#has smashed multiple light bulbs

[wyofabdoms]

Undercover I Do - Chapter 12

Characters: Javier Peña x female reader

Summary: While on an undercover assignment posing as a married couple, you are attacked and nearly assaulted. Upon waking, all you remember about Javier Peña is what you remembering seeing from two photographs of the two of you posing as the happily married couple. As you struggle to regain your memories, Javi struggles with his own feelings for you.

Rating: Explicit

Chapter Warnings: Implied cheating, swearing, destruction of government property, Javi has road rage.

Word Count: 2077

Notes: Reeling from what you witnessed in the alley, you arrive at the office for your meeting with Dixon. And you take out some of your anger on Javi's unwitting empty office. But in the midst of your rage, you come across something interesting.

Let me know if you find any crazy mistakes. Feedback and comments greatly appreciated.

Be well!

Read on Ao3

*

The moment you set foot in the office bullpen, you know your initial bad feeling about this meeting is right. Everyone seems to be looking at you with a pained expression; as though they are all sympathetic to some plight that is still unbeknownst to you. You think maybe it’s just the memory loss and your temper flares, making you want to scream and lash out at all of them, down to the typist in the corner.

Then, Van Ness steps into your line of sight and says your name cautiously, looking at you with concern etched on his forehead.

“I’m here to meet with Dixon. She called me.” You grit your words out, willing him to just back off, not wanting him to ask you if you’re ok, knowing that if he does, you’ll start sobbing hysterically in front of all of these people in the middle of the United States DEA bullpen.

“Ah….yeah, well the Ambassador just showed up, she got caught up meeting with him. Shouldn’t take long. She wanted me to keep an eye out for you.” As he spoke, the younger man steered her towards an office and through the doorway. “You can wait in here until she’s finished, probably five, ten minutes.” Too late you realized the office you were being ushered into was Javier’s office. You thought better about throwing a fit and asking to wait somewhere else. If you did, he’d probably inquire as to why and then…well, it was probably best to just sit in your piece of trash husband’s office and wait.

He won’t be in for a while anyway, you think furiously. He’s too “preoccupied”. That thought brought the empty bottom feeling into your stomach again and was quickly replaced with boiling fury and rage at what you had witnessed. Van Ness seemed to sense your anger and quickly retreated, leaving you to pace Javi’s office angrily.

“What a piece of shit!” You growl under your breath and then proceed to call him every foul name you can think of in both English and Spanish. As you do so, you randomly kick furniture, upending a pile of cartons on an armchair and not caring one second about the headache it would cause him to reorganize it. As you pass the bookshelf, you punch a flag statue off a shelf and enjoy the satisfying crunch it made as it lands on the floor. That sound seems to drag more need to destroy. You tear the cushions up from the couch and rip them open, flailing the stuffing out of them, imagining it was your husband’s insides that you were ripping to pieces, as well as that “informant”! You grab a framed medal off the wall behind the couch, smashing the glass over the coffee table and marching over to his desk, ripping the medal out of its cushioned velvet bed and taking the sharp, pointed edge of the bottom of it to the back of his desk chair.

The tearing sound as the material was ripped open fills up the room like a freight train and gives you an extreme sense of satisfaction. You jab the sharp end of your makeshift weapon into the glossy, smooth surface of the desk and grit your teeth as you put all of your anger and weight into cutting a jagged line from one side of the desk to the other, knocking files that were spread out haphazardly on the floor. Your rage completely overtook you and you began to gouge all of the foul names you had previously been calling him into the surface of the desk until your hand began to ache from pressing so hard. The pain only makes you angrier and you fling the medal across the office, knocking a lamp off of the end table. The clatter and sound of the bulb smashing give you some momentary peace, but then the memory of that woman’s hand moving inside his pants resurfaces again, causing you to redouble your efforts and proceed in destroying every visible inch of his office.

How dare he? How...dare...he? How dare YOU, thinking anything less from the man that was your husband. A leopard doesn’t change its spots...what had you been thinking? WHAT could possibly have EVER made you agree to marry such a vile, disgusting slime ball of a man? You had begged him...BEGGED HIM...to fuck you only an hour before you found him in a shkeezy back alley with a cheap whore. Fuck him! If he would rather have his whores than you, then so be it. He could keep them. How long had he still been “working leads” after you’d gotten married? Did everyone outside in that bullpen know? How many of them still tittered over the water cooler about how many times Agent Peña visited the brothels in the city...how many of THEM out there had he fooled around with, too? Why stop at whores? How could he have convinced you so well. Convinced you to marry him, but then, all this time, convinced you to keep begging him, to keep trying to be with him. You had asked...you had asked him to his face if there was someone else. He had denied it and you had believed him. What a fool you’d been. No, there wasn’t someONE else. There was probably NUMEROUS others.

As suddenly as your rage had come upon you, it is just as suddenly replaced by an overwhelming sense of sadness; you feel your legs give out and you collapse to the floor amidst the upended furniture, crumpled balls of paper, broken glass and strewn file folders. Staring at the destruction around you for a moment, you feel the knife of betrayal prick your insides and your heart shatters to pieces.

You bury your face in your hands and begin to sob. After several minutes you draw a watery breath, then shake your head. Dixon was going to be out of her meeting any minute. She was going to find you in here sobbing hysterically amidst all of this.

Oh god! You look around at the mess you’ve made in Javi’s office. The sudden thought enters your mind that you’ve just successfully demolished a significant amount of government property. You frantically start collecting crumpled paper and straightening file folders within reach, trying to return the room to some semblance of order as quickly as possible.

As you reach for one particular folder, you catch sight of half a photograph sticking out that seems familiar. Your hand stops in mid-air.

It’s your wedding photo with Javi.

The same one that’s framed in your apartment. Your hand shakes as you reach for the photo, tears starting to stream from your eyes again at the sight of the now familiar photo. You both looked so happy, so in love with each other. What had happened? How could he be such a good liar?

You cry as you clutch the photo to your chest. Your marriage was over. A marriage that you hadn’t even really gotten a chance to be a part of because most of it was lost to the clouds of your missing memory. And though you didn’t want to admit it...as much as you wanted to hate him, you knew that deep down you were mostly sad because you loved Javier. And he had betrayed you. Had lied to you. But you loved him despite that. And now, knowing what you knew, you couldn’t stay married to him.

And that broke your heart.

You heaved another huge sigh and moved to place the photo back where you had found it….

...and paused again.

What was your wedding photo doing in a DEA case file folder?

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

Javier didn’t think he had ever driven so fast in his life. Even though he had made a valiant effort at breaking every single driving law in Columbia, it still seemed like an eternity before he braked in front of the DEA building. Today the universe had not been on his side. Despite driving as fast as he could, he seemed to hit nothing but red lights and streets full of bumper to bumper traffic. Crosswalks seemed to be more full than normal with mothers and baby carriages and kids on their way to school. Even when he had tried to take the few shortcuts he knew, he had stalled, running into construction or a blocked roadway where there had once been open passage.

In the end, it had taken him twice as long to get to work then it normally would have. He was furious when he arrived. Furious as himself mostly, but also willing to dole out a fair share to the traffic lights, pedestrians, sidewalk vendors and whoever tried to get in his way before he found out where his partner was.

He was certain she had seen them. He just knew it, deep in his gut. And he knew that he had to find her. To see her. To talk to her. He needed to talk to her before Dixon broke the news to her about her being sent home. He needed to hold her. To tell her….

Would he have the balls to actually tell her what he needed to tell her?

Thinking about that only served to remind him of what a coward he was. He knew he wouldn’t be able to tell her how he really felt. He hadn’t even been able to….SHOW her how he felt. He hadn’t been able to fuck her when she had begged him, when she had willingly offered herself to him on multiple occasions.

He wanted to throw up thinking about it. Thinking about saying those words to her. Thinking about how she was going to be sent home, that by tonight she wouldn’t be in his life anymore, that he was never going to know how it felt to hold her in his arms and whisper those words in her ear, wasn’t going to know how it felt to be inside of her, to know how she sounded and looked when she came undone from pleasure.

Yeah, he was a real fucking coward.

When he stormed into the bullpen, he knew something was wrong. Van Ness and Feistl both stood a short distance from his office, arms folded, heads cocked towards the closed door as though trying to detect any sound. They both had stricken looks on their faces, a mixture of fear and bewilderment, and neither man seemed quite sure what to do with themselves when Javier entered. One look at them and then a look at the closed office door told him that things had already started happening. His heart sank.

“Dixon?” He asked, nodding towards his office. Van Ness started, then stood up straight, shaking his head.

“No. She’s still in a meeting. She wanted me to have her wait in...” Without waiting for any further information, Javi plowed his way past them and wrenched open the door to his office.

He stopped short, eyes widening at the scene in front of him.

It looked like a bomb had exploded in his office. Furniture was upturned, pictures were smashed and hanging askew, file folders were thrown everywhere, the floor was covered in ripped and crumpled paper and...some kind of fluff...what was that? The couch cushions? He saw them ripped to shreds and thrown randomly around the room. Items had been smashed off the bookshelves and lamps were cracked and broken to pieces, leaving large chunks of glass strewn about the floor.

And there she sat in the midst of the chaos.

Her shoulders were hunched over. A file folder was open in her lap and she had clearly been reading several pages of the report found within. Your staged wedding photo was in one hand as she turned the pages of the report with the other. He could only stare at her and at the destruction surrounding her...and then it slowly dawned on him what she was reading.

At almost the exact same moment that he had the realization, she lifted her head from the file and looked up at him.

His heart broke.

Her face was red from crying, tear tracks staining her face, confusion and a thousand questions filling her eyes. Her voice was shaking and wobbly and sounded like a child’s: scared, lost...terrified of the truth.

“Javi?”

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8,  Chapter 9, Chapter 10,  Chapter 11, Chapter 13

[gamerwoo]

Seventeen: Welcome to Caratland (Part 13)

(header by the amazing @cozynochu​​​)

Characters: Seventeen x reader (gender neutral)

Genre/warnings: horror/halloween au, interactive au, this part doesn’t really have anything happen so if you’re scared of death or injury or anything ur safe (but the alternate endings include death and injury so do with that what you will)

Summary: The night before Halloween, you and your 13 friends decide to go explore the infamous abandoned amusement park: Caratland, where it’s rumored that rides start on their own, empty mascot suits are seen walking around, and people don’t return the same as when they left. Can you and your friends survive the night in Caratland?

Previous | Next | Caratland Masterlist

After weighing your options, you shrugged and said, “I think I wanna check out the funhouse. It’s probably super creepy now, right?”

“That’s the Halloween spirit,” Wonwoo deadpanned, patting your back before turning to go toward the funhouse. “I think it’s this way.”

“Everybody text if you need anything!” Seungcheol called as the groups went their separate ways.

-

After a bit of searching, the five of you finally found the funhouse. It looked smaller than you remembered, but Hansol remarked that he was pretty sure it was bigger inside than it was outside.

“I think that was part of the gimmick or whatever,” he said.

Because the power was on, the lights were dimly blinking outside the funhouse. You were pretty sure they were supposed to be brighter and steady, but the bulbs were old so you didn’t think too much of how creepy it seemed. This funhouse wasn’t necessarily supposed to be scary since Caratland was aimed toward kids.

The entrance was one of those tunnels that spun around with a swirl pattern on it. It was turning slowly, and Wonwoo led the way into the funhouse, turning his head to warn everyone not to slip on the dust.

“There’s probably a fuck ton of cobwebs in here, too,” Joshua muttered, shining his light around. “My allergies are gonna be so bad by the end of this.”

“You’re the one who wanted to come to the funhouse,” you reminded him, “so stop whining.”

He just mocked you and kept going.

You were at the end of the group, but you managed to keep up. There were a bunch of weird things inside like a bunch of punching bags and slow swinging balls you had to make your way through, a room of streamers that were now falling apart from how old they were, and a bunch of other rooms that had obstacles to go through. The five of you stopped to take pictures and videos while you goofed off in the funhouse, laughing and genuinely having fun. You were glad you went with a group that didn’t have anybody who was necessarily afraid of the abandoned park.

“Can you shine your light a little off to the side?” Minghao asked as he posed for some pictures that he forced Joshua to take for him.

“Can you pose better?” Joshua shot back as he got down on one knee and bent his body down, trying to get the angle that Minghao instructed him to get.

Hansol craned his neck to see the phone screen, “It looks pretty dope, though.”

“Can I have a turn being the model?” you asked, holding two flashlights up above your head. “My arms are tired.”

“I’ll buy you McDonald’s if you stop complaining,” Wonwoo offered.

After a lot of dicking around and picture taking, you reached the end of the funhouse: the mirror maze.

“I forgot about the mirror maze,” Wonwoo whined. “Everyone stay close, okay?”

You were at the end with Minghao in front of you. You grabbed onto his shirt to make sure you wouldn’t get lost, even when he stopped to pose for photos in the mirrors.

“Shouldn’t we keep up with the others?” you asked.

“It’s fine,” he promised. “If we run into mirrors, we just go the other way. There’s only one path, ______.”

You stepped away so you wouldn’t be in his shots, patiently waiting as you looked around. But you did a double take when you saw something bright pink in the mirrors. You turned your head back and pointed your light just right to see the reflection of Eight in the mirrors. You turned this way and that to try to see if you could find where the frog animatronic was, but you couldn’t find the source. When you turned back around to see the reflection, it was gone anyway.

‘It couldn’t have gotten out of the food court,’ you told yourself, ‘it’s probably just some dumb affect the mirrors have.’

Deciding the mirrors probably were made to show reflections of the mascots, you thought nothing else of the reflections.

“Let’s go, _____,” Minghao called.

But when you went to step forward, you ran face first into a mirror. You let out a deep sigh, trying to find your way through the maze, but Minghao was already walking ahead of you so you didn’t get any closer -- it didn’t help that you kept crashing into mirrors, anyway.

“Hao!” you called, trying to get him to slow down at wait for you.

But there was no answer.

You hit another mirror, stepping back and rubbing your forehead. As you glared at the mirror in front of you, you saw Eight looming behind you. You whipped around, shining your flashlight just to see reflections of the pink frog on every single mirror, and your stomach suddenly dropped as your blood turned to ice. You weren’t sure why, but you were getting a bad feeling. Your brain going into overdrive knowing you had to get out of the maze, you figured you had two options: find your way through the rest of the mirror maze since it was the last part of the funhouse, or go back the way you came since you were still near the beginning of the mirror maze. The first option would be good since it was the last part of the funhouse, but difficult since you were still at the beginning of the mirror maze. But the second would be good as well since you had the rest of the maze to go and you were having a difficult time, but it meant having to go backwards through the funhouse all alone. So what were you supposed to do?

»»————-　　————-««

TAKE THE POLL HERE!!!

The poll will close tomorrow (10/25) at 9pm EST!!

»»————-　　————-««

There are multiple alernate endings because each choice also had two more choices so here’s all the possible endings for the other options.

Ferris Wheel Ending 1: You would get to the ride with Seungcheol, Junhui, and Mingyu and check it out. At the end of the part, there would be another choice where you could choose to either ride the ferris wheel with Mingyu and Jun while Seungcheol controlled the ride, or you control the ride while you let your three friends ride it. If you control the ride, you’d stop their cart at the very top of the ride to freak out Seungcheol and Mingyu, but from the top of the wheel, Seungcheol would spot Serenity walking toward the ride with its animatronic eyes glowed to life. He would scream for you to get them down, and luckily, you’d manage to do so in time. Junhui would grab your arm and run just before Serenity could get ahold of you. You’d decide to all meet at the merry go round since it’s in the very center of the park.

Ferris Wheel Ending 2: If you chose to let Seungcheol control the ride while you rode it, you, Mingyu, and Junhui would be too loud while messing around on the ride and wouldn’t hear Seungcheol shouting for help when he spots Serenity coming for him. He doesn’t run because his main concern is getting the three of you off the ride safely, but he spots the animatronic too late and it’s already too close. Junhui manages to jump off the ride when the cart is low enough, but Serenity already has ahold on Seungcheol’s shirt. Serenity would crush Seungcheol’s scull between its metal hands. Junhui would yell for you and Mingyu to run, and Mingyu would help you off the ride before the three of you book it to the merry go round.

Bumper Cars Ending 1: You, Jeonghan, Chan, and Seokmin try to get the ride going. Jeonghan has been making jabs at Chan being the baby all night, and makes another comment about how Chan isn’t old enough to drive the bumper cars himself. This sets Chan off and the two begin arguing with you trying to break them, up. Seokmin is frantically trying to get your attention, and points to one of the cars where Bongbong is sitting with its eyes glowing and the lights on the car turns on. If you decided to try to get into one of the cars instead of making a run for it, you end up in a car with Seokmin with you driving, and Jeonghan and Chan manage to get in a car with Jeonghan driving. You do your best to avoid the animatronic, but you know you can only drive around in circles for so long. Chan gets the idea to jump out of the car near the ride controls so he instructs Jeonghan to drive closer to it. He leaps out and shuts down the ride. Bongbong’s car slides into a cluster of other cars while Jeonghan’s bumps into the gate that fences in the ride, and you and Seokmin slide toward Chan. The four of you manage to escape while Bongbong is trying to get out of the car, and you all decide to meet up with everyone else at the merry go round.

Bumper Cars Ending 2: If you decided to make a run for it instead of hopping in a car, you’d slip on the floor of the ride since it’s very slipper, and you’d fall on your face. Bongbong would go to hit you with the car, but Chan would jump in front of you before he could reach you. He’d get knocked backwards, smashing his head off the metal midway that divides the track, dying on impact as his skull cracks open and he bleeds out on the floor. You would scramble to your feet as Jeonghan tries to hop cars with Seokmin who’s panicking, and the three of you would make a run for it toward the merry go round.

Rollercoaster Ending 1: You, Soonyoung, Jihoon, and Seungkwan would make it to the rollercoaster and decide to walk the path on the side that workers use for maintenance and whatnot. There’s a cart still left on the track, but it’s obvious turning the rollercoaster on wouldn’t be very safe. But as your walking the side of the track, you hear what sounds like a rollercoaster going up the hill. You turn your heads toward the hill, but you’re at the bottom of it and can’t see the other side of it. You make out a rollercoaster peaking over the top of the hill before you can make out Horanghae riding in the front of the ride. As the rollercoaster flies down the hill, you press your body up against the railing of the path to get as far away as possible. But it takes Soonyoung by surprise and he falls over the railing. He’s just barely able to grab the railing, dangling well above the ground. Jihoon quickly reacts and grabs onto Soonyoung’s hand to try to help him, but the railing is clearly old and about to fall apart. Seungkwan falls to the floor in shock, unable to move. If you decide to try to grab Soonyoung’s hand that’s holding onto the railing, you and Jihoon manage to pull him back up to safety before the railing can give out. You collect Seungkwan, go down one of the emergency ladders, and decide to go to the merry go round.

Rollercoaster Ending 2: If you decided to grab onto Jihoon instead to pull on him and try to pull Soonyoung up like that, the railing would break. The three of you would fall to the ground, Soonyoung landing beneath the both of you and dying. Your weight as the height of the fall would also kill Jihoon, while you managed to survive from your friends breaking your fall. You would rush up the emergency ladder to get Seungkwan and help him down before going to the merry go round.

[mother-snake]

🎶Guess whos back🎶 🎶back again🎶

It's me! With more Janus angst! Well, more fluff then anything... It's fluff (did you really think we could pass the 4 year anniversary of sanders sides and I wouldn't send something in?)

So!! The sides are having a huge party to celebrate 4 years. The living room is decked in all the colours of the rainbow. A mixture of all the sides music are playing through the speakers and all their favourite foods are set up. Everyone is in the living room, talking and dancing mostly but Virgil did climb on top of the fridge when Roman took out glitter. Well, everyone is in the living room except for a certain snake like side.

Janus didn't join the party. Hes still in his room in the mindscape. Not from lack of effort from the others. They knocked on his door for half an hour straight with no answer. So they just accept that Janus is going to miss this year.

At least all accept Patton.

Patton snatched Remus from the party and made him lock pick the door open. Patton opened the door slowly -so that if Jan was sleeping it wouldn't disturb him. Patton felt his heart drop when he saw the yellow side's room.

The walls were covered with scuffs and tears in the Victorian wallpaper, almost all the furniture was flipped and destroyed -burns coating some of the edges, Janus' prized record player was smashed to pieces and all of the light bulbs were shattered. Stuttering out a soft curse (holy smokes, fudge, sugar honey ice tea, etc) Patton summoned the others.

Instant chaos. Virgil immediately goes to "oh my god, Janus is dead. I need to pick up a larger work load. Thomas is never going to be able to lie again. Patton is trying to hold back tears and calm down Virgil Logan is looking throughout the room, deducing that there was a massive struggle, some things are burned but only in concentrated places and there is a small pool of blood by some shattered glass. The twins say that they feel some magic from the imagination in the room. The sides decide to follow the clues and go to the imagination to see if they can find anything else.

Luckily for them! The imagination works with a different time! 24 hours in the imagination is one hour irl. So they should be back for the party!!

When they enter the imagination the first thing they see is a bowler hat that is stained with blood and a set of foot prints. They follow it as well with picking up the hat.

Logan notices that the corner is burned and the blood is fresh -still wet and it hasn't darkened yet-

While walking they pay close attention to their surroundings and chat about what movies they want to watch when they get back to the party. The footprints are becoming scarce so they follow the occasional droplet of blood and torn piece of clothing.

They walk for hours with only the birds and setting sun to keep them company. They decide to stop and rest for the night when Logan almost falls in a hole that was hidden by the lack of light. Roman summons a few sleeping bags and sets up a fire while Virgil takes first watch. Switching throughout the night.

The next day continues more or less like it did the day before. Walking and talking.

This time ,after crossing a river, they find a yellow glove soaked in blood, some scales stuck on the fabric. If their hurry wasn't there before it was now. They quicken their pace even more. Leaving the forest they were in and moving into some plains, they thought they heard distant shouting.

"don't let me right now you monster!"

"you have no idea what I'm not capable of when I'm mad!"

"Sooner or later the others won't catch up with you!!"

All with the S' slurred and sarcastic tone that they knew oh so well. They walked up a hill to see Janus tied to a pyre, blond curls a mess and matted with dried blood, clothes torn and some scales torn off. They looked to the insane bastard that thought kidnapping the snake was a good idea to see not just one bastard. But over 30 bastards!!

Janus got kidnapped by a cult.

The cult was very stereotypical; black cloaks, a few sacrificed goats and white porcelain masks with painted scales on their face -wait a sec... Scales? Yes scales. Deceit has a cult devoted to him- and thats when it clicks for them. They want to sacrifice Janus to appease Deceit. This cult doesn't know that Janus IS Deceit. The sides face palmed when they realized how dumb these cultists are.

The cultists seem really annoyed with Janus' complaining so they gag him all while he was yelling at how he was going to skin these fucking people alive to make a skin suit -Remus was proud- but sadly. Threats don't mean much if you're tied to a pole and about to be set on fire. The people continue to prepare the dumbest sacrifice ever while the others try to figure out how to free Janus.

Virgil looks closer at the items the cultists have laid out. A spider corpse, an octopus tentacle, a bulls horn, a cats eye and a few crow feathers... This wasn't a Janus cult. This was a Dark Side cult. Virgil let out a heavy sigh and told the others his plan.

Remus and Virgil turned into their dark forms. Spider legs coming out of Virgil's back along with six more eyes sprouted, his hair also turned purple. Remus had oozing green tentacles rip from his back and his skin took a sickening green tinge, his white hair stripe also turned neon green. They teleported behind the cultists and let out animalistic growls.

The cult turned around to see the people they worshipped having a pissed off expression on their face and instantly knew they fucked up. They fell to their knees and begged for mercy all while Virgil chewed them out for kidnapping the actual Deceit -thats when that threat of a skin suit really sunk in- and how creepy it was to try to burn someone alive and to at least have some class when sacrificing someone- that went on for a while.

The other three snuck behind the cult and untied Janus, the second they untied his hands Janus ripped off the gag and turned into his dark form.

He grew six arms and his eyes glowed with a intense yellow. Golden snakes wrapped around his arms and then he let out a low hiss.

Janus sent the snakes to tie the cultists arms behind their backs and stepped down from the pyre. To be honest; every side there thought that Janus was going to murder 30 people and actually skin them, but that is NOT WHAT HAPPENNED!!!

No one expected Janus to yell at them like a disappointed mother for 2 hours straight and keep their mouths shut with his powers.

"-AND NOT ANOTHER THING! If you ignorant self centered pricks ever, and I don't mean ever, lay a single hand on another side again. YOU WILL ALL BE BURNED AT THE FUCKING STAKE!-" he went on for a while...

The ironic thing was that Janus was the youngest side so this was equal to hearing your toddler threaten arson.

After Janus was done he turned around and snatched his glove from the nearby table and changed back to his normal form all while mumbling about "some insane crazy assholes who fucking kidnapped me in the middle of scale care, fucking pricks." The other sides just followed him. Virgil and Remus changing back as they quickly caught up with Janus.

Remus could not stop laughing, Virgil was shocked that Janus could be a disappointed mother without having children, Roman was just amazed by the fact that the snake was still standing after some of those injuries. Patton wanted to give him a hug.... Ok multiple hugs... Fine he wanted to snuggle. And Logan? Logan just wanted to know more about the dark forms.

The walk was quicker back then it was to rescue the snake all while listening to Janus complaining that the pricks broke his record player and that they had the bloody AUDACITY to kidnap him! All they could think about was when Thomas called Janus the main mean girl and that they couldnt even deny it anymore.

When they made it back they patched up Janus and let him take a shower before sinking back out to join Thomas, who was just watching the office for the millionth time (pick another show sanders, I beg of you) he did perk back up when he realized that the sides were back. Then he saw the pissed off look on Janus' face... and he asked what was wrong. That set JanJan Binks off again as the others were getting a bit tired of hearing this again for the fifth time that day. So like how you distract a child.

They put on 'Chicago, the musical' and let the songs of Roxie Hart distract the snake. It worked, he shut up real quick!

The sides vowed to never let Janus get kidnapped ever again because that was.... An experience, that they DO NOT want to do again!

Thankfully the rest of the day went off well.

~~~~~

And that was an idea from 1am from someone who should be asleep! I was gonna make this angsty but all I could imagine was a pissed of Janus yelling at 30 adults.

I doubt you would want to use this but feel free! I hope this is as funny as my sleep deprived brain thinks it is!

(I'm sorry for any typos, it is very late)

(I got it! Just forgot to post it yesterday ^-^')

One, Yes. I love it. The beautiful angst... And ferral janus is something I absolutely die for.

(would say more but my brain has short circuited and I'm in boi, strict teach... But I'll put more later!)

[gizmobode]

The Google Nest Mini is a smashing entry into smart tech. It gives you a mini search engine in your kitchen, office or bedside. It is relatively inexpensive and usually part of deals or promos and have been seen as cheap as £20. Asking for your schedule, to stick your playlist on works a treat. It comes alive though when you sync up with other smart gear and a Google account, flicking the lights on or off in the house for example. Packs a reasonable punch for a mini speaker too.

Taking the leap

Getting into smart tech wasn't an instant thing for me. It took a long time to break away from opening up my door and home to these ever-present, ever-listening gizmos. I saw them more as a gimmick, than a useful device. Yet now, I am only full of praise for these little pill-like speakers that dot around our house. I have four of them. One in the kitchen, hidden behind the television, another by my bedside table, a third in the garage and a spare (replaced by a Google Home Hub, in fact - one I'll be reviewing later). What changed?

It actually started with when we moved home and we arrived to what was a blank canvas, stuck desperately in the seventies with its decor and I wanted to be able to do something flash with the lighting. My research took me towards the fabulous Philips Hue system (again, another thing I will be talking about soon) and enticed by a deal, was offered a solitary lightbulb with a Google Nest Mini second generation in tow. One downside with the Philips Hue system is the price. Lightbulbs are expensive. Think Lexmark printers and ink cartridges. The printer (the hub itself) isn't that expensive, but the ink (bulbs) were nearly as much, if not more than the cost of the printer! So, if you can get a bulb at a modestly cheap price, it's worth it. And it just happened to come with the Mini.

It is though with this dynamic duo, you start to get lured into the smart world, Ironman Jarvis style, by ushering commands and controlling things and your mind opens up to the possibilities of automating things around the house. Let me give you a few examples of how I use mine.

OK Google ...

When I wake up, I can simply say "Hey Google, good morning" and it will run through the schedule for the day, the weather, my traffic on my commute and give me a tailored overview of the headlines from BBC, Bloomberg or whoever floats your boat there and then. Great for getting dresses in the morning. I head to the office at home. "OK Google, turn the fan on". It'll switch on a TP Link smart plug (another review coming for that) that's connected to my tower fan and cool the room down. "OK Google, open my skylight" then opens the Velux window that is about 14 ft above my head and previously was only reachable with a huge stick. When it gets dark, "OK Google, turn on the office lights". That switches on the office lights in the room.

Now you're not talking about life-changing tech here, let's be real. With mobile phones, things are an app away, or I could get my long stick and open the window, press the "on" button on the fan or flick the light switch, but it starts to really fit nicely into your life. Much like how the iPad was mocked as four iPhones being sellotaped together. Remember that? Then it's the neater things, "play my playlist" or entertaining my kids with "what noise does a lion make" again and again. You've got the whole power of Google and its unparalleled search engine working away and retrieving you answers, pulling the strings on your tech and giving you the latest information.

When you hook up a few of these, you get some slightly more interesting options too. You can 'broadcast' messages around the house, or sync music across multiple Nests.

Setup is pretty painless. First, you need a GMail account. Then, the Google Home App. Once you've got those in place, simply plug the device in where you want it and assign it to a room, tell it what WiFi network to link up to and that's it. The Google Home App is another great starting point into the world of smart tech. Once you set up your first room, you are thinking about every room in your home and what could be automated, 'smartened' or voice activated.

A good listener

The main way it works, how it prompts the commands, is it is listening. All the time. This is probably the major concern, or caveat with this technology. There have been plenty of stories of smart speakers having picked up or recorded things in homes not intended to have been recorded. And this is the biggest mindset to overcome for smart tech sceptics. The Mini has a physical switch to mute the microphone should you not want to take changes, but this is of course invalidating the purpose of the tech. Google have gone as far as to say to warn guests if you have smart devices, owing to it recording. It for sure is the biggest hurdle to overcome. Accept it in your life and you get to enjoy the benefits. If you're reluctant, it's a non-starter.

Looks-wise, the Nest is a smart, subtle looking speaker. It's covered in a fabric mesh and comes in a variety of colorus, black, grey, red or a silvery blue. Aside from the mic cut-off switch, there are hidden volume up / down buttons to the left and right of the mini, as well as a mute button on top, useful particularly for music. Speaking of music, the speaker is good, if not mind-blowing, but I didn't find it at all bad, or even tinny when listening to my playlist. On the back is a notch so you can hang it up on the wall with a screw, if you wish. It doesn't look too bad, but you have to deal with the wire leading to the mains (it's not battery powered, I am afraid).

These speakers gave me my entry into Smart tech and I love them. Cheap, full of info and functionality, look good and sound decent too and they take every room a good step into smart territory once set up. Could I live without them? Yes, for sure, but I probably use mine every day. Even if it's just to turn the lights on and off.

WOW 3/5 😮😮😮 Great kit, does some neat things but really needs other smart tech around it to change your world.

Dosh 4/5 💵💵💵💵 Reasonably priced, pretty inexpensive, look for deals or promotions.

Style 3/5 😎😎😎 Looks good and subtle - would sit well on a coffee table, shame it's wired.

Gizmo Total 3/5 ⚡️⚡️⚡ Great entry product into Smart tech.️

#googlenest #googlenestmini2 #smarthometechnology #smarthomes #smarthome #smarthometech #techreview #smartspeaker #google #nest #gosmart #gosmartorgohome https://www.instagram.com/p/CG53Xfzl1IK/?igshid=52wsd77ckl4m

[normalgirlnextdoor]

Strong, little Omega~ Alpha! Sam x Omega! Reader

Finished version

You couldn’t believe this. THIS had to happen now when all you wanted to do was take a break, relax, maybe go to an all Omega beach, and let Drag rest his strong Doberman jaw from all this times he protected you by ripping the monsters that go bump in the night necks out… but no, you got a call from a friend whom also happened to be a hunter. They called about multiple body’s showing up with their hearts ripped out. Your first obvious thought was werewolf, but with the amount of body’s you knew it had to be a pack.

Pulling up to the newest crime scene in your, silver 1997 cadillac deville. Getting out of the slick vehicle, you turned opening one of the passengers doors open allowing Drag to get out and stretch his legs. Once he was out you closed the door with a creek.

“Come on boy,” you called out walking towards the yellow caution taped house, instantly pulling out your fake FBI badge flashing it to the outside officer guarding the scene.

As you enter the scene you take in the scent of the multiple Alpha officers, glad that you took scent hiding pills before you left the ‘cozy’ hotel you are staying at.

“Miss, how can I help you?” A man whom you can tell was the head detective asked you. In an instant you pulled out your badge.

“Good evening detective I’m special agent Jared and this-“ you point to Drag who has happily stayed sitting by your side, “is my partner Drag. Where here investigating the multiple murders that have been spreading through this town.”

The detective shook his head in understanding.

“If I may, I’m going to take a look around,”

“Please, go ahead,”

You thanked the detective before walking towards the body that laid cold on the ground. Drag walked up to the the body sniffing for any sign of werewolf or any monster really. Once he was done he threw his head up and gave a dark quick growl indicating werewolf. Dropping to your knees you pet your dog, “Good boy! Now let’s go talk to the detective and leave,” you cooed standing back up and heading outside to the detective.

You were finishing up with your question when the sound of a car pulling up on the graveled path filled the air, turning your head you saw a black 19somthing impala pull up hosting two men. Just one glance at them even if they were still in their car told you they were hunters. You sighed, you hated to work with other hunters because they thought you were weak. You knew you were not the strongest biologically, but when you were young your father trained you in hunting and the different types of monsters, so you were pretty experienced. Turning your head back to the detective thanking him before heading towards your car, that the hunters decided to park by.

As you walked, Drag happily skipping by your side, the two men got out.

“Sorry boys, but I already took this case,” you told them once you got close enough. The two men looked at you surprised, the smallest of the two smirked before opening his mouth.

“You a hunter?”

“ I am,” you walked closer to the two opening the passenger door to your car allowing your dog to hop in. After closing the door you turned taking in the shortest man scent secretly, alcohol, blood, and apple pie filled your nostrils not intoxicating like a true mate but comforting like a good friend.

“What’s your names boys?” You said walking toward the drivers side of your car, looking up you meet the eyes of the taller man.

“...Sam and Dean Winchester,”

“Oh! Your the Winchester brothers, neat. Well I’m (Y/n) (L/n). It was nice to finally meet you two-” you opened your door before climbing in, clicking the buckle across your chest. Rolling down the windows,

“Oh and if you really want this hunt, the first one who finds and kills the pack had to buy a round of drinks,” you smirked before driving off.

‘Odd,’ you thought to yourself. You were never the talkative type unless it was someone you felt close to, plus you normal don’t talk to strangers unless you have to… and another thing that man, Dean, his scent didn’t repel you it was soothing almost comforting, like your Omega half just knew it could trust him. Then the other man, Sam...well you didn’t get his scent. A frown came to your face at the thought, which was also strange. Deciding to ignore all of which happened in the last five minutes, you got back to the case.

A few hours later you arrived at an abandoned warehouse.

“Typical,” you muttered under your breath, as you shuffled through your trunk pulling out a gun filled with silver bullets and just Incase your silver switchblade. Turning your attention to Drag who say patiently by the side of your car inspecting the warehouse, his pointed ears up checking the sound of the area. You smiled pulling out a silver spiked collar, farmers use these types of collars so wolf’s can’t bite the weakest point of their dogs.

“Drag, come here boy,” you patted your thigh. The dog turned his head before strutting over to you, getting down on your knees you gently wrapped the collar over the top of his existing one.

“Okay, lets go kick some bitches ass,” You smiled walking into the building, gun up and ready. Bad idea. You only killed three when a sharp needle like pain shot through your neck.

Your eyes fluttered open, a small room with a dim light bulb being your source of light. You looked around noticing your dog in the corner a muzzle tightly strapped around his jaw, his eyes shut in pain.

“Fuck! Drag,” You tried to get up but the cold metal chains wrapped around your wrist and ankles kept you in your spot. You jumped when the loud screech of your ‘cell’ door opens allowing a bright light to flood into the small space. The figure of a man showed in your vision.

“Ahh, little Omega your up! You’ve been out for about two days now, my bad, that little scent blocker of yours wore right off by the way,” his voice was dark and leaving you feeling sick.

“Any way I brought you some friends,” he threw two body’s into the ground, both of them grunt as they hit the floor. Now that your scent blocker wore off your scent enhanced and your scenting ability all Omegas have was enhanced, allowing you to catch the scent Dean, and a mysterious scent that sent you overboard, coffee, sandalwood, mint and alcohol. True mate was your only reason for why the smell was intoxicating.

‘it must be Sam’ you thought to yourself.

“Sam, Dean. Please wake up,” you didn’t mean for it to come out desperate but the Omega and yourself where scared out of your mind. Why the unconscious Winchester didn’t respond or wake silent tears started to fall down your cheeks. You didn’t know what was wrong with you, just the fact that your true Alpha sat on the floor made your Omega go crazy and freak out.

“Alpha please wake up, Alpha!” Your body was shaking now, terrified.

“(Y/n)?” A raspy voice asked.

“Sam? Alpha?” Your voice came out raspy.

In a quick motion Sams head raised up talking in your rich, terrified Omega scent. Without even thinking Sam crawled up to your chained body, pulling you close up against his chest.

“Shhhh, it’s okay, I’ve got you ‘mega,”

You sniffed pushing your head more into the man you know nothing about chest.

“I’m so sorry I’m nothing like this,” you stuttered out with a sniff. Before Sam could say a word a gruff groan echoed in the small space.

“Sammy?”

“I’m here Dean,” his voice was muffled by your hair, his head on top of yours.

“What’s going on? Who’s that? Why does it rek of Omega in here?” The oldest Winchester questioned, freaking out slightly.

“This is (Y/n), Dean. She put scent blockers on so no one knew she was an Omega,” Sam said brushing his fingers through your matted hair, his head no longer on top of your’s.

Dean looked at you before putting his focus on his little brother.

“Can I talk to you Sam,” he tilted his head to the side indicating he wanted to speak to him alone.

“Fine. I’ll be right back,” Sam sighed gently releasing from you before heading over to his brother. You watched them talk in hushed whispers before the cell door opened once again, allowing three men to enter the space. Two of the men grabbed Sam and Dean smashing them into the wall while the last man walked to you twirling a key ring around his pointer finger. When the man was beside you he started to unlock the chains from the walls, as the last chain was unlocked you twirled your body around kicking him hard in the groin hoping to catch him off guard. Thankfully your plan was a success as the man fell to the floor with a yelp. You tried to get up to help the brothers, but the drug they knocked you out was still in effect causing you to fall to the floor in pain. The man you kicked got up anger written all over his face.

“Bad idea kitten,” he snarled pulling the chains around your wrist, dragging you out of the room. Closing the large metal door, leaving the two other werewolves with the Winchester’s, without a word. Your limp lifeless body dragged on the hard dirty ground, pebbles digging and cutting into your skin. Your eyes slowly closed with pain as you fell unconscious, once again.

________________________________

You woke up for the second time that day with a raspy gasp. Your eyes where covered by a blindfold preventing the slightest bit of light to seep in. You noticed that your body was chained to a metal chair, the cold surfaces sending chills down your spine alerting you that you where declothed.

“Ahh, good your up, again,” the same male voice meet your ears making you wimpier and push your body further into the chair. Your nose twitched as the werewolf -man- stood in front of you pulling your blindfold off. You cried out in fear, the Omega in you taking control, your newly exposed skin sending her into a spasm of fear and anxiety. The man moved his hand down your face to your collarbone where he paused.

“Please. Please stop,” your voice came out defeated, pained and scared at the same time. The man only smiled grossly before speaking.

“No, bad pets get punished,” he continued to travel his hands down the valley of your breasts, once again your Omega let loose.

“SAM! Alpha, PLEASE!!” Your plea sent even shivers down the Alpha whom sat in front of you. In only seconds a loud bang echoed through the walls of the warehouse.

“Gra, Fucking bitch,” he growled, swinging his hand down landing it on your cheek with a crack. He turned his body walking towards a table that you noticed was scattered with hunting weapons. He grabbed a blacked out handgun checking for bullets before walking out of the room.

Taking a deep breath you used your sweat covered hands slipping them out of their chained confinement. Next you focused on your feet, painfully pulling them out as well. Once your nude body was free you wobbled to the table picking up your switchblade. Then you wobbled once again back to your spot wrapping your ankles around the front legs of the chair and placed your hands behind your back twiddling with the knife. The man returned again bruised and bleeding, dragging Sam behind him whom was also beaten and chained. He lifted Sam up by his handcuff chains placing him on a hook attached to the wall.

“Now, where was I?” He snarled, walking up to you. Your eyes where on Sams worried ones as the disgusting Alpha neared you. He reached his hands out for your breasts, saliva practically dripping from his mouth. Before he could reach you, you grabbed his head standing up on your feet. Lifting your leg you smashed his head into your knee making him crumple and fall to the floor where you landed on top of him bringing the blade of you knife down onto his chest stabbing his heart, killing him.

“Omega,” Sam whispered out making you jump up from the body picking up the key ring he attached to his hip. Scrambling to Sam's body you unlocked the chains that confined him, allowing him to drop his hands and wrap them around your body. Your head rested firmly to his chest while his left hand rested on your waist, while his other hand tilted your head up allowing him to gently kiss your lips in a sweet but reassuring kiss. When you two parted for air Sam unbuttoned his plaid button up, on instinct you lifted your arms allowing him to pull the shirt around your body buttoning it back up, hiding your nudity. You smiled bashfully wrapping your arms around his waist, tilting your head up allowing the two of you to meet for a kiss.

“My strong little Omega,”

Please do not copy and repost, you can reblog though thank you

Tag list:

@tuliptx

[bellbrendan15189-blog]

DIMMER SWITCH

On the off chance that the garments make the man, the lighting makes the room. Regularly, after we've picked our goods, our paint, the embellishments with which we customize a room and make it our own, lighting is an untimely idea. However, it is integral to the presence of your room, yet your delight while in it. Since the greater part of the rooms in our homes will in general be multifunctional, (for example, the lounge area that fills in as an office, expressions and specialties studio, game room, and even a spot to eat), having only one wellspring of lighting isn't compelling. 

To utilize the lounge area as an illustration once more, you may require solid, direct light for work, yet a milder, more climatic light for sentimental meals or social affairs with loved ones. You could have different light installations, or you could attempt a dimmer switch. When you introduce a light dimmer, you will have the option to control your lighting and use it for your potential benefit. This guide will take a gander at which dimmer switch brands are the best, what to search for, the amount they cost, and the amount you will cherish them.

Better than ever Light Dimmer Switches - Before home lighting became environmentally friendly, light dimmer switches were not horribly effective. Wire wound dimmers had a loop inside, and when you darkened your lights, part of the vitality went to the light or light, and the other part was occupied to the curl. Here, it was changed over to warm and squandered. 

This is the reason old dimmers and lights would get hot - and why your electric bill would get high. Another reaction was that when the vitality was being changed over to warm, it made a humming sound. You would get the pleasant barometrical light you needed, just as a foundation orchestra of your vitality charge ticking upward. Luckily, light dimmer switches have gone through an earth-accommodating makeover, and they are considerably more effective. Furthermore, calm. 

The present better than ever light dimmer switches work by just killing the ability to the unit and walking out on quickly. This occurs so rapidly that your eyes simply observe a consistent shine. Let's assume you needed to have a pleasant sentimental supper. You faint the lights to 25 percent of their most extreme yield. This implies the unit is turning itself off for 75 percent of the time and running for 25 percent. The advantages?

*No humming or murmuring.

*Bulbs last more.

*Easy to introduce.

*Cooler bulbs, which can convert into cooler rooms. Each degree includes in the late spring!

*Lower vitality bills on the grounds that the light is killed for a bit of time.

The disadvantages to these vitality productive light dimmers?

*They cost more than wiring a dimmer switch.

*Choosing one is more included.

For the primary concern, we'll state that they pay for themselves in vitality reserve funds. For the second, perused on. Picking the Right Dimmer Switch - The hardest piece of picking the correct dimmer switches is knowing the wattage of your present lighting framework. You need to discover the circuit burden and ensure you don't surpass the most extreme heap of the dimmer unit. Let's assume you have 5 50-watt lights on a circuit. 

Your circuit load is 5 x 50, or 250 watts. Add another 10 percent to compute the base wattage your dimmer switch will require. You will likewise need to pick a dimmer that is directly for your light or lighting apparatus. On the off chance that you use CFL (minimized bright lights, ensure you purchase bulbs that are explicitly intended to work with dimmers. This will be composed on the bundling. One final tip: choose a general light dimmer as it will diminish low voltage incandescent lights and glowing fundamental voltage lights, rather than just incandescents.

The Best Light Dimmer Switches - For us all non-circuit testers, the universe of dimmer switches can be befuddling. AsktheBuilder, a confided in site for committed DIYers, lights up it a piece. Among all the decisions, three names develop as the best:

*Leviton

*Lutron

*Pass and Seymour

We should investigate a couple of their best models. You can peruse the smash hit dimmer switches online here.

This Leviton can work with dimmable CFLs, just as radiant bulbs. It highlights Auto Mode to decide if the light is glowing or CFL and changes the dimmer range to oblige for it. The 6673-10W replaces a normal switch yet utilizes standard wiring, so establishment is fast and simple. It can oblige illuminating to 300 watts - 120VAC CFL and 600watt - 120VAC brilliant. 

The alternative for 3-way diminishing permits you to redo your lighting. This vitality sparing dimmer switch conveys a restricted five-year guarantee. For the cost of simply over $22, this is an extraordinary speculation for your home.

This dimmer presents a brilliant method to control lighting for table and floor lights. What is extraordinary about this dimmer is that it doesn't need any establishment and can be moved varying. You essentially plug your light into the installation on the dimmer, and afterward plug the dimmer into your outlet. You would then be able to utilize the slider to change the degree of lighting or turn it off. 

The Lutron TT-300NLH highlights a LED finder light so you can discover your way in obscurity, slide on/off, 6-foot line, and UL (Underwriters Laboratories) endorsement. It works with lights that have a 300-watt greatest limit and handles both glowing and incandescent lamps. In the event that you faint your lights by 50 percent utilizing the Lutron, you spare 40 percent of the power and broaden the life of the bulb by multiple times. This is an extraordinary, versatile, lighting answer for your home. It sells for about $14.

This Pass and Seymour is an extraordinary choice for those with roof fans. It includes a fan speed regulator and dimmer, with one next to the other slider controls. There are 4 preset fan speed controls, and the De-Hummer include kills the murmur from the fan's engine. It is evaluated at 1.6 amp/300-watt and has a 3-way dimmer switch. The Pass and Seymour is anything but difficult to introduce, offers remarkable warmth the board, has power-disappointment memory, an effect safe thermoplastic lodging, and is UL recorded and CSA ensured. 

It sells for just shy of $40 - somewhat pricier than the past two models, yet you have the double capacities to compensate for that. Including light dimmer switches is a simple, generally economical approach to build the reasonableness of your lighting. An extraordinary symptom is that you'll diminish your electric bill and proportionately increment the delight in your home. Peruse here for a broad choice of dimmer switches.

[asm297]

99 Truths, 1 Lie. (My Junior Year)

Before ya go through this and guess the lie, I gotta say that there’s some stuff in here that might make you uncomfortable. Here’s ya warning. Anyway, here we go:

1. Junior year of college was the most tumultuous

2. For every incredibly wonderful day, I felt like I had 2x as many days feeling depressed and alone.

3. But I gotta say, living in a house with some of my coolest friends was super fun.

4. I just hoped that I didn’t “die” at some of the parties, y’know?

5. I’m still learning my “tolerance” lol

6. I don’t like those sugar-y alcohols.

7. They’re tolerable, but they always make me sick.

8. Speaking of which, there’s some things you probably wouldn’t even believe.

9. Almost like that’s the point of this whole “99 Truths, 1 Lie” game, huh?

10. There was a time where I got addicted to nicotine

11. I brought my vape wherever I’d go, cause I liked that buzz it gave me

12. I also used Tinder/Bumble much more often this year

13. I never thought I’d use it considering how much I don’t like dating apps (see “The Incident”)

14. But I gave it a try because of how desperate I was to have company

15. It sorta worked? Depending on how you’d define “worked”.

16. I met a few people off of it. It was awkward every time.

17. The first person I met didn’t even live around UIUC

18. They also assumed we were an official couple after meeting up once.

19. That ended fairly messy.

20. I did end up getting in a short relationship with someone from Tinder.

21. Again, she lived nowhere near UIUC.

22. Our first meetup ever was in a dark forest, at midnight, during the Winter.

23. Some people have told me that was a terrible idea.

24. I have to agree, but what’s the worst that could happen?

25. The possibility of disappearing without a trace? Yeah. Probably.

26. Erm, okay, the following is gonna sound like a total humblebrag, but hear me out:

27. Usually, people would love getting a lot of matches on these dating apps

28. Lately, I’ve been feeling very stressed talking to too many people at once.

29. As I said, humblebrag

29. Xander Mobus is the voice of the announcer in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

30. But here’s the thing: I don’t consider myself to be an introvert

31. Yet, I’m not a complete extrovert either.

32. At the moment, I’m thinking of two people who I’m totally extroverted with

33. Every time I’d hang with them, I crack jokes and can always do comedic “bits” that they can easily play off of.

34. At the same time, I feel like a literal “fool”

35. There was a time in high school where my friends considered me to be the “super sarcastic” type

36. Secretly, I hated it because that makes me sound like an buttface.

37. Makes me think I’m this one dude you could never have a serious conversation with.

38. I’ll always be a joke to everyone.

39. I changed that once I got to college.

40. Instead of being overly sarcastic, I tried being more extroverted and lively

41. It worked for a bit, especially in my sophomore year here

42. And now... I don’t even know what I am anymore

43. Referring to #32, I now get the feeling that I’m super annoying to both of them now.

44. I get this feeling that they no longer enjoy hanging out with me

45. I’m always concerned with how people see me

46. Strangers, close friends, family. I hope they have a good image of me in their minds.

47. Yet, I can only convince myself that I’ve got no friends anymore

48. Of course, ^that’s not true. I do have people that care about me.

49. But seeing a psychologist multiple times in the last year made the following statement true:

50. I’m in a bad headspace, and my mind is crumbling

51. I saw a social worker over summer 2018

52. It helped, but as soon as I got back for junior year, I was falling apart

53. At one point first semester, I did something that I highly warn all of you to definitely not make the same mistake I did

54. I went for a walk by myself

55. at night

56. with my headphones in

57. I ended up getting followed on my way back home by some random person

58. and I didn’t even notice until much after he started following me

59. That incident really fucked me up for some time

60. But that’s not the mistake I’m talking about

61. The real mistake is walking alone, in the dark, with headphones on for a second time

62. The reason why I did that was because I did something I never saw myself doing ever

63. I hurt myself

64. Right after it happened, I fled my house

65. I was disappointed in myself

66. I was mad at myself

67. I was at my lowest point

68. I walked with no destination in mind

69. Luckily, a very nice friend helped me out, talked with me, comforted me, and I’m forever grateful they were there for me.

70. That’s what lead me to see a psychologist while I was here.

71. That’s all I’ll say on that topic

72. Here’s something completely different: I’ve “intoxicated myself herbally” multiple times

73. A lot of times, at this point. To the point where I can’t even recall how many times I’ve done it.

74. In fact, a roommate said “when is he not high?”

75. It was a bit chilling to hear

76. I’ve also “earned” the title of “smoker of the house” by my roommates

77. On the other hand, I keep notes every time I get “herbally intoxicated”

78. I think most people think it’s weird

79. But I like to use it as a sort of... diary? or journal?

80. I think it’s funny, and memorable. At least most of the time.

81. I also sometimes write letters to people while I’m “herbally intoxicated”

82. Most of the time, it’s so that I can tell them how cool they are and how happy I am that I met them. Sound familiar? You should ask me if I have any letters for you.

83. Anyway, the following statement is a short excerpt from 4/20:

84. “Took a shower, bought I was in there longer. Shower was only 10 minutes. The future was going in slow motion. Like a light bulb memory. Maybe a flash bulb? Listened to Angel Olsen. Felt like I was flying. Time was slow. It felt nice.”

85. If I didn’t believe in parallel universes before, I definitely do now.

86. However, I definitely need to start limiting how often I “herbally intoxicate” myself.

87. Especially considering I am completely fine doing it on my own now.

88. That’s a bit worrisome to me as well.

89. Other than that, I have one more thing that I want to share.

90. It’s something that I have rarely told people because I am afraid as to how they’ll react

91. Like they won’t believe me

92. Or that I’m only “doing it for attention”

93. I have been questioning its “veracity” almost everyday

94. The only reason I’m sharing it is because I was inspired by another person who told me they did the same thing.

95. Although most of everything I’ve said has been true, the main goal was to hit 100 here

96. And I definitely will

97. Even now, I’m going to write the last thing in such a way that most people still won’t know

98. First letters of 93-82 79-90-46-97-29-27-96-91

99. Now it’s out there

100. I don’t wanna thank you for going through this entire list of 99 truths, 1 lie. Please lemme know when ya get here so I can send you a funny meme. Or a song recommendation. I dunno something cool. See ya, and hope ya have a good day. ❤︎

- Armond

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E23 (June 19, 2018)

Welcome to tonight’s Talks Machina. Today’s preshow: the weather throughout the Dwendalian Empire. I’m sure this isn’t foreboding at all. Tonight’s guests: Matt & Emmy-award-winning Sam Riegel. Sam has a prepared bit for the opening that he just found out he was supposed to prepare. He gets out, “How many... light bulbs...” before BWF has pity and throws us to the title screen.

Tonight’s announcements: New M9 shirt in the new CR store at shop.critrole.com. The show also now has their very own dedicated Critical Role Youtube & Twitch channels--however, don’t worry, as it’ll still be broadcast in all current locations as well. After Dark will continue to be available on After Dark only. There also will not be any Talks Machina or new Critical Role episode July 3 or July 5, as they’ll be making the move to a new studio during this week. (Marisha’s stepped down at G&S to make this move to full-time CR management as well.) There’s a summary post of these announcements with a FAQ on critrole.com, if you need more information.

Before we can get to CR Stats, Sam interrupts to ask Matt why they’ve never had an NPC with a French accent. Matt, answering in an excellent French accent, explains that they’ve not come across any regional areas that are analogous to France yet. He suggests they visit the Menagerie Coast.

CR Stats! The M9 have now officially rolled 99 natural ones. Nott’s in the lead with 22. Sam only has one d20 that he rolls, and he thinks Laura’s bad luck is rubbing off on him.

The M9 have now been traveling together for about a month. Matt, deadpan: “They’re such a tight-knit family.” He does like that everyone’s getting to see the ground-floor development and occasionally has to remind himself to set the scene because he gets sucked into the roleplay.

Kiri has imitated people 82 times--Sam loves Matt’s imitations.

The D&D Beyond theme song was a greater achievement than the Emmy (per Sam): “It was a thing that I just came up with...that became the anthem for a generation.” The Emmy is a bucket list, pinnacle professional achievement, but he loves that he got to write & make the theme song. (Also: two years on one cartoon vs. fifteen minutes on a song.)

Matt has a tumultuous history with the Streamys. He directed a web series ten years ago and was invited to contribute to a big montage...only to find out right before the show that it had been cut from the program altogether.

The battle with the Merrow played out fairly close to how Matt had envisioned it, although the players’ positioning led to some interesting situations. It was more challenging in certain moments without Nott, especially when Matt was trying to decide how certain events would play out. Sam sidebars to point out how much he loves it when a battle changes halfway through (either due to traps, additional enemies, or the map changing). Matt says there are many battles they’ve had in the past where certain traps were never triggered. However, you can’t do it too often or it becomes expected. (Matt does feel bad when he’s rolling well and the PCs are rolling badly.)

Nott’s water thing Sam invented during the game (because he thought it would be funny, natch), but he’s come up with a backstory since then that explains why she’s so afraid of water.        

Matt plays out combat as designed even when a PC suddenly decides to not participate--unless it’s a new group that doesn’t fully understand D&D combat yet, and it would impact their enjoyment of the game. He wants people to understand that there are consequences with character choices. 

Sam often finds it bothersome when they know they’ve missed something in game, especially when it’s an important story beat. It’s the worst when Matt gives them multiple chances to succeed, and they still end up failing all of them. Matt confesses sometimes he makes them roll checks on general knowledge they’d have known anyway just to make them feel a certain esoteric skill was useful for once. 

Nott feels terrible she sat out the Merrow fight only for Caleb to come close to death. Sam: “Nott feels awful about it. Sam Riegel feels great about it! I love situations where it doesn’t look like it’s going well.” Plus, the night before she also got Caleb in trouble with the bowl thing. BWF’s a little worried it’ll affect their relationship.

Matt claims that Kiri was not at all related to wanting to prove he could do Jester’s accent. He rolls for random encounters when they’re traveling, and Kiri was one he’d considered to demonstrate the presence of kenku, while also highlighting that non-Empire people are moving away from the conflict. He half-expected them to ignore her altogether. 

Matt reveals that Kiri has six (6) (SIX) hit points. “She’s practically a baby bird!” Sam has a retroactive panic attack that they’ve been bringing her to all these battles. Me too, bud. Sam accuses Matt of “not having brought anyone worthy of taking a baby bird off our hands.” Matt: “You haven’t even looked!” They wonder together about the possibility of a baby bird orphanage in Hupperdook.

GIF of the Week! @justjamesearle. It’s long and perfect and details the Fjord whack-a-mole death saga with the venom splashes. 

Nott’s opinion of Kiri hasn’t changed at all with the reveal that she heard/repeated her conversation with Caleb. Sam thinks Nott should have known better than to talk with a recording device in the room, especially since she only ever repeats it when it’s hilarious or well-timed. “It’s hard to live with a soundboard.”

Matt keeps a list of notes of what Kiri can say. It’s super fun, and he sometimes gets so caught up in conversations he forgets to write down things for her to repeat later.

Nott wished Kiri hadn’t repeated the facts from her backstory, but she’d never considered being aggressive towards “little RiRi” (oh God it’s too adorable). She still doesn’t like a lot of attention. Both BWF & Sam applaud Matt for giving them little prods to reveal backstory.

Dagon, Matt & Marisha’s bird, provides a lot of inspiration for Kiri. Matt talks about being a bird owner after growing up with cats and dogs, and reveals that wanting to utilize that knowledge was part of why he introduced kenku.

Nott finds Beau the exception to her general mistrust of the group, which is why she let her care for Caleb after the last fight. She feels Beau has been weirdly sensitive and protective even through her lens of abrasiveness, and she respects that she hasn’t spilled the beans about Caleb’s backstory.

Fanart of the Week! @obeymybrain, which is a great group portrait in four vertical-column stylings after the Haunted Mansion from Disneyland.

If the troll hadn’t been slowed by Caleb, Matt thinks the group would have permanently lost someone. Matt loves the new monsters that are punishing to melee characters. He thinks they did a good job damaging it at range at first, and Sam waxes poetic on all the options they didn’t pursue instead (like Saran-wrapping the door before it came running out). Oh, what could have been.

Sam’s love for Liam is stronger than Nott’s love for Caleb, because “...Liam kisses back.” They’ve known each other half their lives now.

If the M9 pursue dynamite as a common battle tactic, Matt may need to prepare for his builds to be destroyed more often. It’s still limited by the relatively new availability of blackpowder and has a high possibility of backfiring depending on their rolls.

Nott wishes she could tell everything to Caleb, but is limited by the realities of their show, since it’s hard to find a time that’s not full of dick or drug jokes. There’s been times they’ve been alone together but Caleb hasn’t asked any questions; Sam thinks “He needs to do some Marisha-style questioning. That is an inquisitive monk, and I love her for it.” Matt points out it’s a critical aspect of her character that she wants to know everything.

Matt played out the last Fjord moment in front of the whole group in part because it would have interrupted the flow to have everyone leave, and in part because he trusts his players not to metagame now that they’re all learning bits and pieces of each other. He liked the visceral smash-cut of the vision to the party watching Fjord jam this thing into his stomach.

Matt does have to juggle all the party’s backstories since it’s such a large group; some will be long-game just because of the natures of their stories. He likes to drop threads as they go, though, so everyone feels more connected to their world. Players feel like the stakes are higher when they can see their stories reflected and affecting the living and breathing world around them.

Nott wasn’t particularly bothered by Molly immediately forgiving the bandits right after they hurt her. “They’re just dumb. They’re just dumb and they need to go. They’re too dumb to hurt.”

Matt knew the outline of Hupperdook before the party ever heard of it. Now that they’ve expressed interest in it, he’s begun filling in the details since it looks likely that they’ll visit it soon. It helps that they’re limited to speed of foot & horse; when they can start bamfing everywhere in later game, it gets a lot harder. Matt’s advice in that situation is to give the town a unique social structure or aspect, to make a bold choice that will cause it to stand out in their mind. It helps if you can ask what the players are looking for, then “yes and” based on what they’re seeking (he builds an idea of two competing taverns poaching clients from each other off a spur-of-the-moment request from a player asking if there’s an inn nearby).

Sam does rehearse his more performative ads ahead of time. He usually writes them the day of over lunch, although lately he’s been trying to get them done on Mondays and Tuesdays so he’s not as stressed on Thursday.

There’s no specific inspirational character for the Gentleman. Matt wanted to create an outside-the-law businessman who wasn’t your typical ~thief-lord~ while still seeming unique against the world. He wanted him to be charismatic and domineering, welcoming until you crossed a personal or business line, in which case he’d immediately put you in your place. 

Nott still considers her old goblin tribe a threat to her & is reluctant to confront them. She does feel a little more prepared now that she has more allies, but is hesitant to meet old demons & old memories. Matt sidebars to point out that a lot of these character backstories could be self-driven, since there’s nothing keeping them from visiting Nott’s hometown now. They could pursue it at any time if they wanted.

The firearms in the world are a direct result from Percy & Ripley; she dealt them out in heavy trade areas like Marquet, which results in the technology being distributed in a way that now impacts the M9 in their world. They’re still limited by materials, though.

Matt loves the joy on Tal’s face every time they mention firearms are readily available in Wildemount.

Everyone’s distraught over Tal’s Vicious Mockery in the last episode. Bless his heart. Matt: “Sometimes you come out of the gate and realize you’ve come out without your pants on. You commit, and you walk away.”

Sam misses giving inspiration on a regular basis. He also has a lot of insecurities over his current inability to contribute to a battle with much more than crossbow bolts. BWF: “Just sent Nott to a bard college.” Matt: With a -3 charisma, I think you’re taking inspiration away from people.”

Favorite M9 voice to mimic as Kiri? Partially Jester, because it’s just funny, Nott is shrill and ridiculous, and has lately been enjoying mimicking Fjord for the few times he’s been echoed.

The Nott voice is not hard at all on Sam; it’s mostly falsetto, which BWF says he usually talks in off-camera all the time anyway.

After Dark: After This

In CriticalRoleLand, Dani would like to see Vex’s Flying Brooms. BWF suggests a waterslide that ends in Vex’s & Percy’s bathtub; Matt suggests it be a goldfish ride that goes over the side. He also likes a teleporting ride that goes into Umbrasyl’s belly, and Sam comes up with a dunk tank for heckling Tary.

Matt talks about that viral Youtube video with the weather forecaster naming the city that’s like 100 characters long. Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, that’s the one.

Nott’s Tinder profile? “Short, green, looking for mean. Buy me a drink and I’m yours.”

Matt wouldn’t be surprised if this campaign does eventually touch on family in the same way the first one did. However, Sam feels so far it’s much more about identity, and Matt tacks on regret & making amends. He also thinks trust & learning to accept help from others is still developing, since so many of these characters have been hurt in some way.

VM had a lot of very classical heroic archetypes; this campaign is full of many more human, subtly complicated characters. Matt loves the contrast.

The eyes. The EYES.

Sam agonizes that in his Friday retellings of the campaign’s story to his six-year-old son, it drives him crazy that he can’t answer his son’s questions as to why something happened. His son does ask “does Matt Mercer know?” and Sam is glad he can say yes.

Sam loves the idea of the world hinging on the bandit troupe they keep running into. I debated troop or troupe there, but given the hysterics they keep causing, I’m sticking with troupe.

If they met, Nott would steal every single thing from Taryon Darrington. Except that lame book, of course. “That’d be amazing. And! Possible! We’re on the continent, right?” Sam rubs his hands together gleefully...until Matt points out Taryon’s been relegated to NPC status & Matt would be the one controlling him now.

Matt usually prepares a guest for the show by meeting with them ahead of time. Depending on how much (or if ever) they’ve played before, he helps them build a character and teaches them the basics of the class. Mark, obviously, didn’t need that introduction, so instead they focused on loose backstory and finding ways to integrate that backstory into the existing world. When it’s time for them to actually play, they’ll discuss in advance a way to bring their paths across each other, such as Cali looking for a specific relic at the same time that the M9 were going to be investigating a safehouse full of stolen relics. As soon as they meet, it’s hands off. (It can be hard to get someone out of the group if they for sure can’t return the next week.)

MAJOR, MAJOR, MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE END OF CAMPAIGN ONE IN THE SECTION BELOW.

BWF jokes that last campaign Joe Manganiello just showed up and said, “Hey, so, I’m playing Arkhan,” and that was that. Actually...that’s pretty close to what really happened. Matt & Joe did meet for a long evening in Joe’s kitchen in advance to discuss backstory & motivations, after which he finally managed to convince Joe’s wife, Sofía Vergara, to play a small game with him, Joe, and Marisha. Sam laughs that at Matt & Marisha’s wedding, they had two sentences with Joe before the conversation immediately devolved into D&D and Joe’s wife rolled her eyes out of her head.

They did discuss that Joe wanted to steal the hand at the end of the last campaign. “You don’t have the Hand of Vecna, the Hand of Vecna has you.” They had a long conversation about Arkhan’s denouement after that episode.

END OF MAJOR, MAJOR SPOILERS.

And that’s all for the night! Have a lovely week, and is it Thursday yet?

[carol-thirteen]

Don’t Hesitate - Go Right

*Reader is 18+*

You turn quickly on you heals and go right down a darkened hallway, littered with wires. Tube light bulbs fallen and smashed onto the ground from the ceiling, some were still dangling from the fixtures. As you tried to avoid the laser beams that had actually helped light up the hallway, your foot got caught on an old discarded box of wires. Landing hard on the surface, your hands bracing your fall, but were impaled by small shards of glass. You pick yourself up, the shock and adrenaline enabling you to carry on and find somewhere to hide. Taking multiple turns, you eventually lose them and end up in the main warehouse. Ducking behind a few unopened crates, you watch as the remaining bots turn around and split up.

After sighing in relief, you feel your pain worsen. You feel your heart beating quickly in your ears and decide to find somewhere to sit. You turn to walk as you realize your ankle is throbbing. You hobble towards the warehouse shelving units and sit down on the bottom shelf, moving some boxes to the side, the grit on the bottom of them, scratching on the metal.

You start pulling up your jeans, revealing a very bloody ankle and a large gash situated just above the bone under your sock. You tug off your thin scarf from around your neck, hands shaking. You try and wrap it around, wincing at the touch.

You sit for a while, wondering where The Doctor and Yaz are, hoping they would be able to find you soon. You stared at the small pieces of glass in your palms and sighed. Some larger shards were embedded further into your hand. Not wanting to risk damaging your hands, you started to remove the smaller pieces first. Gripping them with your pointer finger and thumb nails. You sucked in air through your teeth at the pain.

“Y/N?” The Doctor turned the corner, seeing you sat there. instantly worried seeing what you were doing. “There you are! What happened?” She whispered.

“I fell,” you lifted up your injured hands from your lap, into her view. “And uh something must’ve-“ You move the scarf that had just been gently laid on top of the wound. She breathed in through her teeth as she saw the large cut.

“Oh Y/N,” She takes the scarf and wraps it around, tightly, resulting in a groan from your throat.

“I turned around and then you weren’t there. I didn’t know what to do.” Your voice broke. The pain ripping up your leg.

“Shh, It’s okay I’m here now and we’re gonna figure this out. The bots are in some kind of status now on the top floor. They detect sounds very well so we have to be really quiet.” she whispers. “Can you try to walk?”

You put a small amount of weight on your ankle and realize you really cannot walk on it. She shushes you, both to stop the sound that had come from you trying to stand, but also to calm you down.

“Where’s Yaz?” you asked as The Doctor moved a box across the shelves to sit beside you.

“She went back to the Tardis to grab some equipment for me.” She said. “I had to come and find you.”

She took your hands in hers, and frowns, shaking her head slightly. She rested your hands on her lap before reaching into her pocket, pulling out a pair of tweezers, a small container and a roll of gauze.

“You really have everything in there huh?” you tried to lighten the mood, and distract yourself from how bad your hands were stinging.

She took your left hand, leaving the gauze and container between her legs. She began taking out the glass from your skin. It was painful, but watching the concentration on The Doctor’s face seemed to help. With each piece of glass removed, the better your hand felt. After she finished with the left, she moved on to the other. Still admiring her beauty, you hadn’t even noticed she was almost done.

“Sorry Y/N, this bit will hurt.” With both of your hands on her leg, she unscrewed the top of the container, revealing a clear substance. “But in about an hour,” her eyes met with yours, and her lips curved into a soft smile. “You’ll be completely healed.”

You hissed as the cream was gently lathered onto your palms. A small pad of cotton, was retrieved from her pocket, and placed on the top. Then covered in gauze. Once both hands were tended to, The Doctor did the same to your leg.

She had bent down in front of you, in the middle of the warehouse aisles to wrap your leg.

“There,” she spoke with a hushed voice. “All better?”

“Just about,”

“It has numbing properties as well, should help with the pain a bit.” She sat back beside you, putting her arm around your shoulder. “Once we get to the Tardis, I can sort you out properly.”

You found yourself leaning into The Doctor, your head nestling into her neck.

“Doctor?” you heard Yaz call out quietly in a whisper, causing you to lift your head up. You caught sight of her briefly at the end of the aisle.

“That’s Yaz,” she said, turning her head back to you. “Wait here, I’ll go get her.”

“I’ll come with you,” you start standing up causing the doctor to push you back down, gently but forcefully.

“No, you have to stay there. That ankle is bad enough already, no need to make it worse eh?” She rubbed your arm and got up walking towards the meeting place her and Yaz had agreed on earlier.

“Just stay where I can see you.” You say. “I don’t wanna lose you again.”

The Doctor turned around at your words. “You won’t.” You watched her walk down the aisle towards a door, every few steps she would look back at you.

Yaz and The Doctor started walking towards you, holding scraps of metal and wires. Once Yaz caught sight of your bandages, she picked up speed and upon reaching you she began placing the items on the shelf above you.

“What happened to you?” She frowned. You heard The Doctor just beside you, already starting to tinker with the materials.

“Just a scrape or two,” you joked.

“She has glass in her hand and a laceration on her ankle.” The Doctor piped up. “Hardly a scrape.”

“I’m fine now,” you reassured her and Yaz.

Yaz sat beside you as The Doctor went off down the aisle, looking back at the both of you every so often, as she searched for what you assumed to be useful equipment.

“So,” Yaz begun. “Did you talk to her?”

“Oh will you stop,” You rolled your eyes. “She’s an alien, there’s no way she’d love me, a human.”

“Come on Y/N, that’s not an excuse and you know it.”

“We’re in the middle of whatever this is,” you gesture to the room, more the situation. “This isn’t where we should be discussing this. Again.”

“Well if you told her, there would be nothing to discuss anymore.” You turned to Yaz at those words. “Plus, I may or may not have talked to her already”

“What?” You raised your voice a little too much, which you instantly regretted.

“She initiated it.” Yaz started. “She likes you back Y/N” You wanted to focus on those words, but you had a feeling you raising your voice had alerted the bots. “It’s kind of obvious. She thinks that-”

“Shh,” You listened.

“Y/N just-“

“No Yaz, listen.” you sit in silence as you tried to listen closely.

You heard something, a light buzzing sound, gradually getting louder. One of the bots hovered towards you and Yaz. The Doctor moved towards you both, stuffing whatever she was working on into her pockets. Several other bots arrive.

Do you: TRAP ONE or RUN

[cactiem]

Perturbation

Chapter One: Run For Your Life

Pairing: N/A

Requested: Nope

Summary: Running for their life, Austin and Cassie come across a group of mutants willing to help them.

GIF Not Mine 

Chapter One -> Chapter Two

Based on 1x01 - eXposed

How did the world get so messed up that you have to run for your life because you're different? That was the current question going through Cassandra’s mind as her and her brother ran down the streets of Atlanta in the pouring rain getting chased by the police, the very people who were supposed to protect them. The two siblings both turned down an alleyway, puddles splashing over their legs as they ran through them. Austin was in front and dragging Cassie along as she was considerably slower than him. Sports was never her strong suit in school. Austin came to a stop causing the girl to run into his back. "Why'd you stop, Austin?" Cassie asked between breaths but he didn't answer instead he closed his eyes and held is hands out to activate his powers. The whole time she watched helplessly as the police cars got closer. Unlike her brother, Cassie didn't have powers that could physically help in a fight. Well, she did but she didn't know how to control them or use them to their full potential.

The cars came barrelling down the alley as Austin was still trying to activate his powers. Cassie shut her eyes bracing herself for the impact of the car but it never came. Instead she heard the sound of the car being thrown back by, what sounded like, a lightning bolt even though she knew it was Austin's powers. Next, Cassie heard the sound of multiple light bulbs being smashed. She opened her eyes and saw that the alley has now been plunged into darkness. Austin grabbed his sister's hand and started running out of the alleyway, dragging her along with him leaving the cops behind. Cassie couldn't see them but she could hear them. "I can't see anything." One of them said. "Split up and find them, they can't have gotten far." Someone ordered before going back to the car and speeding away trying to find Cassandra and her brother, the others either going back to their cars or going on foot.

"That was close." He states looking down to the empty alley they ended up in before turning to the blonde haired girl beside him. "We have to keep moving though." She nodded sadly before following him as he walked away. Cassie hated this. She hated running for her life. Even when her legs are numb and her chest is burning she still has to run otherwise she’ll get captured and never heard from again. She will get separated from Austin. These were some of the threats Austin kept telling his sister so she wouldn't give up.

After a while of walking in the shadows and hugging the walls the two siblings both found an empty building. Austin walked up to the door and using his powers he zapped the lock, unlocking the door. The two of them made it inside, the warmth in contrast with the cold outside. Austin immediately made his way over to the lockers and looked through them seeing if there was anything useful that could be used. Cassie, however just sat on the chair at one of the desks spinning around and waiting. Waiting for Austin to be finished. Waiting for the cops to find them. Waiting for the inevitable to happen.

—

"You getting anything?" Marcos asked impatiently.

"Working on it." John said, his hand slightly raised from the ground using his powers to find the mutants they were chasing. "They're moving around. I can't get an exact read on them but they're around here somewhere."

"That's great. I mean, it's what only twenty odd buildings to search." Lorna gestured to the surrounding buildings causing Marcos to snicker.

"Hey, what's that?" Clarice asked, pointing to one of the buildings who's entrance is in an alleyway. Marcos lifted his hand to light up the alley.

"Footprints leading to that building. Two sets of them." He told the others as he walked closer to get a better look. "The lock's toast. Scorch marks. They're in here." John nodded before taking lead and heading inside with the others following. When inside he gestured for Marcos and Lorna to check the left side while he and Clarice check the other side.

As they made it to one of the rooms Marcos and Lorna heard movement as if someone was going through some lockers. They walked carefully into the room as to not spook whoever it was. Cassie however saw them come in when she spun to their direction on the chair. Not breaking eye contact she got up out of the chair and backed away until her back hit one of the lockers. Austin noticed Cassie's sudden change in mood and concern washed over him. "What's wrong, Cas?" But when she didn't say anything he followed her gaze, tensing up when he saw the two strangers that were now in the room with them. "Who are you people? Are you with the cops?" Austin asked them. He was now standing in front of his sister in a protective manner holding her hand ready to get out of there if necessary.

"We're not with the cops." Marcos told the two of them trying reassure Cassie and Austin. When Lorna saw the hesitation to believe them on Austin's face she decided to try something.

"We're just like you." She said before raising her hand to make the metal stapler to fly into her hand. Cassie peeked from behind her brother's back looking at the girl in awe at what she just did. "Just a couple of freaks."

"We've got company." John interrupted running into the room, his eyes landed on the young Williamson girl for a second before heading back to the room at the front of the building.

"Grab your things. You're with us now." Marcos told the siblings. He then followed John to the room in front with Lorna following behind. Cassandra looked over to Austin who sent her a reassuring smile telling her that it's going to be okay before following their lead and moving to the room in front.

Everyone took cover behind desks that were left in the building. While Austin listened to plan being made to get out of there unscathed Cassie shut her eyes and focused on trying to calm herself down. It was only when she no longer felt her brother beside her that she opened her eyes. She looked up and saw Austin stood in the middle of the room, using his powers to take out the lights. Cassie stood up and tugged on his sleeve to gain his attention. "We- we can’t go out there. There are- there are cops out there." She said timidly. It was quiet enough that only Austin heard her.

"It’ll be okay, Cas. We have a plan." He assured her, grabbing her hands to stop her from fiddling with her sleeves. "I promise nothing will happen to you." The blonde girl gave a slight nod to show that she understood. The calmness was short lived when bullets started flying through the windows. Austin dragged Cassie back behind some cover. "Stay behind me." He told her trying to cover her as best he could.

Lorna stood in front of the doors, using her powers to stop the cops from shooting at them with Marcos joining her soon after to distract them even more while John ushered everyone out through the side door. Austin pushed Cassie in front of him and followed John and Clarice to the car with Lorna and Marcos behind. They thought they were in the clear until a cop came round the corner and shot Marcos, angering Lorna. John dragged Marcos to safety and instead of joining them, Austin remained glued to his spot. He had a decision to make. Help Lorna and risk getting caught or leave her. Austin landed on the former option. He couldn’t just not help. That wasn’t who he was.

Holding his hands out he shot a bolt of electricity at one the cops, careful not to seriously hurt him. Another came round the corner and shot him with the taser. It didn’t work though as instead of making him fall to the ground, like it did to Lorna, Austin stood there absorbing the electric current. He walked towards the green haired girl to grab her hand only to be stopped by someone shooting him, this time with an actual bullet.

Cassie screamed when her brother fell to the ground beside Lorna, writhing in pain. She tried to go after him but two strong arms wrapped around her waist stopped her. She couldn’t do anything. All she could do was watch as the one person in her life get taken away.

Requests are open

A/N: This is a series I started ages ago and finally got around to finishing the first chapter of. It will be loosely based on The Gifted with a few additions and changes to it. This is the first time I’m writing with my OCs and I’m so excited for it. Gabby, my third OC for the Gifted, will be added into the story but later on in the series. Anyway, I’d just like to thank @sweetblink for inspiring to actually finish this part with your amazing imagines for the series :)

Tag List (Still Open): @mayasmedberg @lunarmoonwolf @princess-of-the-fandoms @live--aloud @sutoritaimu @fangirling-central @missmeganrachel @hanabiri @playbucky @therealmrshale @lostnliterature

[classpect-musings]

Classpect Analysis: Bard of Light

Long post; information under the cut. Y’all know I love Bards.

While Hussie did state in a tweet that all god tier classes are not gender-specific, it is worth noting that both canon Bards (Gamzee Makara, Bard of Rage; Cronus Ampora, Bard of Hope) have been male. Bards are the passive destruction class, allowing the destruction of their aspect or allowing destruction via their aspect. Princes are the active equivalent of Bards. Light represents knowledge, details, clarity and truth. It pertains to information as well as success and fortune. Light can also be represented as literal ‘light.’ I’ll list out some common traits for Bards and explain what they might mean for a Bard of Light in particular.

Starts off more aligned with opposite aspect: Bards and Princes start off acting like players of the opposite aspect. The opposite aspect of Light is Void, which represents mystery, irrelevance, and potential-- it is ‘what could be’ rather than ‘what is.’ So the Bard of Light would be laid-back and wouldn’t take things too seriously. I could see this Bard being kind of a nihilist/existentialist. This doesn’t mean that they’re a total downer; it merely means they don’t have a lot of drive to care about the grand scheme of things. “Stop taking everything so seriously and just chill, man. It’s not important. Nothing is.” They’d also tend to be vague and nonspecific about a lot of things, including themself. The Bard of Light would tell people, “Don’t worry, everything’s fine” when it really isn’t. They’d ignore the details in life and just kind of...space out, distancing themself from it all. Overall they’d be pretty apathetic and airheaded.

As far as interests go, they could be intrigued by obscure things. Weird, unknown genres of music? Sign me up! They might also be interested in the ocean and its mysteriousness, how we have explored so little of its depths, which have the potential to hold both beautiful and nightmarish creatures. Because this Bard is ghosting Void, and like I said, they’d be kind of an airhead, they might separate themself from reality. Perhaps they live surrounded by terrible circumstances and prefer to just block it out. Maybe they do some sort of inhalant drug, always living in both a physical and mental sort of fog. They wouldn’t be high in the sky of their imagination like we see with Gamzee (Bard of Rage-- ghosting Hope!), but just… Floating. Existing. Without much drive or purpose. Hence the nihilist attitude. Lastly, the Bard of Light might have a very one-sided perspective of life, whether it’s by their own volition or by blocking out any other information. They’re not capable of seeing different perspectives, new knowledge, new meanings. Again, this is where that existential outlook of this Bard comes into play.

“Crisis:” Bards do start out acting like players of the opposite aspect, but once they have a sort of crisis in their life, they actively pursue their aspect, trying to take in as much as possible. The Bard of Light would start to go after information, relevance, clarity and even fortune/luck. As far as a crisis is concerned, this Bard may cause some dire effects (ex. an unfortunate accident, death of a loved one, etc.) because of their Void tendencies. Perhaps they miscommunicated or didn’t speak up, and as a result, something went terribly wrong. Or maybe by spacing out and blocking out vital information, this Bard created a problem. There are a lot of ways this could happen. The point is that the Bard of Light would pursue information with a new urgency. They’d gather intel from from/about everyone concerning everything in an attempt to try and be helpful, to guide their team towards success. The Bard would ask themself a lot of sudden and important questions that they didn’t notice or just plain ignored beforehand: What’s important? Why do I care? What’s the point? Due to the rapid influx of multiple perspectives they’ve been trying to gather, the Bard would have a lot of trouble trying to answer these questions. But unlike before, they wouldn’t be able to just sink back into their former nihilistic and uncaring attitude. They care now-- perhaps too much.

They would become a lot more uncertain and paranoid, always trying to take in more information (maybe to the point of trying to access some sort of ‘forbidden knowledge’), always thinking there is more left to be known. They also might start relying on lucky objects or even lights in general. The darkness/fog they lived in before, both physically and mentally, will now be something they fear. This Bard might even become the stereotypical ‘crazy conspiracy theorist’ who tries desperately to piece information together into theories so they can protect themself.

Post-crisis: The Bard eventually creates a sort of balance by destroying their aspect, intuitively learning “how much is too much?” They’d destroy lucky objects and information. They might be the type to burn down a library for the ‘greater good’ because really, most of the novels were actually government propaganda. They might also destroy Light in the literal sense-- smashing lamps and light bulbs. Keep in mind that the Bard is the passive destruction class, though, so they’d do this in kind of a subtle way. Imagine you’re walking down an alley and one by one, the lights start to flicker out. You can just barely see a figure in the shadows at the other side. That’s the Bard of Light. By destroying knowledge, they can create confusion among enemies, and with their team, they can omit the unimportant parts of a source so people can focus on the relevant information. Bards also destroy with/through their aspect, so the Bard of Light might literally blind their enemies with beams of light or even turn the luck on their side to kill their adversaries more efficiently. One special ability of this Bard could be driving the enemy mad using information, such as some sort of ‘forbidden knowledge.’

Land Quest

A good land for the Bard of Light might be the Land of Murk and Libraries, or LOMAL. The planet is shrouded in a dark fog produced by the denizen that smells sweet and tinges everything in sight a blueish color. This fog is to prevent the consorts from becoming overly intelligent and know things they should not know. However, it is ultimately harmful, as the consorts breathing it in have become ignorant and simple-minded. The denizen is the only one who has knowledge on the planet, which is hidden in various libraries throughout the land that can be opened through solving puzzles. It is the Bard’s job to not only to destroy the fog, but also to destroy the information in the libraries so that the consorts will not be overwhelmed with information.

Weapon

We don’t know much about the weapons for Bards apart from Gamzee’s clubs. Light players tend to have pretty ordinary objects (dice, needles). Since a Bard of Light would start out acting like a Void player, they might have fistkind as part of their Strife Specibus as our canon Void players do.

The inverse of a Bard of Light is a Maid of Void.

[rairun]

Last Saturday @quietroomineedyounow and I watched It's Always Right Now, Until It's Later by Daniel Kitson. It was my third time - I was there when it was filmed in 2012 (you can spot @nymeth and me in the audience!), and then we saw it again a couple of years later when Kitson did a cinema tour. Now he's finally made it available for rental on Vimeo, and YOU SHOULD ALL SEE IT. [Spoilers ahead] It goes like this: Kitson stands alone on stage with light bulbs hanging all around him, as he narrates different moments in the lives of Caroline Carpenter and William Rivington. Each light bulb represents one of those moments. He starts from his death and her birth, and then alternates between them as he moves towards his birth and her death. I remember I had trouble following the story the first time around - the fact that I wasn't very familiar with his Yorkshire accent at the time didn't help, but the structure of the play doesn’t make it easy either. Whereas later shows like Tree and A Show for Christmas give you time to breathe - if you get distracted for a moment, you can easily regain your bearings - It's Always Right Now, Until It's Later can be pretty unforgiving. It's densely packed and fast-paced, and the moments Kitson tells us about are years apart: if you miss a few lines, you might end up having to make sense of a completely different scene, in a completely different place, often with completely different characters, with few visual cues to help you out. The performance is great; it’s just difficult to follow at times. A kinder way to put it is to say it rewards multiple viewings - and I do want to be kind here because the show displays so much generosity, and such an incredible openness of heart, not only towards its characters but all of us who are here in the business of living and breathing and dying and being forgotten. After we watched it, as she was walking me to the bus stop near her flat, Sophie said that Kitson was really good at picking up on and describing experiences we could all relate to, and I think she is right. He knows how to zoom in on those mundane experiences to show exactly why we still want to be here experiencing them. Or why sometimes we don't. Sometimes we are confused, and we fail to see how any of this is worth living at all. When he's nearly 40, Kitson tells us, William goes on a dinner date with a woman. In the middle of the date, William launches into such a misguided tirade about how it is all bullshit - the way they talk, and the way they exchange pleasantries and small talk, hiding all the ways that four decades of living on this planet have left them scarred, and scared, and hungry for connection, while repeating the same safe conversations they've had with countless other people. Kitson is great here because he exposes a sense of loneliness and frustration so many of us experience privately, but his way of telling it is really funny - and the joke is on how self-important it all can be. The joke is on the sense we are different and privy to some truth no one else can see, and he sets it up in a way that shows how men in particular tend to condescend even as they are trying to connect. Caroline too experiences similar feelings in her 30s, even though she has a husband and a little boy. The scene starts when she asks her husband to sit down, and she confesses she's had an affair. Now, I'm as tired of stereotypically straight relationships as anyone else - I'm tired of the repetition of dilemmas that don't have to be dilemmas at all, of all the love triangles, of the refusal to see alternatives to heteronormative modes of living. But even in a relatively traditional context, Kitson has a way of peeling these layers away and showing sentiments that are common to us all. Benjamin feels shattered, but "he takes her hand, he tells her that it's all right." And when she says that it's not all right, he asks her "what she wants him to do, to storm out, to smash things, to hit her, is that what she wants? What does she want him to say? That it's over? That he hates her? That she's ruined it?" And when she says of course not, he just asks her why. Caroline feels so guilty, but over the weeks and months and years, she finds herself telling her husband things about herself she never thought she would tell anyone. This is the type of connection that William wanted so desperately, and here we have Caroline experiencing it exactly when things go off track, when she allows herself to explore the feelings a wife and mother supposedly shouldn't have. And sure, maybe Benjamin could have had an easier time shaking off the feeling that it only happened because he was not loved enough. Maybe he could have seen love as something else entirely. Maybe Caroline never needed to have felt so guilty for so long. But despite all the useless suffering, and all the feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness he might have felt, Benjamin listens to her because he loves her, and deep down he knows that this openness is a rare and precious thing. One of my favorite parts of the show takes place a few years before that, when Caroline has her first baby, and she's tired, and the baby won't stop crying. As she tries to make her way to the hospital in the rain, she starts sobbing herself, and an older woman on the street looks at her and tells her that it's all normal, it's going to be all right, and it's all so simple and kind and profound at the same time. There are a couple of other moments in the show where a person tells another that whatever is happening is normal, and they are so full of compassion for people who can feel just as alone and scared and singled out as us. And these small pieces of kindness, these moments of human connection, are passed on and on in the most unlikely ways, in the most unexpected yet necessary situations. And then there's the scene where William is on the bus, holding a gift for his father (and he's been noticing for a while now that the gifts he gives are better than the ones he receives from him). Kitson does a wonderful bit of observational comedy here - and this is something that is lacking from all my descriptions so far, the sense of how funny he is all the time. He describes how annoyed William feels about a boy who keeps pressing the bell, and how William keeps hoping his mother will tell him off. But once she actually does, William starts rooting for the boy instead; and when she finally loses it and humiliates him in front of everyone, slapping his legs until they're red, it dawns on William that this is how she is teaching the boy to be a person. He realizes the ripples and consequences of this personal trauma, and of all the ones like it, connecting hurt and abuse over the span of years and generations, and suddenly he is aware that the gift sitting on his lap "is barely even adequate." Meanwhile, after Caroline goes to university, she develops a sense of displacement in relation to her home, like it is only a place that she visits now. Kitson talks about how your relationship with your parents changes over the years, how things aren't necessarily worse, but they are different, and at some level there's a sense of loss. The people who shaped so much of your personality, and the place where you learned how to be yourself, no longer occupy the same space as they once did in your life. It made me think of myself at twenty-seven, with my eyes wide open at 4am in a dark flat in Manchester, realizing for the first time that I would never again go down the stairs in the apartment where I grew up, long after my parents had gone to sleep, tiptoeing to my room and into bed, aware of all the city noises outside the window. I would never live somewhere where my parents ate dinner and watched TV and slept every night, while I went online and spoke to people from all of the world, and saw my life stretching out in front of me like a long road to who knows where. That night was when it hit me, and I was thousands of miles away, and I didn't know there was even a road leading anywhere anymore, but I was grateful that my parents had been kind to me and that I had become me. Another thing that I found very well done was how William's stories felt different because we already knew where his life was going. When we get to his late 20s, we find that he's friends with a really lovely couple who had just had a baby. And you feel happy but also sad, because the moment the three of them are sharing together is so sweet, but then it dawns on you that it's also so fleeting - the story of his life is moving backwards, so if his friends had never been mentioned before, that must mean they lost touch. This works really well because it's not heavy-handed: no one is there reminding you that it is going to be over soon, but you know. And finally, there is also a beautiful part towards the end that I found so moving. Caroline dies, but it isn't moving just because she is gone. We get a lovely scene that shows Benjamin doing something that she had wanted to do not too long before her death. And after they both die, that one action of his, so unassuming and so imbued with love, creates a ripple that outlives them. But no one has a freaking clue about it - not even the people who are there, seeing it with their own eyes and having their own significant moments, made possible only because of those two elderly people who no longer exist. This scene could have been really clichéd, but it isn't. It's so well written and delivered. It really makes you feel like you're part of something much bigger, with a deep joy and a deep sadness, with an awareness that our love for things and people is so meaningful and so insignificant at the same time.

[thenakedgalaxy-blog]

Sharks in the Night

It can be an odd feeling to sit alone on the surface of some moon.  And by “odd” I don’t mean some sort of “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” type of odd.  This isn’t about awe.  Oh, I am sure that those explorers out in the inky depths of the perpetual night do come across this feeling when setting down on some pristine world never before seen by human eyes.  I am not such a soul.  I like to putter about the well-traveled or, at least, well surveyed space lanes.  Sure, someday I would love to set down on such a world, but that desire is just one of many that can be found on my “red letter days” wishlist that includes such other flights of fancy as “getting out of debt,” “completing every quest in Space Vikings from Pluto,” and “freeing the galaxy from narcissism.”  So, no, it was not awe.  

It was loneliness.

This is something a lot of dirt pounders and station rats don’t understand.  When you are surrounded by large populations on a planet, or even in one of the larger space stations, people are everywhere.  You never feel alone.  Oh sure, every now and then you might find yourself by your lonesome, such as when the third shift night cycle arrives station-side and the passageways and java joints empty out, but you know deep down that another human being is easily in reach.  Not so when you touch down on a largely uninhabited moon.  Then, it is just you.  For hundreds if not thousands of miles.  

This was a realization that occurred to me as I sat in the cockpit of my Asp Scout after touching down on the high metal moon, Suhte B1.  I was there to do a quick hack job on a lightly guarded outpost in the middle of the Big Nowhere.  I wasn’t really looking for such a job - I wanted to move on from Suhte and its bloody communal politics - but I agreed to take the quick data smash and grab as a favor to an agent who was good to me in the past.  It wasn’t a big deal, just a swimming in the rain gig for easy money, so I was happy to help my arch-browed contact at Ballard Survey.  Fast scratch is the best scratch for flyboy bindle punks like me.  

Off I went.  I arrived without incident, and inserted my craft into an orbital glide pattern with little effort.  The outpost I was to hit took a bit of scanning to locate - even without an atmosphere to soup things up, the onboard survey gear, a fancy name for a collection of high resolution CCDs and SIGINT antennae, takes time to pinpoint a pinprick outpost on even a small moon like Suhte B1 - but I found eventually.  I carefully, and I like to think surreptitiously, brought my ship down about a kilometer from the isolated base and quickly shut down most systems to minimize my EM profile as an extra precaution.  And then I waited.

Waited for what?  Well, that’s sort of the point.  You never really knew.  My smuggler uncle was fond of mumbling “haste is of the devil,” especially when I would get antsy after hours of camping out in some godforsaken asteroid field awaiting a contact.  He would look at me, his unshaven face pale from years spent in the black and his breath stinking of cheap EconoStyle Gin that he often rebottled and resold as the good stuff to the slower marks across the galaxy, and say, “You can be fast or you can be smart.  Not both.”  Then he would take a swig of gin from his ever present zero-G flask, point a finger at me, one with swollen joints from years of gripping a flight stick and throttle, and deliver his favorite line: “Haste is of the devil, boy.  Never forget that.”  I haven’t.

So I sat there and passed the time by doing some quests in Space Vikings from Pluto while keeping an eye on the station, visible to me in the dim distance thanks to the lack of an atmosphere and my ship being on a slight hill that overlooked the plain on which the station sat.  Let me tell you, sitting alone inside a ship on a almost unpopulated moon provides a whole new understanding of the word “quiet.”  Suddenly the smallest of sounds have a very real presence of their own: the rumble of a pressure exchanger deep in the hull; assorted chirps and buzzes of various automated systems conversing with each other in some secret machine language; the creak and pop of a hull adjusting to the weight of gravity; and the ever present chill whisper of the environmental system that kept me flush in oxygen and nitrogen.  And that is it.  It is the type of silence that deafens before long.

At one point I needed to take some footfalls just to reassure myself that I hadn’t gone deaf.  I stood from my command chair and made my way back to the small galley behind the command deck bulkhead.  When the automated lighting flickered on with miniscule but audible clicks, I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.  The galley was always a refuge of sorts to me.  I found its small interior comforting, especially the built-in slate blue baguette seating to my left and the countertop, with its tiny population of assorted culinary equipment, along the bulkhead to my right.  I particularly enjoyed how the countertop and its equipment was delicately lit from above via some hidden striplighting that lined the underside of the overhead cabinetry.  As I filled a bulb of tea from the automated beverage dispenser, I realized the top-lit galley equipment made a type of ersatz city skyline; an uneven sawtooth profile of a moody city at dawn...or maybe dusk would be more accurate.  Even the variously colored LEDs on the equipment furthered the illusion with their lit from within, window-like appearance.  I began to wonder who might live there.  Probably the same sort of people you found anywhere else.  People who rushed to work, to home, to the local pub, but never anywhere important.  People who did what they were told, sometimes did what they wanted, and but ultimately did nothing worth remembering.  Did they ever glance at “the sky” and wonder about it?  Wonder why the heavens were lit?  Wonder at the...wonder of it all?  Probably not.  They just ate, slept, worked, got drunk and occasionally double-crossed each other.  Just another bitter little town.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there was a good probability that at this very moment some poor schlep was making his way home to his apartment, expecting to find his gal there, but finding something else.  That discovery would change the city for him, make it unlivable, and force the sap to flee the unrelenting light and seek the solitary darkness of space….

A distant buzzing brought me out of my flight of fancy.  I hurried back to the command deck and discovered that my scanner had detected a ship a kilometer or so to the west.  I looked in that direction and could see the reflected twinkle of the local dwarf star on its windscreen as it began to move.  As I watched, it lifted off in a puff of dust and turned in my general direction.  It didn’t take long for the ship, I believed it to be a Sidewinder, to pass overhead.  It’s funny: even though the hard vacuum of space prevented it, I thought I could hear the pop-pop-pop of its reaction motors mocking the planet’s weak gravitational pull.  Combined with the forward thrust provided by its main engines, the ship was soon a distant winking of running lights in the dark night of space.  A moment or two later, the bright flash of frameshift acceleration heralded its faster than light departure for parts unknown.  

And I was alone again.  

It’s strange how you can get attached to someone you didn’t even know.  I had no idea who the fella was.  Heck, for all I know he might have shot me on sight if he had detected me.  But none of that mattered.  All I knew was that for a brief instant I was not isolated on this rock, and that meant something.  

All I could do was shrug my shoulders and take another sip of tea.  It was during that sip that I noticed it:  two skimmer drones were now patrolling the southern edge of the installation.  So that was it.  That flyboy was probably an itinerant techie sent out here for maintenance on the installation’s security grid.  While not guaranteed, this was a darn good sign that the place was largely automated, a not uncommon practice for corps that run multiple small setups, like listening posts and such.  Once again, my uncle was right.  Waiting paid off as I now knew I only had to worry about two skimmers, and probably not very good ones as they needed maintenance.  I drained the last of my tea and entered the hold of my Asp.  Ten minutes later I was in my surface reconnaissance vehicle and out on the surface of Suhte B1.

Even in the 34th Century, driving about on an alien moon never feels routine.  To be enclosed in that clear plastic cabin that is little more than a portable bubble of air, and to hear the crunch of the alien surface beneath the balloon tires of the vehicle, well, that is something you never get used to.  Ever.  When you live on a planet that is well-lived, that is, well explored and well surveyed, that conveys a kind of safety that you feel even if you are alone in the middle of a desert.  On an alien moon...not so much.  Even ones that have major cities on their surfaces, such as Aquinas Landing on Summa 3, are not thoroughly explored in the fashion of the old worlds, such as Sol’s Earth or Alpha Centauri's 2042 L1.  No one has the time or the resources to scour every planetoid even if they decide to build a settlement on it.  And if they did commit to doing so, things have a way of changing out here.  It’s a big galaxy, one griped by entropy.  Unexpected surprises are quite common, and any comprehensive survey would have a short shelf life. Hence, the ever present sense of ancient awe that you might be seeing something no one has ever seen before.  

The heebie jeebies are there as well.  Even completely alone on a mid-sized ship like my Asp conveys a sense of safety with its reinforced hull, shield banks, and reassuring collection of rumbles, buzzes, and beeps.  In a SRV, all you have is a spidery hull, an underpowered defense turret, the ghostly feedback of its limited range surface scanner, and the grating whine of its electric motor.  Not much to hold back the terrors of the endless night.  It did, however, have a decent heater, something of inestimable value when the outside temperature was 226 K in the sun.  That’s -53 degrees F for you landlubbers.  “Cold” doesn’t quite describe it.   I cranked the heater up as I drove across the surface towards the installation.  The heated air quickly filled the cabin and wrapped its warm arms around my shoulders.  I relaxed a little.

I halted that SRV about half a mile from the installation and deployed my turret.  Now came the tricky part, but not too tricky, I soon discovered.  My SRV’s basic SIGINT gear scanned the drones and classified the manufacturer as Acme Tech.  Bargain bin quality.  I should be able to take them if I got my shots off first.  

I engaged the SRV’s motor again and slowly crept forward until I found what I was looking for: a low rise that I could use to shield the bulk of my SRV.  In the military, they call it a “hull down” position.  Out here, we call it “being smart.”  I slowly nudged my SRV into position, enjoying the crunch of the moon’s regolith beneath the tires.  The bulk of the small rise soon covered the majority of my view from inside the cabin. Perfect.  I locked the brake in place and extended the turret mount over the low rise.  Then I reached up to remove the SRV’s set of virtual reality goggles from their cradle at the top of the canopy, carefully unfurling their trailing data cable that was plugged into the interface panel above.  With one hand I held the goggles over my face while the other hand stretched the securing headgear over and around my head.  Once snuggly in place, I hit the activation stud and my vision was quickly filled with what my turret could see.  And there they were: two buzzing drones scanning every rock on their perimeter like a bunch of mindless worker bees.  Taking a deep breath, I centered the turret’s targeting pip on the nearest drone and slowly squeezed the trigger.  

My SRV vibrated with the discharge of the twin cannons, and I saw dual streams of fire lash out and strike one of the drones.  Immediately it’s partner reacted to the onslaught and opened fire on me in return.  My use of terrain worked as the incoming bolts did little more than raise puffs of dust from the small hill that shielded me.  Using muscle memory, my right hand boosted the power to the cannon on the right console and then resumed squeezing the trigger.  It only took a few more seconds for the cheap drone to suffer fatal damage and tumble into the regolith.  One down.

The second drone had closed the distance to my SRV and boosted itself in altitude so as to fire over the hill and down into me.  Hmm, that was a smarter tactic than what I thought its rudimentary AI could handle.  My thin SRV shielding began to sizzle and pop as it absorbed the incoming fire.  I quickly swung the turret to the second drone and squeezed the trigger again.  My bolts impacted on the drone and made it unstable, causing its return  fire to miss.  Displaying some learning behavior, it began to jink to mess up my aim but it was too little too late.  It, too, quickly took the big sleep and tumbled onto the surface after suffering an internal explosion that spilled its electronic guts over the near terrain.  Good salvage there.    

I exhaled with relief.  Remembering my uncle’s maxim, I centered the turret’s camera on the distant outpost and increased the magnification.  I waited to see if the combat resulted in any reaction from the outpost.  Seconds and then minutes ticked by but the base was quiescent.  Just what I thought.  Either the outpost was entirely automated, or there was perhaps one or maybe two techs inside who were now probably battening down the hatches and hiding under their desks, desperately hitting a panic button all the while.  

I removed the VR goggles and returned them to their cradle.  I unlocked the brake and hit the SRV’s thruster stud.  A small burst emanated from the twin thrusters set at the middle back of the SRV that briefly lifted me off surface and up and over the hill.  When my tires touched ground again I goosed the throttle and took off for the base at a dash.  

Before long I was right in the middle of the outpost.  The transmission tower with its red painted mast and attached generator could not be missed.  While constantly scanning my surroundings looking for signs of trouble, I sidled the SRV up to it.  I quickly donned my vacsuit’s helmet and gloves, and depressurized the cabin.  Seconds later, I was standing on the sandy surface of Suhte B1 and fighting my vacsuit’s bulky gloves as I tried to attach the interface cord from my dataslate to the transmission tower’s maintenance slot.  Using some cracking software I picked up at Vonaburg Collective, I was soon past the off-the-shelf security software and hacking into their comms database.   I could hear myself panting inside my vacsuit as the adrenaline hit my bloodstream.  Even if nobody was a threat in the base, that didn’t mean a threat wasn’t on the way from someplace else.  And no matter how easy this job was, I still was, technically speaking, committing a crime.  That sort of realization has a way of messing with your nerves.  

The dataslate flashed green.  Done!  I had the information I needed to fulfil the contract.  I quickly yanked the cord from the maintenance panel and loped in the quarter gravity back to my SRV.  Barely taking the time to remove my helmet and gloves, I floored the SRV out of the crime scene and headed back to my Scout.  Mission accomplished.

***

I made it back to my contact at Ballard Survey with no problems.  The hot data was delivered, I wasn’t thrown in stir by the authorities, and I was a few thousands of credits richer.  What more could a pilot want?  Sadly, the answer to that question still eluded me as I stared into my rye on the rocks.  The electro-punk music of the dive I was in did its best to drown out coherent thoughts, but I don’t believe that was the reason for my lack of an answer.  Perhaps there was no answer.  Perhaps CMDRs like me were like sharks: we needed to keep swimming for no other reason than to stop would be to drown.  Keep moving and keep hustling.  That was our simple-minded way.  Eh, it was a good enough explanation for me.  Lone wolves didn’t ever stop to ask why they were lone wolves, they just were.

I felt a tug at my shoulder.  I glanced to my right and saw a square-jawed mug impassively looking down at me.  He leaned over and said, “The boss has another gig for you.”  He jerked his head towards the door, indicating it was time for me to finish my drink.  I downed the last of my rye in a single gulp and followed the loogan out of the joint.    

Like I said, keep swimming or die.  What more reason did I need?

[mypkshop-blog]

Top 10 Best Gardening Products | Buy Best Gardening Products Online

To get an abundance of crisp blossoms, veggies, and natural product, you need to place in somewhat (well, a ton) of real effort. These smash hit digging tools, going from attempted and-tried gloves to game-changing weed executioners, will leave your yard putting its best self forward. Regardless of whether you're beginning without any preparation or are interested about the apparatuses that other Amazon customers use to cause their nurseries to develop, look at this rundown of top of the line picks before getting the opportunity to work. Since your nursery won't plant itself, ya dig?

1. PRUNING GLOVES

These long pruning gloves are made of premium goat grain, so sharp thistles won't jab through. You can even take them past your nursery: One analyst wears them while brushing her since quite a while ago haired Persian feline to maintain a strategic distance from chomps and scratches.

Buy Best Gardening Products Online in Pakistan in Cheap Price..

What Reviewers Are Saying: "I feel like everybody who has a flower shrub ought to have these gloves. Actually, I just purchased two additional sets for my mother and my sister for Mother's Day."

2. Nursery KNEELER AND SEAT

Bid farewell to a throbbing painfulness with this stooping cushion and nursery situate. Ideal for cultivators with awful backs, this foldable seat accompanies two arrangements of hardware pockets, so you can hold the majority of your fundamentals directly close by.

Buy Best Gardening Products Online in Pakistan in Cheap Price..

What Reviewers Are Saying: "My better half is very dazzled with the plan, strength and usability. He expressed, 'The Arthritis Foundation should bounce on sharing this item.'"

3. WEEDER

PSA: Weeding doesn't need to bust your back. Rather, go through this instrument to paw dandelions, thorns, and other intrusive plants without twisting around. To make weeding even to a lesser degree a task, utilize this apparatus after it downpours.

Buy Best Gardening Products Online in Pakistan in Cheap Price..

What Reviewers Are Saying: "It should come standard when you get another house. My yard was brimming with weeds from the last proprietor, and I filled two pails of weeds with this thing in 20 minutes. "

4. Digging TOOL SET

Give your whole toolbox a redesign with this arrangement of hardened steel apparatuses, including pruning shears, trowel, transplant trowel, soil scoop, weeder, and cultivator. Additionally, everything comes tucked inside a smooth dark pack for simple vehicle.

What Reviewers Are Saying: "Great made strong development and every one of the devices for cultivating you'd need. I'd get it again ... in any case, I won't need to in light of the fact that these will last."

5. PLANT TIES

Meet the most ideal approach to keep your plants — tomato vines, particularly — secure and bolstered. Subsequent to slicing these delicate sided connections to any ideal length, they'll control your nursery to become only the manner in which you need it as well.

Buy Best Gardening Products Online in Pakistan in Cheap Price..

What Reviewers Are Saying: "This stuff is astounding and each time I pivot, I locate another utilization for it. I even keep a come in my vehicle glove box!"

6. PLANT MARKERS

Not exclusively will this arrangement of 10 record names give your nursery character, yet you'll have the option to monitor the majority of your herbs and blooms (with the assistance of a chalk marker).

Buy Best Gardening Products Online in Pakistan in Cheap Price..

What Reviewers Are Saying: "These are exactly what I've been searching for — uncompromising names for my nurseries that include an expert vibe. What's more, reward: They are anything but difficult to compose on."

7. PLANT AUGER

Most bulbs should be planted somewhere in the range of three to six inches down, which is an undertaking in itself. This drill, which works in different kinds of soil, burrows profound openings without the additional real effort.

Buy Best Gardening Products Online in Pakistan in Cheap Price..

What Reviewers Are Saying: "I simply got done with planting 90 daffodil bulbs in dirt soil in around an hour and a half. In any case, the genuine point isn't the period of time it took, however the exertion required. Short form: very little."

8. SEED SPACING TOOL

Guarantee that you're giving your sprouting plants all the space that they merit with this helpful apparatus. In the wake of squeezing the device into the dirt, it deserts a feeling that you can use as your planting guide.

Buy Best Gardening Products Online in Pakistan in Cheap Price..

What Reviewers Are Saying: "This is totally ideal for an accomplished or the beginner nursery worker, such as myself! This device took out ALL of the mystery and it was really fun utilizing this with my teenaged child and little child." 

9. PRUNING SHEARS

These are the shears to purchase as indicated by the 2,900 analysts that gave it a close impeccable five-star rating on Amazon. They likewise accompany a lifetime guarantee so in case you break them, Fiskars will send you another pair for nothing.

Buy Best Gardening Products Online in Pakistan in Cheap Price..

What Reviewers Are Saying: "I was exceptionally intrigued by their capacity to overwhelm any size branch that I could fit into its jaws. I chop down a few huge branches off a tree and these shears could even handle half-inch thick branches"

10.Instrument HOLDER

On the off chance that you truly need to turn into a genuine cultivator, store your trusty pair of pruning shears in a cowhide holster. That way you can remain without hands while you're working in the nursery while looking very cool.

Buy Best Gardening Products Online in Pakistan in Cheap Price..

What Reviewers Are Saying: "This holster is immaculate. The craftsmanship is incredible, and it is securing my costly shears."

11. Digging TOOL AND GLOVE SET

Since it takes magnificence to develop something delightful, isn't that so? This do-everything tote accompanies two distinct arrangements of gloves and six devices enriched with splendid florals.

Buy Best Gardening Products Online in Pakistan in Cheap Price..

What Reviewers Are Saying: "This is ideal for an apprentice nursery worker. Indeed, even with all the base devices, the pack is huge enough to store additional embellishments."

12. LEAF SCOOP

Before you start planting blooms, vegetables, and natural products, you need to set the stage. This pair of 12-inch scoops are a distinct advantage for evacuating leaves — wet or something else — and setting mulch in your revived bloom beds.

Buy Best Gardening Products Online in Pakistan in Cheap Price..

What Reviewers Are Saying: "With regards to yard work and scraping up wet leaves, these are unquestionably extremely valuable. They truly make things simpler and accelerate the procedure when doing yard work."

13. Nursery KNIFE

With this multi-reason Japanese cultivating apparatus, you can burrow and scoop soil, just as cut roots and vines. When you're not utilizing it, keep it pleasant and secure in the going with calfskin holder.

Buy Best Gardening Products Online in Pakistan in Cheap Price..

What Reviewers Are Saying: "Long story short, get this. It's so very much made that you'll be passing it on to your children. It has an impressive haul to it, yet that just addresses its quality since it's not hard to use by any stretch of the imagination."

14. WATERING CAN

Each cultivator needs a watering can. This exemplary sprinkler has an extra-wide gush, alongside on-pattern copper complements that make it alright to forget about in plain view.

Buy Best Gardening Products Online in Pakistan in Cheap Price..

What Reviewers Are Saying: "I spent always attempting to discover a watering can that was valuable, yet in addition tastefully satisfying to use as stylistic theme. This one was ideal for me."

15. TRELLIS

In case you're inadequate with regards to garden space, brainstorm not out with this trellis, which climbs multiple feet tall. Perfect for cucumbers, squash, peas, and blossoming vines, this top pick can likewise be collapsed level and put away when not being used.

Buy Best Gardening Products Online in Pakistan in Cheap Price..

What Reviewers Are Saying: "This is ideal for our little garden. Presently I can have the majority of the veggies I needed in my nursery without occupying so much room!"