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libermachinae · 3 years

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Cradle

Available on AO3 Summary: Post-battle roll call. Notes: For @soundwaveweek, prompt was ‘poetry.’

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The MTOs were stressed. He could understand that, and in fact had little choice but to. Coming online in a crashing shuttle was a less than ideal way to begin life, and the hours of listening to gunfire and artillery going off just outside their prison-slash-shelter almost guaranteed the sorts of injuries no tool could fix. Soundwave had no idea whether the silence that followed the Decepticon victory would have been a welcome reprieve or the most hellish stretch of the experience, but his torch cutting through the crumpled hatch had broken its hold on them, and now they were frantic.

Their thoughts cut him like millions of grains of sand caught up in the exhaust of a shuttle launch. There were questions, the standard Who is that?, Am I going to die?, and Is that supposed to happen? Then the observations, It’s dark, It’s light, He’s blue, He has a gun, and I have a gun.

Mostly, though, they were giving off impressions that could not be condensed so neatly into words, not without at least a few days’ practice to understand the ebb and flow of language. Without it, Soundwave could feel the crush of the darkness, the burning slice of the light. When he announced himself on arrival, his voice came back to him thirteen different ways, shivering or sliding or in boxes, an impressive feat for a group whose sum total life experiences were the inside of a dead shuttle and each other.

The volume increased as he approached them, both due to proximity and their own increasing anxieties. Their thoughts were loud enough to be knocking against his helm, adding to the cacophony the echo of his own internals, but he soldiered on, approaching the first cradle, its occupant staring at him with a mouthless expression that nevertheless seemed to snarl.

“Designation,” Soundwave demanded.

“Megatron.”

Hisses and whispers and flares. Soundwave wished he could turn down his sensitivity, but with all the cassettes investigating other casualty reports, he couldn’t risk making himself that vulnerable, even if it meant he would be taking a splitting processor ache to berth with him that night instead of recharge.

“Your designation,” he said, with no patience to start with.

The MTO stared at Soundwave, optics glancing first over his face and then the length of his frame. He started to speak, aborted the effort, attention straying to his comrades before snapping back to the officer. His thoughts were bright, sour, and runny, becoming more disorganized the longer Soundwave stood waiting for an answer. Now he was tearing through his data packs, the disorganized folders spilling open with instructions on how to shoot, who to shoot, which way to run—

“No designation,” Soundwave concluded, feeling a part of his psyche slump with resignation. “Serial code.”

The uncomprehending stare slid again to the other MTOs, whose own thoughts echoed the globular confusion. A few of them were in the same process of upending their entire storage libraries, and although any one of them could have accurately pinpointed the coordinates where their plummeting ship had disappeared off the edge of the battle map, not one of them could provide him the very basic information he needed to complete this task and leave these soldiers for the recovery teams to salvage.

Soundwave made a quick visual inspection of the MTO, who tried to lean away—not far, given that he was still suspended in the cradle—now that his defensive bluster had dried up. No printed serial code, nor was there on the MTO beside him, a quiet mech who barely glanced at Soundwave as he came close. No serial codes, either printed or coded.

“Any identification markers?” Soundwave asked the room at large. A flicker of movement: Soundwave looked down to the mech at the end of the starboard row, the one installed opposite the sole casualty, aside from the ship itself. His thoughts had been quieter than the rest, colorless and inflexible in a way that had suggested a concussion, but Soundwave’s question had provoked a brief flare. He was looking up: on the ceiling above his squadmate was painted the number 2.

That, unfortunately, was something that could be plugged into a database, checked against the shuttle manifest and production logs, and be used to reverse engineer a serial number. Success, though, depended on this being a legitimate deployment, and certain signs were suggesting the opposite, though none so definitively as to trigger a full investigation. Soundwave put out a recall signal to Frenzy and Ravage, wary of how isolated the shuttle’s final resting place was, and tuned his sensors up higher…

Only to immediately turn them down again as the minutiae of the newbuilds’ thoughts flowed like acid rain through fresh gaps in a roof. He could read the rudimentary threat assessments they were running on him and taste the swell of emotions too new to differentiate yet; the bravest among them had started to free curiosity from the mass, and they plugged it into every observation they made, building questions on top of each other until the thoughts were heavy enough to bend under their own weight. Within the shuttle, everything felt compressed and heavy on top of him.

“Calm down,” he commanded, and winced at spikes of anxiety impaling him from multiple directions.

What a waste, he thought as he recovered from the burst, of his time and their lives. Nova Point was captured, the Autobot base overrun, and Starscream’s choice to put him on recovery meant vital logistics standards were being delayed. The already lengthy identification process would easily be doubled if this much of his processor remained dedicated to his hypersensitivity sensors, and he was vulnerable as long as the soldiers’ thoughts were filling his audio feed. Soldier was even a generous word for the mechs he’d been tasked with risking his life for. Their minimal data packs and emotional instability would make them ill-suited to the promotions occasionally offered to MTOs. They would be getting hauled out of one wreck only to be pressed into another, one that would more likely than not reach its intended destination.

Soundwave did not fault Megatron for leading a chunk of their forces off to the distant front lines on other worlds, but he did long for his leader at times. Megatron would know what was best, whether to forge ahead with the recovery efforts or leave them here to—

“A new row of unlit lanterns is marched in, And I can’t remember what my world looks like In the dark.”

The recording was poor quality, torn from a processor moments before it went offline. Soundwave kept hoping to find the rest of the poem, but bots who survived that time were few and far between, and they guarded their secrets fiercely. Because it was short, he let it play out, and when it finished the attention of the MTOs had narrowed.

“What was that?” the first one asked.

“Untitled,” Soundwave said, which wasn’t entirely accurate. He had a recording of a secondhand account that referred to the poem as ‘The Chain Runners,’ but had never been able to confirm it. He could have asked, but then he would have to tell Megatron he kept the old poem, and that wasn’t a conversation he was ready to have yet.

“But what was it?” The MTO jerked in his cradle; despite the clatter of plating, it did nothing to free him.

“Identification: a poem.”

The complete absence of understanding was a hole Soundwave could have fallen into. A couple accepted that as an answer—a poem must have been another form of marching order, the only communication style they had been brought online to understand—but the others prodded him with their curiosity, audials straining to catch another blip of that strange voice.

“That wasn’t you,” one of the others said.

“Negative,” Soundwave said. “Speaker…” He stopped, remembering how the first MTO, now gazing at him with useful curiosity, had snarled the poet’s name. Had that been out of a sense of pride? A desperation to answer the question, using the only scrap of information they had? Or had it been in worship, choosing his lord’s name to be his first word to the real world? The clashing, violent thoughts did not readily bear an answer to Soundwave, but they did give him pause as he considered his response, long enough that the MTOs’ anxiety rose up once more in a wave.

“What’s it mean?” one of them asked.

“Definition subjective,” Soundwave said. He still had so much work to do. “Silence requested.”

“It’s a code.”

“Negative.”

“Then it’s gotta mean something.”

Soundwave grasped uselessly for words, wishing Ravage were there already. He was better at this. Soundwave wasn’t good at conversation, but most of the time he could get out of it by virtue of the fact that the people he ran into were either his subordinates and afraid of him, or at about equal level and jealous of his proximity to Megatron. It was so rare for him to enter a room without his reputation having already made the rounds for him, he had no basis for navigating this.

He couldn’t come up with anything, and the longer he let the silence drag out the louder the background of thoughts grew to compensate. At a loss and desperate for relief, Soundwave dove into his archives and pulled a file at random, plugging it into his speakers without even scanning the contents.

“The revolution failed because the lords were unamused. The smoke that rose from the burning corpses of their clerks Soured their palmful drinks, And the chants which rose to their balconies, Calling for their heads, Were out of tune with the afternoon symphony.

(The first chair would be tossed out at intermission, And the crowd would suck closed empty fuel lines While inside, the lords sipped in peace.)”

Even with his speakers playing at a high volume, the relative noise inside the shuttle dropped instantly. Their minds were still working, turning over each word like they could find the meaning hidden underneath, but without the fear of the unknown it was quieter and reflective.

“If you still say your knuckles ache, Lay them here, on my knee. I cannot take from you That pain, But I will map the seams of your palm. I will memorize you, Memorialize. I will chart your construction And between your seams find…”

Crunching data while listening to Megatron’s voice was second nature by now. Soundwave stood in the center of the wrecked shuttle, seeking out the identity of the MTOs, while around him they leaned and twisted in their cradles, hunting down the poems like the twinkle of an enemy across a battlefield.

#maccadam #transformers #soundwave #soundwave week #my writing #oneshot #cradle

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trutimeline · 3 years

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idislikecispeople, The Most Infamous Dyscourse Blogger: Part 1.0, Rumors

idislikecispeople, also known as many names throughout her time on Tumblr (such as Adele, Kat, Mami, Samantha and Sayaka), was a former Tumblr blogger who became infamous for coining the term "tucute", among many other controversial things she has posted on her blogs. This was supposed to be one, very long masterpost about her, but Tumblr's post editor is a bitch and won't let me do that.

In this post, I'll be debunking or confirming rumors commonly spread about idislikecispeople. The rest of my posts about her will each be dedicated to a specific controversial belief she held or situations she got into. For simplicity's sake, I'll be referring to idislikecispeople as Kat for the rest of this post and future ones.

Rumors

Kat Coined the Terms "Truscum" and "Tucute"

Verdict: Partially True

Kat coined the term tucute, but she did not coin the terms truscum or transmedicalist.

Here's a screenshot of Kat's original definition of a tucute:

Transcript:

What is Tucute?

What does tucute mean?

Tucute is basically just the opposite of truscum, it’s a term and community for trans, nonbinary, and/or non-cis individuals created to separate anti-truscum from truscum and to serve as a safe place from truscum and from cis people, where they believe that being trans requires dysphoria, we do not,where they think that being trans is a medical condition, we do not,and where they deny numerous gender identities on the basis that it “discredits the trans community” we do not.

What are the prerequisites to be a part of the tucute community?

You have to be trans, nonbinary, and/or non-cis in general

You have to accept all pronouns and gender identities

You haveto believe that dysphoria is not necessary to be trans

You have to dislike truscum

You cannot side with truscum or believe in their ideology

You cannot misgender anyone no matter how mad they make you

You cannot be an ableist whatsoever

Did you invent the tucute community? Why?

I indeed did coin the tucute term and community and anyone who says otherwise are creeps who are trying to steal it from me and redefine it for their own nefarious doings. I started this community so anti-truscum could separate themselves from truscum and cis people who are a part of the truscum community, it serves as a safe space from both truscum and cis people.

I’m cis, can I be tucute if I believe in your movement and want to help?

No, you can’t be tucute if you’re cis, you can only be a tucute ally, and you need to be sure to never speak for or over a trans person.

I see a lot of tucuties being just as harmful as truscum, what will you do about it?

There isn’t much I can do to them other than ask them to stop aligning with the tucute community, and of course, that doesn’t mean they will. Also be noted that truscum and cis people will pretend to be tucute just to tarnish the name of the tucute community, so tread lightly, you might be talking to a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Spread the word, use the tag #tucute and join the army today!

[A digital drawing of Sayaka Miki from Puella Magi Madoka Magica in her magical girl form, with a banner underneath her reading "Tucute 4 U!"]

(source) (source)

Kat Was a Cisgender Woman Who Lied About Being a Transgender Woman

Verdict: False

This rumor primarily comes from a post on Kat's oldest known Tumblr blog, chromaghost, where she claims that she wasn't MTF and only tagged a selfie as such because she thought that transgender people were "cool".

Transcript:

Anonymous asked: are you a mtf? i seen it tagged on one of your photos.

No lol. I wanted to post it to the tag because transgender people are cool :3

(source) (source) (source)

However, Kat addressed this post and made it clear she very much was a transgender woman multiple times on her later blogs. This claim can also be confirmed with nude photos Kat posted online, which I don't feel comfortable spreading, so you'll just have to trust me on that one. I also don't feel comfortable directly encouraging you to go and dig up those nudes, as most of her nude photos were either taken when she was a minor, spread without her consent and/or were uploaded because people pressured her into posting nudes to "prove" she was a transgender woman.

Transcript:

Anonymous asked: you bound with ace bandage in one of your selfies. i don't know what to think about you anymore. according to some people you're a 27 year old cis woman scamming us, but you say you're a 22 year old trans woman. i want to trust you but i don't know if i can. i'm sorry.

Rest assured I’m not 27 years old lol. What you’re referring to is a less than graceful ~art piece~ we did (”Playing a Boy” or something) on deviantART when we were 16/17 (?) and really ill-informed. I ask you to not take that as how I stand currently – as I have learned so much more since, and I have a penis and I was designated male at birth because of it (feel free to purchase a passcode to our nsfw blog to see for yourself). At the time we were developing breast tissue but still had to appear as a ‘boy.’ Don’t bind with Ace bandages, kids, it can damage your rib cage, something we didn’t know at the time.

(source) (source)

Transcript:

[A picture of two prescriptions, estradiol and spironolactone, both prescribed to Adele Sheffield.]

grandtran still gonna think I photoshopped it or what

(source)

Transcript:

Anonymous asked: In other words, you aren't gonna cough up the pics because you know you can't fake that shit because you're actually cis. Cool. BTW why do you keep changing your story about the blog, and if the blog was run by you when you were in denial about being trans because of self hate, why were the pics tagged mtf and you were constantly saying trans people were cool?

Yeah I’m not gonna do something for y’all and get nothing in return except more doubt from you, you see how one sided that kind of request is? Also its technically considered sexual harassment, just because its on the internet, you’re a coward (whats your username btw?), and you think I’m cis and you want me to prove time and time again to you that I’m dmab doesn’t justify sexually soliciting someone when they’re not comfortable in being solicited – for free no less.

At first I genuinely had no memory of that blog, it was only active for all of 2 months and for some reason I moved onto a new email and new tumblr, and I haven’t the foggiest why. As for the whole “me claiming to not be ~mtf~” I don’t have any memories from that time, I can only assume it was a lot of dysphoria fueled self-hatred and wanting to be seen/pass as a cis girl lesbian.

If you’re really gonna solicit nudes from a trans woman (a second time) as they do sex work to try and stay on their feet without offering anything in return just so your transmisogynistic ass can get off to trying to tell me my dick is fake isn’t classy at all. I perish the thought of what you’re parents would think of this behavior from you. But yeah, feel free to send some money to my paypal so I can get the gender markers on my records changed because that’s gonna cost a lot apparently, and I’ll definitely send you the dick pics you want. :)

(source) (source) (source)

Transcript:

[A picture of a a hospital bracelet on Kat's wrist. The patient's name is Adele Sheffield and her sex is labeled as "M".]

(source)

Kat Lied About Having Diabetes To Get Money From Tumblr Users

Verdict: False

This doesn't need much commentary from me, just view the screenshots below.

Transcript:

To the people who keep harping on me buying a $15 video game for my mental health 7 MONTHS ago “with my donation money,” well, here you go, some proof, links and screenshots provided

So for everyone spreading misinformation about me spending $15 on a video game for my mental health, here’s a full list of reasons why there is no way, shape, or form I spent my paypal money on it:

Yes, I spent $15 of my own money after selling one of my possessions, not denying it:

[A screenshot of a Tumblr post by Kat where she shows off a copy of Fall Out: New Vegas, marked with a price of $14.99. The date of the post is marked as July 21, 2014 at 06:28.39 PM.]

Be sure to look at the date, July 21st, 2014 6:28 PM. Now lets look at my first donation post asking for help:

[A screenshot of a Tumblr post by Kat where she asks for donations to be able to afford insulin because she has no insurance. The date of the post is marked as July 20, 2014 at 08:14.00 PM.]

Hmm, one day before the purchase of said game, July 20th 2014 at 8:14 PM. Now, I’ve never heard of a video game store — much less a non-chain video game store accepting payment for video games in the form of virtual Amazon gift cards, have you? Oh, but you’re gonna say, “well you bought the game with your paypal donations anyway!” Well, here’s exhibit C:

[Another screenshot of a separate post made by Kat where she is also asking for donations to be able to afford insulin. The date of the post is marked as July 23, 2014 at 12:27.46 PM.]

Again, looking at the date of this posting which is the original donations post, you can see it was posted on July 23rd, 2014 at 12:27 PM, a full 2 days after I had bought the game. Now, if there’s no way for me to use Amazon gift cards for a real life video game store, then how can I go back in time a minimum of 2 full days to give past me $15 to buy said game, hm? This isn’t even accounting for the fact that I didn’t even have my own bank account associated with it until over a week later, and it surely doesn’t account for the fact that it takes up to 5 days to transfer from paypal to your bank account. All the dates are linked to the original unedited posts so you can see for yourself, and for added measure my first deposit was on August 14th, 2014:

[A screenshot of a deposit made by Kat. The date is marked as 08/14/14.]

Oh but yeah, anti-sjs, truscum, and the like took damniwishidthoughtofabettername’s postthey used to gaslight us with misinformation and you all bought it. Tell me how I could misuse donations that I could not use outside of Amazon and money I didn’t even start receiving until a full two days later, let alone the fact that there’s no way I could have transferred said money and used it two days prior as of the date of the paypal donations post.

I hope some of y’all could reblog this and get the word out, I’m sick and tired of people buying into that misinformation that person did solely to gaslight me as a means to try and disrupt my donations drive.

(source) (source) (source) (source) (source) (source) (source)

Transcript:

[A selfie of Kat holding up a vial of Novolin to the camera.]

Hey anon, I don’t feel comfy giving you my receipts (because doxxing is a thing) but here you go, a selfie with my most recent insulin purchase. 👽

(source) (source) (source) (source) (source) (source) (source)

Transcript:

Anonymous asked: Getting desperate for money again I see. How is your fake diabetes lately. I bet your blood sugar is like 800 this time and you're still able to be alive somehow.

You got me, I’m ~totally faking~

[A selfie of Kat. In the background several items used by diabetics are seen such as insulin syringes, glucose tablets, a blood sugar tester and test strips.]

[A picture that gives us a closer look at the background of the previous selfie.]

[A selfie of Kat holding up two vials, one of Lantus and the other of Humalog.]

Gee, must be one dedicated faker, right? To have hundreds of dollars of insulin equipment and insulin itself. Hmmm… Insulin syringes, glucose tablets, a blood sugar tester and test strips.. oh and insulin, hmmmm….

Oh and because you didn’t learn from last time you don’t die instantly when your blood sugar goes over 600 lol, something anyone who studies endocrinology can tell you, and I would know, being a diabetic, having to be hospitalized numerous times for ketoacidosis where the blood sugar has been too high for too long. Things you clearly do not know and you’re just jumping on the disableist bandwagon. I have an idea of who you are anyway, just doing this for future reference.

(source)

#idislikecispeople #dyscourse #transmed #truscum #tucute

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5-falsehoods-phonated · 3 years

Note

Pinned under wreckage. Hmm, how about Intruality with Remus a construction worker where something went wrong? Preferably happy ending but any will do. (keep up the good work! You're amazing!!)

(Prompts with boxes have been taken, highlighted have been written)

Requests for this card are closed, thank you to anyone who sent in requests! If you don’t want to see these you can block the tag #false bthb. As always shoot me an ask if you wanna be tagged in future stories, whether it be for bad things happen bingo or any of the other series, one shots or in general!

Thanks for the request, I hope you like it!

General Taglist (ask to be added or removed!): @im-an-anxious-wreck @logans-library

Hold Onto Me

Summary: Patton had just wanted to deliver lunch to his husband when he saw the emergency vehicles at the construction site. All he can hope for is that keeping ahold of his hand will be enough. (Happy Ending)

Warnings: anxiety, major injury, blood, hospitals, emergency situation (if there are more please let me know)

Prompt: Pinned Down By Wreckage

Ships: Romantic Intruality (Patton x Remus)

WC: 4038

Disclaimer: I don't think this is how construction practices work but for the sake of the beginning that’s how it's gonna work because angst. The procedure to get him out is however fairly accurate, I did a bit of research as to how someone is rescued from that kind of situation but other than that please take the accuracy of this situation with a grain of salt.

Remus’ heavy boots thudded loudly on the thin catwalk leading over top of where the scaffolding was set in place for the floor of the third story of the new building, not that he could hear it over the general din of construction work. Everything looked good, he was only here to do a general sweep over before anyone else came up to lay the insulation and then actual flooring to make sure nothing would collapse. Being so high up he had a wonderful view of the fair bit of land whoever was moving into this house would own when it was done: a field with woods surrounding it with a long, winding road leading up to the front entrance.

It was stupidly extravagant, some dream house Roman would have loved to live in if he was rich enough to afford but Remus had been so excited to work on it, and still was. He got to help with the design work and use his hands for hours and hours and even though he came home tired and sweaty he still loved it with every fiber of his being. Not to mention he got to go home to Patton who would smile and cup his cheek to kiss him before pushing him down the hall to shower while he started on dinner. He’d come out to help and they’d settle down at the table or couch to talk or watch a movie and then either work on their own things or cuddle up in bed depending on how tired they were. It was mundane and domestic most of the time but Remus loved that with Patton. He had him and his job and his stupid brother and he couldn’t be happier; everything in his life made him feel safe and happy and comfortable and he couldn’t imagine asking for anything better.

Of course it could all be ruined in an instant. One wrong step and he could certainly plummet to his death. The scaffolding could crack and he’d be impaled on a jagged piece of wood. He could break every bone in his body or be paralyzed for life and be a burden on everyone who knew him and- Remus shook his head impatiently, willing the thoughts away as he turned carefully and began making the rest of the way across the catwalk. Thoughts like that kept him on his toes at least but it was best not to dwell on them too much. He was always careful and he wasn’t about to jinx himself by thinking of everything that could go wrong on the job.

He almost laughed when he felt it: a shift under his feet that meant something could be loose. Of course he would manage to have the most ironic timing in the world. Carefully stepping back he looked closely to see if he could tell what the problem was but he saw nothing. Biting his lip he looked back up at the last couple of feet he had to walk. He should definitely turn around and tell someone to look and fix whatever might be wrong, but he could also save the time and try to figure out himself what it could be if he could just get a better vantage point. It was only a couple of feet, if he stepped wide enough he might be able to avoid whatever problem there was.

Mind made up he stepped forward again more gingerly than he had ever done anything in his life, faintly hearing the lunch bell ringing and the gradual silence that was left from the various machines being turned off and tools being put down. Good, he thought, that way if anything happens no one’s around to get hurt. He screwed his mouth to the side as he quickly dismissed that thought as well, mentally kicking himself for the possible jinx. It was only a couple of feet, just one step and he could hug the wall and lean over to see what the problem was. Honestly with the way the skeleton of the wall was he could probably squeeze himself between the gaps of the unfinished floor and climb down to safety to avoid even having to hop back to the catwalk and go all the way back around. Leaning forward a bit for stability he brought his arms out and quickly lunged for the one, grabbing a hold of two support beams and digging into them so hard his fingernails began to ache. Despite that his new position seemed to be fine, no more shifting under his feet as the tips of his boots found a bit of purchase on the floor's framework by the wall. Grinning through the adrenaline rush he maneuvered himself around until he was facing back towards the room and carefully surveyed the floor. They had laid the framework out in a hurry- ill advised but for the time crunch they were under it had seemed necessary. The consequence for them rushing it though thankfully just seemed to be a missing support plank, making a couple of the beams bow under the catwalk when they were walked on. An easy enough fix and thankfully one that would be relatively quick.

Remus looked down with a grimace. He could climb down...but he had already gotten in trouble once for using scaffolding as a jungle gym even if he was trying to be careful not to be caught. He’d rather not be labeled as a liability not even halfway through the project and since in reality there wasn’t that much wrong with the floor he really didn’t have an excuse not to walk back the way he’d come. Sighing in disappointment he stepped forward and began to make his way back across, the shifting under his feet only making him slightly nervous as he took a bigger step to avoid the worst of it- only to immediately regret it as the entire catwalk shifted to the right as the board he was using slid away from the framework. The catwalk was mostly just a series of shorter boards placed in a sort of grid pattern so you could walk around without there actually having to be a floor. The board he was standing on and currently trying his hardest to rebalance on had shifted under his weight making the edge fall off the board underneath it, meaning it was now hanging onto a beam less than three inches thick by a couple of inches at its end. So not only was then the floor not laid well but the catwalk hadn’t been properly secured either, and if he squinted even closer there wasn’t much of the floor that was laid completely securely.

Swearing profusely a selfish part of him wished someone else was in this position besides him, maybe they could have figured out a way out of this mess. As it was it was just Remus alone up here, everyone else gone on lunch break and if they noticed he was missing they probably assumed he was either in the bathroom or fucking around somewhere he probably shouldn’t be...such as on the second story unsecured catwalk watching the floor settle and resettle under his weight with sweat dripping down his face. This was supposed to have been a quick job- ten minutes at most of him poking around to find something and now that he had he was risking practically the entire floor collapsing underneath him. He didn’t want to call out for help in case it actually did fall through and trap someone beneath it so it seemed as if it was simply going to be a waiting game in which either he or the floor would come out on top.

And with another shift underneath him it didn’t seem like it was his lucky day.

-----

Patton sang softly along to the song playing through the radio, tapping his fingers along with the beat on the wheel. He didn’t do this often but he really wanted to surprise Remus at work with a lunch. He had packed a little extra for dinner as well hoping he wasn’t too late to give it to him. Remus had said yesterday he’d have to stay a little later than usual to look over some things and do...whatever it was he had said he had to do to play catch up in the huge project the company had undertaken, an apology heavy on his tongue that Patton had preemptively forgiven him for with a peck on the lips and a smile. Though he wasn’t happy how over worked his husband often was, he more blamed the company and commissioners than Remus himself. He worked hard and it showed, and Patton was always proud of him. So, packed lunch and dinner it was with hopefully a quick visit before he had to leave since he was in no way authorized personnel but the people in charge often simply rolled their eyes and waved him through, vaguely threatening him with promised of forced exit if he stayed too long, which Remus never let him do anyway since an active construction zone wasn’t exactly safe.

The sound of sirens in the distance cut off his thoughts as his blood ran cold. Sirens didn’t have to mean anything of course, there were many reasons you’d hear them- but this was practically out in the middle of nowhere, near a construction zone which was again out in the middle of nowhere. Cursing he sped up just a little bit, desperate to get to the site and hopefully disprove what he already knew he’d see. He nearly started crying right then when he turned into the long drive only to see the house surrounded by emergency vehicles and people in uniform bustling from point to point to do whatever it was they had to do. He could see the part of the collapsed house beyond that, what looked like a cave in from the second story that had taken the supporting wall with it, though how something like that had happened Patton couldn’t fathom.

He hadn’t even clicked the engine all the way off when he was out of the car and running to who he knew was in charge, dodging out of the way and trying not to make a nuisance of himself so they didn’t have a reason to kick him off the property. There was no sign of Remus as far as he was looking, not even the sound of his rather loud voice cutting through the worried din of everyone else’s voices which only served to drop his stomach further as he swallowed hard around the nausea. Please God no, he thought. Please please please-

“Where’s Remus?” Patton didn’t think there was a need to bother with formalities in this kind of situation. He just needed to figure out where his husband was, go to him and make sure he was safe. It was a simple plan, the simplest set of goals he’d ever set in his life, but his heart sank as the supervisor turned to him with a grave look on his face that told Patton everything he needed to know before the other even began shaking his head.

“There was an accident. The floor- the floor must have been loose and nobody thought- I didn’t think to check on him after he went up there. We all know how he is.” He gestured helplessly to where several people were gathered around a section of rubble, the weight of a whole building bearing down on whatever they were puttering around. “We know where he is; it’s just getting him out.”

Patton didn’t need to hear anymore, noticing some of the people leaving the group and leaving a bit of space he could see the mess through. Most of it was just wood beams sticking out in every direction like a crudely placed beaver damn, some insulation from the ground floor poking up at the bottom. If he squinted though he could just barely make out a small space that had been cleared, a small hole that he could only assume was what they could safely clear away to see if Remus was still-

Pushing forward before he could finish the thought he hurried over to where the space had been made and knelt down next to it, laying a shaking hand next t o the rubble and iting his lip tp keep from crying.

“Sir you can’t be here-”

“That’s my husband in there.” Patton cut the woman off sharply, only feeling slightly guilty for his tone.

The woman softened. “I understand but-”

“I’ll leave when I’m in the way but right now no one’s doing anything so I’m staying right here so I can be with him. I’m not going to touch or disrupt anything but I’m not moving.” Patton looked up, defiantly daring her to continue, but after a moment she just nodded and backed away. He turned back to the space as a slight moan alerted him, gasping as long fingers emerged from the cramped darkness and reached out. A high pitched whine left Patton’s mouth at the sight of how bloody it was but he nevertheless reached forward desperately and grasped the fingers in a gentle hold. Faintly he heard a warning not to pull him as assistance was yelled for but he only shook his head as tears streamed down his face. Everything in him was screaming to lift the beams himself and drag Remus to safety but he knew it couldn’t work like that. This was a delicate situation that needed to be handled with care but the frustration only built as the seconds ticked by and nothing seemed to be getting done.

“Remus honey, I’m here okay? I’m right here and so are people that are going to get you out of there. You just hold onto me baby everything will be okay.” He nearly choked on his own uncertainty but he couldn’t afford to let emus think he was anything other than certain he’d make it out of this. His fingers squeezed weakly and Patton’s breath hitched in relief, continuing to rattle out reassurances that he’d be out soon and they were doing what they could he just had to hold on a little bit longer. His head snapped up as a hand landed on his shoulder, one of the paramedics motioning people forward with equipment.

“Keep holding his hand and talking to him, you’re probably helping keep him awake.” Patton decided he didn’t want to think too hard on what that might mean, instead simply scooching over slightly to make room for whatever it was they were doing and running his thumb gently over Remus’ knuckles as he took a steadying breath.

“They’re going to get you out Remus. They have equipment they’re setting up to get you out and then everything will be fine.” His fingers were squeezed again gently and the medic must have noticed since they paused and leaned down.

“We’re going to put two sturdy boards on either side of you to help stabilize what’s laying on top of you and then put airbags on the other side of them to lift everything up. That should give us enough room to remove you safely. If at any point your space gets too cramped or you feel things settle down on you more, squeeze your husband’s hand and he’ll let us know okay? We’re working as quickly as we can to get you out.” Remus squeezed his hand again and the medic nodded, signaling for things to begin. “This is called cribbing. It’s just putting a basic framework underneath everything to hopefully stop it from settling down more. And then those long tubes will be put in and inflated to lift it up, at which point you'll have to move out of the way so we can get him out.”

Remus squeezed his hand again and both the action and explanation Patton felt his anxiety ebb the tiniest amount. He nodded to the kind woman and moved to hold Remus with both hands as if doing so would make the process go any faster. As the emergency crew bustled around him and got everything into place he simply sat with cramping legs and blurring vision, reassuring the trapped man through soft touches and softer words as they moved thick, wedged shaped beams in front of the pile of debris. Holding his breath Patton tightened his grip slightly as they began inching the beams underneath, focusing his attention solely on the bloodied hand in his grip, poised to react at even the slightest twitch of discomfort. The boards were halfway in when his hand was squeezed weakly, jolting him out of his tense state to yell out a loud “Stop” to the team. They froze and looked to the woman still holding Patton’s shoulder, who leaned forward to be heard.

“Squeeze once if the pile is shifting, twice if we’re hitting you with the boards.” Two quick squeezes were felt and she nodded slightly. “Is there any way you can move without endangering yourself so we can get them in a bit more?”

He felt a slight squeeze on his hand before shuffling was heard accompanied by a quiet whimper that tore straight through Patton’s heart as he fought to simply hold the hand in support and not yank him out himself. He nodded as his hand was squeezed again and kept up his quiet reassurances, speaking just loud enough for Remus to hear him over the directions the medics were constantly throwing back and forth. After what seemed like an eternity the wedges were in place and Remus gave the go ahead to squeeze in the air bags. No one dared breathe as they were squeezed into place, no response from Remus unless they asked for confirmation that everything was still okay.

Everything was going fine- the bags were filling up and Patton could see the rubble being lifted slowly but surely up and off his husband. They were so close to having him out and okay that it almost didn’t register when Remus’ hand went limp in his own. Patton felt the muscles slacken and the hand become sudden deadweight in between his own. Eyes widening he squeezed his hand gently, then perhaps a bit too hard as panic gripped him.

“Remus honey? Are you okay?” The slick hand remained still, fingers not even twitching to indicate he had been heard. “Remus? Remus!”

He thrashed as he was pulled away, screaming louder than he ever had in his life as Remus’ hand slipped away from him and he was hauled to his feet and backward. The medics crowded to fill the space and he lost sight of his hand completely, screaming louder and scratching madly at the arms around his middle.

“Let me go! Let me go, he needs me!” The logic that Patton more needed him than Remus needed Patton over the medics at the moment was flung out of the window as he bucked backwards attempting to throw off whoever it was but the person just held him tighter as they walked him away, heedless of his ear splitting screams. Vaguely he was aware they were talking to him but Patton couldn’t care less as the phantom sensation of Remus’ hand going slack in his own tore his mind apart.

“P…….Pat…...Patton please!” Virgil’s yell finally cut through the panicked fog and provided the window he needed to haul Patton the rest of the way over bside the parked ambulance and sit him down on the ground. “They’re going to get him, Patton, it's okay. I promise you He’ll be okay. And we’ll ride in the ambulance and go into the hospital with him and they’ll make sure he’ll be back to making idiotic decisions in no time.”

The words meant to reassure him didn’t make Patton feel any better but all the fight left him, adrenaline running its course as he buried his face in his friend’s chest and wept.

-----

Remus had Patton and Virgil as his first two people to call in an emergency and since Patton had already gotten there and hadn’t checked his phone someone must have then called Virgil when he hadn’t picked up. As bad as he felt he was grateful the other was there as he all but collapsed while they finally got Remus’ still, limp body out from under the wreckage and onto a stretcher, stabilizing him as much as they could before ushering him into the ambulance and driving away after denying them riding along since they needed the extra room. Patton all but dragged Virgil to his car, the other swiping away his keys and insisting he drive as Patton was in no state to and Patton really just agreed if only to get them going faster.

They didn’t get to go in Remus’ room for hours after that, apparently suffering a broken legs and ribs, a sprained risk and a minor concussion that had taken the rest of the day to fix, nearly sending Patton into hysterics when they were informed with the final comment being that he had gotten off lucky. Thankfully Roman and Logan had arrived at that point and they were able to sit with Patton through the night and morning before Logan suggested he take Virgil to get a change of clothes and other necessities so they’d be able to stay longer, Roman volunteering to come along to get Patton and Remus’ things as well.

The hospital room was quiet save for the soft beeping of the machines lining the bed and the gentle huffing breaths of Remus as he slept, thankfully peacefully, in the hospital bed that Patton had his chair pulled all the way up to to hold his now bandaged hand between his. He yawned loudly and laid his head on his arm, eyes fighting to stay open as he promised himself he was merely resting his eyes but drifting off rather quickly considering the stress of the past couple of days. Confident he would wake if anything happened and trusting the others to come back soon he allowed himself to drift off.

-----

Patton awoke slowly to the feeling up fingers running through his messy hair, taking the time to gently brush out all the tangles of the previous day. He hummed happily and snuggled further into the tough, only to grunt in pain as his neck protested the action with a rather loud crack. Reality hit him all at once and he picked his head up to see Remus smiling tiredly down at him, Head wrapped neatly and already crooked nose set after what must have been the third or fourth break he had already suffered. Patton’s eyes filled with tears as he sat up and slowly reached for his husband, hands coming to rest on each cheek to make sure he was really there and alright. Smile tugging wider Remus brought his own hands up to rest on Patton’s, thumbs slowly running over the knuckles like he had done when Remus had been trapped.

“If I wouldn’t hurt you more and get hauled out by security I would slap you so hard for what you did.” In his tired state Patton honestly couldn’t think of anything better to say, but Remus only chuckled weakly and nodded.

“I love you too.”

Laughing softly with him Patton leaned forward to rest his forehead against Remus’ before pressing a featherlight kiss to the tip of his nose and softly whispered “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

“I always am with you.”

Later a nurse would come in and smile at the two: Patton tucked under Remus’ chin and clutching onto his hands like a lifeline as they both slept. Quietly, he would turn out the light and shut the door, reassuring the people camping on the chairs outside that they were alright and they would sigh and shake their heads with amusement. The scolding could wait, they decided. For they would leave them to hold onto each other for as long as they needed.

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callboxkat · 4 years

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Infinitesimal (epilogue)

Author’s note: Happy two year anniversary of when I first began posting this fic! Let’s celebrate with its conclusion. I hope you have all enjoyed reading this story. I know I’ve enjoyed writing it. <3

Warnings: food mention, injury mention, illness mention, captivity mention, nightmare mention

Word count: 3058

Infinitesimal Masterpost!

Writing Masterpost!

...

“We’re almost home!” Patton announced as they rounded the final corner. It was a straight shot now, barely any distance at all to the home that Emile and Virgil had built and made their own, and that they had eagerly welcomed Patton to join. A home that they hadn’t seen in weeks, since Emile had first gone missing, not counting Patton’s brief return for Virgil’s birthday gifts. Suffice to say, however friendly they had grown with Roman and Logan, all three of them were happy to be back.

“Home,” Emile hummed. He was clearly exhausted, leaning heavily on Virgil and Patton as they slowly made their way home; but he had insisted after their last break that he could make it the rest of the way in one shot. And now that they were so close, he seemed to gain a new energy. Patton couldn’t blame him—he felt the same way.

Minutes later, Virgil was opening the door and flicking on the lights, and they stepped over the threshold.

Home.

Patton and Virgil had meant to immediately take Emile to the bed in the second room, so that he could recover from the journey; but Emile stopped as soon as he was inside, staring up at the walls.

Oh, right, Patton thought. He’d nearly forgotten.

The drawings that Patton and Virgil had created while Emile was on his ill-fated supply run still hung on the once bare walls, cheerful, colorful banners that coated nearly every bit of available space. Some were detailed—the earliest of these drawings—while others were little more than bright scribbles meant to fill up space like a gigantic patchwork design, adding to the ridiculous cacophony of it all. One in particular, a very goofy looking smiley face, hung at eye level directly across from the door.

A second passed, and then Emile began to laugh.

…

Two weeks had gone by since the littles had departed. Logan had seen no sign of them since, and could only assume—and hope—that this meant that everything had gone as planned, and that they were fine.

He wished he knew this for sure, but it wasn’t as if he could call them and ask.

Logan sighed, tapping the pencil he held in one hand against the book in his lap. It wouldn’t do to be so distracted, he told himself. He was meant to be doing homework.

Deciding that perhaps biology would be easier to focus on than Calculus, Logan stood and went to get his other books.

Soon after, he returned, the textbook, notebook, and calculator held in his arms. He made for the sofa.

“Hello?”

Logan jumped, very nearly dropping the books in his arms. He whirled around towards the voice, and his gaze locked onto the shelf on the wall opposite the window.

Virgil.

“I—” Logan shook his head, composing himself as best he could. “Virgil! Is something wrong? Did something happen? Is everyone okay?”

Virgil held up both arms in a “calm down” gesture, his crutches hanging from his elbows, briefly balancing on one leg.

“They’re fine,” the little said, putting his arms back down. “Is, um. Is Roman around?”

Logan, who had been staring at Virgil with wide eyes as he spoke, deflated slightly. “Ah—yes. My apologies, I shouldn’t assume you are here to speak with me. I’ll fetch him instead.”

Virgil groaned, rolling his eyes so hard that it was a full-body gesture. “No, you moron, you come back too.”

In another circumstance, Logan might have been miffed about being called a moron, but now he just blinked in pleased surprise. “Oh.”

Virgil leaned on one crutch, tilting his head to the side. “So? Are you going to get him?”

“Ah—yes, of course. One moment.” Logan placed his school materials on the coffee table, then strode purposefully from the room.

When he returned, a very excited and curious Roman in tow, Virgil was still on the shelf, shifting awkwardly where he stood.

“Doctor Gloom!” Roman greeted cheerily, his still-exuberant voice softened out of consideration. “What brings you to our homely abode?”

Logan glanced at Roman, a bit surprised at the vocabulary choice, and wondering if perhaps he’d confused the definition of “homely”, before looking back to Virgil for an answer.

Virgil managed to look even more uncomfortable. Logan shifted his gaze slightly away, hoping that that would help. It seemed to do the trick.

Virgil took a deep breath. “So… I wanted to, uh… I wanted to say thanks,” he said. “I know I wasn’t… I wasn’t the nicest, when I came to ask you guys for help, with Em. But you helped me anyway, and you helped him. You saved him. And Patton. So… thanks for that.” He paused. “Um. That’s all.”

He opened his mouth again, shook his head, and turned away, clearly about to dart back into the wall.

“Wait,” Roman begged. “Don’t go yet.”

Virgil paused.

“You came quite a long way just to say that,” Logan observed. “I do appreciate it, as I’m sure Roman does, but….”

Virgil scoffed.

“Would it hurt to have a conversation before you leave?” Logan gently pressed. He hadn’t seen any of the littles in two weeks, which, while not overly long, was certainly more time than he would have preferred.

“Are Pat and Emile okay?” Roman asked. “How are you? What’s been going on the past two weeks?”

“You ask a lot of questions,” Virgil muttered.

Logan and Roman waited.

Virgil sighed. “I waited because I wanted to make sure Em was good, okay? And he’s—he’s fine.” Virgil turned away from the wall to look more properly towards them again, but his voice was quieter as he continued, “I just wanted to thank you guys, and he’s better, so I came.”

Logan nodded slightly. “We appreciate it,” he said.

Virgil shifted. “I’m fine,” he continued. “I’m great. Pat and Em, too. We’ve just been, um. Helping Emile. And fixing things up at home.”

Virgil nodded to himself, and started to turn away again.

“Is that all you wanted?” Logan asked. “Do you need food, or supplies? Perhaps you could pass along well-wishes to Patton and Emile.”

“I don’t need charity,” Virgil said, shaking his head.

“It’s not charity,” Roman chimed in. “We want to help. Because we’re friends, right?”

Virgil sighed.

“Is there really nothing you need?”

Virgil tapped one of his crutches on the shelf, thinking. A few seconds later, his shoulders drooped.

“Can I have one of your Christmas lights? A clear one? And some wire, maybe?”

Logan remembered the broken glass in Emile’s bag, the remnants of a light he had attempted to bring home. They must not have been able to replace it yet. Of course, they hadn’t. He should have realized.

Virgil seemed to want to justify his request. “It’s just—we’re not going back to where we used to get them, so. We haven’t found a new spot yet.”

“You won’t have to,” Logan said. “Whenever you need a new light, just ask us. We’d be happy to provide them”

Virgil nodded, still not looking at him. “That’s all, though,” he seemed to need to say. “We can get our own food and everything.”

Logan nodded, allowing a small smile to come to his lips. “Of course.”

“And—and, maybe,” he continued, “Maybe I’ll bring Patton next time. If he wants to come.”

Logan was just happy to hear there would be a next time.

Virgil was persuaded to have a snack while he waited, for hospitality’s sake rather than need; and he and Roman sat down to share a bag of cheese crackers while Logan got the light.

…

Roman sat down on the arm of the chair, watching as Virgil inspected one of the cheese crackers before finally taking a bite.

“So… what’s it like living in the walls?” Roman asked.

Virgil glanced at him warily, then swallowed. “Who says I live in the walls?”

Roman blinked. “Well… where else would you live?” Virgil, Patton, and Emile had all travelled up through the walls towards their home, even if they hadn’t said exactly where that was “…Do you live under someone’s floor? Or in the ceiling?” He paused, reaching for another handful of crackers. “Those are all kind of the same thing, though, right?” He shoved the snacks in his mouth.

Virgil sighed, apparently conceding the point.

“So, what’s it like?”

“What’s it like not living in the walls?”

Roman made a thoughtful noise. “Fair.” Virgil probably didn’t have a great sense of how to compare that aspect of his life to any other. While he had experienced a taste of what living in an apartment was like, but it wasn’t exactly… a normal situation.

They continued snacking in silence for a few moments, until Roman sighed and set his cracker bag to the side.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sounds like you’re going to.”

That wasn’t a refusal, Roman noticed. He decided to go ahead and ask. “Well, it’s just… I’ve been nothing but nice to you, or at least, I know I’ve tried to be, but… sometimes it still seems like you hate me. Why?”

Virgil glanced over. “…I don’t hate you.”

“You don’t like me,” Roman insisted. “Or don’t trust me, anyway, even after everything. Why?”

Virgil shifted, uncomfortable.

Roman waited.

“…It’s because you’re a human,” he admitted. “Yeah, you helped Patton, and yeah, you helped Emile. And I’m very thankful for that—you know I am. But that doesn’t change what you are.” He glanced away. “It’s not your fault, and I’m trying my best to ignore it—I swear I am—and I do… ugh, I do like you, I guess, but… you and Logan are human. And humans hurt people like us. They capture us, they either kill us or keep us as specimens or make us into pets—” he grimaced— “or they make us into playthings. Patton isn’t an outlier. I’ve heard the stories.” He shook his head. “I know you two are nice, but… I can’t just ignore that, even if I want to. So… so I’m probably not ever going to stop being… kind of afraid of you.”

Roman looked down, his heart sinking at Virgil’s words. He felt rather speechless at the sheer certainty in the little’s eyes. The urge to be defensive was still there—if all he and Logan had done wasn’t enough to fully earn his trust, then what was? But he stopped himself. Instead, he took a second, and he thought back, back to when he and Logan had first found Patton, hiding in that conch shell on that fateful day at the beach.

They’d brought Patton home with them in order to help him; but as much as he hated to think about it, Roman had to admit that Virgil had a point. In those first few seconds after Logan and Roman had found Patton, their first instinct hadn’t been to let him go. It hadn’t been to help. Logan had simply shouted at Roman to catch him, and Roman had jumped in front of the little, cutting off his escape. It was only afterwards that Patton had collapsed, when they had realized the true severity of his condition, that they had changed their approach. Roman remembered clearly the moment the surprise, the wonder, the confusion, the excitement, had drained out of him and been replaced with nothing but fear and concern for the little guy.

Had Patton not been so sick, had he not been hurt, had he not already been so clearly emotionally scarred, Roman honestly couldn’t say what he would have done. Would he and Logan still have brought him home with them? Even against his will?

…Probably, he thought, thinking of Logan’s notebook. Of his own burning curiosity about the small, strange creature. Of the fact that Logan had, despite his good intentions, literally put him in a cage. And of the fact that Roman hadn’t stopped him.

Roman was glad that things had not gone any further down that path. But under different circumstances, while he as much as any other person would want to think they could never do something like that… he could see how things might have gone very differently.

Roman turned his head to look back at the little, who avoided his gaze.

“I get it,” was all Roman said. And he did—as much as any human like him could. Maybe Virgil would always be a little afraid of him, and maybe he’d never be comfortable enough to do something like ride in his palm, like Patton had, but that was okay. Roman would respect his boundaries.

Virgil’s gaze darted back in his direction, and he nodded, looking relieved. “Good. Cool.”

…

By the time Logan returned with the light and the wire, Virgil had finished nearly two of the crackers. Logan sensed a slight change in atmosphere had occurred while he was gone, despite the cheerfulness of the way Roman was asking about the littles’ home—which, it sounded like, was apparently made up of two cozy, narrow rooms within a wall somewhere—but it didn’t seem that anything cataclysmic had gone wrong, so he decided to say nothing about it.

He cleared his throat to announce his presence, and held up the supplies he had put together.

“Do you want to take some of these back with you?” Roman asked once Logan had carefully put the items up on the shelf, holding up the bag of cheese crackers. “I don’t think I can finish them all.”

Virgil squinted, disbelieving. Which was fair, given how few were left.

“I bet Patton would like them,” Roman continued thoughtfully. “He does love cheese.”

Virgil grumbled, but he was already moving to put some of the crackers in his bag. Roman grinned and put a couple more on the shelf.

“So… I know you already said they’re fine, but how are Emile and Patton?” Logan asked, feeling rather left out of their earlier conversation. He’d certainly be asking Roman to share what they had talked about with him, later. “Is Emile getting around okay? Is Pat still having nightmares?”

Virgil finished packing up the crackers. He chewed on his lip, then seemed to take pity on them. “Em’s good. He’s been resting a lot, still, but he’s okay. And Patton’s fine. I think being home helps. He hasn’t really had any nightmares, at least that I know of.”

Logan smiled. “That’s very good news, Virgil.”

“Yeah.” Virgil nodded. “Anyway, um, I’ll bring Patton in… probably another couple weeks?”

Logan felt his smile widen, and he nodded. “That sounds perfect.” He would have liked to see Patton sooner, of course; but he assumed the wait was likely because of the length of the trip (he wasn’t sure exactly how long that was, but he knew it wasn’t short) and because Virgil probably didn’t want to leave Emile home alone yet. It would be a while, he assumed, before Emile was well enough for a visit.

Virgil got to his feet, grabbing his crutches. “So… I guess I should be going.”

Logan’s smile faltered slightly, but he only inclined his head. “Of course. Please give our best to Patton and Emile.”

“Tell them I said hi,” Roman added. “And tell them I quit my job, so no more grocery cart duty! No more asthma attacks!”

“Oh… sure,” Virgil said, looking mystified, most likely about what a grocery cart was. “I’ll tell them.” He put his backpack around his shoulders. “Well… thank you again, for everything.”

“Thank you for coming back,” Logan replied sincerely.

Virgil nodded, offered them a half-smile, and ducked back into the wall.

…

Three more weeks went by before the littles returned to see the humans again; but Virgil and Patton did return, as promised. Patton had wanted to go back sooner, and he knew that Roman and Logan would want them to as well, but he and Virgil had decided to wait one more week.

The reason why they had waited currently stood between Virgil and Patton, his arm still in a sling, and part of his tail still in a splint, but now walking without aid from either of them: Emile.

Patton stepped out from the wall first, bolstered by the sound of quiet voices from the kitchen, confirming that his humans were home.

“Hello!” the little called out cheerfully, as Virgil and Emile carefully followed him out onto the shelf. “Roman! Logan!”

The voices stopped immediately, and there was the sound of two chairs being pushed back before Roman and Logan hurried into the room. Their faces lit up, and Patton beamed at them.

“Hey, guys!”

“Greetings.”

“Sorry we’re late,” Virgil said, walking closer to the edge of the shelf and stopping just shy of Patton. “Em wanted to come.”

Roman looked like he was barely containing his excitement, grinning from ear to ear. “That’s okay!” he said. “I’m just glad you’re here now.”

Logan’s features settled into a calmer smile. “What brings you here tonight?”

Patton shrugged. “We wanted to see you. It’s been a while.”

Logan bit his lip. Patton had a feeling he was trying not to get emotional. His heart went out to the human.

“Well… I’m glad.”

“I want to hear about Roman’s job thing!” Patton added, referring to what Virgil had told them after his previous visit. Hopefully, the story would include what exactly a job was, in the sense that humans talked about them; but Patton was sure he’d enjoy hearing it regardless. “And I bet other stuff has happened. And we can tell you about the new fish in 4B, and about how Virgil drove the rat out of the building!”

Roman glanced at Logan. “Drove the what out of the building?”

“Besides,” Patton continued, still smiling, “we never did get to finish Avatar.”

And so, Roman and Logan moved their dinner into the living room. The littles came down to the very same table where they had once stayed, sitting atop one of the pillows from Roman’s apparently extensive collection. They watched cartoons, and spent the evening talking, laughing, sharing food, and simply enjoying each other’s company.

...

Meanwhile, dozens of miles away, as the title sequence of that first episode played, a young blonde girl with pigtails stubbed her toe.

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idealnreal · 4 years

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Maruki Palace over-analysis (pt.1)

Thank you for @appleyjuiceboy for helping me out with this and entertaining my brainrot. and to @goalexstark for requesting this :D Now buckle in, put on gentle madman, and a whole lot of insanity under the cut

So the best place to start is outside the palace. Specifically, the external architecture of the palace. It’s clearly very contemporary even futuristic in its design, while holding an organic form. It’s design reminds me of rotating tower concepts with the way the first half of the tower curves and twists. And the palace itself does seem to rotate and shift, especially the components in the top half -- accentuating the organic and dynamic futuristic design. However, in comparison with most contemporary and organic architectural designs, the external architecture isn’t minimalist. There are various components, that make the design seem chaotic and even Extra. Of course this is a palace, and we should expect that.

The middle section of the palace is a twisting glass ‘stairway’, surrounding a golden almost ‘woven’ like structure. There is an elevator shaft running through the middle of it. This elevator leads to the garden of eden section of the palace. While the peak is a hologram of a globe, surrounding an amorphous golden form -- that seems to be the source of the light. Strangely enough we don’t see the tree of eden from outside. That would’ve been neat. But alas. The we come to the rotating rings, bound by these golden ‘wires’, and have these camera lenses attached to them.

So, the architectural style of the lab is futuristic, organic and dynamic -- and completely whack. This reflects how he thinks that his new reality is also effectively a new way, a new future -- breaking past the confines and rules of even the most contemporary of architectural design, and breaking past the confines and rules of life and reality.

All throughout the exterior of the palace there are these limelights and cameras, rotating about, focusing it’s lenses. This alludes to how he gives each patient his full attention, to be the centre of attention, to be in-focus. Alternatively, it could also suggest an over protective, surveying/ supervising mental state -- ever watchful for anyone in pain.

The entrance’s design, in comparison with the rest of the exterior, seems very straightforward. If you take away the glass atrium, the grey structure in the middle would actually be very imposing. The gold ‘wires’ arcs also surround this area, giving it an organic and dynamic design. Note that these aren’t doors, but an elevator. From the get go, Maruki is taking patients up, above ground.

Stepping out of the elevator, from the dark and up a flight of steps, into the light, we are greeted by a flight of doves-- accentuating the idea that the entrance hall is an open-aired space despite being indoors. This becomes a theme across the palace, going back and forth from high-ceiling and open-aired sections, to very closed and claustrophobic corridors. There are also those golden ‘wire’ arches decorating the ceiling of this entrance hall. In contemporary architecture, big atriums and open-aired spaces are meant to promote airflow and natural light, to give visitors a sense of ease and relaxation, while also being a respite from any harsh conditions outdoors. The sound of the doves taking flight add on to the peaceful and calm atmosphere.

Like all information boards, Maruki is showing people the benefits of his research, how it works, and most importantly, evidence that it does work -- that it is for the best. The amount of detail and the number of charts on these boards suggest that he is being transparent with his research -- and that it is scientifically proven. Of course, no one real (beyond the phantom thieves, shibusawa and the professor) has read this research. The people outside who’s cognitions he had changed, did not need to read this research -- they only needed to wish for happiness. Even so, these boards reflect his belief that if people know about his research, about how it works, they can be convinced into accepting his help. The cognitions who talk in the entrance hall also tell the PT to give it a try, and were understanding of any hesitance and were reassuring.

Also notice that the walls of the hall are lined with flower-beds, specifically wildflowers -- Calling back to Rumi’s love for the wild-flower field and Maruki’s youth with her. It also fits into the open-ness of this section that these are not potted deliberately arranged plants, and it would seem that these flowers just grew out in the patch of dirt and grass left for them.

Here, we come to the reception hall, where there are a few components to note. The first is probably the huge fan topping off the very high glass ceiling -- again, adding to the idea that this palace is all about natural light, air circulation and a breezy peacefulness. Then we have those golden wires/cable things (they actually remind me of computer cables), wrapped around these cameras and helping to prop them up and move them. THese cameras are also propped up by these black thin wires -- and the gold and the black -- hinting that there is more going on here. On the huge cameras themselves, now they seem more like surveillance cameras than the camera lenses outside. Adding credence to the idea that this is a big brother type situation, but one that is just reALLY keen on making sure everyone isn’t suffering and is happy.

The design of the reception itself is well organised, with lined benches and the calling numbers on full display. When i first played this section i thought that this was more like a hospital -- not a lab.

The next section is this green house looking area, with a tree and a garden in the middle and four TV screens. We don’t know if these screens are meant to play memories of anyone who comes by but that’s what we see-- Sumire walking in as her father is crying over Kasumi’s body. Importantly, after this section we see a cognition of Kasumi who sees and waves at Sumire, and then once we meet Maruki, he shows us another video from Sumire’s POV of the accident. Also the room we see the cognition of Kasumi and meet Maruki is a gymnastics arena.

This is important because we know that this is Maruki’s palace, and not Sumire’s. How is it that these POV memories are in this palace, and that Maruki would have a cognition of Kasumi? Of course one can argue that he created these memories and the cognition of Kasumi based on what he knows of Sumire/Kasumi -- and was doing this to manipulate her. But this definitely isn’t the case. He has never met Kasumi, and from what we can tell, he only had one session with Sumire, who didn’t really give any details of the accident itself to Maruki, or speak of her father to him. I doubt that Sumire as Kasumi would’ve spoken to Maruki about the accident after -- as she was more concerned about her gymnastic performance.

Perhaps this will get to personal headcanon territory, because the game doesn’t give us any answers on this. So Maruki is definitely an empath, and while that doesn’t give him the affinity to gain other people’s memories -- I believe that with Azathoth’s power and with this palace, it does. We know that he can see into people’s minds and know their pains and wishes -- which would very likely come in the form of memories -- whether it be persona users or mementos dwellers. Also, being an empath means that he can feel what another is feeling. Or rather if i can describe it -- letting someone walk through the door and change the furniture around. This is Maruki’s palace, and yet he is allowing Sumire to walk in and see her own memories from her point of view. Therefore, while i think that Maruki has access to some of these memories, they’re supplemented and brought into focus by the presence of Sumire. At least that’s what my hc is.

Speaking of the gymnastics arena, we arrive at our first colour switch of this palace. Dark purples and violets. It doesnt look like the walls or floors are purples/dark -- but instead some purple light, and that the big lights aren’t turned on on purpose. Like discussed before, this seems very much like Sumire’s section of the palace -- and Maruki allowing her to ‘move the furniture’

Something else to note thanks to juicedup14 from twitter for these translations of the banners, tickertape/crawler text, “We’ll watch over you always” “ The ideal reality you haven’t seen is waiting for you” “ May the world be a happy place where no one suffers”

And these posters, translated “ Let’s keep our hearts healthy”.

After a week we return to the palace and head to the Auditorium. This time, this is definitely Maruki’s section of the palace. Unlike the Arena, the Auditorium is a circular and bright hall, flanked all around with seats and podiums and screens for presentations. Yes, Maruki’s cognitions of people are fuckin creepy, but this is where they are the creepiest. They’re all sitting in rows, faceless and happy -- and have their hands together clapping. There is also a hologram of the globe topping off the ceiling -- like the hologram globe outside. This is where Maruki’s research will and has gained global recognition -- presented to thousands, and seen as the panacea to all ills and suffering of the world.

I went into more detail in my analysis of the shadows, but tldr; the cult-like vibe this palace, and especially this room, gives. However this ‘religion’ is founded on research, factual and scientific evidence. Which is why we have those presentation screens and all the information boards in this first third of the palace. And given how his research has been suppressed and ignored for years, it makes sense if those cognitions are his converted detractors, his followers, as well as his ‘patients’. Maruki doesn’t deny wanting his research to be recognised, and this is what this room is dedicated to. But like he says, and ultimately what the rest of this palace will show -- Maruki wants to heal the world at whatever the cost.

And with this i’ll probably close this off here. I reckon this will be one of four or five parts, kinda split to how the game splits this palace. This will be a long and wild ride ladies gents and enbees. Oof.

#(( sorry the screenshots are a bit all over the place #(( i took them from youtube letsplays and a few from jester #(( i still need to reach maruki's palace again on my NG+#(( hopefully the next few parts i will have better content <3 #takuto maruki #c: the self #f: notes #persona 5 royal #p5r spoilers

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anythingandeverything1d · 4 years

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Sleepless, stressed, and homesick

Harry’s show had ended a few hours ago, he had showered backstage and was helping clean everything up with the band. You had wandered onto the tour bus, sitting at the small table with a cup of tea and your computer. You were working on replying to fans, setting up new merchandise to sell at the concerts, and organizing Harry’s schedule for the next few weeks. You weren't his manager, but Harry did not manage his time well so you had taken it upon yourself to try and fix that. You had a google calendar for every event that he planned, studio sessions, writing times, fan meet and greets, rehearsals, and date nights had been scheduled in too of course. It was getting to be a lot of work, Harry kept adding more and more to the schedule, he kept changing things on tour whether it was set lists, outfits, or special guest performers, and it was exhausting to keep up with. You heard Harry climbed into the bus and he sunk into the seat next to yours, placing a gentle kiss against your cheek. “Youre still up?” he asked leaning his head on your shoulder and looking at what you were working on.

“Yeah, I wanted to finish these emails, and then also finish this t-shirt design and send it in so that we can possibly have them at the next concert.”

Harry smiled and grabbed your hand, turning your body slightly towards him. He kissed your wrist and then your lips. “You need sleep too, it's been a crazy long day (y/n) and you've been running around non stop.”

“I know.” You kissed him again and touched his cheek. “Ill come to bed soon I promise.” Harry nodded with a smile, getting up to change into pjs and then crawling into his bunk. You let out a deep breath, your face in your hands. The past few weeks just hadn't been easy. You weren't adjusting to the tour life as much as you had thought you would. Being with Harry was amazing, he made everyday brighter and life more interesting, and being on tour with him had really allowed your relationship to grow. It also had its stresses though. Fans crowding you every stop you make, always feeling like you have to be camera ready, being away from home and your friends, and of course all the extra work you had taken on. There were definitely times you didn't always enjoy the tour life. You missed sleeping in until 1:00pm with Harry, lounging on the couch without pants on and eating ice cream while watching Disney movies. On tour, people were always around. It never felt like it was just you and Harry. On top of everything going on with the extra work, you also hadn't been able to sleep. You just couldn't sleep in a bunk, alone, and while the bus was moving around from stop to stop. You didn’t find it comfortable at all. The bed was tiny, the mattress not how you liked it, and it felt very closed in. You shook your head trying to clear the thoughts in your mind and focus on the task at hand. You were working on a really cool t-shirt for Harry’s tour, but it had been a week since you started working on it and every time you looked at it something needed to be changed. It just wasnt working out the way you wanted it to.

After another hour working on the t-shirt design, you realized that the wifi connection had been lost and nothing had saved. You closed the computer and put your head down on the table, tears forming in your eyes. “Baby, what's wrong?” Harry came over, pulled you onto his lap and ran his fingers through your hair.

You were now crying harder. You were tired, annoyed, frustrated, and stressed. You buried your face into Harry’s chest and he gently rubbed your back calming you down. After a few minutes you looked at him, your eyes locking on his. “The shirt design. It-it didn’t save because the stupid wifi wasnt even working and- and I worked so hard on it and-”

“(y/n), its okay love. If we don't have the shirts, we don't have the shirts. Im sure the new design changes you make will be even better than what you had done. Just calm down and breathe okay? Everything is fine.”

“Everything isn't fine. I hate this bus. I miss my bed, I miss us sleeping in together and cuddling in the morning, I miss not having people around us all the time. I miss not being able to sleep-”

“You can't sleep?” Harry looked at you concerned, his hands still rubbing your back. You shook your head and wiped the tears falling down your cheeks. “Why can't you sleep?”

“Im just not comfortable. The bunk is so closed in, and I’m all alone, and its so dark Harry, I hate the dark.. and then I just feel like I’m going to roll right off the edge and break something.” Harry smiled and you frowned. “Why are you laughing at me.”

“I’m not, I just think youre cute.” He kissed your nose and sighed. “Come on, I have an idea.” He grabbed your hand and dragged you toward his bunk.

“Harry what are you-”

“Shh, go put pjs on.” He pointed at the bathroom and you sighed changing into a baggy tshirt and shorts. When you came back from the bathroom, Harry had moved your pillow and blanket into his bunk. “Climb in baby.”

“What? No.” you shook your head. “There’s no way we will fit in there.”

“If you don't willingly climb into my bed (y/n) I will have to force you in.” Harry crossed his arms and nodded at the bunk. “Whats it going to be?” You sighed and climbed in. Harry climbed in after you, pulling the curtain closed with him. It was a tight squeeze, Harry was big spooning you, kissing your cheek and running his fingers up your arm. You rolled over and faced him.

“Are we actually going to stay like this?”

“Yeah. You are going to sleep with me so I can make sure youre actually sleeping. Mitch said a lack of sleep leads to sickness and stress and we don't need that here.” Harry rolled onto his back and pulled you onto his chest. You traced his tattoos and leaned your cheek where his heart was. You could hear the gentle thumping echoing in his chest. Harry had his arms tightly around you and was humming softly. “Sleep baby.. it's just you and me like it would be at home. Im not going to let you fall off the side either. You're completely safe here just close your eyes.” Harry kissed your head one more time, continuing to hum a gentle rhythm. You closed your eyes, listened to his heart, if this was how sleeping on the bus would be from now on, it might not be that bad... Eventually drifted off into a peaceful deep sleep for the first time in months and when you woke up in the morning, light was filtering in through the curtain. Harry smiled at you and winked. “How’d you sleep?”

You pressed your lips to his, maneuvering your way onto his body. You deepened the kiss, wrapping your tongue around his and cupping his cheeks in your hands. “I slept great.” you said with a smile, pulling slightly away from him. He grabbed your face, pulled you back to his lips and laughed.

“I have a surprise for you.”

You sat up confused. “What is it?” Harry reluctantly pushed you off him and got out of bed. He helped you climb down and put his hands around your eyes, walking you towards the bus door. “Harry, you know I hate surprises.”

“You’ll love this one trust me.” Harry had helped you down the stairs, off the bus, and into the cool morning air. He gently removed his hands from your eyes and you tried adjusting to the bright sun. In front of you stood your two best friends. You screamed and ran to them, wrapping them into a tight hug. “I figured you could use a little more girl time and a little less work time.”

You ran back to Harry, kissing him all over his face. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too (y/n). Now go, enjoy the time with your friends.” He kissed your cheek and you smiled, walking back over to them and planning what you were going to do for the day. You walked them onto the bus, winking at Harry as he walked in for rehearsal. You really did have the best, most caring guy you could've ever asked for.

---

Got this request! Hope its not too cheesy of a story lol

Enjoy! xoxo

#one direction #directioners #one direction fanfiction #one direction imagines #Harry Styles #harrystyles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles imagines #harry styles imagine

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didanawisgi · 3 years

Link

U.S. still hasn't ruled out lab accident origin for Covid because China hasn't been transparent. U.S. officials haven't shown any evidence pointing to a lab escape, and scientists call the scenario unlikely. The U.S. wants China to share information.

By Ken Dilanian, Carol E. Lee and Keir Simmons

“WASHINGTON — Despite a finding by the World Health Organization that the Covid-19 outbreak in China most likely first infected humans through an animal host, the United States is still not ruling out the possibility of a laboratory accident, as officials continue to sort through intelligence about the Chinese government’s initial handling of the outbreak, American and Western officials told NBC News.

A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told NBC News the agency is standing by a public statement it issued in April, which said that American intelligence agencies "will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan."

U.S. officials have not made public any evidence pointing to a lab accident, and most scientists who have studied the matter said that such a scenario is unlikely. But Biden administration officials have faulted China in recent days for what they have termed a lack of transparency around the origins of the virus. And they have criticized how the WHO last week presented the initial findings of a visit to Wuhan, where the virus is believed to have emerged.

WHO investigators, after visiting three labs in Wuhan, said last week they found no signs that a lab accident could have caused the outbreak. One WHO researcher told reporters at a news conference the organization was halting any further inquiry into that theory.

But the director general of the WHO appeared to walk back that definitive statement a few days later, saying that "all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and study."

A Western intelligence official who has seen classified material told NBC News the U.S. has substantial intelligence that has not been made public about actions the Chinese government took — related to the Wuhan lab and other issues — that were designed to obscure the origins of Covid-19 and conceal its early impact. A former U.S. official who has also seen the intelligence agreed that it was significant, if inconclusive.

Both sources said the material, which they did not detail, did not add up to evidence that a lab accident occurred. But they said it raised enough circumstantial questions that analysts have been unable to rule out the lab scenario. U.S. intelligence officials declined to comment.

The intelligence, which includes documents, paints a picture of a Chinese government initially trying to hide the burgeoning pandemic from the outside world.

"There is no doubt that, especially when Covid-19 first hit but even today, China is falling far short of the mark when it comes to providing the information necessary to the international community," Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told NBC's Andrea Mitchell this month. "All of the — that lack of transparency, that lack of being forthcoming, is a profound problem and it's one that continues."

The lab theory

The so-called lab theory refers to a hypothesis that the Covid outbreak emerged in Wuhan as a result of an accidental release from one of the labs working with coronaviruses in that city — perhaps from an improper disposal of lab waste or an employee who got infected at work and then infected others.

U.S. intelligence agencies and scientists say they have ruled out that Covid-19 was human-made or intentionally released. The lab theory hypothesizes an accidental release of a virus found in nature by researchers and brought in for study.

Download the NBC News app for full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

Scientists say that scenario is unlikely on its face, because animal-to-human transmission of viruses are common, while lab accidents are relatively rare. The key scientists studying viruses in Wuhan say they were not studying the Covid-19 virus, which had not been previously documented in nature before the outbreak.

Intelligence officials counter that one key lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, removed from public view a database of 22,000 virus samples for security reasons, and has not allowed a detailed look at the lab's notes or other records.

They say it's suspicious that the virus outbreak arose in Wuhan, a hub of virus research in China, while the bats that commonly carry coronaviruses are typically found in caves a thousand miles from that city.

They note that scientists also have not found a host animal that could have transferred the virus to humans, after a year of looking.

WHO researchers acknowledged last week that the "wet" or live-animal market in Wuhan, which was originally thought to be a likely source of the outbreak, may not be the whole story, since early cases have been identified in people who had no connection to the market.

The WHO team included international and Chinese scientists. They say their summary report will be published within weeks.

One member of the team, Australian microbiologist and infectious diseases expert Dominic Dwyer, told NBC News that the scientists didn't get all the data they sought from the Chinese government, and that team members disagreed about various aspects of what they saw and heard.

"There were tense moments and disagreements and, you know, arguments about what things meant and so on, between both sides," Dwyer said. "And some of that is just because the data isn't strong enough to give a single, a great conclusion."

Dwyer says the team was given "aggregated data," as opposed to detailed, line-by-line case information, for the 174 known Covid cases from Wuhan in December.

Case information would enable researchers, he said, to "go along to a person who had this disease and say, OK, you know, how old are you? You know, what sort of work do you do? Who's in your family? What do you do for your hobbies? You know, do you go to the market? What sort of market do you go to, you know, what's your general health, like, all of those sorts of things to try and understand where a person had been, and where they could have been exposed to something."

Several members of the WHO team told NBC News they were provided with just 13 DNA sequences from the 174 cases. Of those, five had small genomic differences, suggesting a wider pool of virus, Dwyer said, though the sample was so small it was hard to draw conclusions.

"Actual infections is probably much higher than the 174," Dwyer said.

WHO investigators tasked Chinese researchers with surveying the wider community, he added.

According to Dwyer, the Chinese researchers said they examined the cases of 76,000 people presenting with fever or pneumonia from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, 2019, and found 92 people with Covid-like symptoms. Of these, they tested 67 people, Dwyer said, and found no Covid-19 antibodies.

Those tests were carried out in January 2021, more than a year after the potential exposure. Scientists don't yet know how long Covid-19 antibodies remain in the body after infection.

Pompeo and the lab theory

The Trump administration, and in particular, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, repeatedly said there was significant evidence in support of the lab theory.

On Jan. 15, five days before the end of the Trump administration, the State Department published a "fact sheet" making a series of allegations about the Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory.

Among them: "The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli's public claim that there was 'zero infection' among the WIV's staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses."

The fact sheet added, "Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China's military. The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017."

One former official familiar with the intelligence on which Pompeo's statement is based said it was less than rock solid, and that some officials were surprised that the secretary aired it publicly. Pompeo did not respond to requests for comment made through his spokesman.

Dwyer told NBC News the WHO team inquired about the testing of researchers at the WIV lab and was told that there were standard tests of all staff in April 2019 and then again in 2020. They were told those tests were negative. But it's not clear when the 2020 tests were carried out, again raising questions about whether Coronavirus would be detected. The head of the Wuhan Institute of Virology Dr. Shi wrote on July 31, nine months after October 2019, that she "recently" tested all WIV employees and they were negative.

"I think the jury's still out," State Department spokesman Ned Price said last week about the origins of Covid-19. "Clearly the Chinese, at least heretofore, have not offered the requisite transparency that we need."”

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hellzyeahwebwielingessays · 4 years

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The Not-So-Amazing Mary Jane Part 4: The Death of Mysterio

Previous Part

Next Part

Master Post

Last time we began our look at the life of Mysterio. In this post we’ll continue our retrospective, starting with the 1990s.

The 1990s: Helping Harry

We come now to an event that chronologically would’ve happened in the 1990s but was retroactively established in 2009.

During Brand New Day (ASM #581 specifically) we learned via retcon that Mysterio was responsible for faking the death of Mary Jane’s close friend, Harry Osborn. He did this on behalf of his Harry’s, father Norman.

I won’t recount the entire Harry Osborn Saga for you, but suffice it to say that Harry’s descent into madness was incredibly stressful for Mary Jane and Peter.

In spite of what Harry had become the couple were grief-stricken by his death.

MJ in particular was so affected by his death she requested Peter take a temporary break from hero work.

That same day Carnage began a killing spree alongside several other highly violent super villains. MJ’s grief over Harry coupled with the anxiety that Peter might meet a similar fate contributed to straining her and her marriage further, albeit briefly.

At the time Peter and MJ were living in an apartment owned by the Osborns. Following the Carnage crisis, Harry’s widow Liz Allan evicted the Parkers as a direct result of Harry’s death. Obviously this added to the Parkers’ distress.

In general Harry’s death left short and long-term wounds for MJ and people she loved and Mysterio was directly implicated in that. As he had done with Aunt May he had caused entirely unnecessary pain and grief out of pure selfishness, even if he was merely a ‘hired gun’ to that effect.

We never see MJ learn this information but given how one of her friends seemingly came back from the dead it’s something she’d obviously want to know about and since she is so close to Peter and Harry it’s extremely unlikely they wouldn’t have told her.

I will admit that this example is a contentious one as it doesn’t really make sense for a loooooooot of reasons and the story doesn’t 100% confirm that Harry (and by extension Peter and anyone either of them might tell) knows Mysterio was responsible.

So it could be argued that as far as Harry knows an unknown ‘someone’ covered his tracks (presumably his father) but he’s in the dark regarding Beck’s involvement.

However it is food for thought, yet another thing that would realistically cause MJ to hold Mysterio in lowly regard.

Duel with the Devil

Lets move away from Beck’s encounters with Spidey and towards those he had with Man Without Fear, Daredevil.

The first of these occurred in Daredevil #358, set shortly after the Onslaught crossover. In the wake of Onslaught’s attack and the presumed deaths of the Avengers and F4 Beck set up a fraudulent insurance scheme to con people out of their money. That isn’t too relevant beyond it once again proving what an exploitative dickbag Mysterio is. More importantly though, it sets up his next encounter with DD.

I am of course referring to the ‘Guardian Devil’ story arc that ran through Daredevil volume 2 #1-8.

This arc is the absolute nadir of Mysterio’s ‘bad behaviour’.

Developing terminal illnesses and with just a year to live, Beck sought to go out with a bang. Initially he intended to make Spider-Man the centre of his plan but due to confusion (arising from Ben Reilly’s tenure as Spidey) he targeted Daredevil instead. Learning personal details about Daredevil’s life (including his secret identity) Beck built a plan designed to attack Matt Murdock’s sanity (evoking his scheme in ASM #24). In particular his plan hinged upon Murdock’s Catholic beliefs.

A key component of his plan was the abduction, drugging, artificial insemination and gas lighting of a Catholic teenager named Gwyneth.

Although her faith led Gwyneth to believe her pregnancy was divine in origin, she was understandably emotionally distraught after discovering herself pregnant and her pregnancy caused major strife with her parents. To ensure Gwyneth’s parents wouldn’t get the chance to investigate the matter, Beck hired some thugs to murder them. Witnessing her mother being beheaded over the body of her father Gwyneth fled with her baby, terrified as the thugs pursued her.

Out of desperation she was temporarily forced to sleep on the streets with her baby. It was at this point that Beck used his illusionary skills to trick her into seeing a ‘divine vision’ that led her to Matt Murdock. Passing her baby onto Matt she fled again hoping to lay low. However Mysterio’s men found and promptly murdered her. Her body was buried somewhere it wouldn’t be found.

Just to bottom line things so far, Mysterio knowingly:

Abducted

Drugged

Sexually assaulted

Orphaned

Traumatised

Hunted

Distressed

Manipulated

And murdered

A TEENAGED GIRL!

Just saying…

Anyway, there was more to Beck’s scheme than just Gwyneth.

He also murdered an innocent old man and for his fortune and impersonated him to enact the next part of his plan. This entailed slipping Murdock drugs that made him susceptible to Beck’s cover story. According to this story Gwyneth’s baby was in fact the literal anti-Christ and misfortune would befall Matt the longer he was around the child.

To help make his story more convincing Beck began targeting Matt’s loved ones.

He hired a drug-addicted actress named Lydia Mckenzie to seduce Matt’s best friend Foggy Nelson, who was already in a relationship. On Beck’s orders she also slipped Foggy a drug that caused him to perceive her as a demon and believe that he had pushed her out a window. In reality Beck ensured she died of an overdose, shoved her out the window himself and over all framed Foggy for murder.*

He also posed as a doctor and (I am dead serious right now) tricked Matt’s girlfriend Karen Page into believing she had AIDs. Remember this story was from the late 1990s so this was a BIG deal.

As a result of these machinations and the drug Beck slipped him, Daredevil genuinely tried to murder Gwyneth’s baby.

Mysterio later hired DD’s long-time nemesis (and known psychopathic assassin) Bullseye to abduct Lydia’s baby. He cared little about the inevitable collateral damage Bullseye caused in pursuit of his target. And by ‘collateral damage’ I mean the serious injuries to several people (including Matt’s mother, the nun Sister Margaret) and the murder of 11 people. Karen was among the casualties, traumatically dying in Matt’s arms.

Matt was so distraught over Karen’s death that he briefly contemplated suicide.

Angry and determined, Daredevil zeroed in on Beck’s hideout where Beck had a gauntlet prepared for him. One of the obstacles Murdock faced was an illusion of Karen stuck in Hell. Undoubtedly this was the single most spiteful and hurtful of the things Matt endured in Beck’s gauntlet.

When Daredevil and Mysterio finally come face to face, Beck revealed Gwyneth’s baby trapped in a soundproof chamber where the air was rapidly running out.

So…Mysterio is a-okay with seriously endangering and potentially murdering a baby.

…Again…Just saying…

Mysterio finally revealed his master plan to Daredevil, intending to push a broken Murdock into murdering him.

When DD refused Mysterio opted to emulate Kraven the Hunter and blow his own brains out; a fact that became public knowledge.**

Now sure, we the audience might be aware of all these awful things Beck did in ‘Guardian Devil’; but how much does MJ know about them?

The potential answer is all of it.

The definite answer is more than enough of it.

Towards the start of Daredevil v2 #8 Peter is shown watching a news report about Mysterio’s death. The report acknowledges Mysterio committed suicide and that the bodies of his criminal crew had been found. It also refers to ‘a related story’, that of Foggy Nelson being freed from prison after being framed for Lydia’s death. This implies the news were aware Mysterio was implicated in Lydia’s death.

During this scene MJ is not only within earshot of most of the report, but she even consoles Peter that Mysterio was (in her own words) ‘a lunatic’. She acknowledges he was responsible for the deaths of ‘all those people’. She continues by saying Beck doesn’t deserve Peter’s ‘pity’ and that he should ‘not mourn for Mysterio’. She concludes by telling him to mourn someone ‘who deserves it’ instead.

Then they go to Karen Page’s funeral, which they were clearly preparing for during the news report.

Their attendance of the funeral and the scene leading into it heavily implies that Peter and MJ were aware that Mysterio’s was implicated in Karen’s murder.***

Later in the issue Spider-Man talks to Daredevil in order to fill in the blanks.

We do not know for sure if Spider-Man relayed any of this information to Mary Jane, but it’d be highly likely.

He typically confides in her and uses his conversations with her to process things. MJ herself often asks him to share if she sees something I bothering him.

In this case Peter would especially want to inform MJ of what happened and MJ would especially want to know.

This is because the incident entails one of Peter’s foes essentially manipulating and killing the lover of a fellow street level hero. In fact the only reason Daredevil was targeted at all was because Beck didn’t realise Peter was still around as the original Spider-Man. In other words Peter and MJ could very well have been in Matt and Karen’s shoes.

For the sake of future reference and general safety it’s totally unbelievable that Peter would not have told MJ about this at some point. After all, forewarned is forearmed and MJ has found herself targeted by people with powers of deception like Mysterio in the past, e.g. Venom and the Chameleon.****

I admit there is no hard proof that MJ knows all the details about Mysterio’s actions, but it’s rather unlikely that she wouldn’t if Peter did; it’s just common sense. Therefore we don’t need to see such a scene any more than we need to see the characters going to the bathroom or paying their taxes. It’s just such basic common sense we can presume it happened.

Even if you don’t think so, at the bear minimum Mary Jane definitely knows Mysterio is guilty of murder, accessory to murder (of someone in a similar relationship to herself), gas lighting and mental abuse. The result was that she personally regarded him as mentally unhinged and unworthy f sympathy.

If you only bear in mind ONE of the stories we’ve looked at so far, remember this one. In particular because the story is explicitly referenced in Amazing Mary Jane #1.

The 2000s: Rebirth of Berkhart

As far as those in charge of Marvel were concerned, Beck was genuinely dead and that was the status quo throughout the 2000s.

Nevertheless there are two very noteworthy events from MJ’s point of view that should be taken into account.

The first occurred in ASM v2 #7-8. In this story ‘Mysterio’ abducts the Parker family along with some of their friends and plugs them into a virtual reality machine because the Matrix was really popular back then. His intention was to deduce Spider-Man’s true identity by monitoring their interactions in the virtual world.

This virtual world happened to be shaped by the subconscious of Flash Thompson, meaning everyone was contorted to fit into his wish fulfilment fantasy. This included MJ’s friend Jill Stacy becoming a seemingly resurrected Gwen Stacy, MJ herself being gaga over Flash and wanting to marry him (the climax actually occurs at their wedding) and MJ’s husband being wheelchair bound.

Realistically the fantasy world (along with the realization they’d been abducted) would’ve obviously been upsetting for Mary Jane. Indeed it would’ve been upsetting for everyone else too (including fragile old Aunt May) even if it didn’t leave long-term scars. With no equivocation, this upset was directly ‘Mysterio’s’ fault.

I say Mysterio, but in actuality (and due to retcons) it was Beck’s ‘apprentice’ Danny Berkhart. However, Mary Jane couldn’t have known that (even the writers didn’t!), so from her point of view it would’ve seemed likely that Beck was responsible and merely faked his death once more during the ‘Guardian Devil’ arc.

Later during the ‘Mysterio Manifesto’ mini-series Spidey and Daredevil discovered the truth behind Berkhart’s scheme. This is tangentially important to bear in mind because of what we are going to look at next, namely Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #12.

The specifics of this story aren’t all that relevant. All you need to know is that following Spidey publically unmasking Midtown High (where he worked as a science teacher) was besieged by three Mysterios. One was a new villain named Francis Klum, who had a vendetta against Spider-Man. Another was Berkhart who took issue with Klum’s claim to the Mysterio mantle. And the third was Beck himself, literally sent back from Hell.

After deducing an illusion of MJ as a fake Peter calls the genuine article to confirm her safety. During their conversation it’s revealed that MJ believes Mysterio to be dead.

First of all, this scene establishes that MJ was definitely aware Mysterio had targeted her husband (again!) and potentially endangered school children in the process.

Second of all, from her point of view it’d seem likely that Beck would be behind this. I grant you that's a point that can be debated. However in her conversation with Peter he seems to imply to her that it is the original Mysterio.

Finally (and most importantly) MJ’s dialogue reveals that previously believed Beck was dead. Between ‘Guardian Devil’ and ‘Beck’s’ presence in ASM v2 #7-8 Mary Jane would have no reason to believe Beck hadn’t simply faked his death again. That is unless Peter told her otherwise.

Remember, Peter learned the truth in the ‘Mysterio Manifesto’ when MJ was believed dead, which occurred after ASM v2 #8. This means that Peter must have informed her of this discovery after she was revealed as alive.

This is a point less about how bad of a person Beck is and more about proving that Peter keeps MJ abreast of noteworthy events in regards to his villains. Thus it is absolutely illogical to presume MJ wouldn’t similarly be in the know about most events Peter experiences pertaining to his villains; or at least the really noteworthy ones.

Let’s leave it there for now. Next time we will finish our coverage as we enter the 2010s.

*‘Fun’ fact. In addition to her close friend/ex-boyfriend Harry Osborn struggling with a drug addiction (which indirectly led to Gwen’s death) another of MJ’s friends was well acquainted with drugs.

Her name was Lorraine and she helped MJ learn the ropes when she was first getting into modelling. Unfortunately after overdosing in the Parker residence, MJ learned Lorraine had a major cocaine problem. MJ was so upset by this she asked Peter to sort out Lorraine’s dealer, only to be distraught when Lorraine simply went to someone worse and very nearly died as a result.

Lorraine survived and MJ was determined to help her through her problem.

Oh and MJ herself struggled for a little while to kick cigarettes.

All of which is to say Mary Jane is definitely going to take major issue with someone exploiting someone else’s drug addiction for their own ends. Which is exactly what Beck did with Lydia McKenzie.

Not to mention Lydia was someone in the exact same profession as Mary Jane, which might incline further ire from MJ.

**Remember this is not the first time Mysterio has been publically declared dead. It first occurred in ASM #141, which I discussed in the last instalment.

***Not to mention how it’d be common sense to ask how someone so young died if you are going to their funeral.

****And as food for thought she has literally armed herself with guns in the past. As such the idea she wouldn’t make a point of getting practical information for the sake of safety is highly unbelievable, even if she didn’t live in a city where super villains are commonplace.

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#Mysterio #Quentin Beck #Amazing Mary Jane #Leah Williams #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #MJ Watson #mjwatsonedit #Spider-Man #peter parker #daredevil #matt murdock #Karen Page #Bullseye #Harry Osborn #Flash Thompson #Foggy Nelson

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arlakos · 4 years

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Why Miracle Queen doesn’t make sense. (SPOILERS just in case)

As most of you who have seen my blog know by now, I have found Season 3 to be somewhat of a mess. While having bit of a better writing and episodes overall compared to the rather boring season 2, it also had a lot of disappointing mistakes in terms of character writing and focus, and most episodes which could have been good often had a rather awkward or cringe moment that ruins the episode for me, such as the statue scene in Puppeteer 2. For fans who don't remember, let me remind you:

Now that I’ve mentally traumatized myself looking for this pic, let us continue:

On the topic of episodes, despite any cringey scenes that might be in the episodes, a lot of them are at the very least concise. Sure, the episodes usually have the same generic plot, non-hero moment, angry person, Akuma, hero fight, reset and repeat, but for the most part, they are ok... But even this season, there have been some episodes that have the most stupid plots that don't even make sense. From the horrifying Chameleon episode that had all class characters drop in IQ for the story to work, to the Feast Episode which restored the order of Guardians, but didn’t have them come to Paris to get the box back, there have been some rather stupid episodes...

...But none are more stupid than the Season Finale - Miracle Queen

For an episode that is not only confusing but bad, I could talk about the hundreds of mistakes that are present in episode, but other people can talk about that, or perhaps ill make another post regarding the episodes when I feel like breaking my fingers on my keyboard again, but right now I would like to focus on the 2 main plot holes that absolutely made no sense but ASS-TRUC, the man, the idiot, the infamous twitter legend, decided to do anyway.

So the first plot point I'm gonna talk about is.....

Chloe Bourgeois, aka Miracle Queen

For anyone who hates Chloe bourgeois, this episode would have probably left you jumping for joy, given the fact it pretty much gets her removed from the miraculous team.

For the rest of us, who I assume either like Chloe or find the episodes plot to make no sense, or both, this episode is quite contradictory to the entirety of the season, both because the seasons abnormal focus on Lila and her antics, and because of the fact that previous episodes had Chloe accept the fact that she couldn't become a hero.

In Miraculer, Chloe accepts the fact that she can’t become a hero again. Sure the episode has Chloe be upset at Ladybug, but in the end, she accepted that it was mean to be this way, and definitely shows no trace of wanting to join hawkmoth in any sort of capacity.

Also, a small bit added in from my friend @twin-books, who said this gem of a message:

“ Ah, in Miraculer what she displayed was confidence where she knew she would be Queen Bee again, she didn't doubt herself for a second. Chloe used to doubt herself, used to play the damsel, let others take care of her but this time she said, "No. I am Queen Bee and just because you won't give my comb doesn't make me anything less." Or at least, how I interpreted it. By tearing the photo she was excepting that Ladybug didn't have faith as her as a hero, nor did she ever. That Ladybug ignored her in favor of someone she deemed worthy but Chloe knows she's worthy. She proved her worth and just because Ladybug can't see that doesn't mean she should believe it. It's also interesting how she completely takes it out on Ladybug but is fine with Chat because she knows where she stands with Chat and she may have never liked him but he displayed faith in her. He knew and that might just be what kept her going so she could gain her own confidence. “

So when Chloe is left angry in Miracle Queen because she wasn’t chosen and immediately joins Hawkmoth, it just doesn't make any sense because previous episodes contradict it.

NOW, to be fair, I would have been fine with Chloe joining Hawkmoth if there was a buildup to it. If they Had Hawkmoth come in between the episodes from Miraculer to Miracle Queen to try and persuade Chloe and/or have her doubt Ladybug, then the turn from hero to villain would make sense. Unfortunately, thanks to Ass-truc and his have-every-episode-be-a-single-story-episode-and-have-every-character-reset-fuck-you-continuity episode design, this doesn't happen and having Chloe go from a person who is selfish but at the very least is a hero to a full-on 2-d villain is jarring as shit. It would have made more sense for her to just take the miraculous and go rouge with it, but a full-on villain? C’mon.

Also, there's the fact that for the entire season the show has been pushing Lila to be this over the top manipulator and villain in the day to day lives of the heroes. If they really wanted to have someone be Miracle Queen, why not Lila. It would make sense considering a Miracle is something that happens that it seems so unreal, and given that Lila would probably like her lies to become real it would make sense for her to become Miracle Queen.

Also where the hell was she all episode, she just disappeared out of existence for the entire episode. At least have her come and take the fox miraculous from Alya and have her be a secondary antagonist.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, now for the second plot hole...

The Miracle Box

It. Just. Doesn't. Make. Sense.

But to understand why, let me break it down.

- So due to Hawkmoth almost breaking through the barrier (and for whatever reason decided not to just jump away) Fu transfers ownership of the box to Marinette

-Because of the idiot logic of the show, there can only ever be on Guardian at a time, and because of the transfer, the previous Guardian loses their memories.

-The box also turns into an egg, for whatever reason.

Now, the only thing I dont mind about the whole scene is that the whole Guardian thing is magical in nature. Since Fu can do stuff like detect other Miraculi, it would make sense that the Guardian is more than just a title and has a magical aura around them that makes them a guardian. That being said, there are still a lot of trouble with this scene that rustle my jimmies to heck.

So lets go through the main problems with this plot hole.

-’There can only ever be one Guardian’

Bollocks. The flashback of the order clearly shows multiple individuals. And with the Sandboy episode showing Fu being haunted by a guardian with a female voice (yet also showing a male Guardian in Feast), it clearly shows that there are more than one Guardian in the order.

-’Upon transfer, the previous Guardian Loses their memories’

Again, this also doesn’t make sense. Even assuming that the Guardianship of box needs to have a magical transfer, making the previous Guardian lose their memories because of it makes no sense in the plot of the Miraculous Universe. Maybe it would make sense if the Guardian was but a single man (like in Fu’s case), but it doesn’t make as much sense when you remember the order it comes from.

See, the Order was located in Tibet, high away from the outside world, and the people who were there probably lived there all their life. So knowing these facts, why would it make sense for the previous owner to lose their memories? I can understand someone being a head guardian and then transferring the ownership when their time is up, but it doesn't make sense for them to just forget the order, they live there their entire lives, and would likely do so until their death. And the show implies that this is the actual way the ownership is transferred, and Marinette’s case wasn't a special case of an emergency transfer. It does make sense that the Guardians can remove memories of the order for people who have gone rogue or are expelled, but it doesn't make sense that the memory forgetting is entwined with the transfer of Guardianship.

-’The box turns into an egg, for whatever reason’

I'm not gonna explain it. Its a freaking box. A box that, while well designed, showed no capability of magic power at all for the entirety of the show. ITS A GODDAMN BOX AND IT MAKES NO SENSE FOR IT TO TURN INTO A POLKADOTTED EGG.

Though to be fair, in hindsight, a lot of this plot hole induced stupidity does have a logical explanation for this:

Thomas Astruc and Zag

Or rather, Thomas Astruc and Zag quarrel.

See, when it comes to Ass-truc and his ideal show design, it would have been just simple about Marinette and why she is quote on quote ‘awesome’. thats it. Pretty much every episode would be about Marinette being amazing, everyone loving her and kissing her feet, and nothing goes wrong for her in the same way as every Mary Sue ever written in a fanfic. The only difference being there was no main character to replace.

But Zag was having none of it. While Ass-truc wanted to just show off his OC, Zag wanted an actual show, and so made a lot of changes to it. Chat Noir, who in Astruc original comic idea was a one off character (and possibly a villain) got repurposed by Zag to be the second main character in the show. It also makes sense for every hero to have a mentor, which led to Zag creating Fu. Zag was also responsible for a bunch of other stuff to be added into the shows, such as additional heroes, Chloe becoming a good Guy, etc.

Of course, this made ASS-truc mad because that meant no 100% focus on the ‘goddess’ that is Marinette. So after bullying Zag off twitter via the use of his Stans (rip Zag twitter account- no posts since 2017) and forcing him off the Miraculous team after Season 1 (although this could also just be Zag focusing on other shows), Astruc had free reign to undo all that Zag had done. While Astruc did follow Zag's request due to owning half of the Miraculous license (being the guy that co-produced the show), he often twisted them so that they were skewed or couldn't last. The flashback of the order being destroyed? That was due to Fu being hungry and creating a monster in a plot induced stupidity. Chloe being a good guy? Yeah right, she sabotages a train just to save it and make herself look good, is an asshole regardless and then goes full-on villain. The other new heroes that help Ladybug? Gone, due to the same episode which prompted me to make this post.

Of course, this would impact the ratings of the show, forcing Zag to come back and fix Astruc’s mess in Season 4. Astruc knew that Zag returning would undo all the damage Astruc done to the show. So in a final bid attempt to keep this his way, he rewrote the finale, causing things in the show to actually become permanent and leaving Zag unable to fix anything. Thanks to Ass-truc, Fu is now gone forever, making Marinette the Guardian permanently, all the heroes aside from Ladybug and Chat Noir can’t be heroes anymore (leaving the focus entirely on Marinette), and Chloe now has become an irredeemable villain. All so that Astruc can brag on twitter about how Chloe ‘always was a villain’ and how ‘he was right all along’ despite being the one who wrote the character into existence.

And I’m not lying about this either or making it up. Even in the finale of the season 3 (particularly miracle queen) a lot of the time involves most of the characters standing around listening to dialogue and exposition rather than acting in ways they actually should (such as trying to save Fu or attacking Miracle Queen), no doubt due to the rewrites Astruc did before the finale was released, causing the animation to be very minimal or not making sense as there wasn't time to redo the animation. You can even see it in small amounts in episodes such as Glaciator and Troublemaker.

For me, this will probably go down as one of the worst episodes in the series, even worse than Stormy weather 2, because of its horrible writing, the plot holes it creates, and how much of the episode was designed to cater to Ass-trucs desires rather than designed to actually be a good finale to a season. That's not to say it didn't have good moments (such as dragon Bug and Snake Noir), but the overall episode was just so bad that the bad outweighed the good moments, at least for me. I wonder what Zag will do to fix season 4, but considering the suicide impact on the show Astruc made to make sure the show would remain ‘his way’, i don't have any doubts that it will be a hard challenge ahead of him. Good luck Zag, hope you can fix the mess Ass-truc made.

#Miraculous Ladybug #Season 3 #Miracle Queen #A fair bit of salt #Goddamit Astruc you nuked your own show #Virgin Astruc vs Chad Zag #Plot Induced Stupidity #Plot Holes #Heres to hoping for a better season 4 #Miraculous Ladybug salt

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newstfionline · 4 years

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Headlines

State police returning to Portland following deadly shooting (AP) Oregon State Police will return to Portland to help local authorities after the fatal shooting of a man following clashes between President Donald Trump supporters and counter-protesters that led to an argument between the president and the city’s mayor over who was to blame for the violence. Trump and other speakers at last week’s Republican National Convention evoked a violent, dystopian future if Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden wins in November and pointed to Portland as a cautionary tale for what would be in store for Americans.

Snapped Poles, Shredded Roofs: A Long Road to Recovery After Laura (NYT) Hurricane Laura ravaged southwestern Louisiana, leaving weary residents to assess the toll and map a way forward. The damage the storm inflicted was so severe that it will be an immense undertaking just to clear debris. But beyond the physical labor, residents were also stepping into the thicket of bureaucracy that follows a hurricane, with insurance claims and applications for government aid. Officials said that roughly 368,000 customers in the state remained without electricity. Some 17,000 linemen were at work on repairs, but they had a lot to tackle: some 500 transmission towers were destroyed or damaged. In some places, utility companies said, it could be at least four weeks before electricity is restored. CoreLogic, an analytics firm in Irvine, Calif., estimated that the hurricane had caused insured losses of $8 billion to $12 billion. “The story here is going to be the wind damage,” said Curtis McDonald, a meteorologist with the firm.

Burning (NYT) According to researchers, somewhere between 4.4 million and 11.8 million acres in modern-day California burned every year in the earlier times. When people started moving there, and building there, and understandably preferring that their homes not burn, those natural fires were stopped. From 1982 to 1998, land managers in California burned on average 30,000 acres per year, which dropped to 13,000 acres from 1999 to 2017. The backlog is deadly, and one reason the state has become a powder-keg. A February 2020 study published in Nature Sustainability found California would need to burn 20 million acres to become stable.

A Zoom Thanksgiving? (AP) As the Summer of COVID draws to a close, many experts fear an even bleaker fall and suggest that American families should start planning for Thanksgiving by Zoom. Because of the many uncertainties, public health scientists say it’s easier to forecast the weather on Thanksgiving Day than to predict how the U.S. coronavirus crisis will play out this autumn. But school reopenings, holiday travel and more indoor activity because of colder weather could all separately increase transmission of the virus and combine in ways that could multiply the threat, they say. Here’s one way it could go: As more schools open for in-person instruction and more college students return to campuses, small clusters of cases could widen into outbreaks in late September. Public fatigue over mask rules and other restrictions could stymie efforts to slow these infections. A few weeks later, widening outbreaks could start to strain hospitals. If a bad flu season peaks in October, as happened in 2009, the pressure on the health care system could result in higher daily death tolls from the coronavirus.

Rethinking their slogan (Foreign Policy) The latest casualty of the coronavirus pandemic is the long-time slogan of popular U.S. fast food company Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). The slogan, “it’s finger lickin’ good,” has been used by the company on-and-off for 64 years, but KFC announced last week that it is suspending the slogan because it is no longer appropriate in the current health-conscious environment. Health experts discourage people from touching their faces in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and users on social media criticized KFC for implicitly promoting unhealthy habits in its marketing campaigns. The company rolled out an advertisement in the United Kingdom and Ireland that ended with the tagline: “That thing we always say? Ignore it. For now.”

India’s economy contracts by nearly 24 percent amid pandemic (Washington Post) India’s economic output shrank by nearly 24 percent in the most recent quarter, the worst contraction since records began and the largest such drop of any major economy during the coronavirus pandemic. The stunning decline reflects the economic toll of India’s nationwide lockdown and illustrates the depth of the challenge now facing Indian policymakers as they grapple both with a hobbled economy and a raging pandemic. India is currently adding the largest number of new coronavirus cases per day of any country in the world. The Indian economy has not contracted for two consecutive quarters—the definition of a recession—in 40 years. Now the country appears certain to experience a recession and possibly one of unprecedented severity. That kind of economic slump would be devastating in a country like India, where 9 out of 10 workers have no job protections or unemployment insurance, leaving them with almost no safety net.

Indian army says foils Chinese attempt to encroach over disputed border (Reuters) Indian troops foiled an attempt by Chinese troops to encroach over the disputed and ill-defined border in the western Himalayas, the Indian army said on Monday, in a fresh flare-up between the two nuclear-armed countries. Pre-emptive action by the Indian troops was enough to deter the Chinese troops, and the confrontation did not escalate into a clash between the two sides, an Indian military official, who requested anonymity, told Reuters. China rejected any breach of the border by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops, but tensions between the two armies in the freezing snow deserts of the Ladakh region have been running high for several months.

Backing the monarchy in Thailand (Foreign Policy) Protesters gathered in a stadium in the Thai capital of Bangkok on Sunday to rally in support of the monarchy following massive student-led anti-government demonstrations in recent weeks. The event, which attracted around 1,200 people, was organized by the newly-formed pro-monarchy group Loyal Thai. “We insist that the country’s conflicts stem from politicians,” said Warong Dechgitvigrom, a prominent right-wing politician who founded the group. “The monarchy institution has no part in governing the country. The institution is the morale support that connects the people together.” Anti-government protesters have defied draconian laws against criticizing the monarchy in recent weeks to take to the streets to demand the ouster of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, fresh elections, and a new constitution that would limit the powers of the monarchy.

Facial recognition and bathtime bookings: How China’s universities are reopening (Reuters) As COVID-19 cases in China sink to new lows, the world’s largest population of university students is heading back to campus in a migration defined by lockdowns, patriotic education and cutting-edge surveillance equipment. The highly choreographed return comes as Chinese universities revert to in-person instruction for the fall semester after months of pandemic controls. Some universities have strict rules governing how students eat, bathe and travel. Students in Beijing, Nanjing and Shanghai told Reuters that they must submit detailed movement reports and stay on campus. At the same time, government procurement documents show dozens of universities have purchased “epidemic control” surveillance systems based on facial recognition, contact tracing and temperature checks. There are more than 20 million university students in China, and most live on campus in shared dorm rooms, presenting a challenge for health authorities. On Chinese social media, students have chafed at the controls, which mirror restrictions on the wider population during the height of the outbreak in March.

With a Wary Eye on China, Taiwan Moves to Revamp Its Military (NYT) China’s growing aggression across Asia in recent months has created fears that it may make brash moves in Taiwan, the South China Sea or elsewhere. The ruling Communist Party’s recent crackdown on dissent and activism in Hong Kong, a former British colony that has long been a bastion of democratic values, has added to those concerns. Beijing’s posturing has forced Taiwan, an island of 24 million, to re-examine with new urgency whether it is prepared for a confrontation, the possibility of which now seems less remote. But there are questions about its readiness to defend its people—with or without the help of the United States. “I have to be honest: Taiwan’s military needs to improve a lot,” Wang Ting-yu, a member of Parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee, said in a telephone interview. Taiwan’s leaders have been moving to shake up the military and increase spending. Military tensions across the Taiwan Strait have surged in recent months as Taiwan has increasingly become a focal point in the confrontation between China and the United States.

New prime minister in Lebanon (Foreign Policy) Mustapha Adib, Lebanon’s current ambassador to Germany, is set to become the country’s next prime minister as it continues to grapple with one of its worst crises since the end of the civil war in 1990. Adib won support from all of the major parties on Sunday, as well as from former prime ministers including Saad al-Hariri. He will be designated prime minister today just before a crucial visit from French President Emmanuel Macron.

Israeli, U.S. officials on historic flight to UAE to formalize normalization deal (Reuters) Top aides to U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a historic first flight from Tel Aviv to the United Arab Emirates on Monday to finalize a pact marking open relations between the Gulf power and Israel. Even before discussions start in Abu Dhabi, the delegates made aviation history when the Israeli commercial airliner flew over Saudi territory on the direct flight from Tel Aviv to the UAE capital. Announced on Aug. 13, the normalization deal is the first such accommodation between an Arab country and Israel in more than 20 years and was catalyzed largely by shared fears of Iran.

#headlines #news

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diarrheaworldstarhiphop · 5 years

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The Chinese government has drawn wide international condemnation for its harsh crackdown on ethnic Muslims in its western region, including holding as many as a million of them in detention camps.

Now, documents and interviews show that the authorities are also using a vast, secret system of advanced facial recognition technology to track and control the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority. It is the first known example of a government intentionally using artificial intelligence for racial profiling, experts said.

The facial recognition technology, which is integrated into China’s rapidly expanding networks of surveillance cameras, looks exclusively for Uighurs based on their appearance and keeps records of their comings and goings for search and review. The practice makes China a pioneer in applying next-generation technology to watch its people, potentially ushering in a new era of automated racism.

The technology and its use to keep tabs on China’s 11 million Uighurs were described by five people with direct knowledge of the systems, who requested anonymity because they feared retribution. The New York Times also reviewed databases used by the police, government procurement documents and advertising materials distributed by the A.I. companies that make the systems.

Chinese authorities already maintain a vast surveillance net, including tracking people’s DNA, in the western region of Xinjiang, which many Uighurs call home. But the scope of the new systems, previously unreported, extends that monitoring into many other corners of the country.

The police are now using facial recognition technology to target Uighurs in wealthy eastern cities like Hangzhou and Wenzhou and across the coastal province of Fujian, said two of the people. Law enforcement in the central Chinese city of Sanmenxia, along the Yellow River, ran a system that over the course of a month this year screened whether residents were Uighurs 500,000 times.

Police documents show demand for such capabilities is spreading. Almost two dozen police departments in 16 different provinces and regions across China sought such technology beginning in 2018, according to procurement documents. Law enforcement from the central province of Shaanxi, for example, aimed to acquire a smart camera system last year that “should support facial recognition to identify Uighur/non-Uighur attributes.”

Some police departments and technology companies described the practice as “minority identification,” though three of the people said that phrase was a euphemism for a tool that sought to identify Uighurs exclusively. Uighurs often look distinct from China’s majority Han population, more closely resembling people from Central Asia. Such differences make it easier for software to single them out.

For decades, democracies have had a near monopoly on cutting-edge technology. Today, a new generation of start-ups catering to Beijing’s authoritarian needs are beginning to set the tone for emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. Similar tools could automate biases based on skin color and ethnicity elsewhere.

“Take the most risky application of this technology, and chances are good someone is going to try it,” said Clare Garvie, an associate at the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law. “If you make a technology that can classify people by an ethnicity, someone will use it to repress that ethnicity.”

From a technology standpoint, using algorithms to label people based on race or ethnicity has become relatively easy. Companies like I.B.M. advertise software that can sort people into broad groups.

But China has broken new ground by identifying one ethnic group for law enforcement purposes. One Chinese start-up, CloudWalk, outlined a sample experience in marketing its own surveillance systems. The technology, it said, could recognize “sensitive groups of people.”

“If originally one Uighur lives in a neighborhood, and within 20 days six Uighurs appear,” it said on its website, “it immediately sends alarms” to law enforcement.

In practice, the systems are imperfect, two of the people said. Often, their accuracy depends on environmental factors like lighting and the positioning of cameras.

In the United States and Europe, the debate in the artificial intelligence community has focused on the unconscious biases of those designing the technology. Recent tests showed facial recognition systems made by companies like I.B.M. and Amazon were less accurate at identifying the features of darker-skinned people.

China’s efforts raise starker issues. While facial recognition technology uses aspects like skin tone and face shapes to sort images in photos or videos, it must be told by humans to categorize people based on social definitions of race or ethnicity. Chinese police, with the help of the start-ups, have done that.

“It’s something that seems shocking coming from the U.S., where there is most likely racism built into our algorithmic decision making, but not in an overt way like this,” said Jennifer Lynch, surveillance litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “There’s not a system designed to identify someone as African-American, for example.”

The Chinese A.I. companies behind the software include Yitu, Megvii, SenseTime, and CloudWalk, which are each valued at more than $1 billion. Another company, Hikvision, that sells cameras and software to process the images, offered a minority recognition function, but began phasing it out in 2018, according to one of the people.

The companies’ valuations soared in 2018 as China’s Ministry of Public Security, its top police agency, set aside billions of dollars under two government plans, called Skynet and Sharp Eyes, to computerize surveillance, policing and intelligence collection.

In a statement, a SenseTime spokeswoman said she checked with “relevant teams,” who were not aware its technology was being used to profile. Megvii said in a statement it was focused on “commercial not political solutions,” adding, “we are concerned about the well-being and safety of individual citizens, not about monitoring groups.” CloudWalk and Yitu did not respond to requests for comment.

China’s Ministry of Public Security did not respond to a faxed request for comment.

Selling products with names like Fire Eye, Sky Eye and Dragonfly Eye, the start-ups promise to use A.I. to analyze footage from China’s surveillance cameras. The technology is not mature — in 2017 Yitu promoted a one-in-three success rate when the police responded to its alarms at a train station — and many of China’s cameras are not powerful enough for facial recognition software to work effectively.

Yet they help advance China’s architecture for social control. To make the algorithms work, the police have put together face-image databases for people with criminal records, mental illnesses, records of drug use, and those who petitioned the government over grievances, according to two of the people and procurement documents. A national database of criminals at large includes about 300,000 faces, while a list of people with a history of drug use in the city of Wenzhou totals 8,000 faces, they said.

Using a process called machine learning, engineers feed data to artificial intelligence systems to train them to recognize patterns or traits. In the case of the profiling, they would provide thousands of labeled images of both Uighurs and non-Uighurs. That would help generate a function to distinguish the ethnic group.

The A.I. companies have taken money from major investors. Fidelity International and Qualcomm Ventures were a part of a consortium that invested $620 million in SenseTime. Sequoia invested in Yitu. Megvii is backed by Sinovation Ventures, the fund of the well-known Chinese tech investor Kai-Fu Lee.

A Sinovation spokeswoman said the fund had recently sold a part of its stake in Megvii and relinquished its seat on the board. Fidelity declined to comment. Sequoia and Qualcomm did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

Mr. Lee, a booster of Chinese A.I., has argued that China has an advantage in developing A.I. because its leaders are less fussed by “legal intricacies” or “moral consensus.”

“We are not passive spectators in the story of A.I. — we are the authors of it,” Mr. Lee wrote last year. “That means the values underpinning our visions of an A.I. future could well become self-fulfilling prophecies.” He declined to comment on his fund’s investment in Megvii or its practices.

Ethnic profiling within China’s tech industry isn’t a secret, the people said. It has become so common that one of the people likened it to the short-range wireless technology Bluetooth. Employees at Megvii were warned about the sensitivity of discussing ethnic targeting publicly, another person said.

China has devoted major resources toward tracking Uighurs, citing ethnic violence in Xinjiang and Uighur terrorist attacks elsewhere. Beijing has thrown hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and others in Xinjiang into re-education camps.

The software extends the state’s ability to label Uighurs to the rest of the country. One national database stores the faces of all Uighurs who leave Xinjiang, according to two of the people.

Government procurement documents from the past two years also show demand has spread. In the city of Yongzhou in southern Hunan Province, law enforcement officials sought software to “characterize and search whether or not someone is a Uighur,” according to one document.

In two counties in Guizhou Province, the police listed a need for Uighur classification. One asked for the ability to recognize Uighurs based on identification photos at better than 97 percent accuracy. In the central megacity of Chongqing and the region of Tibet, the police put out tenders for similar software. And a procurement document for Hebei Province described how the police should be notified when multiple Uighurs booked the same flight on the same day.

A study in 2018 by the authorities described a use for other types of databases. Co-written by a Shanghai police official, the paper said facial recognition systems installed near schools could screen for people included in databases of the mentally ill or crime suspects.

One database generated by Yitu software and reviewed by The Times showed how the police in the city of Sanmenxia used software running on cameras to attempt to identify residents more than 500,000 times over about a month beginning in mid-February.

Included in the code alongside tags like “rec_gender” and “rec_sunglasses” was “rec_uygur,” which returned a 1 if the software believed it had found a Uighur. Within the half million identifications the cameras attempted to record, the software guessed it saw Uighurs 2,834 times. Images stored alongside the entry would allow the police to double check.

Yitu and its rivals have ambitions to expand overseas. Such a push could easily put ethnic profiling software in the hands of other governments, said Jonathan Frankle, an A.I. researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“I don’t think it’s overblown to treat this as an existential threat to democracy,” Mr. Frankle said. “Once a country adopts a model in this heavy authoritarian mode, it’s using data to enforce thought and rules in a much more deep-seated fashion than might have been achievable 70 years ago in the Soviet Union. To that extent, this is an urgent crisis we are slowly sleepwalking our way into.”

#fuck paywalls #sinofuturism #china

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ficrecsforklaine · 5 years

Text

even more Soulmate!Klaine fic recs in response to this ask “could you give a few more recs for soulmate fics?” because I couldn’t resist adding more fics that I enjoy:

To Light a Match by tchrgleek [AO3] (36,928words rated Teen&Up)*

*you must be logged in to an AO3 account to read this fic

Blaine gets marked with his soulmate’s name, but it isn’t as easy to find him as he’d hoped it would be.

All for you by reidbetweentheelines [FFN](18,847words rated T)

"Never be afraid to love." Too bad Kurt never wants to find his soulmate, but sometimes fate has a funny way of doing the exact opposite of what you'd like. After the death of his father, Kurt moves to California to live with his cousin Nick Duval. A new state, new school, new family, and a Grammy nominated singer who wants nothing more than to find his soulmate.

un jour, mon amour by nightbirdrises [AO3] (5,249words rated Teen&Up)

Everyone has a soulmate. The problem is finding him. Blaine doesn’t try to think about it much until a professor’s innocent suggestion accidentally turns his world upside down.

10 more fic recs under the cut

Soul Mate by fablewriter [AO3] (5,195words rated G)

Special request from a friend on my Tumblr. theladyoftheland asked: hello, this au has been floating around tumblr for a while and it’d be awesome if you wrote it!Klaine soulmate AU | They don’t know each other, but people know them.Kurt Hummel is the famous fashion designer, who wears a cuff around his wrist and says that his soulmate’s name is his own business, but jokes at interviews about it.Blaine Anderson is a young, successful singer-songwriter who does the same things, keeping the name hidden from everyone. But what happens when he accidentally tweets.

Worth It To Me by xonceinadream [FFN] (12,362words rated M)

[GKM Fill] Blaine's felt worthless his whole life. Kurt started feeling worthless when his soulmate started sleeping around on him. When they meet, they slowly fall in love and reassure the other of just how much they're worth. [Soulmates AU]

Hearts We Hid Up Our Sleeves by groovymoonshoes [AO3] (82,691words rated Mature)

Blaine Anderson had been waiting his whole life for the countdown on his wrist to hit zero, for the day to meet his soulmate to finally arrive. He didn't expect the meeting to be on the day of his biggest job interview to date. He didn't expect that it would take place in an elevator. And he definitely didn't expect that his soulmate would be another man.

Breathe You Into My Heart by SlayerKitty [AO3] (4,524words Rated Teen&Up)

I raffled off a fic for the Klaine Fandom Charity Giveaway. My winner was keepingthepeaceinouterspace. She prompted a soulmate fic with names written on the body with a side of Anderberry siblings (but light on the Rachel). I've never written either one before, so this was very interesting for me. I hope you like it. Title from "Not the One" by Daniel Beddingfield. Thanks to missgoalie75 and star55 for being awesome betas.

The Greyhound Way by Mildredo [AO3] (2,666words not rated)

Soulmates can occasionally read each others' minds. That's how Kurt discovers that his soulmate is one of his fellow bus travellers. And his soulmate just happens to be checking out a girl.

Hey Soul Singer by bossy narwhal [FFN] (60,498words rated K+)

When you hear a song in your head without any prompting, it might well be your soulmate! when Kurt and Blaine start hearing songs that they would not usually listen to, are their two souls becoming one? Eventual Klaine fic based on series 2 but Kurt does not transfer to Dalton before Sectionals. Enjoy!

In Ivy and In Twine by rubblerousing [AO3] (32,643words rated Mature)

A fill for this prompt on GAM. A semi-AU. Kurt and Finn hate the idea of soulmates, mostly because neither of them know the name of theirs. But all their friends are a little obsessed, and decide to try to find Kurt's soulmate for him. What they find instead is Cooper Anderson, who says if Kurt doesn't visit a mysteriously ill Blaine in the hospital soon, they both could be in danger.

Fate Comes Crashing In by Switch842 [AO3] (6,084words rated Teen&Up)

From the moment Blaine literally fell into William’s life, there has been nothing but chaos and turmoil. But Kurt seems to like Blaine and Blaine's roommate Kate isn't really that bad, once you get to know her, so William tolerates their presence. The fact that Kurt seems to like Blaine so much makes all his moping over this stupid puzzle piece really confusing and all it ends up doing is cut into William's "me time." So, William, being the kind, loving, helpful soul he is decides to help push things along. What’s a little invasion of privacy between roommates?

Only A Name by unshurtugal [AO3] (22,577words rated Mature)

Soulmate!AU: Kurt and Blaine are activists part of a revolution where they ritualistically adopt aliases and wear wrist cuffs as to not reveal the names imprinted there. They believe that people should fall in love the ‘natural way’. Little do they know they are each other’s true soulmate.

Standing in the Light by glitterandpaws [LJ] (31,700words rated PG13) [PDF download]

Each person has their soulmate's name written on the back of their neck, visible only to their destined partner. Blaine moves to New York for his first year at Tisch, full of hope and small-town ideals. He stumbles on Sugar Motta's coffee house, where he meets Kurt. Kurt is Blaine's Pandora's Box, opinionated and a little jaded. But is Kurt the one he's looking for?

#klaine fanfiction #reply post #soulmates #download link included

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kangaroo-r00 · 5 years

Text

CH4P73R 1

The messy apartment was silent other than the rustling coming from inside the inhabitant’s room. Jay wriggled into his red pants and swung his leg up onto the bed, sliding his knee pad on and securing it in place. He yanked on his red knee high boots and laced them up tight, triple knotting them. He repeated the process with his other leg before pulling his refashioned red hoodie over his head, sliding the elbow pads on afterward. Gloves? Check. Utility belt and backpack? Check, check. He pulled the blue mask on his forehead down, brushing his green hair out of his face and breathed out deeply.

He wasn’t Jay now; he was Jackieboy Man. And he was gonna go out and protect his city.

“SAM? You there, buddy?” He asked the mechanical green eye lying prone on his bedside table, optic nerve hanging off the edge. They chittered in response, blue iris lighting up and shining happily.

Their official name was Surveillance Address Machine and their job was to scan local radio waves and pinpoint areas where crimes were happening. They also doubled as a recording device and camera. It had been quite the task to build them—a combination of scraps, expensive parts, and some other stuff Jackie hadn’t completely understood but used anyway. Powering the little bugger wasn’t easy either. They had to charge all day often times and required many many batteries for the backup power.

“You ready?”

They trilled, leaving their designated spot and hovering next to him.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Jackie took a brief moment to peer out his window, making sure nobody was watching before swinging a leg out and dropping down onto the balcony below in a crouch. He pulled out his grappling hook, shot the harpoon high above the opposite building towards the water tower, and gave a tug to make sure it had grabbed a hold of the bars properly. With a leap onto the railing and a push, he was swinging through the air with a whoop.

While he couldn’t necessarily fly (that’s what his grappling hook was for), he certainly could jump much further than the average person. And land from higher falls without breaking something important.

He narrowly avoided crashing into the building wall, his boots striking the side of the building. Grabbing ahold of a windowsill, he hit the trigger and was yanked upward. Swinging and climbing like a monkey, he dodged window sills, repeating the process like clockwork until he was hanging off the water tower, looking out over Septic City.

The night was cloudy, making lights twinkle like stars on all levels of different buildings. Giant screens on the sides of tall buildings showed bright, colorful ads. People bustled about on the sidewalks far below, going about their night and cars idled on the street in traffic, honks not uncommon. It was a truly beautiful sight to behold.

Jackie sighed wistfully, electric blue eyes roving over the landscape. “Wouldja look at that…”

Unfortunately he only got a mere moment to gaze out over the illuminated city. SAM let out a repeated chirping sound, and with the sound of tuning stations a broadcast filtered through.

“Attention all units, the gang known as “The Puppets” and their gang leader have attacked two of our Watchers at the corner of Silent Avenue and Night Bend. We’re requesting backup…”

Jackie backed away from the edge before taking a running start and leaping off the ledge, running from building to building, using his gloves to latch onto glass surfaces and scale up vertical surfaces.

Recently there had been this… gang going around (nobody was sure what to call it exactly) causing trouble. The reason Jackie uses “gang” lightly was... well…

There was some kind of virus going around causing bouts of paranoia and laughter called “The Giggles” (some smartass journalist had jokingly called it that in an article and the name stuck). It seemed it was passed through blood contact, scratching, biting, whatever causes pain. Infected people went through a bout of illness and disappeared. As infected citizens disappeared, new puppets seemed to join the ranks…

Jackie knew he shouldn’t be dealing with people who were infected—he was no doctor—but people were getting hurt! If it involved the citizens of his city getting injured then it was his problem. He’d never met the leader though—the other rarely showed up publicly. All he knew was that he was strong and sly based on the attack on Mayor Sean on Halloween and the illness that sent him into a coma nearly a year later.

He landed on the side of a building, surveying the area. The scene was more… unsettling than they let on. There had to be over thirty people there, all standing silently, heads bowed and arms hanging loosely by their sides.

“The hell…” he whispered softly, squinting and activating his x ray vision. There was nothing hiding behind cars or wheelie bins other than a few out of sight puppets.

“It’s fucked, isn’t it?” A familiar voice said tonelessly above him. “Like some horror movie bullshit.”

His head snapped upwards so hard he pulled something. A bedazzled white cat mask with the suit of cards on forehead glared back down at him, the owner sitting with his legs crossed at the ankles dangling over the edge.

“Magnificent,” he greeted curtly. “How’d you know to come here?”

He tossed his long green hair over his shoulder and winked. “I thought you knew this already; a magician never reveals his secrets.”

Jackie rolled his eyes, huffing in annoyance. One day he would figure out how he pulled this shit off but it appeared today wasn’t the day. “Well, Mr. Magician, how do you suppose we handle this situation? Know anything I don’t?”

Magnificent hummed lightly, turning his attention back to the people littering the streets below. “They appeared to have calmed down. The two Watchers booked it and then they all just… froze up. Haven’t moved since.”

“They all froze up? At the same time?”

Magnificent nodded. “Yeah. It was fucking freaky.”

Jackie was stumped. “So….. they’re what? A hivemind?”

“I wouldn’t say that necessarily—we’ve seen them do different things—but there’s definitely someone pulling the strings.”

Jackie turned to face SAM. “SAM, start recording my voice on 3… 2… 1. This is Jackieboy Man—”

“I’m here too!” The other butted in obnoxiously.

“And Magnificent calling in to say we’re currently handling the situation alone to reduce casualties should any arise.” A prolonged moment of silence so SAM knew to stop recording and cut out the empty bit of recording. “Send it to the Watchers’ headquarters, SAM, please and thank you.”

Magnificent snickered behind a gloved hand. “I can’t believe you say please and thank you to a robot.”

“Fuck off; it’s called being polite.” Jackie snipped back. “And stay out of my fucking calls!”

“Nah, it’s more fun. Besides, people might forget about me.”

“Only cuz you’re a recluse.”

“Oh piss off, some of us have a job to do.”

Jackie’s eyebrows knit together. “At night?” That was the closest thing he’s ever gotten to information about Magnificent’s personal life.

“Yes, through dusk and the beginning of night.” He sighed and stood, cape billowing out behind him as a gentle breeze kicked up. “Shall we go and investigate, my darling hero?”

“We shall, Mr. Magician,” he snarked.

The black cape behind him turned into a pair of large feathery black wings and the other stepped off the edge, allowing his wings to snap out behind him and slow his descent.

“Show off,” he muttered, dropping down and landing in the classic superhero pose. He stood, dusting himself off before saying, “SAM, start recording both scene and audio.” He took a moment to yank off his gloves and slip on his brass knuckles.

Magnificent stalked forward with intent, whistling casually, dress shoes clicking against the asphalt the only sound on the empty streets. He stopped briefly to wave a hand in front of someone’s face and to poke someone else’s cheek.

“Dude, what the fuck!? Don’t do that!” Jackie hissed in horror. He jogged to keep up, weaving between silent figures to catch the other before he did something else reckless. If the media thought he was reckless, they should really see Magnificent.

They stopped in the center of the circle, turning around to see if any movement occured. No change.

Magnificent peered closer at one of the people, pointing at her. “I recognize this one. She was one of the journalists who interviewed me a while back. Doubles as a horror writer.”

Jackie stared at the woman. Glowing white strings were wrapped around her wrists, ankles, knees, elbows, and neck, the other end of the strands disappearing into her skin while the others fell to the ground, coiled in piles around her feet. Her eyes were black and she had a chilling smile frozen on her face. Her face was familiar.

“Didn’t someone report her missing a while back?” The hero asked, his brain suddenly putting two and two together. There had been posters hung up with many others, all displaying different faces and names.

“Yeah, it was all over the news as well.” Magnificent confirmed. “She was one of the first person who many knew who disappeared.”

The one thing that really bothered Jackie more than the confirmation that missing people turned up as puppets was the strings. “What’s up with this?”

Magnificent reached out and grabbed the string, watching as she jerked, startling them both into flinching back. She settled back down and resumed her original position. Jackie cringed as the magician moved to repeat his previous action.

“Maybe you shouldn’t do that again.”

This time he grabbed the string and didn’t let go when she moved, watching curiously as she turned to him with half lidded empty eyes, head bowed down in submission.

“Interesting…” Magnificent murmured, rubbing the string between a gloved thumb and forefinger, staring emotionlessly as she twitched spastically, head snapping to the side. “Someone is quite literally pulling the strings here.”

“Maggie, cut that shit out. We don’t know what that’s doing.“

“H͘a̡s͏n͏’҉t ̡an̴yo͟n͘e eve̴r ̢ta̢u̴g͜ht yo̧ų ̷no̴t͞ tó t̶o̷uch whàt̕ do͟e͟sn̵’͞t͡ bel̸o̸ng to ͡y͠ou͠?͜”҉ A new voice growls from all around them, the pitch jumping from higher to lower than any voice they’d ever heard.

Jackie whirled, heart rate spiking sharply at the interruption. “These people don’t belong to you!” He declared, heart in his throat.

“Ǫh̸ r̢e̶a̷ll͠y̛?͘” The voice split, traveling in opposite directions, forcing Magnificent and Jackie back to back. “T͡hose ̸ştr̵in̕g̴s s͡a͟ý ́o͘t̷h͢erw͘íse~”̵

“They’re strings,” Magnificent sneered, “What’s so special?”

“You҉ ͝s͠aw.͠ ̸P͝upp̛e̢ts͡ ̸mov͢e ͏w͞h̶en̕ t͠h͏e͡ir ͘s͘t͘rin͏g̀s͡ a͝r͡e p̵ul̴léd̕ ̸but͝ ͡o̸n͞l̀y̨ their ͟M̢a̢ster̵ caņ ͘p̷roperly͞ ͞c͞on̨tr̶ol҉ t҉hèm͘. Beside̴s̸,̶ th̶e̷y’d̀ dó whate͢ver̢ I ͠tol͘d ̢t̷hem t͝ơ. ͝T̸hey’d͘ t͜h̡r̀ow th͞e̢ms̕elves ͡o͜ff a͘ c̀l̛i̵ff ́íf i͝t͡ ̡m҉e̕a̵nt͝ pl̴ea̡si͝n̷g̀ ҉m͜e.”̨

“Show yourself, coward!” Jackie spat, stomach twisting into nervous knots at the mention of these people willing to do anything for whoever this freak was.

There was a cluck of the tongue. “A͞wfull̢y̸ ͢b͝old̸ ͞for̶ a͢ h̴e͢r҉o wi̸t͠h́ ͞ha̴r͡dl͡ỳ a̸ny͟ ͡powers̀. I ̶mean,͜ ̨c̛’̡moǹ:̴ ̧s̡u҉peŗ str҉ength̷ a͠nd x͏ ̴r̨ay vi̶sion͝ i̛s̵ s̶o c̨liche i͟t ͞bárely͢ co̧untş.”

His face reddened at that statement, his initial fear being replaced with embarrassment and anger.

“Alright, loser,” Magnificent said before Jackie could blow his top. “Show’s over. Get out here.”

“̀C̸a͢refu͡l͜ wh̀at̷ ̸you̢ ̴w̷ish̕ ҉for.” They said, voice drawing back away from the two and drawing together into one again.

Before their very eyes pixels of shifting colors flew from the puppets’ bodies and strings, drawing together into a form in front of them. He was taller than both of them by several inches, dark forest green hair ruffled and falling into his black and neon green slitted eyes. The wide slit across his throat from one side of his jawbone to the other poured coding and static down his ghostly pale, glitching skin. His shadow violently glitched red, green, and blue, grinning wide on the ground with sharp fangs. There was only one person this could be.

“Anti,” Magnificent said, eyes burning with cyan magic.

The being of code bowed with a giggle. “̕Th͡e o̢ne ̴a͏nd onl҉y.̡”

“What the hell are you doing here? What are you trying to accomplish?” It was easy to slip into his hero persona and start up an interrogation.

Anti grinned widely. “Why̴ I waǹted t͝o m͜e͟et the tw̢o҉ f̵a̵b̛l̷e̛d he̶roeś ̡o̕f Se̢ṕt̷ic Ci͏t̢ỳ.̶ ͘S͘i͝n̴ce y͠o͢u ͜two̧ ćo͟u͠ldn’t͘ b̷e bo͘ther̷éd͡ to͝ ͠sh̶ów͢ u͘p̨ wh̸e͘n ͡ev͞èryone ̨n͟ee̷ded̶ ́y̧ou̷ mos͏t.”͏

Magnificent growled lowly and Jackie could tell his claws were about to tear through his gloves. It was time to wrap this up. The other was dangerous half shifted. It left both of them open and vulnerable.

“Well, you met both of us. Now release those people and beat it,” Jackie demanded.

Anti’s smile wavered, falling flat before taking up half his face again, teeth bared. “͜Y̛ơu see, h͢e͢ŗo͏, ̕I c͏a͞n͘’t juśt do ̛t͠h̴at͟.́ Th̀e ͏s̶t͞ri҉n̷gs̶ run͢ muc͡h dee͝p̕e͜r ͢th͡an you͟ ͏th͢i͏nk.̷ ̶The͡y ̴wou҉ldn͠’͟t ̶k̢n͢ow͞ w͘h̴a͝t to ͏do ҉wi̧th̀ ͝th̨em͏se͝lve̵s if ͜I d̷id҉ ̀th̢a͟t̀.͡”͏

Magnificent took a step forward. “Bullshit. Let them go and piss off.”

“Yo̧u’l͟l̴ ḩa̴v͠e͠ t̡ó ̷ma͢k̸e̢ ́m̶e,͝ kitt͜en̷.”

Jackie grit his teeth. They’d have to be careful. “Challenge accepted.”

Every puppets’ heads snapped up. The strings that seemed to go nowhere slithered across the ground towards them. Anti turned the other way and glitched down the street.

“I’ll deal with the puppets,” Magnificent said, hand alighting with hot cyan magic.

Jackie took off into a sprint, charging forward and leaping over the heads of puppets. If Anti wanted to play that game then he was willing to partake as long as it meant he got to bash his head in for landing Sean in that coma.

The insane cackles led him further and further away from Magnificent and the crowd of people and into the more rundown side of town. Abandoned buildings and silent blocks were all that remained down here, most citizens choosing to move out into the newer, better parts of the city long ago.

Suddenly his foot got caught and he was falling forward, slamming into the uneven, torn up road. The air was knocked out of him in a giant push and he gasped, familiar shockwaves of pain traveling up his arms.

“͞K͟l͡u͢tzy͝, k̷l͡ut̀z͝y he̵r̷o̵,”͢ the glitch taunted. “̨Ca̛ņ’t ͝ev͞e͝n͞ la̸s͜t five m̷i̷nute͏s͞ w̶it̷hou̢t f͞uck̸i̴n̸g̡ śóm̶eth͜ing ̛úp.̸”͡

Jackie chose not to grace the words with a response, shoving himself back onto his feet and turning all around, eyes darting to catch a sight of the villain.

“͝Over h͞e̛r̛e,”̡ the voice sounded to his right. He whirled and saw nothing.

“Oops, I mean͡t͡ ̀b͝e͠h͜ind ̵y̢ou.̨”҉ Nothing.

Fingertips dragged up the knobs of his spine, sending sparks of burning electricity surging through his skin. He yelped, pulling away and tripping over his feet, twisting to try and regain his balance only to fall a second time.

“͜H̨ów pàt̷h͠et͟ic,͞”̨ Anti said, air ripping apart above him in a flurry of glitches to reveal him standing there, leaning over the hero. “Her̨e Į was ho͘pin͏g ͞for ͞a̢ çhal͜l҉e͟nge͝.”̷

Jackie glared at him. “Well, sorry to burst your stupid bubble. Here I was hoping for a somewhat decent criminal but all I got was another dickbag. Guess we’re both disappointed tonight.”

He thought the virus was going to plunge his knife right into his throat and rip out his vocal cords right then and there but an uneasy minute of silence dragged by. Anti merely stared blankly, unblinkingly at him before a wide grin stretched across his face. The most unpleasant, scratchy, high pitched laughter bubbled up out of his throat and echoed throughout the abandoned district.

“At̴ least̶ ̛y҉o͟u̷’ŕe s̨o̸mewh͟át ͜amus̕i̵n͟g. A̵l̶l ͡y̧ou’͡r͟ȩ ̷pro͘ba͝bly̷ good ͟fo҉r͢.”̕ He cackled.

Jackie took the opportunity to lean back on his hands behind him, throw himself back onto his feet, and slam his head into Anti’s, grinning through the throbbing pain at the other’s surprised screech. His brass knuckles connected with his cheekbone, tearing skin and drawing another scream.

“Get fucked, prick,” Jackie crowed, taking another strong swing.

Anti locked eyes with him and disappeared with a burst of pixels. The sound of rising static was the only warning Jackie received. Anti collided with his back, knocking the air out his lungs and driving him into the concrete. A clawed hand gripped his hair and bashed his head down. Stars exploded in his vision, warmth running down the side of his head and matting his hair. A powerful shove of his head scraped skin off his cheek and smeared dark liquid across the street.

“Do̕n’t͟ ge͘t ćo͜ck͟y, l͡i͜tt̛l̸e͏ hero̡. ̢T͞h͏is̨ ̴f҉ig̵h͡t ̵ai҉n’̢t̛ o̴ver͢ yet҉.̴”̛

He was struggling to catch his breath when a burning punch between his lower ribs on his side stole all his air away again. Sputtering and choking on copper, Jackie could only force himself to suck in ragged breaths.

“Y͟ou’͟re ͢n̴ot ̧wor͡t̴h̴ ̢m͏y ti̧me͝. ͡S̀tay͝ ̢o̕utta͟ my w̨a͠y.”̧ Anti muttered in Jackie’s ear, moist, hot breath rolling over his ear. The sensation made him squirm in place only to whine loudly at the sharp lance of pain that shot through his side.

The weight on him disappeared and the lack of static told him he was alone.

He wheezed, knowing he had just narrowly escaped death but not understanding how. His trembling hand went to his side and came away with red on his blue gloves. “Shit,” he breathed. “Shit.” Putting pressure on the wound, Jackie blinked. banishing the black creeping up on the edges of his vision. “Up, up and away,” he slurred tiredly, shoving himself onto his feet and nearly falling forward, barely catching himself. “Hoo boy.”

Stumbling his way down the street, Jackie managed to avoid passing out, limping on his better side with his hand pressed tight to the weeping wound. The stickiness on his hair and skin was beginning to dry and flake off. Every now and then he’d stagger and pause, sucking in a deep breath before continuing.

“Well, this night coulda gone better,” he mumbled to himself, nearly tripping over his own feet again.

Thinking about how he was gonna get more time off from work when he used up all his sick days already nearly made him fall over for the umpteenth time tonight. One step at a time… quite literally.

(A/N) See the mess above??? This is where it all goes downhill.

General tag list: @melasong, @writerwithdepression, @normallyemma, @kitnkas, @iris-the-asparagus, @here-be-becquerel, @maybalator

Series tag list: @kyeabove, @10th-no-name-person, @a-septic-writer-of-art

(tell me if you want to be added to either taglist)

PR3V10US

N3X7

#silent city #writersofjack #jacksepticeye #jacksepticeye alter egos #jse fanfiction #jackieboy man #marvin the magnificent #antisepticeye #the puppets #community members #tw zalgo text #swearing #brief violence

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winterdeepelegy · 6 years

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RP Log: Trials and Revelations - Part 2

Frost continued on with his explanation, "In our ongoing idleness, he sought to use my Brothers and Sisters to further his own experiments, in the development of a more powerful living weapon, and to do so, this meant their lives would be sacrificed, their bodies repurposed, or at least parts of them which were to be combined with others. This also included drastic physical mutations inflicted upon them by chemical means. If any of us were ever 'beasts', it was solely due to this. If any of us have been 'abused', it was due such a drastic level of suffering being inflicted upon them, with or without anyone else's consent. One of my Sisters returned to us missing most of her skin... this was months ago, now, and she is still in recovery." He took a breath and added, "We are opposed to Theius' experiments for these reasons. You want to see us as beasts? It was solely because a Pureblood intended for us to be seen that way. I will also add that there are Purebloods among us now, too, as mentioned in my recent letter. Are they any less for what they've received from Pyr Sylvanius?"

“You realize then if we approve of pyr Sylvanius’ request, you will likely go back to being idle and obsolete”, he said merely playing devil’s advocate at this point, and really pissing Lillium off below her hard shell. The door opened again to have another militia official step inside. Moka could pick up the weight and clatter of the highly complex, decorated armor. Each footfall fell heel first, then slowly rolled. Clack, thump. Clack, thump.

Ember jumped in her chair, the sound standing out for the weight of it. Where people came in fancy shoes for the most part, they made a distinct rubber sound. This...was not that. She didn't just twist in her chair; she turned her legs to the side, in the direction Glace had sat, thankfully, so she didn't bang knees with anybody.

Moka would be passed by a giant of an individual that rivaled Terra in size. The mountain of armor and twisting designs signified the presence of a tribune. With a guiding cane, that likely doubled as a gun if the military was to be known, the man stopped in the isle and rested both hands on this black, glossy stick. He spoke, loud and low, “Your honor.” The voice was Lysander, the size was wrong, the weight was impossible for a man. He had no signal of any subject. “My apologies for this tardiness.” The helm adjusted its angle to stare a hole through the back of Frost’s head. “I was met with a highly inconvenient set of circumstances.”

Frost's jaw tightened. Behind the shades, he was probably BlueScreened. Son of a bitch…

So much for uncoiled muscles. Everything about her went high tension from the tip of her ears to the end of her tail, which fluffed and went perfectly still. Her eyes tracked the figure intently, torn between so many feelings she wasn't sure WHAT to do with herself...from the impulse to run all the way to attack for the...wrongness. Her hand moved slightly across her lap...but there wasn't anything to reach -for-, leaving her fingers flexing in blank, empty air.

At length, 178 slowly turned his head to regard the armored figure for a moment before turning his eyes back to the council. It afforded him a moment long enough to regain his ability to breathe, "Lord Theius. How very good of you to join us." Flat tone, no more or less emotion than he's displayed thus far. This whole thing boded ill... he wondered how long the council knew, and how much they'd been paid.

When the man approached, the stark difference in his own height set him well above Frost and Lillium, but perhaps it was the helmet. His shoulders were so broad, and he stepped so carefully it was as if he was walking along each support beam through the floor. “No thanks to a set of Imperial Shadows who saw fit to crash my ship ride home”, he immediately accused, bringing the entire council to a bit of a stand still. “E-excuse me?” One of the men stammered. “We are most thrilled to see you return well, but the media must be notified of your return. What do you mean you were attacked by Shadows?” Theius lifted his head and spoke calmly, “Perhaps it is something we can discuss before you transfer my hard work back into obsoletion.”

174 dropped her jaw. Shit. Her eyes went to Glace - remember what he had told her, everything he had mentioned. And then to Mother. She had to do something...step in, remind them of a hearing? She was on the edge of her chair again, wondering wildly if she could reach Frost in time if she had to, if an attempt to restrain him was going to be made...if the accusations were going to get worse. The why's and how's seemed kinda paltry by comparison... ...not to mention she needed to let someone else know too. And why was he alone?

“Certainly”, Lysander began, “Such discussions can be completed here given you have a witness to the attack present right now. Let the media suspect whomever it wants. This discussion may prove or disprove the viability of this transfer.” The center judge, still a bit shocked, gestured a hand to the helmed man. “Lord Theius, I mean no disrespect, but given the accusations and your disappearance, and the convenience of your arrival, I am going to ask you to remove your helm in the presence of my court. Then we can continue.” The giant didn’t hesitate. He set the cane against a nearby desk so he could reach up and draw his helmet off his head. The visage was definitely, without doubt, Theius. He looked up at the council, two blue eyes, a central third eye glossy and bright, and the only thing showing was a bit of scruff on his jaw and an ashy tone to his skin. With his identity revealed, the elder judge nodded his head with some disbelief. “Let the court continue the hearing.”

Witnesses were different than evidence, he mused in silence. All the while, he felt Sheol grinning at the back of his mind, taunting 'You really should have gone to Azys Lla first... but we can work with this if we must... it will be messy.' Frost barely inclined his head to the council to continue. He had no reason to think they were done questioning him just from what they had written on the docket.

Theius spoke to explain himself, “Before the crash occurred, I was happened upon by a group of rogue shadows who knew full well the transportation ship was Imperial owned. The group was large, but I likely can pick them out in a line up if given the chance. They are the reason for my absence, but my health is restored, and I request that this transfer be canceled and the power of the courts be moved to smoking out the treasonous Shadows that made the attempt on my life, and killed innocent medical personnel. ‘ “Lord Theius, can you testify if any of the subjects under pyr Sylvanius’ guide interfered with this incident, were present, or had any hand resulting in the absence that could keep you from this hearing today?”

Frost's eyes closed behind his shades and remained that way, waiting…

Scooted to the end of her chair, right foot forward, looking ready to move at a seconds notice...and she was.

Theius looked towards Frost to study him fully, and maybe let time drag on just a bit more so the burrs pulled at his flesh as seconds crawled by. He would turn back and answer, “None, your honor. I believe pyr Sylvanius is taking advantage of a convenience made by the traitors. I stand before you now to request that the transfer be canceled. Units still listed under my name are to be left to finish their advancement.” “A number of accusations have been made against your methods saying you inflict harm, or torture, on your subjects. How do you reply?” “I have worked under pyr Sylvanius for the duration of my career before I was promoted. I assure you the methods I use are all detailed in my reports as evidence, and are available at Solus for review. All of which are designed under pyr Sylvanius’ design, and each subject is provided ample support during and after surgeries. If there is any suffering to be had, it is the removal of my subjects from this support before they are completed.’

Under the back of his shirt was a frozen line running the entire length of his spine where his own sweat had turned to ice. Frost remained still and visibly calm, but inside, he was screaming and confused, and Sheol was having a laugh riot over it all. There was nothing he could do to silence the beast. His eyes opened, but narrowed. "And Mother can also furnish copies of duplicate reports if the court would like to compare the ones in the Solus files." He hated putting the woman on the spot, but if anything could disprove Theius' argument, it would be testing the freshness of the ink it was written with. "Frumentarium, as well, maintains records of -all- experiments conducted."

He lifted his head a few degrees to peer directly up at Theius-bot over the top edge of his shades, "That is still correct isn't it, my Lord?"

“Correct. If it will please the court, I have a request of my own”, Theius answered then nodding to the central judge. “As a show of my advancements and proof that the subjects are to be used well under my directive, and not left idle, and given a chance at life, I would like to request a transfer from pyr Sylvanius to my own team, to which the courts, Frumentarium and Academy can observe.” Lillium was ready to burst, her eyes so icy cold and stone hard with rage. If he took her Frost, there would be hells to raise. There wasn’t a damn thing she could do in her position either. “That is an extensive audience. We will grant your request for a temporary transfer. Shall you negotiate a subject exchange with the Optio here, or do you have a specific unit in mind?” “I do, your honor.”

Frost smirked, the first visible sign of emotion since he was called forward. Another inward 'son of a bitch...'

“I specialize in taking the forgotten subjects of the Colossii and repurposing them with viable bodies. I have the perfect refurbishment idea in mind, and I request that unit 76 be transferred to Solus.” “I object”, Lillium nearly interrupted him. “76 is not fit for transfer.” “Precisely why she would benefit from an improvement.”Ember jerked so hard in her chair that it actually dislodged back from under her, skittering backwards after almost falling over. She didn't look at Frost - she knew his reaction would be along the same as her own, if not a bit more contained...or even more outward. She was staring at Lillium. She couldn't...she -wouldn't- let that happen, would she? The Elezen uttered the first sound of protest - the start of a growl - but caught himself. "With respect to the courts, 76 is delicate. The procedures inflicted upon the others by Theius were of an extreme, stressful, and incredibly painful nature. She would not survive the process." “Methods that are reserved for units within the second and third tiers. Unit 76 is a tier one, the most basic. She will get a long awaited upgrade to classify her before undergoing any additional advancement. Basic units are easily upgraded to accessory units with the injection of a sterile, benign hive of nanobots. Once her resilience is proven to the courts, I can also show that my support systems are appropriate.” “Your support systems are sedatives and painkillers”, Lillium argued coldly. “As are the protocols within any medical facility, Optio.”"At least he admitted to his brutality, finally. I would," raised a hand to interject over the debating around him, "ask for the council to review the results of the experiments conducted on my Brothers and Sisters up to this point, including the visible images of mutations and deformities sustained as a result before making such a decision. An upgrade of this nature could just as easily be conducted by Pyr Sylvanius in more comfortable and familiar surroundings." “The point of this transfer isn’t to show the methods of the past”, Theius argued gently. “Allow me to work on 76, and I will transfer three of my works back to Pyr Sylvanius for her to observe and test for herself the new nature of her familiar units with my handiwork. Let the appropriate personnel follow the works.” Lillium was furious, but she could reclaim three right there, in a way she didn’t prefer. She still didn’t approve. “76 is not fit for transfer”, she remained firm."We have no guarantee that your present methods are any better than your past ones," he grumbled, yet still kept his tone in check. Lillium gave him a card to play and he was determined to play it to the fullest extent, and for as long as possible. "I would request to have proof of the current methods before anyone else is subject to it." “Given I have just walked myself to this hearing, I will transfer the appropriate documentation once I can get proper transfer back to Solus, under military guard”, Theius demanded. “Granted. Deliver the necessary documentation and we will gather again to discuss a temporary transfer of multiple units for experimental purposes. Pyr Sylvanius, unfortunately, I must deny your request for transfer of the whole sect. However, if the tribune is unable to prove his methods, then we will reconsider.” Lillium shut her eyes so the fire didn’t shoot out of them. She bowed her head and growled, “Of course, your honor.” "Wait!" She was the rest of the way up before she even realized it. Though amongst all the larger Garleans, she still very much looked like a bright pink midget. She hesitated, then set her face. "Uh..I'd like to..propose something.", with a complete lack of social etiquette for such a thing. Hands down at her sides, she spoke anyway. "Brother Frost and Mother weren't lying...76 is...special. She's capable but she's...", she bit her lips. They didn't care about that. "...I'd request to go with her. She knows me. If she's calmer, feels safer, the results should be...more accurate right?", her ears pinned themselves back. "Sister!" he barked. Not only had she spoken out of turn, but she outright -volunteered- to go. Right when they had this under control for the moment… “Optio, keep your units in order”, the judge called out gesturing to have Moka sit back down. “Request denied, unit 174. Sit.” Theius practically purred his response, “Now, now, let’s not keep these men and women silenced. 174, Ember, is showing a love for her companion subject. It will prove all the more how well my methods are, especially if one of the optio’s own is willing to jump so willingly to observe.” “Present the documents, Lord Theius, and we will consider the double transfer with the verbal consent of unit 174 to accompany unit 76 for this. Unit 174 is to report to Pyr Sylvanius and the courts frequently throughout the process if approved.” She didn't dare look at Frost - it didn't matter if she had the mask for a shield or not. She kept herself standing, even though her knees did give a little jolt to bent when she was told to sit. When Theius spoke in favor, she felt an odd rush that echoed in her ears, as if she were suddenly under water...relief or...something else? Maybe both. At least this way...she could be with 76. And report to Mother...that was good. It had to be good. Frost's eyes flicked up at Theius again with his mocking tone. He knew he didn't see any of them as people, and the snideness was evidence of that. He took a slow breath and exhaled it, steeling his calm once more and looking back to the council. He wasn't sure if they were about to adjourn, or if there was more.Lillium requested a final time before the gavel fell, “I would like a word with my unit before this transaction is completed. Surely the tribune will require time to get his things in order, and I can properly counsel my subject.” “Granted”, the elder nodded. “You both have your orders. This meeting will recess until further notice. Dismissed.” He picked up the gavel and gave a single hammer down to end the meeting. "Thank you, Your Honors." With the council departing, he snapped a sharp salute and waited until they were out of the room to let his shoulders sag. He looked to Lillium with concern. Lillium, sorely battered by all this, kept her firm glare forward at that damned chair where that damned man called the order of this court. Her jade eyes slid to the man who arrived, one she surely wished would drop dead right there. Theius would be soon joined by the few militia and a lone medicus that arrived earlier. “ The media will be thrilled to hear of your survival story”, she said half spitting. “I owe it to my technological advancements”, he said proudly. ”I knew you may bring a few of your own with you, so I made sure to silence myself before my arrival. No need to cause more of a commotion than it did.” "Hmph... how thoughtful,” Frost drawled.So that was why.... Her ears went back even further. Still right where she was, waiting. Even if she saw a bright side to it, she was still fairly certain she was in a deep amount of trouble. Frost shook his head and stepped off to Lillium's side, "We can depart when you're ready, Mother." He wanted very much to not stay any longer than they already had because he wasn't sure which orifice was going to let go first once they were 'safe'. Theius waved them off and Lillium sought to collect both Frost and Ember before anything could intercept them. “Let’s go, you two”, she ordered. “We are leaving.” “I look forward to the next hearing, Sylvanius”, he spoke out lifting a hand up to tap a small device on his breastplate. The setting in that stopped the hammer that dampened his subject signal, allowing it to pour over the court in an echoing frequency that was unlike any of the three tiers. It rang low, but powerful as a tier 3 would be, but with the implication that it was beyond that. Other units hearing this frequency, even for the first time, would be instantly alerted to an excessively powerful being nearby. Even the MT code warning signal just barely equaled the feeling this signal carried. The Miqo’te waited until Mother was close before she started to turn...but when the code unleashed she froze. Pinned back ears couldn't save her now as goosebumps went up and down the length of her arms. She whipped around, unwilling to leave her back to someone - something - like that, fists not brandished, but fingers curled as if she still wore the metal fitted over claws over each digit. Glued focus on Father, slow breath through parted lips. Frost scowled and stepped up behind Embersong and dropped both hands onto her shoulders. He'd steer her toward the door if he had to, he didn't care if he had his back turned to Theius since he'd had his backside to him most of the time he was present. And as far as he was concerned, it was the only side the old man was entitled to see. "Come along, Sister. The sooner we put some space between ourselves and this place the better." “Move on, 174. I’m sure I will see each other soon enough”, Theius answered her hesitance back. He waved his hand, and the signal seemed to shift in a frequency that subjugated those who could hear it with the pressure it exerted. Even if Moka wanted to engage, the feeling she would get would be that of a challenge she could not win. Her programming would tell her to back down immediately. She flared her nose, pressing her lips together so hard that they blanched completely white beneath the lipstick. No teeth...don't... Frost's guidance helped; turning her away and directing her towards the door, feeling her feet shuffle but thankfully not tangle up in one another. "...Right. Right.", she wasn't even sure to what she was answering anymore. Frost followed wherever Lillium led them, whether it was to somewhere providing accommodations, or to a waiting transport. He almost hoped for the former... just in case. Lillium would lead them back to the transport ship that would swiftly lead them back to the castrum. She was bothered. Highly bothered, by so many things. So many questions she didn’t want answers for. “Get in the ship. We will talk on the way home.” She furiously slammed the lift gate button to lower it down on the transport ship. Ember felt...better-ish, at least, for being further away and outside. Less closed I'm trapped and stifled. The anger pouring off of Lilium in practically tangible waves however was hard to miss. As soon as the lift was down, she started up the ramp..then paused. "Mother...I...", she wasn't sure what to say, the rest of anything and everything else wedging like a hard lump in her throat. He boarded the ship and immediately sank into a seat with all the bonelessness of a bag of popotos. He patted for one pocket with a visibly shaking hand, but failed to find what he sought. With alarm, he started patting and searching for other pockets until he had the one thing he wanted, a single, tightly wrapped, fragrant cigar. This, he pinched between his teeth and resumed searching for something to light it with and grumbled when he found nothing. Instead, he simply gnawed pointlessly at it and slouched forward with his elbows on his knees and stared at his shaking hands. All the frozen sweat under his hair and clothes liquefied at once, leaving the Survivalist to look like he'd just walked through a downpour in his dress uniform. Lillium manned the ship to get them home, but she was sorely defeated by all this. Everything just seemed to shatter and fall around her. She didn’t know what to say to Ember, still debating it as they flew into the air. How could she prove Theius was a monster when she had her own jumping to offer themselves up? She cursed 271. Cursed him silently every minute of the flight for whatever he had done to 174. 174 sat quietly before the ship took off, fingers nimbly fitting the belt in to place. All her of her nervous habits took a back seat to just staring down at her hands without really seeing them, thoughts all turned inwards and ears down low...how she was going to tell some. What else this would mean. How angry Mother and Frost had been. The scolding of the court...they had turned over everything and now 76 would be with her… "This... this isn't a defeat," he muttered hoarsely, "Not entirely. No matter how it looks, we still have a fighting chance..." He had to believe that, no matter if anyone else did or not. He knew there was a finite possibility that Theius could have survived when all the searching turned up with no remains, but just looking at the old man now, he was more monster than Pureblood, himself. More machine than Spoken. The documents would reveal the conflict in Theius' words, they had to, Lillium's and Frumentarium's documentation, against his which were undoubtedly doctored. He absolutely loathed the possibility of 76 falling into his hands, but he knew why. The old man knew how well-loved she was by all of them and that seeing her harmed would destroy them. He knew Frost was part of the team of Shadows who crashed the airship, and this was his revenge. "I failed... forgive me, Mother. But I daresay this has now given us more of a fighting chance than we had before. " “I don’t like how he is setting this up. I don’t like that he is alive at all. I don’t even believe that was him. How the hell did he return a fulm taller? He had both of his eyes. He knew you were there and he lied to the court. Why would he risk perjury if only to blackmail you later!?”" Because he's a Pureblood and he's banking on that granting more credibility than a savage with no rank or clout whatsoever... typical. He probably lied because he knows of other ways to drag out his revenge rather than let the courts call for an immediate execution." Fingers curled and uncurled, fidgeting and wanting something to stave off the trembling. "His signal was screaming, like none I'd ever heard from another subject. Close to an MT code warning, but not an MT code. He's a threat... but assassination won't cut it. He needs to be exposed." Lillium frowned a bit. “I heard it, too” , she said in a defeated hush. “I’m not sure what this means. I felt as though just hearing that tone, there was no point resisting.” "Even trying to fight him there would have made our case worse. If you heard it, then everyone else must have too, surely they would have made note of it." He scowled, taking the cigar into hand and staring down at it since chewing on it wasn't helping to settle him any. "271 will try to go back to him as soon as he finds out, which also means he'll know I was responsible for what happened. I'm expecting a fight." “No one else but us heard it”, she concluded quietly. Frost slowly turned his eyes toward Lillium. Ember pinned her ears back. She heard that, much as she didnt want to. Now her hands turned towards each other, fingers intertwining. Instead she asked. "How do you know, Mother...?" "When were you augmented, Mother?" he asked plainly. “When Terra became a tier 3”, she said without hesitance in her answer. "Ah, so that's what he meant." Frost nodded, but got up from his seat to try and find something he could use as a light. Finally, amidst utility cabinets, he found a small butain torch. The aroma of creamy spices soon softly flavored the cabin air. He took several long draws from the cigar, practically inhaling half of it straight away. “He said he told you, but you didn’t understand at the time. I didn’t want to press the issue with this, but I am technically 296b. It was necessary when they were giving L... Terra his second surgery. I trusted no one else with his life, so I became his Other.” "I didn't, because he made it sounds like more of a romance thing - soulmates and all that - rather than an actual -Other- Other. Like for those of us who have Others, they're no longer living beings who are bound to us but fragments of history, or a scrap of memory." He sagged back in his seat until his head touched the head rest. "He's lucky. Mine's an arsehole." Ember opened her mouth...then stopped. She thought it sounded...well it didnt matter. She lapsed back to quiet. But rather than swell in darker thoughts, she opened her ears back up to fully listening to the two of them. “It is, and it isn’t. Before we joined the Empire, and even now, we are husband and wife. I couldn’t risk him failing his upgrade when he was the first executioner made. I had no idea what to expect, but I couldn’t lose him. The only Other that could understand him as well as could be was me, so I volunteered. The resonance of Host and Other is a type of bond. The more I see 168 speak to himself, the more I’m inclined to believe him the longer I’m bonded to Terra.” "There's no reason to disbelieve it... I've spoken to his Other, Raiden. Mine is aware... and has been trying to get me to secure a better bond with it," which almost had a note of dread the way he described it. "When can you fix that loose wire, by the way?" “If your Other is reaching out to you, reach back, Frost”, she said resigning to the idea. “As you are now, you will not lose yourself, or the Other in your core. You need to find ways to resonate with one another, and you will then be able to be more powerful. Obviously, the Empire frowns highly on this explanation of ideas, so keep this between us three. When we get back to the castrum, I can see about your wire.” His brow furrowed as he stumped out the end bit of the cigar in an ice-filled palm. He didn't fully trust his Other or its desires to commit on that level, even though he agreed to accept it. A trip to Azys Lla would soon be in order, once his core housing was fully repaired.

#ffxiv #ff14 #IC Happenings #Garleans #Garlemald #Colossus Project #RP log part 2 #easily some of the most intense RP yet

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