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jcmarchi · 6 months

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Generative AI from an enterprise architecture strategy perspective

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/generative-ai-from-an-enterprise-architecture-strategy-perspective/

Generative AI from an enterprise architecture strategy perspective

Eyal Lantzman, Global Head of Architecture, AI/ML at JPMorgan, gave this presentation at the London Generative AI Summit in November 2023.

I’ve been at JPMorgan for five years, mostly doing AI, ML, and architecture. My background is in cloud infrastructure, engineering, and platform SaaS. I normally support AI/ML development, tooling processes, and use cases.

Some interesting observations have come about from machine learning and deep learning. Foundation models and large language models are providing different new opportunities and ways for regulated enterprises to rethink how they enable those things.

So, let’s get into it.

How is machine learning done?

You have a data set and you traditionally have CPUs, although you can use GPUs as well. You run through a process and you end up with a model. You end up with something where you can pass relatively simple inputs like a row in a database or a set of features, and you get relatively simple outputs back.

We evolved roughly 20 years ago towards deep learning and have been on that journey since. You pass more data, you use GPUs, and there are some different technology changes. But what it allows you to do is pass complex inputs rather than simple ones.

Essentially, the deep learning models have some feature engineering components built in. Instead of sending the samples and petals and length and width for the Iris model and figuring out how to extract that from an image, you just send an image and it extracts those out automatically.

Governance and compliance in generative AI models

Foundation models are quite interesting because first of all, you effectively have two layers, where there’s a provider of that foundation model that uses a very large data set, and you can add as many variants as you want there. They’re GPU-based and there’s quite a bit of complexity, time, and money, but the outcome is that you can pass in complex inputs and get complex outputs.

So that’s one difference. The other is that quite a lot of them are multimodal, which means you can reuse them across different use cases, in addition to being able to take what you get out of the box for some of them and retrain or fine-tune them with a smaller data set. Again, you run additional training cycles and then get the fine-tuned models out.

Now, the interesting observation is that the first layer on top is where you get the foundation model. You might have heard statements like, “Our data scientist team likes to fine-tune models.” Yes, but that initial layer makes it available already for engineers to use GenAI, and that’s the shift that’s upon us.

It essentially moves from processes, tools, and things associated with the model development lifecycle to software because the model is an API.

But how do you govern that?

Different regulated enterprises have their own processes to govern models versus software. How do you do that with this paradigm?

That’s where things need to start shifting within the enterprise. That understanding needs to feed into the control assurance functions and control procedures, depending on what your organization calls those things.

This is in addition to the fact that most vendors today will have some GenAI in them. That essentially introduces another risk. If a regulatory company deals with a third-party vendor and that vendor happens to start using ChatGPT or LLM, if the firm wasn’t aware of that, it might not be part of their compliance profile so they need to uplift their third-party oversight processes.

They also need to be able to work contractually with those vendors to make sure that if they’re using a large language model or more general AI, they mustn’t use the firm’s data.

AWS and all the hyperscalers have those opt-out options, and this is one of those things that large enterprises check first. However, being able to think through those and introducing them into the standard procurement processes or engineering processes will become more tricky because everyone needs to understand what AI is and how it impacts the overall lifecycle of software in general.

Balancing fine-tuning and control in AI models

In an enterprise setting, to be able to use an OpenAI type of model, you need to make sure it’s protected. And, if you plan to send data to that model, you need to make sure that data is governed because you can have different regulations about where the data can be processed, and stored, and where it comes from that you might not be aware of.

Some countries have restrictions about where you can process the data, so if you happen to provision your LLM endpoint in US-1 or US central, you possibly can’t even use it.

So, being aware of those kinds of circumstances can require some sort of business logic.

Even if you do fine-tuning, you need some instructions to articulate the model to aim towards a certain goal. Or even if you fine-tune the hell out of it, you still need some kind of guardrails to evaluate the sensible outcomes.

There’s some kind of orchestration around the model itself, but the interesting point here is that this model isn’t the actual deployment, it’s a component. And that’s how thinking about it will help with some of the problems raised in how you deal with vendor-increasing prices.

What’s a component? It’s exactly like any software component. It’s a dependency you need to track from a performance perspective, cost perspective, API perspective, etc. It’s the same as you do with any dependency. It’s a component of your system. If you don’t like it, figure out how to replace it.

Now I’ll talk a bit about architecture.

Challenges and strategies for cross-cloud integration

What are those design principles? This is after analyzing different vendors, and this is my view of the world.

Treating them as a SaaS provider and as a SaaS pattern increases the control over how we deal with that because you essentially componentize it. If you have an interface, you can track it as any type of dependency from performance cost, but also from an integration with your system.

So if you’re running on AWS and you’re calling Azure OpenAPI endpoints, you’ll probably be paying for networking across cloud cost and you’ll have latency to pay for, so you need to take all of those things into account.

So, having that as an endpoint brings those dimensions front and center into that engineering world where engineering can help the rest of the data science teams.

We touched on content moderation, how it’s required, and how different vendors implement it, but it’s not consistent. They probably deal with content moderation from an ethical perspective, which might be different from an enterprise ethical perspective, which has specific language and nuances that the enterprise tries to protect.

So how do you do that?

That’s been another consideration where I think what the vendors are doing is great, but there are multiple layers of defense. There’s defense in depth, and you need ways to deal with some of that risk

To be able to effectively evaluate your total cost of ownership or the value proposition of a specific model, you need to be able to evaluate those different models. This is where if you’re working in a modern development environment, you might be working on AWS or Azure, but when you’re evaluating the model, you might be triggering a model in GCP.

Being able to have those cross-cloud considerations that start getting into the network and authentication, authorization, and all those things can become extremely important to design for and articulate in the overall architecture and strategy when dealing with those models.

Historically, there were different attempts to wrap stuff up. As cloud providers, service providers, and users of those technologies, we don’t like that because you lose the value of the ecosystem and the SDKs that those provide.

To be able to solve those problems whilst using the native APIs, the native SDK is essential because everything runs extremely fast when it comes to AI and there’s a tonne of innovation, and as soon as you start wrapping stuff then, you’re already out in terms of dealing with that problem and it’s already pointless.

How do we think about security and governance in depth?

If we start from the center, you have a model provider, and this is where the provider can be an open source one where you go through due diligence to get it into the company and do the scanning or adverse testing. It could be one that you develop, or it could be a third-party vendor such as Anthropic.

They do have some responsibility for encryption and transit, but you need to make sure that that provider is part of your process of getting into the firm. You can articulate that that provider’s dealing with generative AI, that provider will potentially be sent classified data, that provider needs to make sure that they’re not misusing that data for training, etc.

You also have the orchestrator that you need to develop, where you need to think about how to prevent prompt injection in the same way that other applications deal with SQL injection and cross-site scripting.

So, how do you prevent that?

Those are the challenges you need to consider and solve.

As you go to your endpoints, it’s about how you do content moderation of the overall request and response and then also deal with multi-stage, trying to jailbreak it through multiple attempts. This involves identifying the client, identifying who’s authenticated, articulating cross-sessions or maybe multiple sessions, and then being able to address the latency requirements.

You don’t want to kill the model’s performance by doing that, so you might have an asynchronous process that goes and analyzes the risk associated with a particular request, and then it kills it for the next time around.

Being able to understand the impact of the controls on your specific use case in terms of latency, performance, and cost is extremely important, and it’s part of your ROI. But it’s a general problem that requires thinking about how to solve it.

You’re in the process of getting a model or building a model and creating the orchestrated testing as an endpoint and developer experience lifecycle loops, etc.

But your model development cycle might have the same kind of complexity when it comes to data because if you’re in an enterprise that got to the level of maturity that they can train with real data, rather than a locked up, synthesized database, you can articulate the business need and you have approval taxes, classified data for model training, and for the appropriate people to see it.

This is where your actual environment has quite a lot of controls associated with dealing with that data. It needs to implement different data-specific compliance.

So, when you train a model, you need to train this particular region, whether it’s Indonesia or Luxembourg, or somewhere else.

Being able to kind of think about all those different dimensions is extremely important.

As you go through whatever the process is to deploy the application to production, again, you have the same data-specific requirements. There might be more because you’re talking about production applications. It’s about impacting the business rather than just processing data, so it might be even worse.

Then, it goes to the standard engineering, integration, testing, load testing, and chaos testing, because it’s your dependency. It’s another dependency of the application that you need to deal with.

And if it doesn’t scale well because there’s not enough computing in your central for open AI, then this is one of your decision points when you need to think about how this would work in the real world. How would that work when I need that capacity? Being able to have that process go through all of those layers as fast as possible is extremely important.

Threats are an ongoing area of analysis. There’s a recent example from a couple of weeks ago from apps about LLM-specific threats. You’ll see similar threats to any kind of application such as excessive agency or or denial of service. You also have ML-related risks like data poisoning and prompt object injection which are more specific to large language models.

This is one way you can communicate with your controller assurance or cyber group about those different risks, how you mitigate them, and compartmentalize all the different pieces. Whether this is a third party or something you developed, being able to articulate the associated risk will allow you to deal with that more maturely.

Navigating identity and access management

Going towards development, instead of talking about risk, I’m going to talk about how I compartmentalize, how to create the required components, how to think about all those things, and how to design those systems. It’s essentially a recipe book.

Now, the starting assumption is that as someone who’s coming from a regulated environment, you need some kind of well-defined workspace that provides security.

The starting point for your training is to figure out your identity and access management. Who’s approved to access it? What environment? What data? Where’s the region?

Once you’ve got in, what are your cloud-native environment and credentials? What do they have access to? Is it access to all the resources? Specific resources within the region or across regions? It’s about being able to articulate all of those things.

When you’re doing your interactive environment, you’ll be interacting with the repository, but you also may end up using a foundation model or RAG resource to pull into your context or be able to train jobs based on whatever the model is.

If all of them are on the same cloud provider, it’s simple. You have one or more SDLC pipelines and you go and deploy that. You can go through an SDLC process to certify and do your risk assessment, etc. But what happens if you have all of those spread across different clouds?

Essentially, you need additional pieces to ensure that you’re not connecting from a PCI environment to a non-PCI environment.

Having an identity broker that can have additional conditions about access that can enforce those controls is extremely important. This is because given the complexity in the regulatory space, there are more and more controls and it becomes more and more complex, so pushing a lot of those controls into systems that can reason about them and enforce that is extremely important.

This is where you start thinking about LLM and GenAI from a use case perspective to just an enterprise architecture pattern. You’re essentially saying, “How do we deal with that once and for all?”

Well, we identify this component that deals with identity-related problems, we articulate the different data access patterns, we identify different environments, we catalog them, and we tag them. And based on the control requirements, this is how you start dealing with those problems.

And then from that perspective, you end up with fully automated controls that you can employ, whether it’s AWS Jupyter or your VS code running in Azure to talk to Bedrock or Azure OpenAI endpoint. They’re very much the same from an architecture perspective.

Innovative approaches to content moderation

Now, I mentioned a bit about the content moderation piece, and this is where I suggested that the vendors might have things, but:

They’re not really consistent.

They don’t necessarily understand the enterprise language.

What is PI within a specific enterprise? Maybe it’s some specific kind of user ID that identifies the user, but it’s a letter and a number that LLM might never know about. But you should be careful about exposing it to others, etc.

Being able to have that level of control is important because it’s always about control when it comes to risk.

When it comes to supporting more than one provider, this is essentially where we need to standardize a lot of those things and essentially be able to say, “This provider, based on our assessment of that provider can deal with data up to x, y, and z, and in regions one to five because they don’t support deployment in Indonesia or Luxembourg.”

Being able to articulate that part of your onboarding process of that provider is extremely important because you don’t need to think about it for every use case, it’s just part of your metamodel or the information model associated with your assets within the enterprise.

That content moderation layer can be another type of AI. It can be as simple as a kill switch that’s based on regular expression, but the opportunity is there to make something learn and adjust over time. But from a pure cyber perspective, it’s a kill switch that you need to think about, how you kill something in a point solution based on the specific type of prompt.

For those familiar with AWS, there’s an AWS Gateway Load Bouncer. It’s extremely useful when we’re coming to those patterns because it allows you to have the controls as a sidecar rather than part of your application, so the data scientist or the application team can focus on your orchestrator.

You can have another team that can specialize in security that creates that other container effectively and deploys and manages that as a separate lifecycle. This is also good from a biased perspective because you could have one team that’s focused on making or breaking the model, versus the application team that tries to create or extract the value out of it.

From a production perspective, this is very similar because in the previous step, you created a whole bunch of code, and the whole purpose of that code was becoming that container, one or more depending on how you think about that.

That’s where I suggest that content moderation is yet another type of kind of container that sits outside of the application and allows you to have that separate control over the type of content moderation. Maybe it’s something that forces a request-response, maybe it’s more asynchronous and kicks it off based on the session.

You can have multiple profiles of those content moderation systems and apply them based on the specific risk and associated model.

Identity broker is the same pattern. This is extremely important because if you’re developing and testing in such environments, you want your code to be very similar to how it progresses.

In the way you got your credentials, you probably want some configuration in which you can point to a similar setup in your production environment to inject those tokens into your workload.

This is where you probably don’t have your fine-tuning in production, but you still have data access that you need to support.

So, having different types of identities that are associated with your flow and being able to interact, whether it’s the same cloud or multi-cloud, depending on your business use case, ROI, latency, etc., will be extremely important.

But this allows you to have that framework of thinking, Is this box a different identity boundary? Yes or no? If it’s a no, then it’s simple. It’s an IM policy in AWS as an example, versus a different cloud, how do you federate access to it? How do you rotate credential secrets?

Conclusion

To summarise, you have two types of flows. In standard ML, you have the MDLC flow where you go and train a model and containerize it.

In GenAI, you have the MDLC only when you fine-tune. If you didn’t fine-tune, you run through pure SDLC flow. It’s a container that you just containerized that you test and do all those different steps.

You don’t have the actual data scientists necessarily involved in that process. That’s the opportunity but also the change that you need to introduce to the enterprise thinking and the cyber maturity associated with that.

Think through how engineers, who traditionally don’t really have access to production data, will be able to test those things in real life. Create all sorts of interesting discussions about the environments where you can do secure development with data versus standard developer environments with mock data or synthesized data.

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covetonki · 2 years

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Visualize decision tree python

#VISUALIZE DECISION TREE PYTHON CODE#

Single Layer Neural Network - Perceptron model on the Iris dataset using Heaviside step activation functionīatch gradient descent versus stochastic gradient descent Machine learning algorithms and concepts Batch gradient descent algorithm Scikit-learn : Sample of a spam comment filter using SVM - classifying a good one or a bad one Scikit-learn : Support Vector Machines (SVM) IIįlask with Embedded Machine Learning I : Serializing with pickle and DB setupįlask with Embedded Machine Learning II : Basic Flask Appįlask with Embedded Machine Learning III : Embedding Classifierįlask with Embedded Machine Learning IV : Deployįlask with Embedded Machine Learning V : Updating the classifier Scikit-learn : Support Vector Machines (SVM) Scikit-learn : Random Decision Forests Classification Scikit-learn : Decision Tree Learning II - Constructing the Decision Tree Scikit-learn : Decision Tree Learning I - Entropy, Gini, and Information Gain Scikit-learn : Linearly Separable Data - Linear Model & (Gaussian) radial basis function kernel (RBF kernel) Scikit-learn : Unsupervised_Learning - KMeans clustering with iris dataset Unsupervised PCA dimensionality reduction with iris dataset Scikit-learn : Supervised Learning & Unsupervised Learning - e.g. Scikit-learn : Logistic Regression, Overfitting & regularization Scikit-learn : Data Compression via Dimensionality Reduction III - Nonlinear mappings via kernel principal component (KPCA) analysis Scikit-learn : Data Compression via Dimensionality Reduction II - Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) Scikit-learn : Data Preprocessing III - Dimensionality reduction vis Sequential feature selection / Assessing feature importance via random forestsĭata Compression via Dimensionality Reduction I - Principal component analysis (PCA) Scikit-learn : Data Preprocessing II - Partitioning a dataset / Feature scaling / Feature Selection / Regularization Scikit-learn : Data Preprocessing I - Missing / Categorical data Scikit-learn : Machine Learning Quick Preview Scikit-learn : Features and feature extraction - iris dataset

#VISUALIZE DECISION TREE PYTHON CODE#

The code used for the plot is as follows: That the Gini index is an intermediate measure between entropy and the classification error. Note that we introduced a scaled version of the entropy (entropy/2) to emphasize In this section, we'll plot the three impurity criteria we discussed in the previous section: The Information Gain (IG) can be defined as follows: We will use it to decide the ordering of attributes In other words, IG tells us how important a given Set of training feature vectors is most useful. Want to prune the tree by setting a limit for the maximum depth of the tree.īasically, using IG, we want to determine which attribute in a given However, this can result in a very deep tree with many nodes, which can easily lead to overfitting. Samples at each node all belong to the same class. We repeat this splitting procedure at each child node down to the empty leaves. Using a decision algorithm, we start at the tree root and split the data on theįeature that results in the largest information gain (IG). Similar to entropy, the Gini index is maximal if the classes are perfectly mixed, So, basically, the entropy attempts to maximize the mutual information (by constructing a equal probability node) in the decision tree. entropy of a group with 50% in either class:.Entropy of a group in which all examples belong to the same.Entropy reaches maximum value when all classes in the node have equal probability. In other words, theĮntropy of a node (consist of single class) is zero because the probability is 1 and log (1) = 0. The entropy is 0 if all samples of a node belong to the same class,Īnd the entropy is maximal if we have a uniform class distribution. Where $p_j$ is the probability of class $j$. There are three commonly used impurity measures used in binary decision trees: Entropy, Gini index, and Classification Error.

#Visualize decision tree python

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everynicorobin · 2 years

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Demonio Fleur

A couple things I think are interesting about Robin’s Demonio Fleur form (this got long so I’m putting it under a cut):

The appearance more closely resembles Robin pre-timeskip than post-timeskip.

The most notable differences between pre-TS and post-TS Robin are:

- Hair style: Obviously her hair is a little longer now, but it’s also wavier (and appears to be thicker) than it was pre-skip. She also no longer has bangs post-skip.

A shot of pre-skip Robin, showing her straight hair (chapter 436)

Versus a shot of her from almost the same angle, post-skip - note that her hair appears to be more in one block shape with sharper shines, as opposed to pre-skip’s soft shines and thinner, less layered look (chapter 700)

A clear look at her bangs during the separation arc (chapter 593)

Versus post-skip. Note that because her hair isn’t slicked back, we can see clearly that she’s grown out her bangs. (chapter 794)

- Eyes, nose, and face: The shapes of all of these were more sharp and angular pre-skip. Oda started “softening” her features, drawing them more rounded starting in Thriller Bark, but took it to new extremes post-skip, to the point where she looks completely different.

A closeup of an eye way back in Whiskey Peak (chapter 114). Note the almost diamond shape, the large solid-black pupil surrounded by a small ring of iris, and the lack of visible eyelashes. Compare this to the most common female eye design from pre-skip OP:

Would you believe me if I told you these were three different girls? The first is Nami (see the full picture from @everynami), the second Vivi (see the full picture from @everyvivi), and the third is Conis (see the full picture from the OP wiki). Robin’s narrower eye shape and iris made her stand out from the cast of same-face same-body women. But now look at her post-skip:

She now has visible eyelashes, her eyes are slightly rounder, her pupil is no longer colored solid black (and it is sometimes colored like a second iris for some reason, with a smaller pupil in the middle), and the iris is slightly wider. “But EveryNicoRobin,” you might say, “her eyes are basically the same shape!” That is true! But! Compare her new eyes to the eyes of the post-skip women:

Once again, in order these women are Nami from chapter 944, Vivi from the cover of chapter 815, and Conis from the wiki’s image for her manga post-skip look.

Funny, all of a sudden everyone’s eyes are slightly narrower, making Robin stand out even less!

Moving on to her nose:

A large, straight nose with a thick bridge. Excellent! (chapter 114)

Oops, what happened here? A smaller nose, with a thinner bridge and a slightly more curved look, reminiscent of the classic anime side-view nose! (chapter 909)

Once again, let’s compare this to the side-view of other noses on women:

In order, this time it’s Nami from chapter 663, Koala from chapter 904, and Shirahoshi from chapter 906. Not much of a difference here either, huh?

And now let’s look at her face shape:

(chapter 114)

A more rounded jawline (chapter 955)

Finally, keeping all this in mind, let’s look at her Demonio form:

First of all, she has her bangs back (!!). Though her hair is pretty much the same length as it is post-skip, it has returned to its straight state, and is no longer wavy except when adhering to the curves of her body. Her eyes appear more angular, even though she retains the thicker iris, the sharp shadows show a strong and sharp nose, and I would argue that even her face shape has become less rounded.

Robin’s “normal” giant form that she was previously using to fight Black Maria has none of these features, and instead resembles present Robin down to a T (minus the clothes for some godforsaken reason). I think it’s likely that she managed to produce her normal giant form before her Demonio form, which makes it all the more interesting that her Demonio form more closely resembles her pre-TS look, since she probably didn’t develop it until after she had changed her hairstyle.

My second and final idea is that I think this is Robin awakening her Devil Fruit.

From what we’ve seen so far, awakened Paramecia fruits can affect the environment around them, eg Law expanding his Room to have any effect he wants, Kid turning anything into a magnet, and Doflamingo turning Dressrosa into strings. But despite that Robin isn’t affecting the environment, she is doing something that her Devil Fruit cannot normally do. Yes, she has produced giant limbs before, but we know that those are made up of thousands of smaller limbs acting as a hive mind - and this simply doesn’t work with a giant form of Robin. She could produce a copy of herself with thousands of hands, but there would be no way to accurately reproduce her eyes or mouth.

In addition, wings and horns are not something Robin actually has (as far as we know 👀), and their apparent color and texture do not match up with anything on Robin’s normal body. She could maybe make fangs with copies of teeth, but that would be the extent of it.

Finally, we also know that a user using the awakened form of their Fruit without enough practice tends to become exhausted quickly. Chopper still collapses after using Monster Point for three minutes despite being able to control it, and we saw Kid and Law collapse after fighting Big Mom. Robin, too, fainted after her battle, and we see Brook carrying her in his arms afterwards, presumably for at least 5-10 minutes.

In conclusion: I just think she’s neat

#other

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michimichim · 3 years

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party monster 🎃 | sunmi

disclaimer: dom!fem reader x sub!sunmi ; substance use

the entirety of the apartment is decked out to resemble a typical college halloween party – cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, carved pumpkins ordered from amazon in every corner of the living room and red solo cups littering every table corner.

in the middle of dancing bodies sways a woman, all flawless skin shown off, shimmering with a moist layer of sweat as dawn-tinted hair twirls around the body; slim hips move along to the 808’ beats.

she moves with feline grace, back arching against her friends, head tilted back as she downs back her tequila shot. there’s a smudged hot pink lipstick mark on one cheek and a smear of body glitter brightening with her every movement under the light.

iridescent eyes lazily flutter open, they seem to glow in the dimmed orange lights of the house as though infinite, such an alluring black that it seems possible to drown in her gaze. they stare right back at you through the frilly catty eye mask.

she smirks, arms above her head, her fingers traveling through silky air, pulling lightly, the pain tugs a risqué moan out of her. she trails her hands down her body, taking satisfaction in the brush against her ample chest, head spinning in a thick haze, sketching the gentle curve of heart-shaped lips. she presses closer to the warmth of skins that surround her, body contorting, hips shifting, an untroubled edge to her movements, pushing up against the sleek bodies that sway against her.

all but forgetting your chatty tinder date, you carve a path through the grinding, gyrating bodies, all passion and sultry motions and sweat for the dancing woman. meanwhile, her eyes had trailed away from your approaching form, but the newfound accentuation of her hips tell you she’s anticipating you.

a few hands stretch to graze you, tender and relishing, before returning to their places on the bodices, hips, throats of whoever they're with. on any occasion, you’d laugh and engage in it, dancing the night away with close friends, roommates and acquaintances but this stranger managed to capture you in with one look, you’d die without capturing a closer look.

she owns the dancefloor –– more so your living room — eyes are adjusted on the both of you. you had observed many things in the time you’d attended parties, but you’d never seen anybody move so freely. watching her was better than sex – witnessing her is art in a mixture of sensuality and passion. a mastery.

her gaze flicks up to yours all the while grinding back against one of the girls she showed up to the party with. you feel your blood surge and a chill runs down your spine. despite all eyes being on her, hers stayed riveted on you.

you don’t know where to look – at her hips, the way they’re undulating to the music, the way her hands roam over her lithe body. the way her stomach muscles flex and relax, and her mesh shirt frames all of her curves, skillful legs showing soft skin through ripped jeans.

you observe one another for a moment, her eyes commanding, an offer so intimate in the fiery air that connects you — and she’s all but grasping your hand in hers, setting one on her waist and lifting your entwined fingers into the air until you are almost flush against each other. your noses brush along cheeks briefly, lips essentially meeting as you adjust to the new song reverberating through the speakers.

she brazenly stares into the adorned deep gaze of your iris before in a swift move, she’s got her back against you. her hips twist, ass grinding back against your hips; your hands cup her hips, restraining her closer in a tempestuous sway. her head slumps back against your shoulder, face rolled to the side where she inhales in the heady aroma of your perfume — a welcome distinction versus the overwhelming mustiness of smoke, sharp alcohol, and rich sweat that fills her nose.

you continue to flow with the rhythm, her ass meeting with your crotch again, this time with more sharpness, more authority, and you choke back a cuss. when it happens again and plump cheeks press tighter against you, you can feel it in your gut, snaking down to your toes, tingling within your neurotic system, vibrating down your spine, it curls through you, like thunderstorm splitting through clouds, a frenzied feeling.

a brush of your hot palms slips upon her exposed hips, slotting flawlessly against the slopes there, thumbs shifting just above the low hoisted waist of her jeans, digits arcing around, tips delving into heated skin.

kisses are shared — some light, just a graze of lips, others with fervor, crimson lips are sucked right into grasping mouths, all but nibbled on — as you move in excellent rhythm for two more songs. you find yourself focused on the woman wrapped around you tighter than the faux jail chains around your ankles: your heart's pumping, pulsing, blood thrumming and humming, the throb between your legs torturously delectable as you grind back against her, slow and steady.

she moans against your lips, the sound squandered in the unyielding beat of the music, intense and all-consuming. she rubs down against your thigh and forth, lacing her arms around your shoulders, heat trimming at her.

her movements leave your head spinning and you can’t do anything but follow along, helplessly stifling your moans from those sinful lips, those hips – grinding and dropping in perfect rhythm. you softly praise her, before she’s picking up the pace again. with every roll, every ruthless wind of her on you, you find it harder to keep level-headed.

once the songs come to a close, slipping flawlessly within another, she inclines her head forward with a drunken smile. your hands slip gracefully down her spine to properly grasp her ass, slipping them in her back pockets, and you’re instantly surrounded by the intoxicating sound of her distinctive voice against your attentive ear.

“need a drink.” she whisper-yell, a tickle of warm air against your earlobe.

“water?” you offer, hand skimming back up the small of her back, a comforting weight pulling her closer to you.

she laughs – a full, grown laugh, pearly white teeth on display. “oh babe,” she twines your fingers with hers and draw your faces closer, dark eyes twinkling strikingly. “i’d do a lot of things tonight, but water’s not one of them.”

it’s the absence of subtlety in her narrative, the self-assuredness, the attitude –– it’s all so fucking alluring and it leaves you eager to learn more of her character.

with that, you both stagger your way to the kitchen. you’re striving a replicate of pina colada, and she’s cracking jokes about your drunk ass all but scattering slips of alcohol on the counter. with a short, though intoxicated laugh, you press the petiole of a refined glass –your roommate's favorite – into her hand. "fuck it, i tried."

"at least you looked great trying." she acknowledges with a simper, nonetheless accepting the drink and taking a scanty sip. "oh," she hums in surprise. "this is good." she says it in a voice faint and full of evocative arousal.

under the bright, fluorescent light of the kitchen, she’s on full display.

she takes a sip of her drink in a botched effort to conceal the surreptitious simper under your watchful gaze. your eyes sweep over her, from head to toe, absorbing her in – her sleek boots, the transparent mesh shirt, plus those tight, ripped jeans are making your head spin and it certainly has nothing to do with the red, plastic cheap alcohol-filled cups you’ve been ingesting all night.

“i’ve never seen you around campus. you new?”

“we could say that,” she responds with a tilt to her head, this time around she’s the one dragging her gaze up your body. “though i’m here for a different reason.”

you hum in immediate response, taking yet another step, pervading her space. “that’s one lucky reason,” you study her reaction; besides a cocked up brow and a valiant effort to remain passive, she keeps demure, pushing herself up against the counter, folding her arms beneath her breasts in a way that pushes them out in your line of sight. “but i’m glad you’re here.”

she mirrors the sound, her hum having comparatively more lilt to it.

“and i’m glad to be here.” she offers back, and the way she somehow manages to say it sounds exclusive, as if for a restricted number of people to her. her penetrating dark eyes don’t waver even as you lift a hand to caress her skin, fingers trailing up her neck until it curls around. there’s humor dancing in her eyes, burning behind a silent dialogue of crumpled composure. “heard about your parties, you know?”

“i’m flattered.” you smile, stroking the back of her neck. “hope you’re enjoying it.”

she reaches in to touch in return, blunt fingers trailing across your bare arm, road tripping their way to cover your hand with hers. soft, warm breath tickles her ear as you sink into her, your other hand skims behind the small of her back. “it did meet my expectations,” she notes, pressing her body further into you. “can you exceed it.”

“i think i’m doing a pretty good job so far..” you make a point to lean back slightly and glance down at her piece of fabric that carries out a shoddy job at concealing the hardened peaks of her nipples.

her expression transmutes to sheepish for a second, something you would have never pictured on her. yet she stands her ground, chin tilted up, challenging you to do something about it. and if it suggested this, you’d never been more thrilled to break first.

you cup her chin with cool fingers, knowingly overwhelming her senses as you skim your warm lips over hers. the heat of the kiss is scorching, she parts her lips to grant you better access. your tongue easily glides into her mouth, meeting her own. she tastes delicious, like rum, coconut and fruits. you could drown in it. her breasts press into you, nipples achingly hard.

“where to?,” she pants, leaning in, breath caressing your lips. the need to have her agitate into something more substantial and the heavy bass of the music press into your bodies, resolutely setting your blood on fire.

sharp breathing, puffed lips, cool walls, pounding music all filtering into the dark hallway. everyone is busy in the living room; no one is sober enough nor aware to venture into this part of the apartment, which, quite honestly, fits you just fine.

kisses are being traded with a frenzied edge, your cool fingers are gently winding into distinct hues of pink hair, bodies rutting into burning chafing, lips resounding with extensive, pleasant surrendering moans that quake from glossy mouths.

it's all a blur once you're inside your bedroom, hands on buckles and zippers, ripping apart clothes to remove denim, shoes peeled off, fingers stroking along swollen lips and thrusting inside when they open invitingly, each suction around each digit laves individually, each suck pulling them further in until she's moaning lowly, never gagging, only then to slip below into her inviting, hot heat.

a mewl falls from her lips, the back of her head pressing against the headboard. her hips buck up and she moans again, one of her hands gripping your head working between her thighs. the rhythmic bass of some drill song makes the walls shake and your brain can’t help but find the high wails of the girl beneath you make a beautiful combination.

her eyes roll back as you hum into her, skilled tongue flicking her clit back and forth, sucking on the flushed skin. your lips kiss over her slit, lapping at her wetness as you gaze up at her through your lashes, a smirk in place.

she doesn’t register your hands wrapping taut around her wrists, nor being turned on her stomach. you touch up her arms, down her legs, ankles, then back up her back and shoulders.

you knead over the back of her thigh and hum approvingly when she widens her legs a little further, further baring the enticing wetness of her dripping pussy. she feels you lick a stripe up her neck and then a sharp bite as the head enters her, and sweet adrenaline rushes her veins.

then you start moving, propping your forearms on the bed and fitting your pelvis agilely upon hers. she’s still soaked with your saliva which carries out the glide sleekly, spearing heat into her gut. alcohol swirling in your heads; you can't correctly think about anything else but the filthy mewls issuing from her, can't shift if it's not in time with her, rocking downward when she rocks back up, excitement sputtering just beneath your skins.

your breath is scorching on her neck, perspiration already creeping on your skins. her back’s supple under your hands as your shoulders undulate with brisk movement. the fabric made to brush back against each of your thrusts undoubtedly makes you spiral into a mess, seeking more friction as she moans with a shudder to it, pleasure already curling around her core.

her face feels hot and her mind muggy; her hair sticks to the back of her glossy neck and sweat slicks the tight space between your bodies each time you writhe smoothly against each other.

she bites down on the edge of your cover; the slick and painless weight that promptly detects where to push with thrilling warmth and then a sharp sting of hot bliss as your thrusts turn harsher.

her spine arches further up while you work in every crevice, slick dripping out and down her slit, coating the strap in her excitement. the ample fullness feels about adequate to carry her over. she dips her back in that sharp angle and straight away she’s sailing, satisfaction burning in ardent layers up her back and she can’t help the tumultuous, appreciative moan.

“so good,” she moans, body rushing forward, unable to support her weight on all fours. you slow down to a sensual grind, practically fucking her into the bed.

the position enables for a more rooted, firmer thrusts. you wrap your hands around her hips, sidetracked by how wondrous her ass pushes back against you, its view delectable.

you drag her back flush against your hips, making her shriek, both with surprise and the sudden zap of pleasure scouring along her pussy.

this time, you don’t remember switching positions – she’s on top, hips straddling you, panting into each other’s mouths, grinding her hips down in tight circles before she’s kissing down your neck, nibbling harshly over your flesh, and you’re listening, responding to the filth that scatters from her mouth as her thighs squeeze around you.

her teeth nibble and nip lightly at your jawline before travelling to your soft arched collar, fingers gripping at your thighs to support herself with each grind.

she’s stretching her body and keeping each movement seductive under your watchful gaze, grabbing your shirt, hungry eyes watching the strap sliding in and out of her, gaze lingering on your thumb circling her clit.

she puts your hands back on her hips and you just watch her relax her bones, body wavering a little, then her hips spring to move, her arms lifted above her head, taking some of her hair with it so it slumps in a cascade wave of pink strands highlighted in a kaleidoscope of color down her shoulders. she throws her head back, her eyes shut and her lips shift up in an ecstatic smile.

your hand slithers behind to grasp her cheeks and she gasps loudly, hands immediately searching and burying themselves deep into your hair. there’s that warm and wet feeling as you’re nibbling at the buds, the grazing of your teeth bringing a handful of shivers down her body through her transparent shirt.

you harshly cup one breast in your hand, gently flicking your thumb over the pert nub as you lick a scorchingly hot tongue over the other, moaning in time of her whines.

you bury your face in her neck – her scent, something dark and soft, like spice and cinnamon, floods your nostrils and you breathe in deeply, memorizing the smell of her. your free hand comes up her shirt to push her bra down and your tongue runs along the lacy fabric of the shirt, teeth grazing her nipples.

it keeps going for a couple of minutes.

you feel like you’re being squeezed into an outlet. am engulfing sensibility whirring up your vertebrae to compress your neck and then back down again, blending fiery and ease.

you have to hold your breath and tense each thread below to circumvent coming before her.

your prayer seems to have been answered by whatever god because her movement becomes sporadic, unpredictable and, “fuck, fuck, i’m almost there,” she keens, thoroughly grinding back down to take the entirety of the strap.

she’s torn between arching back onto you and rolling her hips one last time —it turns out she didn’t have to decide, her hips moved of their own accord, against the plane of your abdomen and the bottom juncture of the strap rubs back against you.

she momentarily forgets her own name, she moans, back arching, nails painfully jarring into your shoulder. but that’s nothing opposed to the fused sensation that immerses through your cores.

moments later, you watch her pop the head free, only to play with it again and push it back inside for a couple of last long, sloppy, savoring strokes, giggly moans out of her.

“well,” she pulls you up in a clumsy high of exhausted bodies and sweat, biting at your lip with a raspy laugh. “this was fun.”

fatigued, your body slumps back against the headboard as she climbs off your lap, then she pulls her underwear back on, followed suit by her jeans. she comes back to drop a kiss on your cheek, and you peek up at her, puzzled. “you leaving?”

she winks, “thanks for the party babe, got another to finish.” she's gone before you could get a word in, a sway of her hips to her steps, boots clacking against the floor.

and fuck, she’s an absolute party monster — you didn't even catch her name.

#sunmi smut #wjsn smut #kpop smut #sub kpop #wlw #fanfic #girl group smut #halloween smut

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cheryls-blossomed · 3 years

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I think it’s strange that people are mad that the team wanted to save everyone not just Iris. Although some aren’t invested in Cisco’s relationship the fact is he loves Kamilla and he has every right to want her safe just as Barry wants Iris safe. So his relationship shouldn’t be seen as important? So Kamilla and Singh’s life aren’t as important as Iris’s? Just like Iris should be Barry’s number one priority, Kamilla should be Cisco’s. The simulation was a scenario seen from the perspective of a Barry who no longer took emotions into consideration and based it on what people might logically say just like the Thinker. I knew it was fake when Cisco didn’t say anything. Like he said there’s no way he would calmly vote for Kamilla and Singh without putting up an argument to come up with another way to try to save them all first. Also I highly doubt Allegra would’ve calmly voted as well. Don’t have that much faith in Frost. That was the point of that scene was to show the contrast. Cisco should push back on Barry’s decision to only save Iris. What kind of boyfriend would he be if he calmly accepted his girlfriend staying in there when none of them knew what was happening to them, which we find out they are more negatively affected by being there than Iris. She adapted, they didn’t.

Okay, so this is a complicated, multi-layered issue. Because, of course it makes sense why Cisco and everyone else see the only option as saving everyone. And that scene was only a simulation. Nobody is expendable, and no one should be treated like they are. But the narrative was framed as pinning this goal against saving Iris, even if that was not the intention. I joked when I said that I was, “Team Barry,” during the episode, but I think it’s indicative of the reason why so many Westallen fans are quick to say, “Barry was right.” Yeah, we’re joking a little, but the fact of the matter is, while Barry wasn’t himself and was emotionless, there was something very satisfying about watching Barry defy the narrative construct that constantly forces Iris to be self-sacrificing. That forces her to be resilient every single moment. That forces her to save herself and everyone else around her, but not be rescued. This is one of the only times, if not the only time, that we’ve ever gotten to watch him basically defy the idea that he can’t cross X “made up moral” line to save Iris.

Iris, Kamilla, and David all should be saved. That’s not the issue. The issue is framing it as a Save Iris versus Save Everyone. Why is it that the narrative chooses Iris’s livelihood and life to make a point that Barry must be selfless and save everyone, and that Iris must be self-sacrificing? It’s a consistent narrative issue, and 7x02 sort of had Barry defy this completely, for once, but he also happened to not be himself, which resulted in a very traumatic exit from the mirror for Iris, stripping her of choice completely, because of course Iris would save David and Kamilla first, before voluntarily leaving herself. And the trauma of her exit and Iris being stripped of her agency were very problematic, as this was a moment that ought to have been a heartfelt rescue and reunion that was the catalyst for her own catharsis.

But before that scene, Barry defying the narrative constantly positing Iris’s very life against “don’t cross that line/don’t kill to save Iris/don’t compromise your humanity” was satisfying to watch. I’m not going to pretend that it wasn’t. So, no I wasn’t on the team’s side at all, not because they were wrong in wanting to save everyone (they were obviously right to want to save everyone), but because the narrative was using the team, generally, to once again devalue Iris’s livelihood, by making this an argument about Save Iris Versus Line Hero Must Not Cross. I’m sick of the show finding new ways to rework this miosgynoristic position, under the guise of making some fallacious statement on a hero’s morality. Like there was no need to even write it like this in the first place.

#anonymous #replies

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and-then-there-were-n0ne · 3 years

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« In the fruit fly Drosophila there is a gene called eyeless. Geneticists have the perverse habit of naming genes by what goes wrong when they mutate. The eyeless gene normally negates its name by making eyes. When it mutates and fails to have its normal effect on development, the fly has no eyes, hence the name. It is a ludicrously confusing convention. To avoid it, I shall not refer to the eyeless gene, but will use the comprehensible abbreviation ey. The ey gene normally makes eyes, and we know this because when it goes wrong the flies are eyeless. Now the story starts to get interesting. There is a very similar gene in mammals, called Pax6, also known as small eye in mice and aniridia (no iris) in humans (again named for the negative effect of its mutant form).

The DNA sequence of the human aniridia gene is more similar to the fruit fly's ey gene than it is to other human genes. They must be inherited from [our] shared ancestor. Again, I shall call it ey. Walter Gehring and his colleagues in Switzerland did an utterly fascinating experiment. They introduced the mouse equivalent of the ey gene into fruit fly embryos, with astounding results. When introduced into the part of a fruit fly embryo that was destined to make a leg, it caused the eventual adult fly to grow an extra 'ectopic' eye on its leg. It was a fly eye, by the way: a compound eye, not a mouse eye. I don't think there is any evidence that the fly could see through it, but it had the unmistakable properties of a respectable compound eye. The instruction given by the ey gene seems to be 'grow an eye here, of the kind that you would normally grow'. The fact that the gene is not only similar in mice and flies, but induces the development of eyes in both, is very strong evidence that it was present in [our common ancestor]; and moderately strong evidence that [our common ancestor] could see, even if only the presence versus the absence of light. [...]

Drosophila ('dew lover') has long been the geneticists' favourite animal. Embryology should never be confused with genetics, but recently Drosophila has assumed a starring role in embryology as well as genetics, and this is a tale of embryology. Embryonic development is controlled by genes, but there are two very different ways in which this might theoretically happen. [...] Textbooks of biology are wrong when they describe DNA as a blueprint. Embryos do nothing remotely like following a blueprint. DNA is not a description, in any language, of what the finished body should look like. Maybe on some other planet living things develop by blueprint embryology, but I find it hard to imagine how it would work. It would have to be a very different kind of life. On this planet, embryos follow recipes. Or, to change to another equally un-blueprint-like analogy, which is in some ways more apt than the recipe: embryos construct themselves by following a sequence of origami folding instructions.

The origami analogy fits early embryology better than late. The main organisation of the body is initially laid down by a series of foldings and invaginations of layers of cells. Once the main body plan is safely in place, later stages in development consist largely of growth, as if the embryo were being inflated, in all its parts, like a balloon. It is a very special kind of balloon, however, because different parts of the body inflate at different rates, the rates being carefully controlled. This is the important phenomenon known as allometry.

The Fruit Fly's Tale is concerned mostly with the earlier, origami phase of development, not the later, inflationary one. Cells are not laid like bricks to a blueprint, but it is the behaviour of cells that determines embryonic development. Cells attract, or repel, other cells. They change shape in various ways. They secrete chemicals, which may diffuse outwards and influence other cells, even some distance away. Sometimes they die selectively, carving out shapes by subtraction, as if a sculptor were at work. Like termites co-operating to build a mound, cells 'know' what to do by reference to the neighbouring cells with whom they find themselves in contact, and in response to chemicals in gradients of concentration. All cells in the embryo contain the same genes, so it can't be their genes that distinguish one cell's behaviour from another's. What does distinguish a cell is which of the genes are turned on, which usually is reflected in the gene products — proteins — that it contains.

In the very early embryo, a cell needs to 'know' where it lies along two main dimensions: fore and aft (anterior/posterior) and up-down (dorsal/ventral). What does 'know' mean? It initially means that a cell's behaviour is determined by its position along chemical gradients in each of the two axes [anterior/posterior and dorsal/ventral]. Such gradients necessarily start in the egg itself, and are therefore under the control of the mother's genes, not the egg's own nuclear genes. [...]

These labelling concentrations persist in the substance of the cells that are produced as the egg subsequently divides. The first few divisions occur without any addition of new material, and the divisions are incomplete: lots of separate nuclei are made, but they are not completely separated by cellular partitions. This multinucleate 'cell' is called a syncitium. Later, partitions form, and the embryo becomes properly cellular. Through all this, as I say, the original chemical gradients persist. It follows that cell nuclei in different parts of the embryo will be bathed in different concentrations of key substances, corresponding to the original two-dimensional gradients, and this will cause different genes to be turned on in different cells (we are now, of course, talking about the embryo's own genes, no longer the mother's). This is how differentiation of cells begins, and projections of the principle lead to further differentiation at later stages of development. The original gradients set up by maternal genes give way to new and more complex gradients set up by the embryo's own genes. Consequent forkings in the lineages of embryonic cells recursively generate further differentiations.

In arthropods there is a larger-scale partitioning of the body, not into cells but into segments. The segments are arrayed in line, from front of head to tip of abdomen. Insects have six head segments, of which the antennae are on segment 2, followed on other segments by the mandibles and then other mouthparts. [...] The three thoracic segments (Ti, T2 andT3) [each] bear a pair of legs. T2 and T3 normally bear wings, but in Drosophila and other flies only T2 has wings. [...] Cells 'know' (in the sense already excused) which segment they are in, and they behave accordingly. Each cell is told which segment it is in through the mediation of special control genes called Hox genes, which turn themselves on inside the cell. The Fruit Fly's Tale is mostly a tale of Hox genes.

It would make things neat and easy to explain if I could now tell you that there is one Hox gene for each segment, with all the cells of a given segment having only its own numbered Hox gene turned on. It would be even tidier if the Hox genes were arrayed along the length of a chromosome, in the same order as the segments they influence. Well, it isn't quite as tidy as that, but it very nearly is. The Hox genes are indeed arranged in the right order along one chromosome, and that is wonderful — gratuitously so, given what we know of how genes work. But there aren't enough Hox genes for the segments — only eight. And there's a more messy complication that I must get out of the way. The segments of the adult don't exactly correspond to the so-called parasegments of the larva. Don't ask me why (perhaps the Designer was having an off day), but each adult segment is made up of the back half of one larval parasegment plus the front half of the next. Unless otherwise stated, I'll use the word segment to mean larval (para) segment. As for the question of how eight Hox genes in a row take charge of some 17 segments in a row, it is partly done by resorting to the chemical gradient trick again. Each Hox gene is mainly expressed in one segment, but it is also expressed, in decreasing concentration as you go backwards, in more posterior segments. A cell knows which segment it is in by comparing the chemical outputs of more than one upstream Hox gene. It is a bit more complicated than that, but there is no need to go into such detail here. [...]

A Hox gene, then, is a gene whose mission in life is to know whereabouts in the body it is, and so inform other genes in the same cell. We are now armed to understand homeotic mutations. When things go wrong with a Hox gene, the cells in a segment are misinformed about which segment they are in, and they make the segment they 'think' they are in. So, for instance, we see a leg growing in the segment that would normally grow an antenna. This makes perfect sense. The cells in any segment are perfectly capable of assembling the anatomy of any other segment. Why should they not? The instructions for making any segment lurk in the cells of every segment. It is the Hox genes, under normal conditions, that call forth the 'correct' instructions for making the anatomy appropriate to each segment. As William Bateson rightly suspected, homeotic abnormality opens a revealing window on how the system normally works.

This brings us to the most wonderful part of the Fruit Fly's Tale. After they had been discovered in Drosophila, Hox genes started turning up all over the place: not only in other insects such as beetles, but in almost all other animals that have been looked at, including ourselves. And — this really is almost too good to be true — they very often turn out to be doing the same kind of thing, even down to informing cells which segment they are in and (better still) being arrayed in the same order along chromosomes. [...] Hox genes have now been found in every animal that has been looked at except ctenophores and sponges, including sea urchins, Limulus, shrimps, molluscs, annelid worms, acorn worms, sea squirts, nematode worms and flatworms. »

— The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life, Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong

#richard dawkins

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cubeswhump · 4 years

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Vampire Study: Physical Characteristics

Vampires take all shapes and forms across various forms of media. While many things vary, they all tend to share two common factors: vampires survive on blood (notable exception is the House of Night series but I don’t want to talk about that, okay?) and are largely nocturnal (notable exception is the titular Blade, but he’s chill). This would move them into the class of predators, and with no natural predators of their own, they would be classed as apex predators. I will be focusing on characteristics of various predatory land animals to see how a bipedal, humanoid mammal would adapt to a nocturnal life as a photophobic apex predator. This study will be split into eight labeled parts so feel free to skip around: sight, hearing, olfactory, dental, musculature, reproduction, digestion, and complexion.

Sight

In this study, sight is not only what we see but the structure of the eyeball and its placement that create and process the images we see. Look at the eyes of a predator and compare them to the eyes of its prey. You will see different placements (forward-facing versus sides), color, size, and pupil shapes. Even taking two different types of predators, like the small ambush predator versus large daytime predators, will present two very different sets of eyes.

Placement: Herbivorous prey animals’ eyes will commonly be placed on the sides of their heads to watch for predators approaching from the sides AND back. Forward-facing eyes produce better depth perception which will aid in tracking and pursuing prey. This means vampires will have forward-facing eyes so no painful skull transformation is necessary. Plus that would look a bit odd.

Eye color: While eye color doesn't effect visual sharpness, it can effect comfort and clarity in different lighting. Higher concentration of melanin, or dark eyes, act as a built-in sun shade. Lower melanin, or light eyes, take in more light, but at the same time increase sensitivity. Blue eyes, having the lowest amount of melanin, are a bit too sensitive to light so you don't often see it in predators (unless you count my fifth grade bully), but you'll often see hunters with orange, yellow, or green eyes.

Eye size: Look at your cat. Do you see much white? And look how big those suckers are in that cute lil' face. Why is that? The reason might be surprising; eye size often correlates with maximum running speed. Fast animals, like cheetahs and even prey-animal horses, often have big eyes with more iris than sclera (whites) because this gives them better vision to avoid colliding with animals. Is your vampire inhumanly fast? Then I suggest increasing the eye size a bit.

Pupils: There are three main types of pupils, which are round, vertical, and horizontal. I'll start by saying your vampire does NOT have horizontal pupils. That's prey shit (I love you, goats). Round pupils are most commonly found in diurnal hunters, who often are at a greater distance from the ground and do not need to get as close to their prey do to features such as a jump, like lions, or who prey by exhausting victims, like great canines. However, you will see some round-eued nocturnal exceptions, like the aye-aye, which actually relies more on echolocation. A circular pupil, because of the way the muscle bunches, is the least effective at contracting, so this might give your vampire increased light sensitivity. Nocturnal hunters need pupils that can dilate A LOT to let in light in the dark, and slits are often used because of their effective contracting maneuver. You'll often see slitted pupils in ambush predators (i.e. predatorial animals who wait and catch their prey by surprise) too. These animals are often smaller and less-strong, which is the cause for this hunting style, but if your vampires hunt by ambushing prey, slits might be the way to go.

Pupil bonus: You'll often see pupils dilate when the animal (or even human) is really focusing on something, which can be adorable or super sinister. Watch this cat's eyes to see what I mean.

Color vision: Retinas have rods that process light and cones that process color. A nocturnal animal's retinas are almost entirely rods because color is less important when you're prowling in the dark. The effectranges from the world being comprised entirely of shades of grey to seeing dull and muted versions of the colors we see. Your vampire probably can't distinguish colors that well.

Reflection: Have you ever noticed a cat's eyes glowing in dim lighting? Many animals, especially nocturnal ones, have a layer of tissie behind the retina called the tapetum lucidum, which reflects light like a mirror. When light enters the eye, it's supposed to hit a photoreceptor that transfers information to the brain. However, it sometimes misses this photoreceptor, and as it is absolutely critical for the nocturnal animal to recieve that information to make sense of its environment, the tapetum lucidum offers a second chance by bouncing that light back to the receptor. Your vampire will probably benefit from such a function, and also it looks pretty killer. The amount of pigmentation will affect the color of the glowing effect and so will substances like zinc or riboflavin (vitamin B2) existing inside the tapetum lucidum. Cats will often have eyes that glow green, though Siamese cats' tend toward a yellow. Some animals' can even glow turquoise. Animals of the same breed with the same eye color can even produce different lights. Go wild with what color you make your vampire's eyes glow.

Conclusion: A vampire will have forward-facing eyes, typical of predators to aid in pursuing prey, with irises favoring lighter shades to take in more light in dim environments. Blue is the most sensitive to light and nocturnal predators tend to favor shades of orange, yellow, and green. Animals that run fast tend to have larger eyes to avoid obstacles, so your vampire's eye size will depend on their running speed. A layer of tissue called the tapetum lucidum will likely make your vampire's eyes glow in the dark, tending towards yellows and greens but other colors are possible. Color vision is reduced in nocturnal animals, so vampires will likely experience some form of color blindness. Pupils should be able to dilate considerably to take in more light in dim environments. Slitted pupils contract more to protect against light, so circular pupils will increase your vampire's sensitivity to light. Ambush predators tend to favor slitted pupils so if sneaking around is your vampire's style, they might have slits. It depends on how they process light and how they hunt.

Hearing

We often see vampires with pointed ears in fiction and while that probably takes basis from a vampire's association with bats, there may be an evolutionary benefit for vampires having pointed ears. There are other external ear structures that may make sense for your vampire, but much will be influenced by your narrative.

External ears in many mammalian species, especially prey, can swivel or rotate at least partially. This allows them to pinpoint the direction a noise is coming from. You might be looking for a different mobility in the predatory vampire; asymmetrical hearing is very common in nocturnal species; they will hear separately by tilting one ear forward and one back to hear noises in different directions. Consider a new vampire who can't fully control the movement of their ears.

Predators' ears tend to point forward to aid in pursuing prey.

Cupped external ears take in more sound and are common in nocturnal species, including those that use echolocation. Consider this as a possibility for your vamp, but it is not a necessity.

Some nocturnal animals (and even some blind or visually impaired humans) value hearing over sight and will use echolocation. They will produce a high pitched sound wave with their mouth, or click their tongue (seen in visually impaired humans), which will bounce off of objects to make them aware of their surroundings. They can even tell how big or small the object is with larger things giving off a high intensity and smaller things giving off a low intensity.

Pointed ears don't necessarily hear better, but they can pick up more frequencies than non-pointed ears. They are also more sensitive to changes in air movement and temperature, so they may be able to sense changes in weather before a visual effect is produced.

My vampires hunt on the ground and can't fly, but I have seen flying vampires in some media. If your vampires can fly, take a look at birds of prey; their ear structures allow amazing precision even in flight. Owls tend to have outer ears that are fixed yet asymmetrical. One ear is set forward and one is set back, with the left ear picking up sounds from below while the right picks up sounds from above.

Conclusion: Asymmetrical hearing, which is common in nocturnal animals, will benefit a vampire. Ears will likely point forward. Ears may be cupped to take in more noises or pointed to hear more frequency and sense changes in weather. Consider echolocation if your vampire depends on hearing over sight, and if your vampire can fly, one ear may be positioned forward and one may be positioned back to hear noises above and below.

Olfactory

Sense of smell is very advanced in most mammals, though we humans depend more on sight. I myself have lived with ferrets for five years and I'm what the kids would xall "nose blind". But unlike their human counterparts, vampires typically have a great sense of smell in fiction. They smell your paper cut and they're coming for you. Nocturnal anumals very commonly have a keen sense of smell because of their limited sight.

Animals that rely mostly on smell to hunt their prey are called olfactory predators. You might think that on a windless day, a predator can just follow the smell of a gory carcass, but actually, molecules that carry odors have a tendency to get displaced on a horizontal axis (notice how you can smell that cat box EVERYWHERE?), so the process of zeroing in on the source is a bit trickier. Without wind, it spreads out in a smelly radius and is strongest in the center. The smell is all around inside the radius so it's still hard to figure out where to go. It's actually easier to hunt on a windy day because of the way wind changes the shape of that odor cloud; strong wind means the plume is narrow and directional. If your vampire relies heavily on smell, windy nights are preferable.

Nocturnal animals actually rely more heavily on smell than diurnal animals. A raccoon or fox's sense of smell is as strong as our sight (well, in theory. My glasses would be an inch thick if I didn't pay for compression). This allows them to smell food up to several miles away.

It all depends on how you write your vampires. I can see reasons for your vampire to rely on hearin, rely on knowledge of human behaviors, rely on smell. Your vampire probably knows where humans frequent. However, an advanced sense of smell might allow them to catch humans that are out alone or be sure that their meal is not diseased.

The nose isn't the only structure that smell relies on. Have you ever seen an animal pull back its lips in a sort of grimace? It is actually increasing the intensity of an odor reaching an organ at the roof of its mouth called Jacobson's organ.

Conclusion: Again, it depends on the narrative you create. Does your vampire depend heavily on smell, or more on hearing? Your vampire may have a very advanced sense of smell but hunting prey using your nose has its complications. Pinpointing the sourse of the smell isn't as simple as it sounds. Or, your vampire might not even need to be able to sniff out prey depending on how you write them. Do some thinking. Whatever way you write them, you're not incorrect.

Dental

When we think of vampires, we think of fangs. Sometimes those fangs are retractable, sometimes they're permanent fixtures in the mouth. But what would be most beneficial to a mammal that survives on a liquid diet?

Most similar mammal to vampires in terms of diet is the vampire bat. There are actually three species of vampire bats: the common vampire bat, the hairy-legged vampire bat, and the white-winged fampire bat. All are adorable and have teeth suited to an entirely liquid diet. Few teeth in their heads and all teeth are sharp. No molars are needed to grind food, no incisors to cut food; all canines.

A key difference between vampire bats and vampire hominids is that vampire bats are small and only need a quick nip. Vampires are as large as humans and need at least a few pints, even litres or more a day. Thay means they need to be feeding for more than a few moments. Prey will likely struggle, so vampires need something that will keep their prey from escaping mid-feed. I propose two solutions, the first being a number of needle-like teeth of varying sizes that pierce far into the flesh abd hold the prey in place, as seen below.

Another possibility is a type of paralytic neurotoxin the vampire injects while feeding. The potency of the neurotoxin affects the aftermath. A mild one with effects that are only temporary might leave the prey still able to move very slightly, but struggle is limited greatly. A stronger one causing full-body paralysis could very possibly cause respiratory distress when the chest muscles are paralyzed as well. May numb pain or be excruciating.

Another interesting thing about vampire bats is within their saliva. Vampire bat saliva contains an enzyme that prevents the prey's blood from clotting to keep it flowing right into its mouth. Vampires would benefit from this adaptation.

Conclusion: There are two paths you can take when you go with vampire mouths. If the technique is to hold the victim in place, dental features may be very visibly inhuman with a number of needle-like teeth that pierce the skin like a bear trap. If you want your vampire to have a less freaky mouth or perhaps make them a larger threat, they might naturally inject a neurotoxin into the prey while eating. This neurotoxin attacks the nervous system and causes either partial or full paralysis. Potency will gave different effects. An enzyme within the saliva that prevents blood from clotting may also aid in feeding.

Musculature

We often picture vampires as slight in build yet possessing superhuman strength and speed. Stick with me and don't google "vampire muscle growth". Just don't. You'll find horny deviantartists. A strong and/or fast mammalian species is going to have a physique that supports this.

Speedy vamps: When you think of fast animals, your mindight go to a cheetah. Well a cheetah can reach a top speed of 113kph (70mph), the world's largest goose can fly at 142kph (88mph). That's not really relevant but I'm terrified and needed to tell someone. When looking at fast-running animals, let's look at the cheetah, longhorn antelope, wildebeest, and brown hare - in that order. I've put a visual reference below. Three of these are prey animals and one us a predator, all have different survival techniques, but they have similar physiques, you see? More lean than muscular with long legs.

Animals and humans alike tend to be more speed or more strength. A runner might be able to put up a fight, but running is its main defense or hunting technique (or Olympic skillset). Some can run for longer at a slower pace and tire out their prey. Some run very fast but lack endurance. You'll never outrun a housecat, but humans are built for endurance, so when chasing a naughty runaway cat you're supposed to walk briskly and wait for it to tire out. How does your vampire hunt?

Have you ever seen the charts comparing different athletes? Compare wrestlers Brandon Slay and Rulon Gardner in image one to sprint and longjumper Aimee Mullins and long-distance runner Deena Drossin in image three, marathoners John Kagwe and Joseph Chebet in image five. The wrestlers, based on strength and ability to chase, are broad and bulky while the ones based on speed and/or endurance in running are slim and long-limbed. Runners are rarely super muscular while strength-based musculature tends to be less defined and more bulky compared to bodybuilders whose focus is physique rather than strength. Consider builds when considering your vampire's strength and speed.

Conclusion: Your vampire probably has one main way of hunting. Following and tiring out their prey, ambush attacks that require speed and sneakiness, sprinting after a slower prey, or overpowering the prey when they catch it. Your vampire's physique will depend on its hunting style; runners are slim and long-limbed while fighters have less-defined bulky muscles.

Reproduction

It's generally accepted that vampires "reproduce" by spreading the virus. What happens to human reproduction organs? How is the virus spread?

Reproductive organs: With no use, reproductive organs may atrophy. Testes recede, erectile dysfunction is permanent, sperm and eggs die, ovaries shrivel, menstruation stops entirely (please turn me). It is completely impossible for a vampire to get pregnant or impregnate someone and sexual pleasure is probably reduced or nonexistent.

Hormonal: With atrophied testes abd ovaries, production of sex hormones is extremely limited if not entirely halted. Like children, an AFAB and AMAB vampire will have nearly equal levels of testosterone and estrogen. Facial, pubic, and underarm hair may fall out. Male and female pattern baldness may go away (in some narratives, vampires are fully harless, making fe/male pattern baldness a human peoblem). Body hair is thinner and more sparse, if present. Breast volume is reduced but not fully removed.

AMAB versus AFAB vamps: Vampires will have few, if any, sexual differences besides things like height and bone structure left over from humanity. No difference in strength or ability. Vampires are super equal. Down with sexism.

Spread of vampirism: There are multiple routes you can take with this. It may be carried in the saliva like rabies, infecting at first bite. Some writers, like Anne Rice in her Vampire Chronicles and @/breebird33's awesome Patrik the Vampire, have a sort of blood swap. After the vampire bites the intended target, the target is made to ingest the vampire's blood. Or instead of a paralytic neurotoxin, the vampire's fangs could contain a liquid virus injected into the victim.

Conclusion: Vampires do not reproduce; they infect. Sexual functions are halted, causing infertility and changes in physical characteristics. Testosterone and estrogen even out and AMAB and AFAB vampires have little difference. Instead of reproducing sexually, more vampires are created via spread of the vampiric infection. There are several ways a vampire may spread the virus; through presense in saliva, blood transfers, or infectious venom in their fangs.

Digestion

With vampires being predators, you might think to look at a carnivor's digestive tract. However, carnivores tend to ingest meat while vampires survive on a fully liquid fiet. The focus should be on the hematophagous animals, or animals that consume blood.

A female vampire bat can consume half her weight in blood in a single feeding. It's up to the author how much a vampire should consume. In aome narratives, vampires only need a few ounces at a time. Others, litres. Sometimes more than that. Figure out how much your vampire needs to consume. Does the prey need to die to feed the vampire?

If a vampire drains an entire human in one day, don't you dare tell me they stat a skinny little twig. That's five to eight litres consumed. Where does it all go to? Your vampire should plump up a little at least temporarily. Doesn't need to mean your vampire turns into a sphere like a bedbug blowing up after a feed, but a little bloating would make sense until they've digested it.

Vampire bats' (I'm so sorry I keep talking about vampire bats but I won't stop) stomachs and intestines absorb the water which is quickly transported to the kidneys and bladder. A vampire, too, will likely need to urinate briefly after feeding.

A vampire, living on a fully liquid diet, will have no need to defecate. The colon will atrophy into a vestigial organ that's just kinda there.

Having a big meal, a vampire will need some time to digest. They'll settle down for the day and digest the blood, sans water.

Biology creates a natural protection against pathogens in ingested blood. Or not, if you want a vampire sickfic.

Blood is full of proteins and lipids. Vampires should probably stay away from human food but if they want to chance it, they'd best stick to food high in protein and fats, which their bodies are more used to. Put down that milkshake or you'll regret it. A glass of water won't hurt, maybe they can even have a few bites of steak, but too much sugar or fiber and their body will do its best to expel it to prevent injury via regurgitation.

Conclusion: A vampire's digestive system must adapt to an entirely liquid diet. Function of the colon is lost as vampires will excrete solely through urination, particularly shortly after a meal. Depending on how much a vampire consumes in one feeding, bloating and a long digestion may follow. A natural protection against bloodborne pathogens may or may not be present. Human food should be avoided but foods high in fat and proteins and low in fiber and sigar may not cause TOO MUCH trouble.

Complexion

Vampires are just pale, right? That might work, in theory, if vampirism was only found in European and certain Asian populations, but that wouldn't make any sense. If your dark-skinned vampire turns white I'm out. Not only is that bad science, but it's pretty racist. So what can we do about complexion to keep our undead from looking too lively?

One tumblr user based the change in skin color that affects vampires on livor mortis, or the blueish-purple color seen in dead bodies when there is no circulation, allowing blood to pool.

If you've looked at artistic tutorials, you may have noticed a lot of talk about undertones. Check out this tutorial on skin bases and undertones for a general idea of what I'm talking about. Consider leaving the base skin color the same and changing the undertone to something like blue or grey to give the skin an unnatural coloration without changing it entirely - and do NOT only do this for your dark-skinned characters. You can't have a greyish dark-skinned vampire and then a perfectly normal pretty caucasian character with rosy cheeks or you're uninvited to my birthday party.

Conclusion: Vampires are associated with paleness, but that excludes or whitewashes dark-skinned characters, which is not cool. And also turning your black characters caucasian makes no sense?? But there are two ways I've highlighted to help your vampires look a bit less lively without being racist. You can base the palor off of livor mortis, or the blueish-purple discoloration of skin found in corpses, or you can keep the base skin tone based on pigmentation while changing the undertone to something a bit less lively.

#vampires #vampire whump #vampire whumpee #vampire whumper #monster whump #monster whumper #monster whumpee #monsters #mythology #science fiction #cube talks science #whump

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robininthelabyrinth · 5 years

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Fic: An Internal Affair - Chapter 22 (Ao3 link)

Fandom: The Flash Pairing: Leonard Snart/Barry Allen

Summary: Leonard Snart, the CCPD Captain of Internal Affairs, is known as Captain Cold for a very good reason: He hates corrupt cops with a merciless vengeance, and once you’re on his list, you’re in serious trouble.

His next target?

A CCPD lab tech named Barry Allen who’s developed a suspicious habit of disappearing at random intervals.

—————————————————————————————————

Barry's not fast enough.

He's not sure he even can be fast enough, ever - the thought that Wells might've deliberately sabotaged his development as a speedster, ensuring that he's always going to be second best, has gone through his mind more than once - but he knows he's not fast enough now.

And now is when it matters.

He comes to a brief stop, panting for breath, for the fourth time in the last two minutes. He's being worn down, just trying to keep up with Wells' superior speed, and he knows it.

He wonders if Wells is trying to run him into exhaustion, and only when Barry can no longer move his legs, when his will to move is utterly broken, will Wells destroy everything Barry has ever loved.

His dad.

Iris.

Len.

Wells will kill them all.

He'll kill them all because he knows that promise or no promise, Barry would agree to anything Wells wanted if Wells showed him how to get them all back.

Or maybe - maybe Wells doesn't know that.

Maybe he'll just kill them because he can.

"Slowing down again, Mr. Allen?" Wells tsks, coming to a stop a dozen feet ahead of him. "For shame - and you were so promising when you were under my guidance."

"Still happier not to be," Barry spits at him. He can feel his muscles recovering, happy for the break. "You murderer."

"You take it all so personally," Wells says. "The deaths of these unimportant people. You’re always taking it to heart, even though they lead uninteresting, unimportant lives that ultimately mean nothing. You always have. That's a weakness, you know - a weakness that will always be your undoing -"

The wall behind Wells' head explodes.

Even when you can move at speedster speed, you still need a second to process shock.

Barry, who's further away, gets thrown back a few feet, skittering onto his feet and looking around in confusion - Wells is buried in the rubble, too surprised to dodge it properly, but that's temporary, Barry knows -

"Barry! Come here!"

Iris!

He's at her side in a moment.

"You need to run around Iron Heights," she tells him, breathless. "All around the outside corridors; Snart has a plan. It might hurt you, you can't know what it is, but it has to be done and he's sorry and he loves you."

"Why didn't he tell me himself?" Barry asks, surprised.

Iris smiles. "Because I'm your best friend, Bar; I'm your anchor and he knows that. He knows I'll always be there for you, even when you go and fall in love with the second hottest guy in Central City -"

"Eddie being first?"

"Pssh, Eddie, I'm talking about Rory. Have you seen those muscles?"

"Iris!"

She laughs - Iris, beautiful and wonderful as always, and at last, at last, he can love her whole-heartedly without any jealousy or resentment or longing; Iris, who is his anchor, his lightning rod, and of course Len would know whose voice Barry would be automatically drawn to, of course he knows - and Barry can hear the crackle of lightning that is Wells back on his feet and before Iris even finishes laughing, Barry's off again, twisting to tackle Wells right around the midsection before he goes anywhere near Iris.

And then they're running again.

Only this time, Barry's leading - not because he's faster, no, but because Wells saw him heading away and followed, drawn after him like a moth to the flame.

"Where are you going, Barry Allen?" he calls, mocking, darting in front of Barry's path to try to trip him up. Barry dodges and keeps going. "I never took you for a coward!"

Barry grits his teeth and focuses on running. He's not as fast. He needs every ounce of willpower just to stay ahead.

Not that Wells is trying to stop him, not really.

Clearly mockery is much more fun.

"Run, Barry, run," Wells calls, his voice jovial, "Yes, run away from me! Just like you always have - from the very beginning!"

The man who murdered Barry's mom.

The man who put Barry's dad into a cage – into the prison where he spent half of Barry’s childhood and into the cage where he is right now both.

The man who is going to kill everyone if Barry doesn’t find a way to stop him.

Run, Barry, run.

"I'm not stupid, you know," Wells says conversationally, only a foot or two behind Barry now. "I know what you're up to."

Crap. How?!

"You can't hide anything from me," Wells says. "I've been studying you my whole life - even in the far future, before I ever met you."

"Creep," Barry can't resist saying.

"And once I met you, well, that just made it easier," Wells says, the flash of red lightning from his eyes the only sign he heard what Barry said. "For someone who lies as much and as effectively as you do, Barry Allen, you really are an open book to anyone who knows you."

Wells - Eobard Thawne - is probably right.

He knows Barry.

But Barry never knew him - not until it was too late.

Just the way Wells wanted it.

And yet -

Wells is still running.

So the plan, whatever it is, is still on.

Barry focuses on running.

"I know you," Wells says again. "You'd never run from me, not really. You've been running to me your entire life, Barry. The Man in Yellow, the genius of STAR Labs, your mentor...I'm everything to you."

Seriously, does Wells not get how creepy he sounds?

"And you, Barry Allen, are everything to me -"

Yeah, no, he's definitely doing the creepy thing on purpose in an attempt to get under Barry's skin.

It's working pretty well.

"- because you're my only way home. And you're going to get me there."

"I'm really, really not," Barry says. He's panting again, damnit. He really hopes whatever plan Len's working on won't take much longer. "Why would you think I'd help you? After everything you've done?"

"Because that way we'd both win! Yes, I killed your mother, but I also give you a chance to get her back!"

Those things are really not equal and Barry has no idea why Wells thinks they are. A lifetime without his mom, versus a chance to destroy every important relationship he's built during that lifetime and possibly himself to save her?

Okay, Barry's not going to lie, he's super tempted.

But they're not the same.

Only a psychopath who doesn't actually understand that the worth of a person is in the time you get to spend with them would think that they were.

And anyway, Barry promised Len he wouldn't.

He's really glad he did, too, because otherwise he might've fallen for Wells' bullshit the way he always has, and then Wells would get everything he'd ever wanted.

Everything he's done, all of that horror and death, would actually have been worth it, in Wells' eyes.

And there'd be no reason that he wouldn't just keep going.

Keep killing.

For all of time.

"Know this, Barry Allen," Wells says. "You will help me achieve what I want. Whatever stupid little plan you and your friends have concocted -"

He doesn't know what it is!

...probably because Barry doesn't know what it is.

Good plan, Len.

Barry knows that there’s probably something bad at the end of it, but he also knows that Len is cold enough to make the call he needs to. He knows that Len knows him well enough to know that Barry would agree to anything, anything at all, if it meant stopping Wells.

Stopping Wells is worth anything, even Barry's life.

Barry just really hopes it doesn't end up killing him before he can tell Len that it would be worth it, because Len will feel awful about it, just the way he felt awful about Mick, and that would suck.

“- just know that it won’t be enough to stop me,” Wells continues. “It will never be enough.”

Is he still talking?

Ugh.

Can’t a guy have a minute for some introspection about his boyfriend right before he potentially dies? Seriously.

They keep running the endless loops around Iron Heights. It's all vacant, now, with all the cons having slipped out and most of the guards safely evacuated as well, so the only time Barry sees anyone is when he passes by the room his friends are in.

Even in that room, though, the speed he's running at makes it seem almost unreal - a series of snapshots, separated by a few seconds, like one of those spinning visor toys that mimics video.

Snap: Mick raising his gun as Nimbus looms above him.

Snap: Mick's gun blasting out a giant wave of flame, all at once.

Snap: Nimbus alight, screaming, a gaseous form lashing out with tentacles aflame.

Snap: Mick ducks.

Snap: One of Nimbus' now-partially-solid 'arms' whips into Mick's belly.

Snap: Mick goes flying, his midsection aflame.

Snap: Kara catches him.

Snap: Mick's midsection is somehow covered by a thin layer of frost.

(Yeah, Barry has no idea how that happened either - he's clearly missed something.)

Or take Iris, instead -

Well, no, it's not quite the same thing. Barry got one snap of Iris standing triumphantly over Tony Woodward's semi-conscious frame, that's basically going to be his mental screensaver from now until he heals from his middle school trauma.

So, like, forever.

After that, though, Iris ran over to help Eddie fight Mark Mardon, which Barry personally thought was not exactly good news. Mardon hates Joe West, might know who Iris West is, and he literally caused a tsunami.

As much as Barry loves Iris, neither she nor Eddie has powers. They shouldn't be fighting Mark Mardon.

Except apparently they should be, because less than ten rounds later they're no longer fighting - he's helping them move wires around or something.

No, Barry has no idea what’s going on there.

He doesn't even know where those wires came from!

Maybe they have something to do with the plan?

Maybe Len is off getting more wires.

That would explain why in all the snaps so far, Barry still hasn't seen him - not since he started running.

Barry would really like to see him.

Especially if he's going to die.

Damn, Barry's a superhero, he should get a dramatic last moment. Ideally with a nice goodbye kiss.

Ideally with magic resurrection happening five minutes later, while he's daydreaming.

Which he shouldn't be, because he's in the middle of a supervillain boss battle against the guy who killed his mom.

Bad time to let your mind drift.

Personally, Barry blames the running - he's always found it easy to daydream while he's running -

"In the end you will come to understand -"

Holy crap, Wells is still talking!

"Seriously?" Barry demands, not breaking pace. "Could you can the monologue already? It doesn't matter what you say -" Like Barry was even listening. "- it doesn't change a thing! I'm never going to help you get back to your time period!"

"Oh, you will," Wells says. "You see, because of your refusal to help me, I'm going to brutally murder every one of your friends - and it'll be your fault that they die."

Ouch. Right in the sore spot.

"And because I'm a speedster, too, I can keep you from going back to save them - let the timeline settle - make it permanent - or, at least, permanent enough for you to only be able to change it if you agree to aid me. What do you think about that, Barry Allen?"

"Honestly," Barry says, "it's about what I thought you were going to say, so - mostly bored?"

"Bored?!"

"It's the running," Barry says, faux-apologetically. "I'm so used to daydreaming, my mind drifts if there isn't anything worth paying attention to -"

Why yes, Barry can do some damn good passive-aggressive bullshit if he does say so himself.

(He might be an Allen, but he was raised a West.)

Wells looks murderous, which to be fair is how he normally looks when Barry is tweaking his nose, so Barry takes the moment to leap onto the wall and catapult himself forward for a little speed advantage.

That gets Wells' attention back on the race.

But he's still scowling, still murderous, and if Barry doesn't keep his attention, he's going to stop and Len's plan, whatever it is, will be ruined.

He has to keep running.

All his life, everything he loves, comes down to this race.

He runs.

"Faster, Barry!" he hears Iris shout.

He stops daydreaming, puts his head down, and runs faster.

Faster and faster, till he's going as fast as he can go -

"Faster, Barry!"

That was Len.

Huh, look at that.

Looks like Barry can go faster.

Even Wells is concentrating now, mockery gone as he focuses on keeping pace, his eyes crackling red lightning, his steak of light besides Barry's.

Faster, Barry.

Faster.

"Run, Barry," he hears his dad say. "Run."

(Run, Barry! his mom shouts in his mind. Run!)

Barry puts everything he's got into his legs.

His heart, his soul, his mind -

Everything he's got.

He runs.

He doesn't even see snapshots of his friends anymore - it's all blurring together around him, streaks of light turning into smears of color. It's beautiful and unearthly, an impressionist painting gone mad, and it's something Barry knows at once he'll never be able to show anyone who isn't a speedster, that this is their secret alone. This is how it looks when he's about to travel in time, but there's no other-Barry running beside him to signal that he's broken that barrier, no sign of any time travel, of any anomaly.

Just Barry.

"The Speed Force!" Wells hisses behind him, his voice half-awed, half-jealous, and Barry realizes that this is what Wells couldn't achieve on his own: this detached euphoria, this moment where his mind is empty, his heart is at peace, and everything he is has been given over to the pure act of running.

Where everything, everything at all, is speed.

There's no space for other people here. No room for fear, no room for care - no room for anything at all.

It's suddenly easy. The running, the movement - it locks into place, a runner's high like no other, and suddenly Barry feels like he could do this forever. It's all clear now: how he could run through time if he wanted, how he could return Wells to his time or to go back and rescue his mother in hers, how Barry could do whatever he wanted, but why would he ever want to?

Why would he ever do anything but keep running?

Keep running.

Keep accelerating.

Keep moving.

No one can touch him here. No one can hurt him, or disappoint him, and make him vulnerable. No one to make him care about them. No one to disturb his perfect equilibrium, no one to knock him off his stride, no one to make him stop.

Perpetual motion.

Perpetual speed.

Perpetual peace.

And no one can touch him again, not even another speedster, because Wells is trapped in his own euphoria just beside Barry - visible but separate - distant - and who cares, anyway? This is why Wells doesn't care, Barry suddenly understands, this is why he murders with impunity those people who could never understand this, because what's it worth, what's any of life worth, in comparison to this bliss, this unending perfection? Nothing else matters, not anymore. All that matters is here and now.

All that matters is the speed, the joy of running, the ecstasy of acceleration, because he's left everything else behind.

He couldn't leave this place even if he wanted to, but why would he want to? All there is for him outside of here is pain -

"Barry!"

Len.

Len's voice, not strong but certain, splitting through the indifference of perfect, empty, vacant bliss like a lightning bolt.

Len, who is waiting for him; Len, who is counting on him; Len, who hurt him -

Len, who loves him.

Love.

That's what this place is lacking, this 'Speed Force' that Wells wanted to reach so much, this place of pure joy.

It lacks love.

Because love isn't all joy, no, it's terrible and wonderful, painful even when it's good: it's the heartbreak and the reconciliation, the cold loneliness of missing someone and the fireworks of seeing them again, it's the inside of your lungs being squeezed out of you because you're so happy to see someone, it's your throat catching and choking on emotion so thoroughly fused that you don't know if it's good or bad, it's every tear you've ever shed for love coming back all at once - the agony and the ecstasy both.

Love.

Barry loves Len.

And if he stays here forever, he'll never see him again.

No!

"Barry!"

That's not Len - that's Iris.

Iris, his best friend, his past love, the one who he first began to love when he was a child and never stopped. The person who knows him best, the one who'll always be there for him, the one who has his back even when she's breaking his heart.

Love.

"Barry!"

Dad.

God, Dad. Barry might have lost his mom for good at age eleven, but he lost his dad as well - every holiday soured by their absence, every birthday bittersweet. Speaking to him only through glass, sadness drowning him but unwilling to give it up because the joy of seeing his dad, even like this, was so much greater. Telling him the best and worst parts of Barry's life, telling him about school and becoming a CSI and the hope that burned in Barry's heart - burned hot and ugly and painful, but a fire he tended to faithfully no matter how it hurt him - the hope of putting this wrong right one day.

Love.

"Barry!"

His friends. Friends already made and held dear; friends only in potential - Cisco, Caitlin, Kara, Mick - people he knows and people he can't wait to get to know. The fear of the unknown warring with the excitement of discovery.

Love.

Barry's anchors are all here.

So is Barry.

And suddenly, leaving the Speed Force behind is the easiest thing Barry's ever done.

Suddenly he’s just running again – strong and without pause, suddenly filled with more energy than he’s ever had before, but he’s not trapped in that blank trance, the nothingness and emptiness and loneliness of being utterly alone.

“Barry.”

That’s Len’s voice again.

Len –

“I’m sorry, Barry,” Len says, and his voice is anguished. “Ramon, Rathaway, hit it!”

Ramon is Cisco, yes, but Rathaway? Isn’t that Hartley Rathaway, the one Cisco’s been calling the Pied Piper? What is he doing here?

And why did Len say he was sorry –

The world explodes.

It’s like being hit by lightning all over again. Not pain, exactly, just shock: every synapse blazing at once, every sensation - good bad mediocre - all bleeding together the way the light had earlier, hitting every single sense - touch sight sound smell taste - all at once as if the sensitivity of every single input in his body suddenly got turned up to eleven and he can feel it but at the same time his brain is just unable to process it all and opting to just give up, shutting down, going from color to black and he can't see and he can't hear and -

And suddenly he's tripping and falling and the world is spinning, spinning, spinning and everything in his body - mind belly brain - all seized by the strongest sense of vertigo he's ever experienced.

His stomach roils, his brain screams, his muscles spasm -

And then it's over.

Whatever "it" was.

Honestly, Barry couldn't give a damn what it was; he's just happy that it stopped. He's still dizzy, still a little nauseous, but it's fading; he's still shivering and shaking a bit, but that overwhelming shockwave of sensation is gone; and sure, he's a bit sore all over but hey, he's not falling anymore.

So, in summary: he's sitting (well, lying) still, he's not about to throw up, he sees nothing but darkness behind his closed eyes, and his brain isn't on fire.

All good important things that Barry really hasn't appreciated properly up until now.

He’s going to appreciate them now. At length. While continuing to lie down and not move, because not moving sounds great right about now.

At least until his ears stop ringing.

" - arry!"

Someone needs him.

Ugggggh.

They always need him. Barry really needs to learn how to say no to things.

Maybe Len could give him lessons.

Sexy lessons.

Mmmm.

"Barry!"

Oh, okay, fine. He's getting up already. Stop yelling.

Barry cracks an eye open.

The world is blurry at first, which is a bit concerning, but then it all stabilizes back into a depressing blank grey slate roof. Very prison decor.

...because he is, in fact, in a prison.

It all comes back to him in a rush: Iron Heights! His dad! Wells! The Speed Force! Wells about to murder everyone!

Barry's eyes shoot open and he starts trying to scramble to his feet, except he feels heavy and slow and clumsy and -

"Barry, are you okay?" Iris demands. She's kneeling beside him, Len right next to her, and they're both pushing him down from getting up.

His two favorite people, yay.

"I'm fine," Barry says, though he's pretty sure it comes out as something more like "Mmfin."

"Are you in pain?" Len demands, looking pale and guilty and -

Oh, right, the plan.

The "it might hurt."

The "I'm sorry" that Barry still doesn't entirely understand.

"I'm fine," he says again, forcing himself to enunciate clearly. "What happened? Was that the plan?"

"Yeah," Len says, still looking distressed. "But you're sure you're okay? No pain?"

"Just dizzy," Barry assures him. "Wells..?"

"He's waking up!" Cisco yelps. "Guys! Someone! Do something!"

Len and Iris turn immediately, Barry forcing himself up to a sitting position - with some help from both Len and Iris - to see as well.

Wells is, in fact, waking up. Worse, he's getting up - grimacing with an expression that suggests he's got some of the same nausea and vertigo that Barry had, but that he's powering through it.

"Whatever you did," he rasps, his eyes fixed on Barry, "it won't be enough. You can't stop me."

And then he runs straight at Barry.

Except -

He isn't moving at super speed.

He's just - running.

At regular speed.

He stops the second he realizes, coming to a half only a few steps away from them. "What have you done?" he shrieks.

"Holy crap that actually worked," Cisco marvels.

"Of course it worked," Hartley sniffs. And then, begrudgingly, he adds, "When we put our heads together, everything we do works."

Cisco looks thunderstruck. "Uh," he says. "Yeah. Definitely."

"Can someone catch me up to what happened?" Barry asks.

"You remember how Ramon installed a miniature version of the Accelerator in Iron Heights to keep the metas in?" Len asks.

"Yeah?"

"We exploded it."

"You what?" Wells shouts. “You did what?!”

"Technically," Hartley says, smirking at Wells, "we just followed your lead, O captain - after all, you were the one who designed the Accelerator to explode if it got overpowered."

"Say, by two speedsters racing through an environment not built to tolerate it the way STAR Labs is," Cisco says. "Barry, remember how your powers disappeared when Blackout hit you with his lightning drain? Like that, just - bigger."

Barry blinks. "So - my powers - they're gone?"

"Theoretically, yeah," Cisco says apologetically. "We needed you and Wells to over-power the Accelerator, so we couldn’t shield you from the blast. We theorized that the second blast would nullify the dark matter in your system -"

"Or blow your head up," Hartley says cheerfully. "One or the other."

"They're gone," Barry repeats blankly. "I'm - normal again."

He doesn't feel like he's normal again.

He doesn't really see no-powers as "normal" for him anymore.

Wait. If his powers are gone -

He looks over to where Wells is standing, his mouth hanging open in shock.

"Wells' powers should be gone, too," Iris confirms.

"Now we can arrest him," Len adds. "Bring him to justice - free your dad -"

"No!" Wells shrieks, and then he moves - not a speedster, but fast and unexpected, darting down to the ground and back up and suddenly he has Cisco's discarded vibration gun in his hands. "I'll see you all dead first -"

Len brings his crutch down on Wells' head.

Wells collapses onto the floor, unconscious.

Everyone stares at Len.

"What?" he asks. "I told you they make good weapons!"

Kara starts laughing first, but Barry's right there behind her, and it's only a few minutes before everyone else is cracking up, too.

"Not to interrupt," Barry's dad says archly. "But as funny as this is, could someone please let me out of this cage?"

"On it!" Caitlin says, grabbing the vibration gun from where Wells dropped it and heading over.

"On that note," Mardon says dryly, "I'm gonna duck out before you decide to put me back in prison. I wanna get in a few hits on the Families before I leave town."

"Just keep it to Families," Kara warns. "Or we'll find you and stop you."

Mardon snorts. "Whatever. You already took my powers. What more you gonna do?"

"Iron Heights's regular wing ain't that much fun, either," Len drawls. "Go on, get."

"How come he agreed to help?" Barry asks as Mardon jogs out of the room. "Didn’t sticking around mean he'd lose his powers, too?"

"He really hates Wells," Hartley says dryly. "And he's not alone." He shakes his head. "I'd better catch up with him; I'm probably his only means of transportation out of here."

"It was - weirdly fun working with you," Cisco offers hesitantly. "Like, when it's too much of an emergency for you to be a dick. So, you know, if there's another emergency - not that I want another emergency -"

"I'll call you," Hartley interrupts. "Maybe we can see how we work together when Wells isn't playing us against each other."

"Yeah! Yeah. That."

"See you around, Ramon."

He leaves.

"All things considered, leaving's not the worst idea in the world," Mick says, reaching down and scooping Wells over his shoulder like an unwieldy sack of potatoes. "City's on fire, the people are rioting, the Families and the Feds are brawling in the street, and I'm pretty sure the boss authorized all of it."

"...on second thought, maybe I should’ve let Wells get me," Len says, looking mildly horrified.

"You're not dying," Kara says. "Not after all this effort!"

"Wait, we have to do more?" Cisco asks. "But we already defeated Wells!"

"The city's still going crazy," Eddie points out. "Our job doesn't end until peace is restored."

"That's why being a pig is a shit job," Mick says wisely.

"I'm going to recruit you into the CCPD," Eddie tells him.

"Don't you fucking dare."

"You did good work here -"

"Stop!"

"- probably great with scaring kids straight -"

"Kids?!"

"Mick, he's pulling your leg," Len says. "Stop letting him."

"I don't know," Iris says thoughtfully. "If he’s not going to be a thief anymore, he does need a new job now -"

"That can wait till later," Mick says quickly. "City to finish rescuing, remember? Besides, this guy needs to go somewhere secure 'till the boss can read him his rights."

"Detective Thawne can do that," Len says hastily. "I'm sure it'll be cathartic and all, what with him being his ancestor."

Eddie looks at him, his lips starting to curl up into a grin. "Captain, I hope you don't mind me asking -"

"That ain't a good way to start a sentence."

"- but have you ever read anyone their Miranda rights? Do you even know what they are?"

A moment of silence.

"...I've had them read to me a bunch of times?" Len offers.

That sets them all off laughing again.

"I know what they all are!" Len is protesting when Barry finally manages, with the help of Iris, to get up. "I know them inside and out - probably better than any of you - it's just that saying them feels weird, that's all -"

Barry taps him on the shoulder.

Len looks at him.

"Barry," he says, levity suddenly gone. His eyes are intent on Barry's face, his expression solemn, and suddenly Barry can barely breathe with how much he loves him. It's like the entire world just shrinks down until there's no one there but them. "Barry - your powers - I -"

"Screw my powers," Barry says, interrupting. "We did it. We beat the bad guy. Together."

"But -"

"You didn't betray me," Barry says, because he knows Len well enough to know what's bothering him. "You knew how I felt about defeating Wells and I trusted you to do what needed to be done - and you did."

"You trust me," Len repeats.

"Yes," Barry says. "Because I love you."

Len breaks into a smile. "Yeah," he says. "And you ain't too shabby, either."

Barry laughs, pulls him into his arms, and kisses him.

Len kisses him back.

And it's - perfect.

Not the empty vacant perfection of the Speed Force, but a real perfection: love and joy and relief and pleasure and the hope of a future to come, a future together, a future untainted by the threat of Wells.

That sounds pretty much perfect to Barry.

Someone clears their throat.

Barry ignores them.

Someone clears their throat a second time, and this time taps Barry's shoulder, too.

Barry really doesn't want to stop kissing Len.

But then again, if he stops just long enough to tell whoever it is to buzz off, he'll be able to get back to kissing Len in an uninterrupted manner.

Barry pulls away reluctantly.

Then he turns his head and -

Oh.

It's his dad.

It's his dad!

His dad just saw him making out with his boyfriend!

"So, Barry," Henry Allen says, his eyes dancing with mischief. "Are you going to introduce me to Mr. Snart here, or am I going to have to call on our previous acquaintance from back when he was a fellow inmate?"

Oh god.

His dad just saw Barry making out with his boyfriend before Barry's even introduced them and he thinks Barry’s boyfriend is a felon!

"I'm a police captain now, actually," Len says.

"Really? That's nice."

"Yeah. Your son's pretty nice, too."

"I know he is. I'd offer to shake your hand, but you seem pretty reluctant to get it off his ass."

"He has a very nice ass," Len says, even as Barry buries his head in his hands. "One of the many nice things about him, really."

"Please," Barry says. "Both of you - just stop talking."

He considers.

"Also, erase the last five minutes from your memories," he instructs. "I refuse to let this be how you two meet."

"Too late," Iris cackles. "We've all seen it now. This is already filed, documented, and going into the Barry Allen File Of Embarrassing Moments forever."

"No!"

"Is that a real thing?" Mick asks.

"We're breaking it out for his wedding rehearsal dinner," Iris says.

"Really. Say, boss, would you consider -"

"Mick. Finish that sentence and I punch you in the face."

"Yeah," Barry says, unable to resist. "Because as an unquestioned authority in the subject, I can tell you that that would definitely be moving too fast."

Len kisses him again, just for that.

#coldflash #barry allen #leonard snart #eobard thawne #iris west #henry allen #cisco ramon #Caitlin snow #kara danvers #mick rory #mark mardon #hartley rathaway #my fic #an internal affair

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