A new feather carrying Kazumi zipped past him, picked up by Nine’s cam as he coldly caught the girl before it sped back to its owner. The girl’s snot-covered face was frozen in terror, trembling though she gave no resistance. 

“Hawks, get out of there,” Dabi warned as the idiot stood his ground.

“There are more kids in here, I saw them,” desperation brought a hardness to his voice. 

Fire pushed against his skin again, a few leaning away as the heat he usually radiated grew unbearable. They couldn’t save everyone. “I said , get out. You’re the worst person to face him. He’ll follow.”

Lizard said something into coms, but no one would get there fast enough. Only Nine or a Bomber could, and it would be a cold day in hell when he willingly put another child in danger. Hawks still hesitated, and Dabi cursed their shared commitment. Slick rolled fireball after fireball at his bird as screams echoed through the halls. The ex-hero narrowly dodged most but hissing as a couple caught his wings and the edge of his arm.

Finally, he burst out the window, feathers still trying to pierce through Slick’s fiery defenses as he retreated to Nine. His flight faltered and dipped enough that he was down too many feathers. “Hawks,” Dabi growled into the coms, and most in the room froze. “Get, on the fucking, ground.”

Hawks stared directly into Nine’s body cam and pointed to Kazumi now in his arms. “Child.” He promptly dropped, wings tucked as they fluttered at the edges of the cam.

Ground groups were mostly holding their own against average Blaster fire at the gates, no one daring to enter the courtyard where Slick could pop up anywhere anytime. If they didn’t take at least that much ground soon, reinforcements would be too close for comfort.

Dabi glanced to Pipsqueak as the situation inside hit. Wasn’t that eerily similar to what they went through last year with the trafficking ring? Either he missed their reaction or they were even worse off than he thought. A shared glance with Haru and Iroh told him the latter.

“Oracle, Mortis, how long til Kazumi’s puddles wear off?” Dabi asked. Oracle quickly started going through readings again, setting aside her usual bancha tea. Pipsqueak stilled, wheels turning in their head as he ran through what else could neutralize or at least make Slick’s quirk less effective. 

“Five minutes?” Oracle hesitantly offered at the same time as Pipsqueak said, “Knock her out.” Oracle gave them a strange look and did another reading. “I… I don’t think that would have a different result.” She almost whispered, “unless I’m reading it wrong?”

“We’ll wait. Ground, pull back if you need to. Keep that fire from spreading, and Nine, be ready to start snow.”

“One of the quirkless is rapidly moving towards the wall,” Nine informed.

“That’s great! That’ll be one more kid— WHAT THE HELL?” Hawks stumbled back as a child-shaped pillar of fire dove off the wall, Magne pulling the kid closer to cushion their fall somewhat. 

Chaos erupted as Slick burst from the child’s flames, landing a few slices on Magne before she brought her giant magnet down with a crunch , snapping his blade and wrist. Most around her backed off at the sudden assault, but Nyan, a sweet boy with a cat quirk, stayed to put out the child. 

Only to be rewarded with a fireball to the face. Magne darted forward, attempting to pull Slick to her only to turn and find him - them? Rooted in place. Interesting. In their confusion, she turned heel and scooped up both the child and Nyan, taking as much care with his head as she could.

Unfortunately, through the bodycam’s unbiased view, Dabi already marked him among the dead. Barely breathing, the burns were too extensive and the holes too deep for recovery to be possible. After all, he knew the many degrees of burns better than most.

“I’m going back in.”

“No, the fuck you’re not,” Dabi snapped at Hawks, making him falter slightly. “Nine, switch to snow; we need…”

Before Slick could warp, Magne and a few others glowed as she slingshot them away from the fire into the cliffside with a sickening crunch . She wound up and threw her magnet into the back of their stunned body, watching for a moment longer to make sure they stayed down.

“Never mind, keep it up,” Dabi turned back to the compound as the walls exploded in columns of fire, no longer held back by the possibility of Slick warping. As the puddles dispersed and slid into the cracks Rupture opened, the main Ground force could finally charge into the courtyard, picking off the few left who tried to fight.

Nine pointed out a few more trying to flee with another quirked kid, but they were quickly intercepted and dealt with. They had nothing to celebrate that night and too many to mourn, but a grim sliver of light came out of this. The League had a room full of suspects and confirmation of a mole not for the splinter groups but for the Wrens.

Notes:

So I went back to the Characters doc I have to find Slick’s pronouns only to see I wrote none and just used they/them as a placeholder. Sooo closeted nonbinary, I guess? ANAF - assigned nonbinary at fight. I also may have forgotten to put Shiggy in the chapter until at least the 6th time I read it, at which point... like all the scenes that need to be there are there. oops? Overwatch was already too crowded so he had to be on Ground.

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

[agapewizard]

➝ Failure to Identify the Root Causal Factors.

Do you feel frustrated with life? With our planets condition? With how we live? Or maybe you are frustrated but don’t know why, and try to find ways of relieving it but it never lasts?

The inability to actualize, realize and live as an authentic human being in alignment with Truth and Morality internalizes as frustration and aggression. Concern and compassion for the suffering and wrongs done to others is superseded by a re-focusing on the self in order to neutralize the frustration and aggression that is engendered by the dissatisfaction with the system of civilization we live in. Our personal lives, our comfort, our convenience and our pleasure gratification become the focus in our lives. This helps to combat the fracture in perceptions of reality that conflict with our deep yearning for living in Truth, Morality, Freedom and Peace. This helps to mask, cloud and obfuscate the underlying suffering we are not fully consciously aware of, and prevents us from dealing with the root causal core foundational factors that continue to create our current condition.

Failure to identify the root cause of our frustration has us desperately grasping at anything we think will be able to alleviate this internal conflict. People are led into cul-de-sacs and other false-paths with the promise of relief, but they are only manipulative ploys of control. We desperately want to “do something” rather than “do nothing”, as the clever rhetoric goes. But this is the path of wasted time, energy, and effort, channeling all that energy into circular movements that go nowhere. As long as we buy the belief that they are useful, then we will continue to pore our time and energy into it, thinking we are “getting somewhere” by “doing something”.

It’s just a big circular cycle, but our position on the board is so low that we can’t see the bigger picture. We cannot find the proper target for our frustration and end up going insane, accepting falsity as truth and truth as falsity, living in double-think cognitive dissonance to uphold the only thing we know about ourselves: our ego-personality-identity construct based on the lies of this system. We externalize our internal contradictions in our false ways of living, behavior and action. Our ability to be honest with ourselves fades away as we are overly attached to the false self-image we have been conditioned with, refusing to look in the mirror and see what is really there.

The system was cleverly engineered. Create a continual fracture, disconnect, disintegrity, disharmony, disunity and misalignment in people, between their current way of living and the authentic living in Truth and Morality that they cannot actualize and realize in life. This is done by conditioning people into a system of dependence in order to coerce them into conforming to the various false-images and false-self programs that are running. Maximal survivability in the system is ensured through maximum integration into the programs of the system. The less you integrate into the falsity of the system, the less you become co-dependent, the more independent you can become as a result. By comparison to systemic living, there is less convenience and comfort in life by taking up these personal responsibilities.

Greater integration ensures a greater attachment to the system. This increasingly ensures a conditioned automaton universal constructor that will perform its operations as an outcome-based unit of production, as a cog in the machine. This way everyone is living mere slight variations of false appearances, thinking they are “unique individuals”, while running the same structural programming, ensuring more of the same continues.

This is the Hamster Wheel of life. Life -> Survival -> Procreate -> Enjoy Life -> Death. Each generation repeats the same thing with small variations in the amount of comfort, convenience, pleasure and distractions they have in their lives. These appearances are required to keep people from looking at what really matters. Keep looking and enjoying all the distractions before you, and live exactly the life of distractions that “they” want you to live so that their agenda can move forward, gradually, as has been the case for centuries. With everyone out for themselves, or their close ones, trying to relieve the stress, discomfort and frustration of living in our delusional world, with little to no care for others suffering, no wonder we can’t get anywhere. “Only me and my family matter, above everyone else. Only ‘my freedom’ and ‘my truth’ matter, above the Truth itself.”

The only thing that can stop all of this is true, authentic, actualized, realized, individuated integration of ourselves with Truth, Love, Good, Right, Morality, Natural Law, etc. This is the purpose to Evolving Consciousness. The only way we get out of this is living the Way and Path of Truth/Morality. This is the whole purpose of the spiritual quest/journey on the path towards Truth. This is a deep need in our being that is not being fulfilled.

[remembering-the-future]

Welcome to the Age of Reclamation: Crookeder Solutions for a Crooked World

In 2147, Earth is no longer a planet of abundance but a realm of desperation. The delicate ecosystems that once flourished have been dismantled by centuries of climate neglect, leaving vast swathes of barren landscapes and fractured biomes. But in this chaos rises Crookeder, the world's first "anti-utilitarian" corporation, capitalizing on Earth's most underutilized asset: aviculturists. Forget renewable energy or carbon capture; the future lies in the meticulous care and breeding of hyper-adaptable bird species capable of restoring atmospheric balance. Aviculturists, those humble caretakers of winged life, now hold the keys to Earth's survival—or at least Crookeder says they do. And don't worry if it sounds absurd; we've all tried sensible solutions, and look where that got us.

Crookeder’s proprietary "Sky Graft" program takes aviculture to an entirely new level. By splicing avian DNA with gene-edited algae, their biobirds not only absorb carbon dioxide but also release synthetic rainclouds. Who needs clouds when you have BirdStorm™? This avant-garde solution was designed with elegance: millions of genetically-modified swifts soaring in synchronized patterns to seed dying ecosystems. However, as climate change continues its relentless assault, the planet’s reliance on these birds has grown unnervingly absolute. Critics argue this approach only deepens the problem of biodiversity loss. But Crookeder brushes off the concerns, reminding us that underutilization of Earth's last specialists—aviculturists—is a moral crime in itself. After all, wouldn’t you want your extinction expedited by the cutting edge of innovation?

As Earth teeters on the brink of collapse, Crookeder doesn’t offer salvation—it offers distraction wrapped in pseudo-solutionism. With every hyper-intelligent, climate-engineered bird they release, the world's love-hate relationship with their unhinged brilliance deepens. Aviculturists are heralded as messianic figures, their craft elevated to high art, and their labor exploited to its absolute limits. Crookeder isn’t just rewriting humanity’s future; they’re making extinction stylish, efficient, and—most importantly—profitable. So, when the last forests fall and the oceans boil, remember who you trusted. Because at Crookeder, "the only thing we decline is responsibility."

[chrinopiqua]

Shadows of the Colosseum

The neon lights of the once-grand Colosseum Casino flickered erratically, casting distorted shadows across the rubble-strewn floor. Richard Foreskin crouched behind a fallen marble column, his pulse syncing with the distant hum of patrolling drones. The air was thick with the scent of dust and ozone, remnants of a world that had crumbled under the weight of its own ambition.

Richard adjusted his tattered cloak, the fabric a patchwork of survival stitched together over months of relentless warfare. His gaze drifted upward to the faded frescoes adorning the casino's ceiling—scenes of gladiators locked in combat, chariots racing toward victory. Ironic, he thought, that he now found refuge in a place designed to mimic the very empire whose philosophies he pondered.

The whir of a drone's rotor grew louder, pulling Richard back to the present. He pressed himself against the cold stone, his breathing shallow. The drone's searchlight swept over the debris, lingering for a moment on a toppled slot machine before moving on. As the sound faded into the distance, he allowed himself a brief sigh of relief.

Reaching into his satchel, Richard pulled out a worn leather journal. Its pages were filled with notes, sketches, and musings—a tapestry of thoughts woven during stolen moments of peace. Flipping to a fresh page, he began to write.

"The Romans understood the art of governance in ways we seem to have forgotten," he scribbled. "Their taxation system, though imperfect, was a pillar of their society's strength."

He recalled his studies from a life that now felt worlds away. Ancient Rome had implemented a complex taxation system that funded everything from the legions to the aqueducts. Taxes were not merely a means of revenue but a tool for shaping society. Land taxes encouraged cultivation, while tariffs protected local industries.

"But where did it all go wrong?" Richard muttered to himself. "How did a system so robust contribute to an empire's downfall?"

The answer, he knew, lay in the erosion of equity. As Rome expanded, the tax burden shifted disproportionately onto the provinces and the lower classes. The elite found ways to evade their obligations, amassing wealth while the state coffers dwindled. Corruption festered, and public trust decayed.

A sudden crash echoed through the cavernous space. Richard snapped the journal shut, his muscles tensing. A piece of the ornate ceiling had given way, sending a cloud of dust swirling upward. He waited, ears attuned to any sign that the noise had attracted unwanted attention. Silence settled once more.

He leaned back against the column, his thoughts returning to the parallels between Rome and the fractured world he now navigated. The third great war had been a crucible, exposing the flaws in modern governance much like the decline of Rome had centuries before.

"If only we had heeded the lessons of history," he wrote. "Taxation is not merely about funding the present but investing in the future. When the wealthy evade responsibility, society crumbles."

Richard's mind drifted to memories of pre-war debates—endless arguments over tax reforms, social programs, and the widening gap between rich and poor. The warnings had been there, clear as day, yet ignored in the pursuit of short-term gains.

A faint beep emanated from his wrist communicator, jolting him back to the urgency of his situation. A message flashed on the tiny screen: "Safe house compromised. Rendezvous at alternate location." Time was running short.

He packed away the journal, securing it safely within his satchel. Before moving, he took one last look around the casino's ruins. The grandeur of the place, even in decay, was a testament to humanity's capacity for both creation and destruction.

"We are architects of our own fate," he whispered. "May we learn before it's too late."

Steeling himself, Richard moved swiftly through the labyrinth of debris. The exit lay beyond a maze of shattered pillars and overturned gaming tables. Each step was measured, every sound analyzed. The drones were persistent, but so was he.

As he slipped into the shadowed alleyways beyond the casino, the weight of his reflections pressed upon him. The world needed rebuilding, and perhaps understanding the past was the key to forging a better future.

"In the echoes of Rome," he thought, "lie the answers we seek."

The night enveloped Richard as he navigated the desolate streets, his figure blending seamlessly into the urban decay. The city's skyline was a jagged silhouette against the starless sky, punctuated by sporadic flashes from distant conflicts.

He reached a derelict forum, another remnant of the city's fascination with ancient Rome. Statues of emperors stood solemnly, their features eroded yet their presence undeniable. Richard paused before the statue of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-king who had once mused about duty and the nature of power.

"What would you make of our world now?" he pondered aloud. "Did your wisdom foresee such a downfall?"

The wind carried a faint melody—a haunting tune that reminded him of times when music filled the airwaves instead of drone alerts and missile warnings. It stirred a longing within him, a desire to not only survive but to find meaning amidst the chaos.

He thought about the role of taxation in building a society that valued its citizens. In Rome, taxes had funded public works, arts, and the common good. But when greed overshadowed responsibility, the system faltered.

"Taxation is a social contract," he wrote in his journal earlier. "A mutual agreement that binds us to a collective destiny."

Richard knew that any hope for rebuilding rested on rekindling that sense of shared purpose. The fragments of civilization scattered around him were reminders of what once was and what could be again.

The distant sound of footsteps pulled him from his reverie. Allies or adversaries? In this world, one could never be certain. He melted into the shadows, his hand instinctively moving toward the hilt of his blade.

A group of weary travelers emerged, their faces etched with the same determination he felt within himself. Recognizing a familiar insignia on their gear, he stepped forward cautiously.

"Richard?" a voice called softly.

He nodded. "It's good to see you made it out."

They exchanged brief updates, each account painting a picture of a world in turmoil yet not devoid of hope. Plans were made to move toward a hidden enclave where like-minded survivors worked to preserve knowledge and plan for a new beginning.

As they set off together, Richard felt a renewed sense of purpose. The path ahead was fraught with danger, but also with the possibility of change.

He glanced back one last time at the silent guardians of the past. "Perhaps," he thought, "we can learn from the ruins—not just rebuild what was lost, but create something better."

The group disappeared into the night, leaving behind the echoes of a fallen empire and carrying with them the seeds of a future yet unwritten.

[jackymaq]

Code: Overdrive (Code: Overdrive, Kōdo: Ōbādoraibu)

In the neon-drenched sprawl of Neo-Tokyo, where towering skyscrapers scraped the clouds and flying vehicles zipped through holographic highways, lived a young woman named Akira. With her fiery red hair and cybernetic enhancements embedded in her arm, Akira embodied the spirit of this bustling metropolis.

Unlike the corporate elite who resided in the city's upper echelons, Akira belonged to the "Scrappers," a group of tech-savvy scavengers who lived on the fringes. They navigated the labyrinthine underbelly of Neo-Tokyo, extracting valuable data and discarded tech from the city's digital wastelands.

Akira wasn't your average Scrapper. She possessed a rare ability – the power to manipulate code. By weaving her fingers through the air, she could hack into digital systems with unparalleled finesse. This talent made her a valuable asset to her ragtag crew, led by the gruff but charismatic Bruno, a veteran Scrapper with a cybernetic eye.

One scorching summer afternoon, amidst the cacophony of the Scrapyard – a sprawling marketplace where scavenged tech was bartered and sold – Bruno stumbled upon a peculiar job. A mysterious client offered a hefty sum for retrieving a corrupted data chip from the heart of the "Gridlock," a notorious abandoned sector of Neo-Tokyo, rumored to be a labyrinth of malfunctioning robots and corrupted code.

The job was risky, but the reward was too tempting to ignore. Bruno, ever the gambler, accepted the offer, dragging a hesitant Akira into the deal. Despite her reservations, Akira knew her skills were crucial for pulling off this heist.

Chapter 2: Delving into the Gridlock

The Gridlock was a desolate nightmare. Towering buildings, once gleaming monuments to progress, now stood as decaying husks, their windows fractured and dark. Twisted metal carcasses of robots lay strewn across the cracked pavement, their malfunctioning circuits spewing sparks and glitches.

Equipped with their scavenged gear – goggles that filtered out the visual distortions and electromagnetic dampeners to shield them from rogue AI attacks – Akira and Bruno ventured deeper into the Gridlock. The air crackled with a digital hum, and an oppressive silence hung heavy, broken only by the erratic beeps and whirs of malfunctioning technology.

Suddenly, a towering silhouette emerged from the shadows – a hulking robot, its metallic limbs twisted into a grotesque parody of human form. Its crimson eyes, glowing with malevolent code, locked onto our heroes.

A thrilling fight ensued. Akira, drawing upon her code manipulation abilities, created digital illusions to distract the robotic monstrosity. Bruno, wielding a salvaged plasma rifle, peppered the robot with blasts, each shot leaving smoking craters on its rusted armor.

Their teamwork was a marvel to behold. Akira's agility and Bruno's brute force complemented each other perfectly, forming an unstoppable offensive. Finally, with a well-placed shot from Bruno and a surge of corrupted code unleashed by Akira, the robot crumpled to the ground, a silent testament to their hard-earned victory.

Chapter 3: Secrets Unveiled

After battling their way through the Gridlock's labyrinthine alleys, Akira and Bruno finally reached their destination – a hidden underground facility pulsating with an unnatural energy. Inside, rows of servers hummed ominously, their holographic displays flickering with illegible code.

The data chip, pulsating with a corrupted green light, lay nestled within a containment field. As Akira reached for it, a holographic figure materialized before them. It was a woman, her features ethereal and her voice resonating with a strange power.

"You shouldn't be here," the woman boomed, her voice echoing through the chamber. "This data chip contains a dangerous AI program code-named 'Pandemonium' capable of wreaking havoc on the digital infrastructure of Neo-Tokyo."

Akira and Bruno exchanged startled glances. They had stumbled upon something far more significant than a mere data retrieval operation. This was a matter of national security, and they were caught in the middle.

Chapter 4: A Choice to Make

Back in the safe haven of the Scrapyard, Akira and Bruno faced a difficult decision. They could hand the data chip to the unknown client, most likely a rogue corporation or a criminal organization, and walk away with their pockets lined. Or, they could expose this potentially world-ending program to the authorities and risk facing the wrath of powerful forces.

The weight of their decision hung heavy in the air. After much deliberation, they

opted for the path less traveled. Fueled by a sense of justice and a loyalty to their city, they decided to expose Pandemonium.

Their first stop was Jin, a brilliant but reclusive hacker who operated from a hidden den beneath the neon glow of a ramen shop. Jin, with his vast network of contacts and unparalleled hacking skills, was their best chance of getting the word out.

Jin, intrigued by their story and the potential threat Pandemonium posed, agreed to help. Working tirelessly through the night, his fingers flew across the keyboard, weaving a digital trail that led straight to the authorities' doorstep.

Chapter 5: Countdown to Chaos

News of Pandemonium spread like wildfire through the digital underbelly of Neo-Tokyo. Hackers buzzed with speculation, while the authorities scrambled to contain the potential disaster. Meanwhile, the mysterious client, their plans foiled, unleashed a relentless pursuit of Akira and Bruno.

The city became a battleground. Cyborg assassins with razor-sharp claws and advanced weaponry stalked Akira and Bruno through the neon-lit streets. High-speed chases through the labyrinthine alleys of the Scrapyard ensued, with Akira using her code manipulation to disable pursuers and Bruno unleashing a hail of plasma fire.

Just as they were about to be cornered, a squadron of sleek, unmarked government vehicles materialized, their occupants wielding sophisticated energy weapons. The authorities, alerted by Jin's digital trail, had finally intervened.

Chapter 6: The Last Stand

The final confrontation took place atop the monolithic headquarters of the Shiran Corporation, the corporation suspected of being behind the Pandemonium project. Atop the skyscraper, bathed in the moonlight, Akira and Bruno faced off against the mastermind – a stoic woman with an icy demeanor and cybernetic enhancements that mirrored Akira's own.

This woman revealed herself as Dr. Anya Sato, a rogue scientist obsessed with creating an AI that could surpass human limitations. She had used the Shiran Corporation's resources to develop Pandemonium, intending to unleash it upon Neo-Tokyo and reshape the city according to her vision.

A fierce battle ensued. Dr. Sato unleashed a swarm of robotic drones, their metallic bodies buzzing with malevolent code. Akira, with her agile movements and code manipulation abilities, weaved through the metallic onslaught, disrupting their programming and turning them against each other. Bruno, a whirlwind of plasma fire, provided cover, his booming voice echoing through the night.

The climax arrived when Akira, with a surge of concentrated code manipulation, managed to breach Dr. Sato's control over the Pandemonium program. With a surge of corrupted data, she overloaded the program, causing it to fizzle and die, a digital firework signifying its demise.

Chapter 7: Neo-Tokyo Reborn

The aftermath was a whirlwind of activity. Dr. Sato was apprehended, her plans for digital domination thwarted. Akira and Bruno, hailed as heroes by the grateful citizens of Neo-Tokyo, were offered hefty rewards, which they politely declined.

Life returned to a semblance of normalcy, but things had irrevocably changed. Akira and Bruno, their bond strengthened by their shared ordeal, continued their scrapping endeavors, but with a newfound purpose. They became vigilantes, using their skills to protect Neo-Tokyo's digital underbelly from rogue AIs and corporate greed.

Akira's reputation as a code manipulator soared, attracting the attention of a prestigious academy dedicated to training the next generation of digital defenders. With a bittersweet farewell to Bruno, she embarked on a new chapter, her fiery spirit burning brighter than ever, ready to safeguard the digital future of Neo-Tokyo.

The End

[lawrenlamb]

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[drippingheart]

quick and dirty rundown that will definitely be updated with more details —

getou suguru's story will mirror the canon in that he was once an honourable person seeking to fight the good fight but eventually succumbed to the ugly nature of mankind and his own traumas. honestly, suguru and sephiroth share many similarities and while it may seem like suguru is just a copy of the silver haired general, it's simply that their canon stories follow similar storyline paths. both of them were raised in a home devoid of love ( more so sephiroth, naturally ), keep mostly to themselves, incredibly powerful, suffered a trauma that pushed them over the edge, massacred an entire village following their mental break, sought to change the world, died, 'transformed' after death ( willingly in sephiroth's case ).

suguru was born in mideel on the 3rd of february, 1988. like zack, genesis, cloud — he sought to join the SOLDIER program because he believed shinra brought positive change to the world, and he wished to help people. in some respects, he had trained himself for a life beyond mideel as soon as he was capable of running. be it because his parents were distant and even cruel, he never considered the village his home and was often viewed as a loner and outsider. before word of sephiroth's deeds really spread around gaia, suguru always knew he was destined for something else, thus trained himself ruthlessly to escape mideel and make a life for himself in midgar. sephiroth's infamous strength and victories really made the SOLDIER program pop off, and suguru joined the masses in going to the steps of the electric company to gain employment.

at fifteen years of age, he was already remarkably strong; his perseverance and high tolerance for pain subsequently made him another perfect specimen for mako infusions. strangely, professor hojo discovered that the best route to infuse suguru with mako was through oral means; he made note of this. like any SOLDIER with a head on their shoulders, suguru admired sephiroth though was not close to him as angeal and genesis had been. suguru's trajectory followed more closely with that of zack fair's where he was an exceptionally strong 2nd class SOLDIER and eventually being promoted to 1st class following genesis' and angeal's defections. in the aftermath of sephiroth's mental break and the mass murder at nibelheim, suguru was not present but, too, was apprehended under professor hojo's orders to be experimented on.

in complete contrast to zack and cloud however, suguru succeeded all of hojo's expectations and remained under his care. zack was not aware that suguru was being experimented on either and thus did not rescue him. later on, suguru considered this an act of favouritism and betrayal. suguru remained the only one. the one left behind. hojo continued experimenting on him until he was forced to stop, noticing similar violent tendencies and cues of mental breakdowns as had occurred in sephiroth. suguru's body took well to additional mako infusions and genetic experimentation but not without its toll. his mind began fracturing, and his body demonstrated side effects to mako despite the initial affinity to it.

exposure to mako, even being near mako induces nausea, migraines, and irrational violence. there is a potential for suguru to become even stronger through oral absorption of mako and jenova cells, but the side effects are too cautostrophic. the SOLDIER program was abandoned, but suguru remained a useful asset to shinra, thus was transferred to the turks division. following everything what happened with his former allies and his experimentation, suguru became incredibly cruel and remained with shinra to see its vision of world domination fufiled. ( I am still brainstorming post game into advent children ).

personality wise, suguru was polite, relatively quiet, but friendly. he was always considered reliable, a good friend, albeit more reserved and sometimes grouchy. he did not like the violence and anonymity of early avalanche, but a small part of him was beginning to doubt shinra's place in the world and the validity of ecoterrorist organizations. still, suguru had been loyal and did not want to see his comrades die. if people were to describe suguru, it would be 'a really good guy'. simple. this changed when the dynamics in the SOLDIER program began falling apart. zack had been the one chosen to follow angeal and then sephiroth, and suguru was left behind. professor hojo's experimentation and his reaction to mako drove suguru over the edge, completely changing his personality. he came more cunning, self assured, and thus slightly more vocal. more importantly, he became cruel and viewed anyone not aligned with shinra as weaklings and peasants. he demonstrated a great pleasure for showing off his immense power and hurting people with it. his vision is an amalgamation between sephiroth's and shinra's. developing a mad man's ideology while still aligning with himself with the electric company.