#if they add the copper robot i hope they call it a robot

[brainbesplit]

with the amount of uses copper is getting in this update i just want to say if they add the copper "golem" into the game and it has that ungodly fucking nose i'm going to personally march to jens bergenstein himsefl and shave him completely bald EVERYWHERE. i will douse this man in fucking flaming nair hair remover

[wherefancytakesme]

“Mistakes”

(BOYD gets to spend the afternoon with Gyro, then Mark Beaks shows up and brings on emotions that BOYD has never had to face before.)

The day so far had been one of harmless goings-on and quiet excitement. BOYD went to school with his adoptive brother Doofus Drake, for once not being as much the studious little database he always was in class—he was going to meet with Gyro Gearloose and Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera after school, and it filled him to the brim with joy.

Since the day he’d reunited with his creator, BOYD loved spending time with the scientist, always awaiting a time when he would call the Drakes over the phone and ask to pick their ‘younger’ son up and bring him to the underwater lab. Gyro always said he needed to perform regular checkups and maintenance on the little android, but BOYD was hoping secretly that it was also about spending time together; The doctor was becoming gentler now that everything in the past was behind them.

Regardless, BOYD’s feet were bouncing lightly under his desk with the anticipation of it all the way until the final school-bell rang—any excuse to see Gyro, someone he considered so close, gave his mechanical heart inexplicable delight.

Finally when class had let out for the day, BOYD took Doofus’ hand, smiling, and pulled him gently along.

“Come on, come on, big brother! Dr. Gearloose and Dr. Crackshell-Cabrera are waiting outside!”

Doofus grunted. His parents had strictly told him to be on his nicest behavior in front of Scrooge McDuck’s scientist, especially for his little brother’s sake—and to say nothing at all if he hadn’t anything nice to say—or else not expect any dessert for the next several weeks. He threw a fit, of course, but eventually resigned to not ruin anything for BOYD—or his chance at still being allowed to eat an ice cream float every night—and let BOYD have all the ice cream for himself.

Some part of Doofus’ subconscious didn’t mind the constant company of someone his own age. But all the unpleasantness that buried such feelings from his thoughts and actions that proved Louie Duck right kept the boy from understanding any of that, and so he simply allowed BOYD to pull him along—small as he was, the android could easily overtake his brother—and decided to be pouty but uncharacteristically quiet the rest of the day—though not altogether unhappy.

When the two boys reached the front gate, Gyro and Fenton were waiting at the entrance. The latter grinned and waved a friendly hand. The former smiled a bit more visibly than he’d have liked to when BOYD ran out to him.

“Dr. Gearloose!” BOYD called out, immediately throwing his arms around Gyro’s knees.

The gesture pushed Gyro to hide his previous smile by putting a fist to his mouth and clearing his throat. But his tone wasn’t harsh.

“It’s nice to see you, 2BO—er—BOYD.”

He had no idea how to greet Doofus Drake, however. He groaned with his mouth closed, awkwardly, and looked away, but Doofus had nothing to say either anyway.

“Are we going to the lab right away?” BOYD asked with bright eyes.

“Well I have an errand to run in town first, but it shouldn’t take long.”

Fenton chimed in;

“We could make a fun outing of it! Uh—nothing that would deviate from the plan, of course,” he said drawing back once Gyro side-eyed him, “Just something to do while Dr. Gearloose is busy.”

“Yeah, like find a local landmark to learn about!” BOYD did some drawing back of his own when he noticed his brother pout, but did so more graciously than nervously as compared to Gyro’s assistant. “Or maybe there will be a park nearby!” He smiled more when he noticed his brother’s frown fade a small amount.

“Whatever we do,” interjected Gyro, “Stay close to me. I do not want everyone running all over and taking up too much time.”

BOYD’s sunny smile remained as he put his hands behind his back, determined to be well-behaved.

“Yessir, Dr. Gearloose!”

About twenty minutes of walking had led the group of four to an obscure electronics store. Gyro needed a special kind of copper wire before going back to the lab and his odd specifications were hard to meet. While he spent his time inside, Fenton and the boys went to the adjacent shop to buy ice cream. Gyro had told them not to wander off, so once both kids had a cone of their own, they walked out to wait for the doctor.

It had taken several minutes longer than usual for the store owner to fetch what he needed, but by the time he had his purchase in hand, Gyro pondered over taking another minute or two to browse recreationally for spare parts. However, the thought was suddenly halted by the sound of a piercing shriek from outside.

“BUT I DON’T LIKE PISTACHIO!”

Gyro’s whole body jumped at the sound before he bolted out the door to see what the commotion was.

Oh.

Of course. Doofus Drake was throwing another tantrum, shaking his ice cream cone violently.

“Then why did you ask for it?” Fenton asked, confounded.

Gyro ground his teeth and rubbed his middle and index fingers against his temples. But the eyes he’d at first squinted shut opened back up when he heard the screaming stop at a kind voice.

“It’s okay, big brother. I’ll eat yours and we’ll trade!”

BOYD had a warm little grin on his face, holding out his hand.

“Fine!” snapped the spoiled drake, fuming as he thrust the treat into his brother’s hand. “You wanted to try a new flavor of ice cream anyway!”

This caught Gyro’s attention particularly. That little brat shouldn’t be forcing something on a robot who wasn’t built for consumption. He approached, and took on a less-than-pleasant tone that now commonly became him.

“Ice cream?” the chicken asked, twisting his face, “2B—er, BOYD, doesn’t eat.”

“I don’t need to,” answered BOYD, “I like to! My big brother told me about all the different kinds, and now every time I eat a new one, I add it to my memory. It’s fun!”

There were so many words in there that Gyro had to take a moment to think over. First and foremost, it was still mystifying why someone like BOYD and someone like Doofus Drake would consider eachother brothers—leaving aside that the former was much older than the latter. But he chuckled mentally a bit at the association between ‘memory’ and ‘fun’. The only other boy he knew who thought like that was Huey Duck, and it was nice that he and the android had found someone like the other. It felt nice too that such a thought could soften him back up again and make his migraine go away.

But Gyro wondered what eating must really be like for BOYD—he didn’t remember programming BOYD specifically to eat, but on a technical level, he supposed it was possible, given the way he’d built him.

“Can you taste it at all?” he said looking down at BOYD now, curious at the answer.

“Yeah! It was actually only recently I first had ice cream. I didn’t know I could taste anything until then, but it seemed to register, and I really liked it! So when I got home, I asked about it, and now I get to have it every day!”

Gyro didn’t realize how much he’d been missing out on the little boy’s life. Even the very first tests he’d run on him didn’t experiment with things like taste, or smell. Body temperature, vision, maybe—but those were comparable to how a computer would run. Gyro had made BOYD with sentient, behavioral programming, but he supposed he never put any of it into practice, in a real-world scenario. Part of that may have been Dr. Akita’s fault, but… Well, Gyro didn’t want to make excuses for what he did and didn’t do back then.

It was strange—and a little sad; BOYD went twenty whole years unaware of whether or not he lacked the sensation of taste, and Gyro wasn’t there when he finally tried. Gyro knew every single robotic modification BOYD had—from the USB drives in his fingertips, to the blasters throughout his body—he’d put every one of them to the test, but how often did he actually take the child outside the old laboratory? Did the small creature have any memory of Tokyolk before his core was overridden?

Quickly Gyro shook any dwelling thoughts from his mind. No matter. He was making up for it now.

At least he hoped so.

All of a sudden, Gyro felt someone bump against his side, sending him back into the conscious world with a jolt. He made a startled squeak, which embarrassed—and therefore slightly angered him.

“Can’t you watch where you’re—Oh.”

The scientist wrinkled his face with annoyance when he turned and saw a slightly younger man on a self-balancing scooter.

“It’s you.”

There was no mistaking it. Sleek cardigan, large overconfident eyebrows, phone in hand… It was Mark Beaks.

Mark Beaks blinked when addressed. He had no doubt everyone knew who he was, but the lanky chicken facing him seemed to be acting like he’d met him before.

“Oh heeeeey… Uh, do I know you? Probably, right? You see so many faces every day when you’re this famous, they kinda all just blend in, y’know?”

Gyro looked up at Beaks with half-lidded eyes.

“Dr. Gyro Gearloose? Scientist of Scrooge McDuck? You’ve stolen and modified my tech about four different times?”

Beaks looked up and narrowed his eyes, stumped.

Gyro sniffed. Mark Beaks had pointed him out in public several times; This was quite obviously being done to wind him up. “Perhaps he looks familiar to you?” he said, throwing a hand out to gesture at BOYD.

“Ohh yeah! You built that guy? No wonder he went all terminator on me!”

Again Gyro responded sarcastically, with more of a scoff this time.

“That is not my fault. Likely you reprogrammed his hard-drive and rewrote his memories so many times, one simple question overwhelmed him to the point that he couldn’t even tell a person from a flyswatter.”

“Ugh, whatever.” Beaks said, waving his hand, “If you make faulty robots and don’t wanna keep the improvements I put in there, that’s on you. Kid was pretty popular online though. I mean, come on!”

Mark Beaks pointed back and forth between himself and BOYD with both of his index fingers.

“He looks just like me!”

When Beaks acknowledged the android a few feet in front, suddenly two yellow eyes stared back. A little gasp emitted from the little black beak that was previously opened to eat ice cream. BOYD hadn’t seen his older doppelganger since the day he met Doofus Drake. His whole face suddenly beamed with cheeriness at a familiar face.

“Da—”

He bit off the word ‘Daddy’. That was a memory overwrite, he knew now. Still, he was happy.

“Mr. Beaks!”

BOYD instantly ran over to the addressee to jump up and hug him. Beaks just as instantly wheeled back with his scooter board, holding his palms up.

“Woah-ho-hooooh, don’t like touching, remember? What was the number one rule?”

Oh. Right. Remembering that made BOYD’s smile fade.

“No hugs?”

“Exactly, see? You’ve still got some of the good ol’ Beaks programming clunking around in there somewhere!”

Gyro rolled his eyes at a statement like that, but for BOYD it started to set a certain train of thought in motion; Mark Beaks had programmed him to be like his son. At the time, he had felt like it, not simply had it wired into his head, but… now that he thought about the standoffish way the young adult was acting, was that all he was to him? Like a son?

That couldn’t be true, could it?

“Um, Mr. Beaks?” BOYD said, voice starting to grow more shy, “I know things are different now—the two of us living separate lives and everything—but even so, would it be okay if I still spent time with you once in a while?”

Beaks sucked his teeth at BOYD.

“Ooh, no can do, sport. See, if we’re not family, there’s kinda no point anymore. Nobody looks at pics of me just hanging with some rando kid, y’know? Outside that, I’m like super busy all the time, sooo…”

“But… Didn’t you have fun with me?”

“Sure, I did all kinds of awesome stuff in a whole day! Took lots of great selfies!”

BOYD faced the ground at that response, trying to process it. All the words were simple, but slowly, they triggered the most complex of memories… ______________________________

The first memory he had after the incident in Tokyolk was the faint recognition of someone’s voice in the garbage dump he’d evidently wound up in. He didn’t know what was going on, and had no recollection of where he came from, how he worked, or hardly even who he was. All he could bring to mind was an assigned identification number—2BO—and a gut feeling that he was a definitely real boy.

But when the voice came closer, BOYD felt his OS booting up again—his processor bringing things back online. What life he may or may not have had before, he knew not. He only understood that there was reason to be up and running now—alive. These feelings hadn’t manifested into thoughts at first—and then he heard the moving figure above him make a noise. When BOYD parroted back the mimicry of lasers, it was purely instinctual—technological sounds, technological creature. But it made someone notice him. It made someone marvel at him. It made someone give him a real name. It made someone want to take him home. That someone was Mark Beaks.

Even if he had only programmed into him the title of ‘father’, the wealthy parrot was the first person he knew to give him somewhere to live. With or without his original memories, BOYD had never really had an actual home before. He’d never had anyone so willingly look after him like a normal kid—like their kid. In many ways, both literal and figurative, Mark Beaks was the first person to be a parent to BOYD. Even lacking the memory of Akita’s cruelty and Gyro’s hesitance, when BOYD was around Mark Beaks, he felt like someone’s son with no hint of abandonment for the first time in his life.

Yet some underlying doubt lie buried, deep down in one of the many corners of his mind that BOYD didn’t have access to—only this one wasn’t blocked by another person’s override. Anytime he called out ‘Daddy’, Beaks didn’t always turn around right away. He might look confusedly around the room, or take a second or two to respond. And even then, he didn’t seem to say things other than ‘Hey you’, or ‘Need something?’—they were happy, but one-sided. BOYD didn’t think about that then. He was just glad to have family, and to have anything a kid could ask for.

But that was another thing that suddenly made BOYD think. The two days he’d spent with his new father were the best of his whole life; He spent time at an office filled with apparatuses to play on, candy to eat, and places to nap everywhere—even if he didn’t need to nap. Then for the rest of the day, the two Greys went all over Duckburg having fun—eating, playing, exploring… And still, through everything, there didn’t seem to be a connection. When BOYD and Beaks spent time at a show, flew kites, or wore novelty hats, the latter was always taking pictures with the former in them, but seemingly never with him. BOYD was too distracted by the thrill of spending time with someone he considered family to notice before, but now that Beaks worded it the way he did, only mentioning the fun he himself had that day, the signs were becoming obvious. He never once touched him—never once looked at him when he took those selfies—BOYD might as well have been a part of the background.

Come to think of it, did Mark Beaks ever touch BOYD? His biggest aversion, which he’d made clear several times, was touching, after all; The hopes of the first hug BOYD thought he’d ever had at the time were straightaway brushed off. Maybe once or twice, when he needed to be kept from getting wet or from going haywire… But otherwise, the man hardly paid physical attention to him. He didn’t want to feed into the worry that was always secretly there, but the recollection of everything made it impossible now. It hurt BOYD so badly to consider that he was only there to serve a purpose—as he had been his whole life—after all. He couldn’t remember Beaks saying his name, he couldn’t remember Beaks saying something gentle to him… Sometimes if he didn’t act the part he was made to, Beaks would scold him. He tried to avoid calling to mind that once, Beaks struggled to even remember the familial title under which BOYD was programmed.

“Yeah, I love this… What was it again? Uhh, uh, son!”

Oh no.

Mark Beaks never even said the words, ‘I love you’.

But no. No, it couldn’t be true that he didn’t at least care about BOYD, it just couldn’t. It was painful all the same, though, no matter how trusting and unassuming a child BOYD was.

He had to know. He wanted just a little word of assurance that he was wrong, that it was all in his head, that it was just worry that came with twenty years of feeling unloved. Even if Mark Beaks saw him as means for attention first, surely there was some sort of fatherly instinct left over from caring for someone made to be for all concerned his family.

BOYD was feeling some sort of physical discomfort he couldn’t pinpoint when he made his next inquiry, as if he was swallowing something down.

“Mr. Beaks,” he questioned, blue irises still fixed on the ground and fingers toying with one another, “Do you…”

He swallowed physically this time.

“Do you love me…?”

Mark Beaks’ face froze, and before answering made a noise somewhere between the word ‘I’, and an ‘Uh’.

“Kid, what kind of question is that? I don’t do the whole affection thing, okay? Much less with someone who’s not even in my entourage anymore.”

Oh, that hurt. That hurt far too much. Normally with Dr. Akita’s overriding, emotional triggers like this would have BOYD glitching. But that wasn’t there anymore. He was open to feel whatever a boy would feel any time he wanted now, without malfunctions and without something to block his true childlike wiring—too open, perhaps, because now instead of his mind going blank over spiritual pain, his mind would take in every single thought that set him off, and fester. What Beaks said to him now was festering. It made him feel vulnerable. Even if it didn’t hurt or scare him as much as when Gyro told him he was going to shut him down for good, or when Gyro constantly put him down, there was nothing to keep BOYD from blacking out afterward anymore. The feelings over Mark Beaks’ statement were flooding all throughout him.

“But…” BOYD persisted still, wanting some sort of kindness—at least for a fresh start. “Couldn’t we at least be on friendly terms? Isn’t there anything you like about me?”

“Aw come on, little man, it’s not like I was letting you get close to begin with. You’ve got other rich people and tech geeks to be with now. So you don’t need me and I don’t need you.” The man crossed his arms.

If any justice could be done, it might be stated here that the biggest reason Mark Beaks was beginning to act more and more bitter with the small child was out of a sour-grapes mentality. Visible weakness wasn’t characteristic of the young trend-chaser, but in a situation like this, where something he genuinely found impressive and thought he’d made his own had been lost to him, and had been left in the hands of someone else he barely knew—knowing that a technological wonder like BOYD was something he could no longer have—Beaks was annoyed, and he would never dare let it show through. Instead he increased his shallowness ten-fold.

Poor little BOYD’s eyes went wide, wanting so terribly not to believe what he was being told, wanting so desperately not to be outright rejected by someone he’d let himself previously grow so attached to. He looked into Beaks’ black eyes, searching for some kind of reassurance in spite of only hearing cruelty. He wanted so much to hear something that would make the building pain he’d never understood before shrink down.

“But,” he said, voice more quiet and in disbelief than he could ever remember expressing, “You gave me a name. You took me home with you. I was like your family.”

Mark Beaks rolled his eyes back, looking only more annoyed that the little creature almost forced him into guilt with such words.

“No way, kid. I just scooped you out of the trash because I thought I could make something out of you. But four-eyes over there took out all the mods I made to begin with—the new voice I gave you isn’t even there anymore. Hate to say it, but without any of that, you don’t mean anything to me.”

He shrugged his shoulders, talking for a minute more so to himself than anyone, but nonetheless just as aloud as before.

“Guess all the time I put into you was a waste. ‘Least with everything else, I got some money or permanent attention out of it.” Beaks blew air out through his nostrils almost like a laugh when he thought about it. “Jeez, kid, you were my worst investment.”

BOYD didn’t know what the feeling was, but those awful words broke something within him. His face tensed up. The tightness in his chest started to swell. All that desperation to disprove his first proper parent didn’t actually care about him, all that pain welling up inside him the more said person shot down attempt after attempt for requited affection… And now he’d dealt him a blow like that? Mark Beaks had thoroughly destroyed his spirit—he might as well have slapped him in the face. And incidentally, his face started to burn. BOYD had no idea what this meant, but the reaction was involuntary. It hurt so much, he couldn’t understand. The heat concentrated in his eyes. His nose and mouth trembled as he faced his former caretaker. A warm, salty liquid began slowly to fill his eyes and then roll down his cheeks.

BOYD was crying. ______________________________

All the time Beaks had been talking, Gyro and Fenton had been narrowing their eyes in anger and darting them back and forth between the two parrots facing one another, the taller one saying nastier and nastier things to the smaller one. Neither Fenton nor Gyro knew quite what to say or do, or how to intervene—for Fenton in particular because he also had to keep an eye on Doofus Drake, who any second could stop being content licking the inside of his ice cream cone and go ballistic again. It irritated him that he had to keep his mind on such a small matter when clearly there were bigger fish to fry at the moment—and also a little bit that BOYD’s adoptive brother didn’t seem to be noticing how much he was hurting.

Gyro wanted to speak up at some point, but couldn’t bring any words into his head.

And then out of the blue, when Mark Beaks had finally pushed innocent BOYD to a breaking point, the tiny thing cried. He cried.

Gyro’s heart stopped dead in its figurative tracks.

His eyes went wide and dropped their gaze to the ground. This was something he had no idea was physically possible. An invention of his had been, through instinct alone, pushed to actually cry. He didn’t understand. He didn’t specifically write that sort of thing into BOYD’s coding when he made him—certainly Akita didn’t put that in—so then what? BOYD was a definitely real boy, but, to this extent? Gyro wanted to react, to do something for the boy, to get angry at Beaks, but everything failed him. He was stock still, frozen with a horrible blend of shock and concern.

Meanwhile, BOYD continued to stare up at Beaks as tears stained his face, disbelief and utter heartache consuming everything from the waist up.

The first reaction was when Doofus Drake turned and took notice of what he had been sure was a robot his parents adopted, somehow leaking sadness out of his eyes. The Drake boy physically reeled back, socially perturbed.

“Agh, he’s broken!” he yelled, unable to understand, “Do something and fix it!”

Fenton reacted second, clenching his hands into fists, intent on indeed doing something to ‘fix it’, but not the way Doofus imagined. He held back solely on the basis that Gyro was going to say something.

But Beaks was the immediate one to react next.

“Yikes, buddy,” he said to BOYD, backing up uncomfortably. He didn’t mean to make anyone cry, but then again, he didn’t think BOYD could feel anything that real. “It’s not my fault a lack of Beaks tech makes you basically worthless.”

Where Gyro normally would have gotten angry, this time Fenton stood in—he saw that the doctor was too dumbstruck to do so for now. But Fenton was certain both of them were equally as angry.

“What on earth are you thinking saying that to his face,” he snapped, “He’s a kid!”

Mark Beaks shrugged, as if his next reply was a matter of fact.

“Well I mean yeah, but like, not a real one…”

Each adult’s face in present company sneered at Beaks. That was the final straw. With that, Gyro Gearloose was finally able to pull himself out of his stunned state and draw up the emotion to straighten his back and snatch BOYD’s hand, dragging him away. Whatever he was thinking or wasn’t able to think at the moment didn’t matter. This child wasn’t going to be tortured by being here any longer.

“Cabrera, you take Doofus Drake home and get rid of this…” He struggled to find the words; “this, while I take BOYD back to the lab.”

Fenton nodded, determined, as Gyro stormed off, leaving Beaks to be thoroughly dealt with. ______________________________

The walk back to the underwater lab wasn’t a long one, but when Gyro wasn’t seething mad, he would look down at BOYD and notice a look on the boy’s face not dissimilar to his own from earlier—it contained surprise, the fearful kind, as if he didn’t know he could shed tears either. He didn’t look up at his creator, even though he followed the aggressive tug of his arm compliantly, and he didn’t try to wipe at his face. He seemed, again, to be having the same sort of shock that tried to question what in the world was happening to him.

When the two finally did make it inside, Gyro relinquished his tight grip on BOYD’s hand, picked him up by the waist, and sat him down on his center loft work desk.

“BOYD,” he said directly, but not ungently, “Keep your face still for a moment, okay?”

Gyro cupped the little creature’s face in his hand, taking a moment to peer into the huge ovate orbs that were wet as ever. There was nothing physically wrong with them… Nothing functionally wrong with them… Lightly touching the substance that had wavered within them didn’t seem to prove this was some sort of fluid leak. As far as Gyro could tell, these were tears, plain as plain.

So then how was that possible? It wasn’t as if the scientist had actually sat down and built a mechanical version of every single organic function an ordinary person had when constructing BOYD—he and Akita wanted a defense drone—but he knew the little one had an approximation of a heart, and bones, and lungs, and other such things; He was an android, which meant he was deliberately supposed to resemble other people in addition to all the access ports and ribbon wire. Still. Things like tear ducts, taste buds, the need to sleep? Gyro didn’t physically install those things into him. Now a possibility occurred to him. He decided to address BOYD again.

“Can you tell me… Can you tell me everything you’ve been feeling since you talked to Mark Beaks? I know it might be hard, but I need you to try for me.”

BOYD felt Gyro place both hands on one of his. It was the first time the doctor had engaged him like that, and it brought on a warm confusion in spite of the pain he still felt at his core. BOYD’s teary eyes were trained on the floor when he started to analyze what kind of things that pain entailed.

“I’ve… been feeling…” he began, voice thin and shaky, “Sad… and overwhelmed… and afraid… and alone, and… and confused… Before, when I had programming issues, I would start to malfunction anytime something hurt me. But now instead of glitches coming on that I can’t control, it’s more like…”

BOYD’s whole body started to shiver. “It’s more like something my heart can’t control, I guess? Not literally, but, I…”

His vision grew blurry and his voice shakier than ever. “I don’t have anything holding me back from losing emotional control, and I don’t understand. What Mr. Beaks said really hurt, but… I’ve been told things that made me lonely and sad before. I don’t know why I’m only reacting this way now.”

BOYD shut his eyes, rubbing at them as he made a little whimper. “I’m sorry, Dr. Gearloose. I know that doesn’t help. The only other thing I know when I think about all this is that it scares me.”

Gyro felt choked up. He wanted to react beyond keeping his hands palmed over the one BOYD wasn’t wiping his own face with, but twenty years of distrust and cynicism had clouded his ability to be as kind as he used to. But that answer actually helped Gyro a lot. Before, he remembered BOYD saying something about eating—he didn’t need to, but he liked to—that he wondered whether or not he was able to taste, but it ‘seemed to register’. Gyro then supposed while he didn’t build BOYD to eat, it wasn’t impossible given the way he was made; He likely found some sort of place in his structure to double as a stomach, being that he was basically the same as any other boy.

This was what made it click in Gyro’s brain. He had programmed BOYD, for all intents and purposes, to be a living child. Even if the actual hardware wasn’t there, even if Gyro hadn’t thought of specifics when creating… Akita called it ‘real boy programming’—there were things within BOYD that could adapt, and apparently had adapted, themselves to become a part of his sentient reactions and behavior—there were things inside him that manifested because at the end of the day, BOYD was… well, BOYD was a boy.

BOYD wasn’t crying because he was built for it. He was crying because all boys were built for it.

Oh god. A realization like that sent a heavy weight into Gyro’s chest. This wasn’t just some invention that was child-like he’d made, as he initially thought two decades ago. He had brought a life into the world.

He was responsible for every bad thing that life would ever face, because he was the one responsible for ever having made something that could feel, could want, could hurt. Why hadn’t he once considered that when wiring sentience into a body? Gyro felt sick to his stomach.

Yet here was BOYD sitting on a desk, afraid because he wasn’t ever told what would happen if he was sad enough—as if crying was normal, but not for him.

“Dr. Gearloose…?” The timid squeaks in BOYD’s broken voice coupled with glumness on every part of his face made Gyro feel pain in every inch of his body. “Is there something wrong with me?”

Shocked as he was still, an automatic reaction came on that brought Gyro to dry the small creature’s eyes. This reaction, too, shocked him.

“No—no,” he answered nonetheless, just as reactionary.

“Really?”

The nervousness in that inquiry pushed Gyro on. What he was grappling with wasn’t important. There was a child in front of him, needing to be consoled. And while he normally was awkward with children—with people in general, really—Gyro knew about BOYD at least from a technical aspect. He wasn’t a medical doctor, but he did have a doctorate in mechanical engineering. He could work from there—he knew hardly anything about children from a biological standpoint, anyway. In a way, BOYD being an android worked to his advantage here. Gyro sobered up mentally and placed both hands on the little one’s shoulders.

“Yes,” he replied, surprised with himself that he was able to sound so matter-of-fact so quickly. He tried as hard as he could to sound gentle too. “Besides your internal structure, you are otherwise indistinguishable from organic life. You have thoughts and feelings, wants and needs. It’s inherent for you to be sad just as any normal boy would—because that’s what you are.”

BOYD looked back at the ground for a moment, then up at Gyro again, putting his tiny hand over the fold of the man’s thin elbow. There was something he wanted to know—there was still pain in his chest that was building up beyond his control.

“Then…” he asked with teary, pleading eyes, “Can I cry a little more?”

Gyro wished that he knew just what to say—his heart ached so much to hear such a little boy ask for permission to feel—but he simply gave a pitying, guilty, yet mostly obligatory, “Yes.”

That one word of acceptance sent BOYD over the edge. A little hiccup escaped him, and what had previously been only silent tears that fell on their own turned into a full-on fit. BOYD covered his face and wept.

Gyro tried and failed to swallow the lump in his throat when he saw BOYD truly cry for the first time. But in under a minute, his creation said something that brought him to accommodate without a single thought.

“Dr. Gearloose? I know you said back in Tokyolk that hugging was just for that day, but—”

BOYD was interrupted when Gyro immediately drew him in with a one-armed hug, bringing him close and holding him tight. BOYD in turn drew himself closer to his creator, no longer holding back.

BOYD’s little cries then were soft and whining, innocent and unhinged in the way that became any child. Any time he needed to sniff or dry his eyes, he buried his face into Gyro’s chest, and sunk his tiny fingers deep into his vest. The length in each wail that came on now and again reflected the fact that BOYD had never cried before, and that he was discovering in the moment just how much he needed to all this time.

Poor BOYD, Gyro thought, barely ever allowed to simply hug anyone before. He was the sweetest living creature Gyro had ever known—always smiling so jubilantly and talking politely to everyone and everything—and yet so many people met him only with malice? That was far too unfair.

Oh.

But then, that was exactly what he’d done, wasn’t it? He’d so readily assumed when Inspector Tezuka brought BOYD down that he’d created something evil—he’d thought the evidence was everywhere, quite literally. But couldn’t it have been just as easy to think that someone like Dr. Akita who’d turned out to be a known criminal could have been responsible? Couldn’t Gyro have at least considered for a second that it wasn’t BOYD’s fault and defended him more? But he hadn’t. Instead he’d let his young mind believe everything his former mentor drilled into his head; His inventions were weapons, plain and simple, and nothing would change the fact that that would be a part of him the rest of his life—that he would always know somewhere in the back of his mind that he was just a big screw-up. And Gyro had taken that out on BOYD. He’d turned his anger and fear over himself and projected it into anger and fear over his first real invention. He’d defended inventions like Lil’ Bulb to the last ditch—even when the evidence they were turning evil was just as seemingly apparent, if not more so. Even they weren’t referred to as failures. All that bitter sarcasm and unkindness that became a part of who he was had all been based on nothing. When they’d reunited, he lashed out at BOYD over and over again, scornful whenever he even looked at him, refusing to call him anything other than an ‘it’, saying he was dangerous to his very core, saying he didn’t have feelings—even when the sadness and frightened tentative motions in his expression and body were clear as day—he even said straight to BOYD’s face that he was going to ‘fix’ his malfunctions by essentially flat-out killing him.

Gyro was furious when Mark Beaks made BOYD cry. But the first person to ever treat him inhumanely, was Gyro himself. It made him feel so unbearably guilty he almost couldn’t breathe. No matter what his eyes would look like anytime Akita’s programming kicked in—those things weren’t even there anymore. Anytime Gyro thought back, those big eyes were always so full of light—light of happiness, of sadness, of kindness, of intelligence, of innocence. How could he have ever looked at eyes like that—eyes that were capable of producing tears—and thought BOYD was evil?

Even if the child wouldn’t say so, Gyro knew there must still exist an ache within him over being rejected by the person that gave him life. He owed it to him to make it known just how sorry he was for it—even if the words kept getting jammed in the middle of his throat.

“BOYD,” he faltered, though it was now becoming easier to call him by his real name, “I need to apologize for the way I treated you back then. I know Mark Beaks hurt you when he told you that you weren’t worth his time. But the awful things I’ve said to you… they’re no different.”

BOYD calmed himself down a little to be able to speak. He didn’t face Gyro when he answered, but it wasn’t out of unacceptance—his answer was simply an automatic one.

“It’s okay…”

Gyro let go of BOYD for a moment to stare at him gravely in the face.

“No. It’s not okay.”

Gyro couldn’t remember when he’d talked so seriously before. He’d talked sternly—talked angrily—shouted several times… But as far as he knew, nothing compelled him to speak so straightforward and strict and deadpan as this in his life. He wasn’t going to let anyone make excuses for him ever again—not BOYD, and most certainly not himself.

“I said I’ve spent my whole life trying to live down my first invention being evil. But you were never made evil. I made you out to be evil. And now I’m going to spend the rest of my life living down ever having damaged you like that.”

Gyro found himself astonished that he was able to say what he did next, but nonetheless let it be said; BOYD needed to hear exactly what he was deserving of.

“And I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to do right by you. Because after everything that’s happened, I am so proud that a boy like you does right by me.”

In spite of BOYD’s constant shivering and whimpering, he was able to smile comfortingly just for a moment, nestling his head further into Gyro’s scrawny arms.

“I of all people know what it’s like to be new to Duckburg and down on your luck with nothing—with nobody. But I was fortunate. I met Scrooge McDuck and he gave me a place to work, and to make my way up the ladder. He was the only one to give me a second chance—to trust me.”

Gyro sighed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t do the same for you—as if I didn’t learn. How you stayed the same as I built you this whole time is beyond me. I’m nothing like you.”

“That’s… That’s not true,” BOYD sniffed, rubbing his eyes again, “If I make you as proud as you say, then some of that had to come from you—where else would I get it from? The only other person around me then was Dr. Akita, and then I spent twenty years asleep in Duckburg. I’m like this because you made me. And if I’m still like this, that part of you has to still be in you too—doesn’t it?”

Gyro couldn’t respond to something so kind. He couldn’t. Gyro didn’t deserve merit like that. Instead, he turned to another question that he’d been thinking of as BOYD stayed settled under his arm—something more technical, but still in reference to the android’s feelings and his sentience.

“When you shiver…” he asked with difficulty, “Is it because you’re cold? And if you overheat, do you feel feverish?”

“I do feel sort of sick when something overheats inside me… At home, it’s treated like I have a cold, which usually helps. But… when I’m cold, I operate at peak efficiency, so that’s never uncomfortable.”

BOYD’s voice was still full of quiet hiccups and characterized by the hurt within him.

“I guess I’m shivering because of how sad I feel. There are a lot of things I’m scared of—and things I’m so glad of, they hurt—but mostly, I just keep thinking back to what Mr. Beaks said. He brings up this little voice in my head that tells me people don’t want me. Like I’m making it hard for them.”

Gyro surprised himself again by stroking the back of BOYD’s head lightly. Nevertheless, he responded with defense and firmness in his tone.

“You should make it hard for people like that to want you. If you’re a waste of energy to someone like Mark Beaks, then good. The more you keep being yourself, the less they’ll stick around to hurt you.”

BOYD looked up at Gyro once more with his wet, shining eyes.

“But you won’t do that if I’m myself around you, right?”

That question pulled Gyro into a riptide of guilt so strong that it almost drove him to cry. But he squeezed his eyes shut, fighting down the urge for BOYD’s sake—this was about him. He made it clear to himself he’d never let his little creation down again when he hugged him in Tokyolk—and now he was going to make it clear to BOYD, say it out loud to his face so there was never any doubt again. Gyro rested the hand he had on BOYD’s head, held him just a tad closer with his arm, and said,

“I’m only saying this once; There is nothing you could do in front of me that wouldn’t make me want you. Ever. You can come to me for whatever you need. I’m not going anywhere.”

Gyro watched as that sentence prompted tear after tear to fall down BOYD’s heated face, nearly every part of his insides nagging uncontrollably at him when the little creature encircled his puny waist with his arms.

“I’m so glad!”

The sobs that BOYD let loose figuratively jabbed the scientist in the gut as he thought of the fact that were it not for his sheer irresponsibility, the poor little thing would never have had to be born into a world that presented such harsh treatment.

Still, BOYD wanted to cry. Didn’t the need to cry come from getting to let go—to feel better—to be alive?

Gyro thought as he instinctively continued to stroke the small head under him with his thumb. If he had brought a life into the world that was going to have bad moments, that meant that the same life was going to have happy moments too, didn’t it? Well—he already had! BOYD might as well have been built as a bluebird. Gyro should be glad BOYD was finally allowed to have this kind of release. It meant he could finally, truly, feel like the definitely real boy he was. The pain of fault and responsibility still wracked Gyro—he figured it always might—but at this point, he was relieved the poor thing he held close in the underwater lab wasn’t going to be mistreated any longer—not if he could stand to help it. ______________________________

BOYD sat in Gyro’s lap, beginning to feel better as he allowed himself to let everything out in the embrace of someone close to him. He could cry as much as he needed around Gyro. And he was going to take that allowance for all it was worth.

Part of his crying now came from the warmth he felt knowing that the old Gyro he thought he’d lost was still in there somewhere—that he hadn’t gone after all—and that even though he’d through no fault of his own gotten it lost, he had brought its return as well. That restored a lot more of BOYD’s self-worth than he fully realized.

BOYD was so grateful—so, so grateful to have that Gyro here again. He didn’t understand why at first it hurt so much to be called an ‘it’ by his creator—he didn’t remember Gyro was his creator at the time—but to think that someone was afraid of him and that someone hated him just for being himself stung so badly. He didn’t cry then—he didn’t know he could. But he cried now, over the cutting things Mark Beaks said, over Gyro’s hand at his back, over anything he could think of that needed crying over—mostly however over the knowledge by now that Gyro didn’t see him as nothing more than a destructive machine—as ‘evil down to his core’ any longer. He could tell that even if Gyro didn’t say it, he loved him; He risked his own life just to hold him in his arms, to save him and others from himself. Now BOYD really did have someone who loved him the way a father would a son. He could hug Gyro if he wanted—as many times as he felt like it—and never be brushed off. That thought brought such relief to him, his processor couldn’t take it all in.

But he didn’t tell Gyro any of this; He noticed all those looks on his face—they gave away just how terrible he felt over not being able to do as much as he wanted for him right away. So he kept any more words from leaving his mouth in order not to burden his guardian with any more guilt. BOYD simply let himself release all the emotions he could which he didn’t know he had before, as if he were wringing himself out—and as such, began soaking up all the comfort he was being given like a dry and thirsty sponge.

BOYD learned some wonderful things that day as he clung so strongly to Dr. Gearloose in that lab—much as it hurt to tremble violently, and bleed out feelings until one’s eyes burned, and let out enough raw noise fit to make one’s throat sore. He learned that being allowed to feel so sad was rewarding, and cleansing. He learned that tears were something he could produce no matter what he felt. And he learned that everyone in the world would make mistakes, no matter what or who they were, but that it was never too late to grow from them.

~ Holy shoot, wow, this is the first serious fic I’ve ever posted on here before.

I really wanted to share it, because it took so long to write—although I didn’t think it would turn out so long… 8k words! It’s the lengthiest thing I’ve ever written.

Anyway, this is a story that is very dear to my heart, not only because I put the most into it out of anything, but because studying Gyro Gearloose as a character and loving his dynamic with BOYD has been one of the most amazing things to think of through the hiatus that came after Astro BOYD.

I always loved BOYD, of course, but once I started seeing all the art and fanfics that others had started doing out of the emotions that came with his and Gyro’s backstory, I got swept up in it too, and wanted desperately to get out all those feelings into one story.

The idea came from the concept of whether or not BOYD can cry. We’ve never really seen him do it before, and it’d probably be hard because he’s normally so happy—but I kept wondering if he, as an android, even could. So it hit me; What if BOYD could cry, but Gyro wasn’t aware of it? What if even BOYD wasn’t aware of it? I kept playing with what would possibly make him cry, because even when Gyro was threatening to shut him down or was calling him ‘it’, BOYD only frowned a little. Suddenly I got the nasty idea of Mark Beaks showing up and telling him he never wants to see him again, and it built from there—I started also thinking that maybe what brings BOYD to cry is just a long enough buildup of pain, and maybe he couldn’t feel as much because Akita’s meddling with him had gotten in the way before.

On a sidenote, Mark Beaks was pretty hard to write at first; I had to make sure his confidence was switched on all the time or he’d come off a little out of character. But much as this is about Gyro & BOYD, Beaks being awful is so deliciously fun to write. I think it’s because he makes you love whoever he’s being mean to even more.

Anyway, after I’d written that part out, I spent a lot more time than I initially thought I would focusing on how all this would make Gyro feel—that is, how much guilt his responsibility would bring on. I’m really desperate to see for myself how they interact in canon from now on, but I always imagine that Gyro’s feelings which are most associated with being a father are of guilt; They make him protective of BOYD, they make him sensitive to BOYD, and they might drive him to treat BOYD—again, be more like a father. Pretty much all Gyro’s niceness comes from wanting a do-over.

I never post my serious writing publicly—mostly because I’m really tentative and shy about showing my literary ‘skills’ and the kinds of raw emotion I spill out in words sometimes—but this fic slowly became something I wanted really badly to share with the DT fandom, as a thing that could both be a way to show my own interpretation and thoughts of Gyro and BOYD, and could maybe even be liked by people as much as it is by me.

I know a good few episodes have aired since Astro BOYD did, and that it’s been a long while since the episode has been talked about, but I’ve only now been brave enough to decide to put this story out there for all to see.

I really hope you enjoyed it.

(Incidentally, I wanted to be sure to post it before Let’s Get Dangerous! airs, because I know this fic would get swallowed up by all the emotions to be had from that episode… ^^; )

[pennamesmith]

My Friend, My Skeletor

Adora and Hordak talk over coffee. Skeletor has a pleasant day. More ‘Skeletor’ stories.

*

Chattering excitedly about near-death experiences, the last of the clones strolled out of the hallway door at the end of another Ex-Horde Therapy Group session. Wrong Hordak watched them all go and waved cheerfully.

“I am so sorry about that,” Perfuma groaned, next to him. She was covered in twigs, moss, and mud, and leaned exhaustedly on Scorpia’s arm. “I didn’t realize the Whispering Woods would provide quite so... hostile an environment for a walking meditation. Or that so many of the brothers would wander away from the group. Repeatedly. No matter how many times I reminded them that they could have become emotionally dysregulated, or eaten.”

“Nonsense, noble Perfuma!” Wrong Hordak reassured her, sparkling happily. “We have learned much today about the value of understanding our responses to uncomfortable feelings, and also monsters.”

“And Adora got everyone back just fine!” Scorpia added, patting Perfuma’s head. “I mean, I think she did? I hope she did. I didn’t exactly count. I’m pretty sure we got them all. Wrong Hordak?”

While Wrong Hordak counted carefully on his fingers, Adora wrapped up leftovers from the snack table. She, too, was covered in forest detritus, and still felt some of the lightheadedness that came after turning back from She-Ra. It had been an eventful day, to say the least. Putting away the room alongside her were Catra, Hordak, Entrapta, and ‘Skeletor,’ a spindly former Horde bot Entrapta was currently refurbishing. So far the results had been mixed.

“Idiots! Foolish mortals! If I’m not there, nothing is done right!” Skeletor whined, as he stacked chairs. “Myaah!”

Adora snorted, and idly picked at some of the leftover food. Her eyes flitted to where Catra was chatting shyly with an exuberant Entrapta, and she felt her heart swell. Despite the disarray, her world was healing.

“Hey Adora!” Catra called, looking her way suddenly. “I’ve gotta, uh, talk to Entrapta about something real quick. Right outside. We’ll be back in a minute, okay?”

Adora flashed a thumbs up as she chewed her way through some stale bagels. While Catra ushered Entrapta into the hallway, Hordak glanced in Adora’s direction and caught her eye. He left Skeletor with a broom and dustpan and approached her at the table.

“Your bravery and strength were most impressive today,” Hordak commented, pouring himself a cup of something hot from a copper carafe. Despite his looming stature, he seemed smaller and humbler in Adora’s presence. “We are… indebted, once again, to your kindness and protection. Perhaps you should, as the people of this planet say, take it easy for a moment.” He gestured to a free chair and offered a second cup of the drink he’d gotten himself. Adora accepted both and plopped down with a relieved sigh.

“Thanks. Today was an adventure all right,” Adora agreed, slouching in her seat. She sniffed at the dark, steaming liquid in her cup. “What is this stuff, anyway?”

“It is of my own invention,” Hordak said, with a hint of pride. He sat in another chair next to her. “The distilled essence of roasted coffee plant seeds. It contains restorative properties. The taste is naturally bitter, but you may add sugar if you wish.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” Adora nodded, emptying most of the provided container of sweetener into her cup. Her sword flashed, and then she was stirring the drink with a tiny golden spoon. “You weren’t half bad today either, you know. I liked what you said about learning from failures.”

“Mm.”

An awkward silence stretched between them for several seconds. Adora scratched her head and a few leaves fell to the floor.

“You know, I’m proud of you.”

It was Adora who said it. Hordak looked at her in surprise, but she kept going before he could say anything.

“I know what it’s like to start a whole new life after only knowing the Horde. And what it’s like to not be trusted at first.” She paused, considering this. “I mean, I know it’s kind of different since I’m She-Ra and everyone was cool with me after like a day, and you’re the leader of the whole Etherian Horde and got brainwashed by Prime and some people still despise you even after you rebuilt Salineas and cleaned up Beast Island, and…”

She trailed off. Hordak’s expression was impassive.

“Uh, but I’m getting off track. My point is, it’s hard to keep doing the right thing after pain like that. And you are. Um, doing. The right thing, I mean.” Flustered, Adora took a generous gulp of her drink. Her eyebrows shot up and her pupils dilated by several centimeters. “Oh. Wow. Wow. This is… wow. You want to go for a run? I feel like I could go for a run all of a sudden.”

Hordak found his face softening. “I believe I understand what you are trying to say.”

Adora, caffeinated, was not listening. “I mean, look at this guy!” She gestured vaguely at Skeletor. “He’s ridiculous!”

“Behold my mystic cage of bones!” Skeletor cackled, as he emptied his dustpan into a trash bin.

“Most people would have thrown that thing out in the garbage,” Adora went on, rapidly tapping her feet.

“Entrapta did not,” Hordak countered, smiling.

“But you just… talk to it!” Adora threw her hands up, spilling some of her coffee. Skeletor saw the new mess and groaned in annoyance, fetching a mop. “You talk to it, and you’re patient with it, and you reason with it,” Adora said. “Even when it’s not being reasonable.”

“Meheheheheh! Now we’re playing in my dimension! See if you can stand up to my stun-ray!” Skeletor cried, mopping the floor.

“The mending process does not always make a great deal of sense,” Hordak conceded. “But we must be brave.”

“Speaking of,” Adora abruptly cut in. She took another huge swig of her drink. “You remember that thing I asked you about the other day? When Catra wasn’t here?”

Hordak quirked a brow. “I recall.”

“Good, because I’ve got blueprints.” Adora pulled a stack of scribbled-on paper napkins from her pocket. She held them up for Hordak. “Do you think you can do it?”

Hordak plucked a napkin from the stack and studied it. “Yes. This should be well within my scientific capabilities. I will contact you when construction is complete.” He hesitated. “Thank you for… trusting me, Adora. You are… an admirable role model.”

Adora smiled back.

“I’ve done it! I’ve triumphed at last!” Skeletor crowed as he finished cleaning.

Catra came back into the room at that moment, trailing an excitedly chattering Entrapta. When she saw Adora, Catra’s eyes bugged and she clamped a hand over the scientist’s mouth.

“That’s right, Entrapta!” Catra said, very loudly. “Science is very scientific! I couldn’t agree more!” She paused, casting her eyes back and forth. “And. Thank you for talking to me about, um… science. I respect your interest in this topic, because we are friends.”

Catra coughed.

“Aw, thanks,” Entrapta beamed, giving Catra a light pat on the head. “Hordak! I’ve got lots of new ideas for experiments after today! Listen to this!”

She and Hordak immediately fell into a world of their own, filled with trajectories and equilibriums. Adora smiled fondly at the pair and stood shakily to her feet, accepting a helping hand from Catra. She wasn’t sure if her heartbeat was racing because of the coffee, or because of the closeness of Catra’s face. But she felt fantastic.

*

Later, in their laboratory, Hordak eyed Entrapta over a paper napkin schematic. “It may amuse you to know the favor Adora asked of me today,” he began.

“Guess what Catra wants me to build?” Entrapta blurted out at the same time.

“She needs me to make her a ring,” they both finished together.

There was silence. The two mad scientists gaped at each other for a moment, and then the lab was filled with the ringing sound of their guffaws.

“Can we observe the reaction?” Entrapta squealed. “Please?”

“That would be rude, my dear.”

“Okay, okay,” she pouted. “But. Are we going to tell them?”

“Of course not! That would corrupt the data.”

Entrapta clapped happily. “Oh, this is going to be so much fun! Do you think we should make them matching, like ours?” She tapped at a purple First Ones crystal that hung on a pendant around her neck, the twin to Hordak’s own. “Ooh! Or what if we made ones that turn into robots?”

Hordak, who still felt laughter bubbling up from inside him, leaned in closer to his imperfect, beautiful partner. His imagination burned. They had much to scheme.

“Ahh,” said Skeletor. “I can’t remember when I’ve had a more pleasant day!”

[siren07tucker]

Coraline Grumbot AU inspired bye @petrichormeraki

Part 8 Charms will harm ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ|| ∴╎ꖎꖎ リ𝙹ℸ ̣ ℸ ̣ ᔑꖌᒷ ⍑╎ᒲ ᔑ∴ᔑ|| ⎓∷𝙹ᒲ ⚍ᓭ

This one is long and I hope you guys enjoy it

Grumbot happily skipped in to Larry, The snail house was always cozy and comforting it usually smelled like Spices and Old paper, but it’s spelled terrible like fermented spider eyes and nether-rack but he ignored it.

“Ss~ ss~ss~ jelly? Ss~ss~ jelly come here kitty?!” GB kept calling for jelly, when the familiar appeared Grum smiled happily as he watched her materialize from a Book.

“jelly! Oh I miss you so much! I have a lot to tell you! I went on a adve-“ GB was cut off by jelly hissing at him she wasn’t usually aggressive?

“J jelly? It’s me?” Grum Felt sad as jelly continued hissing. GB sat in a corner and waited for his uncle a few minutes later Scar walked in

“Ok My little buddy today-“ scar stopped as he saw GB Sitting in the corner as jelly hissed that him.

“Jelly?” The cat looked at him before walking away

“That... that was odd? Grum are you OK?” The little robot nodded his head and smiled

“yes uncle scar i’m fine” The wizard smiled before walking over to one of his many desks.

“Well before I was interrupted today we were making charms or protection amulets!” Grumbot smiled

“that sounds like so much fun!” GB clapped his hands excitedly. Scar started getting some things to make jewelry he also got some kids stuff like air dry clay, pipe cleaners and beads.

“now what is rule four of Magic?” Grum didn’t really have to think about it.

“your intent and emotions are put into the spell or potions more than your ingredients! Like you should never be angry when you make a happiness potion” scar smiled proudly at his student

“good job now how do you feel right now?” GB had to think on that right now he was happy but he was also a bit scared and wary?

“I-I guess I feel confused? right now I’m happy but recently things have been off?” Scar smiled gently

“I know how you feel and those aren’t bad emotions GB. What are you confused about? If I might ask” Something told him not to trust his uncle and he listened

“I- I just wondering what I could be when I grow up? I know I’ll still be a hermit no matter what but what kind of job will I have” scar smiled sweetly

“ well you know you don’t have to assign yourself a job do whatever makes you happy but right now you’re a kid it’s good to wonder about that type of thing but just don’t worry about it!” Scar grabbed the box of supplies and put it down in front of GB with a smile

“How about we make some jewelry when we’re done I’ll charm mine and you can try to charm yours OK!” The little robot smiled happily at the idea of casting a spell

“i’m going to make mine super pretty!” Scar chuckled as his nephew began rummaging through the box for materials. GB decided he will make two pieces of jewelry a necklace and a bracelet The bracelet will be for his uncle and the necklace will be for his brother.

Scar thought about the small amulet he had in mind four Grumbot, scar knew he had to make somethings a little robot would like which was easy Grumbot like basically everything! The wizard finally decided on a design he grabbed a Clear crystal, A thin copper chain, a dried poppy, Redstone and some small copper gears. It was easy enough to shape the Crystal and connected to the chain but he had to put the decorations in spells inside of it.

“i’ll be right back GB hold down the fort!” The little robot giggled and nodded his head as he continued with his own jewelry. Scar gently please the crystal and Materials down onto a rock, He took out his wand and gently poked the Small Poppy it appeared in the middle of the Crystal. The wizard work carefully as he placed the gears in they were for a aesthetic but they were also a bit useful especially when he started to add the Redstone into the gears even though they were encased in Crystal they begin spinning gently.

“Nice” scar happily pump his fist in the air he couldn’t believe it actually worked! He called Jelly to him he’s familiar walked over and rubbed against him. Scar gently plucked a piece of her her from her then did the same to himself, he then placed them within the crystal it was now powered by his personal reserves of magic found it would be used as a summoning Point for jelly and him if the ambulance breaks. Scar got up and made his way to Larry.

“I am back!” Scar called out to his nephew

“i’m ready to charm my staff uncle scar!“ scar smiled as he made his way to a small cabinet and took out Grum’s training wand it looked kind of like a Redstone torch and a repeater had a baby it was made from Oakwood, Redstone, poppy flowers and The core was made from Grian’s wing feathers.

“Ok! My little student do you know who you’re making your charms for-“ GB cut him off

“yeah! Rule seven when dealing with protection spells of any kind you must know why you were casting them for the unknown is where we get our power but we grow our power by using the knowledge we have!” Scar proudly smiled at Grumbot

“you are correct! So do you know the people well? Do you care for that?” GB had it determined look on his face

“Yes! Yes I do you” scar handed GB his wand, The small robot held it with gentle hands.

“Ok here are a couple of simple charms you can do!” GB found two that he liked! He cleared his voice box and started to feed his wand magic like how his uncle scar taught him.

“01001100 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 00110001” GB smiles as the bracelet glowed a soft read the color of his magic. He focused on the necklace now, thinking of the charm he wanted for his little brother.

“01010011 01100001 01100110 01100101 01110100 01111001 00110010” his uncle smiled proudly is both charms glowed red and gave off a comforting feeling.

“Great job! Grum I think this is some of your best work!” GB smiles happily as he presented the bracelet to his uncle the bracelet at Green and blue beats and charms on it The charms were a little diamond, jellies Face, a little Larry and A heart. Scars eyes teared up as he put the bracelet on

“does it fit?” Scar did not trust his voice so he nodded, GB happily smiled! Scarred cleared his voice before taking out his own wand, it was made from birchwood, diamonds and crystals, jungle vines and the core was made from dragon bones. Scar would have to place a few combined the spells if he wanted to protect Grumbot from the dark force that Grian was scared of

“ʖ╎ʖʖ╎↸╎ ʖ𝙹!¡ ʖ𝙹𝙹 ⎓𝙹∷ ||𝙹⚍∷ ⎓ᔑᒲ╎ꖎ╎ᒷᓭ ꖎ𝙹⍊ᒷ ∴╎ꖎꖎ !¡∷𝙹ℸ ̣ ᒷᓵℸ ̣ ||𝙹⚍ b╎ʖʖ╎↸╎-b𝙹ʖʖ╎↸╎-b𝙹𝙹 ℸ ̣ ⍑╎ᓭ ᓭ⍑ᔑꖎꖎ ꖌᒷᒷ!¡ ||𝙹⚍∷ ⍑ᒷᔑ∷ℸ ̣ !¡⚍∷ᒷ ᔑリ↸ ℸ ̣ 𝙹 ∷ᒷᔑᓭᓭ⚍∷ᒷ ||𝙹⚍ ∴╎ℸ ̣ ⍑ ᔑ b╎ʖʖ╎↸╎-b𝙹ʖʖ╎↸╎-b𝙹𝙹 i’ꖎꖎ ᒲᔑꖌᒷ ᓭ⚍∷ᒷ ||𝙹⚍ ꖌリ𝙹∴ ╎ℸ ̣ ’ᓭ ℸ ̣ ∷⚍ᒷ ∴╎ℸ ̣ ⍑ ᔑ b╎ʖʖ╎↸╎-b𝙹ʖʖ╎↸╎-b𝙹𝙹” The necklace cloud blue with scars magic. He picked up the necklace and showed it to the little robot.

“Here you go” GB smiled as scar helped him clip it on

“Thank you! uncle scar it’s a pretty! I’ll never take it off” scar chuckled has he told Grum what it does

“it will protect you from bad magic OK. It took a lot out of me so how about we read some magic books and relaxed?” For the rest of the day the two wizards relaxed safe in the snail Shell.

[hawkbucks]

16. the one where anything written on your skin appears on your soulmate's skin as well. I just imagine MIT tony falling asleep and rhodey drawing a dick on his face which also appears on Bucky aka the winter soldier one of the most deadly Assassins

This really got away from me. Somewhat angsty? Idk hgjfkdls I go from talking about a dick on Bucky’s face to… well, a certain date. It sorta ends happy.

The Asset stares blankly at the concrete wall in front of him, shoulders stiff and knuckles turning white as he grips the edge of the steel slab they have the audacity to call a bed. He breathes in and out, in and out, long, deep lungfuls of air. The taste of ice still lingers on his tongue, and there’s a chill in his bones that aches.

His Handler circles around him, hands clasped behind their back as they relay the details of his mission. “Do you understand?” they ask, snappish, barely glancing at him out of the corners of their eyes. He isn’t important enough for direct eye contact; he’s learned that a long time ago.

Before he can respond, his Handler does a double-take, looking at him with widening eyes. “What,” they start, “in the fuck is that.”

He makes no noise as they hoist him up and drag him in front of a stained mirror, their clipped fingernails digging into the flesh of his right bicep. Right in the middle of his forehead is a rather… phallic looking symbol drawn in black marker. Still dazed, he looks confusedly at his Handler, unsure if this is some sort of test.

An irritated growl rips itself from his Handler’s throat before he finds himself being shoved back into his cryostasis chamber. Before he slips back into the darkness, he picks up bits and pieces of harshly spoken Russian. Something to do with a “soulmate”? Whatever it is, he’s sure that he won’t be woken up again until that problem is solved.

Thankfully, the next time he’s up to bat, there are no phallic symbols drawn anywhere on his body. In fact, nothing appears on his skin the entire time his Handler gives him information on another mission. He’s noticed, though, that the once-clean concrete wall is now stained with mottled red, greens, and blacks. The light in the back right of the room–which flickered the last time he was here–now seems to have been ripped out, if the copper wires dangling from its previously occupied hole in the ceiling is any indication.

He can’t help but to wonder if they remember what happened last time. Or maybe they do, and they’re just desperate. It’s not like he’s going to ask; that’s a quick way for him to get disciplined for speaking out of turn.  

A manila folder is pressed into his hands. He understands what he has to do.

He sits on a rather uncomfortable plastic chair behind the counter in a convenience store. The actual cashier is conked out in the backroom, their name tag currently decorating the front of his shirt. A cheesy pop song blares from the radio sitting on a black table behind him, of which the audio quality is not the greatest.

There’s really nothing to be done as he waits for his target to come in, besides reading a battered pile of magazines sitting in a cardboard box by his feet. The top one doesn’t even seem socially acceptable to be read in public. He absentmindedly drums his fingers on the surface of the counter along with the beat of the song, reading the far away labels of Doritos bags and Red Bull cans. Out of all the places for his target to frequent…

As he studies a mole on the heel of his palm, blocky–yet elegant–writing starts to form across its surface.

Call Jan – need help for lab tmrw

His brows knit together, and he clenches and unclenches his fist, watching as the words roll and crinkle on his skin. If he sees what they write on their skin, could they see what he writes on his? Curiosity bubbles up in him like a volcano waiting to explode.

Biting his bottom lip, he reaches for a ballpoint pen sitting on the edge of the counter. He presses the cool tip against his wrist and writes. Hello. His letters are lopsided and decidedly ugly compared to the other’s, but at least it’s legible. He hopes.

Holy shit, is hastily scribbled below his greeting. All these years, and now you answer?

Yes. Sorry.

You should be! I’ve been sending you messages ever since I knew what a soulmate was, but you never wrote back! I just assumed I didn’t have one.

Something like guilt stirs at the bottom of his stomach, but his attention is drawn to that word: Soulmate?

For the next few minutes, no new words appear. He’s on the verge of giving up and scrubbing away the pen ink on his wrist before he gets a reply. You aren’t joking.

Why would I be?

I don’t know. To screw with me or something? Have you been living under a rock?

Kinda. That’s close enough to the truth.

Yeah, you must have been if you haven’t replied to my messages for the past 9 years. What’s your name?

He frowns. It changes. One day he’s Nicholai and the other he’s David. He’s been called Matthieu and he’s been called Sebastian. He doesn’t have a true, solid name. Then, one pops in his head. One that feels vaguely familiar, comforting in a way that he can’t put a finger on. James.

Cool. My best friend is named James, too. My name is Anthony, but you can call me Tony.

Hello, Tony.

Hi, James! A small smiley face appears next to the exclamation point.

The bell above the door rings, bringing him back to reality. He snaps his head up, recognizing his target’s face from the dossier. I have to go now, Tony, but I’ll talk to you soon.

He doesn’t get to see Tony’s reply before he throws the pen with devastating accuracy.

By the time he was finished dispatching his target, Tony’s messages have all disappeared. He feels a twinge of disappointment in his chest when he realizes that he never got to see what Tony said after he bid him farewell, and only God knows how long it’ll be before he’s taken back out.

He scrubs any and all traces of the ink off of his arm, not wanting his Handler to demand an explanation should they see even a faint mark. If he were to mention this soulmate of his… well, he has no doubt that what they would put him through would make him wish he never even picked up that pen.

Throwing the pen into the cardboard box from earlier, he makes his way out of the store with no more than a passing glance at the now bloodied floor.

The walls are stainless steel now, not concrete, and the lights are all a harsh white that wash the room in its fluorescence. His Handler is different–younger and crueler in the way the corners of their mouth turn up.

Instead of a folder, he’s handed some black device, molded perfectly to fit in his ear. They motion at him to put it on. With shaky hands, he does.

A voice booms in his ear, much too loud for how sensitive his senses are, but he manages to keep his face schooled. He grits his teeth, jaw clenching. His Handler looks him straight in the eye. “You keep this on you at all times, do you understand?” He realizes right then that it’s their voice that he’s hearing.

He nods stiffly, glaring up at them.  

They grin, looking almost wolf-like. “Good.”

He stops by a convenience store like the one before to buy himself a couple of granola bars and energy drinks. If this mission is going to go the way he thinks it’s going to go, he’s going to be camping at that place for a while, and what his Handler packed for him can barely be considered food.

His Handler also doesn’t seem to keep that close of an eye on their wallet.

“I know you took some money,” they say, although they don’t sound that annoyed.

He rolls his eyes, picking up a small bag of chips. He can’t exactly reply, not without a microphone. As he walks to the checkout, a pack of pens catches his eye.

Without hesitation, adds it to his basket.

Hello, Tony, he writes over his pulsepoint, sitting in a tree next to a craggly, old street. Underneath him lies a motorcycle, covered up by the bushes. The night sky above him is a gradient of hazy blues and blacks, with the only light being provided by the flashlight he has pinned to the front of his vest.

Asshole, is all he gets back. You and I have a very different definition of “soon.”

I’m sorry.

It’s been 2 years, James. He sucks in a breath. 2 years? He’s sure that he’s been out for longer than that before, but when put it in the perspective of someone who doesn’t know who he is… Where have you been?

My job is very demanding. It’s not a lie, but it’s not the truth either.  

What are you? The President of some foreign country?

No.

A spy? An assassin? A soldier?

I can’t tell you.

Great, that means you’re some sort of super secret government spy. Don’t worry, I won’t tell. Can you at least tell me how old you are? I didn’t get to ask you that last time.

Using the bottom of the pen, he scratches at his temple. His age? Like his name, it fluctuates, but he settles on a number that feels right. 26.

Oh. You’re only 5 years older than me. Thank god, I thought you were like… 45.

5 years. So, Tony’s 21? I’m not.

Yeah, I know that now… so, how are you?

I’m bored. Waiting.

For what?

It’s for my job.

…Okay. I’m kind of waiting, too.

For what?

My parents. They’re out somewhere, and I wanted to surprise them.

We can talk. It’ll be less boring.

Tony draws another smiley face. Okay!

From their chat, he learns that Tony is wicked smart. He attended M.I.T, made a functioning robot, and obtained 2 master’s degrees before he was even able to drink. His best friend is in the Air Force, and he has this butler he loves like a father. He likes shrimp carbonara and refuses to touch green beans unless they’re shoved down his throat. Tony, he concludes, is utterly fascinating, and he makes that clear in all the sentences he writes back.

What about you? Tony writes after going on a paragraph-long rant about some movie series called Star Wars. (They both had to wait for some messages to disappear lest they start taking off their pants for more writing space.)

What do you mean?

Do you like Star Wars?

I’ve never watched it.

Tony’s next response takes up a good chunk of his arm: BLASPHEMY!

Can you give me your number? We need to arrange a meetup, and it gets exhausting to write.

His hand freezes. Number? I don’t have one.

A few seconds pass. Then: You can’t be serious, James.

I’m being serious.

Yeah. You’re the same guy who didn’t know what a soulmate was. I believe you.

Thank you.

You know what you can do? I’ll give you an address. You in New York?

Yes.

Good. What’s your last name?

God, he really wishes Tony would stop asking these kinds of questions. He settles on the first one that pops in his head. Barnes.

Okay. Go here–an address is scribbled across the crook of his elbow–say your name is James Barnes, and ask for Tony.

Tony what?

Tony Stark.

He drops his pen. Stark. There’s no way. Except that his Handler gave him all of the information on his target, including the fact that they have a son named Anthony, but he preferred to be called Tony. Anthony’s birth date matches up with his Tony’s age. Anthony went to M.I.T, too. Anthony reported having made contact with his soulmate 2 years ago, having previously thought he had none.

In the distance, he hears the purring of a car’s engine.

He switches off his flashlight and jumps down.

James, are you there? appears on his right palm as he smashes Howard Stark’s face in. You didn’t even say bye. Kinda rude.

He finds himself scrubbing away all evidence of conversation on his arm again, this time using boiling hot water and going until his skin is pink and raw.

Back in the base, his Handler grabs at his forearm, gripping him so tightly that the skin around their hand turns a pale white. “We know you’ve been writing to someone,” they whisper, low and dangerous. “Stop. Now.”

He nods.

My parents are dead, is scribbled over the middle of his right forearm. The glass in front of him fogs up with ice. If you’re there, I really need to talk to someone right now.

James?

Where are you?

I thought we were going to watch Star Wars together. I’ve asked, and no one’s said that you’ve visited, and I told everyone that you pretty much get priority. There are only two James Barnes that I know of: you and Captain America’s old war buddy. Were you named after him?

I liked talking to you. You can’t just pull another 2 years on me. First time I didn’t mind that much, because we didn’t really know each other, and I didn’t want to seem clingy, but I really like you, James.

It gets hard to ignore. There’s a tugging sensation in his gut every time he allows one of Tony’s messages to go unanswered. He manages to shake off the tail he has on his next mission. They must’ve assigned a more inexperienced person. Who knew they were accepting amateurs these days?

He swipes a pen from an office supply store. Hello, Tony.

You. It’s amazing how such a short word can hold so much bitterness.

I’m sorry.

What the fuck is up with you?

Has it been that long? Sure, the world seems far more technologically advanced than it did when he talked to Tony a 2nd time, but he figures it can’t be more than 8, 10 years.

It’s been 30 fucking years, James. Oh.

…I’m really sorry.

Don’t be. But he feels like he should be. Listen, I can’t write that much right now. I’m on my way to Afghanistan for a demonstration. We can try again later. Bye.

Bye. I’m sorry, again.

Sure.

TONY STARK: MISSING?

Three months later, and, for some reason, he’s still out in the field. Something his Handler–another new one–said about another target having cropped up during the tail end of his original mission.

Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the news.

Quickly, he dips into a store along the street and asks to use their bathroom. He fishes the very same pen he took from the supply store out of his jacket pocket. I have. Are you okay?

I’ve been better.

As long as–he’s cut off by Tony’s writing overlapping his own. Where are you?

In a bathroom, which is inside a store.

Smartass. Where’s the store? Give me the address.

Why?

I’m coming to see you. Right now.

What if I’m on the other side of the country?

I have a private jet… of sorts.

But by the time you arrive, I won’t be in that store anymore.

Just give me the goddamn address.

So he does. Meet me inside.

As he rifles through a rack of leather jackets that cost an obscene amount of money, he feels a tap on his shoulder.

He whirls around quickly, eyes flaring, before he comes face to face with the most expensive-looking man he’s ever seen. They don’t seem the type to be working with his, er, employers, and with that sling around their arm, he doubts they could do much damage to him. So, he relaxes. Just a little.

“Are you James?” they ask. “Please be James. I’ve asked at least 4 other guys already and they’ve all looked at me weird.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“It’s me. Tony.”

WOO, I ACTUALLY MADE THEM MEET AT THE END. I was actually going to end it right after Tony leaves for Afghanistan, but I decided to let them meet ‘cause y’all deserve that after the last fill.

Tony still doesn’t know James killed his parents. He doesn’t know James is the Winter Soldier. But I had to stop or else this really would’ve… turned into its own monster.

Thank you for reading!

[threadsketchier]

The Glam is strong with this one

Hokay.  Yeah, this project is out of left field but this is what happens at the nexus of my nerdiness, a dim fantasy about what shenanigans I’d get up to if I was an influencer, and a Coastal Scents Hot Pot mega-sale.

(So Coastal Scents is an affordable cosmetics site primarily known for their eyeshadow, but even at $3 a pop for singles, that adds up quick.  Ah, but when their singles go on sale for $0.99 each, now we’re talking.)

For a long time I’d thought to myself, if I could theme an eyeshadow palette around Star Wars, how would I do it?  (Especially because, shockingly, this...hasn’t really been a thing before?  I’m surprised that it hasn’t?)  And then the sale appeared and I was like, why not do a palette per movie for the OT?  Because I’m Extra™ AF.

The empty magnetic palettes themselves aren’t anything remarkable to look at, but I will say, they’re great quality for how cheap they are - weighty, sturdy plastic with a secure closure, full-sized mirror, and nice padding around the empty wells.  10/10 would totally recommend, not just for CS shadows but any standard-sized eyeshadow pot.

However, this part of the project is still a WIP, because I wanted logos for each of the movies on the top lid, not just to help me tell them apart when they’re closed but for the Aesthetic™ too, obviously.  My original plan was to track down good-quality stickers or vinyl decals, but it’s turned out to be a lot more difficult than I anticipated.  Decals are way too big, since they’re generally intended for car windows - these little dudes are only about 5x4″ roughly.  The only other film logo stickers I could find that would work in a pinch came from a vintage 1997 set, but they’re pricey for what they are and I’d feel wasteful not using the rest of the stickers.  In the future, as time allows, I might try to mock up the logos on their starry backgrounds as images on a USB drive or something to take to my local FedEX to print out custom stickers.

Anyhoops, on to the shadows!

I know what you’re thinking - WTF is up with that color selection, those don’t look practical at all, etc. etc.  I’m well aware of that.  XD  These weren’t made with logical use in mind; first and foremost they’re meant to retell the story in color.  Each shadow represents either a character or an event in the films, placed in chronological order.  And this is entirely subjective - I’m just one person with questionable tastes, this could have gone in so many other directions.  But this is what I felt like crafting.

(Apologies for my shitty lighting, I’d have preferred to shoot these in full sunlight but I can’t really do that here at home, so I tried my best with a mix of window daylight and interior light plus some help from a handheld LED lamp.)

First up, A New Hope:

Shadow names in order from left to right, top row to bottom row [format - my label in “ ” followed by the actual shadow name in italics]:

“Dark Lord” - Incognito, a matte black representing Darth Vader’s first appearance

“Princess” - Cloud White, a matte white for Leia’s white senatorial gown

“Mindless Philosopher” - 18 Karat Gold, a rich golden shimmer for C-3PO (which didn’t come across accurately in these photos, it’s not quite as dark and dull as it looks)

“Astromech” - Electric Blue, a matte blue for R2-D2

“Farthest” - Pumpkin Pie, a matte light tan brown for Tatooine

“Skywalker” - Iceberg, a pale blue shimmer for Luke Skywalker, evoking both the color of the sky and his eyes

“Old Wizard” - Deep Roast, a matte brown representing Jedi robes and Obi-Wan Kenobi

“Legacy” - Azure Frost, a more vivid aqua blue shimmer for the blade of the Skywalker lightsaber

“Fast Ship” - Aluminum Taupe, a light taupe grey/brown shimmer - do I even need to say why I picked this shadow, it’s not just a stand-in for the Falcon, all I can think about is Robot Chicken’s “WHAT THE HELL IS AN ALUMINUM FALCON???!!?!” XD

“Superlaser” - Limelight, a bright acid-green satin for the Death Star’s primary weapon

“That’s No Moon,” - Thunderous, a deep gray satin for the Death Star itself

“Flyboy” - Orange Crush, a matte bright orange for the Rebels’ starfighter flightsuits

Next, The Empire Strikes Back:

“Ice Planet” - White Silver, an icy white shimmer for Hoth, natch

“Executor” - Ash Grey, a matte medium gray for Vader’s flagship and the Imperial Navy in general

“Slimy Mudhole,” Olive, a matte drab olive green for Yoda and the swamps of Dagobah

“Asteroids!” - Boca Mocha, a milk chocolate shimmer for Hoth’s asteroid belt

“Among the Clouds” - Peachy Copper, a...well, peachy copper shimmer, lol, for the luminous sunrise and sunsets of Bespin

“Baron” - Golden Avocado, a slightly olive-toned deep gold shimmer evoking the lining of Lando’s sweet, sweet cape

“Absolutely Beautiful” - Raisin Berry, a deep wine-burgundy shimmer for Leia’s Cloud City dress

“Bounty Hunter” - *Team Captain, a deep, grungy matte green for Boba Fett (*This is a Colourpop shadow single that I felt worked better than the original shadow from Coastal Scents, Olivewood - it wound up being too close to Olive above.)

“Carbonite” - Stone Cold, a deep, slightly brown-tinged gray satin for Han’s carbonite block

“Fatigues” - Ashen, a light warm gray satin for Luke’s military fatigues

“The Responsible One” - *Lost and Found, a matte cornflower blue for Lando’s blue shirt, meant to symbolize the shedding of his façade (notice how he somehow loses his cape after he begins helping Leia & Co. escape) and the revelation of his ethics as he tries to help keep both our heroes and his own people free from the Empire (*This is another Colourpop shadow; it’s nearly identical to the CS version but the CS pot came with a minor blemish, so I swapped this in.)

“Core Shaft” - Steel Grey, a medium cool gray soft shimmer for the location of Luke and Vader’s duel and that paternal bombshell

Last but not least, Return of the Jedi:

“Return” - Nectar, a pale tan shimmer representing the sun-baked sands of the Dune Sea as Luke comes back to Tatooine to rescue Han and face down Jabba

“Someone Who Loves You” - Kodiak, a deep bronze-brown soft shimmer for Leia’s Boushh attire

“Pit of Carkoon” - Chocolate Berry, a dark plum-brown satin for the depths of the sarlaac’s mouth

“Old and Weak” - Sage Sensation, a subdued yellow-green satin for Luke’s melancholy return to Dagobah for Yoda’s death and the revelation of his mentors’ deception

“Forest Moon” - Pinehurst, a rich matte cool green for the forests of Endor’s moon

“Bright Tree Village” - Harvest Brown, a matte red-toned brown for the redwood trees and Ewok village

“Father” - *Vale, a black pressed glitter symbolizing Anakin Skywalker’s gradual redemption, by showing the darkness of his anguished soul shot through with glimmers of light (*This glitter is from Dear Katie Brown, and while per their FAQs this is likely not an eye-safe glitter I couldn’t resist including it here, it was too perfect for what I was trying to get across.)

“ISYHCANL” - Spring Fever, a bright lime-green satin for Luke’s lightsaber blade, and a tongue-firmly-in-cheek nod at the crazy acronym this prop has been given in the replica prop community for the 5-second shot of it being turned over in Vader’s hands as he says, “I see you have constructed a new lightsaber.”  Fun fact: that version of Luke’s lightsaber - also called the “Hero” version due to being mass-produced in toys, artwork, etc. as his official saber - is not the one he carries around for 90% of the movie.  The prop most featured onscreen is known as the V2, a much more beat-up looking hilt.

“Conflict” - *One Night Stand, a rich metallic red shimmer for Vader’s blade and the turmoil within him as he attempts to turn his son to the Dark Side (*This shadow comes from Looxi Beauty.)

“So Be It” - *Dreamboat, a pale lavender-blue shimmer for the Emperor’s Force lightning (*Another Looxi Beauty shadow)

“Pyre” - Bahama Mama, a light orange shimmer for the flames of Anakin Skywalker’s funeral pyre

“Victory Celebration” - Fairy Gold, a yellow-gold satin that’s not exactly meant to represent the Rebellion’s party at the end of the film, but the actual yellow coloring of the Star Wars logo itself, showcasing how the OT saga has come to a satisfying conclusion

Am I tempted to create looks with these?  Of course.  But to be completely honest, I assembled these mostly for the fun of it when I saw I had an opportunity without breaking the bank.  I already have more than enough eyeshadow to play around with (especially since I don’t have time to wear them on a daily basis), and I actually wish I could gift these to someone else who could get some creative enjoyment out of them, but I don’t know who would want them, lol.  For now they’ll hang out in my collection, and hopefully I can get those decals done for them.

[macchiatomingi]

dysnomia.exe (ATEEZ Cyberpunk!AU) Chapter 2

Chaos//Order

After the news report, the house was sent into a flurry of activity. Yunho and San were setting up the firewall to prevent trackers from getting to it, Jongho and Yeosang were hooking up the microphone and making sure the surrounding area would be silent. Mingi hadn’t left his room since the report, but everyone knew better than to try and speak to him. You, Seonghwa, and Wooyoung sat with Hongjoong, discussing the group's next move.

“We have to leave,” Seonghwa starts, his voice cutting through a thick veil of tension.

“Where can we go.” Hongjoong replies, voice so certain that you couldn’t register his statement as a question or just a general sentence, the tension in his shoulders suggested a question, but the certainty of his voice suggested statement. Humans were confusing.

“We can scout,” Wooyoung starts, using a scarred hand to push silver hair out of his face, “the normal team can go out and look for a new place to live. We need to go hunting anyways, so we can kill two birds with one stone.” He finishes, leaning forward and resting his hands on Hongjoong’s desk.

Confusion sets in; why would Wooyoung want to throw stones at birds? Now isn’t the time for that.

“Wooyoung,” you start, turning to face him, “what is the purpose of killing birds with stones? There are more pressing matters at hand,” you say.

“Well, y’see Calixte-”

“As well as now not being an appropriate time,” you cut in, green numbers and charts flashing in front of your vision, “it is statistically impossible for anyone outside of Mingi to hit a bird with a bullet, let alone a stone. Attempting to kill birds with stones at this point in time would result in an approximate four hours and thirty-seven minutes wasted, and an approximate two hours and twenty-three minutes wasted by Mingi.” you conclude, the green haze leaving your eyes as you focused once again on Wooyoung’s features.

The room was silent, aside from Seonghwa’s muffled laughter at your literal acceptance of Wooyoung’s words.

“Anyways…” Hongjoong begins, you notice some of the tension has left his body and were relieved until another jolt of electricity shocked your system. Human emotions are stupid and cause nothing but pain, that’s the conclusion you’ve come to due to San’s faulty codes, “I’ll send the normal squad out for scouting after the transmission is completed, deal?” he finishes, pushing himself up from his seat.

Your eyes glow blue in affirmation while Wooyoung nods. Seonghwa took this as a chance to exit the room, and he did, followed by Hongjoong. Wooyoung followed shortly after which left you alone.

Your systems were malfunctioning, especially your sight receptors. You should probably notify someone of that, but now isn’t the time. Stress levels were much higher than what they normally were at the time of transmissions, and you knew to request an update to your hardware would add on to the already stressful situation.

The house was silent upon your exit from the room, realizing that everyone was standing outside the recording room as Hongjoong made another address, you quietly made your way over. Not a single floorboard creaked under your weight, and nobody knew you even left the room as you took a place standing behind Yunho, too short to see over his shoulders but not needing to.

“In light of the recent news report,” Hongjoong begins, his voice as smooth as silk as he spoke, “We feel as if it is necessary to re-explain our goals. Dysnomia is, in short, the Greek goddess of lawlessness. Disorder. Rebellion. Anarchy. Whatever word you’d like to use. Our goal? Answers. We seek answers for the crimes committed against us and the 15,892 others that lost their lives in the forced Wiping of Sector 00913. We seek the truth, we seek closure, and we will stop at nothing to get it.” He drawls, voice sharpening as his words take on more emotion, “Whether that be murder, or starting riots, we will get what it is we ask for.” He says.

The air stills, and you can see everyone get tense once more. Hongjoong speaks again but this time his voice is...darker...harsher than what it was.

“The answers we seek come from IDAT, from the Integrated Defense of Automated Technology. The president finds it in himself to call us the criminals when he is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. We will bring his crimes to light, and we will bring peace and solace to those affected by him and his men’s regime.” He says, every word laced with a poison of which you’ve never heard.

The transmission ends shortly after; it was a success. 

There were no attempted breachings, and it was broadcasted on every major news network and website in Nuseoul. As quickly as everything was brought out, it was packed back up. Hongjoong exited the recording room and instructed everyone to go with him into the city to buy new clothes and hair dyes as well as materials for your new physical suit.

“Calixte,” Seonghwa says, stopping in front of you as he puts on his coat, “stay here and make sure Mingi doesn’t do anything stupid.”

Your eye flashed a shade of yellow, “Command received,” you say.

Seonghwa nods and follows everyone else out the house, leaving you alone with Mingi.

This wasn’t a problem, it’s not that you disliked the boy, you were incapable of disliking anyone after all. You took a seat on the couch once more and the TV automatically cut on in response. Every news network in Nuseoul was talking about the recent transmission, and after conducting a quick search of the Internet, you realized that every forum was talking about it as well. Eventually settling on a random TV station playing a mindless cartoon, you set your systems to Hibernate to try and alleviate some of the stress your sensors had been under for practically the entire day.

You were brought out of your hibernation when a body was sensed nearby, turning to face the direction of the body, you took note of the figure in front of the fridge.

Mused brown hair fell in front of sharp features, the boy stood unmoving until he noticed you staring at him.

“What,” he starts, gravely voice cutting through the air, “what do you want?”

“My sensors tell me that you are distressed,” you say as you run an emotional diagnostics exam, “the main emotion you seem to be feeling now is the one titled Stress. According to the WPA, one way to alleviate Stress would be to discuss your problems with someone around you.” you finish.

“I don’t need to-”

“My sensors also indicate that you are experiencing the emotion titled Anger.”

“Well yeah because when you-”

“My sensors indicate that you-”

“Can you shut up?” The door to the fridge slams shut, rattling the entire appliance and knocking down some of the boxes of cereal on top of it.

Your already scrambled sensors are scrambling even more at this point, a variety of emotions swirl in front of you ranging from Confusion to Rage to Distress and you don’t know what any of them are, you only have Excitement and Confusion. San hasn’t created any new emotions for you yet.

“I do not understand,” you say, head tilting to the side, “it is clear that you are experiencing a variety of negative emotions yet you refuse to acknowledge the solutions that have been provided to attempt to resolve them, Song Mingi.”

“I can’t believe I’m arguing with a robot,” he says, laughing at the pure stupidity of the situation, “I don’t need your advice, I don’t need advice from a talking piece of metal.”

“I am an android, an android made of a copper-titanium alloy.”

“Like that makes it any better.”

You stay silent, you couldn’t understand why he wasn’t taking the advice you gave. Your primary purpose was to serve ATZ and ensure that they are well and that their missions are a success, that is what you were reprogrammed for. That is what you were repurposed for. The fact that you were so blatantly ignored when the person obviously needed help was...as Jongho would say, baffling.

“I apologize if my lack of Empathy renders me a nuisance to you,” you hear a scoff, “I have requested that San program the emotion so that I can better understand complex human emotions. I hope that I will be more understanding once I receive that program.”

“You sound like a fucking IDAT robot.” He groans, your vision flashes an ERROR message once again.

Silence consumes the room as you turn back towards the TV, slowing down your systems once again to accommodate the influx of error messages you receive. You eventually fall into another Hibernation state, only waking out of it when Wooyoung restarts your systems to notify you that you, him, and Mingi will be leaving to both scout the surrounding area for a new home and hunt for dinner for at least the next week.

The three of you left in silence, you trailing behind Mingi, who followed behind Wooyoung. All of you dressed in black to blend in with the darkness around you. Wooyoung has a small pouch of throwing knives tied around his thigh, while Mingi has at least three guns on his person. You’re left with nothing, but that’s okay as you’re able to be repaired and are thus, as Mingi says, disposable.

“There is a heat signature about fifty-four feet in front of us, near a water source, most likely a stream.” You say.

“Got it,” Mingi replies as he passes in front of Wooyoung, taking the gun that was slung over his shoulder and flipping it around, he crouches down and brings his eye up to the scope, powering the weapon on. He adjusts his position a bit before he holds his breath, you take note of how his heart rate slows and his body relaxes. He pulls the trigger and is knocked back a bit due to the rebound from the weapon, but you still see that the animal was indeed hit by the bullet.

“The target has been knocked down.”

“No need to state the obvious.”

“Be nice.”

The three of you walk forward to the animal, you take note of it’s twitching form as it’s life slowly ebbs out of the bullet wound. Walking past Wooyoung and Mingi, you pick up the animal and sling it over your shoulder, turning back around to face them.

“We can continue searching for shelter now.” You say, walking back towards the path you all came down originally.

After about two hours of searching you all stumble across another house, further out than the one you were currently in. Wooyoung instructs you to notify the rest of the team via an encrypted message, and you do so. Receiving a reply roughly 30 seconds later instructing you three to set up home for the time being.

Wooyoung and Mingi enter the house as you go around the back to drop off the animal that was collected from the hunt, as you set it down you receive a file from San.

‘These are some emotions I made for you! Install them! All the programs save for Excitement are betas so let me know how they work!’ it reads.

The emotions are installed as you set up a fire to cook the animal, and by the time everything is finished you’ve acquired Empathy, Sadness, Joy, an updated Excitement, and Rage. Placing the animal over the fire you make your way into the house from the back entrance.

“Calixte!” Wooyoung shouts, a wide smile gracing his features sending a jolt of electricity through your systems, “how do you feel? San said before we left that he was gonna send you new emotions!”

“Yes,” you begin, “I have received the emotions and they have been installed. Upon you saying my name I believe I felt the emotion of Joy, but I am unsure.” You said monotonously, much to Wooyoung’s dismay.

“Well, there’s always time to teach you,” he sighs, grabbing you by the wrist and dragging you towards the home’s living room, “let’s wait for everyone in here. Mingi already claimed a room and slammed the door.”

You nod in acknowledgment of his words, and upon sitting down your systems once again get flooded with error messages.

~~~~~

Ooooh this kinda droned on too but !!! the next chapter should pick things up :’) fdaklj i’m so hype to get the next chapter up but its 12:30 AM as i finish and i still have to sort stuff out for school :’) ah education, i love it but i hate it.

[duhragonball]

[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (104/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation.   This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.

Previous chapters conveniently available here.

[8 February, 233 Before Age.   Planet Quadzityz.]

Under different circumstances, the mission would have been simple.   Lesseri and her team had traveled to the middle of the war-ravaged Planet Quadzityz.   There, Lesseri and her partner Endive, would recover a pair of ancient artifacts which their alien comrade Treekul would use to locate the source of a mysterious power known only as "Jindan".   Once the artifacts were safely on board the ship, they would take off and get as far from Quadzityz as possible, and then use the spoils of their mission to find the next piece of the puzzle.  It was child's play for a Saiyan.

This simple mission was complicated by Luffa, the Legendary Super Saiyan.    The invincible warrior had taken an interest in the Quadzityz War, and she had arrived on the planet before Lesseri's team could get there.    Even their combined power was nothing compared to a Super Saiyan, and Luffa had been hunting for Saiyans for the past several months.   If she discovered Lesseri or the others on the planet, she would chase after them, and there would be very little hope of escape.   The only chance of avoiding Luffa's notice was for the team to suppress their power levels while they were in range of Luffa's ki senses.   That meant that they couldn't fly to the building where the artefacts were stored, nor could they use energy blasts to destroy the security robots that defended the building, nor could they use their awesome strength to break free of the robots when they were captured.    

It would take only a small exertion of ki energy for Lesseri and Endive to save themselves from their captors, but Luffa would surely sense that Saiyan power, even from half a world away, and then they would have an even bigger problem on their hands.  

Instead, the two Saiyans allowed themselves to be captured.   They now stood like condemned prisoners, trussed up by the robots' multitude of spindly arms, unable to move or speak.    One of those robotic arms had produced a syringe, and without explaining its purpose, slowly directed the needle at Endive's throat.    

The tension of the moment had taken its toll on Lesseri, who seriously began to wonder if it would be better to break free and risk attracting Luffa's attention.    As strong and fast as the Super Saiyan was, it would still take at least a few minutes for her to get to them, and that might be enough of a window for them to return to their ship and escape.   And yet, if that plan made any sense, she would have expected Endive to have already broken her bonds to escape the needle.    Instead, Endive simply stared forward, as though she were silently daring the robots to do their worst.    

And then Lesseri sensed something.   As far as she knew, there were only four Saiyans on the planet: herself, Endive, their partner Guwar, and Luffa.  The first three had been suppressing their ki all along, while Luffa's enormous Super Saiyan power had been shining like a beacon in Lesseri's ki senses the entire time.   Lesseri could sense other strong energy signatures, which likely belonged to powerful warriors or alien mercenaries but none of them were Saiyan in nature.   This new power, however, was definitely Saiyan, and it wasn't any of the four Lesseri had accounted for.   It was as good an opening as Lesseri could have hoped for.   Whoever this fifth Saiyan was, he was much stronger than Lesseri's group, so if Luffa was going to go after anybody, she would start with him.   The newcomer didn't seem strong enough to keep Luffa busy for long, but it might just give them enough time to make a break for the ship.

Surely Endive had sensed the same thing.   Was that her plan?   Was she waiting for Luffa to engage the other Saiyan before making her move?   That was probably the best bet, except the robot with the needle wasn't going to wait that long.   Was it possible that they had already done something to Endive to cut off her ability to use her own ki?    Lesseri didn't think they had done anything to her own powers, though she supposed she wouldn't know for sure until she tried to use them.   Was Endive waiting for Lesseri to help her?    And if that was so, was it in Lesseri's best interest to help her?   Endive hadn't outlived her usefulness just yet, but this would still be a good chance to eliminate her, giving Lesseri a greater share of the rewards when their quest was finished.   Whatever Jindan turned out to be, Lesseri didn't see any reason to share it if she didn't need to.    

As she considered all of this, the point of the needle moved closer to Endive's neck.    It made contact, pressing just hard enough to push the skin, and then--

"Hold!  That's quite enough of that!"

There were already some lights on in the foyer of the penthouse, but now someone had turned on several more lights as he stepped into the room.   He was a Quazity man, his orange skin dusted with patches of white.   His shirt and pants were rather plain-looking, but the frames of his sunglasses were plated with gold, and the jewelry on his fingers and neck indicated that he was very wealthy.   The fact that the robot withdrew the needle from Endive's throat indicated that he was the owner of the penthouse, if not the entire building.    

"Well, well, well," he said as he approached the captive women and looked them over.   They had tucked their tails into their body armor, so if he recognized them as Saiyans, he didn't show it.   "I expected looters to show up, but only after the battle, not during."  

He leaned in to take a closer look at Lesseri, and then impulsively ran his fingers through her long hair.    "Sorry for taking so long to call off the security robots," he said.   "When the bombing started, I went down the bunker in the sub-basement.    I've been down there for over two weeks, you know.    Maybe that's why I decided to come up and see what my pets had caught.    The fighting seems to have died down a little, but honestly I was so bored that I probably would have come up here no matter what."

As he went to pick up the stolen artifacts from the floor, Lesseri looked at Endive, who now looked back at her.    It was starting to add up now.   While Lesseri was fretting over whether to rescue Endive, Endive was focusing her senses to detect this man.   His ki was extremely faint, typical of a civilian with no combat skill, but he still had enough life force that Endive could detect him coming up the elevator shaft, so long as she knew what to look for.  Lesseri was impressed that Endive had managed to concentrate so well under duress.  

"You picked some interesting pieces to steal, ladies," he said as he stepped back into their field of view.   "Most burgalers would have taken the golden idol on the next display case.   Small, valuable, easy to fence.   The scuplture of the javelin thrower is actually worth more, though.    It's made of ruthentium, though most people don't recognize the metal."    He held up the retort and the scroll.  "But a copper retort? With a hole in the side?    And an old scroll that looks like it was written in gibberish?   Well, you're no ordinary thieves, are you?"

He paused, as though waiting for them to reply, despite the fact that they couldn't.   "I had to kill a lot of people to get my hands on these," he said.   "At first, I only dabbled in alchemy to counterfeit money.   This whole building?"    He waved his hand, gesturing at the room around them.   "I swindled a lot of people to pay for all this.    But you can't take it with you, and that happy thought is what got me interested in the Elixir of Life.   I've been studying the runes on this old teapot for decades, and I think the scroll would help me, if only I could read the whole thing."  

He began to pace around the room, looking at them from time to time as he tapped one of the handles of the scroll to his lips.   "Maybe this is a blessing in disguise," he finally said.    "For a long time, I've wondered if these two objects could really contain the secrets I need.    But if the two of you want them so badly, then that means someone thinks I'm on the right track.    Just like that Saiyan fellow who tried to begged me to help him with his powers.    Yes, I must be getting close, or why would so many people try to stop me?"

He looked at them, and pointed the end of the scroll at Endive.   "Yes, maybe it's a good thing I came up here to call off my robots," he said.   "If I had let them kill you, then I wouldn't be able to find out what you  know about these objects.  You wouldn't want them unless you had some way of exploiting their secrets.   Maybe you have an expert working with you, someone who can fill in the gaps for me.    Of course, you wouldn't give up your secrets easily, but I have some samskara formulations that will dull your minds, loosen your tongues, and that just might be enough to--"

Suddenly, Lesseri broke free of her bonds, ripping apart the robots that held her and reducing them to so much scrap metal.    The Quadzity man was shocked by the sudden reversal, so much so that he hesitated instead of calling the remaining robots to come to his rescue.   Lesseri quickly grabbed one of her pistols from the broken robot that held it, and aimed it at the man's head.    

"You so much as blink, and I blow your damn head off, got it?" she said.    Once she was satisfied that he understood, she pointed to Endive, who had not yet broken free.    "Turn her loose.   No tricks, or you're a dead man."

"Emergency override!  R-release her!" the man said.     The robots opened their arms in unison, and Endive nearly lost her balance as she stepped clear of them.   She picked up her own weapon and fired at the robots, destroying them before they could do anything else.

"Now, hand them over," Lesseri said, pointing to the retort and scroll in his hands.  Endive stepped forward to collect the items from him.  

"You sense it too, don't you?" Endive asked.    "That enormous ki that just appeared out of nowhere.    That couldn't be Guwar..."

"No, but whoever it is, his power is incredible," Lesseri said.  "Let's just hope he kept Luffa distracted enough that she didn't notice what I just did."

"Luffa?"  the man asked.  "You mean the Super Saiyan is on Quadzityz?"

Endive ignored him.   "Time to leave, I think," she said.  

"Not yet," Lesseri said.    She stepped closer to the man put the end of her pistol to his chest.   "First, I want to know about that Saiyan you were talking about.    The one who came to you for help."

"I... I... he said he was losing his powers!" the man said.  "There was nothing I could do for him.    He was convinced that the scroll could help him, but I only know how to read certain parts of it!"

"What was his name?" Lesseri growled.  

"S-salziff!" the man gasped.   "His name was Salziff!   He said he was from the Vannis Sector, but I don't know where he went!  I swear--"

Lesseri shot him before he could finish.   She would have preferred to interrogate him more thoroughly, but there wasn't time.    

"Now can we go?" Endive asked.    

"In a minute," Lesseri said as she stepped over the man's still-smoking corpse to head back to his private gallery.    "We might as well help ourselves to that ruthenium sculpture he was talking about."  

*******

On the opposite side of the planet, Luffa was battling foes on multiple fronts.     The warring factions in the Quadzityz sector had begun to concentrate their forces on the planet itself, hoping to secure their interests there now that the Super Saiyan and her Federation had entered the conflict.   Most of them recognized that defeating Luffa was strategically impossible, though some commanders clung to the idea that reports of her power were exaggerated.   In any case, their main goal in converging on Quadzityz was not so much to secure a victory there as it was to keep her from undoing smaller victories throughout the sector.  

Luffa had established a demilitarized zone on a large island, and used that as a base of operations.    Federation convoys would eventually land there and begin relief operations, but only after Luffa had pacified the planet.    In the meantime, she zipped from one continent to another, defending her own territory while launching raids to disrupt her enemies.   Whenever a unit of troops did surrender, Luffa ordered them to give up their weapons, and then she escorted them to her island DMZ.   Those who refused her terms were dealt with.    

"It's!  The best!  Offer!  You're!  Going!  To get!" she shouted as she took a general from the Red army across her knee.    She didn't enjoy humiliating a fellow warrior in full view of his troops, but Luffa could see no other way to get her point across without killing him.   She hadn't ruled that out, of course, but he was more useful to her alive than dead.   She would need leaders to keep her growing collection of prisoners under control.  

She shoved him to the ground and turned her back to him as an air raid siren sounded.     There were Green starships entering the atmosphere, and she needed to be ready for them.  

"I'll be back in five minutes," she said to the Red general.    "If you don't accept my terms then I'll take your weapons by force and leave you out here to die.   Think carefully."

With that, she leaped into the air and rocketed off in the direction of her next skirmish.   "What's the status of Blue Headquarters?" Luffa asked aloud.

"Total disarray," replied Zatte's voice from the communicator Luffa wore in her left ear.  "They'll be too busy restoring power to their base to give you any grief."

"That's good, because the Greens are gonna have me tied up for a little while," Luffa said.   "Are you okay getting back on your own?    I might run late picking you up."

"You're fine," Zatte said.   "If I don't hear from you in an hour, I'll head for the woods a mile from the base."

"Don't get cocky," Luffa said.   "You can't outrun a weapon of mass destruction, and I don't like your chances against a slorg.    If things get bad, raise your power level to signal me, okay?"

"And you'll drop everything to come to my rescue," Zatte asked.  "I had no idea you could be so romantic in the middle of a battle."

"Not now, woman," Luffa said with a smirk.  "You'll embarrass me in front of the enemy."

She stopped in midair and waited patiently for the three ships to come into view.   The left one opened fire, and Luffa swung her left arm towards it, releasing a blob of green ki energy which dispersed the plasma bolt before it could reach her.    The ship on the right fired a missile, which Luffa intercepted and caught in both hands.   Uncertain of its payload, she spun around in midair and threw it like a shot put, sending it straight up into the sky.    She then fired a ki blast after it, which would destroy the missile once it had reached outer space.   Next, she turned her attention to the center ship, flying on a collision course with it's aft hull and ripping open a hole ten feet across.   She exited the ship the same way, bursting out of the forward hull and taking out the ship's weapons systems in the process.   Now unable to defend itself or retreat back into space, the center ship turned and ran, though it had nowhere to go.   Luffa would catch up to it and escort it to her DMZ island later.  

The remaining ships tried to regroup.   Luffa noticed they weren't quite as aggressive this time, and she guessed that they were trying to decide how to keep her occupied without sustaining damage.    Then she sensed a group of mercenaries powering up several hundred miles away, and she decided that they were a little too close to her island for her comfort.  She flew off in that direction, leaving the ships to decide if they wanted to chase her or withdraw.    

"Looks like I won't be back in five minutes like I thought, general," Luffa said to herself.    "I'll see you when I see you, unless one of those ships decides to gun you down before then."

It was then that she sensed it.   A Saiyan power, unlike any she had encountered before.   She had hoped to have a little fun with the mercenaries, but she couldn't ignore the Saiyan.   Whoever it was, if they knew anything at all about King Rehval's whereabouts... she couldn't afford to let them escape.    

Right on cue, Zatte contacted her on the earpiece.  

"Did you feel that?" Zatte asked.

"Feel what, Zattie?" Luffa replied sarcastically.  

"What's a Saiyan doing on Quadzityz?" she asked.    "Besides you, I mean."

"I don't know," Luffa said.   She dove down over the mercenaries' position and clenched her fist once she was positioned in the center of their group.   A wave of golden energy expanded all around them, and before they could do anything, they were completely vaporized.   Under different circumstances, she might have offered them a chance to surrender, but there wasn't time.   She had shown more than enough mercy on Quadzityz already.    She had been the Legendary Super Saiyan for four years now.    By now, every soldier-of-fortune in the galaxy should have known that no contract was worth a battle with her.  

"I'm on my way to check it out," she said as she resumed her flight to the unidentified Saiyan.  

"He's strong," Zatte said.    "I think he might be as strong as King Rehval.   You don't think it could be--?"

"No, I don't," Luffa said.   "The ki signature is all wrong.    It can't be Rehval, unless he found some way to alter his energy.   But it is a pleasant thought, isn't it?   Maybe dropped by to beg for my forgiveness."

"Luffa, be careful," Zatte pleaded.   "This might be a trap--"

"That's exactly why I'm trying to get to him," Luffa said.  "Whoever this guy is, he knew I was here and he knows he's not strong enough to beat me.   He must be up to something.  He might be planning to blow up the whole planet!"

At last, she was close enough to her target to see him.   The Saiyan was tall and bald, with a shock of dark hair jutting out from the tip of his chin.   The small town he was standing in looked like it had been hit by a hurricane, and judging from the Blue troops scattered around, Luffa suspected that the Saiyan had been amusing himself with them while he waited for Luffa to reach him.  

She landed twenty feet away from him, and the impact of her boots into the ground made a small crater.   "I'm only going to ask this once," Luffa called out to him.    "Where is Rehval?   Tell me where that bastard is hiding, and you won't have to suffer."

Before she could get an answer, she suddenly noticed a second Saiyan power.    This one was much weaker in intensity, and it had only flashed into being for a second or two.     It came from the city of Inoy, several thousand miles away.   For a brief moment, Luffa worried that this was an accomplice of the Saiyan who now stood before her.  She couldn't shake the possibility that this was some kind of suicide run, and as she wondered what the second Saiyan was up to, she turned her head and lowered her guard for the briefest of moments...

And then the first Saiyan, the bald one standing before her, sucker punched her in the jaw.    

The blow actually hurt, and as Luffa recovered, the Saiyan followed up with several dozen body blows, and then a kick to Luffa's ribs.    As she went flying, he screamed at the top of his lungs, gathering as much power as he could before releasing it all in an enormous ki blast, which he fired from his open mouth.  

When the attack subsided,  the dust settled to reveal Luffa was still standing, her arms crossed over her face.  

"No, you're definitely not Rehval," Luffa said.    "You're actually stronger than he is.    Still no match for me, but..."

She lowered her arms and her hair shifted back to its original black color, and her eyes and the fur on her tail returned to brown.    "Yeah," she said.   "If I fought you like this, we'd be just about even.    No, you'd be a little stronger.    Who the hell are you?"    

The man snorted indignantly.   "You don't even remember me, do you?    Asher II.    The raid on the Crystal Tower.   You broke both my arms."

Luffa raised one eyebrow in surprise.   She remembered the raid on Asher II, and how she was hired to defend the Crystal Tower, and that there were Saiyan mercenaries in the raiding party.    "Wait, yeah, the one with the mouth.  That was you, wasn't it?   I didn't recognize you without all that henchman gear your bosses made you wear.   Yeah, I worked you over pretty good back then, but it looks like you bounced back well enough."

"Bounced back?!" he snarled.    "You ruined my life!   I needed that payday to pay off my debts!   By the time I recovered enough to return home, my starship had been repossessed, and my mistresses had all left me for other clients!   I was so weak from the convalescence that one of my associates managed to beat me up and he stole my emergency cash fund!   I even had to-- what?  Why are you laughing?!”

"Now I remember," Luffa said.   "You were the idiot who said you kept calling me names the whole time I was beating the crap out of your team.   I was gonna save you for last, but then I just got fed up with your annoying voice.   I forget what it was you said that pushed me over the limit.   Was it worth getting both of your arms broken?   I'm just curious."

"You don't scare me anymore!" he screamed.    "I spent years looking for a way to make you pay, to put you in your place, you little--!"

Suddenly Luffa was behind him, in her Super Saiyan form, with her arm raised to deliver a knifehand strike.    The man barely managed to step out of the way of her blow, but he wasn't fast enough to avoid her other hand as it grabbed him by the face.

"Don't misunderstand this," Luffa said.    "I don't have time to discuss your revenge fantasies, or to reduce my power to your level so we can have a decent match.    The only reason I haven't killed you already is because I want to know everything you know about King Rehval.   And since I won't ask twice, and you don't want to answer me, then I'll just have to pull what I need from your puny little mi--"

Not long before transforming into a Super Saiyan for the first time, Luffa discovered that she could read minds.   She preferred to use this power sparingly, as she was never completely confident that she had full control over the ability.    It was difficult for her to sift through another mind to pick out a single piece of information.    More often, she found herself overwhelmed by memories and emotions that were not her own.   In spite of her discomfort with this, Luffa still found tactile telepathy to be an ideal means of extracting information from her enemies.    

But this time something went wrong.    Instead of the normal flow of information--the interface of one mind to another that Luffa lacked the words to describe--there was a strange warmth, which intensified into a sensation not unlike pain, but mental instead of physical.   Later, Luffa would compare the experience to eating an extremely spicy pepper with her brain.    For now, all she could do was release her captive and scream as she clawed at her forehead.   Breaking the connection with him had kept the pain from getting worse, but it still remained.   As she backed away from the Saiyan, she could hear him laughing.

"Jolok," he said.   "That's my name, not that you ever cared."  

He kicked her legs out from under her, and then grabbed her by the collar of her sleeveless shirt.    Luffa was too dazed to defend herself.  

"You said I was stronger than King Rehval, right?"  he said.   "Let's put that to the test."

He grabbed her left arm and put her in a hammerlock, summoning as much power as he could to intensify the pressure.  

"See, I could explain to you how I got so much stronger, except that's against the rules.   There's a lot of rules, actually.    To make sure no one reads my mind to learn our secrets, well, that's where the Mindworm comes in.    Anyone tries to use psi powers on me, they get infected with a sort of computer program that's in my head.  It's safe in my mind, but once it gets into yours, it starts replicating itself, clogging up your thought processes.   Hurts, doesn't it?"

Luffa screamed, though whether she was aware of Jolok's taunts was uncertain.  

"Yeah, I tried it out on a fortuneteller I met in the Reeloor Clurster.    Had to see what it would do before I used it on you.   She screamed for days.   Finally went into a coma, but when I left her, she was still alive, if you want to call it that.   You, on the other hand, well, I'm going to kill you whether the Mindworm is fatal or not.    First, I'm going to break your arms, just like you did to me.    Then I'm going to--"

Luffa suddenly grabbed his head with her free hand, and pulled it towards her until his neck was pressed up against her right shoulder.   With a desperate howl, she pulled down harder, choking the life out of Jolok.   The unspoken message was clear: "You might break my arm, but I will definitely crush your trachea."    He released her, and she swung him over her shoulder like a sack of laundry.  

They each stumbled away from the other as they recovered from the exchange.   Luffa had stopped screaming, but there wear tears running down her eyes, and drool spilling from her mouth.   Her movements were sluggish, and when she spoke, it sounded like she was half asleep.

"Cute... cute... cute trrrrrick," she said.    "Shoudna... unner... unnerestimated you."

Jolok tried to respond with some defiant words, but all he could do was cough and gasp for air.   Once he was finally able to talk, he said: "I get it now.    They didn't want me going into business for myself.   Their power, their rules.    I thought... the Mindworm would be enough to stop you.    Knew you'd try to read my thoughts first thing... but... you're resisting it somehow.   Second attack might help... but you're not dumb enough to fall for it a second time."

Luffa opened her mouth to speak, then suddenly she dropped to one knee and put her hands on her temples as she wailed in pain.   For a split second, Jolok thought this was an opening he could exploit, and then, without warning, Luffa pointed one of her fingers at him and fired a ki blast at his right kneecap.    

"That's better..." she said as she slowly rose to her feet.   "I feel a little crummy playing possum like that, Jolok."   She began to walk towards him as he writhed on the ground, clutching at the stump where his lower leg used to be.   Her voice was more lucid and her expression more alert, but the sweat on her face and the wince in her expression showed that she was still in great pain.    

"Yeah, we could have had some fun and dragged this out," she said.   "But this Mindworm thing hurts like hell, and like I said, I never should have underestimated you."

Before Jolok could react, she pointed at his other leg and severed that one at the knee as well.    Then she grabbed his left arm in both hands and drove her knee into his bicep until she heard a popping noise that made her smile.    

She rolled over his body, and then pinned his remaining hand to the ground with her boot.    "Okay," she said.   "Okay... it's starting to get easier to think."  She ran her hand through her hair and bared her teeth.    "Definitely won't be reading anyone's mind for a while.   Now then..."

She pointed her finger at Jolok's chest, and a tiny sphere of light glowed just beyond the tip of her fingernail.    "This is how it's going to go, Jolok," she said.   "I want answers.   If you won't talk, and I can't read your mind, then I'll just have to beat it out of you."

He was still whimpering and grunting from his injuries.    Luffa ground his left hand under her heel, and he cried out, but he didn't open his eyes.  

"No," he cried out.  "Not now!   Not like this!"

"Exactly like this," Luffa sneered.   "It was you dumb idea to come here, and now it's time to face the consequences.  I-- what the hell is wrong with you?"

Luffa took a step back-- releasing his hand in the process-- as she noticed a rapid increase in Jolok's ki.   He wasn't charging up for an attack, but his power was rising all the same, as if he had lost control of himself.  Then, she seemed to sense two separate energies from within his body.    One was smaller, more in line with what she would have expected from a typical Saiyan.   The one that continued to grow, it now felt more alien to her.   No, not alien, but unnatural.

She raised her arms to defend herself from an attack, but it never came.   Instead, the bizarre energy flowed out of Jolok's body and down into the ground below him.   A moment later, Luffa could see it with her eyes, as a purple glow that soaked into the soil like rainwater.  

"What are you doing?" Luffa demanded, but Jolok could no longer answer.    He was delirious, both from the pain Luffa had inflicted upon him, and the sudden change in his power.   The ki that had remained within his body was growing weaker by the second, and all he seemed to be able to do was moan incoherently while shaking his head from side to side.     And then, the ground rumbled beneath her feet.

At last, she decided that whatever was happening, it couldn't be good for that much raw ki to be absorbed into the planet's crust.    Figuring that Jokol was as good as dead already, she fired a blast off her own through his heart, killing him instantly.   When that didn't stop the flow of the strange energy, she threw out her hands and tried to use her own power to contain it.    

The resistance was intense to say the least.    As a Super Saiyan, Luffa's strength was still far superior to whatever had emerged from Jolok's body, but somehow it had infused itself into the earth, and the sheer volume made it difficult for Luffa to control.   The lingering effects of the Mindworm weren't making things any easier.   She struggled to corral the affected soil into a bubble of solid energy, but each time she tried, she found that a little managed to slip out.     It was like trying to scoop up water with a fork.   She tried again, but with each attempt she had to expand her own ki field to cover a larger area of ground, which only made the task more difficult.    

Finally, she reached for her earpiece to signal Zatte.    If she couldn't contain this, then there was a very good chance that it would absorb into a big enough section of the planet's crust to destroy it.    It wouldn't explode all at once, but Luffa doubted that she would have time to evacuate Quadzytiz, even if half the population wasn't currently trying to kill the other half.    At least she could warn her wife, and give Zatte a chance to get to their ship.

She tried again to contain the energy seepage, and failed.    She could sense the unnatural ki growing unstable.   Luffa had no way of knowing what would happen or what signs to watch for, but it all looked very grim.    Zatte didn't reply to her signal, and when she took the communicator out of her ear to check it, she realized what was wrong.  

The casing of the earpiece had been cracked, probably during the battle with Jolok.    Try as she might, Luffa couldn't get the device to reactivate.    It was impossible to warn Zatte, and unless Luffa thought of something soon, everyone else on the planet would be doomed as well...

NEXT: The Forbidden Power.

[donutpwns]

Little Brother Blues - Part 4

Part 3 - Part 5

He's been getting a lot of headaches lately, ever since the day with the gnomes. He's not sure why, but they always hit him once they leave the Shack. Maybe he caught something from the gnomes? Like a magic bug or a beard infection or something. It's always this dull throb that gets worse the longer they're out, the kind that makes him just want to curl up in a dark room and take a nap while his ma or Stanley reads to him, but Ford doesn't want to tell anyone. He likes going on adventures with Mabel and Dipper; what if they stopped just because of a headache? They already treat him like a little kid sometimes, not letting him go out on his own or read certain parts of the Journals. Stanley is lying to him about stuff and whenever he calls him on it, it’s always ‘grownup stuff’. He’d hate to see what they’d do if he was actually sick; they’d probably lock him in a room until he was big again. He might not be as tough as his brother but he was tough enough to deal with this. It’s just a headache and no headache is going to keep him from an adventure.

Today they were going to an island in the middle of the lake to see a monster that was also a robot, apparently built by a mad scientist. Old Stanley didn't come with them, which was a bummer, but Ford tries not to be too disappointed. Just last night they'd played checkers and then all of them had watched movies in the living room together. Movies were so much cooler now than when he was a kid; Ford swore Hollywood had actual magic, though the kids just said it was special effects. Old Stanley was trying at least, but he still has a job and stuff so Ford tries not to get sad when he can't play with them. Grown up stuff, even if Ford hated that term. Ford could understand that, at least as long as he got to spend some time with his brother.

Besides, Ford likes being around Dipper and Mabel too; it's like being with Stan only double. Two friends instead of one. It's nice, though Stan is still his favorite. Mabel is so friendly and upbeat and Dipper might be smarter than even Ford, and Ford was smarter than a lot of grownups according to his teachers. They don’t let him look at certain parts of the Journals, they say there are parts that aren’t safe to read and they learned that the hard way, which Ford finds annoying but he still likes spending time with them so he doesn’t push it. For now. He wishes they could've been around when he was a kid with Stanley. It would've been nice, all four of them on adventures together all the time.

The boat they've rented is small, doesn't hold a candle to the Stan O War in Ford’s always humble opinion, but it's decent enough he supposes. It's got a gas motor on it that Ford is itching to take apart; he'd always wanted to build a motor for their boat but the parts were so expensive. He really needs to ask Stan more about their boat and why they didn't get a new one after whatever happened to the old one. It's hard to picture a future without sailing, even if he's in it currently. There's gotta be a good reason, has to be, he just can't think of it. Which is weird because Ford can think of lots of things usually. He does become the greatest scientist ever according to Dipper after all. You have to be smart to do that.

The boat gets them to the island in the middle of the lake in no time thanks to the motor. Mabel is over the side in an instant but Ford stays a few extra moments to help Dipper pull the boat up on land and tie it to a nearby tree. “This is a figure eight knot, it's really secure.” he says as he goes through the practiced motions. After Stanley and him started on their boat, Ford had read every book about sailing that he could get his hands on. He'd made both of them practice tying knots for hours; they'd be out of luck if the Stan O War got untied and drifted away, after all. Ford was always better at tying the knots thanks to a bonus in his dexterity, but Stan was better at getting the knots undone. Though sometimes he did that by just breaking the knots so that was kinda cheating but it worked in a pinch. That's why they were the perfect team.

“Guys! C'mon, the cave isn't gonna wait all day for us!” Mabel is already several yards ahead, hanging from a low branch on a tree. She does that to Stan’s arm a lot, just dangling.

“Where's it gonna go?” Dipper asks with a laugh as he gives Ford’s knot a test tug. He nods, apparently satisfied with it which just adds about five layers of pride to Ford’s good mood, before gesturing for them to follow after his sister. The island is dreary, the trees blocking out a lot of the sunlight and making the ground several degrees cooler. There’s also fog that seems ever present. Ford wonders what the science behind that is; maybe the temperature drop clashing with the heat and the water? Hm. He really needed to read some updated science books.

They come to the entrance to a cave that, once inside, he can see is connected to the water from another entrance that’s blocked by one of the most amazing things Ford has ever seen. If he was itching to take apart the motor of the boat, then he was way beyond that once he sets his eyes on the giant robot monster. It looked better than anything he'd ever seen in a movie, even the new movies that had to be made with magic, or the comics he and Stan would buy once a month. The skin was ripped in places, showing solid metal plating, and wires were poking out of where the metal itself had been torn back. Ford can feel excitement like electricity buzzing under his skin as he takes Mabel’s hand after she's climbed up onto the head. She hefts him up like it's nothing and there it is. The pilot seat. The wooden chair is slightly less impressive but he is in no way less excited.

“Do you think it'll still run?” he asks as he jumps down into the seat before letting himself plop down into it. Regrets that pretty much instantly as it seems the wooden chair was not made for comfort and it feels like he'd gotten a swift boot to his behind. He shakes his head, regrets that too for the way it makes the dull throb in his skull rev to life for a moment. No time for pained butts or heads, though. He reaches for one of the many levers and gives it a pull. He puffs out his cheeks when nothing happens. Maybe there's a start button somewhere?

Dipper jumps in with him while Mabel ducks out of view. “I think the crash wrecked it pretty bad. Soos said he wanted to scavenge parts from it but he was, uh…”

“I think he said he was ‘Like totally scarred for life, little doods'.” Mabel yells from outside the cockpit, her voice going deep and with a weird accent that Ford recognizes as an impression of the odd hamster man that works for him and Stanley. Ford is pretty sure he's some sort of monster/human hybrid but the twins insist that Ford's already ran tests to disprove that. Maybe he's slacking in the science in the future. Nah, can’t be. But still, there’s something up with that guy. Things to find out later.

Ford’s disappointed that they can't drive the thing but it's still impressive to see. He wishes he could've borrowed some tools from the hamster man, would've loved to see what they could've scavenged themselves. Maybe before he got turned back into an adult again he could build the boat motor he'd wanted to for the Stan O War. Then maybe he and Stanley could go sailing with the kids later. He thinks they’d all like that. Mabel said she was friends with a merman; they could track him down. He and Dipper could study monsters and Stan could hunt for treasure and fight anything that tried to attack them. Maybe when Ford was big again, he could fight too. He hopes he can.

When he gets out of the cockpit, lending a hand to pull Dipper out, Mabel is nowhere in sight but there’s the sound of metal hitting metal. They both slide down the side she'd disappeared around; Ford snorts a laugh at the high pitched sound Dipper makes when a length of pipe nearly smacks him in the face as it flies out of a rather massive hole in the side of the robo-creature.

Dipper’s face goes red and Ford quickly covers his mouth to stifle his laughter. He adjusts his glasses, moving to look inside the hole that they hadn’t seen from the other side; he has to duck as a handful of shredded wires are tossed at his face. “Watch it, Mabel!” she’s got her sleeves shoved up to her elbows as she digs through the innards, tossing stuff over her shoulder without looking back. He wants to lecture, he is technically the adult here, but instead he climbs in next to her. Well, he wanted to take it apart anyway. He can be the adult another time. “What’re you looking for?”

Mabel sticks her tongue out in concentration as she digs through what looks like a mountain of cables; Ford hopes there’s no power left in them. “Can’t you smell it?” she asks, incredulous, as if Ford is missing something incredibly obvious.

Ford frowns and sniffs the air. It smells like a car engine, like oil and copper and grease. Smells hot and—wait. He leans closer to the section that Mabel is digging in and takes a deep breath through his nose. He can smell the sweet berry shampoo that his niece uses but, beyond that and the smell of the machine, there’s something else. A different kind of sweetness than her hair with a bite of spice to it. Ford’s never smelled anything like it before. “What is that?”

“Did you guys find something?” Dipper calls and when Ford looks back, he’s moving his hand over the ragged sides of the creature with a face Ford has learned to recognize as his thinking face. It’s the same face he wears when they’re looking through the Journals or he’s reading one of those mystery books he likes to read before bed.

Mabel tugs on Ford’s arm to get his attention; she gestures to a sheet of metal that’s been warped, looking like it’s been bent open and closed repeatedly. He takes her cue and gets his fingers in the crack alongside hers so they can pull together. “It smells like the tea,” she grunts as the metal starts bending, “that Mom always gets from Moondoes.”

Dipper makes a confused sound. “Chai tea?”

“Yeah!” Mabel cries out, victorious as the metal fully bends back. Ford suspects it was weakened from having been bent so many times before. The sweet, spicy smell is much stronger now. Mabel gasps when they peer inside. “Oh my god! It’s so cute!” she whisper-yells, as if to avoid waking the beast the rests inside.

Ford’s not sure about the cute part, but it is amazing. The body is covered in milky brown fur, like coffee with too much creamer in it, and small groupings of dark brown leaves that spread to the right of the double heads that are all curled up as the thing sleeps. The right head is purring, its rounded lion cub ears twitching every now and then. To the left, the head of a goat stretches from the body, little stubs of horns on top of its head; it oddly looks like a baby version of the goat that hangs around the Shack. Ford’s eyes trace the creature’s back to where a tail extends, covered in scales and curled into a spiral that ends in a snake’s head that is resting on itself.

Ford’s breath catches in his chest, excitement threatening to burst his heart. “It’s a chimera!” he hisses in the same yelling whisper that Mabel had used.

“A chimera?!” Dipper squeaks and wedges his way in with them and stands on the other side of Mabel; it’s a tight fit, shoulder to shoulder, but Ford is so beyond caring.

A chimera! A living, breathing, real chimera! Not a monster in one of Ford’s books or one of Stan’s made up creations, but a real, actual monster. This was so much cooler than a bunch of marriage starved gnomes or a buried zombie hand (though those were super cool). Ford scrambles to grab the notebook tucked in the back of Dipper’s shorts. He has to write this down!

“No.” Mabel whispers, shifting so she can stretch a hand towards the creature. “A chaimera.”

“Chaimera. That’s perfect!” Ford doesn’t know what Chai is or what kind of tea it makes, but if that’s what it smells like then it’s a great name. Everyone knew what a chimera is; what fun would it be to tell the world about something it already knew? Ford writes the name at the top of the paper then rapidly starts sketching the thing.

Mabel squeaks happily when her hand touches the lion head, the chaimera making a quiet ‘mrrrp’ sound before purring louder as she scratches behind its ear. “Dipper, it makes the kitty start up sound!”

“It’s very small; must be a baby.” Dipper pulls a small camera out of his bag and starts snapping pictures. “I wonder how it got in here. The side looks like it was torn open but this one is too small to do that.”

The smell is getting stronger, overpowering the smell of the machine the longer they stay. Ford is able to get the sketch finished and has added a few shorthand notes when his eyes start to sting. He rubs at them under his glasses, “Mabel, maybe stop petting it. I think it’s putting off more of that smell.” The smell certainly isn’t helping his headache which seems to be building back to life the more he inhales it.

“But he loves me!” she protests, her upper half of her body mostly inside the little compartment. “Maybe he was abandoned. Ooh, can we take him home? I can be his new mommy! Waddles would love a brother!”

Ford wants to argue further, both about the smell and the fact that the thing would likely eat the fat pig Mabel loves so much, but that’s when he feels a puff of hot, moist air on the back of his head, ruffling his hair. He turns and feels his breath catch once more, though less out of excitement this time. He drops his pen and instantly grabs Dipper’s arm. His nephew turns and Ford is pretty sure they swallow in unison.

It’s big, much bigger than any lion Ford has ever seen in a book. The lion head is huffing harder than the goat; it doesn’t have a big mane but its fangs are large and glistening. The edges of both mouths have brown froth that’s only a few shades lighter than the fur. Each breath is like a blast of spices and sweetness to the face that has Ford’s eyes watering.

“Uh, Mabel?” Dipper squeaks and both he and Ford grab ahold of the back of her sweater to pull her out. “I think it already has a mommy.”

“What? What are you—oh?” Mabel instantly grabs each of their hands as soon as she is facing the adult chaimera. She swallows before grinning a big, metal-filled smile. “Maybe it’s a friendly monster? Hey! You have the cutest little baby ever! Can we be friends?”

The answer to that, apparently, is a giant roar that has all three of them stumbling back.

Why hadn’t they brought Stan? Ohh this was a bad idea; they were going to be in so much trouble. Ford has so many regrets. He moves to tuck the notebook down the front of his sweater. “If I die, please let them publish all my works.” He whispers to himself, trying to remember the last time he went to Temple. His ma would be so disappointed in him if he died without having recently gone.

Dipper and Mabel lock up beside him; Ford looks over when Mabel drops Ford’s hand. “Now!” Dipper yells; Mabel drops his hand too, both her hands disappearing into her sleeves for a second then she’s throwing something from both hands towards each head.

“Eat sparkles, you magnificent creature with adorable babies!” she screams; it’s glitter, she just threw glitter at a monster. Ford is stunned. More so because it seems to work; the lion head roars angrily while the goat head screams, both sets of heads squeezing their eyes shut as it stumbles back.

“Left/right hook!” they yell together, each slamming a fist into one of the heads.

His niece and nephew are so cool.

They scramble to get out of the beast and run for the exit. Ford screams when the snake tail, neck flared out, lashes for them as they run past the thing. Acting on instinct, he mirrors his niblings and slams his fist into it as the run past.

“Guys, I just punched a snake!” he yells after them once they’re out of the cave. Behind them, the ground itself seems to shake with the force of the beast’s roar. Terror bubbles up in the form of laughter. Oh god, where’s the boat?

“Pines Pawnch!” Mabel yells, jumping over a log.

Dipper reaches the boat first and is getting the knot untied when Mabel jumps into it, running to be ready to start the motor. Ford braces against the back of the boat; he waits for the knot to be undone to start pushing it back into the water with Dipper’s help. Water fills his shoes, soaks his socks, and wets the edges his borrowed shorts, but the boat is in the water before Dipper and him heft themselves into the boat.

Ford helps Dipper start paddling with the oars while Mabel pulls the cable to start the motor. One pull, nothing. A roar shakes the leaves on the trees. Second pull, nothing. The chaimera bursts through the treeline and skids to a stop at the waterline. It starts to step into the water as Mabel pulls for a third time; Ford feels something unclench inside him as the motor lets out its own roar and sends up a spray of cold water. The boat gives a lurch that nearly sends him from his seat; Dipper’s hand slaps against his chest to keep him from falling, though his oar does fall from his hand and hits the water with a splash. Ford watches where it floats as they quickly widen the distance between both it and the chaimera and thinks that Stan might be mad that he has to pay for that now.

“That was so cool!” Mabel yells and Ford is getting better, he doesn’t yelp and barely flinches when she tackles both him and Dipper with a hug, sending all three of them to the floor and rocking the boat bad enough for water to splash in. “Attack glitter twin punch was a success! And Ford punched a snake! And I got to pet a tea cat-goat!”

Ford sits up best he can with Mabel mostly on top of him and shoves his glasses back up his nose. “Technically it was a lion, not a cat.” He corrects but he still grins at her.

Dipper shoves her off but Ford can see he’s grinning too. “Wait till Soos hears about this! I wonder if that thing was there when we came to the island last time? Ooh, maybe McGucket has seen it before? Great Uncle Ford, can I see your notes? I want to add to them. Mabel, can you take the boat around the island a few times? Maybe we can spot it safely from a distance.” Dipper is talking a mile a minute and, once Ford has given him the notebook, starts writing just as fast as he talks. “I wonder if Stan knows anything about this.

Ford settles next to Dipper, adding in his own observations while they slowly circle the island. The chaimera can be seen on the shore, its snake tail lashing whenever it catches sight of them, but doesn’t seem like it is going to make the journey out that far to get to them. It's warm in the sun, comfortable especially with the way the boat rocks gently while the other kids talk excitedly to one another and at him. He wishes he could tell his Stanley all about this, not Old Stanley but the one that was his age; he probably wouldn't believe him, but he'd at least listen.

He likes his niece and nephew a lot, more so with every new thing they see and do together. He hopes they visit every summer, that Stanley and him get to spend as much time as possible with them. Maybe Mabel has scrapbooks with pictures of previous summers he could look at later. Other monsters they’ve discovered, other adventures. It wasn’t sailing the world on the adventure of a lifetime, but it wasn’t bad. Might even be a little better, all things considered.

The thoughts bring a smile to his face as he lets his eyes close, the rocking of the boat and the warmth of the sun making him feel extra sleepy. His head hurts less as he relaxes in his seat. He just needs to relax a little; the other kids will wake him up once they get to shore and Stanley comes to pick them up. Just a quick nap, that's all he needs. He’s been so tired lately; all of a sudden it feels like he hasn’t slept in a thousand years. He can feel the world fading away around him, the voices of his family fading to a muffled peace. Just a quick nap.

Then, with the feeling of tall grass all around him, he hears a voice.

“WELL WELL WELL WELL. LOOK WHAT WE'VE GOT HERE.”

Ford turns and sees a figure floating above him. It’s a…glowing triangle with one eye? It looks vaguely familiar but Ford can’t place where he’s seen it before. He looks around; he’s in a wide open field, grass that goes up to his hips. His smile returns when he sees their old swing set in the distance and then—oh! It’s the Stan O War! All the colors are muted and both look more rundown then he remembers them, but it’s still a comfort that they’re here. He looks back up at the triangle. “Who are you?”

The triangle has no mouth, but Ford can feel it smile back at him. It feels like seeing an old friend again, but Ford has never had an old friend before. He’s met this thing before, he’s sure, but doesn’t know where or when. A pair of thin black arms and legs extends from the thing, the right hand holding a cane that it leans on despite still floating in the air. Like Stanley when he greets a group of tourists. “I’M YOUR BEST FRIEND, KID.” It speaks, its voice echoing all around them, familiar and alien at the same time. “THE NAME’S BILL CIPHER.” It sticks out a hand.

Ford nods; he knows that name. He smiles and takes the offered hand. “Stanford Pines.”

[chngmic]

A Whole Lot Greater Than the Sum of His Parts - Halloween Fic Exchange

For @skyroseblog or now @skywalkertvvins . Happy Halloween! 

This isn’t scary at all (fuckin rip my horror writing), but this could be considered a creature AU if you thought about it. I suppose. 

Well, I hope you enjoy! I actually had to cut it because it was longer than it already is (and this is pretty long). I may make oneshots to add those moments I had to cut out. 

Thank you for reading, as always!

AO3 Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1256616

The invention Todoroki Shouto’s father kept in the basement had been a part of his life ever since he was little. He could easily remembering the cutting of metal and the smell of iron vividly, eating his breakfast and staring at the locked basement door, hoping maybe the glare from his eyes could shoot a laser and knock a hole in the door.

His father was very secretive about his creation, not letting anyone else see it - not even his wife knew what is exactly was. Shouto would always ask his mother what his father was building, and his mother always avoided the question by distracting him with questions about school.

As Shouto grew up, he also became bitter. His father started forcing him into the engineering field, as well as abusing his family. Shouto was to “become the next great inventor, and needed the advanced courses he deserves”, as his father said, making Shouto to watch him work.

He still never saw the creation his father spent his whole life working on.

Shouto also found out that he hated machinery - the coldness and apathetic aura that surrounded the rooms he worked in reminded him too much of himself. He could feel himself slowly losing the spark he had inside, rotting into a cold, calculating machine himself.

It got even to the point to at his father’s funeral, no tears were shed out of his eyes. Why should there be? The old man ruined Shouto’s life and drove his mother past the brink of insanity, leaving her to pour boiling water on his face and give him a brand of his own passiveness in the fight against his father. Yet, he was his father, his own flesh and blood, and Shouto should feel something, but he didn’t, and watched his father be put in the ground. His family would be talked about of course - people could understand Shouto not crying, but when a whole family just stares as their father is six feet under, it causes concern.

-

“Your father left a will, did he not?” Shouto’s close friend Iida asked one day as they poured over books about mechanical engineering. “I remember seeing your mother being told its requests.”

“He did,” Shouto said slowly, copper and iron starting to tang his tongue. “He left everything to me. The house, the inheritance. Even the key to his room in the basement. He didn’t leave anything for Fuyumi, or for my mom and brothers. He’s a pain in my ass even while covered in tons of dirt.”

Iida snorted, pushing his glasses atop his face. “That’s terrible, truly. What are you going to do about it?”

Shouto closed the book he was reading. “Split the inheritance and sell the house, giving the money from the house to a charity. I hope the bastard rolls in his grave.” That made Iida fully laugh, shutting his book as well.

“You sound a lot like Bakugou right now,” he teased, which made Shouto groan. “Just saying! I’m curious about this as well: what are you going to do with the basement key? Throw it away?”

“Actually, yeah,” Shouto blinked as he started placing stuff in his bag. “There’s nothing in there that’s of use to me. You have any good ideas, Iida?”

Iida hummed. “Well, this is just a suggestion, but I would be very curious to see what my insane dictator of a father has been pouring his life into for the past 16 years. You can’t help but want to know, right?”

Shouto nodded, shrugging. “Yeah, I suppose. Curiosity kills the cat, though.”

“Yet satisfaction brings it back,” Iida finished, throwing his bag over his shoulder as he stood up. “Not saying you have to do this, but I think it would be good closure.” With a wave, Shouto’s best friend left, leaving Shouto with half finished notes and half finished thoughts.

-

The door to the basement still looked the same as it did years ago. Shouto took a deep breath, holding the key in his grasp. It was silver, a simple design that wasn’t meant to be showy. Clearly his father did not want people knowing about this room or project.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay by yourself?” Fuyumi said gently, an ever cautious hand wavering over Shouto’s shoulder. He covered his sister’s hands with his own, smiling a soft smile that’s only been directed at her.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine, Fuyumi. There shouldn’t be anything too horrible down there. He was a piece of shit, but I don’t think he would build anything to tarnish his reputation.” Steeling his nerves, he unlocked the door with the simple silver key, pushing the basement door open. “You’re welcome to stay here and wait for me though,” Shouto said behind his shoulder, shrugging. “If it makes you feel better.”

“It actually does, so I’m going to do that,” Fuyumi said, sitting in a pulled out kitchen chair. “If you’re not back in ten minutes I’m coming down, just saying.”

Shouto snorted and waved at her behind him, slowly starting to descend the stairs. Squinting, he took out his phone and put the flashlight on, at least until he found the light switch. The kitchen light got dimmer and dimmer as he went into the basement until there was only him and the light guiding him.

After what felt like forever, which was probably like 3 to 5 minutes, Shouto hit the last stair, and the lightswitch. A generator hummed as he looked around at his father’s invention table, still with metal scraps, and the mess of tools and materials strewn about the room. When Shouto watched him work, he was never in the basement - it was his father’s research lab that he was in most of the time, watching him build little trinkets and gadgets.

“He sure didn’t keep the place spotless,” Shouto muttered, turning his flashlight off. He glanced around, but didn’t see anything particular.

His heart stopped.

In the far corner of the room against a wall was a boy, seated on the floor. His eyes were closed and didn’t seem to be breathing. After a second look, because panic made you think stupid stuff, Shouto realized that he had lines from his eyes that fell vertically to his jawline. He was wearing green, black and red armor, plates coming together to form some sort of jumpsuit. There were bright red shoes that could have lightened up the room themselves, and atop his head was green curly hair. He appeared to be slumped against the wall, sleeping.

At second glance, Shouto realized the boy was plugged into the wall, and wasn’t even a boy at all - it was a robot. His breath stuttered a bit upon this realization, and Shouto slowly walked to the robot, and bent down in front of them, his hand reaching up and brushing the breastplate, looking for a switch.

“Is this the thing my father has been working on for a decade and a half of his life?” Shouto whispered, freezing when he felt the switch. He paused, thinking of the consequences.

There aren’t any consquences. The only person who’d give you any consequences kicked the bucket a few weeks ago.

With that in mind, he flipped the switch to On.

The robot’s generator hummed, and slowly their eyes opened, blinking blearily. Shouto looked at them in awe, waiting for them to speak.

“Ah,” the robot said softly. The voice sounded like a young boy, around Shouto’s age. “Um. Hello.” They gazed around, seemingly confused. “You aren’t the professor. Who are you?” They asked, head turning with a little whirring sound to make it look like their head was cocked.

“Professor...I’m guessing you mean my father,” Shouto said slowly. “I’m Todoroki Shouto, his son.” The robot’s eyes widened, and they smiled happily.

“Shouto! I’ve heard a lot about you!” They beamed. “My name is D3K|_|, but please, call me Deku!” Shouto stared at Deku, confused.

Why would his father name a robot useless?

“Is that your only name?” He asked Deku, his eyebrows furrowing. The robot continued to look confused.

“Yes. The professor gave it to me. I’m very proud to own it!” They said, puffing out their chestplate. Shouto smiled a little at their antics.

“Okay, I understand. How long have you been charging?” He asked the robot, unplugging them. Deku stood up, stretching their limbs.

“I don’t have an exact concept of time, but the clock the Professor placed in me said I was placed in hibernation about 3 weeks ago.”

A month? Shouto blinked, but sighed softly. “That’s understandable.”

“Speaking of the Professor, where is he? He usually is the one who wakes me up,” Deku exclaimed, looking around as if Shouto’s father was hiding, waiting to jump out of the shadows. Shouto stiffened, and placed a hand on Deku’s shoulder.

“Ah, Deku, I’m sorry, but ah, the Professor, as well as my father died a week ago. He won’t be coming back.”

Deku stared at Shouto with wide eyes, and looked down again, looking crestfallen. “I-I seem yes. Human’s do do that, I suppose. They aren’t forever, like I am.” They let out something like a sigh, and smiled ruefully at Shouto.

“I don’t know much about emotions. The Professor was teaching me about them, and I’m still learning, and right now...I feel this tightness in my chest. I don’t have a heart, so why is it so tight?” Deku asked, their robotic hand coming up to grasp at his chestplate.

Shouto let out a shaky breath, and looked down at the robot, “That’s called sadness, Deku. That’s what you’re feeling.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Sadness. I see.”

-

“So he was just….in Dad’s basement?” Fuyumi asked as they watched Deku look around the kitchen in awe. Shouto nodded.

“It’s just as insane as it sounds. I can’t imagine why he would build them in the first place. Maybe Pops was trying to create a mature AI with human emotions?” Shouto guessed, rubbing the back of his head. “Anyways, I can’t bring it in myself to turn them off. This isn’t their fault.”

“What are you going to do?” Fuyumi asked, looking up at him. He laughed humorlessly, grinning down at her.

“What else? I’m going to take Deku in. Technically, they’re my property now,” He said, placing both hands on the back of Fuyumi’s chair. She blinked.

“I mean, I suppose you can do that. Will your school let you though? You can’t have a different gendered roommate,” Fuyumi countered, leaning back to watch Deku open and close the oven repeatedly in awe.

“I can change that,” Shouto said. “Hey Deku, did the Professor ever give you preferred pronouns to go by, or a gender?” Deku looked up at Shouto’s words.

“Well,” Deku hummed. “Considering I am a robot, I am genderless. So I have no gender. Though, the Professor did build me with a masculine structure, and used masculine pronouns. Going off of that, I assumed he saw me as a male.”

“Disregarding that bas-I mean, the Professor’s opinion,” Shouto corrected - he didn’t want Deku to find out how the Professor actually was just yet. “How do you identify, Deku?”

“Well, if I had to decide on how I feel, I do honestly feel masculine,” Deku said genuinely, shutting the oven door. “So I suppose use those pronouns for me, they make me quite comfortable.”

“Alright then,” Shouto said to him, a small grin on his face. “See? It works out.” Fuyumi sighed.

“Well, whatever, I guess he is a robot. The people at your school aren’t politically correct enough to ask, I bet,” Fuyumi said dejectedly, waving her hand. “He’s your robot now, so do what you want with him.”

Deku beamed, his eyes almost lighting up like a light bulbs. “I get to be with Todoroki? That’s exciting!”

Shouto shifted, and sighed. “I guess. I’m not that fun to be around honestly. All I do is work.”

Still with that same stupid smile. “I’ll help you then!” Deku exclaimed, standing up straight. “I’m an ever growing, ever maturing AI! My intelligence level is high as well!”

Fuyumi and Shouto glanced at each other.

“Have fun with him,” Fuyumi said.

-

“So, what do you do?” Deku asked as he watched Shouto plug in his charger and other means. Shouto paused, pushing the block to the side and glancing towards the robot on the bed.

“I’m currently an engineering student,” Shouto said, stiffening a little as his guard went up. He hated bringing up his forced career track. Now that his father’s dead, though, Shouto supposed he could change that, but there was still this voice in his mind forcing him to stay with it. Deku’s eyes widened.

“So you work with machines as well! Are you aiming to become like the Professor?” Deku asked innocently, swinging his legs up and down on the bed. Shouto’s stare went cold, and he looked away. “I don’t want to ever be like him.”

Deku blinked, confused. “The Professor said you were going to be though. He said that you were his masterpiece, and that-”

“Deku.” Shouto’s voice was ice, and it made Deku freeze in his tracks. Shouto looked up at Deku, eyes piercing.

“The Professor is dead. He also didn’t consider the fact that I am my own person. His ideals aren’t my own,” he said sharply. “So please, don’t bring up what he said about me again.”

Deku’s eyes dimmed, and he sagged a little. “I-I apologize. That was rude of me, talking about things I have no idea about.”

“It’s not your fault,” Shouto sighed heavily, not wanting the robot to think he hated him. “You’ve only been with the Professor so far, so you only know his ideals.”

“What are your ideals, then?” Deku questioned, staring at him. Shouto blushed a little, going back to setting Deku’s things up.

“I originally wanted to be a writer,” he finally said, standing back up and walking to sit next to Deku on his bed. “A novelist, to be more specific. I love writing stories. My father saw it as fantasy though, and forced me into engineering.”

“Do you not like machines?” Deku asked slowly. Shouto shook his head. “Why not?”

“They’re cold, and hard fact. They deal with too many factual things and I don’t feel my soul in them. I don’t feel the love that I do in a book.” Deku was silent and he glanced over at the robot, who was stared at his red metal feet.

“Do you think I have any love, Todoroki?” Deku asked softly, his hands clutching the comforter below him. “Do you feel love in me?” Shouto thought for a moment.

“My father doesn’t have an ounce of love in his body. So if you do, it’s not his,” he said, trying to find the right words.

“Can I find it then? Love?” Deku asked immediately, turning to look at Shouto. Shouto blinked, staring into Deku’s eyes.

“There’s many different types of love, but…” Shouto thought about his sister, Iida, Uraraka, Momo, and even Bakugou and Kirishima. He thought about how despite how cold he was when he entered University, they warmly welcomed him, and made him feel like he was important.

“If you’re surrounded by the right people, then yes. You’ll find it.”

-

“So your father built a robot?” Iida exclaimed at their friend group’s study meeting. “Like, an actual talking robot?”

“That’s so cool!” Uraraka said, clapping her hands together. “Do we get to meet it?” Shouto closed his eyes and tried to focus on not telling his friends to stop talking at the same time.

“To answer your question Iida, yes, he did. I can’t believe it either. To answer your question, Uraraka, he’s still new on people. The only people he’s met are my father, my sister, and myself,” Shouto said, sipping his coffee as he read his textbook.

“Does he have a name?” Uraraka asked, abandoning her note taking to question Shouto on his new friend. Shouto sighed - once Uraraka started getting curious, there was no way out.

“He said to call him Deku, which is kind of a contradiction since he’s basically named worthless-”

“It doesn’t sound like that to me!” Uraraka said. “It kind of also sounds like ‘I can do it’, you know?” Shouto blinked. No, he didn’t know, but that was a far better alternative to think about.

“That does suit his personality better,” Shouto said thoughtfully, taking another sip of his coffee, textbook unfortunately ignored.

“Does he have a personality? Considering the fact that he’s a robot,” Iida said, curious as well. Shouto nodded, agreeing.

“That’s what I thought, but Deku is quite polite actually. He has this childlike innocence about the world and believes that everyone is a good person,” Shouto explained, leaning back in his chair. “Even my father.”

“Does he know about your father?” Momo piped up, after listening to the conversation for a good bit. “I’m sure your father wouldn’t tell his robot that he’s abusing his family.”

Shouto chuckled a little. “Not that I know of. I can’t bring myself to hurt him like that, though. It would kinda suck finding out the person who brought you into this world was also trying to take people out of it.”

There were hums of agreement as the conversation came to a close.

“I still want to meet him though.”

“God damnit.”

-

“Angelface told me you have a fucking robot now,” Bakugou said to Shouto while they were at the gym. “How is that?”

“My old man’s,” Shouto replied, placing down his weights. “I don’t have it in me to turn him off permanently, so he’s staying with me.” Bakugou grunted, placing his weights down as well.

“Are you sure it isn’t gonna fucking shiv you in your sleep or something? It was made by that piece of shit after all,” Bakugou exclaimed, wiping his forehead off with his sleeve. Shouto barked out a laugh.

“He got upset yesterday because I killed a spider in the bathroom,” he said, grinning slightly. (“If I had a crying function, I would be sobbing right now! How could you have killed Spidey?”

“Wait, you named him?!”)

Bakugou snorted. “It sounds like a fucking wimp. Aren’t robots supposed to destroy the world or something?” Shouto rolled his eyes, picking up a heavier weight.

“This isn’t War of the Worlds, dumbass,” he said, pumping up and down. “He just acts like a human being.”

“Well, isn’t that great? A robot who acts like a human, and a human who acts like a robot.” Bakugou grinned. “You two are perfect for each other.”

Shouto didn’t speak to him for the rest of the session.

-

“He’s so cute!” Uraraka squealed upon seeing Deku in Todoroki’s room when she, Iida, Momo, and Kirishima came to visit. Bakugou and Momoko were currently in class (“But they send their regards!” Kirishima said cheerfully.)

“Um, thank you!” Deku said uncertainly. “Todoroki, who are these people? Did you allow them entrance?”

“Yes I did,” Todoroki said gently, ever patient. “These are my friends Uraraka, Iida, Momo, and Kirishima,” he introduced, pointing to each of them in turn. “They wanted to meet you, so I brought them here.”

“Ah! So these are friends!” Deku said, beaming. “Of course! Well, hello! My name is D3K|_|, but please call me Deku!”

“Hi! I’m Uraraka, like he said!” She said in a bubbly tone, beaming at him. Shouto had to turn away from how much sun suddenly filled up his room.

These two are dangerous together.

“Hi there, it’s a pleasure to meet you!” Deku replied, sitting cheerfully on his bed. Shouto smiled softly.

“My name is Iida,” he said in a professional tone, holding his hand out. “I have heard much about you. It’s great to put a face to the name.” Deku stared at Iida’s hand, confused. “Um…”

“Take your left hand and place it in his hand and move it up and down,” Shouto whispered to him, and Deku’s mouth made an ‘o’ shape, doing so. Iida moved away, satisfied.

“Yo! I’m Kirishima,” Kirishima said cheerfully. “Any friend of Todoroki’s is a friend of mine! Feel free to talk to me anytime, I heard I’m quite easygoing.” Deku smiled again, nodding at his words.

“Thank you! I’ll be sure to keep that in mind!” Deku said genuinely, making Kirishima grin.

“You’re really cool. Todoroki, does he have lazers and shit?” Deku shook his head.

“Professor made me to be exactly like a human, so I don’t have many powerful functions,” he admitted, sagging a little. “My intelligence and design though is very extraordinary!” Deku said proudly, puffing out his chestplate.

“If you don’t want him, can I keep him?” Uraraka whispered to Shouto.

“He’s mine, sorry,” Todoroki whispered back. She pouted.

“Anyways, I must leave, I’m afraid. I have class to attend,” Iida said, pushing his glasses up to his face. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Deku. I hope we talk soon!” After bowing low to the ground, he left.

“What a goody two shoes,” Kirishima joked, and him and Uraraka joined the pair on the bed, and talked for a few hours.

(“Did you like them?” Shouto asked Deku after they left. Deku thought, and smiled a soft smile, making Shouto’s heart leap.

“They’re amazing. They make you smile in a different way. That’s….that’s love, right?”

Shouto smiled.)

-

A couple of months passed since he decided to take in Deku, and Shouto could definitely feel something happening to his body. Lately, he was starting to get nervous around the robot, like the butterflies in the stomach, heart pounding kind of nervous. Shouto wasn’t running a fever (he had Deku check) so he wasn’t sick. He didn’t understand why he was feeling this way.

From the way Momo was grinning, Shouto could tell he wasn’t going to like his answer either.

“From what you’re telling me, I’m 90% sure you have a crush on your robot,” Momo said, calmly sipping her tea after Shouto’s tangent.

Shouto choked on his coffee.

“I beg your pardon? I can’t have a crush on him. He’s a robot!” Shouto said in an unusually high voice, making Momo chuckle.

“You have all the symptoms,” she explained gently. “I felt the same way about Jirou when I met her, and look at where we are now.” Her engagement ring glinted in the sunlight by the window they were sat by. Shouto felt sick.

“Jirou is a human though! She’s flesh and blood, not machinery and electricity!” He shrilled, clearing his throat to calm himself down. “Is he even capable of liking me back? If what you’re saying is right, did I just set myself up for the ultimate unrequited love?!”

Momo placed her teacup down. “Well, you said it yourself, he’s an ever growing AI, so he has a mind that grows like a human’s. Also, a lot of humans have prosthetic arms and legs! It’s just, his entire body is a prosthetic, I suppose.”

Shouto placed his forehead on the table. “That doesn’t make me feel better.” Momo gently patted his head, resuming to look at her book.

“Just sit on it for a little bit. I could be wrong, but that’s what I’m saying, and what the others will say I’m sure.”

Shouto’s groan could probably be heard down the block.

-

When Todoroki was out at class or studying, Deku usually hung out with Iida’s girlfriend Mei and helped her out. She was very eccentric and brash, but extremely clever and genuine. Deku liked her a lot, and could see why Iida did. Right now Todoroki was with his friend Momo, so it was the perfect time to ask the inventor a question.

“Pardon me Mei, but I think I’m malfunctioning,” he said, making Mei pause and pop her head up from her current project.

“What do you mean? I’m sure I can help you, but I just checked you last week, What’s the problem?” Deku looked at his hands, clenching and unclenching them.

“When I’m around Todoroki, my chest feels very warm,” he started, watching Mei work. “And my memory drive feels quite fuzzy. So does where I assume my stomach would be.” He sighed loudly. “I can’t figure it out. I don’t have a heart, so what’s wrong with me?”

Mei stared at Deku.

“Oh my god, you want to touch tonsils with Todoroki.”

“What does that mean?” Deku asked innocently.

She stared at him. “Nevermind,” Mei said, placing her wrench down. “Anyway, Deku, based off those deductions, you have romantic feelings for Todoroki.”

“Feelings?” Deku asked, watching her go back to work. “Romantic feelings?”

Mei hummed trying to think of an example. “Yeah. Like how I feel for Tenya. How Tenya feels for me. It’s like….you want to be with them all the time. Seeing them smile makes you smile. If they were upset or angry the world sort of feels like it’s crashing down.”

Deku nodded, his eyes bright with wonder. “Okay. I see what you’re saying, and….I do want to be with Todoroki all the time.” He looked back down at his hands. “When he smiles, I want to smile. Seeing him upset - it makes me feel what you might call ‘worried’?” At Mei’s encouraging nod, he goes on. “Todoroki is an amazing person. He wants to be a writer, and I think he should be one. I told him so, but he said he has to stay in engineering,” he frowned. “Why does he feel like that?”

Mei was silent as she stood up, examining the metal machine in her hands. “I feel like that’s a conversation for you and him to have, Deku. I would ask him since you don’t already know.”

Deku nodded, thinking. “Yeah, I’ll ask him about that. Thanks for listening, as always! I’m glad you’re my friend Mei.” She laughed, waving him out the door.

“Yeah yeah yeah. Go get your man.”

-

“Hey Todoroki?” Deku asked as he watched Shouto get ready for bed. “Can I ask you something?”

“Hmm?” Shouto turned to look at Deku, his shirt halfway over his head. Deku looked away pointedly, more focused on his feet.

“Why are you sticking with engineering?” Deku finally asked, his hands fidgeting in his lap. Shouto froze as he was putting on his pj shirt.

“What?”

Deku looked up at Todoroki determinedly, a glint in his whirring green eyes. “You’re a fantastic writer. You have such a way with words, and I can tell there’s nothing else you would rather do than write. Yet you force yourself into engineering, where I can even tell it hurts you. It makes your eyebrows furrow, and you frown a lot, and….” Deku hesitated. “I don’t like seeing you so sad. It makes me feel sad. So, please tell me why you put yourself through something you don’t want to do.”

Shouto stared at Deku for a moment, meeting his eyes. Sighing softly, he finished putting on his shirt, walking to sit on his bed with resigned dedication. “You really are persistent, aren’t you?” He muttered with a quiet scoff, his hand coming up to cup Deku’s cheek. His cheek was metal, that much Shouto could tell, but it was also warm, power generating through the wires that encompass the robot before him.

Deku’s eyes widened, but didn’t push him away. He looked more confused at the gesture than anything, but him not moving Shouto’s hand away from his face meant that he trusted him - due to an unfortunate incident with Uraraka sneaking up behind Deku, he wasn’t too fond of people touching him without permission. Seeing Deku letting his guard down in front of him made Shouto’s heart melt.

“Todoroki?” Deku whispered, looking up at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Shouto,” Shouto said, clearing his throat to avoid any voice cracks. “Call me Shouto. I feel as if we know each other well enough.”

If robots could blush, Deku certainly did. He glanced away from Shouto’s gaze and he could feel his cheek get hotter, which made Shouto chuckle. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s just a suggestion.”

“I-It’s okay, Shouto!” Deku exclaimed, that determined gleam in his eye again. “You’re right, we have known each other well enough to go by that name! Unfortunately, I just have the name Deku, but that’ll have to suffice.”

Shouto let out a puff of laughter, and pulled his hand away from Deku’s face and placing his hands in his lap. “Well, you do want to know, don’t you? Why I won’t change my major and why I make myself miserable in engineering.” At Deku’s earnest nod, Shouto looked away, telling the story to the ground.

“I apologize. I haven’t been the most honest with you, Deku,” Shouto said with a sad smile. Deku cocked his head, listening. “My father, the Professor….he may have been a brilliant inventor, but he was a horrible father and husband. He abused my siblings and I, and my mother to the point of insanity.” His hand slowly crept up to the scar on the left side of his face.

“My mother did this to me. She poured boiling water on me, saying that I was unsightly because I reminded her too much of my father. I don’t blame her - my father drove her into a corner where she couldn’t get out. It just made me angry.” He felt a hand on his shoulder, and placed his own hand on Midoriya’s, knowing the robot was trying to comfort him the best he can. “He made me bitter. He was forcing me into something I didn’t want to do, but I had no choice. My father controlled everything about my life. Now that he’s dead, I suppose that’s not true, but this has been a routine for all my life. It’s become mechanical movements.” His laugh was bitter. “Honestly, I think you’re more human than I am, Deku.”

Deku was silent as he spoke, and after a moment’s pause, he quietly asked, “What makes you think I’m more human?” Shouto looked up at his glowing green eyes, which held a slight bit of confusion.

“You’re so bright. You have this gentle aura surrounding you, and you’re so alive. Deku, you feel emotions so strongly, and it’s so beautiful. You’re beautiful.” Deku’s cheeks flushed as much as a robot’s could, looking away. “Me? I can’t seem to feel. It took me so long to get the friends I have now, mainly because they’re persistent jackasses and sort of forced me to be their friend.” Shouto smiled softly. “I am thankful though. They’ve helped me a lot.”

Deku turned so he was sitting in front of Shouto, and took Shouto’s hands in his. “I don’t know too much about grief, and sadness,” Deku said slowly, trying to process his words to come out of his mouth in a correct manner. “I’m always learning, and still learning. Shouto, coming from a machine, I don’t think you’re more of a machine than myself.” Deku squeezed Shouto’s hands. “Humans work differently than machines. We either work or we don’t. We can easily get fixed and not remember how much we hurt, or had hurt. Humans don’t function like we do. Human’s can get fixed in a sense, but they don’t fully heal. There are scars, bruises, blemishes. You can’t turn a gear and get fixed.”

Shouto stared at Deku with wide eyes, listening to what the robot had to say. “You’ve been through more than most others have. Professor hurt you physically and mentally all your life up until this point, and you’ve had no one you felt comfortable enough to turn to.” Deku stared determinedly at Shouto. “Listen to me. One thing I have learned is that humans are not meant to be alone. You just can’t. You've subconsciously realized this, and you’ve made friends. You have been living this routine, this function, all your life. Todoroki Shouto, life is not meant to be on one function. The parts of you, the abilities you have, they help you to do multiple functions of life, and living. You are a whole lot greater than the sum of your parts.” Deku blushed a little, rubbing the back of his head with one hand.

“If I’m beautiful, than you are too,” He mumbled, looking away from Shouto. Shouto felt his hands reach up and cup Deku’s cheeks and make him look straight at him. Deku blinked, looking at Shouto with wide eyes.

It was like Shouto was on autopilot. He leaned in towards the robot before him and gently connected their lips. Deku made a small noise, but didn’t move away, and actually closed his eyes, taking in the presence of the male cupping his face. He could feel the heat from Shouto’s hands, and from his lips, and it set Deku on fire. He moved his hands to sit lightly on Shouto’s knees, holding them.

Shouto pulled away, and scanned Deku’s face, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Then, it was almost as if he got his bearings; the boy blushed and took his hands away, looking down at their legs.

“Ah, sorry,” He mumbled, refusing to look at Deku. “You just, said something amazing. That was my first reaction.” Deku was silent for a moment, and Shouto squeezed his eyes shut, ready for the inevitable rejection that was coming.

“Well….” Deku paused. “I’m not sorry. I actually really enjoyed that.” Shouto whipped his head up to look at Deku’s face, trying to figure out if he was joking or not. Deku chuckled a little bit, looking Shouto straight in the eyes with a shaky smile.

“So you-?”

“Yeah.”

“You actually wanted to-”

“Yes. I did. I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”

Shouto just stared at him with a dazed expression on his face, and Deku started laughing more. He finally broke out into a smile, shaking his head. Suddenly, Deku’s expression turned serious, making Shouto sit straight up.

“I don’t know much about romance,” Deku said, his chin up. “Yet, I would like to learn. I already know that I hold romantic feelings for you. According to an article from Wikihow I analyzed, we are supposed to go on these things such as dates. I don’t know what a fruit has anything to with it, but I will do my best!” His eyes held passion, and Shouto did the only thing he thought to answer that question.

He laughed.

“Okay, sounds good,” Shouto said, feeling the oil in his veins turn to blood, and the generator of his heart starting to beat instead of run.

[yasbxxgie]

Science-Loving Teens From Ghana And D.C. Geek Out Together

It was a meeting of nerds and sharks.

The self-described "biotech nerds" and "robotic nerds" were seven high school students from Washington, D.C. The eight teens who call themselves "sharks" and flew in from Ghana. "The shark is a big fish so it means you're big. Knowledgeable," explains Stephanie Obbo of Ghana, an aspiring medical doctor.

Together, the 15 high schoolers formed a team for the first World Smarts STEM Challenge. That's a science competition run by IREX, a global development nonprofit that strives to promote student enthusiasm for science, tech, engineering and math (aka STEM). Each of the 17 teams had teenagers in the D.C. area partnering with Ghanaians to identify and solve a real-world problem. NPR's Goats and Soda followed "Team McKwiny" — a name that blends D.C.'s McKinley Technology High School and Winneba Senior High School in Ghana.

They had collaborated since September over the internet. The Americans kicked around the idea of minimizing carbon emissions. The Ghanaians wanted to tackle water pollution. They finally agreed to design and build a water purifier.

Both contingents had a personal stake in the project. The McKinley students found high levels of lead in the Anacostia River that flows through Washington, D.C. And the Winneba students in southern Ghana found pesticides, hospital waste, sewage and other pollutants in a nearby lagoon used for fishing and irrigation. And because water shortages cause locals to rely on streams and ponds for clean drinking water, more than 100 cases of cholera swept through a neighboring district just in October 2016.

The Ghanaian teenagers proposed using local materials, like leaves from neem trees, to help filter the water. (The medicinal and antibacterial properties of neem leaves and oil have been studied.) The Americans, with no access to neem leaves, suggested substituting cilantro after learning that it removes lead from water — a property discovered by undergraduate researchers in 2013.

Meeting in person for the first time was a little awkward, since being social mattered at least as much as being scientific. American Miara Bonner, wearing a lab coat and hoop earrings, suggested an icebreaker. "What's that?" asked the Ghanaians in unison.

A question-and-answer game revealed similarities and differences. "I also don't like the food at my school," said Cassell Robinson of McKinley. "We have many tribes and festivals to remember the past and sacrifice animals," said Winneba junior Stephanie Obbo. Bonner's jaw dropped. "I did not know any of that." She remembers thinking, "They hunt. They sacrifice. They don't teach you that in history!"

Their purification device consisted of four interconnected plastic buckets. In the first chamber, the water is filtered through gravel and sand. Then moringa seeds and neem leaves (or cilantro) in the sedimentation chamber extract particles before the water is boiled in a different chamber and then stored. Team McKwiny tested their treated water samples and said they were able to remove contaminants from both fresh and salt water, meeting World Health Organization standards for safety.

"It opens up my eyes that there are a lot of things that are useful out in the world that I just haven't found yet," said McKinley's Megan Richardson.

The goal of the competition is to encourage that kind of curiosity. Especially because few American students are embracing STEM. "Only about 16 percent of American high school seniors are proficient in math and interested in a STEM career," said Rebecca Bell Meszaros, associate vice president for education with IREX. "This program is combining STEM and 21st century skills like problem solving, innovation and cross-cultural communication." She adds that IREX chose to focus the program, made possible by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, in Ghana because the nonprofit has good access to schools with reliable internet.

By Saturday's final event, American and Ghanaian members of Team McKwiny were whispering into each other's ears and holding hands. But they didn't get the grand prize. That went to Team "Big Bang ... Brains of the World!" The students had filled ice trays with soil, added copper wire that was coiled around zinc-plated nails and then poured lemon juice on top. Their battery produced enough voltage to light an LED. The team now has a chance to pitch their battery to investors; IREX will match up to $10,000 raised.

"The winning soil battery demystifies energy production and storage at a time when battery storage is evolving faster than ever," said judge Jim Egenrieder, director of Virginia Tech's National Capital Region Thinkabit Labs. "And the water filtration system prototype represents what may become part of every household in the future, as we learn to use and reuse precious water resources."

Team McKwiny came in second and plans to keep going. The Ghanaian students hope to apply for funding from nongovernmental organizations to construct their filter on the outskirts of the Winneba Township. They want to put the first filter near a school where students lack access to clean water and sometimes have no option but to use water shared by livestock.

In the end, the students didn't just learn about science. The Americans got new insights into life in the developing world. "I didn't know that there are lagoons that people get their drinking water from — the water that they bathe in and wash their clothes in," said Miara Bonner, who hopes to one day become an endodontic surgeon. "I don't like the idea of that. When I heard that, I thought this is the problem we need to focus on."

And the Ghanaians tossed out their stereotypes of Americans. Belinda Dogbe had the preconception that Americans would be "snobbish, always wanting to be alone, not friendly" — a stereotype that came from Hollywood movies. "I realized we are wrong," she said. "They are very friendly, they are open. They love to ask questions."

Photographs:

Ghanaian and American team members met for the first time at the competition, held in Washington, D.C.

Cilantro played a role in one stage of the team's water purification system

It's icebreaker time for Team McKwiny, who found out they have a lot in common

Members of Team McKwiny clasp hands in anticipation of the awards announcement. They came in second

[endlessarchite]

13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces

Hi guys — Sarah here. I just wanted to pop in really quick and introduce a new contributor to the blog, Caroline!

I meant to introduce you guys last week, but I’ve been caught on the phone and getting really behind as usual (and, as always, I’m doing other things behind the scenes that are both gross AND fun AND leading up to a long-awaited reno! Jeez, how long has it been since I tore out my master bathroom? I am going to have a confession all about that later this week as well as what inspired me to start remodeling it again). But Caroline used to write for my team when I worked for an online magazine called Society South, and she’s assisted me in a few articles since then when I do freelance work. Over the last few months, I realized that there are giant chunks of time where writing a post to update you feels like ages (even if it’s only a week, I fondly remember the days where I used to post more frequently), and you don’t see my busy little legs kicking below the surface (the quote of the duck on a calm surface is incredibly apt in my situation!). So, I asked Caroline if she might like to contribute to the site every once in a while for trend-spotting and decorating ideas, much like I used to do a few years ago on Saturdays, but with a little more substance. I like her eye and her writing style, so I’m happy to have her adding some of her own content to the site. Here she is with her first post all about decor for outdoor spaces! I love some of the items she’s found, and each month she’ll be back with themed new finds I hope you guys will enjoy. Thanks, and welcome, Caroline! <3

Hey y’all, I’m Caroline and I’m so excited to join The Ugly Ducking House team! I love that I’m getting the chance to combine two of my passions — writing and design — for Sarah’s blog, and can’t wait to share more of my ideas with everyone. Even though the summer solstice isn’t for another few days, we’ve been lucky enough to have had such warm and beautiful weather early this year — which means extra time to enjoy being outside with friends and family (or just to get working on that tan). That’s why my first post features some of the coolest and handiest outdoor products to enhance your outdoor spaces — enjoy! *contains affiliate links*

Clockwise from top left: chair / lamp / feeder / table torch / hammock / bean bag chair / lawn mower / tunic / bug spray / fire pit / table / cooler / rug

June: you step out of your office to a burst of hot, humid air. You get in your car and nearly every surface burns to the touch. A pop song about fleeting vacation flings is playing on the radio. Ahh, yes, summer has finally begun. But before you get caught up in a day dream montage of grilling burgers poolside, waving sparklers with the kids, and eating too many popsicles, ask yourself — are you, or rather, is your backyard, actually ready? If you’re picturing pollen-covered, half-half broken lawn chairs; a pile of dusty, deflated pool floats; and a grill that’s near rust-damaged disintegration, then no, you are not ready for summer, my friend. Whether your backyard needs a total rehaul or just a little sprucing up,  these outdoor products are guaranteed to upgrade your outdoor space and add a pop of fun just in time for summer to really get into swing.

Natural Wicker/Rattan Furniture – The light, natural wood look as been a popular minimalist interior design style for a while, but now it’s moving to the outdoors again. Retro-vibe rattan furniture gives your patio space a funky twist while still remaining neutral and inviting.

Inside Lighting Brought Outdoors – Bringing the indoors out is often achieved by incorporating comfy sofas or pillow accents into your patio seating design — but have you thought about doing the same with lighting? This solar-powered floor lamp brings the coziness of the indoors outside for an unusual, antique-like lighting effect.

Modern Bird Feeder – Bird feeders don’t have to be reserved for winter and certainly don’t have to be strictly utilitarian in style. Opt for a sleek geometric shape made of glass for a feeder that doubles as yard art.

Decorative Tabletop Torch – If tiki torches feel a little too cheesy-luao-birthday-party-backyard-barbeque to you, opt for a much chicer alternative to keep the bugs away. Fill this copper tabletop torch with citronella oil for a stylish way to stay bug-free without invoking a single hawaiian shirt vibe.

Hammock in a Trendy Color – Bright yellow is one of this summer’s top colors for decor, but think outside the box of throw pillows and pool floaties. A yellow hammock adds a touch of whimsy while still being functional, and the color will pop against a green backyard backdrop.

Creative Outdoor Seating – No more wooden Adirondak chair splinters for you! These outdoor beanbag chairs offer a casual, comfortable, portable seating option perfect for parties and catching some sun (just try not to fall asleep — no one wants an embarrassing sunburn!).

Robotic Lawn Mower – Also known as the “Roomba for lawns,” this little guy is perfect for those who hate cutting the grass in the heat and sun. Personally, I’m extremely curious what kinds of lawn striping or patterns this would create.

SPF or UPF Clothing – Whether gardening, grilling, or beachside, protecting your skin from harmful UV rays is a must. Give your sunscreen a hand by wearing some breathable SPF/UPF proof clothing that’s cute, as well as functional.

All Natural Bug Spray – Reduce the chemicals you put on your body and into the air with a tried-and-true, natural citronella spray. I discovered this awesome product a few years ago while on an annual family vacation in South Florida — let me tell you, this stuff really works! Added bonus: no stickiness and it smells great!

Copper Fire Pit – Upgrade your backyard fire pit to the on-trend metallic version that is sure to make any night-time soiree on the deck feel a touch more elegant.

Mosaic Tile Accents – One of this summer’s biggest trends also happens to be a great opportunity for a DIY project. Entertain yourself or your kids by decorating an end table, plant stand, or bird bath with colorful mosaic tiles.

Retro Patio Cooler – Coolers seem to always get the short end of the stick when it comes to design, which makes sense considering the wear-and-tear of countless tailgates and beach trips we put them through. With these retro and brightly-colored standing coolers, you don’t have to sacrifice an ounce of style for your outdoor space or the convenience of an ice-cold beverage. I recommend the turquoise color to continue the theme of bold and bright!

Bright Outdoor Rug – Drab, stained concrete; faded, weathered wood…this does not have to be the fate of your outdoor flooring. Add a colorful, textured outdoor run to create just as an inviting outdoor entertaining space as you have inside. Can y’all tell I like bright colors yet?

Even something as simple as adding a little color or testing a new product to make the sticky days more bearable (lookin’ at you, bug spray) can really make a difference when it comes to revitalizing and enjoying your outdoor space. So, I hope this list has inspired y’all to take your backyard swag up a notch — what’s your outdoors summer-fun must-have?

The post 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j

[sherlocklexa]

13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces

Hi guys — Sarah here. I just wanted to pop in really quick and introduce a new contributor to the blog, Caroline!

I meant to introduce you guys last week, but I’ve been caught on the phone and getting really behind as usual (and, as always, I’m doing other things behind the scenes that are both gross AND fun AND leading up to a long-awaited reno! Jeez, how long has it been since I tore out my master bathroom? I am going to have a confession all about that later this week as well as what inspired me to start remodeling it again). But Caroline used to write for my team when I worked for an online magazine called Society South, and she’s assisted me in a few articles since then when I do freelance work. Over the last few months, I realized that there are giant chunks of time where writing a post to update you feels like ages (even if it’s only a week, I fondly remember the days where I used to post more frequently), and you don’t see my busy little legs kicking below the surface (the quote of the duck on a calm surface is incredibly apt in my situation!). So, I asked Caroline if she might like to contribute to the site every once in a while for trend-spotting and decorating ideas, much like I used to do a few years ago on Saturdays, but with a little more substance. I like her eye and her writing style, so I’m happy to have her adding some of her own content to the site. Here she is with her first post all about decor for outdoor spaces! I love some of the items she’s found, and each month she’ll be back with themed new finds I hope you guys will enjoy. Thanks, and welcome, Caroline! <3

Hey y’all, I’m Caroline and I’m so excited to join The Ugly Ducking House team! I love that I’m getting the chance to combine two of my passions — writing and design — for Sarah’s blog, and can’t wait to share more of my ideas with everyone. Even though the summer solstice isn’t for another few days, we’ve been lucky enough to have had such warm and beautiful weather early this year — which means extra time to enjoy being outside with friends and family (or just to get working on that tan). That’s why my first post features some of the coolest and handiest outdoor products to enhance your outdoor spaces — enjoy! *contains affiliate links*

Clockwise from top left: chair / lamp / feeder / table torch / hammock / bean bag chair / lawn mower / tunic / bug spray / fire pit / table / cooler / rug

June: you step out of your office to a burst of hot, humid air. You get in your car and nearly every surface burns to the touch. A pop song about fleeting vacation flings is playing on the radio. Ahh, yes, summer has finally begun. But before you get caught up in a day dream montage of grilling burgers poolside, waving sparklers with the kids, and eating too many popsicles, ask yourself — are you, or rather, is your backyard, actually ready? If you’re picturing pollen-covered, half-half broken lawn chairs; a pile of dusty, deflated pool floats; and a grill that’s near rust-damaged disintegration, then no, you are not ready for summer, my friend. Whether your backyard needs a total rehaul or just a little sprucing up,  these outdoor products are guaranteed to upgrade your outdoor space and add a pop of fun just in time for summer to really get into swing.

Natural Wicker/Rattan Furniture – The light, natural wood look as been a popular minimalist interior design style for a while, but now it’s moving to the outdoors again. Retro-vibe rattan furniture gives your patio space a funky twist while still remaining neutral and inviting.

Inside Lighting Brought Outdoors – Bringing the indoors out is often achieved by incorporating comfy sofas or pillow accents into your patio seating design — but have you thought about doing the same with lighting? This solar-powered floor lamp brings the coziness of the indoors outside for an unusual, antique-like lighting effect.

Modern Bird Feeder – Bird feeders don’t have to be reserved for winter and certainly don’t have to be strictly utilitarian in style. Opt for a sleek geometric shape made of glass for a feeder that doubles as yard art.

Decorative Tabletop Torch – If tiki torches feel a little too cheesy-luao-birthday-party-backyard-barbeque to you, opt for a much chicer alternative to keep the bugs away. Fill this copper tabletop torch with citronella oil for a stylish way to stay bug-free without invoking a single hawaiian shirt vibe.

Hammock in a Trendy Color – Bright yellow is one of this summer’s top colors for decor, but think outside the box of throw pillows and pool floaties. A yellow hammock adds a touch of whimsy while still being functional, and the color will pop against a green backyard backdrop.

Creative Outdoor Seating – No more wooden Adirondak chair splinters for you! These outdoor beanbag chairs offer a casual, comfortable, portable seating option perfect for parties and catching some sun (just try not to fall asleep — no one wants an embarrassing sunburn!).

Robotic Lawn Mower – Also known as the “Roomba for lawns,” this little guy is perfect for those who hate cutting the grass in the heat and sun. Personally, I’m extremely curious what kinds of lawn striping or patterns this would create.

SPF or UPF Clothing – Whether gardening, grilling, or beachside, protecting your skin from harmful UV rays is a must. Give your sunscreen a hand by wearing some breathable SPF/UPF proof clothing that’s cute, as well as functional.

All Natural Bug Spray – Reduce the chemicals you put on your body and into the air with a tried-and-true, natural citronella spray. I discovered this awesome product a few years ago while on an annual family vacation in South Florida — let me tell you, this stuff really works! Added bonus: no stickiness and it smells great!

Copper Fire Pit – Upgrade your backyard fire pit to the on-trend metallic version that is sure to make any night-time soiree on the deck feel a touch more elegant.

Mosaic Tile Accents – One of this summer’s biggest trends also happens to be a great opportunity for a DIY project. Entertain yourself or your kids by decorating an end table, plant stand, or bird bath with colorful mosaic tiles.

Retro Patio Cooler – Coolers seem to always get the short end of the stick when it comes to design, which makes sense considering the wear-and-tear of countless tailgates and beach trips we put them through. With these retro and brightly-colored standing coolers, you don’t have to sacrifice an ounce of style for your outdoor space or the convenience of an ice-cold beverage. I recommend the turquoise color to continue the theme of bold and bright!

Bright Outdoor Rug – Drab, stained concrete; faded, weathered wood…this does not have to be the fate of your outdoor flooring. Add a colorful, textured outdoor run to create just as an inviting outdoor entertaining space as you have inside. Can y’all tell I like bright colors yet?

Even something as simple as adding a little color or testing a new product to make the sticky days more bearable (lookin’ at you, bug spray) can really make a difference when it comes to revitalizing and enjoying your outdoor space. So, I hope this list has inspired y’all to take your backyard swag up a notch — what’s your outdoors summer-fun must-have?

The post 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

from car2 http://ift.tt/2siedO7 via as shown a lot

[chocdono]

13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces

Hi guys — Sarah here. I just wanted to pop in really quick and introduce a new contributor to the blog, Caroline!

I meant to introduce you guys last week, but I’ve been caught on the phone and getting really behind as usual (and, as always, I’m doing other things behind the scenes that are both gross AND fun AND leading up to a long-awaited reno! Jeez, how long has it been since I tore out my master bathroom? I am going to have a confession all about that later this week as well as what inspired me to start remodeling it again). But Caroline used to write for my team when I worked for an online magazine called Society South, and she’s assisted me in a few articles since then when I do freelance work. Over the last few months, I realized that there are giant chunks of time where writing a post to update you feels like ages (even if it’s only a week, I fondly remember the days where I used to post more frequently), and you don’t see my busy little legs kicking below the surface (the quote of the duck on a calm surface is incredibly apt in my situation!). So, I asked Caroline if she might like to contribute to the site every once in a while for trend-spotting and decorating ideas, much like I used to do a few years ago on Saturdays, but with a little more substance. I like her eye and her writing style, so I’m happy to have her adding some of her own content to the site. Here she is with her first post all about decor for outdoor spaces! I love some of the items she’s found, and each month she’ll be back with themed new finds I hope you guys will enjoy. Thanks, and welcome, Caroline! <3

Hey y’all, I’m Caroline and I’m so excited to join The Ugly Ducking House team! I love that I’m getting the chance to combine two of my passions — writing and design — for Sarah’s blog, and can’t wait to share more of my ideas with everyone. Even though the summer solstice isn’t for another few days, we’ve been lucky enough to have had such warm and beautiful weather early this year — which means extra time to enjoy being outside with friends and family (or just to get working on that tan). That’s why my first post features some of the coolest and handiest outdoor products to enhance your outdoor spaces — enjoy! *contains affiliate links*

Clockwise from top left: chair / lamp / feeder / table torch / hammock / bean bag chair / lawn mower / tunic / bug spray / fire pit / table / cooler / rug

June: you step out of your office to a burst of hot, humid air. You get in your car and nearly every surface burns to the touch. A pop song about fleeting vacation flings is playing on the radio. Ahh, yes, summer has finally begun. But before you get caught up in a day dream montage of grilling burgers poolside, waving sparklers with the kids, and eating too many popsicles, ask yourself — are you, or rather, is your backyard, actually ready? If you’re picturing pollen-covered, half-half broken lawn chairs; a pile of dusty, deflated pool floats; and a grill that’s near rust-damaged disintegration, then no, you are not ready for summer, my friend. Whether your backyard needs a total rehaul or just a little sprucing up,  these outdoor products are guaranteed to upgrade your outdoor space and add a pop of fun just in time for summer to really get into swing.

Natural Wicker/Rattan Furniture – The light, natural wood look as been a popular minimalist interior design style for a while, but now it’s moving to the outdoors again. Retro-vibe rattan furniture gives your patio space a funky twist while still remaining neutral and inviting.

Inside Lighting Brought Outdoors – Bringing the indoors out is often achieved by incorporating comfy sofas or pillow accents into your patio seating design — but have you thought about doing the same with lighting? This solar-powered floor lamp brings the coziness of the indoors outside for an unusual, antique-like lighting effect.

Modern Bird Feeder – Bird feeders don’t have to be reserved for winter and certainly don’t have to be strictly utilitarian in style. Opt for a sleek geometric shape made of glass for a feeder that doubles as yard art.

Decorative Tabletop Torch – If tiki torches feel a little too cheesy-luao-birthday-party-backyard-barbeque to you, opt for a much chicer alternative to keep the bugs away. Fill this copper tabletop torch with citronella oil for a stylish way to stay bug-free without invoking a single hawaiian shirt vibe.

Hammock in a Trendy Color – Bright yellow is one of this summer’s top colors for decor, but think outside the box of throw pillows and pool floaties. A yellow hammock adds a touch of whimsy while still being functional, and the color will pop against a green backyard backdrop.

Creative Outdoor Seating – No more wooden Adirondak chair splinters for you! These outdoor beanbag chairs offer a casual, comfortable, portable seating option perfect for parties and catching some sun (just try not to fall asleep — no one wants an embarrassing sunburn!).

Robotic Lawn Mower – Also known as the “Roomba for lawns,” this little guy is perfect for those who hate cutting the grass in the heat and sun. Personally, I’m extremely curious what kinds of lawn striping or patterns this would create.

SPF or UPF Clothing – Whether gardening, grilling, or beachside, protecting your skin from harmful UV rays is a must. Give your sunscreen a hand by wearing some breathable SPF/UPF proof clothing that’s cute, as well as functional.

All Natural Bug Spray – Reduce the chemicals you put on your body and into the air with a tried-and-true, natural citronella spray. I discovered this awesome product a few years ago while on an annual family vacation in South Florida — let me tell you, this stuff really works! Added bonus: no stickiness and it smells great!

Copper Fire Pit – Upgrade your backyard fire pit to the on-trend metallic version that is sure to make any night-time soiree on the deck feel a touch more elegant.

Mosaic Tile Accents – One of this summer’s biggest trends also happens to be a great opportunity for a DIY project. Entertain yourself or your kids by decorating an end table, plant stand, or bird bath with colorful mosaic tiles.

Retro Patio Cooler – Coolers seem to always get the short end of the stick when it comes to design, which makes sense considering the wear-and-tear of countless tailgates and beach trips we put them through. With these retro and brightly-colored standing coolers, you don’t have to sacrifice an ounce of style for your outdoor space or the convenience of an ice-cold beverage. I recommend the turquoise color to continue the theme of bold and bright!

Bright Outdoor Rug – Drab, stained concrete; faded, weathered wood…this does not have to be the fate of your outdoor flooring. Add a colorful, textured outdoor run to create just as an inviting outdoor entertaining space as you have inside. Can y’all tell I like bright colors yet?

Even something as simple as adding a little color or testing a new product to make the sticky days more bearable (lookin’ at you, bug spray) can really make a difference when it comes to revitalizing and enjoying your outdoor space. So, I hope this list has inspired y’all to take your backyard swag up a notch — what’s your outdoors summer-fun must-have?

The post 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

from mix1 http://ift.tt/2siedO7 via with this info

[petraself]

13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces

Hi guys — Sarah here. I just wanted to pop in really quick and introduce a new contributor to the blog, Caroline!

I meant to introduce you guys last week, but I’ve been caught on the phone and getting really behind as usual (and, as always, I’m doing other things behind the scenes that are both gross AND fun AND leading up to a long-awaited reno! Jeez, how long has it been since I tore out my master bathroom? I am going to have a confession all about that later this week as well as what inspired me to start remodeling it again). But Caroline used to write for my team when I worked for an online magazine called Society South, and she’s assisted me in a few articles since then when I do freelance work. Over the last few months, I realized that there are giant chunks of time where writing a post to update you feels like ages (even if it’s only a week, I fondly remember the days where I used to post more frequently), and you don’t see my busy little legs kicking below the surface (the quote of the duck on a calm surface is incredibly apt in my situation!). So, I asked Caroline if she might like to contribute to the site every once in a while for trend-spotting and decorating ideas, much like I used to do a few years ago on Saturdays, but with a little more substance. I like her eye and her writing style, so I’m happy to have her adding some of her own content to the site. Here she is with her first post all about decor for outdoor spaces! I love some of the items she’s found, and each month she’ll be back with themed new finds I hope you guys will enjoy. Thanks, and welcome, Caroline! <3

Hey y’all, I’m Caroline and I’m so excited to join The Ugly Ducking House team! I love that I’m getting the chance to combine two of my passions — writing and design — for Sarah’s blog, and can’t wait to share more of my ideas with everyone. Even though the summer solstice isn’t for another few days, we’ve been lucky enough to have had such warm and beautiful weather early this year — which means extra time to enjoy being outside with friends and family (or just to get working on that tan). That’s why my first post features some of the coolest and handiest outdoor products to enhance your outdoor spaces — enjoy! *contains affiliate links*

Clockwise from top left: chair / lamp / feeder / table torch / hammock / bean bag chair / lawn mower / tunic / bug spray / fire pit / table / cooler / rug

June: you step out of your office to a burst of hot, humid air. You get in your car and nearly every surface burns to the touch. A pop song about fleeting vacation flings is playing on the radio. Ahh, yes, summer has finally begun. But before you get caught up in a day dream montage of grilling burgers poolside, waving sparklers with the kids, and eating too many popsicles, ask yourself — are you, or rather, is your backyard, actually ready? If you’re picturing pollen-covered, half-half broken lawn chairs; a pile of dusty, deflated pool floats; and a grill that’s near rust-damaged disintegration, then no, you are not ready for summer, my friend. Whether your backyard needs a total rehaul or just a little sprucing up,  these outdoor products are guaranteed to upgrade your outdoor space and add a pop of fun just in time for summer to really get into swing.

Natural Wicker/Rattan Furniture – The light, natural wood look as been a popular minimalist interior design style for a while, but now it’s moving to the outdoors again. Retro-vibe rattan furniture gives your patio space a funky twist while still remaining neutral and inviting.

Inside Lighting Brought Outdoors – Bringing the indoors out is often achieved by incorporating comfy sofas or pillow accents into your patio seating design — but have you thought about doing the same with lighting? This solar-powered floor lamp brings the coziness of the indoors outside for an unusual, antique-like lighting effect.

Modern Bird Feeder – Bird feeders don’t have to be reserved for winter and certainly don’t have to be strictly utilitarian in style. Opt for a sleek geometric shape made of glass for a feeder that doubles as yard art.

Decorative Tabletop Torch – If tiki torches feel a little too cheesy-luao-birthday-party-backyard-barbeque to you, opt for a much chicer alternative to keep the bugs away. Fill this copper tabletop torch with citronella oil for a stylish way to stay bug-free without invoking a single hawaiian shirt vibe.

Hammock in a Trendy Color – Bright yellow is one of this summer’s top colors for decor, but think outside the box of throw pillows and pool floaties. A yellow hammock adds a touch of whimsy while still being functional, and the color will pop against a green backyard backdrop.

Creative Outdoor Seating – No more wooden Adirondak chair splinters for you! These outdoor beanbag chairs offer a casual, comfortable, portable seating option perfect for parties and catching some sun (just try not to fall asleep — no one wants an embarrassing sunburn!).

Robotic Lawn Mower – Also known as the “Roomba for lawns,” this little guy is perfect for those who hate cutting the grass in the heat and sun. Personally, I’m extremely curious what kinds of lawn striping or patterns this would create.

SPF or UPF Clothing – Whether gardening, grilling, or beachside, protecting your skin from harmful UV rays is a must. Give your sunscreen a hand by wearing some breathable SPF/UPF proof clothing that’s cute, as well as functional.

All Natural Bug Spray – Reduce the chemicals you put on your body and into the air with a tried-and-true, natural citronella spray. I discovered this awesome product a few years ago while on an annual family vacation in South Florida — let me tell you, this stuff really works! Added bonus: no stickiness and it smells great!

Copper Fire Pit – Upgrade your backyard fire pit to the on-trend metallic version that is sure to make any night-time soiree on the deck feel a touch more elegant.

Mosaic Tile Accents – One of this summer’s biggest trends also happens to be a great opportunity for a DIY project. Entertain yourself or your kids by decorating an end table, plant stand, or bird bath with colorful mosaic tiles.

Retro Patio Cooler – Coolers seem to always get the short end of the stick when it comes to design, which makes sense considering the wear-and-tear of countless tailgates and beach trips we put them through. With these retro and brightly-colored standing coolers, you don’t have to sacrifice an ounce of style for your outdoor space or the convenience of an ice-cold beverage. I recommend the turquoise color to continue the theme of bold and bright!

Bright Outdoor Rug – Drab, stained concrete; faded, weathered wood…this does not have to be the fate of your outdoor flooring. Add a colorful, textured outdoor run to create just as an inviting outdoor entertaining space as you have inside. Can y’all tell I like bright colors yet?

Even something as simple as adding a little color or testing a new product to make the sticky days more bearable (lookin’ at you, bug spray) can really make a difference when it comes to revitalizing and enjoying your outdoor space. So, I hope this list has inspired y’all to take your backyard swag up a notch — what’s your outdoors summer-fun must-have?

The post 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

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13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces published first on http://ift.tt/1kI9W8s

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13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces

Hi guys — Sarah here. I just wanted to pop in really quick and introduce a new contributor to the blog, Caroline!

I meant to introduce you guys last week, but I’ve been caught on the phone and getting really behind as usual (and, as always, I’m doing other things behind the scenes that are both gross AND fun AND leading up to a long-awaited reno! Jeez, how long has it been since I tore out my master bathroom? I am going to have a confession all about that later this week as well as what inspired me to start remodeling it again). But Caroline used to write for my team when I worked for an online magazine called Society South, and she’s assisted me in a few articles since then when I do freelance work. Over the last few months, I realized that there are giant chunks of time where writing a post to update you feels like ages (even if it’s only a week, I fondly remember the days where I used to post more frequently), and you don’t see my busy little legs kicking below the surface (the quote of the duck on a calm surface is incredibly apt in my situation!). So, I asked Caroline if she might like to contribute to the site every once in a while for trend-spotting and decorating ideas, much like I used to do a few years ago on Saturdays, but with a little more substance. I like her eye and her writing style, so I’m happy to have her adding some of her own content to the site. Here she is with her first post all about decor for outdoor spaces! I love some of the items she’s found, and each month she’ll be back with themed new finds I hope you guys will enjoy. Thanks, and welcome, Caroline! <3

Hey y’all, I’m Caroline and I’m so excited to join The Ugly Ducking House team! I love that I’m getting the chance to combine two of my passions — writing and design — for Sarah’s blog, and can’t wait to share more of my ideas with everyone. Even though the summer solstice isn’t for another few days, we’ve been lucky enough to have had such warm and beautiful weather early this year — which means extra time to enjoy being outside with friends and family (or just to get working on that tan). That’s why my first post features some of the coolest and handiest outdoor products to enhance your outdoor spaces — enjoy! *contains affiliate links*

Clockwise from top left: chair / lamp / feeder / table torch / hammock / bean bag chair / lawn mower / tunic / bug spray / fire pit / table / cooler / rug

June: you step out of your office to a burst of hot, humid air. You get in your car and nearly every surface burns to the touch. A pop song about fleeting vacation flings is playing on the radio. Ahh, yes, summer has finally begun. But before you get caught up in a day dream montage of grilling burgers poolside, waving sparklers with the kids, and eating too many popsicles, ask yourself — are you, or rather, is your backyard, actually ready? If you’re picturing pollen-covered, half-half broken lawn chairs; a pile of dusty, deflated pool floats; and a grill that’s near rust-damaged disintegration, then no, you are not ready for summer, my friend. Whether your backyard needs a total rehaul or just a little sprucing up,  these outdoor products are guaranteed to upgrade your outdoor space and add a pop of fun just in time for summer to really get into swing.

Natural Wicker/Rattan Furniture – The light, natural wood look as been a popular minimalist interior design style for a while, but now it’s moving to the outdoors again. Retro-vibe rattan furniture gives your patio space a funky twist while still remaining neutral and inviting.

Inside Lighting Brought Outdoors – Bringing the indoors out is often achieved by incorporating comfy sofas or pillow accents into your patio seating design — but have you thought about doing the same with lighting? This solar-powered floor lamp brings the coziness of the indoors outside for an unusual, antique-like lighting effect.

Modern Bird Feeder – Bird feeders don’t have to be reserved for winter and certainly don’t have to be strictly utilitarian in style. Opt for a sleek geometric shape made of glass for a feeder that doubles as yard art.

Decorative Tabletop Torch – If tiki torches feel a little too cheesy-luao-birthday-party-backyard-barbeque to you, opt for a much chicer alternative to keep the bugs away. Fill this copper tabletop torch with citronella oil for a stylish way to stay bug-free without invoking a single hawaiian shirt vibe.

Hammock in a Trendy Color – Bright yellow is one of this summer’s top colors for decor, but think outside the box of throw pillows and pool floaties. A yellow hammock adds a touch of whimsy while still being functional, and the color will pop against a green backyard backdrop.

Creative Outdoor Seating – No more wooden Adirondak chair splinters for you! These outdoor beanbag chairs offer a casual, comfortable, portable seating option perfect for parties and catching some sun (just try not to fall asleep — no one wants an embarrassing sunburn!).

Robotic Lawn Mower – Also known as the “Roomba for lawns,” this little guy is perfect for those who hate cutting the grass in the heat and sun. Personally, I’m extremely curious what kinds of lawn striping or patterns this would create.

SPF or UPF Clothing – Whether gardening, grilling, or beachside, protecting your skin from harmful UV rays is a must. Give your sunscreen a hand by wearing some breathable SPF/UPF proof clothing that’s cute, as well as functional.

All Natural Bug Spray – Reduce the chemicals you put on your body and into the air with a tried-and-true, natural citronella spray. I discovered this awesome product a few years ago while on an annual family vacation in South Florida — let me tell you, this stuff really works! Added bonus: no stickiness and it smells great!

Copper Fire Pit – Upgrade your backyard fire pit to the on-trend metallic version that is sure to make any night-time soiree on the deck feel a touch more elegant.

Mosaic Tile Accents – One of this summer’s biggest trends also happens to be a great opportunity for a DIY project. Entertain yourself or your kids by decorating an end table, plant stand, or bird bath with colorful mosaic tiles.

Retro Patio Cooler – Coolers seem to always get the short end of the stick when it comes to design, which makes sense considering the wear-and-tear of countless tailgates and beach trips we put them through. With these retro and brightly-colored standing coolers, you don’t have to sacrifice an ounce of style for your outdoor space or the convenience of an ice-cold beverage. I recommend the turquoise color to continue the theme of bold and bright!

Bright Outdoor Rug – Drab, stained concrete; faded, weathered wood…this does not have to be the fate of your outdoor flooring. Add a colorful, textured outdoor run to create just as an inviting outdoor entertaining space as you have inside. Can y’all tell I like bright colors yet?

Even something as simple as adding a little color or testing a new product to make the sticky days more bearable (lookin’ at you, bug spray) can really make a difference when it comes to revitalizing and enjoying your outdoor space. So, I hope this list has inspired y’all to take your backyard swag up a notch — what’s your outdoors summer-fun must-have?

The post 13 Must-Haves for Outdoor Spaces appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

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