#i have a few other odd seizure stories

[misiahasahardname]

i found a photo of me in the hospital after my first seizure and i am wearing the most HORRENDOUS combination of clothing imaginable 😭😭

thinking of redrawing it with mikey because epileptic 2012 mikey is real

[zenshyu]

☆ ͡ ݂  taehyun x m!reader for the world: with kang taehyun (강태현)

834 words | 001: taehyun had been your best friend for years, he never once left your side or left you alone in a time of need, but one day; he started acting strangely. he wouldn't answer calls or texts, you were basically certain he'd fallen off the face of the universe, so you go to confront him. horribly written confessions follow. | 002: sorry i was going to write this earlier but i had a seizure and couldn't write :sob: an argument is mentioned, a bit of self depreciation on taehyuns part, also taehyun might be a bit ooc! reader uses he him pronouns as usual, also, my writing requests are open, so feel free to send in an ask if you have anything you want (: as always, apologies for any grammar or writing mistakes! i hope you like this story <3

it started with little things, like taehyun mysteriously wandering past a book store, which also conveniently had a book y/n had mentioned he wanted but couldn't afford; and then said book ending up in y/ns hands the next day. "oh, i just saw it as i was walking past, i had some extra money." taehyun had lied. writing little notes for y/n, so that he'd remember important things. if y/n asked taehyun about it, he'd say that someone else must've written them. taehyun always made sure to say good morning to y/n, every single day, using the excuse of wanting to make sure y/n woke up at a normal and healthy time each day. it meant a lot more to taehyun, than just that.

so when taehyun's good morning messages and the notes stopped, it didn't take a genius to figure out something was wrong. y/n stood on the wooden planks of taehyun's front porch, hand pressed into a gentle fist just an inch away from the pine-wood door. he sucked in a deep breath before his skin met the door, knocking 4 times before dropping his arm down to his sides. a faint rustling could be heard inside, y/n knew taehyun was home, but nobody came to answer the door. clearing his throat, y/n decided to knock again, more firmly this time. he wasn't going to leave until he saw the face of the man he called his best friend. "kang taehyun!" y/n called out as he knocked, before the sound of footsteps hitting the floor on the other side of the door followed. his eyes followed the noise as taehyun unlocked the door and it opened. "taehyun, why have you—" "i'm sorry." taehyun's voice came out in a whisper, eyes directed at the ground, towards y/ns shoes rather than his eyes. his arms sat limp against his sides while y/ns went up and crossed against his chest. a look of anger and frustration mixed with hurt and concern laced y/ns features as he looked into taehyun's eyes the best he could with the other man actively avoiding his gaze.

it was odd. seeing taehyun like this, usually he was strong and brave, now he was afraid and you could basically see the fear dripping from his skin. anxiety kissed up the back of his neck like an abusive lover, as the air surrounding them turned uncomfortable and filled with disquietude. now the pair sat across the couch from each other, after a few minutes of stubborn arguing, y/n had made taehyun let him inside to talk.

"what happened, taehyun?" his voice quivered, shaking as he finally met the gaze of the black-haired man who sat beside him. "i don't get it, did i annoy you? you can't just randomly start ignoring me." y/ns hand went up to wipe away the slither of a tear that had accidentally seeped through his angry demeanour. "i just don't get it, no calls, no texts, no nothing." taehyun's mouth opened to speak, and a nervous breath followed. "i don't know." he whispered, looking down at his hands. "i couldn't deal with it anymore." "what?" y/n responded. "what are you talking about?" "i really, really, like you." he breathed out, voice shaky. "i do, but i don't want you to like me back." y/ns brows furrowed as he listened to taehyun's words. "you should have someone better." y/n stared at taehyun with a confused expression, the air surrounding them grew quiet, as they both processed what was going on. y/n didn’t understand, taehyun stopped talking to him because he liked him? “i think you should leave, y/n. i’m sorry.” their gaze met once more. “no, taehyun. i’m not going anywhere.” y/n exclaimed, voice gentle yet loud as he tried to make the other understand. “i like you too, taehyun.” those 4 words made taehyuns eyes widen, he had to fight back the urge to smile at the boy, he’d been wanting to hear those words for so long. “but-”

“no, taehyun. no ‘but’s, i like you too. i really do, you shouldn’t have shut me out. you should’ve spoken to me about this.” y/n spoke firmly. “really?” taehyun whispered, his voice were quiet, as if he didn’t want anyone to hear, as if he couldn’t believe it. “really.” a deep breath could be heard echoing throughout the small space between them, before y/n nervously leaned in and pressed a kiss to taehyun's soft, yet firm, lips. it was quick, and messy; neither of them were by any means a good or experienced kisser, yet taehyun's heart fluttered in his chest as his mouth lay slightly agape. taehyun leant in once more, pressing another, more stable kiss to the other's lips this time. as the pair pulled away from one another, they couldn't help the smiles that erupted on their features. it was hard to believe they were arguing just moments before, but it was as if everything had been forgiven.

"will you be my boyfriend, kang taehyun?"

[thetalkingwave]

Happy last day of Autism Awareness Month!

My story is a bit of a long one, and I will be omitting some factors regarding upbringing, but I hope it's amusing, or at the very least interesting~

At 4 years old, I was considered near a full mute- I was social, playful, but I wouldn't say anything beyond a whisper or two to my sister and my folks. Many asked when I was a teenager why that had ever been the case and I could never find an explanation for it.

It ended up being a running joke to my older relatives that the reason it was the case was that 'talking is what starts trouble'. I stuck by that notion, but as this was the early 2000s, I understand why this wasn't scrutinized beyond a talk with a speech councilor as to whether or not I would be fit for a traditional school.

Adjacent explanations, the not quite answers, would be commonplace for any bizarre behavior to follow.

When I was 6 years old, my mom had taken me and my sister to a store to buy new clothes- the first time doing so outside of school uniforms since we had moved to Texas.

A few outfits- the catch being we both had to come out with at least two pairs of pants.

I hated pants. Shorts were the most I'd wear, but I couldn't stand how tight they felt, or how the fabric brushed against my legs. I could only go halfway on trying them on before I roughly tossed them aside, squirming and on the verge of tears.

I was just "an extreme girly girl". But pants are needed for messier outdoor activities, so I walked out with fabric that didn't make my skin crawl.

I caught pneumonia at 8 years old for a similar reason- jacket collars brushing against my neck made me feel like I was suffocating. I would wear them for a short while or forgo them entirely.

Unzipping just under the neck didn't cross anyone's minds, but the compromise was either a thicker sweater or a comfortable thinner one underneath so the jacket wouldn't be directly touching my skin.

When I was 15, I had unknowingly unmasked. I wouldn't have considered myself popular; charming would have fit more.

Revealing my analysis of others (in the love for linguistics) was a dire mistake.

At 17-19, anytime I was caught stimming, I would immediately stop.

At age 21, after a harrowing day at work prior, I reached a breaking point. My right hand wouldn't stop shaking.

'A seizure, A seizure!' Was heralded by near all surrounding me.

'Nothing wrong', said the brain scan.

A week passed. It slowed down. A few days passed after that.

It completely stopped.

I was left wondering why something so horrifying felt so familiar.

At age 22, I started a new job. Curiosity peaked for some, but for most...It was shrugged.

Suddenly, something clicked.

"Wait...am I...hired?"

"I...wouldn't be asking these questions if you weren't?"

No malice, no mocking intent behind any question.

Eye contact wasn't a requirement. I no longer felt nauseous.

Early on, I was halted by an older woman I had become friendly with.

"Que traes?" (What do you 'got'?)

"En general? Autismo." (In general? Autism.)

She elbowed another coworker, the blatant appearance of "I told you so" on her face.

"You're a little odd."

I laugh in agreement.

"You've become much more open since you've started here. I'm proud of you."

It's been over a year and I'm still at this job.

At my final day of being 23, I finally get to reveal one of my biggest secrets, the first person who knew being the man I love.

The other incidents were signs, but this is my favorite giveaway.

At age 6-7, I developed a hyper fixation.

The process intrigued me, the way the elements all came together to compliment each other. A meatball sub, a BLT, a torta, ETC.

The sheer amount of joy I experienced when I had tried a Reuben for the first time could only compare to my passion of drawing.

My childhood dream was to make sandwiches, and it was unfortunately denied of its existence when I realized then and there it wasn't at all common for a child to have that interest.

My current and most long running job?

A gourmet grocery store.

The position?

Sandwich Bar.

And now it's something that those I work with on there already know.

[their-love]

Seizure

A Harry Potter story

Part 4/5

Characters: Severus Snape, reader / Y/N (she/her), Poppy Pomfrey

Summary: Continuation of reader having a seizure and Professor Snape helping

Consulting St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries

The second Y/N woke up, Severus darted out of the room. After a few hours alone, she was incredible bored and was not allowed to leave until Madam Pomfrey had heard back from her ‘informant’. Y/N was too tired to ask questions. Yet, she was awake enough for sleep to be impossible.

“You should refrain from making a habit out of this,” Professor Snape said as he walked back into the room and towards her bed. Her eyes went wide as she realized that he lacked his usual cold tone. He joked. Severus Snape joked. A smile covered her face.

“I will certainly try my best, but whatever this is, it’s out of my control,” Y/N said. She motioned for him to take a seat next to her. He gladly took it but seemed rather uncomfortable when silence fell upon them. His feet moved inside his shoes as to make it less obvious that he was nervous.

“Thank you for being there - both times,” Y/N eventually blurted out. She fidgeted with the blanket covering her legs, finding the entire situation bizarre. She had a seizure, two seizures, and Professor Snape had helped her both times. He stayed with me, she thought. Severus Snape cares.

“No need for gratitude. It is my duty as a teacher to care for the students - no matter what others might think, I do take my duties seriously,” Severus said, straightening his back to show pride. Y/N stared at him. Not in a million years had she imagined hearing him admitting to caring for others. Her perception of the greasy dungeon bat was beginning to shatter into pieces. Left was a different view of a troubled man, who clearly had some priorities straight, but the methods could use an upgrade.

“Oh, okay. May I ask a question, Professor?” she asked, looking at him. Or rather she looked at his dark eyes, seeing a little bit of life in there. He nodded, indicating for her to continue.

“Why did you stay with me? Not that I mind at all. I... uhm… It was very nice of you,” she stuttered nervously. The blanket was by then wrinkled beyond repair and Snape stopped moving his feet. Both froze, thinking.

Severus ran a hand through his hair and leaned back in the chair.

“It was rather unpleasant to watch, and I suspect it was just as unpleasant to go through. I wanted answers,” he told her truthfully, but tried to hide his emotions by using his usual cold tone accompanied by a blank stare. Unknown to Severus, Madam Pomfrey stood behind him, smiling like a madwoman. She was trying not to ruin the moment in case he decided to open up and show his emotions clearer.

Y/N looked away from her professor, thinking about how awful she felt after an episode and how weird it must had been to see.

Y/N was lost for words and hardly listening when Madam Pomfrey informed them of the answer from her friend. Only a few information pierced her clouded mind. She had an appointment at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries the following week.

She spent the rest of the day sleeping on and off while thinking about everything that had happened in the past few months. What she thought had been a one-time thing could be something she had to go through repeatedly.

Y/N’s mood took a severe dive in general. The only time she felt herself relax was whenever Severus Snape was nearby. Knowing he cared, that he knew how to handle the situation if things went wrong and that he would be there made her feel at ease.

At meals he would keep an eye on her and whenever she hardly touched her food, he would give her a death stare. That sure made her take a few extra bites before bolting out of the Great Hall.

While Y/N was at the hospital to get checked by healers, Severus barricaded himself in the dungeons, or rather the potion room. He worked at odd hours on combining a potion that could prevent the seizures or at least help speed up the recovery.

“Valerian is being used in anti-convulsive potions already, maybe if I combine it with lavender, for the calming effect, and Aconite, for the pain, it could work as a relief potion… after the seizures,” Severus mumbled to himself as he attempted to brew the perfect cauldron of medicine for his student and possible others as well.

He had been so focused on the task, that he had forgotten both lunch and dinner. Minerva noticed and sent one of the elves down with a plate of food. She knew where he would be even though he had told no one of his experiments. Smiling to himself, Severus took a bite of food before continuing with his assignment.

At the hospital, Y/N was escorted to the fourth floor, which usually consisted of the ‘long-term residents’, but was also known as the ward for spell damage, such as jinxes, hexes, curses and incorrectly-applied charms. Y/N dreaded being there knowing that some people lived there. She felt awfully bad for those who had ended up in a situation where they needed around the clock care. She hoped with all of her heart that she would not end up there.

Being a witch and occasionally collapsing with seizures was not a good mix, the thought of being outcasted and possible losing her right to magic made her extremely nervous. She would had broken down if it weren’t for the Draught of Peace that Madam Pomfrey had given her prior to the appointment.

“You alright there?” Poppy asked as they had finished with the tests. Y/N just nodded, not trusting herself to speak without voicing her real concerns. Poppy squinted her eyes at her, clearly not believing her. She dropped the matter as the Healer walked in.

“We have the answers on a few of the tests already. The rest will come back in about a weeks time, and I’ll make sure to owl you,” the healer said, looking at Poppy. “We can see that your brain is suffering, and I had my suspicions on it not being related to magic. This has been confirmed. It is indeed a Muggle disorder that is causing the seizures,” she continued.

She had chosen her words carefully so that Y/N could follow. She would of course go over it with Poppy afterwards using the correct medical terminology to give a better understanding, but the meeting was mostly for the student at first.

The healer informed them both of the need to consume medicine in order to control the seizures better. Sadly, nothing could be done to fully prevent them. The news made Y/N extremely depressed and all she wanted was to get back to Hogwarts, to hide in her room and never come out.

“Thank you for your help,” Y/N said politely as they left the hospital. Just outside of the building, Madam Pomfrey grabbed her arm and Apparated them back outside the school. Together they walked inside the protective walls of the castle.

“Right, I believe it’s almost past curfew. Off you go to bed,” Poppy told her, waving goodbye as she left for the dungeons. Y/N slowly walked back to her common room, ignoring the students studying or having fun. She went straight to bed, not bothering to change out of her school robes.

Poppy made her way through the chilly dungeon, gently knocking on the door to Snape’s chambers. The door opened with a click, showing an exhausted looking Severus, who still had his teaching robes on. His dark eyes matched the bags under them.

“Oh, dear Severus. You must not overwork yourself,” Poppy exclaimed when she saw him. He just huffed at her worrying.

“Are you not going to invite me in so that I can tell you what the healer said?” she asked in an amused tone. Without speaking a word, Severus moved out of the door. Together they made their way inside, sitting down on the couch. A tea pot and two mugs flew over to the coffee table as they talked about Y/N.

[autobot2001]

Dance Club Emergency

@mediwhumpmay Day 3; seizure

@themerrywhumpofmay  3; "You're not looking so hot." Alt; wine glass

(may or may not be used in Hidden Killer. If not, I have a scene for another story)

Fandom: Transformers Rating: T Warning: Drugs

Jazz likes when he has the weekend off. He can go to the dance club on Friday, but he wouldn't be able to drink if he has a Saturday shift. Jazz doesn't have to work on weekends often. Jazz doesn't drink enough to get drunk, but he'd rather not drink if he has a shift the next morning.

"Hey, Jazz, shift tomorrow?" The bartender asks. "Should I be embarrassed, you know to ask? But no, I don't have a shift tomorrow." "Some would find it concerning the bartender knows them beyond their first name, but I consider it a good thing." "Just a beer tonight," Jazz tells him. "You know I always tell you that even if you have to work tomorrow, you can have a drink?" The bartender gives Jazz a list. "Now I'm embarrassed." The bartender laughs. Jazz leaves the bar with his drink. He joins a few humans in a sitting area as a female sits at the bar.

Jazz can't stop staring at her beauty. "Sir, care to join us in a game of pool?" A man asks. Jazz agrees, more to stop staring at the female at the bar.

The female talks to the guy sitting next to her until he leaves. Other than the bartender, she's alone, drinking her wine. With no one to serve, the bartender watches the patrons having fun until his eyes focus on the female sitting at his bar. "You don't look so hot," he says, not liking the lack of response, "ma'am, are you ok?"

Jazz and the other men enjoy their game until they and every other human near the bar hear the bartender yelling for help. All the patrons see the female Jazz was staring at on the floor, having a seizure. He rushes to the bar.

"What happened?" Jazz asks the bartender after alerting Ratchet. Knowing he'd get here faster than other ambulances. "I don't know. She was talking to a guy. A little later, she wasn't looking good, then fell onto the floor." "Don't touch that drink," Jazz instructs everyone as he sits on his knees by the female. The seizure doesn't last long, and the female wakes up, but she's out of it. "Don't move until we get you checked out," Jazz tells her. "Here, ma'am, drink some water," another female insists.

Prowl and Ratchet agree to take the female to the base. Jazz is worried about her and can go with them into the medbay.

Jazz waits in the hallway until the medics are done. He can sit by the bed while Lennox, Optimus, and Prowl talk to her. "My name is Jetta Jackson. I was at the dance club for the same reason as everyone else on a Friday night." Jetta waits for the questions before continuing her story. Knowing the officer is taking notes. "The bartender said you were talking to a mech. Did you know them?"   "No, I should have been more careful. Rule number one being female going into a club; don't take your eyes off your drink."

"Something doesn't add up," Jazz comments, "I know the cliché scenario; femme gets drugged to be taken somewhere and raped. The guy left after he put the drug in her drink." "Either the drug was supposed to be slow to take effect, or the guy seriously didn't think anyone would care if anyone was acting odd or having a seizure in the club," Ratchet guesses, "we'll have to wait to figure out what was put in her drink." Jazz is allowed to stay in Jetta's room.

"The red eyes confirm whom we're dealing with," Prowl argues, "even if I'm wrong, this is a concern." "I think you're right," Lennox argues, "I worry she's a target once he finds out she's not dead." Though they can't have every surviving victim stay at the base, the three mechs think Jazz will be looking to be Jetta's guardian. They'll talk to the two tomorrow morning. Prowl's last question for Jetta is if she lives with other family members. In a way, he's happy she lives alone. Now he doesn't have to worry if others could be targets even if Jetta doesn't know the guy who drugged her drink.

Ratchet takes an hour to test the remainder of Jetta's wine and a blood sample. He is relieved to get an answer even if Jetta seems ok. "GHB," he tells the other two medics, Lennox, Optimus, and Prowl, "she's lucky the only effect she had was a seizure." "But that happens when a high dose is taken," Jasmine points out, "it's been an hour. Either she's lucky, or we'll have a serious emergency."

***Conflicting research. Yes, GHB causes seizures. A little later into research, only in high doses, meaning there should be a medical emergency, and Jetta shouldn't be in good condition for questioning for days. I might fix this as I put this in the story or decide it's one of those rare instances. ***

[ofdarkestdesires]

This may not be the best place to put this, but despite my follower count being decently high (thanks porn bots /s) this blog is honestly pretty under the radar and a lot of my personal posts get ignored, so let me just vent for a bit.

Christmas was so good, but it was also so, so exhausting, and it is precisely because of two forces—my sister, and my grandparents.

For context, I have three sisters—let’s call them Thing 1, Thing 2, and the Grinch (just because I wanted to play up the Seuss theme). Thing 1 and Thing 2 are the ones I’m closest to—they’re dorky nerds just like me, and one of them is really good at animatics (if you’re interested, you can find her stuff under becky_weber on YouTube). But the Grinch and I were always a bit more at odds with each other. I’m the oldest, she’s the second, there’s barely less than two years between us, it comes with the territory.

Anyways, as far as the Grinch goes, Christmas time was alright…aside from the fact that she spent most of it on her phone calling up her boyfriend, chatting with him, texting him, and otherwise being curled up on the couch far away from the rest of us. She even left the after-dinner games early so she could FaceTime with him, instead of spending time with her family.

Mind you, the Grinch is already spending all of her free time with the boy. They’ve moved in together—with roommates, but still—and it has been implied that though she has a separate room she shares his bed instead, but even before that she’d spend every chance she got hanging out with him. What few times she came to visit the family, she is always on her phone texting him, or leaving early so she can spend time with him.

And even now, on Christmas—even in the middle of the gift exchange that was meant to be a nice little private family tradition—she not only called up but FaceTimed the boyfriend for a good chunk of the morning. I just…I know I shouldn’t throw stones when I’m perhaps the least qualified man to talk on relationships (me being an ace man and all), but can’t she go one day, one very special, family-centric day, without clinging to his messages like a hopeless little puppy?

Anyways, that’s my sister, and that’s an ongoing form of frustration. My grandparents, though, are another story.

More context, and we’re gonna need to turn the tone down a bit. Two years ago, my grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s—and by the sounds of the tests, she’d been going through Alzheimer’s for a while already, but my grandpa had been putting off taking her to get checked because “it’s just old age, you get forgetful in old age.” Which, yeah, you do…but you typically don’t forget what your grandchildren and children look like.

My grandpa is a very proud man, too proud one might say so I’ll say it here and now. He doesn’t like the idea of not being able to handle something on his own, and he won’t admit needing help. He also lives in a house that’s larger than my childhood home, in the middle of the nowhere part of Utah, and refuses to move because it means giving up his big home, downsizing into a smaller place, and giving up all of the many, many things he has.

My grandpa is a lover of things, you see. One may even call him a hoarder of things which I will here and now.

All this is just set up to explain the shock we all had when my mom got a message from her brother, who had brought his family up to spend Christmas with the grandparents, telling her that my grandma had had a seizure during the gift-opening process. Seizures are apparently a part of late-stage Alzheimer’s, as the disease eats away at the motor-control section of the brain, and as it turns out this is not the first time this has happened.

It’s the first time we’ve heard of it, though, and only because my uncle and his family were at the house to witness it. Which means my grandpa has been understating how my grandma’s been doing, and giving false accounts to the doctors for my grandma, because he doesn’t want to admit it’s getting to be too much for him…or that his Jo is slipping away from him.

It’s…it’s sad.

It’s sad, but it’s also so…infuriating. I hesitate to say this, but I hate my grandpa. I hate him for the man that he is, the proud, selfish, stubborn man he is that refuses to sell his massive house that’s so big he can’t even keep it clean, who snubs his nose at the concept of moving to the city into a smaller home, who willfully obfuscates the truth about my grandma and unwittingly gatekeeps her from care and attention that could help her.

Again, they live in the middle of nowhere Utah. My family is a good two and a half hour drive away from them, and I’m a good three hour drive. If something happens—if she has another seizure, a bad one, or a fall, or she tries to run off because she doesn’t know who my grandpa is—they don’t have the high-end medical attention readily available to them, and it’ll take hours for us to get to them too! If they were closer, everyone could feel a bit more at ease, but as it is…

…I genuinely don’t know what day will be the day my mom calls and tells me my grandma died. And when it happens, nothing in my mind will be able to stop my heart from hating my grandfather for letting her waste away and perish so far away.

I love my family, I truly do…but gods, some days really let me see the parts of them that are the worst.

[mari-roleplay]

Rain World

Here's the list of characters that I feel the most comfortable writing. Includes a short interpretation of them and few headcanons I have about them

---Hunter---

I may be a bit biased, but this campaign broke me emotionally and mentally.

Interpretation of story:

Hunter is a purposed organism, created by No Significant Harrasment. His goal was to reactivate Moon by delivering a special neuron fly. However, the Iterator had been tried to speed up the process to bring Moon back as fast as possible, which caused rot to start develop within Hunter's body. Nontheless, Hunter was still send on a mission regardless of his health. As time progressess animal's condition worsens, he times to move slower, and suffers from seizures, and hallucinations. Against all odds he completes his mission successfully, bringing Moon back to functional state. However what happens with his body as his time runs out...

Headcanons:

While loyal to NSH, I think Hunter would partially resent him. You wake up with a parasite living within you. The only other person that is alive, is capable of doing anything is the robot that speaks to you. Wouldn't you blame them if you didn't know what was going on? Even a little bit?

NSH while adores fauna and flora, he treated Hunter a bit colder. Their reasoning to do so was because they belived, that they already hurt the creature, if he got too much attached he would feel even worse for doing so. An Iterator who can't create even a simple slugcat correctly...

While calm and harsh on the outside, Hunter is internally panicking just as much as we are when a King Vulture or a Red Lizard shows up.

Scavangers don't like him not because he's hostile to them, but because they can see the rot. They can see something's wrong with him, and they're rather be safe than sorry.

While at begining he could survive of fruits and vegetables with no issue, the rot inside made his hunger grow more and more, so now he must consume meat, because nothing else is filling enough.

Will take care of a slugpup if he finds one, but will leave them most likely with a Moon. Internal heartbreak throughout the whole travel

---Spearmaster---

Heavily modified purposed organism originating from a very distant land. Createdy by Seven Red Suns they follow the Iterator's instructions. Over the time they have traveled the world many times. Often caring inside their body pearls with sensitive informations. One of the pearls they have delivered caused a tragedy. The other pearl was rewritten and served a purpose of a final goodbye from Looks to the Moon. A sad consequence of one too many informations shared.

Headcanons:

The reason why Scavengers are so scared of them at begining is because, Spearmaster is so modified, they look like they crawled out straight out of uncanny valley

Cheiftain simulator goes brrr. Literally all you have to do is sit in front of the toll and create them a bunch of spears

While they can communicated via gestures, they had a bit of a hard time understanding Iterators before they were given a mark.

Communicates with Scavengers via drawings

While nice to Scavengers, they are pretty much a public enemy number one to all the other animals.

[saratogaroadwrites]

Per Aspera Ad Astra (6/18)

Per Aspera Ad Astra | saratogaroad | banner art credit Rating: T Wordcount: 183k Characters: John 117, Cortana, Thomas Lasky, Sarah Palmer, Fireteam Osiris, The Warden Eternal, The Didact, The Librarian, ensemble of other Halo characters Relationships: John-117 & Cortana Other Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, fix-it, Male/Female Friendship, Canon-Typical Violence Warnings:  War imagery, seizures, graphic description of injury

Snatched from the jaws of death, Cortana and John find themselves adrift in a galaxy that has long since moved on. As they attempt to find their place in this strange new world, they find that the fight is not as over as they thought. Chasing a signal across the galaxy in desperate hope, they come to a stark conclusion: the Reclamation has begun, and they are helpless to stop it.

=

"The Forerunners don't do things halfway, do they?"

"They definitely don't know the meaning of restraint, that's for sure."

Leaning her chin against her clasped hands, Cortana kept her focus on the hologram sitting between the banks of seats. She'd hooked her systems into the emitter to broadcast a map of Requiem, overlaying the process that kept track of all the Soldiers within range. Like a disturbed colony of ants they swarmed across the southern half of the planet on their search for the Janus Key, avoiding human encounters as best they could. They'd bowled over more than one Covenant emplacement on their grid-like search, but the Prometheans were giving them a wide berth.

Odd, that. She'd have expected the Didact's forces to clash with anyone they weren't allied with. Why not turn on the Soldiers, too? Maybe some sense of self-preservation? She turned the question over a few times, contemplative. One more thing to search for in the morass of data that was the Domain. If she'd known how disorganized it all was, she'd have asked the Librarian for a map!

"How many of these units were there supposed to be?" Locke asked her. She glanced up through the hologram at him, the rich deep brown of his skin darkened by the play of light and shadows. Beside her, John twitched. "You said this was one of seven?"

"That's what the console said, yes, but this is apparently the only unit still functional. The rest are non-responsive." When he asked why, all she could do was shrug. "I couldn't say why without eyes on them."

"Maybe save that hunt for after we debrief the Captain," Tanaka said, leaning over with a wry smile. "A thousand extra guns is one hell of a thing to drop in his lap."

"Especially if they're all this freaky looking." Buck gave a mock shudder. "But I don't think any of us'll look a gift horse in the mouth if it means less Prometheans for us to be dealing with. Let them sort it out and take the fire for us, yeah?"

"Unless they can be told to stand down." It was the first thing John had said since they'd left the Legion's storage facility, and all eyes turned to him. He looked back her at her, expressionless visor reflecting her face. "Could you order them to stop fighting?"

She had to stop and think about it. The Didact had taken control of the Prometheans on Requiem once already, so it could be done, but his grasp on their code was infinitely greater than hers. Even so, at this point they were just code. Digitized humans turned into raw data. A few tweaks here or there and she could, in theory, easily manipulate their friend or foe designators. As dense and well constructed as the code was, it was still just code.

She was just code.

She suppressed the urge to shiver. Her capability to turn them or not was one thing. Her ability to do it, to force them to change sides when they'd already had so many choices removed from them…that was another story. She could feel the weight of John's gaze as silence filled the bay. He already knew the answer and had asked her himself to save her having to explain it to someone else. He understood why she hesitated. She drew strength from that and sat back.

"In theory, sure, but I wouldn't risk your lives on it." Or her own, for that matter. Maybe in the Domain she could make a few changes, get one process alone and see how it ticked, but in the physical plane when there was hard-light flying…no. She wouldn't risk it. Snorting quietly, she shook her head. "It's ironic, really. Shooting them's the safer option."

"But it's not sustainable," Locke pointed out, "In a war of attrition, the side that can continue resupplying is going to hold out longer. So long as they're in play, we'll never be able to take Requiem." With a shake of his head, he sat back as well. "They're not exactly fond of surrender."

"Neither are Spartans," John said sternly. Locke tilted his head in acceptance of his point. "If there's a way, we'll find it."

Just not by interrogating her, his tone implied. Cortana dismissed the holograms as the Pelican sailed into Hangar C-9. The first rotation of today's missions was over, second shift preparing to roll out from the opposite side of the ship. Checking the roster, she was pleased to find that Crimson and Majestic had both returned to D-9 just minutes earlier and spun up a process to wait for their reports. Osiris filed off the Pelican, chattering amongst themselves, but John lingered in the bay with her.

"You know they'll ask you to try." He said as she got to her feet, voice pitched low. "Will you be alright?"

"With what? Taking over and forcibly changing souls that used to be alive? Altering the essence of someone that was once as physical as anything else?" She looked to the backs of Osiris' heads. She could understand why she'd be asked to try. Turning the thousands of Knights and other Prometheans from enemy to at least neutral would be worth any risk, but the idea of forcing her will on so many beings that had once been alive…it just didn't sit right with her. "No. If I can do it to them, it can be done to me, and that's." She pressed her lips together. "That's a dose of existential terror I didn't really need."

"You know I won't let that happen." He replied. She glanced back at him and smiled tiredly. Her partner. He'd throw himself between her and anything if she let him, but this. He couldn't stop this.

She didn't try and tell him that, though.

"I know. Thanks."

With a firm nod John got to his feet, their arms knocking together as he stood. Shoring up her resolve from that slight touch, she set the thought aside. She'd toy with it for a while, see if there was any other way. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't. What mattered now was briefing the Captain on their new acquisition.

All thoughts of that, however, fled Cortana's processors as she stepped off the ramp just in time for a wave of orange light to sweep across the hangar, killing the overhead lights A chill swept down her spine, spreading across her code, oily claws hooking into everything they could reach. It was the only warning she had before her awareness was forcibly yanked into her core, sending her rolling across the sand.

Thunder roared overhead, rain lashing the beach. Cold surrounded her on all sides, wrapping her in a freezing cloud as those claws dug into her matrices, tearing away at her, opening wide, weeping gashes in her skin as they burrowed in search of something, anything, everything! She screamed, rage and fear and pain, fighting against the intruder; just looking at it made her head spin and she squeezed her eyes shut, fighting by instinct alone. Teeth tore at her bare arms even as she pulled pieces of it away. The intruder roared at her impudence; she would surrender all she knew or she would be consumed—

No!

"Get off me!"

Anti-intrusion protocols snapped to life, an explosion of light and power as they grabbed the intruder and sent it flying away, dissipating it with a screech. She was left crumpled on the sand, gasping for breath. Dark streams of code slithered down her skin like blood, dripping into the sand from each wound she had taken. Thunder rumbled overhead, the threat pressing on the edges of her sensors. She'd thrown it off. The ship hadn't.

It had drawn first blood. She wasn't going to give it a chance to draw more.

With no time to enact proper repairs she slung up hasty patches, pulling herself back together and throwing her focus back out. Less than a second had passed, the only outward sign of trouble the darkness that had fallen across the bay. Light from Requiem's gravity well created stark shadows, the three fireteams turning on their headlamps in reaction to the loss of light. The crew members in the bay yelped or swore, startled, and grabbed at one another or the nearest solid object as their eyes adjusted. Caught mid-stride she stumbled, grabbing onto John's arm to keep upright. His head had already snapped in her direction, voice near frantic.

"Cortana!"

"Chief, it's—"

Power in the bay had gone out. Alarms blared in the distance, the automated voice warped and wobbling as more and more speakers went dark.

"Warning. Barrier failure in Hangars C-6, C-7, C-8, C-9, D-7, D-8, D-9, and D-10 detected. Sealing bulkheads. All personnel please proceed to nearest safe zone. Repeat: Barrier failure in Hangars C-6, C-7, C-8, C-9, D-7, D-8, D-9, and D-10 detected. Sealing bulkheads. All personnel please proceed to nearest safe zone."

Metal groaned as the bulkheads began to close only to stop mid-way through the process. There was no power to activate the hydraulics, and without those the heavy metal doors couldn't move. Without power, the shield that held back the vacuum of space flickered. When it went, all the air would rush out of the room in a massive decompression event, one large enough that the bay would be swept clean. She would be fine, her Spartans would survive, but the airmen? They didn't even have breather masks! She looked up at the Chief, eyes wide.

"Helmets on!" He ordered, voice calling across the bay and over the hiss of pressure seals as Spartans scrambled their helmets back on. The crewmen were already moving, rushing for the nearest ready room door, but they weren't fast enough. "Kodiak, get them into the ready room!"

The four members of Fireteam Kodiak leapt into action, grabbing the airmen and slinging them over their armored shoulders, bolting for the small ready room on the side of the bay. Osiris moved to follow but only went far enough to grab the doors and shove them closed, metal screeching in protest. The light above the door went green, pressure inside stable and holding. It took two seconds. The barrier flickered again. Cursing the Gravemind for giving her this, this ability to process damaged code as pain, Cortana pulled herself upright.

"Cortana?"

"It's not the Didact, it's something else—" It tugged at her senses, daring her to reach too far and be pulled under again. She snarled, baring her teeth, "The next hangar over."

D-9. Crimson, Majestic, and Venus. One of them had brought something home and paid the price for it. She could only hope they'd make it to safety, but they were out of time. The barrier flickered, catching her and the Chief's attention. In the next half second his magboots locked to the hanger floor and he pulled her into his arms; holding her against his chest with one arm, he punched the other hand clear into the floor, anchoring them both for the decompression to follow.

With a tremendous roar, all the air in the bays and the halls rushed out, dragging everything that hadn't been bolted down with it. The Chief ducked low, sheltering her in the curve of his body, whilst Osiris took shelter along the walls. The now unmanned Pelicans were swept out into open space, Warthogs and Mongoose and tools carried out with them. Her motion tracker went crazy, crates and wrenches and all manner of human debris being pushed out into the stars from the force. She'd lived through more than one decompression event in the safety of a station or John's helmet, but to experience it up close was new. The roar vibrated through her frame, so loud her audio systems hurried to compensate. Her fingers dug into his armor, his arm tightening around her.

It all took less than two seconds, an eternity in miniature. With all atmosphere gone from the bay, anything that hadn't been swept out was now left to drift aimlessly in the zero-g environment. Her feet had already lifted up off the floor when the Chief stood, holding her against him with one arm.

"Osiris, Kodiak, status."

Eight green lights blazed in the corner of her HUD, local area SQUADCOM opening wide.

"All breathing," Kodiak Lead reported, "Minor bumps and bruises and zero-g, but atmo's holding, sir. We're just stuck."

"Osiris is green," Locke added, "What was that pulse?"

"Forerunner in origin," Cortana said, clambering up the Chief's shoulder. She ached, her body pulsing with pain, but she boxed it up and set it aside for the moment. She needed to focus, needed to get this under control. If she'd nearly been swept under, Roland sure as hell had been swept away. "It's in D-9—somebody get me eyes on the damn thing! Chief," She glanced to him, "The plinth. I need to find Roland."

"Hang on."

With a kick of his thruster pack, the Chief sent them flying across the hangar bay. There was one plinth per bay, usually installed somewhere along the wall so as to be out of the way of the comings and goings, and this one was still standing. The wonders of human architecture. The Chief pushed them down beside it, landing hard and activating his magboots a second time. Still in the safety of his grip, she reached out and touched the plinth.

"Roland, come in." No answer. Her core lurched. "Roland!"

Silence.

"Dammit."

She had to go in after him. Looking over as Osiris kicked on their thrusters and headed for the doors she hesitated, worrying her lip. To go in after him would be to expose herself to the intruding force again. She'd fended it off once, could do so again, but not without more damage. She didn't want to.

There was no other option.

"I've got to go in after him."

Even through his visor, she knew that John was looking straight at her. His muscles tensed, vitals kicking up by a heartbeat. Worry sat heavily in his shoulders and she knew then that he had—somehow—heard her battle with the intruder.

"Are you sure?"

No. She tried to smile, couldn't. Didn't matter. They'd talk later. "Someone has to. I'll be right back."

Anchoring a process in his suit she dove, throwing herself into Infinity's systems without letting herself hesitate another second. The systems welcomed her as they always had, but what was in them wasn't nearly as friendly. The calm, steady flow of data that had made up Infinity's systems had been replaced by raging rapids, the flood pushing her away before she could get her proverbial feet beneath her. Had it not been for the anchor process she'd left behind, she'd have been swept away by the rush of data and information surging past. Human and Forerunner code intertwined, rushing downriver in an uncontrollable surge. She could only catch snippets as she fought to keep steady; engine readings, power distribution, life support. This thing was tearing them apart from bow to stern!

"Roland!" She shouted into the roaring deluge, "Roland, call out!"

"Cor!" His voice came from everywhere, thin and warped, his processes scattered across the ship. She pinged the process list and scanned it for his main process. Where was he?! "Cor, help!"

She couldn't find him! The code was too fast, changing between one blink and the next, the current too strong. She couldn't fight it forever but maybe fighting it was a mistake! They always said that if you were caught in a riptide you should swim out with it, not waste your energy fighting against it. This struck her as the same idea, in principle, and before she could hesitate she dove into the current. It stung her damaged code, salt in the wound, but there was no going back. It was faster than she'd anticipated, the intruding force pulling at anything and everything was wasn't nailed down. Infinity's automated systems were trying to compensate, trying to throw up barriers and firewalls, but it was too much. Half the ship was being bombarded by so many data requests that it couldn't keep up, the other half lost beneath the deluge of error messages the first half had sent! They were under attack—something was attacking her ship!

Not just her ship. Roland's ship!

She spun on her heel and slammed on the brakes, digging her feet into the muck. The anchor process was stretched thin; much further and it'd break. She'd be swept away. It didn't matter. She had to try!

"Roland!" She called out again, pinging his main process. He was in here somewhere, but—there! "Roland!"

Plunging both hands into the stream she dug deep, deep into the muck and flow, and fingers clasped around her wrists. He was so caught up in the flow that he nearly dragged her under with him, but she braced herself against the anchor and yanked hard. Roland popped free, fragments of bright Promethean orange dripping off his golden image. Unable to catch himself he fell forward onto his stomach; Cortana landed hard on her rear end, scrambling upright to help him to his knees. He was coughing hard, tiny fragments of orange data dropping off his golden image like water, but he still managed a nod.

"T-thanks. Thought I was a goner for sure—" He looked up with a grateful smile that quickly faded into horror, "—Cor! You're—"

"Don't worry about it," She hauled him upright, linking their processes together to keep them stable. The proverbial rope tied around their waists, she looked around. The flow was getting faster. "What the hell happened?"

"I have no clue!" He said, pulling screens up out of nothing. More data flashed past, readouts and crew locations. Hangar Bays A and B had closed themselves off entirely, compartments airtight, whilst C and D had gone up like firecrackers. 7 through 10 had gone dark, airless and exposed, while 5 and 6 were soon to follow. Whatever this thing was it was playing merry havoc with their systems. An alarm went off: lower deck life support was going fast. If this kept up, then—cursing she pulled up a holoscreen of her own, forcibly rerouting power. There wasn't much of it, but every second counted. "Crimson came back with something and everything went goddamn haywire!"

It was the confirmation she needed. Hangar D-9. No cameras, no power. The barrier keeping out the vacuum of space was gone and with it anyone not mag-booted to the ground. She forced herself not to think about how any crew member without a suit was long gone by now and hoped that helmets had stayed on rather than come off. Without a visual, the only way to check would be to get eyes on it. Hopefully Osiris moved fast. She glanced at Roland.

"Stay here," She ordered, "Route evacuations around D-block."

"Got it." He paled, inhaling sharply. "Cor, engines just went dark!"

Swearing fiercely she threw herself back into the physical. Only three seconds had passed in C-9, Osiris still on the move out into the corridor. They had to push themselves up nearly vertical, the ship listing heavily to stern, but for once the zero-g environment was working in their favor. She glanced over the Chief's shoulder and swore herself even bluer. As if she hadn't just damned a few levels of humanity's ancestors, he nodded.

"I know. Did you find him?"

"Roland's fine but we're not!" She ran the math quickly, narrowing her eyes against the bright glare of Requiem's entrance. It was getting bigger—they were getting closer. At max they had two minutes before nine hundred and seven million tons of titanium battle plate got pulled in engines first; she didn't want to run the odds of them surviving that jump a second time. "We've got to get over there!"

The Chief was moving before she'd even finished the sentence, bracing her against his chest with one arm and reaching forward with the other. A swift activation of his thrusters sent him after Osiris; Buck twisted to grab his outstretched hand and alter course, sending him down the hall towards D-Block. At a barked warning from Buck the other three members of Osiris turned around; Vale and Tanaka snagged him as he blazed past, correcting his course to Locke at the door to D-9 and sending him flying. Locke caught his hand and held on for a second longer than necessary.

"Don't miss," he said, and kicked on his thruster pack. With a grunt and a hard spin, he sent the Chief and Cortana straight into D-9. The Chief twisted, a move few would have thought possible in all his armor, and righted his course.

"There," He said. She twisted around for a better look, scowling at what she saw. "That must be it."

It was an innocuous looking thing, about a meter and a half long by three quarters of a meter wide, more like a brick or coffin than anything really threatening, but there was no mistaking it for Forerunner. Orange lines of power were carved along the entire device, light flaring in and out in a steady, even rhythm. A stark rectangular shadow against Requiem's glow through the bay doors, it sat on the floor and didn't rise so much as an inch. It stuck out like a sore thumb considering that there was little left in the bay at all; no Pelican, no Warthogs, no Spartans. Her core lurched; Crimson would have been here to escort their trophy home. If they'd been shunted out of the bay during decomp, then.

"Roland, do we have any scanners online? Did anyone get blown out the airlock?"

"No scans, but Crimson, Majestic, and Venus were all in Bay D-9 when this thing came through." He paused for a second and added, "And so was Commander Palmer. I can't get a read on any IFFs down there, Cor. Not even yours."

So it was possible they were gone, and possible that they weren't. There were several locker rooms and ready rooms connected to each hangar bay and each was sealed up tight. A scan of the area told her the bulkheads were holding, but each interior was out of range of both her and the Chief's IFF readers. There was no way to tell if anyone had made it inside in time.

"Commander, this is Cortana, what's your status?" Silence. If she hadn't been wearing her helmet, then— "Crimson Lead, this is Cortana, what's your status?"

"We're here," Came the response, causing her to sigh in relief and John's shoulders to relax by half an inch, "Crimson, Majestic, and Venus accounted for. Commander Palmer and the airmen are here, too."

"Status, Spartan?"

"Unharmed, sir," Crimson Lead answered the Chief, "But Spartan Hoya took a hit on the surface and his armor's breached. There wasn't time for the airmen or Commander Palmer to grab their breathing units, either. We're stuck until atmo's restored."

"Sit tight," Cortana ordered, "We'll get this sorted out."

In the privacy of her helmet, she allowed herself a second to close her eyes. No one had been blown out the airlock unprepared, and not one of the crew had suffered the grisly fate of vacuum exposure. At least, not in Bay D-9. She cut the thought off at the pass; there was no time to worry about those who had been lost. Not while there was still an entire ship to save.

Infinity groaned beneath the Chief's feet, Requiem's gravity well growing closer by the second. The process she had left with Roland blared an alarm at her: one minute until unrecoverable descent.

"We need to shut that thing down, now!"

"Is blowing it up an option?"

"We're already in vacuum, so I don't see why the hell not!"

Coming up to the device, the Chief released his grip enough for her to twist; he kept her from floating away in the zero-g as she reached out to the device, throwing all her considerable processing power at it. The intruding process practically hissed at her as she re-entered its line of sight, trying to come at her a second time. This time she was ready and rebuffed its advance with heavy counter intrusion protocols, holding herself as straight as possible in the heavy flow of data. Sorting it out took a few moments; despite the aggressive behavior it had displayed it was a simple scanning program, entirely automated and seemingly unstoppable in how it was tearing through their systems.

The pulse that had spread through the hangar bays had been similar to the Didact's scan pulse, but rather than only UNSC tech this one had found something else: the Forerunner engines. Through them it had reached every other system aboard the ship, tearing them apart bit by bit. It didn't match any known search pattern, wasn't looking for something, it was just after as much data as it could possibly consume and if it kept this up—it didn't matter. Cursing under her breath she scrambled for an off switch, some way to get things back under control, but she couldn't find it! Not with the time they had left!

"Cortana, status?"

She needed more time! They didn't have more time! She shook her head and disconnected from the device. Windblown and frustrated she turned her head back to her partner.

"We're out of time," She said, watching the light of the gravity well play across his armor. His visor had polarized against the light. Hers quickly did the same as she turned to check their distance. They had thirty seconds, max, before their bank became too sharp to recover from. There was only one option left. "If you've got a grenade, now's the time to use it."

Except they both knew he didn't have any, and with everything not bolted down blown out the airlock there was no where to scavenge for another one. He looked between the device and the bay entrance, eyes narrowing. She could see the moment the plan took root in his mind and already knew where it was going even as he shifted his grip on her.

"Get clear."

Meeting his eye through their polarized visors, she smirked.

"Don't go out the airlock."

His huff followed her even as he turned, tossing her clear across the bay. She soared to the bulkhead at the corridor, reaching to catch the door and catching Vale instead, who steadied her with an arm across her back. Neither said anything as they watched the Chief kick on his thruster pack to leap back and gain some distance. Landing with a hollow thud in a perfect three point crouch he looked up, set his angle, and charged forward. Two hundred and fifty seven kilograms of armored Spartan slammed into the device with a tremendous clang, the sound ringing through the bay like a struck gong. An impact with that much force behind it would have sent just about anything flying, but the device only shuddered.

She didn't have time to worry. The orange lines flickered, going dark for a split second before they stabilized. The overhead lights flickered once, tried to stay on, and went dark again. The ship shuddered beneath them, and with a resounding thud the blast door slammed shut, plunging them into darkness. The alarm in her shipside process turned off as the engines kicked back on, restoring power and gravity back to normal.

Well, mostly back to normal. Several thuds rang from the side locker bays as the people within landed hard; Osiris and Cortana had been prepared and landed on their feet. Thanking Vale for the catch with a nod she hurried back into the bay. The Chief turned his head as she drew near, headlamps on at half power.

"That should have moved it," He said with a frown. "Why didn't it?"

"Some sort of localized gravitational anomaly, I'd guess." She reached out to the device with one hand. Now that it was apparently done sucking in power with wild abandon it answered her swiftly, a holographic interface sending more orange light across their armor. Forerunner glyphs took shape, her translation protocols sweeping through them with ease. The impact may not have sent it flying, but it had interrupted what it had been trying to do.

What that had been, she still couldn't say. And judging by some of these readings, it hadn't really stopped doing it, either. It was just slightly powered down, in a sort of standby mode as it assessed the damage and the data it had taken. She pressed her lips together, tabbing through the menus. There had to be a way to turn it entirely off somehow, but if there was it was buried under a thousand layers of chaff and distorted data. It would take hours to find.

"Any ideas?"

"Not yet." She shut down the displays and glared at the device, the corner of her lip curling up in a snarl. "But I'll figure it out. No one messes with my crew."

The only casualty of the incident was Fireteam Franklin's pride, blown out the airlock with them and left to rot in space even after they'd been scooped back up. Considering how badly things could have gone, Cortana was content to count that a victory and keep moving. Order returned swiftly to Infinity in the hours that followed; on Cortana's advisement, Captain Lasky locked C and D blocks down the moment everyone had been pulled clear. No one was to approach the device unless they were fully suited for EVA and armed, just in case. Transit through A and B blocks had also been lessened as much as possible, leaving only drones to be launched from those twenty bays. Bulkheads had been sealed, a temporary airlock set in place outside of D block for additional security in the event of a repeat. They were, for the moment, air tight and back in proper orbit.

Knowing that did little to untangle the knot of dread that had tangled itself around her core as Cortana worked her way through the thousands upon thousands of pages of data the device had ripped from Infinity, Roland, and herself. Though she'd freed herself and her fellow AI, the thing still had its claws hooked into Infinity and wasn't letting go without a fight. It had the deepest grip on the engines, wrapped so tightly around them that telling where one started and the other ended was a near impossibility. Engineering had managed to stabilize them but the systems had gone into lockdown, leaving them unresponsive to any command. Anyone who tried was bombard with a thousand different error messages, the system unable to cope with the dataflow it was stuck under. Information they couldn't process, calls for more and more power she and Roland had only just managed to block, and every system attached to them was under the same threat. If this thing turned on again, they were in trouble.

"Cortana, what are we looking at?" Captain Lasky's voice came through her audio link, "Have you made any progress into shutting it down?"

"Very little so far, sir," She admitted, going over the barebones task list she had been able to find. As dense as the intruding code was, it was deceptively simple. Access and scan any systems in the immediate vicinity, and if something Forerunner was detected, follow that access by taking in all the information and sending it to the receiver. There was no off switch in its programming, meant to be handled from a receiving terminal on the other end, but maybe if she overloaded it with information? That would take more than the entire ship combined! She set the idea aside for another time. "What did Crimson say?"

"Just that the Covenant let them get away with it," John said, sounding as frustrated as she felt. "Crimson Lead said they didn't put up as much resistance as they could have."

A token resistance. Add that to the fact that they'd been trying to dig it up—Covenant archaeological digs were never a good sign—and the whole thing smacked of trap. Cortana growled under her breath.

"So it was a trap," She finished. John hummed low in her ear. "And we fell for it, hook, line, and sinker."

It was a good trap. What human team could have resisted something so easy to snatch up? Whoever set this knew them well, had had to have been studying them for some time. The thought was ice down her sore back, code only halfway done with repairs. She gave the device another look over, but her access was limited. It was only a transmitter, after all. What use did it have for involved process lists and code? The intrusive code made another grab at her and she slapped it down. She was getting nowhere like this. With a frustrated huff she disconnected from the device, shunting herself through the Domain and back out the airlock to reappear at John's side. One of the many benefits of her new form? She didn't have to worry about petty things like airlocks. He glanced down at her, expression tight.

"No good?"

"No good." She eyed him with a frown. To just about anyone else the look on his face would have read frustrated, aggravated, and he was both. But she could also see the pain in his pinched expression. The headaches again. They were getting worse, more frequent. She had to shove the thought into a lower priority queue to keep from dropping everything to solve his problems, forcing herself to stay on task. There'd be time to ask him about it later when they were alone again. She turned her attention to the Captain and Commander instead. "I've turned that thing upside and down and sideways, sir. There's no off switch anywhere that I can find, and no getting it unhooked."

"And it's still attached to the engines," Roland added from the portable plinth someone had set up in the hall. His uniform was in disarray, flight cap missing and regulation short hair standing in sweaty looking spikes. They were both frustrated and more than a little desperate. "They're stable and we're not about to drop into Requiem again, but they're about as useful as paperweights otherwise. No FTL, no slipspace." He sighed heavily. "Honestly, Captain, we're stuck. May as well be anchored to Requiem."

"We actually are." Cortana kicked on her armor's holographic emitter system, bringing up a schematic of the Infinity. Several sectors flared red, still repairing the damage from the assault, but what was most concerning was the concave shape reaching from the hangar bays down to Requiem, connecting the two massive shapes. "As far as we've been able to figure out, the device is some sort of transmitter. It's linked to a receiver down on Requiem via a slipspace corridor that's acting as a conduit for the data it took from our systems, and that conduit is also acting as an anchor" She shook her head. "My guess is it's meant to keep the target ship from moving out of range until whatever or whoever is on the receiving end has the data they need, but whatever it's purpose?" She frowned. "Sir, until it can be deactivated, Infinity's not going anywhere."

The Captain scowled. "And I'm guessing it can't be removed."

"Not for lack of trying," Commander Palmer huffed. "It took the Chief hitting it like a champ, and all further attempts at…physical persuasion—"

"You mean trying to break your foot on it,"

The Commander ignored Cortana's muttering. "Have had no effect. Damned thing's stuck fast."

Just like they were. Holding back an aggravated, tired shout, Cortana raked a hand through her hair. It settled awkwardly out of place, falling into her eyes.

"The good news is that the initial impact seems to have forced the device into some sort of low power state. It's no longer bombarding our entire system architecture, at least."

"Though that doesn't answer the question of why it attacked us to begin with." Captain Lasky crossed his arms, cupping his chin in one hand. "Going by what Crimson Lead said, the Covenant wanted us to have it. Why? We already took out their fleet. Why pin us in place when they know we can outlast them?"

"They could be trying to make us an easy target." John said, his head tilted two degrees to the left as he turned over everything he'd heard. Helmet tucked against his hip the fingers of his free hand tapped quietly at his thigh. "Learn our weaknesses by scanning the ship, then send that data to a second fleet on approach. Clears the way for them."

Maybe. It would make some sense, but. "That implies that whoever is leading the Covenant here knows what this thing and how to use it properly, which is." She paused. "Disconcerting. The Covenant aren't supposed to be that smart. If I can't get this thing to behave, they shouldn't be able to either."

"Oh, really?" Commander Palmer leaned over, smiling toothily. It wasn't a friendly smile. "And here was me thinking you were the greatest mind on Forerunner bullshit, Cortana. Are you seriously telling us you can't figure out how to turn off a transmitter?"

Too frustrated to be snarky, Cortana pressed the pads of her fingers to the inner corners of her eyes and counted to ten. Four times. In four different languages. When she was finished she took a deep breath and lowered her hand.

"I know how to work a transmitter, Commander. You just flip a switch. The issue here is that it can only be manipulated from the receiving end. Someone would have had to do it manually." She tilted her head. "Someone would have had to know what this thing is and how to use it properly, which means they need a very good grasp on Forerunner technology." Her eyes narrowed. "Sir, I think we're dealing with 'Mdama here."

The Captain pressed his lips together. Leader of the Covenant, Jul Mdama was pretty much at the top of the UNSC's kill list. If he was on station, things on Requiem had just gotten more complicated. What a first week this was turning out to be!

"If he is, we'll handle him," John said, all eyes falling to him, "If we find the receiving end, can it be shut off?"

"I'm reasonably sure it could be, yes. Though that still involves finding the damned thing first."

The Commander sighed, hands on her hips. "Let me guess: you don't have any idea where to look, do you?"

"Oh, we have some idea," Roland said, hands on his hips. "It's on Requiem. Devices like these have a short range—"

"For the given value of short."

He eyed her with a frown. "—But the exact coordinates are still unknown. Even with all of our scanners fine-tuned, there's a serious amount of chaff coming off of Requiem. We're having trouble just keeping track of the fireteams, Commander. Finding a Forerunner needle in a Forerunner haystack is a lot more complicated."

"Would the Janus Key help?" John asked, "The Librarian said it was a real time map."

"Of all Forerunner technology." Cortana pointed out. "It's possible it'll stop at the Requiem level, but depending on certain factors it might render enough detail to find one or two artifacts at once." She shrugged up to her ears. "But I have no way of knowing without getting my hands on it."

And the Soldiers still hadn't reported back yet. Maybe they needed more time? They didn't have much of that. Captain Lasky closed his eyes for a moment, considering, then looked at her firmly.

"Then find it," he ordered, "And fast."

"Understood." Cortana paused. Her grip on her arms tightened as she considered her next words carefully. It was true that she'd turned the device upside down and shaken it for all it was worth, and it was equally true that there was simply no way to turn it off from this side. There was nothing anyone aboard Infinity could do to shut it off from the ship. They really did have to go down planetside and find the other end. That hadn't been a lie, and it would have been easy to leave things there.

But one look at John and his pinched expression told her all she needed to know. She ran the odds for the fifth time, adding in the additional weight of what she had just told the Captain, and came up with higher chances of success. Adding to that the pros and cons of her plan actually working, and she had to set aside her misgivings. The dread tightened its grip around her core; for him, she'd do this. She'd do anything for him.

"Sir," She said, getting the Captain's attention from where he'd been turning to ask the Commander something, "It's possible that there's a way to turn off this device without needing to find the receiver. If I could get an extra set of hands on it, someone who knows what they're doing with Forerunner technology, it might be possible to shut it off from here."

"Well, will wonders never cease," the Commander snorted. "Cortana, admitting she needs help from somebody else? Someone break out the champagne." She smirked. "Or the bandages. Is your pride bleeding, princess?"

More than a little. But the Commander's response had been in line with what she'd been expecting to hear, at least. Off to the side, John's heartbeat kicked up by three beats a minute. She eyed him sidelong, taking in his tense posture and the soft creak of his techsuit as he struggled not to clench a fist. There had been no real threat in the Commander's voice, either emotionally or physically, and they both knew that. That didn't mean he liked it. Warmed from within, she met his eyes for only a second, offering him a flicker of a there and gone smile before she shrugged.

"My pride is irrelevant, Commander. I'm just stating facts. I'm attempting to catalog a few million years of history and data, all while maintaining the training routines of five hundred Spartans plus my own day to day experiences." Plus the Legion, but she wasn't about to drop that bomb on their heads in so public a setting. "I can and will figure it out, but it's going to take time. If you want it done faster, call me some back-up."

"Dr. Glassman's on station—"

"No," she and Roland said in perfect unison. The Captain's eyebrows shot up and she sighed, rubbing her forehead. "With all due respect to Dr. Glassman, sir, he has a habit of touching things he shouldn't and I'd really rather he not get zapped all the way back to Sol."

He probably would, too. The man was as unlucky as they came; the three weeks he'd spent with his arm in a shoulder to wrist brace and sling were well remembered among the crew, a piece of machinery with the wrong button pushed at the wrong time. Had Fireteam London not been there, it would have been more than a badly strained arm. He'd been lucky, and she'd sooner never see him test it like that again.

No. No, there was only one other person alive who would have been able to help, and for a moment Cortana hesitated. She wasn't sure she was ready to face her mother, not after all that had changed. Dr. Halsey would have a thousand questions and Cortana had no answers for them, no answers for the questions that had been eating away at her for years. She carried her own baggage from their relationship and wasn't too proud to admit that to herself. She may not have been ready to handle that, but this wasn't about her. It was about her crew, and making sure their home was safe.

It was about John, and getting him the help he needed. He'd done the impossible for her, and now it was her turn to do the same. Swallowing her pride and hurt feelings was far from impossible. The Captain watched her with shrewd eyes, likely understanding exactly what this was going to cost her. She didn't back down.

"If we had more time, sir, I could figure out a safe way to take this thing down, overload it without overloading our systems, but to be honest? The longer it's here the more danger we're in. I can't suggest waiting long enough for me to do that." The Commander opened her mouth, closing it with a click as Cortana continued, "I may be the greatest mind on Forerunner bullshit on this ship, but I am not the greatest mind on Forerunner bullshit around." Her pride twinged. She ruthlessly stomped on it and lifted her chin, meeting the Captain's eye. He held her gaze for a second before looking away, rubbing the back of his neck. She frowned, puzzled. He seemed to have caught her point, but there was something else at play here. She glanced at John, who shrugged. He'd seen it but had no idea what was bothering the Captain. She sighed quietly, softening her tone. "Given the situation at hand, sir, I think we both know what needs to be done."

In the silence that followed, it would have been possible to hear a pin drop.

Used to the quiet, she patiently waited her Captain out. John's eyes slipped back to her and it was her turn to shrug. They'd either come around or they wouldn't, but the Captain was a smart man. He'd see her point if she gave him enough time.

"I'm sorry," Roland broke in, shattering the quiet in his confusion, "Who's there to be back-up? I thought the best minds of the UNSC were already on this ship."

"Some of them, yes," Cortana agreed, "But there's one missing: the mind who made me, the Spartans, and helped make this ship: Dr. Halsey."

Captain Lasky grimaced. "I'm afraid that's not an option."

"Sir—"

"There were stipulations attached to you two being assigned to the Infinity," the Captain said, "And one of them was that Dr. Halsey was to have no further contact with either of you. Bringing her aboard the ship counts."

John and Cortana both startled. She recovered first and asked, "I'm sorry, what?"

This had to have something to do with ONI. Two of their operatives had been keeping guard over Halsey while they were aboard the Houston, and now she was forbidden from being aboard the same ship as the two of them? It had ONI written all over it. The Captain shook his head.

"It's out of my hands," he said regretfully, "I understand where you're coming from, Cortana, but there's nothing I can do about bringing her here."

"Not to mention the absolutely stupid idea it would be to bring an ONI war criminal aboard this ship," Commander Palmer hissed venomously.

Everything stopped. For half a second, for half an eternity, Cortana could only stare at the Commander in wide-eyed, open-mouthed shock. Her main processor ground to a complete halt, skipping a read in her surprise, all processes instantly focused on replaying that singular moment.

ONI war criminal. Dr. Halsey.

That. What?

"What?" John croaked.

The sound jolted her back to reality. Shaking herself off, Cortana boxed up the shock. She could process it all later. What mattered now was John. She looked up, took in the pale, stunned look on his face, and looked to her Captain. He had glanced to the Commander with a notably frustrated expression and hadn't seem to hear the world shatter beneath them. This wasn't how he'd meant for them to find out—if he'd meant for them to find out at all—and he was clearly trying to retake control of the situation. Normally she'd have let him, but with John looking one step from falling over…

"Hey!" She shouted, and all eyes fell to her, "In case you all forgot, some of us spent five years drifting through space. Could someone please fill us in?"

It was telling that Captain Lasky only sighed rather than call her out on her insubordinate tone. Even the Commander had the grace to look contrite, looking aside and rubbing the back of her suited neck. Shaking his head, the Captain sighed.

"This isn't how you were supposed to find out," He said gently, attempting to soothe a wounded, cornered animal. "I don't know all the details, but the official story is that when she took Spartan-087 and left Eridanus Secundus, she was doing so to aid the enemy."

"Dr. Halsey would never help the Covenant," John said firmly, though he was still paler than she'd have liked. "She had her reasons for leaving with Kelly."

"She still made off with UNSC assets in wartime, Chief," the Commander said, and maybe in apology for dropping the proverbial bomb on their heads added in a slightly softer tone, "ONI's been taking care of her since '53. She gets three square meals a day and a roof over her head, so it's not like they just dropped her in a hole or something."

No. Just a cell in some distant ONI facility, never to see the sun again. Never to see the people she had helped to create, to help mold into the heroes they had become. That alone would have been torture for her, knowing they were out there but unable to continue to support them, never knowing if they died or how. The Doctor's Spartans were her children, and only a handful of them yet lived. To not know if they were alive or dead…

Cortana couldn't imagine how that felt. The five years aboard the Dawn had been hard enough as they were. If she'd been up there alone, if she didn't know where John was, if she had to spend years not knowing if he was alive or dead, she'd have broken. She knew that, and yet. And yet, Catherine had somehow managed to survive the years where they had been MIA and then let them go again. She had saved them both, only to let them go.

Catherine Halsey had done a lot of terrible things, Cortana knew, but that had not been one of them. Her core grew heavy, sinking towards her feet.

"Sir," She began, unsure of what to say after that reveal, "I understand that the situation is complicated, but this device—"

The Captain shook his head, cutting her off. "I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do."

He meant that. Both the apology and the fact he lay between them. It was out of his hands, so high up the chain that she doubted even Lord Hood could have done much more than he already had. A thousand plans rose up, were sorted through by her processes, and then discarded just as quickly. She could push it, alter logs, force changes. She'd done it before, could do it again, but ONI would be harder to fool than Command. They would trace it back to her, to Infinity, and her crew would be at risk.

John would be at risk. She would never do that to him.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Cortana set her plans aside and began to rework them. Captain Lasky wasn't finished.

"If finding the Janus Key will help us get this disconnected, then it becomes a priority. You two keep focused on it." He looked between them, firm expression softening. "It's been a long shift. Clean up and get some rest. You'll go back down in the morning."

"Yes sir." Cortana replied, and turned to nudge the silent John down the hall. She'd spin off a process to debrief the Captain for her; right now, her partner needed her more.

Four hours of combat sims later, the world finally felt steady again. Though thoughts of Dr. Halsey in ONI custody still buzzed at the edge of his mind, it was easier to shut them out when he had a mission to focus on. That was probably why Cortana had shoved him to the AR deck rather than the showers. Holograms couldn't hurt them, but focusing on protecting her was better than focusing on his thoughts.

Even if she was making it harder than it strictly needed to be.

"Alright," She complained, dodging a large blast of red holo-paint, "Who programmed that aiming software?"

Her. Tracking her in his HUD he shot out the turret's eye with his own holo-paint gun, splashing it with blue and blinding it. It would buy them time to reach the goal at the top of the cliff. When he turned around, she had already started climbing, reaching for each hand and foothold as quick as she could. Locking his gun, he hurried after her.

"Time?"

"Two minutes left."

Plenty of time. He was careful not to outpace her, keeping within arms reach at all time in case she fell. They both doubted a fall from even the top of the cliff—twenty meters—could hurt her, but he didn't want to take the chance. It left him in a prime position to help as one of the handholds, programmed to be more difficult the higher up the cliff they got, crumbled beneath her hand. Her eyes went wide, balance shifting, but before she could flash-jump her way back to safety he reached out, snapping his fingers closed around her wrist. Hanging there she buzzed beneath his grip, an angered nest of hornets.

"Relax," He said, holding her up as the grips reformed in new locations. He only let go when she had her feet planted and her other hand gripping holographic stone. "You're overthinking it."

"That's rich, coming from you. I can hear you thinking from here!"

He grunted, rolling his eyes, but she was already climbing. Scaling the wall just ahead of her, he crested the cliff and reached to pull her over. With all members of the team at goal, the buzzer rang, the scoreboard appearing in front of them.

Success. Top five in the charts, even. With the mission complete, the cannons shut down. Panels began to move back into position, only to stop as she waved a hand through the air. He turned on her, tilting his head.

"Let's take a break."

He looked around. Up here? She looked back at him and tilted her head. Yes, up here. It wasn't like they had anywhere else to be. One trip down to Requiem per twenty-four hours, Captain's orders. Something had to keep the fireteams from exhausting themselves.

John wasn't much of a betting man, but he'd put his last fruit cup on that order having been put in place to make sure they actually came home after a mission. Either them or Crimson. Maybe both.

When he didn't audibly protest, Cortana moved to sit on the edge of the false cliff. Her legs dangled over the edge, lightly kicking back and forth. She scooted over to make him some room, glancing over as he removed his helmet but saying nothing. Maybe a break was a good idea, he thought. Just for a few minutes. He'd pushed her hard and she'd kept up without complaint. A few minutes to watch the sun set wouldn't hurt.

So he kept quiet as they sat hip to hip, overlooking the false mountain range they had just scaled, the false sunset painting them both in warm golds and reds. She stared out at it as it dipped beneath the holographic horizon, hands clasped in her lap. The silence sat comfortably between them. There was no need to fill it, but watching her out of the corner of his eye he wondered if he should. For all her social skills, Cortana was nearly as private a person as he was. She would never admit to anything being wrong when others were around to hear it. Not after her Rampancy.

But to him, maybe…

"Is the artifact giving you that much trouble?"

"No." She said, shaking her head. "I had it figured out in less than five minutes. It really is just a transmitter—once it's on, the only way to turn it off is from the receiving end." She smiled wryly. "Either that or cover it in grenades and pull the pin."

"Don't tempt me." But if it wasn't for the artifact, then why had she asked for Halsey? Cortana was both prideful and self-sufficient. Asking for help was her strong suit as much as it was his, and even less so now that she wasn't reliant on him to get around. To ask for Dr. Halsey to be brought to the ship ostensibly to help figure out an artifact she'd already figured out…something had hurt her. He looked her up and down, unsure how to pick out wounds on this new frame. "You screamed when it came on. Are you—"

"No," She cut him off quickly, shaking her head, "No, I'm fine. It just caught me by surprise. Nothing a basic repair protocol couldn't handle, don't worry."

Her rueful smile said she already knew that was an impossibility. Still, he relaxed faintly as she combed her fingers through her hair, making it lay flat and even once more.

"I didn't ask for her because I need her, Chief," she went on to say, a knowing look in her blue, blue eyes. "I asked for her because you need her."

Oh no.

"Cortana—" He stopped as she reached up, her fingers curled back. She gestured to his head, wordlessly asking for permission to touch him, and when he nodded her hand settled against his temple. Her touch was feather light but warm, soothing against the knife-sharp pulse that had dogged him since the Forerunner device had gone live. It took real effort not to immediately sag against her, and the look in her eyes told him she knew that.

Of course she knew that. She knew him.

"The headaches are getting worse."

It wasn't a question. He closed his eyes, leaning into the press of her fingers. Somehow she knew right where to put them to make it hurt less. She also knew what that reaction meant.

"It's fine."

"It's not." She countered softly. "Halsey might know how to fix this."

"If you really thought that, you'd have asked for her sooner." The buzz beneath her skin got faster. He cracked open one eye and found her looking away, eyes on the artificial horizon. "Cortana."

Hand still holding his head, she took a deep breath and held it. One second. Two. Five. Ten. She exhaled.

"I have my own issues with Halsey," She said, "And I'm not sure how to fix them, or if they even can be fixed, but it's not about me and her." She looked back at him. "It's about you."

"I'm fine." And maybe if he said it enough times, she'd believe it. The look of worry would leave her eyes and they would go back to normal. No. He knew better than that. There was no going back to normal. Not after so much had changed.

Everything had changed. Except for him.

"You're not fine. You haven't been fine for a long time, Chief. Halsey knows more about Spartans than almost anyone alive. If there's anyone who can fix this, it's her, and we just need to get her here—" She stopped, closed her eyes, and laughed under her breath. "Talk about a role reversal."

Reaching up, he covered her hand with his. She looked at him with such tender concern that his chest hurt. She was worried about him when she didn't have to be. He could handle headaches and odd dreams no matter how bad they got. She didn't have to do something she didn't want to for his sake.

But she would anyway. She would do whatever it took for him, just like he would do the same for her. There was no need to say it out loud.

"You'll figure it out. Give it time."

"Patience isn't really my strong suit."

Not when his safety was involved, at least. It was one more thing they had in common. They shared fleeting, secret smiles, before she turned her attention back to the horizon. The holodecks were set to Infinity's clock, and the sun was dipping even further below the horizon. The last rays of gold and red painted the holographic sky in bright swathes of color, colors he hadn't seen since.

Since when? He'd seen them just the other day. His brow furrowed, the headache returning with a vengeance. He needed to focus on something else.

"Was it true? About Dr. Halsey having been arrested?"

"It's true." She sighed heavily. "All accessible reports read her as being charged in accordance with Article III, section 19 of the UEG code of military law. Providing aid to the enemy."

He couldn't believe it. "She never would have helped the Covenant. Kelly never would have gone along with it."

"It was probably just the first thing they could get to stick for a not completely redacted file, honestly." She rubbed the back of her neck with her free hand. "Making off with the Beatrice and Kelly didn't win her any points, but I get the feeling this was more about the Spartan II program at large, or any toes she might have stepped on in the process of making it happen."

"There wouldn't be a humanity to make that call if she hadn't made us." He said firmly. "It was the only decision she could make."

"True, and the middle of a war is not the time to start debating ethics, but once the war's over…" She trailed off, tilting her head. "This goes deeper than just Halsey. To throw her and only her under the frigate reeks of a cover up."

Letting go of her hand, John sat up straight. Inter-department politics had never been his strong suit, no more than asking nicely was, but if they could do this to Dr. Halsey, what else could be done? Would they come after Cortana next? No. No, he wouldn't let them.

"What do you mean?"

"If this has anything to do with the Spartan II program, any and all charges would be easy to stick. She selected the candidates, performed the augmentations, came with the majority of the training regiment—it's not inaccurate to say that she's the heart of the program and the reason it exists at all, but." She turned to catch his eye. "Do you know how much funding has to go into a program of that size?"

"Billions."

"If not trillions." She snorted quietly. "ONI's budgetary department must have been apopleptic when they saw those figures. Point is—" She shook herself, visibly grabbing her train of thought. "That's not the kind of money one woman can come up with on her own. There would be insane levels of appropriation, funding from all corners, an entire wing of people who would have to sign off on all of it before it gets anywhere!" She threw her hands up, "Blaming Halsey for the whole thing diverts attention away from the real cause, especially if and when things start going public."

"Will they?"

"ONI knows how to make things disappear," She said, a faint shiver wracking her frame. "But if it does, they can easily release just enough information among both civilians and UNSC to control the narrative in their favor. Turn her into a bogeyman for the public to hate all while keeping the truth from coming out and causing everyone to turn on ONI instead." She sat back on her hands, staring up at the ceiling. "They've probably got her in a hole so deep she'll never see the light of day again. We'll never see her again."

The thought twisted around his heart. Before the Houston the last time he had seen Dr. Halsey she had been fleeing with Kelly's unconscious body. He had been hurt, angry, but there had been more to focus on and he'd set it aside. But even with that betrayal he'd still thought of her fondly; she'd molded him from schoolyard bully into Spartan, and without her he wouldn't exist. Without her, Cortana wouldn't exist. No matter what happened, he would always be grateful to her for that.

And now she was going to stay in a cell for the rest of her life. It didn't sit right with him.

"I can make a call," He said, "I still have some pull with Lord Hood."

"And that pull is probably what got her to the Houston in the first place. I don't think it'll work a second time." Cortana sighed exhaustedly. "She's as trapped as we are. Just as imprisoned as her creations."

She dropped her head into both hands then, her color faded until she was nearly as gray-white as her coat. He considered her, mouth dry. She'd said something like that before. It felt like a lifetime ago and he'd never asked her about it. Too much had been happening at the time but now…he tried to find the words.

"Before," he started slowly, "When we were on Requiem the last time, you said that Dr. Halsey had imprisoned you." She hummed quietly. "What did you mean by that?"

For a few seconds, there was silence. He waited patiently for her to gather her thoughts, watching the thin streams of light work their way up and down her body. Her hands came to rest in her lap, fingers clasped together.

"Every Smart AI of my generation was limited to seven years, eight if they were lucky, before neural linkages grew so numerous that our systems became overwhelmed. It's been a well known factor in the community for decades, maybe even centuries. Everything it leads to—neural decay, rampancy, the effect it has on the AI—has been well documented and well studied." Her voice was even, almost monotone. He didn't take his eyes off of her even as she kept hers closed. "Dr. Halsey all but crafted the third generation, my generation, herself. She knew exactly what would happen to any AI and she still did it. She still made me, and in so doing trapped me in that seven year prison." Something he couldn't name—anguish, anger, disgust—entered her tone. She reached up, pressing a hand to her face. It muffled her voice. "And then she had the gall to lie to me and say Rampancy wouldn't hurt!"

His chest tightened. "Maybe she didn't know."

Even as he said it, he knew it wasn't true. Dr. Halsey was too smart to not have known, too well-versed in all things AI to have missed something like that. The alternative, that she had lied to Cortana about what fate awaited her, sat sourly in his gut. Why would she lie about something she had no way to counteract? Why not tell her the truth so she could be prepared to face it?

"She knew." Cortana said, "She knew, and she understood the ramifications, and she still did it, and I don't." She stopped herself, scrubbing her hand down her face. "I don't know how to bring it up with her. I don't even know how to talk to her anymore."

"Same way you always have. You haven't changed that much."

She turned, giving him a look between her fingers. Her other hand reached out and knocked hard on his upper arm with a clatter of titanium alloy and hardlight. There wasn't enough force behind the gesture to move him, but it proved her unspoken point: she had changed. Still.

"You're still you."

Am I?" With a frustrated groan she tipped herself back, legs still dangling over the false cliff. He looked down at her, not liking the distant look that had entered her eyes. "This whole thing has changed everything we thought possible. And not just about AI, but the Forerunners and even humanity and how we could have gotten this far! We're not what we used to be and I don't even know if we're who we used to be—"

She was spiraling. Before she could go any further into the dark he shifted position, laying beside her on the fake stone and throwing an arm over her middle. Her words were cut off with a soft oof as she had to process his weight instead of free air. The sensors in his suit immediately registered her presence; temperature, best estimate of weight based on height, motion. She was warm, solid, and so very real beneath him, his head tipped in her direction. Pressing the aching side of it to the floor, he peered at her with one eye and almost smiled at the look of consternation that had crossed her face.

He'd caught her dead in the middle of a thought and knocked it clean off course. She'd always hated when he did that. Still did, apparently.

One more point for the she hadn't changed column. No doubt knowing why he'd done it, she huffed at him.

"You did that on purpose."

"Maybe." He stopped fighting the urge to smirk at her as she slapped his arm. "It worked, didn't it?"

"You're incorrigible."

They both were. Reaching over slowly, unsure if it was the right move to make, he reached across her body to clasp one of her wrists in his hand. Her hands were so small compared to his that it nearly vanished, so thin but somehow so strong. He thumb skimmed across the underside of her wrist, feeling for a pulse. She didn't have one, not in the way organics did, but there was a buzz of electricity beneath her skin that sang of life all the same. She was here, with him, and alive. Everything else they could handle together.

"Don't worry about Halsey," He said, "We'll figure it out."

"Look who's talking." She returned. He snorted quietly, shifting position to get more comfortable. She wriggled beneath him to free her other arm and reach up, her hand coming to rest on the back of his head. With a heavy sigh, he closed his eyes. Her fingers began to slide though his hair, the light sensation comforting in a way he couldn't remember experiencing before. It made the muscles in his shoulders relax, sleep seeping into the cracks in his guard as she continued the soft motion. He was almost asleep when her voice came from beside him, words he couldn't make out, but her tone was warm, unconcerned. Something warmer still pressed to his forehead, a fleeting touch that was there and gone before he could name it.

Maybe, someday, he would be able to name it.

[quotesfrommyreading]

The Bowlin family’s malformation can indeed be explained by a mutation—a newly discovered one. Theirs is a deletion in the gene CCM2, and this mutation is dominant, meaning it does not skip generations and has a 50 percent chance of being passed on. Marchuk’s lab didn’t just find it in Bettina’s donated tissue, though; the scientists also found it in seven other unrelated patients all at the same time in 2007. How odd, Marchuk remembers thinking, to see the identical deletion eight times in a row. But, he says, “we couldn’t see any common ethnic heritage, and those eight families, we couldn’t connect them in any way ourselves.” The deletion happens to occur in a natural recombination hot spot—where DNA gets cut and pasted back together—so he figured it might just have happened independently in those families.

Then things got stranger. More families with the exact same deletion started showing up after the Angioma Alliance began a genetic-testing program for people with suspected CCM mutations. In the first year alone, a quarter of participants tested had the same CCM2 deletion. The affected families lived across the U.S., with the exception of the Northeast, but they were concentrated in the South and Midwest. (The Bowlins are from Mississippi.) “About two years in, I could say that if you live in Oklahoma, and I’m about to test you, I can pretty much predict which mutation you’re going to have. Or if you live in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana—same thing,” says Connie Lee, Angioma Alliance’s president. The distribution clearly wasn’t random, which suggested the deletion wasn’t showing up by chance. The families probably were related. They just didn’t yet know how.

In search of a connection, the families and Lee created a Facebook group to share stories and names. They scoured census, birth, marriage, death, and other public records. They took AncestryDNA tests. A professional genealogist even came on board and looked for records in person at the Family History Library, in Salt Lake City. In late 2018, a new family joined whose ancestry allowed the group to link up two family trees. That was a crucial clue.

Over the next few months, the families managed to trace their rare mutation back 250 years to a single North Carolina couple born in the 1760s: Matthew Malachi Rushing and Sarah Mae Harrell. Group members couldn’t test the long-dead couple’s DNA directly, of course, but they could infer from the pattern of inheritance in living descendants. Bettina, Margaret, and Susan are the couple’s great-great-great-great-grandchildren. Their migraines, their seizures, their tingling and weakness in the limbs—it all goes back to the DNA of this one couple in colonial America.

  —  How a Rare Brain Mutation Spread Across America

[ms-demeanor]

What's this whole aspartame story about?

Okay so a couple weeks ago I was arguing with my MiL about aspartame; aspartame is extremely safe and extremely well tolerated by huge numbers of people (I won't pretend that it's impossible to have an allergy to it or that it can't cause reactions in people with specific chemical sensitivities, and it can be dangerous for a known subset of the population) *however* when aspartame was seeking approval there was a lot of back and forth about whether it causes cancer or seizures, etc.

The long and short of it is no, it does not, but when I was discussing this on tumblr someone made a very interesting comment along the lines that "aspartame causes such significant problems with reflexes and seizures that pilots are contractually banned from consuming it for 72 hours before flying" and that is a fascinating claim, so I started tracking it down.

And it seems like that claim in particular was most widely circulated by a """""documentary""""" called "Hungry for Change." The claim was specifically made by Joseph Mercola, who wrote a book about aspartame and cited the magazine I bought as his source on the Air Force warning about aspartame (it turns out that IS an air force magazine, btw, but I'm going to have to wait until it arrives to see what the *two pages* of this magazine that he's staking his claim on say about aspartame; he has plenty of other sources he's cited that never bring it up). Anyway, in that section he *also* discusses a hotline for pilots that was set up to make notes of adverse reactions to aspartame (since these 'adverse reactions' often involve fainting or seizures, this can actually cost people their ability to fly - if they can't prove that their seizure was based on a specific product that they no longer consume then they are assumed to have a seizure disorder and can't fly anymore, but if they can prove that it was like, alcohol, and they've gone to rehab and take breathalyzers they can fly again, so people who have lost medical approval to fly are pretty eager to find something to blame it on for a number of reasons). That hotline was set up in late 1987, after Major Michael Collings (collINGS, not colliNS, not the astronaut) testified to the senate about muscle tremors after aspartame consumption.

Pretty much every source out there about this hotline claims that a woman who we're going to call Deborah set it up after Major Collings asked her to do so. Deborah was the 'correct' person to ask because she was already an advocate for consumer protection against aspartame because - and this is important - she blamed it for the brain cancer that killed her husband.

But. I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out if the person with her husband's name, birthdate, and supposed death date is actually dead or is living in a planned community in Texas. NOW, part of the problem here is that your phone numbers and addresses follow you around forever, sometimes decades after you died. Just to compare, I searched my grandmother's name; she died in 1992 and was still showing up as 68 years old with my mom's phone number today. It's totally possible that this is just an anomaly and maybe this guy's son bought a house and his dad's name followed him (though the ancestry page that lists his death date only lists a daughter).

It is *somewhat* odd to not be able to find an obituary, memorial, death announcement, or grave for a mainline protestant in Texas who only died thirty years ago, but it isn't REALLY really unusual.

What *IS* really unusual is that Deborah's husband apparently died of brain cancer that she blames on Aspartame in 1985 - and she talks about this a lot - but she has also posted a newspaper story from 1987 about how she founded a local anti-aspartame group because she blamed her headaches and muscle spasms on the aspartame. This story ran a few months before the senate testimony and the hotline, but there is no mention whatsoever of her dead husband or his brain cancer.

Now, she is also, provably, a liar. She has a pinterest page where she claims that she's been given an award by the Mexican government for being the only American journalist to report on the dangers of aspartame in Mexico, but if you read the certificate she posts (and you speak a bit of Spanish) you can see that it's a certificate of recognition for participating in a sugar industry conference; not a government award (and not even recognition for being the 'keynote speaker' at that conference, which she also claims).

We are also calling her Deborah because she has a minuscule following, like, extremely tiny. Eleven followers on youtube tiny. So this may be just one sad weird little old lady who makes up bullshit. Her husband may have died of cancer, or he may still be alive - it's hard to tell because she has *no* family connected to her on any of her socials. She *did* have an adult daughter who died of cancer (I was able to find memorials for the daughter) very young (in her forties) and I mean that's a pretty clear family history if the husband did die of cancer.

But what's so fucking wacky about it is that Deborah's activism seems to be the main driver of all the research and effort that has gone into exploring possible connections between pilots and aspartame since Major Collings' testimony. Collings doesn't appear to have followed it any further, so it's just this lady, and some time between July 1987 and (at the earliest) November 1987 she went from claiming that she was anti-aspartame because it was causing her personally to feel ill and claiming that she was anti-aspartame because she believed it had killed her husband.

[the-ferocious-kittyrose]

Rewriting Haggar/Honerva’s redemption arc

One of the many things that bothered me about VLD S8 is Honerva’s redemption arc. While I was never fully against the idea of Honerva getting a redemption arc, I just didn’t want VLD to do it because I knew that they would fuck it up if they tried. And low and behold, I was right!

But yeah, I wasn’t against the idea of her being redeemed. And I don’t mean “redeemed” as in “all is forgiven and she’s just a good guy now,” but more like a Darth Vader, “the things she did were inexcusable and she would never be able to right all her wrongs but she goes out on one good act to show that there was still good in her deep down and she at least had the potential to change.”

I know a lot of people don’t like the whole, “redemption=death” thing, which I understand, but I personally never had a problem with it.

Ok, so why didn’t Honerva’s redemption work? Well there are a few reasons but the one that baffles me the most is that, instead of trying to make her more sympathetic, season 8 seemed to go out of its way to show her being more evil and vile than ever.

And because I have nothing better to do, I’m gonna go through Honerva’s story in VLD and explain what I would change to make her redemption more believable.

(Keep in mind I am not a writer, this is just me ranting about my favorite character and how I personally would’ve written her.)

1. Realizing she’s Altean

I always thought it’s was weird that when Allura said “you’re...Altean!?” In the S2 finale, Haggar didn’t seem to react at all, she just kept attacking. It’s as if she didn’t care or already knew, which doesn’t make sense considering in the S3 finale and S8E2 it’s established that Haggar has no memory of who she was before she died. And in S4E3 she seems shocked by her Altean face (which also doesn’t make sense because her blue skin isn’t camouflage that’s just how she looks after the rift) so it seems like she didn’t know.

Wouldn’t it have made more sence if after Allura said “you’re...Altean!?” Honerva looked confused/shocked? If she became defensive and said Allura was lying/trying to insult her? There’s def anti-Altean propaganda in the empire so it would be considered an insult.

After that she starts questioning Zarkon. And when she looks into his mind, it’s out of genuine curiosity and desire to know the truth, not because, “the empire needs him” or whatever that meant.

And isn’t it a bit odd that she doesn’t seem betrayed at all when she finds out Zarkon has been keeping all this from her? She’s just like, “oh, you’re my husband? Cool.” Wtf???

2. Her past relationship with Zarkon

Okay, I love Zonerva, but if we’re being honest, Zarkon was not the best husband. He enabled the shit out of Honerva, even when it was obvious that the rift was doing serious damage to her physical and mental health. To me, it seems like Zarkon was so blinded by the power the rift gave him that he didn’t realize/ignored the negative effect it was having on Honerva. In the same way he downplayed the negative impact the rift had on the planet.

I think that should’ve been explored more. Maybe Honerva notices that she’s been acting differently and is worried somethings wrong (think S5 Kuron). And Honerva tries to tell Zarkon that she feels strange and Zarkon just brushes it off.

And later, when Alfor visits Diaibazaal years later. Things are pretty much the same except when we sees Honerva, she is very obviously pregnant and Alfor’s there when Honerva falls and goes into labor (instead of a random quintessence seizure). Alfor and many Galran doctors try their best to save her and the baby but she dies in childbirth.

Zarkon goes ballistic. He’s yelling, throwing doctors across the room, and Alfor turns to the doctor holding Lotor and tells them to get the baby to safely, fearing Zarkon will take his grief out on the baby.

Zarkon turns on Alfor, blaming him for Honerva’s death and accusing him of letting her die so that he could get his way and close the rift. He lunges Alfor and roars at him to leave.

He spends the rest of the night grieving at Honerva’s bedside, when Kova jumps on the bed and starts gnawing on her finger trying to wake her up. This is what gives him the idea to bring her back with quintessence.

3. Her current relationship with Zarkon

I think it’s pretty safe to say that they’re relationship didn’t get better after the war began. Zarkon hid her identity and her child from her for 10,000 years and essentially used her as a tool of war. It’s pretty fucked up.

I know it’s pretty well established that Zarkon treats Haggar with more respect than his other underlings, but I feel like it would be interesting to see that change overtime. We see that after Voltron comes back, Zarkon becomes very obsessed with Voltron/Black, and he and Haggar start disagreeing more and more.

Remember the moment where one of Haggar’s druids told Zarkon Haggar said he needed to rest and Zarkon hit them with his bayard and told them, “remember who your master is”? What if, instead of a random druid, it was Haggar who he hit?

I feel like that would be a good way to show Haggar and the audience just how much Zarkon’s obsession with Voltron is affecting him, and make the audience feel a tiny bit bad for her.

Then later in season 4, when Zarkon wakes up from his coma and finds out Haggar brought Lotor back to take his place he gets pissed. He puts a price on Lotor’s head and has Haggar arrested for treason. She steals a ship, escapes, and later on meets up with Lotor’s generals.

Her and Zarkon are officially broken up and her quest to reclaim her identity and get her son back begins.

4. Oriande

I never liked the concept of chosen/sacred Alteans. The idea that some Alteans are just born more powerful than others just feels iffy. My idea of Oriande is that it’s an Altean holly land, any Altean can enter it just depends on whether or not you can pass the White Lion’s trial. Passing the trial proves that your intentions are pure and and the White Lion will bless you with power.

I didn’t like how Honerva seemed to force her way into Oriande, I think it would be more effective if she had gone through normally because, at this point, her intentions were pure. She was going there to purge herself of the dark magic corrupting her and reclaim her memories so she could go get her son back.

I also like the idea that Oriande is a sorta link to the Altean after life, and you can speak with people you’ve lost. Allura gets to speak with Alfor, and Honerva speaks with her mother.

You could also have her be confronted by the spirits of the Alteans she helped destroy. Have the weight of her past actions bear down on her. An important part of any redemption arc is acknowledging the terrible shit you’ve done in the past, and that was severely lacking in Honerva’s arc.

Another interesting thing you could do is have Honerva talk to her younger self. The one that died 10,000 years ago. This kinda thing actually happened in 80s Voltron, young Haggar appearing in Haggar’s head trying to convince her to be good again.

5. Her relationship with Lotor

Now this is where the redemption arc really falls apart. I forget who, but one of the writers said after S5 that Haggar/Honerva was motivated purely by love for her son, but man did they do a bad job of showing that.

And it would’ve been so easy to fix that problem, just have her not be horrible to him. Have them have actual civil conversations, have her protect and defend him. Don’t have her reject him as a fucking baby!

Imagine if, after Zarkon destroys Lotor’s planet, instead of immediately deciding to

exile him, Zarkon says that this is the final straw and he’s going to have Lotor executed. But Haggar speaks up to defend Him. There’s actually a scene in DOTU where Zarkon tries to kill Lotor and Haggar gets on her knees and begs for him to be spared. (Though the scene was mostly played for laughs.)

she asks for mercy and justifies it by saying it would be unwise to kill his only heir. It’s a weak argument, Lotor’s a half breed and couldn’t realistically take the throne, but Zarkon does concede, he still loves her after all, and has Lotor exiled.

And Haggar isn’t spying on him because she doesn’t trust him, but because she’s concerned for him. When Lotor confronts Haggar about sending her cronies after him, she says she knows he’s hiding something. Lotor asks if she’s threatening him, thinking she’s going to rat him out, but she says no, she’s not threatening him, she’s just trying to warn him against doing anything stupid because, with Zarkon seemingly on his death bed, the empire needs Lotor’s leadership.

At this point in the story, Haggar is questioning her loyalty to Zarkon, so I feel like it would make sense for her to be silently supporting Lotor from the shadows.

Then at the Kral Zera in season 5, It was weird to me how she was helping Lotor through Kuron while also telling him he couldn’t be emperor and trying to put Sendak on the throne. I feel like it would’ve made more sense for Sendak to just show up on his own without Haggar.

Haggar wouldn’t even be at the Kral Zera, she would just watch through Kuron.

And then we get to S6 when she actually reveals to Lotor that she’s his mom. This scene was just so poorly done. She never actually apologizes to him, she’s just like “yeah I forgot you were my kid and I never loved you, but were cool now right?” I remember when I saw S8E2 and it shows her after Lotor rejects her and she looks like she’s about to cry, I was just thinking, “this would be very emotional and sad IF she had actually apologized and made it clear that she genuinely loved him.” But she didn’t and I don’t know why!

And then we get to season 8, and of course everything in S8 is bad but Honerva’s story is particularly bad. She’s supposed to be motivated by love for Lotor yet she doesn’t act like she actually cares about him at all.

She manipulates his corpse and when she sees his gross melted body, she doesn’t even react that much. When a mother sees her child’s mutilated corpse, how do you think she reacts? Screaming? Crying?? Hurling??? But no. She’s just like, “...”

And then when she goes to the alternate reality and meets baby Lotor and he rejects her, her reaction isn’t disappointment or sadness, it’s anger and entitlement. She immediately decides, “ok, fuck this kid. Let’s destroy this reality.”

It just doesn’t make sense! This is the season you’re trying to REDEEM her! Why are you going out of your way to make her so vile?

6. Her S7-S8 plan

(Keep in mind I haven’t watched S7/S8 since they came out and barely even watched S8 to begin with, so I don’t remember some things and I can’t be bothered to rewatch them.)

Okay, starting with S7, she’s not in this season at all but in “The Ruins” the druid dude says that her final order was to hunt and destroy the Blade of Marmora. I guess it makes a certain amount of sense because she saw that it was Keith who brought Lotor’s actions to light, but that whole plot was really pointless in my opinion. (Was anybody really hoping for a rematch between Keith and that one random druid?)

If you want us to forgive Honerva for her crimes, you really shouldn’t keep adding more unnecessary crimes. It’s established that there were a lot of Galra war lords vying for power and pirates looking for money, just have it be that Kolivan got kidnapped by one of them.

Then you have her season 8 plan and I’m gonna be real with y’all, I have no idea how to fix this mess.

I feel like the basics of her plan could work. She tries to get Lotor and Sincline out of the rift but when she gets him he’s a melted corpse so the plan then becomes to use sincline to go to another reality to find a living Lotor, but opening all these rifts causes problems and the paladins have to stop her.

But all the shit with manipulating the colony Alteans, killing the White Lion, desecrating Oriande, and destroying Olkarion and entire realities, it was all so unnecessary.

Personally I would cut the colony Alteans from the story all together, there are other ways for Lotor to betray the team. It was a lazy way of making Lotor 100% evil and having Honerva manipulate them is unnecessarily cruel, especially in the season you’re trying to redeem her.

Here’s a very basic outline of how I would do this plot.

If we’re going by season 8’s logic that she needs a sacrifice to bring back Sincline, I would’ve had the Galra she killed at the Kral Zera be the sacrifice, not the White Lion. She stands on the pyramid and talks about how the empire stole her life from her and she wants revenge as she absorbs their quintessence into herself and then uses that to bring back Sincline.

Then when she finds Lotor dead she takes Sincline and uses it to go to another reality where she can be with her family.

The danger comes when she opens rifts to the other realities and rift creatures start coming out and causing damage. The paladins fight them and follow her into the rift to stop whatever evil plan she may have. Because the paladins don’t know that Haggar is now Honerva and all this is just to get Lotor back. They think this is all some plan for multiverse domination or some shit.

Meanwhile Honerva has just been rejected by little Lotor and seeing Voltron show up pushes her over the edge and they fight.

But when they find out the real reason she’s doing all this they start trying to appeal to her and convince her to give up and close the rift peacefully. And similarly to how the paladins had to sacrifice the castle to close the rifts created by the fight with Lotor, Honerva has to sacrifice herself to close the rifts.

In the end, I feel like a Honerva redemption arc could’ve worked if the writers were actually competent and actually made an effort to have her be sympathetic, but In canon, her reasoning, “If I can’t indulge in the simple joys of life, why should anybody else?” just doesn’t cut it.

It’s disappointing. VLD had so much potential. I’m thinking of just rewriting the entire series from the beginning. Hopefully putting all my thoughts out into the universe will help me move on.

[eldritchcryptids]

Tim meets Daisy (Protector AU)

Tim groaned, awaking to the sound of loud, repeated, rapping at his front door. He took a moment to read the bright red numbers on the alarm clock situated on his nightstand.

1:00 AM

Who the hell is visiting him at this hour? The tired male thought to himself, it couldn’t be Jay, he would have let Tim know he was coming over in advance...Odd. But considering the harsh knocking seemed to be getting louder, causing the male’s head to pound, he knew he had to go see who it was and what they wanted. He rose from the bed, bare feet hitting cold hardwood. He exited his room, heading over to the entrance of his house. Hugging himself, to protect himself from the cold autumn air nipping at him, he made a mental reminder to turn on the furnace.

Tim finally reached the door, he sighed, rubbing any leftover tiredness from his eyes before unlocking and opening the door. He only opened it a crack, to not let in any more freezing air. Peering out at his front porch, he froze. Tim could practically feel the colour drain from his face as he stared at the face of a man he long thought as dead. It’s been over two years and a half since Entry 87 was posted on the Marble Hornets channel, and unlike the joyful reunion Tim had with Jay after having found out that Jay survived the shot from Alex, this sudden reunion only left a pit in Tim’s stomach and bad memories resurfacing in his mind.

In front of him stood an old enemy with the scarred, tired and gaunt face of a very old friend.

“Brian…” Tim croaked out, his throat suddenly dry - or had it been dry since he woke up, and just now noticed? He supposed it didn’t matter, not right now at least.

“Not Brian, remember?” The yellow hooded man spoke quietly, shrugging. Tim winced but nodded slowly. Millions of questions raced through the bearded man’s head, but he shook them away and sighed again.

“You should go.”

Tim’s life had just gotten back to normal again, he had a steady job and his mental health was doing better...No seizures, no blacking out, no paranoia, no insomnia...Life was all finally somewhat normal for him, and he was not going to be dragged back into whatever the hooded man was planning. But, before Tim could shut the door, the hooded man quickly jammed his foot into the space between the door and frame, preventing him from doing so.

“Tim, please, hear me out.” The man said, a hint of a pleading tone in his voice. Tim blinked, confused. The hooded man puppeteering Brian’s body never pleaded, only mocked.

“What do you want?”

“I need…” The man sighed, pausing before continuing, “I need your help, okay?”

Tim’s eyebrows furrowed and he watched as the hooded man reached behind him, patting something. Tim’s confusion was quickly deepened as a small child peered out from behind the man. A little girl, no less than 6 years old, stood behind the hooded figure. Tim’s eyes shot between the two of them, “W-What?”

“Hi,” the little girl suddenly greeted quietly, staring up at Tim.

“Why do you have a kid?” Tim questioned, concern and worry dripping from his voice, and the hooded man sighed.

“Look, it’s a long story-”

“Oh God, don’t tell me you kidnapped her-”

“What?! No! I mean, not really-”

“Oh? ‘Not really’? That’s reassuring!”

The small girl winced at the sudden shouting, quickly ducking back behind the hooded man and tugging at the back of his hoodie, “I want to go..” she mumbled.

“Good job, you scared her.” The hooded man quietly hissed at Tim. Tim scoffed, crossing his arms and watching as the other male turned around. He crouched down, “Hey, Daisy, sorry about the yelling-”

“You said we were going to your friend’s home...Friends don’t get mad, Mr. Frowns!” She huffed, stomping her foot, before whining, “I want to go back, it’s cold here..”

“Just give me and Tim a second, alright?” Huffing again, the girl nodded. The man stood up again, turning to face Tim, “Look, Tim, Daisy been staying with me for a few months now, alright? It’s a long story, but it’s getting cold out now and I can’t have her staying in Rosswood during the winter-”

“When did you suddenly grow a heart?” Tim interrupted and the hooded man’s jaw tightened.

“We all have hearts!” the girl, Daisy, unhelpfully chimed in, before immediately mumbling to herself, “...Or I think we all do..? Actually, I dunno..”

“It’s a rhetorical question, kid.” Tim sighed, Daisy stared up at him again, wide-eyed.

“Woah...Big word! ...What does that mean?” Daisy questioned, turning to look at the hooded man.

“Rhetorical? It’s when you ask a question that doesn’t need to be answered.” The hooded man explained

Daisy blinked, “Why?”

“It’s...hard to explain.”

“Oh...Okay!”

The hooded man turned back to look at Tim, “As I was saying, I don’t want her to have to live outdoors during the winter, alright? So, I was wondering if it’ll be possible for her to stay with you?”

“Why not just...drop her off at hospital for them to put her into foster care or something?” Tim questioned.

“It’s a bit complicated,” suddenly stepping forward, he leaned down near Tim’s ear to whisper, so Daisy couldn’t hear, “She’s infected with the operator sickness. Tim, you out of all people, know how well kids who are infected tend to be treated by foster families and hospitals.” Tim flinched slightly, childhood memories of clawing at hospital walls, feeling numb, panic attacks, and constantly being moved around foster homes due to being “too difficult to handle” flooding to the surface of his mind.

Tim glanced at the young girl, who had taken to sitting cross-legged on the porch, playing with a rather beaten up stuffed rabbit. He glanced back at the hooded man and then back at the girl, sighing. He was going to regret this, wasn’t he?

“Ugh...Fine. Why don’t you two come in?” Tim suggested, stepping back to allow the two to enter. The hooded man seemed slightly surprised at the suggestion but nodded. Daisy tilted her head, looking up at the yellow hooded man for permission to go inside. He nodded and the girl grinned and squealed, rushing into the warmer confines of the house.

“You’re letting me stay here too?” The hooded man asked, crossing their arms.

“As long as you don’t start to steal my pills again, remain civil, and agree to go to therapy, sure.”

The hooded man tensed, “Therapy..?”

“Yeah, those are my terms, deal?” Tim outstretched his hand.

Silence fell upon the two, the hooded individual stared at the open hand before his shoulders slumped and he gave in, reaching out and shaking Tim’s hand.

“Deal.”

Tim nodded. “By the way, uh, what should I call you? You aren’t Brian, but you never gave me a name.”

“Oh.” The hooded man blinked, looking down in thought, “Masky typically referred to me as Hoodie, so that works, I guess.”

Hoodie entered the house, sliding off his shoes, he walked over to Daisy, who was excitedly bouncing on her heels in the front hallway. Scooping her up, he stated, “It’s way past your bedtime, you know.” Daisy huffed.

“Awh! But I wanna get to know your friend! Mister...Um..”

“Wright.” Tim supplied

“Mr. Wright! I wanna get to know him!”

“You’ll have time tomorrow.” Daisy whined but slumped in defeat.

Tim pointed the two to the guest room and once they were inside, he closed his eyes and massaged his temples. He promised himself that he wouldn’t get dragged into anything, and yet, here he is, housemates with the man he had seen fall to his death. Housemates with the man who practically tormented him for years. Housemates with the man who inhabits his old friend’s body. And on top of all that, there’s a 6 year old girl here as well.

God, Jay is going to freak out. Tim thought before heading back to bed.

[todaysdocument]

Deposition of William Chandler regarding an alleged slave ship, 3/17/1846

He testifies that the ship carried rations for enslaved people--a pound of rice and a pint of water per person per day--as well as a 4 ½’ high space for them to be transported, each sitting between the legs of the next person.

File Unit: United States v. Nathaniel T. Davis, 3/17/1846 - 5/4/1846

Series: Criminal Case Files, 1790 - 1912

Record Group 21: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685 - 2009

Transcription:

US                                                MARCH 17. 1846

vs

Nathaniel J. Davis                        Captain of Schooner Patuxent

                                                                Under act 10 May 1800 2 & 3

                                                                 Prohibiting carrying on slave trade

                                                                 1 Story laws 780

                                      William Chandler sworn- Is Lieutenant in U.S.N. - was attached in Sept. last to U.S.S. Yorktown - she was bound on her Southern cruise. Commander Bell was

Capt the Patuxent was first seen at Monrovia on or about the 25 Sept and was boarded by one of the Yorktown boats. She was only detained the usual time to make

the usual inquiries. I did not board her. Lt. [illegible] boarded her. She was again boarded the day afterwards at Cape Mount about 50 miles N.W. of Monrovia in the

afternoon or evening by the same officer. She was anchor close in with Cape Mount & the Yorktown at anchor near her - Comr Bell took possession of her & her paper, at about 9 A.M. of 27th Sept. I was ordered to the Patuxent about 1 P.M. to relieve Lt [illegible] & to  take command. I took her to  Monrovia the greater portion of the time in company with the Yorktown leaving Cape Mount on the 28th. I arriving at  Monrovia on 1st Oct & leaving again to meet the Yorktown & again arriving on 2 Oct. Left Monrovia on 4 Oct & arrived at N.Y. 9 March. Were compelled to pull into Bermuda twice -  Staid there 1st time one month repairing & the 2ᵈ time about 2 months during the whole time engaged in getting the vessel in a seaworthy condition. Davis the person now on examination was in command of the Patuxent when she was taken. I examined the vessel on the 29th but did not dis

[page 2]

turb the cargo or rather made a personal inspection.  She was from 90 to 100 tons.  I found 5 persons on board W. T. Davis the Master -- Thos l. Shaw the mate -- and Joseph Morrell, James C. .Clark & John Smith. --  The three men are now present.  That is about the usual number for a vessel of that size in the mercht service.  The men were very capable men & good seamen--

[left margin] Provisions [/left margin]I found a large quantity of provisions on board, beef, pork & bread.  There was quite enough to 15 men for 35 days and more than enough beef.  Some of the beef is yet unused.  I had been serving on the Yorktown about two months previous to the seizure--  Whilst on the station I have met with individuals who seemed to have a very good knowledge of the manner in which the slave trade was carried on.  I have principally derived my information from American Officers.  I should think 250 slaves might have been carried from Africa to Cuba in the Patuxent-- 25 days would be rather a long voyage than a short one-- I dont know how many men would be required to take charge of a cargo of that number of slaves.  8 or 10 persons more would have been quite sufficient.

[left margin]  do. Rice [/left margin]  We counted 71 bags of rice on board -- sacks of old canvass.  They averaged about 100 lbs apiece and over.  There was a tierce of 8 barrels of rice. full.  The barrels were common sized flour barrels.  The allowance for each slave is generally about a pound or pint of rice apiece.  A cargo of 250 slaves could have been subsisted 30 odd days on the amt of rice on board--  Rice & water is the usual food given the slaves.  It was African rice a good deal

[left margin] Water [/left margin] mixed with gravel & dirt.  There were 10 casks of water & 1 butt containing or capable of containing in all 1500 gallons.  In that hot climate a gallon a day to a man would be a liberal allowance for drinking, cooking & washing.  A pint is usually, as I have understood allowed per day

[page 3]

to each slave.  There were no other water casks in the vessel to my Knowledge.  I judge that 1500 galls of water is sufficient for a crew of 15 persons at a gall per day each for 30 days and at the rate of 1 pint per day for each slave for 250 slaves for 30 days.  The casks could be very easily filled on the Coast of Africa in the rainy season.  I shᵈ [should] judge they might have been filled in one night by spreading an awning.  It is not usual for vessels of that size to make such preparations for water.  It is not essential to a slaver to have a slave deck.-- We found 50 pieces of plank

[left margin] Plank  [/left margin]      of various lengths from 4 to 38 or 40 feet in length, most of it long: some 10 or 12 pieces of intermediate length-- This plank might have been laid as a deck in a very few minutes without either hatchet or saw without the slightest difficulty.  The plank was new deck plank about six inches wide & 3 inches thick  

[left margin] Stauncheons [/left margin]    The Stauncheons which we found on board the vessel were not all up and such as were up were not fixtures as is usual on board of vessels carrying cargo  This would afford a facility in laying a deck with planks -- Such a deck as this plank would make would be very useful in transporting a cargo of slaves,

[left margin] Arch of deck [/left margin]     more so than a permanent deck.  The beams of the deck were slightly arched so that the deck would be

[left margin] Deck frame [/left margin]      supported even without the stauncheons.  The deck frame seemed sounder than the rest of the vessel and from that I judged that it had been put in since the vessel was built-- Under the deck plank, I found a large quantity

[left margin] Pine plank [/left margin]       of pitch pine plank stowed  & billetted up so as to be level so that it would form a foundation for the deck plank on which it might have been laid by a few hands in a very few minutes-- I found also on board some six or seven tons of stone ballast stowed abaft the mainmast between that & the Cabin Bulkhead.

[page 4]

I found some pieces of chain in the holds. One piece about 8 fathoms & one about 5 fathoms. a small pair of chain [illegible] and a large number of assorted bolts such as come out of ships timbers rather larger than would come out of the Patuxent. a ring & bolt. some iron hooks also. a chest of old tools good for nothing. A number of spare pars ^4 spare sails ^ were found The deck could have been laid with the cargo she then had on board leaving a flush space of 4 1/2 or 5 feet under the deck. The slaves are stowed sitting, one within the legs of the other and 4 1/2 feet would have been ample. When the Patuxent was taken she was anchored about a mile from the shore.

(The Logbook of the Patuxent produced identified IS. Clark Master from June 19 1844 to 12 May 1845. Hiatus to 23 June 1845 when N. T. Davis is master. in the port of New York 26th June crew came on board. Captain, passengers & pilot went on shore Heading from N.Y. towards Coast of Africa 2 Augt. 1845. 7 a.m. made Cape Mount. 11 furled sails. Captain & passengers went on shore.

19 Augt. 1845 to 22 August Vessel lies at Cape Mount 22nd. Took in 3 passengers at Sulima for Sierra Leone. 24th at Sierra Leone. Capt. & 2 passengers went on shore.

Log Book of Brig Atalanta found on board identified 18 July 1844 commences. Johnston Martee. Heading from N.Y. to W. Coast of Africa. Arrived on coast & sailed up & down until Dec 24th 1844 Capt. told crew that vessel was sold to Capt. Canot of Cape Mount.

This last entry is in Capt. Davis's handwriting. There are other entries in the Book in his handwriting.

Is there a notorious establishment at Cape Mount for

[softrozene]

can you make short stories like how smoker, crocodile, marco and doflamingo would react once they realize theyre experiencing love at first sight? thats all!! thank you i hope youre taking care of yourself!

I took out Smoker because I can’t deal with his tsundere butt for this one lmao but these were fun! Thank you Honey and I hope you are taking care of yourself too!

Crocodile, Donquixote Doflamingo, Marco x Reader (Gender-Neutral/Non-Binary)

Warnings: Fluff (and grammar errors probably), Croco-boy and Doffy are a bit creepy but I would be weirded out if they weren’t

Words: 1432

Crocodile-

Boredom appears to be a trait Crocodile was born with. He can’t help it but when he is not chasing after his wild ambitions, he just feels boredom creeping upon him. It sucks and usually, it would not bother him this much but ever since escaping Impel Down and having that annoying respect for Monkey D. Luffy grow, he has just felt a tad empty.

He yearns for something to fill up that emptiness, but he has no idea what. So, he decided to go on a stroll. It already made his irritation for the day worse. Too many people recognized him and steered clear of his path, but it was not satisfying seeing their fearful expressions.

It was rather annoying.

Even if it was good that they dared not to get the marines here in fear of his wrath- It made him even angrier. He was so bored he yearned for a fight or just anything to happen!

As the saying goes- Be careful what you wish for.

He turns the corner, and someone rushes into him at full speed. Of course, Crocodile takes immediate interest since this fool did not know to not rush around corners or to be rushing in a full town. However, as soon as his eyes really looked at the person who is sitting quite pitifully on the ground- He finally feels something stir in him. He feels the emptiness slowly fade away as this new interest takes over.

The person looks up and Crocodile’s eyes widen, the cigar he has constantly in his mouth smoking, falls out of it and lands almost on them. He is in shock because he believes he is finally experiencing something only idiots do- Love. And at first sight.

He would scoff if he were not in shock at how amazing you look. Your eyes are wide only from bumping into him as you quickly stand up and dust yourself off.

“I am so sorry! I need to watch where I am going. I hope I did not hurt you!” Your voice is so genuine and even better?

You seem to have no idea who he is. Color him intrigued. He suddenly does not seem so bored either.

“No harm was done but- You made me a bit late for a meeting. You can make it up to me by allowing me to take you to dinner,” He states flashing a charming smile.

Your angelic laugh makes his smile widen and he is content. Yes, love at first sight is for idiots but he seems to have a better understanding now that he is experiencing it first hand (and deems himself an idiot for being so into you).

Donquixote Doflamingo-

“This was a useless meeting,” Doflamingo states.

His smile is wide and a bit agitated, but he is being honest. The marines have called for him for some useless operation he has no intention of doing.

“Wait, Doflamingo, at least stay and sit on it,” Sengoku murmurs.

A useless plea. However, Doflamingo decides to indulge the man since he has been given this vacation away from Dressrosa. Might as well annoy the absolute shit out of the marines until he can leave. He agrees and immediately leaves the room wanting to find some punk to mess with, to put fear into. It should be simple enough. Everyone here knows he should be here and to be on the lookout.

That is his original thought until he spots someone that nearly takes his breath away. His heartbeat feels like it quickens as he notes the quick attraction to the person. It is unlike anything he has ever felt before. Unlike his usual lust-filled attraction to random people- Doflamingo feels the need to know this person’s name and instead of the usual dirty thoughts that accompany his attraction- He wants to know more about this person, genuinely. He is rather perceptive, so he knows immediately that this attraction is not normal. That he is experiencing love at first sight. It is not with a marine- Thankfully. It is just a devilishly stunning person. They look like a fish out of water though from the lack of uniform. The casual getup makes Doflamingo’s smile widen.

He gets this itching feeling to just talk to them since he is unable to look away so that is exactly what he does. He approaches them and their gaze immediately lands on him making him feel a sense of pride for being able to catch their attention.

“Fuffuffu What is a lovely person such as yourself doing… here?” He asks.

How odd. The person either does not care who he is or really has no clue. It makes him smile bigger since it is truly peculiar if someone does not recognize him.

“Hm? Oh. I am hesitant to join the marines so they are allowing me to watch and try out their training for the next few days. Get a sense of if this where I belong… Sorry, who are you?” The person suddenly asks.

What an airhead- Doffy digs it. He introduces himself with ease, “One of the seven warlords, Donquixote Doflamingo or “Heavenly Demon” if that rings a bell.”

That seems to the do trick as he watches their eyes widen for a moment before their expression returns to a neutral one.

“Ah- You are a lot more pink than I imagined,” You murmur in thought.

Pfft. Maybe he will accept that marine operation if it means he can have this potential new marine recruit join him instead.

Marco-

Marco has sort of given up on finding love. He already has his plate full of dealing with his brothers/crewmates let alone… his father who for the love of everything good in life will not listen to him nor the other commanders about taking the damn medicine.

Needless to say, Marco deserved one night away from the rowdy crew and with the help of Ace, Izo, and Thatch, he got his one night just for himself.

All he wanted to do was drink himself to oblivion since no one would be able to bother him. That is until someone decided to sit right beside him and order a drink for themselves. He was really about to sigh and leave when his eyes scanned the person.

His heart stopped. That is what it felt like to him as he took in this person’s incredible features and oh boy. He suddenly became intrigued as to who they were and why they seemed to be in trouble. The moment the stranger spoke though- It felt like his heart was having a full seizure with how fast it was beating before stopping fully.

Is this what love at first sight is? If it truly is he welcomes it with his full being.

“Sorry for disrupting your peace. I am being followed. Just look natural,” The person murmurs.

Him? Natural? The first mate and commander of the Whitebeard Pirates? That is laughable. He stands up with remorse and ignores their now flustered gaze for ignoring their order. He glances around and indeed sees some marines in poor disguises. What really gave them away was from how fast they recognized Marco.

The whole bar goes up in whispers as the marines scurry out- Not wanting to call the World’s Strongest man here by messing with his right-hand man.

“You? You are Marco the Phoenix?” The stranger asks.

Marco simply nods his head and waits for them to introduce themselves. They do, happy that the threat following them is gone now.

“I am (Name). Didn’t think I meet someone so legendary here,” They say with a slight chuckle.

Marco muses, “Oh? Surely you are not a nobody either if you have marines after you.”

Honestly? This night became Marco’s favorite as he stayed up all night talking to this magnificent stranger. They have a lot more in common than he had thought and as the morning slowly comes- The thought of leaving actually hurts him. He truly did fall in love at first sight and he would be damned if he let such a good thing get away without trying.

“Hey- Wanna head back with me? Pops would surely love to meet you and with us by your side, you won’t have to worry about marines no more,” Marco says softly.

He watches as they put their thinking face on before they seem to come to a conclusion. Their eyes brighten and a smile forms on their face as they nod their heads. Marco’s heart has never felt so at peace before.

[lovely-necromancy]

A Cure for Insomnia CH.5

A scream shocks you out of your fuzzy thoughts. You look around and notice Connor sitting alert and looking like he wants to run down the hallway this very instant.

“Connor?” the head snaps to you immediately and before you can even question his presence in your home he jumps up and barks then walks in circles near the door.

Great a dog who has no sense of horror movie tropes. Since the scream did come from inside your house you should go find the person who made it and see what's wrong. Also maybe get clarification on why they're in your home. You aren't dead and are still in the same clothes so you figure you're alright around them. You follow Connor to where Toby is, in your kitchen staring out the window standing at a very odd angle. Like he caught himself before he fell backwards but hadn't bothered to get up.

“What's up....oh.” is all you can say as you see Chonk's head whip towards you and Connor before he books it for the tree line. Damn that fat raccoon can run fast, good to know if he ever wants to chase you down in the future. Which he might if you don't leave his slice of pizza out today.

“'oh' 'oh', that's all yo-you've got to say about a giant fuck-ing ra-mrrow- raccoon!?!” maybe thinking this guy was composed and unphased was a misconception, if seeing Chonk has put his world views in question.

“I mean he probably just eats a lot of pizza.” to put it simply you never gave much thought to the fat little trash thief, he was just fat and he existed. Visiting your home for the slice he deemed his every other week. Probably had other homes in Kepler he terrorized for the same reasons. God knows Leo would never put up with a raccoon trashing his store for his pizza. Or even his home for that matter.

“He's nearly half the size of Connor!” looking down towards Connor you tilt your head.

“Are we talking about with his legs or just his torso?” you could maybe see the size comparison with the dog's body but with his height it was a different matter all together.

Toby rolls his eyes before going and sitting down at the small breakfast table where he seemed to have found your fidget cube and had been well fidgeting with it. You take the seat opposite of him, it's weird having a guest over especially when you didn't invite them in. Well now that removes the chances of him being a vampire you suppose.

Perfect not a kidnapper, nor a vampire, and he's helped you out twice now. The two of you might well be on your way to becoming best friends. That is if he could get past this episode of yours.

“I still don't know what happened last night, but I'm done with the freak out.” you say as you idly pet Connor.

“...What?” he's squinting at you trying to get a read on how anyone bounces back from something like that so calmly in a matter of hours. Especially when he'd been checking up on you and Connor only to see you still staring off into space.

“Oh, uh... I have Autism. Isn't good for much but helps me rationalize events quicker and move past emotional and mental breakdowns pretty quick too.”

“Is that an Autism thing?” you shrug at his question as he jerks his shoulders forwards a few times.

“Probably more of a me thing, but I've read the trait tends to be more common in those of us who are neurodivergent.”

You hear a murmur of telling someone later later. Filing that away to take note of another day you stare at Toby who in turn stares back. This goes on for a bit, you couldn't even classify it as a staring contest since you are both still blinking occasionally. You aren't really sure if you should say 'thank you' first and then ask the man what he's doing in your home or wait for him to break the silence. But as you stare at Toby, into his eyes, you get the feeling this man is more of a zombie than anything else. The type to drag along and go at a snails pace rather than get into the messy bits in one go...ironic choice for comparison.

“Thank you for driving me home...but why are you still here?” you hear a huff of laughter?

“You weren't really in a position...” knuckles pop “to be left alone. What if you got back into your car again?” his eyes cut and there's a bit of bite to his words...it wasn't directed towards you, you can feel that much.

“Fair enough.” you glance at the stove and see the clock shine a little before six. “Would you like some breakfast” his neck snaps to the left triggering your own to snap as well, “or a ride home?” you finish asking.

“Can you make something for Connor too? Don't trust you behind the wheel yet.”

“Oh sure! What does he normally eat?” Perking up at the thought of the dog being off duty, that means actual pets!

“He-mrrow- normally gets oatmeal with some fruit or veg and anything raw I can find.” He finishes with a whistle for Connor's attention, and then a pointed finger flipping down in front of him. The dog trots over and sits down, while Toby takes off the vest you look through your cupboards to find the rolled oats you'd gotten as incentive to eat in the mornings before realizing you only liked them on certain days.

“So what does Tobias normally eat?” you call out as you look for some honey you know you threw in the cupboards.

“Anything really. I don't do slimy textures or anything watery.”

“Watery? Like soups?” Found a can of pumpkin, it's still in date too, perfect.

“Watery like...when you put too much water in oatmeal.” He nods when you silently show him the can of pumpkin asking if that'd be fine for his boy, who is sitting down drooling from his smiling face as Toby tussles his ears.

“Ahhh, thin watery got it.” You hear movement and a few grunts from Toby as you assume he tics, trying to ignore them so they won't trigger your own you look through the fridge. You suddenly take a deep breath, while looking for a meat in your fridge, and let out a shrill trill. Kinda sounds like a Togepi's cry from the cartoon. Shaking your head your eyes catch the eggs and turkey sausages you have.

“Will turkey sausage and eggs work for you two?”

“Never had turkey sausage but it should be fine.” he's leaning forward resting his head in his arms on the table as Connor lays by his bouncing feet.

You set the eye to medium heat and put the sausages on first, leaving three out for Connor. He is a big dog after all. You turned your focus on preparing Connor's oatmeal while the sausages cooked. It was kinda nice having company over even though the circumstances weren't the best. Your neck jerks to the side three times before pulling back. There's more on the way your neck didn't crack and your body doesn't let up until it does.

“So what disorder do you have?” You turn to give Toby a confused look you hope he can read through your mask.

“...I have a few..you want the list?”

“No, the tics. Lower level Tourettes or what?”

“Oh, they stem from my” head jerking twice to the side before cracking “there we go.” “Sorry, they stem from my Autism, at least that's the best I can gather without seeing a specialist. Virginia doctors suck big time.”

“Tell me about it.” that perks you right up, you knew you caught a transatlantic accent, it's pretty much the lack of an accent that gives Virginians away so easily. You already have two guesses on where Toby came from.

“I knew it, you're from Halifax aren't you?!” Since you've turned around to face him you see the exact moment his face drops. Eyes shocked wide open.

“How...did”

“Oh it's easy once you know what to listen for, in fact it was the total lack of any distinguishing accent or use of slang that gave you a way. A lot of people don't notice what they take from their communities linguistically speaking. And for us Virginians it's what we don't take. It's such a bland neutral midpoint it's why it had been so coveted during the radio era and while we might've lost the in-fluctuations as time went by, no longer needing them for our voices to be heard over various frequencies....am I talking too much you can tell me to shut up, really you won't hurt my feelings.” you give Toby a minute to process everything you've just said.

“Special interest?”

“mmm, more a...an interesting factoid.” you hope he registers your smile, hell you hope he doesn't think you're weird. You know how much you can be sometimes, especially when you info dump or overshare information. He manages to nod along with you before finding his voice again.

“Lemme guess NOVA?”

“Pfft, seriously.” you really need him to at least register the disgust on your face if he hasn't been able to read you before, “Listen the Beach isn't much better but I'd probably off myself if I was from NOVA.”

“A public service really.”

You both stare at each other before breaking into a fit of laughter. It's nothing huge but it does seem to put Toby more at ease you noticed. In the time it took you to make breakfast for all three of you you've found out a little bit more about Toby.

He's uncomfortable talking about his hometown, at least you assume, so instead he mentions that he recently came to town with his friends, Brian and Tim. Talks mostly about Connor and you learn he's to help alert Toby of his Tourettes when driving and he can even detect seizures with Brian. That's amazing, service dogs have sure come a long way! And you love hearing what a silly puppy Connor is off duty, it makes you smile. Toby in turn asks about you, and you are such a well of stories. You tell him about your family back on the coast, about your recent move to Kepler, give him a little info on Kepler to help him adjust to his stay, and even get on the topic of your extensive work with animals.

“Sounds like you were working towards being a trainer, why didn't you?”

Making a sound that sort of sounds like a jumbled 'I dunno', “Sort of don't like people that much. Dogs are fine, less complex and less likely to complain when you do something in a different way. But a trainer doesn't train the dog, they train the people.” You're placing Connor's food in front of him as he sits patiently.

It's quiet for a moment as you place a plate in front of Toby and set yours down as well. Not tense just quiet, it's very calming really. Until Toby ruins it.

“Thanks Connor.”

Like he's a voice actor who is over exaggerating the sound effects of a dog munching away at their bowl. Connor inhales harshly before diving head first into the bowl. The dog is ferociously tearing into his breakfast and you can't help the laughter that spills from you at his enthusiasm. Hands coming up near your face and shaking as you shift from foot to foot. It's a happy stim, cute dogs are of course a trigger, someone can complain later you're happy to see a happy excited pup any day.

Taking your seat and turning your attention to your food, you see Toby hasn't touched his own. He's staring at the plate with a furrowed brow, he glances up to you as you remove your mask. You feel a bit vulnerable to be honest.

“Oh is something wrong? Do you want something else?”  He's a guest who's helped you twice now the least you can do is make sure he leaves your home full.

It takes a moment but he gathers his thoughts to explain, “I have a scar...it's pretty bad.” he looks away from you.

You tilt your head not quiet understanding what he means, “Cool story, do you want me to look away?”

He stalls at this, you just keep throwing him for a loop since you met the other day. While he thinks on it you scoop some of your eggs on your spoon and into your mouth. Perfect texture and prefect flavor, today will be good.

Toby seems to have made his decision and without any show he takes his mask off to begin eating. You can see the scar he was talking about, and while the currently red and bleeding'?!' scar on the left corner of his mouth was bad it wasn't much compared to the gaping hole further up that side on his cheek. You can clearly see the even whiter, how this boy is so pale is beyond you, skin around the edges suggesting the wound was older and had started to heal at some point. But you could see most of the teeth on the left side of his mouth. You've never seen these teeth while they were still in the head. A skull or 3D model yea. But never a living breathing person's head. It's fascinating really, you hadn't even noticed that you finished your breakfast as you watched him eat, you were so enthralled.

“You know your lip's bleeding right?” eyes never leaving the boy's teeth as you see them grind down the eggs into the tiniest particles. Neat!

“Rwhatf?” the way he can talk with his mouth full without spilling it from the hole is fucking magic and you won't hear another word on it.

He takes a drink of water, again it doesn't spill. Then you notice the slight tilt of his head...oh he's had practice doing this. Impressive honestly.

“That's what you choose to comment on?” his eyes narrow at you're still gawking form.

“I'm sorry I've just never seen those type of teeth still in head, normally muscle and...and skin cover them. So this is really cool to see them in action!” gosh you're so damn weird. By his stupefied expression Toby seems to think so too.

“Plus the wound looks healed but the lips look fresh,” you get up and grab a few paper towels bringing them over to offer to Toby, “Not to mention it's bleeding and you haven't once wiped it.”

He doesn't reply as he takes the napkins from you and dabs at his scarred lip, looking back and seeing blood just as you said. He was right when he thought he'd been biting himself a few hours ago. He'd totally forgotten to check after getting you home.

“Well I don't feel it so I didn't know actually.” he just resumes eating as if this conversation didn't happen.

“Didn't, didn't, didn't” you get stuck in a loop for a bit before breaking out “you didn't feel it? What do you have congenital insensitivity to pain?” you ask incredulously.

“I haven't heard it called that since I got diagnosed.” still eating he looks at you through his long eyelashes.

This dude could not be a real person. You had to have been imagining your dream friend. Everything you learned about Toby was more interesting than the last...at least for you it was.

“Medical history podcasts are interesting.” you shrug, “should I get the first aid kit?” at his shrug you get up and go to your bathroom to retrieve the kit.

Coming back into the kitchen you catch Toby lowering your plates for Connor to lick clean. You don't see a problem with it but you will wash everything twice since the pup has slobbered on nearly everything anyway. When you don't say anything he lets Connor continue before placing the dishes in your sink.

“Such a big help” you say patting Connor's head as you pass him, “Yea I really am” Toby says as he sits back down. Propping his arm up on the table to rest his head on his knuckles, it was such a fluid and casual motion. As if he's sat at this table everyday of his life, like this was his home and you were his guest. Tied in with how comfy he is man spreading at your kitchen table you'd say he made himself at home just fine.

You smile and scoot your chair next to him first aid kit in between you on the table. Toby looks between you and the kit before leaning in closer for you to work. Grabbing the antiseptic cleaning towels you go to wipe Toby's lip when he flinches away. Probably faking to see your reaction.

“Oh, fuck off you have CIPA.” you laugh grabbing his chin to keep him in place. He rolls his eyes “And you're weird.” The vibrations feel weird against your fingers.

“I know.” you continue cleaning the small bite mark? Well he does have CIPA he wouldn't be able to feel the pain if he was gnawing at his lips. Would he be able to taste the metallic tang of his blood or were taste buds effected by the disorder too? You might need to do another deep dive on this, it just became relevant. Maybe an anxious tic, judging from the larger wound it could be possible. Wearing a mask must help to hide it but not not to stop it getting worse if no one can call you out on it.

“That wasn't an insult...” he says making you look up into his eyes as you dry the wound, “I know.” You smile down at him, knowing this time he can see it on your maskless face.

When you finished cleaning his wounded lips, you drove Toby and Connor back to their home. Which turned out to be the RV at the forgotten entrance of the forest. Toby had been a little wary you knew where he was talking about but seemed to shake it off just as quick when you mentioned hiking a lot and using that entrance because it was the closest to you.

He had put Connor's vest back on and hopped in the back with him. You noticed from the review that Connor's full attention was on you.

“This set up let's him focus on the driver, so he'll tell us if something will impede your driving.” Well that explains Brian's position the first time you four met.

Nodding you sync you phone with the car's bluetooth and pass it to Toby with spotify open.

“Rules of the road, passenger picks music.” you say simply when he questioned it.

He quickly clicked your last playlist. Probably either too lazy to find something or trying to get a better read on you. Music says a lot about a person even if not everyone thinks that way. And unfortunately for you this playlist screams mental illness and a need for therapy. But you have folk punk. So who needs therapy when you can just scream cry these lyrics.

Toby doesn't comment on it, either just totally apathetic or maybe he likes it. He's a bit of an enigma, he's open and honest for the most part but saves his opinions unless directly asked.

Even after making it to the RV without incident Toby tries to distract you for a bit and tempt you out of the car with the possibility of playing with Connor. As fun as the idea sounds and as much as you don't want to be rude, you're very tired and drained. Probably more from “hanging out” with Toby this morning than your actual episode last night. Plus you understand Toby's just trying to be nice and maybe ensure your safety.

“Could I maybe rain-check? I'm actually really tired.” you say with your most polite smile, though he can't see it through the mask  you know he sees the crinkle of your eyes.

“Sure, just get home safe.” you feel that's less about you, but you aren't sure what the hanging subject is. So cryptic.

“Yup,” you chirp, “See you later Tobias!” as you start to back out back onto the road you hear Toby say “ Later YN.”

Driving off you can't keep the smile off of your face. Toby's a nice guy, you hope you get to spend more time with him. And this time the thought isn't centered around also hanging out with Connor. Just about enjoying Toby's company.

Getting home and locking your door you strip your jeans and flannel, leaving you only in your muscle tee, and curl up in your unkempt sheets. You'll do laundry later, right now was time for a little nap.

[codegemini]

Tower Ascendance - Part I

(( Story co-written with @argonas / @thefugitivemango and @sylaesschasewind / @sylaess . @avehi-the-adamant and @grakkar-gorefang​ for character mention ))

~*~*~

Argonas grunted as he tore the pointed edge of his tower shield from the now-lifeless Mawsworn Shackler-- nothing inside its sundered armored chest plate but ethereal smoke. A hollow suit, at least now. He strapped his shield back to his arm, before continuing towards the next stairwell. Up again. Up eternally, it seemed.

Avehi had made good on her word, and brought both him and his Soulbind Grakkar to the Maw. For Argonas, it was the second time-- third, if when he died counted. Such was the case for the only other time Grakkar had been here; the memories of it shaking him to his core. And being soulbound to him now, to Argonas’ core as well. Grakkar needed help and guidance more than Argonas did, for now. 

While Avehi and Grakkar ventured off to recover the misplaced souls of the Lightbound-oppressed Orcs, Argonas entered the infamous Torghast. All evidence outside pointed to Sinafay-- and possibly Sylaess-- being captured and taken here. A possibility that haunted him after last seeing Sylaess in Bastion; with the upset in the Maw upon their entry, the Jailer’s forces were especially active. It was only a matter of time. Time Argonas had hoped to beat, but now it seemed more like a time he had fallen behind. 

There was no alternative-- he had to get them out.

No two floors of this place were identical, it seemed. Similar in design and structure, but the layouts were… winding. Confusing. Almost random. It was easy to get lost, Argonas figured out early on. To remedy this, he began leaving “breadcrumbs” to help guide him back out if needed. Light-suffused sigils etched into pillars and gates that-- for lack of originality-- translated to… breadcrumb. Simple, but effective.

Of course he met resistance at every turn. Swarms of Mawsworn sentires, and their ghastly metallic beasts. A hulking armored monstrosity that thankfully he had managed to topple off a ledge. Occasional distant clankings and unholy screams that echoed through the tower suggested the monster was still falling, even now.

But as he came upon a crossroads, he found himself unsure. The stairs both led upwards, one banking left and the other to the right. Into differing chambers, it seemed. He knelt down, brow furrowed, as he etched another “breadcrumb” into the ground. Then, still kneeling… he prayed.

“Light, guide me…” he muttered softly, clearing his mind and focusing his thoughts on Sinafay.

Nothing. Nothing sprang to mind. A simple choice, but one that could either lead him closer to his beloved, or even further away. The Light urged him onward, but he couldn’t feel one way or the other. He grunted in frustration.

“Give me a sign!”

--A streak caught his eye, a soft chime faintly heard from its direction as it darted past him. He turned, shield up just in case it was unfriendly-- like everything else in this accursed tower. But as he focused, he recognized it. A wisp? Here? It zipped to and fro, before ascending the left-hand stairs. Drawn to something, perhaps. Argonas sighed. It wasn’t exactly a sign from the Light, but it seemed a sign, nonetheless. He took off after it, eyes peeled and wary for wherever it may lead him…

~*~*~

“...So then, not only did he convince her to become a Vindicator, but then actually started -dating- her. So, of course, I tried to act supportive, but I was very upset over everything… not because I was jealous… Perhaps a -little- jealous… but you understand how awkward a situation like that is, yes?”

As a spirit, Sinafay's use in the tower was limited, so she decided to give Sylaess something to focus on to keep her present. And what better subject than to catch her up on everything she had forgotten? The whisps appeared entertained as well, floating about the shaman’s spectral form as she recounted the stories from Pandaria to Draenor. Anything was better than focusing on the horrors of the tower. It certainly kept her own spirits up as they started going down yet another spiral stairway. How long had they been wandering through this place? Weeks? Months? 

“So she and I got into an argument, and—“

She cut herself off as Sylaess’ ear twitched and the elf suddenly stopped cold. That was usually a sign that she sensed something and they had to be careful. The Draene took on a defensive position, eyes locked on the downward staircase.

A light illuminated the stairwell as a whisp flew up to meet them. Loud clanking could be heard approaching behind it.

Sylaess held a breath. It wasn’t a conscious thing. Her blades were in hand, black eyes sharper than obsidian as she stared down the hallway. Leather creaked softly in her palms as her grip shifted. One. It sounds like one.

But how big is this thing? 

The dizzying chatter had indeed kept her from mostly slipping into those delirious states. Seizures, well, blessedly there had been only a handful more. She couldn’t recall what had triggered them. Damn, it actually sounds large. 

She set her jaw and let the breath slip past her lips slowly. Carefully. Runes blared to life along her blades. 

Slowly, up her armor as she charged forward. Surprisingly quiet, but nowhere near silent, the elf practically leapt down the stairs, blades ready and magic held back by a thread. It was always more effective to go in blazing than it was to reserve yourself, she found, in Torghast.

That way, if you lost, you know you gave it everything.

The Death Knight’s runic blades clashed against Argonas’ shield-- or rather, the protective barricade of Light that emanated from it, surrounding his entire form. He shoved back reflexively, tossing Sylaess from him before readying a counter-attack. Until he recognized her, of course. He stayed his hammer swing, for the moment.

“--Sylaess!” he exclaimed, in an odd mix of excitement and scolding. “Thank the Light I found you!”

Sylaess remained a little apprehensive. She lowered her sabers after they bounced off the shield of Light brightly, shoving her back a good step, the sudden redirection of force jarring up her arms. A thin frown as she stood staring at him. 

Could they use the Light, now? Was it another illusion? 

The wisp flitted into her face, obscuring her scrutiny. Drawing out a sigh. A cacophony of advice hailing from nowhere and everywhere in her head. “Okay--Okay. Enough. I got it. Fuck.”

She grumbled quietly--well, quietly enough. 

“Argo!” Sinafay felt her heart skip a beat… or at least, whatever the spectral equivalent to that was.., at the sound of her mate’s voice. 

It felt so long since she’d last heard it, or gazed at his battle worn face. She smiled brightly at him as she skipped down the stairs to meet him, a multitude of wisps following behind her. This time, she resisted the urge to leap into his arms, lest she pass through him again and go tumbling down the stairs. Instead, she stood by where Sylaess landed, weary but well, despite their time in the tower. Her tail swayed eagerly behind her.

“Ah, Sina, my beloved! It is both a joy and a pain to see you like this!” he stated, first and foremost-- in a rather rehearsed tone.

But given he had thought of nothing else than this moment of reunification, it was to be expected that he started running lines in his mind for the occasion. That didn’t make the words any less sincere, however; seeing his mate like this was an odd mix of comforting and sorrowful. The comfort of course coming from just seeing her again, and knowing she could be saved from this place. Sorrow, though, with all the memories he still carried about losing her in the first place. And living without her ever since.

“Argonas. Do you have any idea how to get out? I’m absolutely fucking sick to death of having my ass kicked.” 

Syleass’ tone was soft, but the gravelly, ruined sounds of her voice were an interesting counterpart to the gentility. Still, she sounded just as exhausted as her weathered frame looked. And out of patience. If this was another illusion, so be it. The souls did not think it so, but even they could be wrong. 

The tone carried a strange desperation from her that Argonas hadn’t heard or experienced since the Exodar.Though even this was different. Weary. He didn’t think Death Knights could get tired. But then… this was more of an emotional weariness, by the sound of it. He nodded quickly to her, both to answer her question and convey appreciation for sticking with Sinafay through this madness.

“Yes!” he stated, proudly. “--I mean… hopefully. I have been leaving small Lightrunes along my path here. But this tower is ever-shifting. The way out may not be the way I came. Though I think we should try, nonetheless. We must get out of here, and reconvene with Avehi and--”

“Were you able to find a vessel?” 

He stopped himself short, eyes darting to Sinafay. Perhaps leaving the detail about his Orc soulbind was prudent, for now. More prudent still, leaving out the fact that the Kyrians only gave him and Grakkar one Soul Vessel. To share. Poor Sinafay would have to ride out of this place in the company of Light-only-knew how many Orc souls Grakkar managed to recover. He didn’t know the mechanics, exactly-- would they even notice each other in there? He hoped not.

Either way, a bridge they would cross when they got to it.

“--and another we brought.” he explained, vaguely. “Another Avehi agreed to ferry back out of the Maw with us. The vessel is with them. I did not want to leave them without it in case I did not escape this tower. But once we do, we will all escape the Maw!”

Thankfully for Argonas, Sinafay was only half listening to his words, once again entranced with taking in the sight of him.

“Well, hopefully there’s plenty of room in there. I think a few souls are looking to escape with us.”

Some of the wisps had already begun gravitating around the Vindicator, seeming to take comfort in the Light aura he surrounded himself in. Something a living mortal might miss, but obvious for spirits like herself to make out. 

One wisps curiously remained by Sylaess. Sinafay tilted her head slightly at how odd it was. It must have had some form of connection to her. Unfortunately, Sinafay only now realized how little she knew of Sylaess outside their interactions together. 

She opened her mouth to ask, only for a loud roar to ring out and startle everyone. The entire tower seemed to shake as a behemoth form began making its way down the stairs, towards the group. The wisps began to flutter about in a panic, and the sound alone caused Sinafay to tremble. 

“Fuck,” she whispered as she backed away down the stairs and towards Argonas. She knew what it was, even though she didn’t exactly know how. Knowledge to all the spirits trapped in the tower perhaps, “The Tarragrue…”

Wide eyes turned to her mate, fear in her gaze, “Run… we cannot fight this one…”

~*~*~