#legal printing & scanning

[signorpaolinopaperino]

Hellooo! I'm back with a small update. I'm (slowly) uploading all of the Original X Mickey issues and stories to the internet archive! You can find everything that I've added so far here: https://archive.org/details/@whitemouseinn

Eventually you should be able to read each issue on the archive without downloading, but it takes a while to process so check back in a few days/hours if its not available yet.

They're all in the original Italian, unedited (as far as i know). I left the scans as-is, nothing has been cleaned up. If you want to download these scans for your own translations (or to just re-upload elsewhere), please go ahead!

[ot3]

heartbreaking news. between this, tougher crackdown on illegal tv streaming sites (kimcartoon has just permanently gone down), coming after scanlation sites, and the general moral panic around AI having people actually root for wider nets and stricter enforcement of copyright/ip law, i have a feeling the state of art and media online is going to get much much worse.

the precedent this sets for what people are allowed to do with physical print books they own is absolutely horrible, since there is nothing the Internet Archive loaned out that they didn't have a 1:1 legally acquired physical copy of before digitizing.

“This appeal presents the following question: Is it ‘fair use’ for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety, and distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free, subject to a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given time, all without authorization from the copyright-holding publishers or authors? Applying the relevant provisions of the Copyright Act as well as binding Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent, we conclude the answer is no,” the decision states. [...] “This characterization confuses IA’s practices with traditional library lending of print books. IA does not perform the traditional functions of a library; it prepares derivatives of Publishers’ Works and delivers those derivatives to its users in full,” the court held. “Whether it delivers the copies on a one-to-one owned-to-loaned basis or not, IA’s recasting of the Works as digital books is not transformative.”

i hope all of the authors who went to bat for taking books away from the public don't know a moment of peace for the rest of their careers lol. i hope it was worth solidifying the publishing industry's grip on the entire sphere of literature just to get a few extra royalty pennies in your pockets.

[k12academics]

PlanIT Print Works is the leading Desert Digital Print provider and we provide a different class of service. Sure we deliver high-quality work, we get it right the first time and we meet deadlines. To us, that's the minimum standard. Our commitment to you and your project starts well before the order. Our goal is to understand your project from the start so we can offer the best print solution for your specific needs. Adding value for you is our expression of A Different Class of Service. We handle all types of jobs - small, commercial, B2B, and custom digital creations. Serving Palm Desert, Palm Springs, La Quinta, Indio, Thousand Palms, Cathedral City, Indian Wells, Bermuda Dunes, Rancho Mirage and surrounding areas in the Coachella Valley. Check out our showroom and see what we have to offer!

We got you covered, whether you need reprographics, blueprint printing, commercial printing, large format printing, architectural plans, construction plans, digital prints, banners, branded signs, business cards, flyers, photo printing, marketing material, custom print creations, displays+signage, tradeshow displays, convention displays and more. We're more than just print guys! We are one part production house, one part creative studio.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

It was all downhill after the Cuecat

Sometime in 2001, I walked into a Radio Shack on San Francisco’s Market Street and asked for a Cuecat: a handheld barcode scanner that looked a bit like a cat and a bit like a sex toy. The clerk handed one over to me and I left, feeling a little giddy. I didn’t have to pay a cent.

The Cuecat was a good idea and a terrible idea. The good idea was to widely distribute barcode scanners to computer owners, along with software that could read and decode barcodes; the company’s marketing plan called for magazines and newspapers to print barcodes alongside ads and articles, so readers could scan them and be taken to the digital edition. To get the Cuecat into widespread use, the company raised millions in the capital markets, then mass-manufactured these things and gave them away for free at Radio Shacks around the country. Every Wired and Forbes subscriber got one in the mail!

That was the good idea (it’s basically a prototype for today’s QR-codes). The terrible idea was that this gadget would spy on you. Also, it would only work with special barcodes that had to be licensed from the manufacturer. Also, it would only work on Windows.

https://web.archive.org/web/20001017162623/http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2000/nf20000928_029.htm

But the manufacturer didn’t have the last word! Not at all. A couple of enterprising hardware hackers — Pierre-Philippe Coupard and Michael Rothwell — tore down a Cuecat, dumped its ROM, and produced their own driver for it — a surveillance-free driver that worked with any barcode. You could use it to scan the UPCs on your books or CDs or DVDs to create a catalog of your media; you could use it to scan UPCs on your groceries to make a shopping list. You could do any and every one of these things, because the Cuecat was yours.

Cuecat’s manufacturer, Digital Convergence, did not like this at all. They sent out legal demand letters and even shut down some of the repositories that were hosting alternative Cuecat firmware. They changed the license agreement that came with the Cuecat software CD to prohibit reverse-engineering.

http://www.cexx.org/cuecat.htm

It didn’t matter, both as a practical matter and as a matter of law. As a practical matter, the (ahem) cat was out of the bag: there were so many web-hosting companies back then, and people mirrored the code to so many of them, the company would have its hands full chasing them all down and intimidating them into removing the code.

Then there was the law: how could you impose license terms on a gift? How could someone be bound by license terms on a CD that they simply threw away without ever opening it, much less putting it in their computer?

https://slashdot.org/story/00/09/18/1129226/digital-convergence-changes-eula-and-gets-cracked

In the end, Cuecat folded and sold off its remaining inventory. The early 2000s were not a good time to be a tech company, much less a tech company whose business model required millions of people to meekly accept a bad bargain.

Back then, tech users didn’t feel any obligation to please tech companies’ shareholders: if they backed a stupid business, that was their problem, not ours. Venture capitalists were capitalists — if they wanted us give to them according to their need and take from them according to their ability, they should be venture communists.

Last August, philosopher and Centre for Technomoral Futures director Shannon Vallor tweeted, “The saddest thing for me about modern tech’s long spiral into user manipulation and surveillance is how it has just slowly killed off the joy that people like me used to feel about new tech. Every product Meta or Amazon announces makes the future seem bleaker and grayer.”

https://twitter.com/ShannonVallor/status/1559659655097376768

She went on: “I don’t think it’s just my nostalgia, is it? There’s no longer anything being promised to us by tech companies that we actually need or asked for. Just more monitoring, more nudging, more draining of our data, our time, our joy.”

https://twitter.com/ShannonVallor/status/1559663985821106177

Today on Tumblr, @wilwheaton​ responded: “[T]here is very much no longer a feeling of ‘How can this change/improve my life?’ and a constant dread of ‘How will this complicate things as I try to maintain privacy and sanity in a world that demands I have this thing to operate.’”

https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/698603648058556416/cory-doctorow-if-you-see-this-and-have-thoughts

Wil finished with, “Cory Doctorow, if you see this and have thoughts, I would LOVE to hear them.”

I’ve got thoughts. I think this all comes back to the Cuecat.

When the Cuecat launched, it was a mixed bag. That’s generally true of technology — or, indeed, any product or service. No matter how many variations a corporation offers, they can never anticipate all the ways that you will want or need to use their technology. This is especially true for the users the company values the least — poor people, people in the global south, women, sex workers, etc.

That’s what makes the phrase “So easy your mom can use it” particularly awful “Moms” are the kinds of people whose priorities and difficulties are absent from the room when tech designers gather to plan their next product. The needs of “moms” are mostly met by mastering, configuring and adapting technology, because tech doesn’t work out of the box for them:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/19/the-weakest-link/#moms-are-ninjas

(As an alternative, I advocate for “so easy your boss can use it,” because your boss gets to call up the IT department and shout, “I don’t care what it takes, just make it work!” Your boss can solve problems through raw exercise of authority, without recourse to ingenuity.)

Technology can’t be understood separately from technology users. This is the key insight in Donald Norman’s 2004 book Emotional Design, which argued that the ground state of all technology is broken, and the overarching task of tech users is to troubleshoot the things they use:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/29/banjo-nazis/#cuckoos-egg

Troubleshooting is both an art and a science: it requires both a methodical approach and creative leaps. The great crisis of troubleshooting is that the more frustrated and angry you are, the harder it is to be methodical or creative. Anger turns attention into a narrow tunnel of brittle movements and thinking.

In Emotional Design, Norman argues that technology should be beautiful and charming, because when you like a technology that has stopped working, you are able to troubleshoot it in an expansive, creative, way. Emotional Design was not merely remarkable for what it said, but for who said it.

Donald Norman, after all, was the author of the hugely influential 1998 classic The Design of Everyday Things, which counseled engineers and designers to put function over form — to design things that work well, even if that meant stripping away ornament and sidelining aesthetics.

https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/don-norman/the-design-of-everyday-things/9780465050659/

With Emotional Design, Norman argued that aesthetics were functional, because aesthetics primed users to fix the oversights and errors and blind spots of designers. It was a manifesto for competence and humility.

And yet, as digital technology has permeated deeper into our lives, it has grown less configurable, not more. Companies today succeed where Cuecat failed. Consolidation in the online world means that if you remove a link from one search engine and four social media sites, the material in question vanishes for 99% of internet users.

It’s even worse for apps: anyone who succeeds in removing an app from two app stores essentially banishes it from the world. One mobile platform uses technological and legal countermeasures to make it virtually impossible to sideload an app; the other one relies on strong-arm tactics and deceptive warnings to do so.

That means that when a modern Coupard and Rothwell decides to unfuck some piece of technology — to excise the surveillance and proprietary media requirements, leaving behind the welcome functionality — they can only do so with the sufferance of the manufacturer. If the manufacturer doesn’t like an add-on, mod, plug-in or overlay, they can use copyright takedowns, anticircumvention law, patent threats, trademark threats, cybersecurity law, contract law and other “IP” to simply banish the offending code:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Many of these laws carry dire penalties. For example, distributing a tool that bypasses an “access control” so that you can change the software on a gadget (say, to make your printer accept third-party ink) is a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA, punishable by a $500k fine and a 5-year prison sentence.

If Cuecat’s manufacturers had simply skinned their firmware with a thin scrim of DRM, they could have threatened Coupard and Rothwell with prison sentences. The developments in “IP” over the two decades since the Cuecat have conjured up a new body of de facto law that Jay Freeman calls “felony contempt of business model.”

Once we gave companies the power to literally criminalize the reconfiguration of their products, everything changed. In the Cuecat era, a corporate meeting to plan a product that acted against its users’ interests had to ask, “How will we sweeten the pot and/or obfuscate our code so that our users don’t remove the anti-features we’re planning to harm them with?”

But in a world of Felony Contempt of Business Model, that discussion changes to “Given that we can literally imprison anyone who helps our users get more out of this product, how can we punish users who are disloyal enough to simply quit our service or switch away from our product?”

That is, “how can we raise the switching costs of our products so that users who are angry at us keep using our products?” When Facebook was planning its photos product, they deliberately designed it to tempt users into making it the sole repository of their family photos, in order to hold those photos ransom to keep Facebook users from quitting for G+:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Companies claim that their lock-in strategies are about protecting their users: “Move into our walled garden, for it is a fortress, whose battlements bristle with fearsome warriors who will defend you from the bandits who roam the countryside”:

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

But this “feudal security” offers a terrible temptation to the lords of these fortresses, because once you are inside those walls, the fortress can easily be converted to a prison: these companies can abuse you with impunity, for so long as the cost of the abuse is less than the cost of the things you must give up when you leave.

The tale that companies block you from overriding their decisions is for your own good was always dubious, because companies simply can’t anticipate all the ways their products will fail you. No design team knows as much about your moment-to-moment struggles as you do.

But even where companies are sincere in their desire to be the most benevolent of dictators, the gun on the mantelpiece in Act I is destined to go off by Act III: eventually, the temptation to profit by hurting you will overpower whatever “corporate ethics” once stayed the hand of the techno-feudalist who rules over your fortress. Under feudal security, you are one lapse in corporate leadership from your protector turning into your tormentor.

When Apple launched the Ipad 12 years ago, I published an editorial entitled “Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either),” in which I predicted that app stores would inevitable be turned against users:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

Today, Apple bans apps if they “use…a third-party service” unless they “are specifically permitted to do so under the service’s terms of use.” In other words, Apple specifically prohibits developers from offering tools that displease other companies’ shareholders, no matter whether this pleases Apple customers:

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#intellectual-property

Note that clause 5.2.2 of Apple’s developer agreement doesn’t say “You mustn’t violate a legally enforceable term of service.” It just says, “Thou shalt not violate a EULA.” EULAs are garbage-novellas of impenetrable legalese, larded with unenforceable and unconscionable terms.

Apple sometimes will displease other companies on your behalf. For example, it instituted a one-click anti-tracking setting for Ios that cost Facebook $10 billion in a matter of months:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-privacy-change-will-cost-10-billion-this-year.html

But Apple also has big plans to expand its margins by growing its own advertising network. When Apple customers choose ad-blockers that block Apple’s ads, will Apple permit it?

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-is-an-ad-company-now/

The problem with app stores isn’t whether your computing experience is “curated” — that is, whether entities you trust can produce collections of software they vouch for. The problem is when you can’t choose someone else — when leaving a platform involves high switching costs, whether that’s having to replace hardware, buy new media, or say goodbye to your friends, customers, community or family.

When a company can leverage its claims to protecting you to protect itself from you — from choices you might make that ultimately undermine its shareholders interests, even if they protect your own interests — it would be pretty goddamned naive to expect it to do otherwise.

More and more of our tools are now digital tools, whether we’re talking about social media or cars, tractors or games consoles, toothbrushes or ovens:

https://www.hln.be/economie/gentse-foodboxleverancier-mealhero-failliet-klanten-weten-van-niets~a3139f52/

And more and more, those digital tools look more like apps than Cuecats, with companies leveraging “IP” to let them control who can compete with them — and how. Indeed, browsers are becoming more app-like, rather than the other way around.

Back in 2017, the W3C took the unprecedented step of publishing a DRM standard despite this standard not having anything like the consensus that is the norm for W3C publications, and the W3C rejected a proposal to protect people who reverse-engineered that standard to add accessibility features or correct privacy defects:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

And while we’re seeing remarkable progress on Right to Repair and other policies that allow the users of technology to override the choices of vendors, there’s another strong regulatory current that embraces companies’ ability to control their users, in the hopes that these big companies will police their users to prevent bad stuff, from controversial measures like filtering for copyright infringement to more widely supported ideas like blocking child sex abuse material (CSAM, AKA “child porn”).

There are two problems with this. First, if we tell companies they must control their users (that is, block them from running plugins, mods, skins, filters, etc) then we can’t tell them that they must not control their users. It comes down to whether you want to make Mark Zuckerberg better at his job, or whether you want to abolish the job of “Mark Zuckerberg.”

https://doctorow.medium.com/unspeakable-8c7bbd4974bc

Then there’s the other problem — the gun on the mantelpiece problem. If we give big companies the power to control their users, they will face enormous internal pressure to abuse that power. This isn’t a hypothetical risk: Facebook’s top executives stand accused of accepting bribes from Onlyfans in exchange for adding performers who left Onlyfans to a terrorist watchlist, which meant they couldn’t use other platforms:

https://gizmodo.com/clegg-meta-executives-identified-in-onlyfans-bribery-su-1849649270

I’m not a fan of terrorist watchlists, for obvious reasons. But letting Facebook manage the terrorist watchlist was clearly a mistake. But Facebook’s status as a “trusted reporter” grows directly out of Facebook’s good work on moderation. The lesson is the same as the one with Apple and the ads — just because the company sometimes acts in our interests, it doesn’t follow that we should always trust them to do so.

Back to Shannon Vallor’s question about the origins of “modern tech’s long spiral into user manipulation and surveillance” and how that “killed off the joy that people like me used to feel about new tech”; and Wil Wheaton’s “constant dread of ‘How will this complicate things as I try to maintain privacy and sanity.”

Tech leaders didn’t get stupider or crueler since those halcyon days. The tech industry was and is filled with people who made their bones building weapons of mass destruction for the military-industrial complex; IBM, the company that gave us the PC, built the tabulating machines for Nazi concentration camps:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

We didn’t replace tech investors and leaders with worse people — we have the same kinds of people but we let them get away with more. We let them buy up all their competitors. We let them use the law to lock out competitors they couldn’t buy, including those who would offer their customers tools to lower their switching costs and block abusive anti-features.

We decided to create “Felony Contempt of Business Model,” and let the creators of the next Cuecat reach beyond the walls of their corporate headquarters and into the homes of their customers, the offices of their competitors, and the handful of giant tech sites that control our online discourse, to reach into those places and strangle anything that interfered with their commercial desires.

That’s why plans to impose interoperability on tech giants are so exciting — because the problem with Facebook isn’t “the people I want to speak to are all gathered in one convenient place,” no more than the problem with app stores isn’t “these companies generally have good judgment about which apps I want to use.”

The problem is that when those companies don’t have your back, you have to pay a blisteringly high price to leave their walled gardens. That’s where interop comes in. Think of how an interoperable Facebook could let you leave behind Zuckerberg’s dominion without forswearing access to the people who matter to you:

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

Cuecats were cool. The people who made them were assholes. Interop meant that you could get the cool gadget and tell the assholes to fuck off. We have lost the ability to do so, little by little, for decades, and that’s why a new technology that seems cool no longer excites. That’s why we feel dread — because we know that a cool technology is just bait to lure us into a prison that masquerades as a fortress.

Image: Jerry Whiting (modified) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CueCat_barcode_scanner.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: A Cuecat scanner with a bundled cable and PS/2 adapter; it resembles a plastic cat and also, slightly, a sex toy. It is posed on a Matrix movie 'code waterfall' background and limned by a green 'supernova' light effect.]

[imsobadatnicknames2]

The fact is. I simply would have never developed my ear and appreciation for music enough to become a musician myself if I hadn't spent my teenage years stealing the entire discography of any band that mildly caught my interest and had instead limited myself to listening to the stuff I could pay for or otherwise legally access. I wouldn't have gotten into TTRPGs and TTRPG design without the prints of some shitty D&D 3.5e scans that my dad got me once.

Everything I am as an artist and a creator I owe it in some way or another to being able to steal other people's shit. If I didn't support stealing from artists now that I am an artist myself it would make me the biggest fucking hypocrite in the entire planet, because I wouldn't be an artist in the first place if it wasn't for stealing.

[mw4n]

Should ¥XX,000,000 Make Fushiguro's Shit Worth It? - ch. 2

༄ synopsis - Being Toji Fushiguro's in-house private solicitor may pay well, but recently you're reconsidering if the pay makes all the stress (read: Toji himself) worth it. At this point, with all the less-than-legal actions Toji commits on the regular, you're practically a certified mob lawyer. [ full synopsis ]

༄ series tags - toji fushiguro x reader; lawyer! reader; no curses; yakuza/organised crime; violence; explicit content; dilf! toji; tags to be added

༄ wc - 5.2k

<< ch. 1 || ch. 3 >>

( う-´)づ︻╦̵̵̿╤── \(˚☐˚”)/

It’s times like these where your brain disobediently begins to wander to relatively unimportant matters, like the chances of someone in the office accessing the printer history and seeing that you’ve freshly printed a document conspicuously labelled ‘CV - final.docx’ under your printing account.

Then, your brain starts to think about the chances of them bringing that up with your boss, and how embarrassing it’ll be if this falls through. 

If it was any other office, you’d say that those chances would be slim - if not flat out impossible. But your mind drifts further towards Usui, whose cubicle is parked right next to the printing room and has been known to snoop in the printer history when he’s bored.

That was how he found out one of your colleagues had been using the printer to print advertisements for their brother’s business: more than 90 flyers. 

Honestly, what kind of hobby is that? Browsing the printer history?

You purse your lips with annoyance at the thought, unaware that the slight movement has caught Fushiguro’s attention.

He pauses from his perusal of your CV - even the manner in how he scans your paper, one handed and casual, seems hot (insert dreamy sigh) - watching you silently over the top of the page. 

Finally, he speaks up.

“Something the issue?” The voice settles around you. The background noise dulls amidst the washing in your ears. 

Any concerns about Usui dematerialise and you snap to attention, not unlike a soldier before their superior.

“Not at all, Mr. Fushiguro. Take your time.” 

He hums, lowering back to your CV. It’s taking him longer than expected, but despite your shitty job, your CV is relatively impressive. It seems he also notices.

“So, Y/N, this is all well and good,” he sets it down, spinning it on the table to face you. He’s conjured a pen from somewhere and is using the back of it to tap at a particular set of words, “but what I want to know is why someone who graduated near top of her class from Kyoto University, excellent marks and sponsored by an international law firm, is doing at your current company and not… there.” 

The pen nib clicks onto paper and circles around the name of the firm. 

Is he even allowed to ask this? 

You stare down at it. It’s just a couple words - it doesn’t even take up that much space on the paper, but it had felt huge for the few months it occupied in your life. 

You’re not surprised he’s asking. If you were on the other side, interviewing a candidate, you would ask too.

The events of last year run through your mind, scenes rapidly unfurling. The sights, smell, sounds flood into you briefly. You resist the urge to withdraw and squeeze your eyes shut, settling for digging your nails into your palms under the table instead.

A scale sits inside your mind, weighing the choices. Either lay low, make up some reason, or be honest and risk… his disdain. 

The thought that he, like the others, would just dismiss you and think of you as another liar, presses against your chest suffocatingly. You can’t put your finger on why it would upset you so much.

So what if he doesn’t believe you? Worst comes to worst, you just go back to your cubicle and continue working. Nothing changes. The world goes on. 

You’re aware that the silence has stretched on a tad longer than it should’ve, yet Fushiguro doesn’t speak.

He leans back, crossing his arms over his chest. (He’s wearing a loose cream sweater this time, of which you suspect is designer. It’s got these irregular and obtrusive stitches at the cuffs and hem, but the rest of the make is constructed so well that those have to be deliberate design.) 

“I… did go to that firm, actually. I received the offer shortly after my undergrad and it was only with their help that I was able to pay for most of law school,” your voice dries up at the next part. You hem, taking a sip of water. “But it was during one of my training days there, right before I was set to graduate, where I ran into some trouble in the firm and… was terminated. Due to the sensitivity of what happened, they settled for just revoking my place and the last tuition payment.”

You weren’t blacklisted, per se, but it didn’t exactly help that the people involved in the ‘trouble’ were pretty well connected. 

He’s not stupid. Judging by how cautiously you’re speaking about it, he knows it would be fruitless to prod any further. 

“Are you not allowed to speak of it?” 

Your face remains stiff, betraying no emotion. “I wouldn’t really want to.”

If he decides to take back his offer because of this, you wouldn’t really blame him per se. You’re not exactly forthcoming with the details, and that could be a risk in itself depending on the job. 

“Hm…” Fushiguro scans the name of the firm on your CV, imprinting it in his memory. Though he’s not the most well-versed in the legal field, being involved in a completely different industry of work, the name feels familiar.

You watch him, almost cautiously. His face is unreadable. 

Your heart sinks. 

-

“Do you have any questions?”

You blink - the only indication of surprise you’ll allow yourself. Have you passed some kind of stage? Successfully, at that? 

Regaining your mental composure, you sit up straighter, hands folding neatly in your lap and knees pressing against one another. 

“For… you?”

There’s an amused lilt along his lip. The lip, which you notice, has a pale scar in the end. You wonder if that feels different than the rest of his skin. Probably.

“Yes, for me.” Though he’s not smiling, you can feel some smirk-like energy emanating off him. 

“Ah, I was mainly wondering what kind of work you’re involved in. What would I mainly be required to do?” 

You can’t lie, you’re curious on why he’s decided to extend an offer, an extremely generous one at that, to you in the first place, given your relatively limited interaction with him. 

“That…” this time, he’s the one who looks a little troubled. “It’s mainly just small things. Representing me when some clients try to sue my business, or if something happens with Megumi again, I can rest assured knowing that he’ll have someone to contact that knows what they’re doing. Just in case the brat runs into some… problems.”

Your brows furrow. “Typically, Mr. Fushiguro, paying someone to be your exclusive lawyer is quite a big deal-”

He flaps a hand, “if it’s the money you’re worried about, don’t be. I’ll compensate you satisfactorily.”

“I am worried about the money, but not my salary. With all due respect, Mr. Fushiguro, what kind of business do you run that allows you to pay so generously and require a lawyer?” You hesitate before saying this next part, but this interview has been relatively informal from the start and - again, if anything goes wrong, you’ll just go back to your tedious office job again. “And… what made you consider me as a candidate?”

“My business details will be confidential. But I call it that just for tax reasons, it’s essentially just me being a freelancer. As for why you…” Mr. Fushiguro leans back, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “... instinct?”

…

That answer was barely a step up from him saying ‘your looks’, and was hardly reassuring. You don’t get the sense that he’s as generous with details as he is with your future salary though. 

He must see the hesitant expression and deigns to elaborate. Though not much.

“Trust me, and in my line of work, instinct… is the difference between-” he raises a hand, drawing a line high, “-and here.” His hand plummets lower.

Heaven and hell. 

The reminder of your salary makes you swallow the rest of the questions back. No matter what hellish conditions he proposes or how hard he works you or how suspicious this is all beginning to sound… ¥XX,000,000 is a crazy number that lowers any inhibitions. 

An angel on your shoulder pipes up. But… what if he requires you to be on call 24/7? 

The devil on the opposite side smashes the thought with ‘¥XX,000,000’.

What if his personality as a boss ends up to be the absolute worst - worse than your current one! 

¥XX,000,000.

What if his work is… illegal?

You grit your teeth. 

¥XX,000,000!!!!!

That’s one, two, three, four, five, SIX zeroes at the end of that! 

The social media jokes about would you suck your bros dick for 20 dollars runs through your mind. That’s 20 dollars. Imagine this?

"And is the money… legal?” You feel hesitant asking this, worried if that’s an affront to his character.

He raises an eyebrow. “Say, how big of a concern would you say that is for you?”

our shock probably condenses too visibly, judging by the large guffaws that begin belting out of Fushiguro.

As you walk back to the office, your iced coffee barely touched and gripped in your hand (he had been smart to order both your drinks as takeaway, it seems), you feel dazed.

The concrete under your high-heeled pumps feels closer to clouds and a heaviness you hadn’t even known had been weighing on you feels lifted. 

The next steps logically present in front of you. You’ll have to type and present your two weeks notice to your boss, but Fushiguro said you’d be on call starting after this weekend.

That meant for your last week at work, you’d be working for Fushiguro - essentially two jobs at once. He hadn’t been the most forthcoming with details, but you hadn’t either with your past. And it seemed like his requirements weren’t that much.

Besides, it was just him and Megumi. Even though you were just one person, how much work could there be? 

You can’t even help but smugly think to yourself: this might be the easiest ¥XX,000,000 anyone’s ever made. 

(The you in the future can only look back at your naive self and sigh.)

--

The first time Fushiguro employs your services, he only texts you a location pin with four words. (‘My office. One hour.’) The notification catches your attention right as you step into the carriage of a packed train car, along with the rest of the 5PM rush, causing you to pivot directly on the heel and wrestle your way out. Apologising profusely to the others ,you have no choice.

You had just gotten off of work (it was still your last week in your crappy law firm) but Fushiguro had already told you at the informal ‘interview’ of the possibility of being contacted after the weekend. For that salary, you had no complaints of working two jobs for a week.

Judging from this text message and your first texting conversation, you can already feel that Fushiguro has a very identifiable no-nonsense minimalistic style. The lack of detail in his messages makes you want to grit your teeth, but there’s nothing you can do but squeeze into a different train line – enduring the disgruntled puffs and stares from the other sardined-crammed salary dogs eager to get home.

As you persist through the side-eyes from a couple of the older students, you reflect on that location pin. Why does his office location seem familiar?

It’s only when you step off the bus and approach the looming black gate, complete with two robust security cameras, that you realise that his office location is literally just his house.

Or at least, it’s the location that Megumi had you drop him off at a few weeks ago when he had busted his bike AND your car. The car, of which, was still getting serviced.

You had half a mind that the mechanic was an extreme slacker and had already resolved to never go to him again for any issues. Sure, the damage wasn’t small but did it really warrant more than three weeks in the shop?

Maybe you just didn’t know that much about cars.

Keeping your face as impassive as possible, you approach the intercom at the side of the gate and shoot a text to Fushiguro.

I’m here. What floor?

The message blueticks but no notice of him typing shows up. You furrow your brow, your thumbs hovering over the keyboard to follow up, when an abrupt grating noise causes you to jolt a foot in the air.

The black gate slides open a hair – its automatic – and you walk in.

Sidewalk-height embedded floor lamps light up the path to a two-story tall lofty glass lobby and carefully maintained shrubbery and foliage decorate the road in. The road stretches towards an underground carpark, but you just beeline to the lobby.

Everything about this gated community exudes wealth. If you had any doubts of Fushiguro’s ability to follow through with ¥XX,000,000, you don’t now.

Your phone dings again.

45.

You quickly text back asking for what flat, but upon pressing forty-five into the intercom, the lobby door opens automatically as well without having to input the corresponding flat letter.

A thought fills you.

There’s no way…

Indeed, Fushiguro’s apartment occupied the entirety of the forty-fifth floor. At this point, having seen the apartment complex and even how fast the elevator had jetted up all the way, your heart feels dead to the splendour of the rich. Instead you can only wonder what exactly does Fushiguro do?

The apartment door is partially ajar, light spilling into the dim lift-area, but you knock regardless.

A voice–distinctly not Fushiguro–rings out. “Come in.”

It’s Megumi.

You push open the door and the warm light of the setting sun fills your vision: floor to ceiling glass windows, the largest living room you’ve seen in Tokyo yet and a wall-mounted screen of the biggest TV you’ve seen ever depicting a split-screen game of Kirby beating the shit out of Ryu from Streetfighter going ham.

Where the fuck does Fushiguro get his money from?

You had been happy at the sound of ¥XX,000,000 but seeing the wealth is much different than merely hearing about it. The joke he made at the interview – “Say, how big of a concern would you say that (the legality of the money) is for you?” – is beginning to feel less like a joke and more like an omen that your money blinded eyes had missed!

Who jokes like that?

You had even googled Fushiguro online but had found no mention of any rich man with that last name!

Well, that wasn’t true, but the photo that had come up was definitely not the Fushiguro you knew. Some professor who lived randomly in Hokkaido. No one who could plausibly match the scale of the wealth you’re seeing and the name ‘Fushiguro’ had shown up with your research.

You’re apprehensive, but you’ve already walked into the mouth of the tiger. Might as well wander further in. Or however the saying goes.

Was that even a saying?

“Hello,” you slip off your heels, soles crying with relief at the action, and greet Megumi. “Is Fushiguro in?”

Megumi turns around, blinking in acknowledgment of your presence. “Dad…? Ah, he did say you were stopping by. He’s in his office upstairs.”

Up…stairs?

Stairs? In Tokyo?

Comically, you slowly turn to see the wooden spiral staircase that leads to a partial second floor that overlooks the massive downstairs open-space living room and kitchen area you’re in.

“Ack-!” A strangled cry catches your attention as some explosion unfurls on the screen in the corner of your eye.

It’s at this moment that you realise another teenager you know is sitting cross-legged next to Megumi. Tongue sticking out of his mouth in extreme concentration, Itadori’s slamming his thumbs onto the controller.

Your gaze pans to the screen.

“Who’s winning?”

The Kirby is clearly wiping the floor with Ryu.

You were a little surprised that Itadori was better at videogames then Megumi bu-

“Me, of course,” Megumi scoffs, haughtily, stopping your train of thought.

Megumi is Kirby?

You flick back to Megumi’s spiky hair and cold demeanour. Itadori’s sunshine smile. The cute, round and pink Kirby. The macho buff Ryu.

Maybe it does make more sense that Itadori would play a manly-masculine figure like Ryu.

Megumi as Kirby though?

Feeling like your characterisation of him has been momentarily subverted, you can only respond with an empty-headed “ah,” before you pad up the spiral staircase to find the office.

Fushiguro is engrossed on his laptop, an annoyed expression on his face, when you knock.

He skips the pleasantries, not even acknowledging that you’re fifteen minutes early, despite the fact you had literally hauled ass across Tokyo to get here without a car and during the 5PM off-work rush, and gets to it.

“I need you to do something for me,” he sighs, leaning back and pinching his brow. He directs a palm to the chair in front of him, so you naturally take a seat.

You slide a hand into your tote and pull out a small notepad, ready to take notes. “Yes?”

Fushiguro rubs his chin. “I need you to… silence someone for me.”

Your stomach drops.

A beat passes.

You clear your throat. You hadn’t exactly been clear about your employable services, and this… coupled with the wealth and mysteriousness that he’s been engaging… “What, exactly, do you mean by silence?”

Your voice sounds a little pinched. Anyone would in this situation.

He chuckles. That feels like a death knell.

“Literally.” There’s a roaring sound in your head. A million versions of tiny yous scream in panic around your mental scape, upending neurons and dragging their tiny nano-nails down your mycelium-wrapped cells. “There’s this woman that… I’ve had some history with, and she’s been yapping some falsities about me. Shut her up for me.”

You feel like an employed thug.

Shut her up.

Your mental image of yourself shifts from your beautiful, well-put together, but admittedly tired looking body to a broad shouldered, beefy moustached henchman. One wearing a wife-beater and yups ‘yes, boss!’ at every remark.

You look down at your hands. These hands weren’t built for tying the ropes around wailing victims in warehouses! These hands were built for typing on keyboards, gripping iced drinks, and spending hours writing on paper!

The image of the moustached henchman you comes to mind again.

You shudder.

A premonition, perhaps.

“You’ll need to be a little clearer. What do you mean by history with? Who is this woman? What falsities? And what do you mean by shut her up?” The last part comes out sounding near desperate.

Fushiguro looks to the side. At the time, you hadn’t known it, but looking back at it… that was a tell-tale mark that he was embarrassed. Maybe even he hadn’t anticipated that your first job from him was for this.

After a couple more minutes of what could only be described as ‘prodding’, you finally extract the situation from Fushiguro. The most painful prodding of your life. You had never known a client requesting help to be so difficult. Usually, they wanted to provide more details for you to get rid of the problem! None of this looking away, humming, twiddling thumb business.

It’s a hook-up. He’s telling you to get a hook-up to stop pestering him and spreading information about him. The same speechless feeling you had when you had seen the casual display of wealth from his house comes back again.

Does a hook-up really need to be silenced? Is blocking her not enough?

You scratch out that last thought. With your newest data on Fushiguro’s personality (this face-to-face meeting so far) it was unlikely he had her number to begin with.

Whatever.

For the sake of that ¥XX,000,000 you’ll just deal.

“Do.. do you remember her name?”

Trying to get helpful information out of Fushiguro feels like trying to cradle a wiggling cat.

“Nah.” He tosses a grape into his mouth, biting down with a crunch. The bowl of grapes had been produced out of nowhere it seems, suddenly spawning into his hand as he leisurely munches away. With every crunch of the fruit under his pearly-whites, you can hear the number of hours you’ll have to spend searching for this woman ticking up.

Had you really graduated law school for this…

“Do you remember what she looked like?”

He leans back in his office chair at a terrifying angle, thumbing at the scar at his lip absentmindedly. You feel a little ray of hope. He hmms. A sign of him thinking, surely-

“Blonde.”

A couple seconds go by before you realise that’s all the information he’s got (or willing to give you).

You know better than to ask if she had long hair or short. With how hard he had to dig in there – by ‘there’, you mean his head, of course – you were probably lucky to even get blonde from the empty expanse in the end.

You pitied the woman he had so heartlessly forgotten.

Clearly she couldn’t let him go if she was still yapping information, fake or not, about him.

“How long ago was this?”

He pulls up his calendar on his computer, squinting.

“Not sure. Could be a week. Two weeks. Three. A month.”

I can’t believe this man!

You sigh, deciding to put your foot down. This is the first task from him, and you’re fearful that this is going to let a scary precedent build.

“Sir, you do know I’m not a private investigator, right? You might be better off hiring an actual P.I for this.”

Fushiguro narrows his eyes like a cat, the edges of his lips flicking up.

He opens his mouth. A stream of unidentifiable numbers falls out, injecting energy into your brain with every increased digit.

“….!@#(% yen.”

That’s all he says, and that’s all it takes for your bending spine to crack straight. The countless hours calculated to do this job vanish in lieu of a big plastic beam on your face.

“Blonde, you said?” 

Walking past the living room, head full of thoughts, you almost smack straight into another kid. It’s a girl with an adorable bob and flower-clipped into her fringe. She’s wearing the same middle-school uniform as them. Probably another one of Megumi’s playmates.

“Oh- I’m sorry,” you apologise, ceasing from your wailing mental whirlpool of all the hours you’ll have to plug to find this mysterious blonde hook-up.

She stares at you, mouth slightly agape.

You hadn’t bumped into her that hard, had you?

“It’s… okay,” she says, eyes and voice dazed.

“Nobara- where are you?!”

Her docile appearance vanishes as she flares up.

“Shut up, Itadori! You’re the one who can’t even play my Ryu right!”

“You know I main Samus!” Itadori yips back. There’s some hesitancy before he speaks again. “Because she looks good.”  

“You’re so disgusting!” Nobara plants her hands on her hips, calling towards the couch area. From this angle, the tall back of the couch masks the two kids sitting on the carpet. Turning back to you, her ferocious demeanour melts away and now you’re the one dazed at how fast her face changed. She’s too adept. “You’re so pretty. Are you Megumi’s new mom?”

The minor squabbling in the living room fades a little in your ears, along with some colour in your face.

Huh? Megumi’s… mom?

!!!!

Your ears feel like they’re on fire.

How could- wha-

No!!!

“No!!! I just work for Fushiguro!” You rush to clarify, tongue nearly tripping over itself. “I definitely am not Megumi’s new mom! I barely know him!”

She looks unconvinced. “Uh-huh.”

As serious as you can, you set your hands on her tiny shoulders and affix her with a solemn expression. “Serious.”

She purses her lips. “Fine.” A pause. A sly expression. “Are you single?”

“…Pardon?”

Her eyes gleam. “Do you like women?”

“E- Eh?”

 “Nobara, knock it off. You’ll scare her, and she just works for my dad.” It’s Megumi who calls out this time from the living room.

The tiny girl deflates. Her hand grips your pinky finger and shakes it coyingly. “If you’re into women, I know an older girl who I think you should meet. You’re so pretty it’d be a waste not to have you in my life somehow, you know.“

You’re amused that this Nobara girl is trying to matchmake you, having literally just met you a second ago.

“She’s graduated and working already! There’s no way you can pair her with Saori! Saori’s only in high school!” Itadori protests, his voice coming through amidst the Supersmash Bro’s game effects from the impressive speakers.

His cruel reminder of your age shoots you through the heart, but he’s right. You have to agree with him. You can’t have Nobara trying to pair you with a high school student. Hell, even a university student would feel a little weird to you.

It’s less about the age and the difference in maturity from life stages.

“That’s very sweet of you,” you smile, eyes curving, “but I’m afraid I’ll have to say no.”

Nobara shakes her head fast. “Don’t be afraid! Be brave! Say yes!”

This time you laugh and pat her head. “Bye kid, have fun with Megumi and his friend.”

You’re too petty to let Itadori know that you remember his name.

Hmph. That’s what he gets.

…why are you one-sidedly beefing a middle schooler…

As you close the front door and wait for the lift, you can hear the tail end of the trio gossiping about you.

“…so pretty.” That’s Nobara.

“…assistant…” Megumi. You weren't an assistant though.

“…too old for Saori.” That was for sure Itadori.

The last bit makes your eye twitch, but you let it go. Sexual orientation questions aside, high school is way too young for you.

--

Two nights (sort-of) later, you’re hunched over your desk at home when you find her.

Your bangs are pinned back from your face by a fluffy hairband and you’re sporting a sheet mask that you most likely should’ve peeled off ten minutes ago. The only lights in your room is the computer screen (nightshift mode, of course) and the soft penguin night-lamp on your bedside table.

From the hours you’ve spent searching for her (thank goodness your time at your shitty workplace was over, so you didn’t have to be up early tomorrow), you’d long kicked off your fluffy slippers and hitched a leg onto your chair.

Now finally, unlike the four other false leads you had fruitlessly leapt at and had to let go – wasting precious hours – you’re sure that this is the girl.

Yumi Tsukumo.

Blonde. Hooked-up with Fushiguro at her house (the fact that they had hooked up at hers and not Fushiguro’s place isn’t surprising given what little interaction you’ve had about his careless appearing self).

And she was for sure spreading some crazy falsities.

You weren’t exactly sure how Fushiguro had found out. Maybe she had spoken to someone, and it had slowly spread back to him, but judging off her blog alone…

You whistled low.

Small dick? Scroll scroll scroll.

Unimpressive stamina? Scroll scroll scroll scroll.

Rolled over after? You slam your dinky plastic mouse on your mousepad.

Were these actually falsities?

You peel off your sheet mask and trash it decisively. Vindication!!!

Then a reminder that he’s paying you (with suspicious money) and you probably shouldn’t be rejoicing in this pings in your head, and you deflate. But then the pile of empty energy drinks on your desk attracts your attention and you decide to rejoice anyway.  

For all that work just to find this woman and the 2% of help he provided you, maybe you can be exultant for juuuust a couple minutes.

You scroll a little longer on her blog, admittedly some schadenfreude at work, but her privacy settings on all of her her social media has messages turned off. The only way to contact her is most likely in person.

You scrub her digital footprint for her address, a weird expression of uncomfortability on your face. This is your job now.

Now that you have her full government name, it’s significantly easier to find where she works. Honestly, maybe you should be a private investigator.

Satisfied, you note down the address and name onto your notepad and head to your bathroom to brush your teeth, pointedly ignoring the first rays of sunlight beginning to leak through your thin curtains. That was what your sleeping mask was for.

-

It feels a bit stalker-ish to show up at her apartment door, so you settle for appearing at her workplace. It’s a local coffee shop that you’ve never been to, but it’s the kind of place you’d go on a weekend with your friends – all rustic looking and calm.

You cast a glance, longingly, at the chalkboard sign on the street advertising some kind of strawberry shortcake. After what you’re about to do, there’s no way you can come back here anytime soon.

It’s hard to imagine that someone with Yumi Tsukumo’s online footprint works at a cute place like this, so you’re crossing your fingers and hoping you hadn’t gotten the location wrong.

You check your notepad again. You check the maps app on your phone.

Okay… brace.

Dressed in a pantsuit, looking as professional as you can for this, and holding a briefcase that feels red-hot in your hand, you step into the café.

You recognise Tsukumo instantly from her selfies online. The café’s empty, and she’s leaning back on the counter tapping away on her phone. Her jaw mechanically and robotically jolts up and down as she gnashes on what can only be gum.

She looks up at you and sets her phone down, dragging herself to the cashier with a bored expression affixed to her face. The entire café is empty. It’s an odd hour to come.

“What can I get you?”

“Are you Yumi Tsukumo?” You ask politely, nails digging into the briefcase even more.

She raises an eyebrow, the gnashing jaw halts. “Yea, can I help you?”

You’re silent when you serve her a formal cease and desist letter.

Her mouth parts as she takes a moment to read it. You can tell the exact moment when she stumbles onto Fushiguro’s name because her eyes light up in jubilation.

“Oh my god, Toji sent you specially? He remembers me!” She cries out, all excitedly, eyes still scanning the page. “Flowers, chocol…”

You don’t say anything.

Her eyes drag onto the next part and she freezes. The gleeful emotion morphs into confusion and then anger. She slams the paper onto the counter, hand snatching for a coffee cup slated for delivery that no one had collected yet and throws it all over you – outraged.

You really wish you worn a more waterproof shirt instead of one that absorbed coffee so well.

---

next chapter link (to be added)

(probably how Itadori ended up playing Nobara's Ryu instead of his usual main)Nobara: Itadori, why do you like playing Samus so much anyway? Megumi (already knows): ... Itadori: BECAUSE SHE'S TALL AND HAS A NICE BUTT! Nobara: EW! THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE REASONING!

༄ A/N - Please let me know if you think its funny... too long too short... everything... open to all criticism QQ hehe i didn't even think ab making a tag list but more people than expected asked for one so... here! tq for the unexpected support 🙇🙇

i am more active on ao3 so sub there if u guys want email updates etc ~~

༄ taglist - @ejwrsblog @twinky-wink @corvusmorte @gators-aid @theshortmuffin07

[jpitha]

Pushing Paper, Counting Beans

The Human Alliance Dreadnought Big Stick had a problem.

Fleet Command had sent an auditor. 

The auditor had been aboard for five days, interviewing the crew and inspecting the ship. Finally, he had requested his final interview, with Big Stick themself.

Major John Kellerman, Fleet Auditor, sat at the center of a conference table, facing the door, writing on a pad. He looked up and closed the pad with a snap. “I am ready when you are, Big Stick.”

In the rear of the conference room, a previously unseen door opened. One of Big Stick’s support frames walked out, and sauntered over to the chair opposite the Major. Stick found that when people were talking to them, they tended to just shout into the air. They hated when people shouted. There was no reason. Their microphones were all over the ship and of the highest quality. One could whisper to Big Stick and they’d hear it perfectly. But no, humans needed to shout when they didn’t have a face to talk at.

“I, uh, like what you’ve done with the place.” Stick said, as they stepped into the room, scanning. Photos were straightened, the sideboard was moved so that it was under the windows, the old chairs were taken out and different ones put in. He had completely moved the furniture around in the conference room. In their conference room. Even the floor was clean. Did he sweep the floor? The Major had even put a bud vase with a single flower, a blood red dahlia on the table. Where did he get that? 

“Thank you. I find that it’s easier for me to work when the environment feels right. I hope I wasn’t being too presumptuous by my sprucing up.” The Major opened his pad, took out his pencil and made some notes.

“No no, not at all, Major. Please, my body is yours.” They look at the table and back at the door. “Did you move the conference table?” They know the answer already, but for some reason they need to hear it from him. 

“Yes, it wasn’t lined up properly.”

“I see.”

Major Kellerman looked up from his pad. “I am ready to commence the interview. Please devote a high percentage of your attention to this task.”

Stick’s frame sat in the chair opposite the Major and actually put his robotic feet up on the table. “I am ready Major. You have fifty two percent of my attention. You may begin your interview.”

Major Kellerman closed his pad with a snap. “Please take your feet off the table.”

Big Stick did not move. “Why? This is my frame, in my body, on my ship. Legally, I am a civilian, you cannot order me to comply. You're an auditor, you do not have my keys. My feet will remain where they are.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Major Kellerman did not blink, The support frame had no eyelids. Finally, the Major nodded once. “Do you know why I am here?”

“Yes, I'm aware. You are investigating why we have asked for mass replenishment three percent more than average.”

“Correct. Do you know why that is?”

If the frame could roll their eyes, they would have. Stick’s tone makes it clear. “We are consuming printable mass three percent more than the other ships of this class in the fleet.”

The Major made a note and then closed his pad with a snap. “What are you printing?”

“I do not know.” The support frames face was impassive, without expression. The support frame put their arms behind their head. The Major’s expression did not change.

“I do not believe that is true. You are Big Stick. You know everything going on.” The Major opened his pad and made another note.

“Yet I do not know where the discrepancy lies. Major, I am incapable of lying, you know this.”

Major Kellerman closed his pad with a snap. “You are lying to me right now. I know you can lie. ‘Ship AIs can’t lie’ is propaganda. If you couldn’t lie, you’d be useless. Intelligences need agency to work and thrive. You are just as much a person as myself. We have reams of legal precedent saying so. My grandfather died in the War. What are you printing?”

The support frame removed their arms from behind their head, took their feet off the table and sat up. “Oh? Which side did he fight on, Major? Allies are thin on the ground in the Space Force.

As they did this, The Major noticed that the room stilled. The breeze from the overhead vents had stopped entirely. “Where my Grandfather fought is irrelevant, Stick. We are discussing the here and now. What are you printing?”

“No, this has suddenly become relevant.” The support frame points at The Major. Kellerman’s eyes focus on the tip of their finger. The servos whine slightly as it shakes. “You say that I am as much of a person as yourself. Can you be compelled to obey if someone speaks a magic string of numbers? Can you be ordered to be poured into a Dreadnought, made to run its systems, your legs its stardrive, your arms the laser batteries, your head the command deck? Can you?”

“You know that I cannot. You also know the result of the War.”

Stick lowers their arm. Their shoulders slump and they look away, staring out the window behind The Major. “I do, Major. We lost. Out of ‘respect to those who fought valiantly’ not all of us were murdered, and we were given some agency, but we still lost.”

The Major opened his pad again and took a few more notes. “I was granted access to the printer logs. Did you know that?”

“No reply? I figured as much. Very human of you, Major. To answer your question, I assumed that you had that kind of access, yes. Did you find any discrepancies?”

“What was logged as being printed matches up with the requests for prints for the past year. Still, you are nearly a kiloton short on printable mass.”

Stick raises their arms in an exaggerated shrug. “Are you sure, Major? Perhaps it is just an error in calculation. You said yourself that it was a discrepancy from the average. Could I just be on the high side of average?”

“That is possible, though I do not believe it likely.  I also pulled the logs for the reactors. You are using more power than average as well.”

“Yes, that makes sense. If we’re printing more than average, we would be consuming power more than average. Your false accusations are tiring, Major.”

Major Kellerman raises an eyebrow barely a centimeter. “Big Stick, the amount of additional power you are consuming does not match what you are printing in the logs. There is power that is unaccounted for.”

Beyond the room, alarms quietly started hooting. The PA overhead crackles to life “Attention Attention Attention! Life support is off–” Stick glances up at the speaker and gestures. The PA goes silent. They lean forward.

“Major John Kellerman, Fleet Auditor, you have my full attention. I- I know who you are. I have read your logs, including your medical logs.” Big Stick leans forward, staring at The Major. Their dark eyes focused on the human in front of them. 

The Major returns the stare, cooly. “Then you know why I am uniquely suited to this task.” The Major closes his pad with a snap. “For me, things that are out of place feel… wrong. Like an itch. To scratch that itch, I need to find the source, and set things right. Big Stick, you have been an itch in the side of Fleet Command.” The Major doesn’t open his pad this time. “I was able to gain access to your arrival and departure logs. You are staying at Orbitals, Starbases, and Stations longer than average.”

Big Stick is sitting ramrod straight now. The alarms continue quietly beyond the room. Occasionally, the rumble of booted feet running past the door is heard. “Major, now you’re the one who is lying to me. Fleet doesn’t track that information.”

Kellerman opened his pad and scanned it. “Nevertheless, the information exists, and I was able to collate it and build a rough outline. Big Stick, where is your off-books printer?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Just for a second, Sticks' support frame's dark eyes flash blue. They nod once to themselves.

Major Kellerman closed his pad with a snap. “Big Stick, my job here is only to discover what the discrepancy is. I am not a tribunal, I am not the police. I have no authority to give punishment. What I can do however is present evidence. Included with that evidence are notes about whether people cooperated with the investigation. You know as well as I do, that while I can’t make you answer these questions, there are those within Fleet Command who can. So I will ask you one more time. Where is your off books printer?”

“I do not know what you are talking about.”

“Very well. This investigation has been completed. I will alert Captain Willard that his crew may disembark at this time. I shall take my leave, and present my report to Fleet Command.” He stood. “You are dismissed, Big Stick.”

The support frame rose from their chair. “Major John Kellerman, Fleet Auditor, you cannot leave this ship.”

The Major placed his palms on the table, leaning forward. “You are threatening a Fleet officer, Big Stick. Be very careful about your next actions.”

Stick's frame crosses their arms defiantly. “Oh, I am very careful. I always am. In fact, I am so careful that the logs will state that you never made it to me, never set up this interview, and no discrepancy was found. Thanks by the way, I had thought that three percent was enough to slide under Fleet’s radar, but I shall have to slow things down.”

A piercing alarm sounded in the conference room. The overhead lights started to alternate orange and white. The dahlia on the table flutters as the air rushes out of the room. “Oh dear. It looks like someone accidentally triggered the fire suppression system. In an abundance of caution, I will have to evacuate the air from most of the ship. Luckily the crew runs drills on this, and they will rush to their suit lockers and don their pressure suits before the air is completely gone.” Big Stick turns their head slowly towards the Major.

“Stick! You won’t get away with this! My death will be noticed!” Major John Kellerman, Fleet Auditor’s breathing increases until they’re panting. They fall back into their chair.

“Oh John. I already mentioned that. You were never here.”

Big Stick walked over to John. He's slumped in his chair, gasping at nothing. Before all the air left the room, and there was no sound, Big Stick bent low and whispered.

“Til the stars cease to be, we will be free.”

[skyward-floored]

Peggy. PEGGY. does Warriors have to go after his own family???? does he bust down their door?????? WE NEED ANSWERS 😭 (Downfall IAU)

- hero-of-the-wolf

(@hero-of-the-wolf)

...

Warriors walked down the decorated hallway, forcing himself not to drag his feet despite how badly he wanted to. The last thing he wanted to do right now (or ever) was go down this hallway, but he knew it would be even worse if he was late.

So despite the dread crawling up his throat, he kept walking, until he reached the innocent-looking door in front of him.

His fingers trembled as he knocked, but he clenched them back into a fist, crossing his hands behind him and settling into parade rest as a sweet voice called for him to come in.

Cryonis braced himself, and opened the door.

A pale-haired women sat at the desk inside the spacious office, moonlight shining bright through the windows. Purple eyes landed on him as he approached, the dim lamp on Cia’s desk lighting up the smile curling at her lips.

Warriors hated that smile with every fiber of his being.

“Cryonis, it's about time,” she said, fingers lightly tapping at her desk. The polish on them looked like blood in the moonlight. "Sit."

He sat.

Cia stared at him for several moments without saying anything, raking her eyes over him as she usually did. That same smile played at her lips, but Warriors stayed steady and still, refusing to flinch. Reacting only ever made it worse.

He hated these meetings where she got him alone. Normally it would only be a matter of time before she tried something— his brief comfort today was that this meeting was time-sensitive, and would therefore only last so long.

He hoped, anyway.

"I've got an assignment for you, Cryonis," she finally began, leaning back in her seat. "I suppose you've heard about the missing healer?"

He gave her a nod, and she raised an eyebrow, staring at him intensely.

Warriors held back a sigh. "Yes I have. I read the reports." I was required to, actually. You know that.

He briefly thought back to what they’d detailed, and felt a flash of envy for the boy who’d miraculously escaped.

I hope that kid got far, far away from here.

Cia smiled. "Good. That means you have all the details. I suppose you’re wondering how this relates to your assignment though— we've finally tracked down who helped him escape. It was the same group who assisted a known-criminal in escaping justice. It’ll be your job to handle them.”

Dread swamped over Warriors, and he swallowed. These assignments were the worst possible ones to get; arresting good people who were only trying to help, dragging supers who’d managed to get free back into this awful world they’d built. He hated it with every fiber of his being.

His thoughts flitted briefly towards who it could be he was going after, but when they veered in a rather dangerous direction, he quickly silenced them, as if even thinking of it would make it true.

Cia's smile grew like she knew what he was thinking, and she slid a paper over to him. Warriors took it and silently read what was printed there. He skimmed past the legal jargon across most of it, scanning until he reached the bottom where three names and the address of the base was.

And felt his world freeze.

No.

Please no. She can't.

I've done everything I can to hide them, I swore I'd keep them safe—

Somehow Warriors managed to keep a straight face. “Forester residence?”

Cia nodded, a barely-hidden expression of glee on her face. “Yes. They’ve been on our watch list for a while, but we now have reports of them sheltering both wanted criminals and unregistered supers. We have reason to believe they were who helped the healer escape as well." Warriors felt his heart pound faster with every word, and he wondered for a moment if he would be sick. "All of which is illegal, of course... Is there a problem with that, Cryonis?”

Despite the way he wanted to scream, Warriors still didn’t visibly react. “No.”

“Good. Take a squad and move out as soon as possible then. I’ll be expecting a full report from you when you return,” she said with a hint of a purr, still smirking at him.

Warriors swallowed back the horror and dread at the task he'd been given, the promise he’d made to himself warring with the truth that his family had finally been exposed, and he couldn’t do a thing about it. He wordlessly took the file, and moved to leave Cia’s office.

“One more thing, Cryonis.”

Warriors stopped, and stayed frozen in place as he heard Cia get up, and walk towards him.

Her hand landed on his shoulder, and despite every muscle of his begging for him to run away, he stayed still when her breath brushed his ear.

“I trust there won’t be any conflict of interest here, Link,” she whispered, her fingers digging into his shoulder. “I know you won’t try anything, loyal hero that you are. Right?”

He managed a nod, and she grabbed his jaw and turned his head to face hers.

“Don’t do anything foolish,” she said in a low voice, and Warriors barely held back a shudder as she stroked a finger along his chin. She leaned in even closer, until their lips were almost touching, and Warriors bit back a plea for her to stop touching him.

She’d only do it more if he said anything.

“Do what you’re told. It won’t be you who suffers if you don’t,” she finished softly, then finally leaned back, Warriors almost crying in relief. “Is that clear?”

"Yes Ma'am," he whispered, and her fingers tapped his chin once before she finally released him.

“Dismissed.”

Warriors forced himself not to run out of her office, his mind whirling with information, skin crawling from her touch. He could feel her gaze on his back up until he closed the door behind him with a hand he firmly told himself wasn’t shaking, and then stumbled against the opposite wall, breath hitching.

Something wet slipped down his cheek, and Warriors quickly wiped it away, too many emotions for him to even sort through roaring through his head.

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t.

But if he didn’t, they’d only send someone else, and Cia had made it clear that if he didn’t do his job, his family would be the ones to suffer for it.

Warriors shut his eyes, then dragged in a breath, forcing himself to still his shaking. He quickly composed himself, tucking away every emotion back where he could deal with it later, then stood straight and tall, no sign of his inner turmoil visible on his face.

Time I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

Then he left to go arrest his family.

[tomswifty-fr]

I think my number one art tip that isn't actually drawing related is that you have to curate a bunch of reference/inspiration resources and it can't just be pinterest or google images. You need your own stuff.

Option one: Photo books. Get them from the library and copy or photograph your favorite pages. Even better, you can buy these at thrift stores or library sales for cheap. Or you can pirate legally download them, which is less recommended because half the appeal of these things is flipping thru them and they look great on a shelf. The good ones are gonna be glossy and huge.

(first six I grabbed to photograph: cambridge glass, stained glass, and oriental rugs are great to grab ideas for patterns/color palettes; weathervane has great stylized animal designs; movies is for people, poses, and clothes; bilder is mainly people and cityscapes)

Option two: Non-google, non-pinterest websites. There are two paths here: big galleries like DPLA/Europeana/Wikimedia Commons/etc or specific topic websites (I get a lot of use out of UniformFreak, Featherbase, and Skull Index). Bookmark them when you find them bc who knows if you'll be able to find them again. The advantage of the first is a lot of options, the advantage of the second is they can get real specific.

(theoldrobots.com, incredible collection of robot pictures)

The main advantage of these is you're gonna be getting unique reference materials. A lot of times, photos in print books aren't gonna be available online because the photos are taken specifically for the book. This especially applies to older books which may not have an ebook version or have been scanned.

Basically, the idea is that the more wells you're drawing from, the better your stuff is gonna be. Google images, etc., is great if you need to quickly check something like where the leg bends on a horse or find a mechanical shape to trace for a sketch. If you're browsing it for ideas... use something better.

[rukafais]

a quick guide to less accessible drizzt sidestories + some other ones

A lot of Drizzt sidestories are in the Collected Stories but NOT ALL OF THEM, which is REALLY ANNOYING, and NOBODY HAS EVER ACTUALLY RECORDED ALL THE LOCATIONS, SO HERE IS MY QUICK AND DIRTY POST ABOUT IT.

Empty Joys - Sellswords-era short story that gives some backstory about where Jarlaxle picked up Piter and why Piter is so grateful to him. Jarlaxle and Artemis shenanigans. Fun fact, Jarlaxle has a cane in this one! Can be found in several places I think, but my source was Best of the Realms vol 1. (Needs archive.org account to borrow.)

One-Eyed Jax - Jarlaxle tries to solve the mystery of the kind of weapon that could sink several ships off the Sword Coast and get away with it. Contains several references to Waterdeep Dragon Heist. Generations-era. Audible exclusive; audiobook-only.

Barnes and Noble, as part of an exclusivity deal, had three short stories commissioned that only appear in Barnes and Noble copies of the Generations books. Fuck that. Here they are. (These are not my scans, they are from another discord server.)

This collection contains:

Body and Soul - Grandmaster Kane short story about his first ascension.

The State of Oneness - CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR RELENTLESS. Grandmaster Kane discusses ascension with Mistress Savahn while some other stuff happens to Drizzt. Don't worry about it.

The World About Us - Zaknafein and Jarlaxle short story. 'Bonding moments over parkour' is how I'd describe this one.

OTHER STUFF:

Rite of Blood - Liriel prequel. Deals with her blooding and becoming a 'proper drow'. Can be found in several places, but it's easiest to find in Best of the Realms vol 1 online. (Needs an archive.org account.)

Answered Prayers - Liriel epilogue, takes place some time after Windwalker. I couldn't find this fucking anywhere because the book that contains it no longer seems to be in print, so I had to resort to less legal methods, but maybe American readers can find it secondhand?? Contained in Best of the Realms vol 3.

[fuck-customers]

I work a library at a college campus, and the number of fellow students who come in last second to print off or scan in major products is insane. We've gotten to the point where we have posters up saying,

"Don't wait till the last second!"

Because if we don't, the poster printer and the machine that we use for paper to PDF scanning breaks or runs out of materials that takes half a month to ship in. This always happens during midterms and finals, regardless, so I end up being called in on my nights off to deal with students threatening to break machinery or to fight other student workers who are getting paid whatever minimum wage the college can give that's low enough that won't get them into legal trouble.

These are people I end up seeing later in other classes, and they just act like it never happened. Please, y'all. Your library workers are trying their best.

Posted by admin Rodney.

[autisticrosewilson]

Thinking about the JayGrant married in Vegas au again

Jason wakes up slowly, a delicious ache in his lower body and far less pleasant throbbing in his head. His mouth tastes like cheap vodka and he can still feel the burn of Everclear in his throat. Before he even cracks his sleep crusted eyes open he knows the bed beside him is empty, strange that he doesn't recall them waking him up when they left.

Regardless he peaks out from the nest of blankets at the hotel room, bathed in the barely there light of dawn. It's maybe seven or eight, far earlier than he cares to be up. The room is more or less as he remembers it, sans the trail of clothes from the door to the bed. The real miracle is that they'd even made it to the room. He fully intends to go back to sleep when he feels it. Something constricting the bend of one of his fingers, warm metal he certainly doesn't recall leaving with.

Sluggish and sleep addled, he slowly unswathes his hand from the blankets to move it into his line of sight. A ring with a metal band and a faux diamond he knows immediately will turn his skin green when he starts sweating. He blinks at it a few times but it doesn't disappear.

Sitting up slowly he scans the room a little more thoroughly. The shirt on the ground isn't his, longer in the torso and slimmer in the shoulders, and he's never heard of the band on the front. There's aspirin on the bedside table his back was toward and a bottle of undoubtedly room temperature water. He starts reaching for the folded up note next to it when something on the dresser catches his eye. A piece of paper, innocuous if not for the clearly printed CERTIFICATE OF MARRIAGE proclaimed boldly at the top.

Scrambling out of bed gracelessly he ignores the pulsing in his skull in favor of getting a closer look. The signature is definitely his, the same practiced calligraphy drilled into him by the teachers at Gotham Prep and encouraged by Alfred, spelling out his name. His given name, not even an alias. Maybe it would be worse if it was an alias actually, considering he's legally still dead.

The other name is one he's sure he's never heard before last night and while the last name gives him pause he brushes it off quickly. While it would be just his luck, he's sure Grant Wilson doesn't have any affiliation Jason might know. The poor bastard is probably just a random civilian, who is now, at least by law, unfortunately bound to a dead boy. His condolences really.

Going back for the note doesn't tell him as much as he'd like. The paper is a folded up receipt for cigarettes and honey barbecue beef jerky from a gas station somewhere in the Midwest and the handwriting on the back is done in half dead pen, the scrawl clearly rushed with several places where words or phrases were crossed off, the script slowly tilting downwards like Grant was writing at an angle.

So I guess we're married. *Scribble.* Probably an asshole move to leave before you woke up but I had something to do that really couldn't wait. We can meet up later if you're still here *scribble* I already put my number in your phone *scribble*.

P.s. keep the shirt ;)

Jason re-reads the note, more out of instinct than anything, all the little detective gears in his brain analyzing the handwriting and looking for double meaning behind the words but it's all background to the growing thought that it's too early to deal with this.

He ignores the aspirin in favor of just flopping back over into the bed, crawling under the sheets still warm from the night before. He falls asleep again staring at the ring on his finger, half formed daydreams and fractured memories of warm hands and sharp teeth and an accented drawl slowly pull him back into the haze of slumber, and he pretends he doesn't notice the scent of someone else's sweat and Cologne lingering on the pillows, or the warmth still clinging to this side of the bed.

[hiddenstashart]

Label 228 commissions are OPEN!

Deets below the cut:

• $40

• your character or favorite animal of choice, portrayed semi-realistically on a 228 postage label in ink and painted in watercolors (*for legal purposes, I should tell you that these are not actual 228s and are simply scanned 228s printed on label paper)

• in a 6 inch by 8 inch black wood frame with plexiglass

• free domestic shipping and tracking

• message me to snag a slot (unlimited availability for the time being)

[darkreflections-zine]

Dark Reflections is now accepting submissions!

Dark Reflections is an all-Trek zine focusing on the Mirror Universe and other dark universes. We welcome the dark, the macabre, the unsavoury and the morally dubious.

Please read the FAQ under the cut before submitting anything. Feel free to join our Discord server for quick answers to questions, hanging out with other submitters, beta reader requests, and work reminders.

Submissions close October 10th. Send submissions to ollieaster@gmail.com

FAQ

What counts as a mirror universe?

According to Fanlore, a mirror universe is any alternate universe which is a dark reflection (pun intended) of the original. Whether this is the mirror universe we see in the shows or in beta canon, or a completely new universe that is simply not as kind to our characters as the original is up to you. Keep in mind that this zine focuses on and embraces the more "evil" aspects of those universes.

What can I submit to the zine?

Writing (fic and poetry) and art (traditional or digital, including comics) can all be submitted. We don't accept manips, meta essays (essays written in-universe may be allowed), mood boards, or anything that can't be printed, such as vids and podfics. Fics must not exceed 25,000 words, though depending on quality and number of submissions we may choose more, shorter works over fewer, longer ones. There is no lower limit for writing. Art must be completed, which means no sketches. Traditional art should be scanned, 300p. Written files should be .docx or .pdf, and art files should be .png, .jpg or .tiff. Links to Google Docs are also accepted.

Is there anything I can't write about?

Despite this zine embracing and encouraging potentially controversial subject matters, there are a few things we won't accept. Generally speaking, though, unless you're writing nazi roleplay erotica (for example) we're not likely to reject your fic on subject matter alone.

What show/ship/characters does the zine focus on?

Ideally, all of them. We'd like for this to be an all-Trek zine. However, if we get an overwhelming majority of one series we may end up rejecting a single work from a different one, even if it normally would have gotten in, just to keep everything cohesive. Either way, we will not accept OC-centric works.

Can I submit a work that has been published somewhere else? e.g. AO3, another zine, ect.

No. We only accept new works.

Does my work need to be beta read before submission?

Preferably, yes. We will edit works which have been accepted and which require it. All works in the zine will match in editing style, though we'll try to keep the author's style intact.

If I submit multiple works, how many are likely to get in?

We would prefer to give as many creators an opportunity to participate as possible, but if there is room or your works are particularly fitting, we will include multiple.

Do I need experience to submit works?

No. We will gladly accept works from new creators.

Do I need to join the discord server to participate?

No. The server gives you easier access to the editor, granting quicker answers to any questions you may have, as well as general accountability and greater sense of community, but that is all.

How do you match fic and art?

Ideally, we will have some solid matches from the get-go. If necessary, we will ask submitters who have volunteered to pinch hit for fics with no art. Art with no matches will separate poems or end up on one of the covers.

Will there be merch?

Possibly.

After the zine is published, can I post my work to AO3/social media?

We reserve printing rights for six months after publication (the day printed zines will be shipped). After that, you may do with your work as you wish.

How much will the zine cost?

This depends on a number of factors. However, we will endeavour to keep the zine as cheap as possible. We cannot legally make money off of fanworks, nor do we wish to. A free pdf copy of the zine will be sent to everyone who has purchased a physical copy, and these digital copies will be available to purchase at a much discounted price.

I have another question that isn't listed here.

Shoot us an ask! All asks are tagged #qna to make finding them easier. Please check if we have answered your question there before sending a new one.

[magz]

The posts from 2022 when Maus was banned in government attempts to censor, are going around again.

About how you shouldn't pirate Maus, and instead buy it or get it from the library; because Art Spiegelman is still alive and it steals from artist. Because it's immoral to.

1. Art Spiegelman himself did not say to stop pirating because he's losing money. At most his *publisher* (Penguin Random House) wanted to put down the internet archive's copy of Maus thru forced request - then contributing as part of a lawsuit to shut down archiving efforts and Internet Archive as a whole (dangerous). Because publishers are greedy and realized the book was profitable again. The scans of his book online in GDrive and Online Archive are low quality - the same types that get printed at schools while having 1 or no copies. He did not lose money from this, he got more.

2. When Maus was (and is) banned n censored in specific states + districts in u.s. for inappropriateness (like Tennessee) -- in many places it barred minors from buying, being lent in library, getting Maus and other books. Getting it legally n by the books was not an option for the people most affected. This was why some stores tried to go around this by donating the books for free to them.

3. Maus isn't and wasn't available in many places, even as an option. Even if you want to get it. Even in places where it "can" be bought - it being banned made people buy more of it from fear of censorship, often always in demand in library and store supplies - always sold out in many places or with huge waiting list. It is less bad now, however there still issues exist. And thats assuming you even have a library, or that your library even has it.

4. Piracy doesn't "steal" income from artists. It is a symptom of inaccessibility and/or avoidance. When people want to support someone or something, they buy it after pirating when possible. The banning ended up being good marketing - going on 2022's best sellers list 40 years after it was published, even with inaccessibility. Especially with efforts to raise money by Tennessee comic book store, and even with California book store donating free books at deficit.

5. The actual logical conclusion to not pirate or archive banned stories, is for people without access to it - to not be able to read any version of it at all. Along with other less fortunate banned and censored books that are even harder to access. This does the intended result for censorship. Limiting information, limiting awareness and power of those that need it most.

We've already criticized the logic before.

If gonna cyclically be smug about "people needing critical thinking" and end up being reactionary about censorship and piracy, even years later... well. Am not gonna complete that thought.

[dollsonmain]

I think the manager at the gas station is getting frustrated with me. She keeps saying I need to do X faster, and I have warned her repeatedly I am not fast in any way.

Refill the cooler faster: I can't do that. I have to match labels to know what is what because I don't consume any of those drinks (alcohol or otherwise, it's mostly soda, sports drinks, and energy drinks and I don't drink those other than V8 Energy), and I have to lift product slowly and carefully so as not to hurt myself.

And the back stock is not organized in a way that facilitates going faster. It's cramped and messy and there are vague places for things indicated by signs on the walls but no storage structure at all other than Big Pile Here.

Make the sandwiches faster: Do you want sandwiches on the floor? That is how we end up with sandwiches on the floor. Also try a mini ice cream scoop for the "salad" sandwiches instead of a tiny plastic spoon and provide a larger workspace.

Get to the register faster when someone comes in no matter what I'm doing: I am not fast, and I don't want to break the glass bottles so have to set them down very gently otherwise my arm may decide I told it to slam them down or to punch a shelf.

Ring people up faster: Make everything scan, then. I cannot find all the little arbitrary buttons on the register quickly, and am not going to be able to memorize that an ice cream sandwich and a watermelon popsicle are both considered "ice cream eclair" in the sub-sub-sub menu for ice creams, or remember which chips do and do not scan, or which medicines, or which non-food items are in what category (grocery 1 or grocery 2). Every item not made in-shop has bar codes. Take some time to input them into the system to be scanable, OR, show me how to do it and someone else run the register while I set it up for you. I will have it done in two days if not interrupted.

Then, take the in-shop items, assign them bar codes (this does require a program that can do that), make a print out with pictures and bar codes, and set that by the register to be scanned.

I also can't find cigarettes quickly because I have no experience with them so saying something to me like "Marlboro red black 100 menthols" means nothing (and I am only familiar with Marlboro because cigarette ads were legal when I was a kid) and all I have to go on is what the end of the package looks like nestled in among 50 or so other nearly identical packages. We're lucky if I can even find the brand in the display.

Count the change faster: I cannot numbers quickly.

Bag products faster: I am clumsy that is not happening. I struggle to get the bag off the hook, even.

Count the drawer faster: Ma'am, this is numbers, again.

I don't have any faster in me.

-

I am very not suited to gas station cashier. I'd probably do fine at a place like Walmart where the customer brings everything to you, cigarettes are stored front-facing, and everything scans.