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thedevotionaltour · 3 months

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On their first night rooming together, Matt and Foggy found it extremely funny that they had both planned on going into law before joining Starfleet.

Foggy told his roommate how he got through one year of undergrad before feeling bizarrely unsatisfied, and terribly lost, because he'd been planning on that for the past four years of his life. When trying to figure out what he wanted to do at the end of his second semester (as he had felt the gut wrenching realization around midterms that this didn't feel quite right or worth it), a friend had called Foggy up to catch up, telling him about how their time at the academy was going. Foggy decided it might be interesting to go try that out. In turn, Matt tells Foggy how he changed his mind at age 15, right at the start of sophomore year of high school, when his dad went back to freighter work for the first time since right before Matt had been born.

Jack Murdock had always desired to work in the stars, but knew he would never have the skills or smarts to get into Starfleet. The next best thing was freighter ship work-- it was fairly easy to get an occupation in, and most people weren't looking to get into it anyways. Freighter work is hard: it's months of deep space, cramped quarters on ships purely designed for the handling of cargo with still little consideration of the living experience on them despite the centuries of their existence at this point. While you're going new places, meeting new clients, the only people you're in constant contact with are the same handful of people for all this time. And while you'll grow close, become tight knit friends, it still feels so damn lonely sometimes. especially on those family run freighters, despite how it seems like you should be able to slide right on into them comfortably and become their family, too. Despite it all, Jack functioned just fine, and even found himself thriving in the work, because he was where he had always wanted and now loved to be. To get to see those stars in the vast expanse of the galaxy was a gift to him, and he wouldn't trade it for the world. He had always thought that for sure, until he'd gotten done with work for the time being and was now on a well earned break back on Earth, and met a lovely young lady named Maggie. He knew then he would trade every star in the sky just to see her smile.

Jack Murdock knew he had done just that when he heard that first little cry from the little boy that looked so much like him right in Maggie's arms.

Freighter ships, despite how a good amount of them were family operated and owned, were still no place for children. Even for the ones that had those multigenerational structures in mind, it was still thought of with that family in mind, at a very specific size, and even then it could get real crowded. After all, these ships are for cargo, and there'd be no space for it if every operation allowed their employees to bring their kids. Jack knew there would never be any space for Matty in a place like that, even if Matt could befriend the few other potential children aboard (that is, if Jack could even get contracted with a ship that allowed them). Even if Jack wanted to go back terribly to his off planet work, there was no one to take care of Matt with Maggie out of the picture, no family or friends close enough for it. Jack would have to leave Matty alone for months at a time, and the thought felt unbearable considering he was worried about the idea of his son's loneliness on a ship with him. So Jack decided his time up there was over, he had a little boy back on Earth to take care of, and picked up other jobs here and there to allow Matt to have a normal enough childhood.

They stay up late the first night in their new cramped quarters, on their first real starship assignment together, the training assignment every cadet is required to go through in order to graduate. For the first time Matt tells Foggy how he feels like he's one of the last people on Earth in this century to ever have his whole life change due to corporate carelessness, because it wasn't due to something blowing up in his face in a school lab at age 12 that lead to his loss of vision. It's the first time Matt's ever discussed how he went blind with Foggy. Despite the intense, tight, and thorough rules and regulations and oversight of the transportation and handling of radioactive materials in the 24th century, somehow, some way, Matt managed to be one of the few people involved in such a mishandling when all that chemical waste spilled. Matt's never considered it being at the wrong place at the wrong time though, because it meant someone else didn't have to go through that same fate when he shoved that man out of the way, and he would do it a million times over if it meant no one else had to get hurt.

While there have been advances and improvements in ocular implants, that wasn't the case when Matt was a child. Implants were still a newer technology and procedure still being refined, and it was frightening to consider an only potentially successful operation for only somewhat restored eyesight. The VISOR was (and still is, for the most part) the most common option, therefore less frightening, and far easier to understand and upkeep. Matt would rather have that for any kind of visual restoration even if his sight would be absolutely nothing like he had known before. Even if Matt had lost his sight now, or if the technology had been near perfect back then, he would still choose his VISOR over anything else for everything it does bring to his world.

Matt grew up hearing just how damn smart he was from his daddy, and how he was goin' to do great things one day, be a doctor or a lawyer or an ambassador for intergalactic peace. How one day Matty was gonna be a better man than his daddy, and do so much more than he ever got to with all those brains he had. Matt still found his daddy pretty smart and found him to be a pretty good man.

When Jack told Matt that one of the freighter vessels he had previously worked for had contacted him, offering him a job, Matt encouraged him to take the opportunity when Jack had asked how he'd feel if Jack went to work for them. Matt had known his whole life how much his daddy loved the stars, loved working up there, and how much this meant to him. He already knew that deep down, Jack was going to say yes to this job no matter what, that his heart had settled on it because he knew Matty was old enough to take care of himself while Jack would be away. He told Matt that until he graduated and went off to college, he'd only been taking short distance jobs, only away for days to weeks at a time instead of those long stretches of so many months.

It felt like no surprise when Foggy and Matt learned the other had decided on going the command track when taking their entrance exams should they have gotten into the academy. Foggy knew from the start he wouldn’t be quite suited towards science or operations, but if nothing else, supposed he could learn the operations skills should something prevent going down a command route. Matt had not once considered any other track– sure, everyone wanted to be a captain when they thought of joining Starfleet, but he found no shame in that. He knew plenty of people switched over to other divisions anyways, and he felt confident enough in himself to be able to make it, helping in the oversight of a starship. It’s not that Matt was necessarily aiming to be a captain, but he wanted to be in on the action, to be part of the lead– more than anything, he wanted the thrill of the adventure. Even if Matt was sure he’d never be swayed to another track, he knows deep in his heart he wouldn’t mind where he ended up by the time he graduates– he just wants to see the stars the way his daddy did.

Matt had never understood the bizarre and weak taunts his peers would occasionally make when they learned his father worked on a freighter vessel, how they had an odd pretentiousness about it and thought it to be such lowly work. There were very few people who did this, and it always got to Matt just a little bit– pointless, mean little jabs for no good reason that were becoming more frequent and often, but he toughed it out and didn’t let it shake him. Matt was damn proud of his daddy. Nobody would ever take this feeling away. His father did amazing work, he was living his dream, and it inspired Matt so deeply. Matt thought about how much Jack loved working in the stars, and how much he loved Matt, and how smart he thought Matt was. Matt decided he would go into Starfleet and make his dad proud.

Foggy had almost convinced himself that he wanted to switch over to the science division after a particularly enjoyable and successful time in both an astrometrics and a xenobiology class. Matt had done great in his introductory xenolinguistics course, and found he had a natural talent for picking up a variety of languages. This talent didn’t translate into speaking them well, however, and one of his classmates begged Matt to never speak Andorian again without the assistance of the universal translator ever again. His accent apparently left much to be desired, and he’d been alerted that this issue had caused one of his phrases to become dangerously close to sounding like something particularly vulgar. Matt has been advised to stick with and further pursue Vulcan, Trill, Klingonese, and/or Modern Bajoran for advanced language courses, but particularly Trill. And to remain far, far away from Andorian.

Matt tells Foggy how in a small, selfish part of his heart, he wished he had never told his dad he was proud of what he did, and that he should have never taken that stupid job. Foggy tells Matt that’s not true. Matt argues that it is. Foggy asks why Matt would bother to still be here, following the same path if working on a ship was such prideless work, if that was the case. The next hour is awkward and silent. It’s the second night of their starship assignment. Foggy wonders if he should say sorry. Matt wonders the same.

Cadet Murdock has found he’s done particularly well as an assistant to the Chief of Security on the ship, as Lieutenant Commander Everett keeps threatening to give him a yellow shirt. He says it’ll look better than the red anyways. Cadet Natchios seems to be in disagreement when she overhears this from her station nearby, assisting Lieutenant Mi’ler, and says the red will be far more flattering with Murdock’s handsome features. Matt is sure his face is the same shade as the strip of red on his gray uniform.

Jack was supposed to call last Wednesday on Matt’s first day of his first assignment on a real starship. Not assisting on a day trip on a scout vessel or spending the day learning how to operate a shuttle craft, but a genuine Nova class starship that would spend the next 6 months surveying and charting a nearby planetary system while establishing further relations with some of the warp ready civillations within. Even if it was still a relatively small vessel for short term missions, even if it was still just training, Matt knew how happy and proud Jack would be to see his son in the exact place he always wished he could have been.

Cadet Nelson had nearly thrown up after his performance on the Kobayashi Maru, even if he had done on the upper end of well on the test. When he hears Cadet Murdock get compared to the likes of Captain James T. Kirk for the ingenuity in his approach to the simulation, he almost wants to punch his best friend in the face. For the next two weeks, Matt can’t wipe the stupid grin off his face over hearing he did the best in their class on the test. Foggy starts to feel his fingers reflexively curl when other cadets stop by their lunch table to bring it up and stroke Matt’s enlarging ego, no matter how humble he pretends to be about it.

In their last video call, Jack had been beaming when he told Matt that he’d been promoted. He’d be handling some of their larger, more important clientele and would be involved in higher up decision making that carried real weight to the operation of the vessel. He’d even been given some very minor training at the helm, too. Jack was no helmsman, never would be, but it was fun that he was allowed to give some extremely minor input now and then in regards to navigation and such with his newfound skills. Matt told his daddy he’d never been prouder, and that he couldn’t wait to be working up in the stars with him soon.

Two and half months into their assignment, Matt and Foggy have found themselves far too invested in the spaghetti western program on the USS Artemis’s holodeck suite, as it is one of the few roleplay simulations available. It is bizarrely extensive with the large amount of chapters it contains. They’ve started to slowly arrange and shift their schedules on the ship so that their free time lines up to go use the suite together, and it’s worked for the most part until everything became unexpectedly busy. Lieutenant Everett tells Cadet Murdock if he asks for one more shift change this week, he’s going to tell the Captain to greatly reduce his allotted holodeck hours. Matt tells Foggy he thinks he might try out the gymnastics program by himself this week, and Foggy tells him that he’s been thinking about spending more time reading this week anyways. They find that their free time shifts have been scheduled at the same time for the next month the following week.

Matt falls asleep the third night on the starship thinking about how Jack told him that for graduation, he’d take Matt on one last real good and fun day trip anywhere he wanted as long as it was on Earth, before his son would be shipped off onto a starship to go far away for a long time the next afternoon.

Foggy can barely believe it when he sees that he and Matt have been assigned to the same constitution class, exploratory starship for after graduation. While it isn’t the flagship Enterprise, it feels pretty damn close considering it’ll be their first true commissioned assignment, and he can’t contain his amazed, over the moon feeling about it. He confesses to Matt he was sure he would get stuck posted at some dinky deep space station. Not that that was something shameful, as it wasn’t in the slightest, it was still highly important and respectable work– but it wasn’t where Foggy wanted to go, and he knew that some cadets who didn’t do as well would get stuck in such places. Matt reminds his friend that he’s damn intelligent and quite skilled, and that he should give himself some more credit. It doesn’t push away the anxious creep that lives in Foggy’s mind, but it makes him feel a whole lot better to hear from one of the best guys in their class.

For their final day on Earth for the next 3 years, Matt and Foggy settle on a visit to New York to celebrate. Even if the location is decidedly boring on paper, considering all the places they could go, it’s a highly special trip. Matt shows Foggy the neighborhood he grew up in and points out the apartment building he and his dad used to live in as they stroll by. He tells Foggy that when he was a kid, he learned this part of the city used to be called Hell’s Kitchen centuries ago, but the name hadn’t really stuck as time went on. Matt liked calling it that though. The enjoyment had mostly started from finding a way to be allowed to say a swear word as a child, and then it simply became the way he referred to the neighborhood without any thought.

According to the report, the freighter vessel had gotten caught in the crossfire of a skirmish between the modified vessels of two small-time crime syndicates. It had been in a quiet, neutral zone in deep space, not too close towards any areas known to be particularly tense at the time. There had been 32 injured and 1 fatality out of a crew of 50 workers.

Ensign Matthew Michael Murdock can’t stop fiddling with the single, shiny pip on his new uniform as he gets ready to leave. It’s cool and smooth to the touch, just barely the size of his fingertip, and he’s known since childhood that it’s gold in color. He runs his hands down the uniform, taking note of his silhouette in the clothing, and smooths down his jacket one more time as he picks up his suitcase. When Matt heads out his door for the last time, his free hand goes right back to running over his red shirt collar where it sits.

#hello. take my post that was meant to be purely information dump rundown of some parts of this au that instead became vaguely sorta fic like #no one else has read this and i wrote half of it late at night so apologies for any incoherency LOL #please god readmore work correctly the first time.#static.soundz #i wrote this for me and absolutely nobody else also. but bc i wanna find it on my blog i will give it a cautious tag #daredevil #star trek #stardevil au #< bc i will inevitably write more on this. ANYWAYS!!!!

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castformation · 2 years

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My child has always been a bit of a roughhouser. I’ve been thinking of getting him a fighting type for his first pokemon so he’d have a training partner to let off his stress with. Do you have any advice as to what to get? If climate is an issue, we live in the suburbs of Nimbasa.

There are plenty of fighting-type pokémon that would make excellent companions for first-time trainers! For your purposes, I think you'll want to focus on pokémon that handle temperate climates well, aren’t too high maintenance, have a good temperament, and are high-energy enough to keep up with an active kid. A child's first fighting-type should also have a simple, easy-to-grasp fighting style, unless the kid in question has a background in sports or martial arts. Of course, your son should be allowed to make the final decision regarding what kind of pokémon he wants as a partner, but here are a couple options that might suit him well!

Scraggy is an admittedly unconventional starter choice-- especially considering what I just said about temperament-- but hear me out! Trainers able to work with scraggy's headstrong and at times standoffish attitude will find themselves with a loyal, energetic partner that’s full of personality and offbeat charm. They have an uncomplicated fighting style that I suspect would mesh well with your son’s roughhousing, are very easy to take care of, and, importantly, they’re native to the southern suburbs of Nimbasa, making them plentiful in your area-- you and your son could have pick of the litter from local breeders, or you could even catch one yourself, if you’re so inclined!

I will always advocate for heracross as excellent pokémon for first time trainers, and make for a great “baby’s first fighting-type”. They’re notoriously docile and good-natured, and are easy to provide for given their diet of nectars and honey. I actually did a short write-up of some heracross triva here if you’re looking for some more info on them! People generally advocate for trainers to have a pokémon with multiple stages as their starter so the pokémon will “grow with them,” but this is a matter of preference more than anything; there's nothing wrong with having a one-stage starter, so definitely keep them in mind.

Makuhitas are classic fighting-type starters for a reason! They’re easygoing, tenacious, and make for great first time fighting-types, but they still pack a real punch in battle, and love to spend lots of time training. They're also apparently quite physically affectionate, which is always a plus in my book. However, they eat quite a bit and have very particular dietary needs, requiring a high caloric intake, so if you intend on getting one for your son, be prepared for a substantial uptick in your grocery budget!

Tepig and chimchar aren’t technically fighting types, but their evolved forms are, and many display fighting-type traits early on! Both are high-energy and a bit scrappy, and as common starter choices they’re very easy to care for. Tepig in particular, as a staple starter in Unova, would be easily obtainable, and once more, you'd be spoiled for choice in terms of which one to take home.

Again, I definitely recommend that you have a sit-down with your son and discuss ahead of time what he's looking for in a partner pokémon, but I think any of these would make a fine companion for a rowdy, physically active young trainer! Please let me know if you have any follow-up questions or comments, and, if you'd like, an update on what kind of pokémon your child ends up being interested in!

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