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tarithenurse · 4 years

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Stolen - 9

Pairing: Loki Laufeyson &/x fem!gifted!reader Content: Angst. Feels. Plot. References to other MCU events. A/N: Thanks for reblogs, comments, and likes <3 It has honestly made me get through these last two days. If you want on the taglist, just send an ask or reblog.

9. Irresponsible Hate Anthem

… Reader …

At least Loki has allowed you to sit down, and good thing too considering that today is the most you’ve done since pushing yourself and your limits by healing the priestess. He has also brought you something to drink and some grape-like fruits. All in all: he is procrastinating and it’s making you awfully nervous.

“Loki.” The god scurries off to fetch you a blanket. “Loki!” you call after him. “Just get your ass back here and start talking!”

Whirling towards you, his jaw clenches and eyes darken with fury...but he stops himself and does as asked. “This is the last time I will allow such insubordination, mortal.”

“Fine.” Ramping up the sarcasm, you clasp your hands and plead, “Oh, mighty Loki. Bestow your wisdom upon me!”

Silence stretches. If he hadn’t been completely stone faced then you might have feared you’d gone too far. As it is, however, the Asgardian simply sighs. He and the others...they should be immortal but he looks old now. A smidgen of discomfort wiggles into your chest, sending tendrils out to legs and arms with the urge to fidget, to tap an unsteady rhythm with a foot, anything to ease the tension you are feeling. At the same time, a self-empowering annoyance is nudging your mind from the other side in an attempt to point out the next issue. I should not feel sorry. He’s a bad guy.

“There are influencing factors to the events that have led to this point.” Loki speaks softly despite a strain to his voice that tells you he is holding back. “In a manner, of all this started many thousand years ago by your time...but what is of relevance to you is the understanding of why your realm was beset by the Chitauri under my command. Who I served by doing as I did.”

“It...it wasn’t your decision?” The wine in your glass is sloshing subtly so you set it down with a clatter.

The green gaze wanders from hands to face, wordlessly binding you to anything he is about to say. “I did not propose it...but I did not oppose it.” Sighing again, he shrugs. “Explaining why will take more time than we have available. Suffice to say that I found myself in the questionable service of a being, an entity, called Thanos. The Mad Titan, is another of his monikers...and quite descriptive too.”

“Titan? Like...Greek myth titan?”

“...no. I would almost suppose the Midgardian titans of old would be preferable. Thanos is powerful in more ways than you can imagine and my fear is that his plan is much worse than even I suspect. Wherever he goes, only half of the population survives to struggle through a ravaged realm, slowly dying from the blows he has dealt them.”

Liar! “But Earth survived! You didn’t even kill half of New York, and now you want to tell me there’s a dude that could end half a planet worth of people? Pfft!”

Loki’s cold hands wrap around your fingers. “Don’t be foolish. Conquering Mi- Earth was not his main objective but a bit of fun to test the strength of the forces, the defences.” Hesitating, he focuses briefly on the way he has grasped your hands. “What Thanos wanted – and still wants – from your realm is an object with immense power. That object, the Tessaract, is one of six and all together they will make him unstoppable.”

“The Avengers stopped you...him,” you try slowly, “they’d caught you. So...you didn’t get that...Tessa-thing to him. Right?”

“No, Thanos does not have the Tessaract,” he agrees before meeting your gaze again, “but he will try again. And he will have me hunted down for leaving his side...for failing him.”

There was a time, when someone claiming the epitome of evil from space would arrive to ransack the Earth they would be considered clinically insane. The problem is that every human watched the news footage from New York and saw the aliens pour out of the sky to follow Loki. Can there be someone worse than him? It stings to admit it, but you don’t doubt for a second it’s possible.

Looking to the god, you fight to keep the fear at bay. “We gotta warn them!”

“They have been and they are preparing.” He still holds your hands, grounding you in an inexplicable way. “After having fought the Chitauri, the heroes of Earth know what’s at stake.”

It’s all too much – worn out from the walking, dazed by the information, and frustrated with the situation you’re in – you slump into the seat in silent despair. “Then...but...nowhere’s safe?”

He draws you in by wrapping an arm around you and you don’t even care to bother about it. Of the two evils seemingly available, Loki is by far the lesser if he is telling the truth.

“One. One place might be safe for you although...it’s a long shot,” the god mutters into your hair.

... Loki ...

Night has fallen, enveloping the temple in velvety silence. Watching from the balcony, Loki sees the lights of the guards’ lanterns follow the same predictable pattern as always and he knows that for the moment, his frail mortal will be safe, so he retreats to the shadows of one of their rooms to use the Tessaract once again.

When the blue haze releases him, it’s into a cold world under the grey light of dawn. Crystalline particles are shoved around by gusts of wind, worn from the rock and ice that covers the ground as far as his eyes can see. Admittedly, the view is rather impeded by craggy cliffs to three sides and crumbling ruins to the other, but the Jotun knows what awaits him past the remnants of the civilization that dwelt here. My people. Scoffing at the thought, he stalks towards the open.

Between the castle ruins and the very precipice of a deep canyon stands a circle of Alfheim’s druids hand in hand along the precarious edge. Where Loki’s hair is whipping around his face, his cloak tangling in itself and his limbs, the Älfir seem untouched by the raging of the cold elements. At least none of us are freezing, a thought jeers in his mind.

Only as Loki comes to stand behind them can he hear the song. It’s almost as though he can see the words through the corner of his eye like a shimmer dropping into the darkness below but there is nothing to see when he focuses: no sign of the magic...and no indication that the efforts are working.

Crouching, fingers digging into the icy snow, a part of the god seeks to tether itself with the realm he came from. He can feel it. Or rather, he can’t. The frozen core should echo the songs of the Jötun of forgotten ages, reduced to a whisper before he himself silenced them forever. There is nothing. For a week now, the Älfir have done as promised and poured their living magic into the deadly wound Jotunheim suffered yet despite the constants efforts nothing has changed.

It is a lost cause. Loki knew from the beginning this was a possibility. Not all damage can be undone. Not all wounds heal.

This was never my home! Then how come an icy splinter which has been gnawing at his heart now grows and digs its own canyons until, with a painful snap, something breaks? Screaming out his rage, the agonized howl is swallowed by the wind, echoed by the haunting echoes from the depths below.

... Reader ...

You’re not sure what has woken you up. Lying perfectly quiet, the song of nightingale – maybe, you don’t really know what sort of bird it is – floats in through the open window and almost lulls you to sleep again.

Wait...there it is, the sound that doesn’t belong. Sitting up, it takes a moment before you figure out which direction the staccato creaks and huffs come from and you’re in two minds about what to do when you recognize the universal sound of a sob that someone attempts to stifle.

Loki?

There’s no doubt it’s him. He’ll kill me, if he realizes I’ve heard this.

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myherorp · 4 years

Photo

THE QUIRK DATABASE HAS BEEN UPDATED !

incoming information on pro hero, angel.

get to know them !

faceclaim: exo’s kim jongin/kai

name: park woohyun

hero name: angel

gender & pronouns: cis male, he/him/his

age: 26

sidekick or pro?: pro

type: underground

agency: nighthawk agency

reputation: for some amount of time, woohyun climbed the hero rankings and held a spot in the top ten. while he was under public scrutiny at this time, he was popular among female citizens, who joked that he was a “tsundere” because he was quite serious in front of cameras but very shy, sensitive, and sometimes funny amongst fans. after switching to underground hero work, woohyun’s public presence dwindled. he fell from the rankings, and not many people know that he took over nighthawk’s agency. you won’t see him on TV or anything, but he has close relationships in the often neglected areas or neighborhoods that he and his colleagues typically work in. occasionally, a camera will catch him, but for the most part he dodges interviews and public appearances. as of now, woohyun has a mysterious reputation, since he did not make a public statement when he left the general public eye.

the quirk !

quirk name: wing manifestation

quirk description: mutant-type quirk that gives woohyun a pair of large, feathered white wings attached to his back. the wings allow him to fly at high speeds and project razor-sharp feathers.

abilities:

flight // allows woohyun to fly at high speeds.

feather manipulation // the thousands of feathers on his wings are all telepathically connected to woohyun. he sees them as removable (and destroyable) appendages of his body. each feather can sense vibrations and can thus widen woohyun’s intelligence of his surroundings.

feather projection // woohyun can manipulate many individual feathers at once using his mind. there are two main applications of the feathers, and these applications can take on different forms based on combat circumstances: woohyun can sharpen them to use as small blades or use them to push, pull, or lift people or objects. not all of the feathers are of the same size or strength. some feathers are better for cutting and others are better for lifting.

air current creation // to a small extent, woohyun can create air and wind currents by flapping his wings.

weaknesses:

the flexibility and durability of the feathers are neither indestructible nor universally applicable. woohyun is limited by the weight or form of the people or objects he wants to move.

fire is the greatest threat to the feathers.

although woohyun can reattach feathers to his wings, he loses his telepathic connection to them once they are harmed or destroyed. destroyed feathers cannot be repaired; woohyun must wait two to three days for feathers to grow back.

if too many feathers are removed at once, the aerodynamic forces on his wings are severely obstructed. depending on the number of feathers removed, woohyun may be unable to fly at higher heights, at faster speeds, for longer periods of time, or at all.

it is unknown whether or not woohyun can regenerate new wings if they are severed from his body.

mutation: two large, feathered white wings on his back

the history !

triggers: abandonment

ONE,

woohyun grows up in the city of busan. his favorite childhood memories are going to the beach with his siblings.

when a pair of white wings emerge from the inside of woohyun’s shoulder blades, mom smiles. she says that he’s beautiful and lucky. mom calls him her little angel.

one of his earliest memories is his mother leaving him. he thinks he’s dreaming when she kisses his face early in the morning and tells him that everything she’s ever done in her life was to protect him. but when he wakes up, he realizes he wasn’t dreaming. woohyun asks his father where she went; his father doesn’t respond — doesn’t even lift a brow, doesn’t even twitch.

not soon after mom leaves, dad says he’s not working at the angel agency anymore. at the dinner table, he tells woohyun that the hero system is bullshit; people should be able to express themselves and freely use their quirks, but the government is stopping them.

his father wants to help start a revolution. he says that woohyun is going to be a part of it.

TWO,

his father graduated from u.y. too. he was the top of his class. when woohyun was young, mom used to recall fondly stories of how his father would spend long nights in the school library reading up on what dad described as “righteous and revolutionary literature.”

no one could have foreseen the path to the salvation order that woohyun’s father took.

when woohyun is accepted into u.y., he excitedly tells his father. at this age, woohyun is young and naive enough to believe that dad may be proud of him. but, the only reason that his father lets woohyun attend u.y. is because he knows they’ll groom him to have the skills of a pro hero, just like they groomed his father. but, when the time comes, he’ll coerce woohyun into making the switch, the right choice.

woohyun tries out an internship at a combat agency, but finds that its not for him. when he interns at nighthawk’s underground agency the following year, he knows that’s what he wants to do. nighthawk becomes his greatest mentor.

in his last year at u.y., woohyun’s father asks him to join the salvation order to envision a new world. he says that society is hypocritical because it punishes villains for enacting the same violence as heroes. dad wants to change society.

but woohyun doesn’t want to be a part of it. he tells his father that nighthawk taught him the virtue of justice: it requires not only that he judge others fairly, but also that he judge himself fairly. just people question authority, but also question themselves. woohyun says dad is due to question himself.

obviously, his father loses his shit. woohyun escapes in the meantime.

THREE,

after graduating from u.y., woohyun joins nighthawk’s agency as a sidekick. he spends two years there before leaving after a falling out with nighthawk, who laments woohyun’s mulish insecurities. nighthawk is right in recognizing woohyun’s stubborn, unflinching commitment to only some forms of justice as a mask for his gnawing guilt and self-doubt.

for the next four years, woohyun forms a ragtag team of pro heroes with some old friends from u.y. they quickly gain mass media attention and popularity for their creative mission strategies and near-flawless teamwork; woohyun himself grabs a spot in the top ten pro hero rankings of korea.

when the team tracks down a group of salvation order villains planning an attack in a daegu neighborhood, woohyun fights his father. this is the first time that they see each other in several years.

during a lull in the fight, dad tells woohyun that mom left because he disagreed with his switch over to the salvation order. mom called him a monster. when mom told dad she was going to take her kids away and raise them herself under the influence of heroes, dad vowed to spend the rest of his life hunting them down unless she left their family immediately.

obviously, woohyun loses his shit. his father escapes in the meantime.

eventually, his friends move on. they join agencies, become u.y. teachers. he has to move on, too.

FOUR,

when nighthawk retires, he reaches out to woohyun — a shot in the dark. they reconcile; woohyun has grown much over the past four years. nighthawk asks if woohyun wants to take over the office. before he has the chance to think about his answer, a “yes” leaves woohyun’s lips.

as an underground hero, woohyun drops off the top rankings and the general public radar. but he and nighthawk’s pro heroes are well-known in the neglected places that they work. the nighthawk agency under his leadership is also known among hero agencies as a trustworthy collaborator and colleague.

sometimes, woohyun remains unsure of himself and whether he is worthy of being revered as a hero. but, if there is anything his mother, nighthawk, or u.y. have taught him about justice, it’s that life is neither just nor fair; this, however, only increases heroes’ obligation to do as much right in this unfair world as they can.

the personality !

Big Gentle Guy, but also very outwardly serious and intimidating. pretty infamously known among his peers as occasionally prone to using threats or violence if he is frustrated with the state of things. despite his serious nature, he is quite mischievous.

highly intelligent and perceptive to both people’s emotions and mission strategy.

blunt and a bit aloof, but is actually a very kind and hardworking person. and, he has a very strong sense of morality and empathy, placing great value on preserving all life.

does not care much for hero status, ranking, or reputation (is what he says), but he secretly cares about his image because his worst fear is becoming a villain, and he believes that public opinion is a good metric for how trustworthy of a hero you are.

his angelic wings give him the appearance of brightness and purity. ironically, his sense of humor tends to be vulgar, insulting, and dark!

has a great deal of respect, loyalty, and trust for the heroes he works with or admires, and enjoys collaborating with other agencies for intelligence/support/combat. but, he has no problem showing open disdain for anyone outside of this circle regardless of whether they are a villain or hero.

his greatest flaw is his constant anxiety over making mistakes or becoming a villain. basically, he never wants to fail or be like his father. woohyun can sometimes hesitate or falter during combat because he’s unsure if he’s doing the right thing. after missions, he typically feels immense guilt or moral confusion, although in recent months this has been rarer.

#myheroaccepted #myherofollow #abandonment tw

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chaj · 5 years

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via www.darkreading.com

Say goodbye to the entry-level security operations center (SOC) analyst as we know it.

It's one of the least glamorous and most tedious information security gigs: sitting all day in front of a computer screen, manually clicking through the thousands of raw alerts generated by firewalls, IDS/IPS, SIEM, and endpoint protection tools, and either ignoring or escalating them. There's also the constant, gnawing fear of mistakenly dismissing that one alert tied to an actual attack.

But the job of the so-called Tier 1 or Level 1 security operations center (SOC) analyst is on track for extinction. A combination of emerging technologies, alert overload, and fallout from the cybersecurity talent shortage is starting to gradually squeeze out the entry-level SOC position.

Technology breakthroughs like security automation, analytics, and orchestration, and a wave of SOC outsourcing service options, will ultimately morph the traditionally manual front-line role into a more automated and streamlined process.

That doesn't mean the Tier 1 SOC analyst, who makes anywhere from $40,0000- to $70,000 a year and whose job responsibilities can in some cases include running vulnerability scans and configuring security monitoring tools, will become obsolete. Rather, the job description as we know it today will.

"The [existing] role is going away," says Forrester principal analyst Jeff Pollard, of the SOC Tier 1 analyst job. "It will exist in a different form."

Gone will be the mostly manual and mechanical process of the Tier 1 SOC analyst, an inefficient and error-prone method to triage increasingly massive volumes of alerts and threats flooding organizations today. Waiting for and clicking on alerts, using a scripted process, and then forwarding possible threats to a Tier 2 analyst to confirm them and gather further data just isn't a sustainable model, experts say.

"I've never been a fan of the term 'Tier 1 SOC analyst.' The term itself is a symptom of a larger problem," says Justin Bajko, co-founder and a vice president of new SOC-as-a-service startup Expel and the former head of Mandiant's CERT. "There's a lot of manual crank-turning, and I'm [the analyst] awash in a sea of alerts. My ability to do real analysis and add value to the business with clickthrough work … is pretty minimal.

"That's where we are right now" with the Tier 1 SOC analyst, he says.

Bajko believes this manual role has actually contributed to the cybersecurity talent gap. "It's not a great use of talent that's out there," he notes.

The Tier 1 SOC job not surprisingly has a relatively high burnout and turnover rate. Once analysts get enough in-the-trenches experience, they often leave for higher-paying positions elsewhere. Some quit out of boredom and opt for more lucrative and interesting developer opportunities.

Large organizations meanwhile are scrambling to keep their SOC seats filled while they begin rolling out orchestration and automation technologies, for instance, to better streamline operations.

"The majority of a Tier 1 SOC analyst's job is just getting through the noise as best you can looking for a signal," say Bajko. "It starts feeling like a losing battle with a bunch of raw and uncurated alerts" to go through, and sometimes multiple consoles that aren't integrated, he says.

With the use of analytics, orchestration, and automation technologies as well as new SOC services that perform much of the triaging of alerts before they reach the analyst's screen, the Tier 1 analyst can become more of an actual analyst, according to Bajko. "Instead of a sea of alerts, they can spend time being thoughtful about things they are looking at and make better decisions and apply more context."

Greg Martin, founder of startup JASK, which offers an artificial intelligence-based SOC platform, says Tier 1 analysts are basically the data entry-level job of cybersecurity. "We created it out of necessity because we had had no other way to do it," he says. But he envisions them ultimately taking on more specialized tasks such as assisting in investigations using intel they gather from an incident.

The Tier 1 SOC analyst will become more like the Tier 2 analyst, who actually analyzes an alert flagged by a Tier 1 and decides whether it should get escalated to the highly skilled Tier 3 SOC analyst for a deeper inspection and possible incident response or forensics investigation. Tier 2 analysts, who often kick off the official incident response process, also would get more responsibility in that scenario, and Tier 3 could spend more time on proactive and advanced tasks such as threat hunting, or rooting out potential threats.

"So Tier 1 would be able to figure out if [an alert is] real and Tier 2 would make decisions like we should isolate that machine," for example, Forrester's Pollard says. "Tier 1 won't go away; it must move up to more advanced tasks."

Today's Tier 1 analyst drowning in alerts is at risk of alert fatigue. That could result in a real security incident getting missed altogether if it's misidentified as a false positive (think Target's mega-breach). "My big worry in the SOC is a Tier 1 analyst is under pressure to get through as many alerts as they can, and they make some bad decisions," says Expel's Bajko, who has built and managed several SOCs during his career. "I'm much more worried about calling a thing a false positive" when it's not, he says.

Aggies in the SOC

Some SOC managers are already re-architecting their teams and incorporating new technologies. Take Dan Basile, executive director of Texas A&M University System's SOC, which supports the 11 universities under the A&M system as well as a half-dozen state government agencies on its network. Basile had to create a whole new level of SOC analyst to staff up: he calls it the "Tier .5" SOC analyst.

"We initially have Tier 1s, 2s, etc. But we have had a hard time even hiring full-time employees, much less hanging onto them for more than a year. We fully expect them to leave and go to industry and make three times what" a university can pay, Basile says.

So Basile got creative. The Texas A&M University System SOC partnered with several groups on campus to identify undergraduate students who might be a good fit for part-time SOC positions. The student Tier .5 SOC analysts work closely with Tier 1 SOC analysts, who oversee and perform back-checks on the students' alert-vetting decisions. The students look at the alerts and then grab external information to put context around the alert. "They pivot and hand it up to a higher grade student or an official Tier 1 employee," Basile says. "They're doing that first false-positive removal."

The Texas A&M Tier 1 SOC analyst then verifies the Tier .5's work. "They send it on up if it's okay," he says.

Hiring undergrads helps fill open slots in more remote campus locations, for example, he says. There are some 250,000 users on the university's massive network at any time, so there are a lot of moving parts to track. "Due to the location of some of these universities [in the A&M system], it's just hard as heck to hire anyone in cybersecurity right now."

Texas A&M recently added an artificial intelligence-based tool from Vectra to the SOC to help cut the time it took to vet alerts, a process that often took hours to reach the action phase. AI technology now provides context to alerts as well, and now it only takes 15- to 20 minutes to triage them, Basile says.

The Tier 1 SOC analysts at Texas A&M are viewing results from the AI-driven tools, next-generation endpoint, and SIEM tools, he says. "They're doing that first rundown: Is this really bad? Do I need to escalate it? Is this garbage? Or do I need to scream at the top of my lungs because it's that bad?"

Basile says even with newer technologies that streamline the process, you still need person power. "I don't see people moving away because of AI," he says. You need people to verify and dig deeper on the intel the tools are generating. "AI is just providing you more information," he says. "You will always need someone sitting there behind the screen and saying yes or no."

It's not about automating the SOC itself. "I don't think you'll ever automate away the job of SOC analysts. You need humans to do critical thinking," Expel's Bajko says.

Meantime, it's still more difficult to fill the higher-level, more skilled Level 2 and 3 SOC analyst positions. "I've been looking for a good forensics person for a year now. I don't even have the job posted anymore" after being unable to fill it, Texas A&M's Basile says. The result: the university's Tier 3 analysts have a heavier workload, he notes.

Meanwhile, the student SOC staffers get to acquire deeper technical experience. "Now they can dig into packet capture," for instance, he says. "This gives entry-level people the opportunity to learn, and to find more bad things."

That's good news for entry-level security talent. While SOC Tier 1 jobs today are relatively low-tech, the positions often call for a few years' experience in security, including analysis of security alerts from various security tools. Such qualification requirements make it even harder for SOC managers to fill the slots since most newcomers to security just don't have the hands-on experience.

SOCs Without Tiers

Not all SOCs operate in tiers or levels of analysts. Mischel Kwon, co-founder of MKACyber and former director of the US-CERT, says she doesn't believe in designating SOC analysts by level. "I don't see my SOC in tiers, and a lot of people are not looking at tiers anymore," says Kwon, whose company offers SOC managed services and consulting.

Placing analysts by tiers – 1, 2, and the most advanced, 3 – only made the job tedious for lower-level analysts, she notes. "It puts the more junior people into boring and pigeonholed activity. We really find that that exacerbates the turnover problem."

Kwon says a SOC analyst should understand all things SOC. Her firm "pools" SOC analysts into groups, she says, rather than tiers. Pooling is not new, though: "It's been in sophisticated SOCs for at least [the past] 10 years," she says.

MKACyber's SOC strategy is similar to that of Texas A&M's: pair up the junior analysts with more senior ones so they can learn skills from them. "No one wants to be Tier 1 and it's hard to be Tier 3. But if you put them them into pools working together, the junior [analysts] become midlevel very quickly, versus in a very stovepiped SOC," Kwon says.

See Dan Basile, executive director of the Texas A&M University System SOC, present Maximizing the Productivity and Value of Your IT Security Team at this month's INSecurity conference.