#they re all around me clicking like vultures

[bottledlies-a]

kingartoria replied to your post:       click me away from this clickell 

:33333c

bYEEeeee. 

[honeyheartsandkisses]

A million times yes

Pairing: Fred Weasley x Reader

One Shot!

Summary: You and Fred have always been really close. After a bad day, he tries to cheer you up and you accidentally confess. (You are in the same year as the weasley twins, one year above the golden trio.)

Warnings: Kissing, and maybe even a little grinding but no smut.

Word count: 2.6k

Sitting here in your potions lesson, you couldn't help but let your mind wander off. Professor Snape's voice droning on in the backgroun about the different kinds of spider venom and what they can be used for. The mildly pleasant smell of bubbling potions and the dim candles illuminating the dungeon all melded together, casting a drowsy spell on you.

"Miss y/l/n!" Snape's nasally voice pierced through your lazy state. You jumped to sit up straight, finding Professor Snape standing right in front of your desk. His face twisted into a nasty scowl.

He starts circling your desk like a vulture circling it's prey. You knew you were in deep trouble. "I suppose you find all this information boring Miss y/l/n?"

"No sir." You said. Staring down at the opened textbook on your desk. Snape always had a thing for torturing gryffindors.

"Humor me this, can you tell me the ingredients for a forgetfulness potion?"

"Umm... no sir."

"Not so smart now are we?" Snape grins, his long crooked nose twisting to make him look truly frightening. "Tell me the ingredients for a truth potion then."

You look up from your desk, and make eye contact with your best friends Fred and George Weasley. The red-haired twins who were seated just a table in front of you had turned around (just like the rest of the class) helplessly watching Snape humiliate you. A few slytherins were snickering, completely enjoying the show.

Feeling defiant, you wink at your two best friends before looking up to face Professor Snape. "With all due respect sir, you never taught us those two potions. How am I supposed to know what's in it?"

Your two best friends start cackling with laughter, clearly impressed by your sudden burst of confidence. A few gryffindors flashed you thumbs up signs, stifling their laughter.

"SILENCE!" Snape stops circling you and look down at you, administering a death-like glare. It instantly made you regret your decision from just five seconds ago. "Miss y/l/n. Very brave for an orphan." The word orphan struck a nerve. Your parents were muggles and at the age of 11, they passed away in a car crash. You were the only one who survived that night. Everytime someone brought it up you would relive it. The heavy snow, the thick ice, the feeling of the car skidding on the ice, and worst of all, your mother's screams.

"Perhaps they never got the chance to teach you classroom manners?" Snape continues in his low nasally voice. Your blood boiled. How dare he bring up your painful past.

"They must be disappointed to learn that their very own daughter turned out to be a failure." This makes your hands clench into tight fists.

You slam the table, standing up from your seat. "I am NOT a failure."

Professor Snape looked almost slightly surprised at your outburst. But within a second he restores his emotionless front. "Six hours of detention Miss y/l/n. Tonight. You will polish all the trophies in the trophy room, without the help of your wand. Be there immediately after dinner or it'll be eight hours. Do you understand?"

Still trembling with rage, you sit back down. "Yes Professor."

The moment Snape goes back to teaching, George quickly slips you a note. You felt slightly better knowing that your friends had your back. Holding the small piece of parchment under the table, you unfold it to see two familiar handwritings.

One of the handwritings had more rounded letters. You easily identified it to be George's.

It wrote: Wow six hours is going to be tough. I'm sorry he said those thing to you but i loved that you stood up for yourself.

The other handwriting was slightly crooked, and this belonged to Fred.

It simply wrote: Are you alright?

Your heart skipped a beat. It definitely was not out of the norm for the boys to show concern but everything Fred said and did made you want to scream. Your heart did backflips whenever you saw him. The way his messy red hair always seemed to fall perfectly into place when he ran his fingers though it, the way he always had a pleasant woody scent on him from all his quidditch practices, everything made you fall in love with him.

You flip the small piece of parchment around and write on the other side and write: I’ll be okay. Before handing it back to the twins. 

You manage to stay out of trouble the rest of the lesson, and when Snape finally dismisses everyone, you scoop your heavy textbook into your arms and the three of you head toward the great hall for dinner.

“Maybe we should leave an exploding chocolate bomb on his table.” George says, holding the classroom door open for you. 

You laugh, walking through the door with Fred following closely behind you. “Don’t be silly George. Snape’ll figure it out right away.” 

“Still worth a shot don’t you think?” Fred says, winking at you. 

You quickly shake your head. “I mean it boys. Don’t. Do. It.”

“Alright alright fine.” George says, while Fred swiftly grabs your textbook from your arms, carrying it for you the rest of the way.

“Actually we know a trick or two when it comes to cleaning the trophy room.” Fred says, looking down at you. Him being a whole head taller than you, he towered over you. It made you feel safe. “You could always bewitch a few sponges to self-clean. Sneak them in under your cloak.”

“Snape said no wands but he didn't say you couldn't do with a little... lets call it special equipment.” George adds. 

You decide to take their advice, and before reporting to the trophy room after dinner, the three of you stop by a supply closet to bewitch a few sponges before they walked you to the trophy room where Snape was already waiting. 

Professor Snape eyes you suspiciously before scowling. “Your little friends cannot stay with you y/l/n.”

Slightly annoyed, you snapped back. “Yes I'm well aware. They were just leaving.” The twins each give you a small pat on the back before hurrying off, leaving you with Snape. 

“You will polish and shine all the trophies in this room.” Snape says in his nasally voice that always left you nauseous. Only when he steps aside do you see how massive the room was. With shelves extending from the ground up to the ceiling, each one of them crowded with trophies of all shapes and sizes. Some looked like regular muggle trophies but some seemed to be able to move. Some had faces on them whereas others were shaped like mystical animals. 

“Maybe this will teach you not to disrespect a teacher.” Snape says, the corner of his lips turned upwards, clearly delighted to see you in misery. “I will be back every hour or so to check on you. If you’re not here, it’s another two hours of detention and fifty points from Gryffindor. Your wand will be confiscated until  all these trophies are polished.” You reluctantly hand over your wand, wishing you could hex the professor. “Get started.” With that, he turns around and walks off, shoes clicking down the dimly lit corridor. 

Cursing under your breath, you retrieved your earlier bewitched sponges from the supply closet, along with a couple other polishing solutions. To your surprise, they worked brilliantly. The small sponges scrubbed every inch of each trophy leaving it spic and span, before automatically moving on the next. While the sponges were busy at work, you headed over to a corner of the room and sat down. Just when you were about to doze off, a familiar voice jolted you awake. 

“Tired already? It hasn't even been an hour.” 

You look up to face it’s owner, coming face to face with Fred Weasley. Your heart swelled. Quickly rubbing the seep from your eyes, you laugh and pat the ground next to you, asking him to sit and he complies. 

“What are you doing here?” “Wanted to say hi to Professor Snape.” Fred says, gleaming mischievously at you. Under the dim light, his brown eyes looked like honey and the smell of his freshly shampooed hair gave you the urge to pull him into a hug. 

You roll your eyes. “Ha-ha. Very funny Weasley.” 

“Are you really alright?” He suddenly says, catching you off guard.

You smile, hugging your knees. “Yeah I told you I’ll be fine.” 

“But you’re not...” He looks down at you, almost like he could see right through you. “When Snape mentioned your parents earlier, you looked so incredibly sad. Like nothing could ever make you happy again.”

“I know...” you let out a big sigh. “Everytime someone mentions my parents I re-live that night. Id be lying if I said it wasn't terrifying. But this is something I have to deal with on my own. It’s not anyone’s job to fix me.” Before you know it, a tear escapes the rim of your eye, rolling down your cheek.

Fred puts an arm around your shoulder, pulling you closer to him. “I understand.  I just wanted you to know there's nothing I wouldn't do for you. So don’t be afraid to let me know if you’re struggling.” 

You snuggle closer to his chest, his arm still tightly wrapped around you. Feeling a warmness wash over you, your mood changed for the better. You tilt your head upwards, looking at him. He senses your movement and looked down at you with concern. Your face merely inches away from his, you fought the urge to kiss him. His eyes travel down your face, staring at your lips before looking into your eyes again. “Y/n I...” But before he could say anything else, you press a kiss to his lips, quickly pulling back to observe his reaction. He looked confused and flustered, making your heart sink. You just made a huge mistake.

“I'm sorry I didn't mean to... I just...” You stumbled over your words trying to find the right thing to say. You felt embarrassed and humiliated. Did you just singlehandedly ruin your friendship with the Weasley twins?

But all of a sudden, Fred stops you from freaking out. “Shut up.” He sounded urgent and needy. He crashed his lips with yours, and you could feel his passion and urgency. Like he needed this for a long time. Like he never wanted to stop kissing you. His hands cup your face, deepening the kiss, while you move to sit on his lap. A growing heat in your lower belly started to take over and you rocked your hips forward, grinding on him. He snakes one arm around your waist, pulling you closer while you kiss his neck. 

Suddenly, you hear the sound of shoes clicking against the hollow corridor and you pull away from Fred in a hurry. “It’s Snape!” you whisper urgently. “You need to go now! He’ll punish you!” 

“But-” Fred tried to protest, but you move off of him, quickly standing up. 

“Please Fred I wouldn't want you getting into trouble because of me. You need to hurry!” 

He gives you a reluctant pout, but finally agrees. “I’ll see you later.” He kisses your forehead before hurrying off.

Shortly, Snape arrives to see you hard at work polishing the trophies. He mumbles something about you having a bad attitude before leaving, and once again you’re left alone.

You sit back down in the corner, going over the past few minutes. Fred Weasley kissed you. The boy you’ve had a crush on since your second year in Hogwarts. He liked you. Being held by him was the most amazing feeling in the world. Kissing him made your head spin. 

Time flew by and before you know it, Your six hours of detention had passed. It was now 1am and the bewitched sponges had obediently dropped to the ground lifelessly after polishing the last trophy. As if on cue, Snape returns, walking up and down the trophy cases.

“Very well y/l/n. You may leave.” He hands you your wand.

“Thank you Professor. Always a pleasure.” You say sarcastically, bolting out the door before he could lecture you again. When you made it up to the common room, you expected it to be completely empty. After all, it was 1am. But to your surprise, Fred was fast asleep on the sofa in front of the fire, his chest rising and falling in sync with his breathing. He had waited for you to come back. You couldn't help but giggle. Grabbing a blanket from a nearby cupboard, you lay it over him and kiss his forehead.

Just as you were about to tip toe over to the stairs to make your way up to the girl’s dormitories, he stirs from his sleep.

“y/n? Is that you?” 

You make your way back to him, sitting down on the sofa. “Hey, what are you doing here silly? Shouldn't you be in bed?”

He sits up, pulling the blanket off him. “I wanted to be here when you got back.”

“Well? I’m here now. Whats the matter?” 

Without saying another word, a mischievous smile spreads across his face. Reaching under the sofa, he pulls out his quidditch broomstick. “Let me take you on a flight?” 

Your eyes lit up. For years you've been begging the twins to let you use their broomstick. Theirs was always better than yours because you weren't on the quidditch team. But they guarded that thing with their life. Not once did they allow you near it. 

“Really?” Fred stands, holding his broom in one hand with the other hand outstretched towards you. “Milady?”

You laugh, taking his hand. Just like that the two of you sneaked out of the Gryffindor common room, creeping past Mrs Norris and Filtch’s office. After a few long corridors and several flights of staircases, the two of you finally reach the main door. He pushes it open, and you step out into the cold night. It’s so dark, it could be impossible for anyone to see the two of you zooming around in the air. 

“It’s a little chilly tonight. Here hold this.” Fred hands you his broom before taking off his coat and handing it to you. He takes the broom from you again and says “Put It on. Wouldn't want you catching a cold.” You pull it on, thanking the heavens that its dark out. This way he couldn't see how much you were blushing. 

He straddles the broom before lowing the back end. “You ready?”

“Just one question.” You say, stepping closer to him so your bodies were slightly pressed together. “Why’d you bring me out here?”

“I wanted to cheer you up of course.” He says, pressing a soft kiss on your forehead. “Wait... is it alright I did that?” 

“Well, that depends.” You lean over his shoulder and whisper in his ear. “Are you my friend or are you my boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend.” he blurts out immediately. “If that's what you want of course.” he adds, looking rather embarrassed at his quick answer.

You giggle at his adorable display. “Fred Weasley are you flustered? For the first time in your life?” “Shut it y/l/n.” he laughs, “Come on, you know you're gorgeous, and funny, and kind and you have a cute butt. Now tell me, will you or will you not be my girlfriend?” Despite the nonchalance of his tone, you could tell he was nervous. His eyes gave it away.

“A million times yes.” Putting your arms around his neck, you pull him in for a long kiss. It was head spinning and life changing. The two of you only pull away when there was not enough air left.  You think I have a cute butt?” You ask, smirking at him.

He smiles, rolls eyes eyes and simply says “Hop on princess.” 

You climb onto the back of his broomstick, wrapping your arms around his torso tightly before the two of you take off into the night.

[animegirl1363]

It Take One Night ch 2

AO3

FF.net

Summary: Crow finds out he is pregnant with Brave's child and effectively cuts off all communication from him. With this event he finds out that Zero Reverse had a lot more side effects on the citizens of Satellite than poverty. All it takes is one night of passion to change the course of someones life.

Pairing: Crow x Brave (Trickstershipping)

Crow looked at his cell phone debating if he should ignore it or answer it. He effectively cut off Brave and was ignoring all attempts to respond to Brave’s concerns. He didn’t know how to tell Brave that he was pregnant. How would he respond to that? The blaring ringtone ended abruptly when Crow clicked the answer button.

“Crow! Finally!” Brave’s voice was a mix of relief, worry, and anger.

“Sorry for making you worry…” Crow said.

“Is that all you have to say!” Brave yelled and Crow flinched. Likely realizing this, Brave sighed and apologized. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.”

“Just focus on the exhibition tournament.” Crow was trying to avoid explaining anything.

“How can I focus on that? You disappear and cut off communicating with me. The only news I got of you was from when the headlines announced that you are quitting dueling.” Brave took a deep breath. “What is going on?”

“… I have to go.”

“Crow why won’t you let me help you?”

Click.

Crow ended the call and turned off his phone to ignore and further calls from Brave. He needed to focus on figuring out this phenomenon.

-

Once the sun broke over the horizon the trio of Yusei, Jack, and Crow all headed to the laboratory. To search for clues.

“Why must I ride double…?” Crow was sitting behind Yusei on the Yusei Go. It was clear that the ginger was no happy about this setup.

“For safety.” Yusei said. Crow rolled his eyes. “We don’t know what is going on so try to work with me.”

“Is there a reason why am being dragged along into this.” Jack’s face popped up on the video screen.

“I feel like this is something that involves all of us. So, no complaints.” Yusei said.

They arrived at the institution and were brought to Yusei’s office. There were papers strewn around on the desk complemented by disorganized bookshelves.

“Just as messy as the garage.” Crow commented.

“If it bothers you so much you can clean it. I’ll be back, let me get some clues.” Just as Yusei stepped through the threshold he turned around. “Try not to kill each other.”p Once the door was closed Crow began picking up bits or paper to put in a neat stack on Yusei’s desk.

“You know I found it weird that you announced quitting dueling. Of course, the last thing I would’ve thought was that is was because you were pregnant.” Jack said. “How did this happen?”

“If I knew I wouldn’t be freaking out about it.” Crow said. “I’m gonna assume sex plays a part since that’s how baby creation works.”

“Who is the dad?”

“Didn’t know you were such a gossip. Getting info to help out Carly?” Crow teased.

“Oh, just answer the question.” Then a look of realization came across Jack’s features. “It’s that trickster guy!”

Crow had split the neatly stacked paper he had building.

“It is him?! Now that think about it, there have been rumors about you two dating throughout the years. Even recent reports have seen you both together in Germany.”

“This is why I announced I was leaving dueling. I don’t need those vultures hounding me.” Exasperated, Crow tried to focus on re-stacking the paper but being reminded of Brave made him pull out his cell phone instead. The notifications read: One missed text. Crow clicked it.

‘You probably have a place to stay but if you don’t you are welcome to stay in the Harald’s estate. Here is the address and lock code. I have told Sebastian, the butler, about you in advance.’

Crow closed the message. “Why are you so perfect…?”

“Trouble in paradise?” Jack raised an eyebrow.

“Not really… I have distanced myself from him ever since the pregnancy started. How can I tell him something like this?”

“You are gonna have to tell him eventually. He is the dad.”

“I know. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.”

After a few hours of a comfortable silence, Yusei came back with a lot of flies and slapped them on his desk.

“I spend hours fixing up your desk and this is what happens.” Crow said.

“We got more important matters to be concerned with. Do you have any information Yusei?”

“Yes surprisingly!”

Jack and Crow’s faces brightened up and they gathered around their middle brother.

“Let’s start. After Zero Reverse happened the gas and/or radiation in the air caused Satellite citizens to develop differently than normal. One such mutation is that Satellite males can reproduce just like the female citizens.” Yusei explained.

“Wait. We all grew up breathing in that poisonous air. That means…” Jack started.

“You and I can also get pregnant Jack.” Yusei finished.

There was a short silence before Yusei turned to Crow.

“You are going to have to finish off your pregnancy here at the institution. Of course, the city doesn’t want something like this getting out.” Yusei said.

“I’m not gonna be caged up.” Crow said.

“No not like that. I meant that you will only be using the doctors here and giving birth here.”

“Hmm… Aki helped me out, so she knows. Nothing will happen to her?” Crow admitted.

“Doubt they have any control outside Neo Domino. But Akiza will not rat you out anyways.” Yusei said.

The trio headed back home. After today’s revelation, they could all use some rest.

While in his room, Crow dialed up Brave’s number. There were a few rings before his voice was heard from the other end.

“Crow?”

“I have something to tell you, but it can’t be said over the phone.” Crow said.

“If it’s important, just tell me now.” Brave goaded.

“I can’t. Please… When is your next time off?”

Silence.

“Are you still there?”

No response.

Crow expected him to get him an ultimatum ‘Tell me now or we are through’. He was going to end the call, taking the silence as an answer but then Brave began talking.

“After the exhibition tournament, I have a turbo match to compete in. I can make it back to Domino in 1 months’ time.” Brave said.

“Okay!” Crow agreed.

1 Month Later.

Crow had arrived at the estate. He had not knocked on the door for his nerves had gotten the better of him. It wasn’t until Brave came outside to bring in his little birdie that Crow was in the building.

They sat at on the couch waiting for Crow to speak up.

“I know I was all demanding at that time, but if you can’t tell me now, it is okay… But I do want to know eventually.” Brave squeezed Crow’s hand.

“This can’t wait any longer.” Crow said. “Where I grew up at had poisoned air and caused mutations in the people who lived there. I’m one of them.”

“You’re still Crow. You’re not dying, are you?” Brave wanted clarification.

“No! it… One of the side effects is that men can get pregnant.” Crow braced himself. He didn’t know how Brave was going to take this. One route was lashing out at what a monster he was. Crow was fully prepared for their relationship to end here and now.

“Umm… I don’t know how to respond to that…” Brave softly said. “Is this why you ran away from me because you started experiencing these side effects of where you grew up? Crow I’m not going to leave you. Whatever happens we will get through it together.”

Brave wrapped his arms around Crow. “You had me worried something bad happen to you.”

Crow gently pulled out of the hug, “Did you not hear what I said? I have the ability to have kids.”

Brave nodded.

“You do understand how kids are made right.”

“I’m not a kid Crow. What are you getting at?”

“I’m pregnant.”

“I’m I the dad? I want to be the dad.” There was no pause, as brave said this quickly without second thought. This left Crow in a state of confusion as he only prepared himself for the bad ending.

“Yes. I’ve only been with you.”

“I’m so happy.” Brave kissed Crow.

Crow lifted his shirt to show his baby bump. Since it had grew slightly, Crow couldn’t wear his normal yellow shirt and was wearing a yellow hoodie instead. Placing a hand over his lover’s stomach, Brave kissed Crow some more. The two basked in their joy, happy for what the future has to bring.

[an-annyeoing-writer]

Baëkhyun x Reader: derision.

Word count: 1 787

Warnings: mind games, drug use, unethical human subject research.

Rating: M (+16) for the warnings stated above.

The man sat down on the opposite side of the room, legs crossed and a folder with documents seated on his lap. To anyone else looking at him now, his face would seem emotionless. But you saw a hint of derision in his beautiful eyes; his head raised proudly as he looked you over for a few long seconds before opening his documents. 

He was barely three, maybe four meters away, but the distance looked like an abyss. The way he sat, the way he behaved, the way he was clothed, so clean, neat and rich, so unlike your dirty, ripped clothes and your limbs stripped to the chair, put up even more distance than there’s ever been before.

You wished there were none, as before, when none of such things mattered. But your wish was not to be granted.

Your head hung lowly.

“Now, shall we start? Miss [L/n], our newest subject. How nice to see you here.” A polite smile crossed his feature, but it wasn’t directed at you, because the man didn’t even look up from his papers. “Let’s talk a bit. It must be a very sudden change in your life, but I hope you’re being treated well. Tell me, is the food alright?”

You wanted to scoff, but a broken sob was all that left your mouth instead. Was he even serious now? He knew how bad it was, how painful. He knew how the guards acted towards the subjects, what the place you were kept in was like, and, although the least important, how nasty the food was, in right amounts to satiate hunger, but stinky and awful in taste, a white butter-like substance consisting of all the ingredients your body would need, but nothing above that.

The man in front of you was nothing but a mocker, taking his time relishing in your misery. 

“I’ll take it as a yes, then. We’ve been taking a lot of tests lately, and I must say, your results are promising. What a surprise a diamond like you had been right under our noses all along.”

“Stop talking like this” you whimpered out. “You weren’t working here. You don’t belong here. Stop talking like you’re one of them. It makes me sick.”

Putting his documents together and folding in front of him, Baëkhyun finally looked at you.

“If not one of them, then who I am, Miss [L/n]? And, more importantly, who are you?”

You opened your mouth to answer, but simply couldn’t. You managed to handle his gaze for a long time before dropping it miserably.

“I-I was good to you…” you whimpered.

“Sure you were” Baëkhyun scoffed, but his tone was rid off amusement.

“Weren’t I…?”

The man stood up from his chair so suddenly that you flinched, startled, making him smirk without even glancing at you. Putting hands behind his back, he started pacing around the room, sometimes disappearing behind your back, but making no effort to get closer to you then necessary. You swore it drove you crazy. You ached to hold him, to have this littlest amount of comfort that was so close, almost in your reach.

“Miss [L/n], let’s get back to business. You’ve been given the same exact treatment as all of the subjects in our center are. Can you see any differences in your behavior, body, your sensations? Has anything changed in your opinion?” 

You weren’t interested in answering his questions. Thousands of thoughts ran through your mind, flashbacks of everything that happened ever since you met him. 

You hated every single memory because they were the reason for the pain of both of you, but you loved them just the same, knowing they were the reason you met him, started to grow fond of him, just like, you were sure, he grew fond of you.

You hated the syringe you had to put in his arm because he was struggling so much that the doctors called you over to sedate him, not wanting to get any closer to the dangerous subject. But you loved the way his lips parted slightly at your sight, and he found himself relaxing the very moment you spoke to him, calm and warm, so unlike anything else he’d experienced in the center. 

You hated the fact you were the one to always interrogate him, being educated enough to do that, but so low in the ranks that no one cared if he’d hurt you. But you loved the fact that he never did, and that those hours you spent together brought you closer to each other. You loved that you could say him all these comforting things, ease him into this life, and tell him that it won’t last forever, and that his sacrifice will bring a better life to so many. You saw that it worked to calm him down. But you hated that he was the one who had to be that sacrifice. Because you swore you’d rather see him free and well, not beaten up and sedated because he tried to run away again, again and again.

You loved that he was free now. But you hated the fact that you were the price of such luxury.

He was considered a finished case, a subject that nothing more could be done with. And as a successful case, he was given an offer to join the center. 

And at the same time, you were accidentally diagnosed as an X-gene carrier, and taken into the custody of the center. What a cruel joke it was, you thought. Almost like those stories about evil kings who tormented their people, only to become a slave to them later on. 

But you weren’t like those evil kings. In your opinion, you did your best to ease the suffering of the subjects, and you wanted the X-gene to be used in a way that’d help them, not destroy them furthermore. The X-gene was supposed to be a blessing, something that could help improve the human race, not a reason to dehumanize its carriers.

“You aren’t replying to my question, Miss [L/n]. Should I repeat it for you?”

However, in the subjects’ eyes, all of the doctors were the same: they’ve seen enough of evil kings to deem all of them just as cruel, and maybe, just maybe, you weren’t doing it well enough to make them realize your intentions.

Maybe, in fact, you were nothing but another evil king, relishing in the safety of your superior position.

But even despite all of that, your feelings were no illusion, and the way Baëkhyun acted towards you right now simply broke your heart into pieces, shattering them all over this cold, dark room with every step he made, pacing around you in circles like a hungry vulture over dead meat.

“Baëk…” you whimpered. “I’m so sorry…”

“That’s not the answer to my question, Miss [L/n].”

“Why won’t you use my first name… I told you you can…” Your body shivered at yet another memory that appeared in your head. 

“Ah, that’d be very unprofessional.” His voice echoed in a whisper right behind you. You could tell he was leaning down to speak to you, words seeping like a venom, his sweet voice deprived from mercy, ringing in your ears, so beautiful, yet so, so relentless.

“Please, stop tormenting me, I can’t stand this being you, Baëkhyun…”

You tried to turn your head towards him, but your neck hurt too much to move it freely; you thought that there was something wrong with your muscles, but it didn’t stay on your mind for too long, because the sound of shuffling quickly distracted your attention.

Something cold and thin touched your neck; it felt like a knife at first, but you quickly realized it was a syringe, pressed flat against your skin. Your heart skipped, but you forced yourself to stay still. Syringes never meant good, you learned. Upon experiencing them yourself, you found yourself regretting every single one you’d used on someone else.

“You’re very uncooperative today, Miss [L/n]. What should I do with you?”

You sobbed quietly.

“Ah, I know. You seem to be sad these days, isn’t it so?” 

The syringe disappeared and for a moment you panted heavily, right before you felt the man’s touch on yourself; it brought as much relief as it brought terror, when the man wrapped his arms around your neck from behind, hanging them loosely in front of you, with the syringe still present in one of them and documents – in the other. The gesture was so intimate, taken out of a completely different story, so nice and comforting; especially as Baëkhyun’s cheek brushed against yours when he leaned down, holding his head right next to yours. 

“But you don’t have a reason to worry, I’m here to take care of you after all, aren’t I? So, sweetheart.” His voice rung in your ear; he was so close you could hear even his breathing, and the quietest clickings of his tongue. “Don’t worry about anything. It won’t last forever, you know? And your sacrifice will bring better life to so many.” He mocked you, repeating your own words, you could tell. Yet, the closeness that he provided you, gave you the smallest sense of comfort; you turned your head to glance at his face, and he returned the glance. The proximity took your breath away. 

Baëkhyun smiled, softly, but still mockingly.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten all we went through” he whispered. You were sure that his voice wouldn’t be registered on the sensitive cameras placed in the room to film the interrogations that took place in it. It was husky, meant for your ears only. “But let me tell you. I’ll put you through hell, and through way worse things that you’ve seen being done to me or any other subjects. I’ll break your body, your soul, I’ll shatter you and put back together the way I want. And then, sweetheart, then, I’ll take you back. I’ll destroy this forsaken place and all the people who brought this misery upon all of us. We’re no different now, [F/n]. You’re just as cursed and hopeless as I’ve once been. So have a good taste of it, sweetheart. Have a good taste of this hell. Atone for your sins to be worth being saved later.”

Straightening up, the man held the documents in front of himself, re-reading them yet again, which you couldn’t really see, with your gaze fixated blankly on the floor between your knees.

“Now, next question. What is your opinion on sedatives used here? Do you remember the types we use, or should I refresh your memory in that matter? Your feedback will be very much appreciated.”

Since my tags aren’t working again, please, reblog if you enjoyed!

[unholyhelbig]

Hizzie Prompt... Ok so Lizzie has to deal with Hope while in heat or during a blood moon

Read on Ao3 | Send me more Legacies Prompts! 

Title: Uncharted Waters 

Ship: Hope Mikaelson/ Lizzie Saltzman 

[A/N: I will be the absolute first to admit that I got a little carried away with the plot here, I really enjoy the disgruntled lifeguard thing. So that means this could totally get a part two if you guys want!] 

The day held a soft golden hue to it, spilling onto the scalding cement and glinting expertly against the choppy artificial waves that started at one end of the pool and pushed to the section that Lizzie was stationed at. She had the liberty of a sun-stained umbrella and a bout of shade that did nothing to quell the heat of the summer wind.

Cool Waves Summer Adventure Park was the bane of her existence. For the cheap wage of seven dollars an hour she would rise before the sun and leave when the night was finally cooling off. Everything smelled like cheap spray tan and sunscreen, and the occasional puddle of vomit. But her father insisted that she keep the position as a lifeguard if she wanted to keep that nice 1969 Chevy Camaro that a family friend had given her.

So she sat at the far end of the pool, day in and day out, watching for lazy parents that tip too far on the rafts, or for their demon kids who would drink the chlorine infused water. Occasionally she would have days like this; where it was crowded and the sun was more irritating than anything.

“Sir I don’t know how to explain this to you in any other way. The coupon you have isn’t even for our park. I couldn’t give you half-off at the snack shack even if I wanted to.”

If the customer in front of her wasn’t already sunburnt, she could see his bald head shifting through three shades of red. He frowned and removed his sunglasses because maybe that would make him look more intimidating, but really it just paid tribute to how many times he had fallen asleep by the side of the ocean. He had the measly paper clenched between his fist.

“Maybe if you went to the snack shack, they could help.” She tried weakly. It was dirty, she knew, pushing the disgruntled father off towards another department. But she was a lifeguard and nowhere near the food stand. “I’m sure they could give you something.”

He sputtered, not happy with the answer. “I want to talk to your supervisor, Josie.”

She glanced down at the white logoed shirt that hugged her closely, damp with sweat. He had used her name to drive a point, but she had grabbed the wrong nametag this morning on her way out the door. Another misstep that she would have to make up to her sister somehow in the next few days.

Lizzie opened her mouth to respond but halted to a stop when the sharp cut of a whistle captured both of their attentions. It wasn’t Lizzie’s hers still hung lazily around her neck, collecting heat like a beacon.

It was easy to spot an accident, she learned that her fourth day on the job when part of the Black Vulture came loose and the large waterslide was shut down faster than an ambulance could arrive to haul away the kid who got a few bruises.

People tended to clear and gawk instead of doing what they could to help. Right now there was a steady circle in the middle of the water and something, someone, thrashing around in the deeper end of the pool. Lizzie could feel her heart in her chest and suddenly didn’t care much about arguing with a disgruntled patron.

She moved quickly past the umbrella, and the chair, shoving both of her hands against the large red button that screamed: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. It didn’t do much of course, but it did bring the motor that created waves in the pool to a screeching halt. They had never used it before.

And then there was the girl, the one who blew the whistle in the first place. Hope Mikaelson didn’t bother shedding away her shirt or pulling the walkie-talkie from the waistband of her annoyingly tight shorts. Instead, she jumped into the pool with expert speed and precision.

Lizzie rushed down the cement steps, hand running across the scalding metal railing. “10-10 wave pool.” She knew her words were breathy over the radio, and she knew even more than that, that this wasn’t just a possible drowning. It was laid out clear and plain in front of her but her scrambled mind couldn’t get a grasp on the correct code.

Hope had pulled the young girl from the far end of the pool and onto the edge by the time that Lizzie had gotten there. They were both dripping and she had linked her hands together, placing them in the center of the young girl's chest, lips blue.

“Where the hell were you?” Hope snarled, squaring her shoulders and applying pressure in intervals. Her mouth moved while she counted before she said: “Help me, Saltzman.”

Lizzie didn’t need to be told twice. She was careful, listening to Hope count out the last five intervals before she lilted the girls chin up and blew just enough air into her lungs to push them outwards. She did this twice before Hope started pressing against her chest again.

Everything had slowed and by the time Hope alerted her of her position, Lizzie was ready to lean forward again. The girl coughed violently, a mix of bile and water pushed from her lips and a healthy dose of color returned to her cheeks.

“Stand back, both of you” Lizzie was shoved to a standing position as the real medical team got there, heeding her shout over the radio. The on-call medic pressed two gloved fingers to the edge of the girls throat for a pulse, despite her lucidity. “It’s a good thing you were here.”

“Where else would I be?” Hope asked, her words dripped of acid and her stare burned like a flame. Lizzie frowned.

“That’s not fair, I was dealing with another situation.”

“Yeah, so was I but I always keep on eye on the pool, Lizzie. That’s basic lifeguarding.” Hope started to walk to the main office shoving past her, shoulder wet and cold as she dripped onto the dry pavement. “Get it together.”

Lizzie wanted to call after her just like she had wanted to rip that guy's coupon to shreds and push him into the shallow end. But she bit her tongue until she could taste blood again before turning her attention back to the medic and the young girl who sat at the edge of the still water.

“You were really lucky that Hope was there.” MG struggled with the combination of his lock. He had been at it for a good fifteen minutes, but with no luck. Lizzie considered the fact that he had the wrong locker altogether, but she resorted to pulling on a sweatshirt, not wanting to stare at that stupid logo of the penguin holding a beach ball anymore.

“But why was she there?” Lizzie asked, earning a patronizing stare. “Not that I’m not thankful. That girl is totally alive because of her. But last time I checked, the almighty Hope Mikaelson was stationed at Hurricane falls, all the way on the other end of the park.”

He pulled down on the lock one final time and it clicked open fluidly. “Yes! Alyssa said she wasn’t feeling well so she was going to take a break in the shade. Hope kind of blew up on her.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Lizzie let the conversation fizzle in the air as MG collected his stuff from the locker, shoving his car keys in the slim pockets of his shorts. Though she thought that the girl had a hero Complex, Hope was anything but violent. Never one with a short fuse and always liked by every single supervisor including Alyssa.

The two of them strolled out into the nearly desolate park, breathing in the hot air. It had cooled off significantly from the afternoon and the usually pitch-black path was lit by an oddly orange light, a curved half-moon in the sky.

“Would you look at that?” MG stared up at it and blinked “Kind of cool,”

Blood Moons weren’t cool, not the full ones anyway. Not in Lizzie Saltzman’s household. She wasn’t an expert in the supernatural by any means, but she had found enough old and dusty books in her mother’s stuff to know that the energy around them was anything but pleasant. That the world was better off forgetting anything like that existed in the first place.

Over the years she and Josie had tried to ask their parents about it, about the old stories and the reason they had all of that stuff in the first place but they were shut out each time. Because magic didn’t really exist, and neither did the creatures that basked in its light.

“Oh, shoot-“ Lizzie patted down her person, “I forgot my keys. Go on without me.”

MG hesitated, his features soft in the darkened crimson light. “You’re sure?”

She nodded, sure of herself. Nothing bad happened here, not this late at night when all the bloodthirsty tourists had retired for fancy dinners by the ocean’s edge. Even if something did happen, the park was littered with cameras, and she was confident.

Lizzie parted ways with him and the two of them walked in opposite directions. Him towards the parking lot and her towards the main building, filled with offices and the employee locker rooms, lined with metal and eerily silent at this time of night.

The air was thick and wet with steam and the scent of soap, unlike it had been moments ago. She felt sweat collect instantly against her skin. They had showers lining the far end, something that had never been converted from the park's original design. But no one ever used them.

Lizzie silently crept towards her locker and started to struggle with her combination just like MG had. Her fingers were shaking, and she was starting to think coming back here on her own was her worst idea yet. But finally, she got enough advantage to snatch them and closed it softly, turning, but halting.

Her body came in contact with another, so quiet and smelling fresh like lavender body wash. Not the usual chemical scent that they all carried home with them like a badge. She felt the soft edge of a towel under her fingertips and slammed her back against the cold metal of the lockers.

“Jesus Christ Hope, you scared the hell out of me!” Lizzie felt her heart in her throat once more but for a different reason than before. Not adrenaline, not fear- something else entirely that she couldn’t’ pinpoint.

Hope was wrapped tightly in a dark green towel, or maybe it was black, she couldn’t tell over the soft light that flooded the bathroom like split blood. It shaded the girls features, sharp and different. Her hair was damp.

“Oh?” She cocked a perfect brow “Should I start wearing a bell, Saltzman?”

“Yeah, maybe. What are you doing here so late anyway?”

Hope raked her gaze up and down Lizzie’s frame before landing back on her stare. “I could ask you the same question.”

“I forgot my keys.” She jingled them like a prize, swallowing the way her hair raised on end, goosebumps prickling. “Hey, I wanted to apologize about earlier today. It pains me to admit it, but you were right. I should have been paying more attention.”

The Mikaelson girl nodded thoughtfully and pulled the towel closer to her, suddenly moving an inch of a step back. Hope frowned and Lizzie couldn’t tell if it was about what she had said or the sudden loss of heat in the air. The light had shifted, hidden behind nothing but a wisp of a cloud.

“Uh, yeah.” Hope cleared her throat and blinked dumbly and took another step back. “Don’t worry about it. You should probably get home.”

Lizzie stared at the girl and the way she pulled into herself against the darkness of the locker room. It hung in the air and her fingers tightened against the edge of her keys. She knew she should wait for Hope, should offer her a ride home or politely walk her to her car- but she didn’t. Instead, she nodded slowly.

“See you tomorrow?”

Hope averted her stare, “yeah, sure thing.”

[tracybirds]

:DD I finished!! Part 2!! of my Man from TB5 AU!! yay!!! A reminder for those who don’t recall last week let alone last month, this is based on a prompt by @kenzie-running-free :

A 'what-if' story based on "The Man From TB5" where the Hood recognized John in the scene when he makes himself known (instead of John stuttering).

Uh and so I did that and then John got kidnapped. Full backstory here: [Part 1]

Super many thanks to @gumnut-logic and @plantmuffin for reading parts and chatting plotting with me :D You’re both lovely!

Enjoy!!

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The silence that followed John’s dramatic exit was the hardest part. No one spoke, the only sound the roaring of the wind and the faint beeping in John’s ear that told him the connection had not yet been re-established. Perhaps, it wouldn’t. The Hood had intended for Penelope to call his brothers to her, and crucially away from him, so it followed that the frequency disrupter was concealed on his person.

If it were him in his ‘bird, he knew how to trace the dead air that a comm jam inevitably created. There was a trail that would follow, maintenance reports and upgrades listed. There was sudden news spreading online of short, unexplained communication failures, a flurry of online activity that burst into life the moment the disruption ended.

He wasn’t in his ‘bird. He didn’t have access to a vast network of datastreams and information caches and statistical modelling programmes. He had a radio that was only connected to a single network and magnetic socks for all the good they would do him. And he had thrown away the one item that might have been useful as a weapon.

After that impulsive choice, he wasn’t certain he could claim his brain as an asset.

One problem at a time. He knew how to calm a racing mind, knew how to create order out of apparent chaos.

Three goons.

One mastermind.

No control over the mechanism strapped to his body.

Wind chill.

No way to contact his family and make his position known.

Yet.

The steady beeping of an unconnected comm was replaced by crackling static. A stationary frequency disruptor then, not on the Hood’s personage at all. It would make things harder for Penelope and Parker to get out of the mess they were in, if they needed to destroy the jamming technology themselves, but it gave John a chance. He twisted slightly in his harness, the unforgiving metal tugging at his skin.

“You won’t get out, boy,” sneered the Hood. “And where would you go? Fall to your death like your mother? Like your friends back at the hotel will?”

John ignored him. His arm snaked higher, feeling underneath the lapel of his suit. He shuddered at the bite of metallic thread, the icy burn spreading outwards from his fingers.

His hands were clumsy and the cold already beginning to muddle his mind as he worked, fighting his instincts to curl up and preserve heat instead of picking at frozen circuitry.

The static dropped into the familiar, faint beeping as they flew through another patch of destructive signal interference. He worked through it, twisting at the threads to create a receiver that would remain open and linked into the iR comm line. To hack into his own network was no mean feat and more than once John had to abruptly shift from fiddling with the electrical components to scratching his chin as the Hood or his men peered back at him. A quiet Tracy was a dangerous Tracy. The Hood had learnt that lesson long ago.

He couldn’t allow more than a sharp inhale of excitement as the radio receiver caught the first snatches of conversation on the air.

“It’s been nearly an hour.”

“And he hasn’t called any of us?”

“EOS, you’re sure this isn’t you?”

“Positive!”

He couldn’t leave a transmission line open, not without creating a signal of his own that would draw attention to himself from unwanted parties. Especially as he couldn’t guarantee it would attract his brothers’ attention. Better to wait.

A new voice broke through.

“Calling International Rescue, we have urgent need of assistance.”

“Lady Penelope?” Scott and Gordon’s voices intertwined, although one displayed considerably more anxiety than the other.

“Lady Penelope, what’s happened to John?” demanded Scott. John could almost see the withering glare he gave their younger brother, almost daring him to speak.

“John’s not… he’s been…”

“Kidnapped by the ‘ood,” cut in Parker. “Begging your pardon, m’lady.”

A loud thump.

“I told you we should take it seriously,” hissed Alan.

“How was I to know it wasn’t his stupid AI being the devil incarnate again?”

“I said it wasn’t me!”

“What information can you give us?” Virgil’s voice was low and calm. John could almost feel his warm hand dropping on his shoulder, his eyes intent and serious.

“I don’t know where John is,” said Penelope, letting out a shaky breath. “But we’ve just destroyed a frequency jammer that was affecting all our communications, and there are three devices slowly cutting through the cables holding up the infrastructure of the hotel. We have nearly 300 civilians that need help now.”

A splutter of outrage came through the earpiece.

“John–”

“Don’t argue with me, Scott Tracy,” Penelope snapped. “Do not think for a second I don’t care about your brother because I do. The Hood wants something from him specifically, he’s not in any immediate danger. But we have experienced altitude shifts from a loss of tension twice in the last forty-five minutes, and we cannot afford to wait much longer.”

“She’s right,” murmured Virgil.

There was an awful silence. John held his breath.

“Thunderbird One and Thunderbird Shadow are our fastest planes,” said Scott. “Kayo, let’s move. Gordon, you and Alan, get up the hotel specs up in the comm sphere, start running timeframe simulations. We need to get those people out of that building.”

“I’ve forward you boys all the information I can.”

“Virgil, can you–”

His stomach in his mouth.

Wind whistling in his ears, drowning out the words.

A drop in altitude, a spike in terror.

He groaned as his body jolted in the harness, the fall abruptly ended with cruel laughter from above. Slowly the mechanical wings retracted and again gravity overcame him. A numb jolt shot up his legs and he crumpled to the hard tarmac. The fall was only a few feet high, but it was enough to cause serious ground shock which slammed through his nerves like a lightning bolt.

John looked up, squinting in the harsh sunlight.

Above him, the Hood and his henchmen circled like vultures, almost lazy in their descent. They would never be able to reach him if he could make a break for it.

‘If’ very much being the operative word.

John looked around him. The mountainous landscape cut off any obvious escape routes. There was a car nearby, evidently left for them to use as a getaway for the next phase of transport. Black, hard top, driver’s seat on the left. He noted the make and model before checking over the sprained wrist he’d sustained as he’d fallen forwards. He grimaced as he tested its range of motion, thanking his lucky stars he was right handed. Gingerly, he dabbed at scrapes beneath his torn dress trousers, doing his best to clean them.

He risked a glance upwards to see how many more precious few moments alone he would be given.

Hunched over his wounds, it was time to make a signal disruptor of his own. He needed a device that would draw attention not only to his existence, but his location. He huffed on his hands, his fingers still stiff and clumsy from the cold. A localised disturbance in the comms network would do it, he knew the precise frequencies that the comms would be operating on and would be able to target a destructive pattern much more efficiently that the broad spectral disruption that the Hood’s device had used. And if he could code a message into the pattern of disruption, all the better.

‘If they can find it.’ He pushed the thought away. His brothers were still chattering in his ear, their focus on the rescue at hand and unaware of his eavesdropping. He knew they were close by, close enough that the comms would record the disruption even if they weren’t looking for it. He just had to hope someone would at least note the regularity of the anomaly when they reviewed the mission logs. He tried not to think about the fact that that someone was usually him.

He had to trust his brothers.

The binary of Morse code made it easy to incorporate, able to be read through the on/off of the signal disruption. They could all recognise a simple SOS message, it had been one of the first rescue lessons their father had drilled into them from childhood. He set the signal to repeat.

Rough hands pulled John upright and he stood on shaky legs that struggled to hold his weight. His adrenaline level was decreasing rapidly, and the resulting shock was beginning to crash his system.

“Get him in the car,” said the Hood, barely glancing at John. “Move quickly, International Rescue will fly over this region soon enough and I want us long gone before they get a sniff of this place.”

“Yes boss.”

John was frogmarched to the back seat and strapped into place. He hadn’t sat in a middle seat since before his first growth spurt and he shifted uncomfortably with his knees around his ears.

“I want something from you, John Tracy.” The Hood sounded bored, merely reciting a daily script with a stranger. “It is a mistake to say I need it. All I want is for you not to have it.”

A soft click drew John’s attention. The cold impression of a barrel against his ribs left him certain of the Hood’s intent. The blood pounded in his ears, the mental instructions he sent to calm his heart rate unheeded by his body.

“I am not concerned how I get it.” John could see the man’s cold, glittering eyes in the rear view mirror. “Do we understand each other, John?”

John licked at his dry lips. His voice was merely a rasp and he hated himself for betraying such an obvious physical reaction.

“We do,” he whispered.

“Excellent.”

John was feeling dizzy. The reality of his situation flashed through his mind, sudden images of being thrown from the hotel, forced out of the sky, the gun that was pressed into his side. He closed his eyes. Faintly, he thought he could hear Alan’s excited voice, his words indistinct as hysteria threatened to overwhelm him.

He couldn’t give that level of satisfaction to his worst enemy.

He wouldn’t allow his emotions to control his responses.

He needed a cool head and all his wits about him if he were to get out of this mess.

The car was speeding along the mountain road, isolated with nobody nearby for miles.

He opened his eyes. Alan was still talking into his ear.

“Guys, I know that’s John.”

“What, so the comm signal drops off nearby and you immediately assume it’s John?” scoffed Gordon. “It happens, alpine regions are always sketchy. It’s back now anyway.”

“Exactly,” said Alan. “Signals that drop off don’t just come back. It’s not random noise either, look at this projection of signal strength. And it’s moving.”

“Kayo, go check it out,” ordered Scott. “It may be nothing, but let’s not take chances. Virgil and I can finish up here, we’re almost done.”

“FAB Scott.”

“Alan, try to make contact. If it is John, I want confirmation of his situation.”

A high pitched frequency assaulted him. Audio feedback, a misplaced connection in the radio receiver and John yelped, bringing his hands up to protect his ears.

He froze, eyes watering.

“Pull. over.”

The Hood’s voice was as silk, a smooth, low, furious sound that demanded obedience.

John didn’t move, didn’t dare draw attention to the radio embedded in his jacket. He could lose the earpiece, despite the anguish it would cause to lose a stable connection to his family. Without the radio itself, their link to him would be destroyed.

Rough hands grabbed at his arm, ignoring the sharp cry as his injured wrist bore his weight as he was hauled from the car.

A hard shove sent him sprawling.

“Get him up,” said the Hood. “Stop wasting my time.”

Revulsion rose from John’s stomach as the Hood stepped closer. His head jerked away, only to be captured in the Hood’s other hand, yanking his ear down to eye level.

“A speaker,” he muttered, plucking the earpiece from its place. He lifted it to his own ear, cocking an eyebrow at the voices that emanated from it.

“So, you’re in contact with them. Clever. And yet you haven’t alerted them to your whereabouts?”

John said nothing.

“There must be a receiving unit. Presumably a transmitter as well – ah! A textile radio, how delightful. Did Brains cook this up for you? But of course he did.”

The jacket was ripped from his body, leaving John shivering in the mountain air.

“How does this work, John? No, don’t tell me. Brains’ inventions are always so intuitive. Very convenient in an emergency, wouldn’t you say John?”

He threw the earpiece back at one of the henchmen holding him in place.

“Best give this part back, we don’t need it.”

The man hesitated.

“Get a move on,” growled the Hood.

John flinched as the earpiece was replaced, his head filled again with the sounds of his family calling to each other back and forth.

The Hood fingered the lapel thoughtfully.

“I can open a transmission to them. Should I do that John? Let them know how helpless you are? How helpless they are?”

“Thunderbird Five calling unknown operator, come in please.”

“They’ll find me. They won’t stop searching.”

“Such faith in family.” The Hood peered into John’s eyes. “Do you really believe that? Surely you recall their past failures. Their prejudices. Their arrogance.”

“We have received an SOS from your location. Please respond.”

He leaned closer.

“John, if you’re out there, give us a sign. Anything. Please.”

Alan’s voice broke. John could hear the shuffling motion of a brother pulling another close. Gordon’s calm, steady voice took over the call.

“You’re about to find out what I learnt long ago. Family lets us down. Family leaves us behind. Family don’t look forever.”

John’s heart thudded in his chest. The Hood’s lips twisted into a cruel smile, a knife twisting in the wound he’d just dealt.

“Of course, you already know that.”

>>>“Dad, we need you.”

>>> “Dad, we won’t stop looking.”

>>> “Dad, please.”

>>> “…”

>>> “Dad, they need me. They need Thunderbird Five.”

>>> “Scott says we have to stop.”

>>>“Dad, I think he’s right.”

John knew. John remembered.

The Hood opened the channel.

“Wait, wait Scott, we have a connection.”

“Can he hear us?”

“John? John?!”

“Anything you’d like me to pass on, John?”

The Hood smiled, a triumphant figure.

“Last chance.”

“Go to hell.”

He laughed, fingers playing on the edge of the jacket lapel.

Twenty-two thousand miles above them, his laugh echoed across a suddenly silent space station.

[Part 3]

[spnsimpleman]

With silent fear and hunger

Part five of Anon request series- Unknown gang daughter.  

Part one of the series- read this first! With the strike of a match Part Two- With a wink and a smile.  Part Three- With a flick of my blade  Part Four- With a smirk and a toss

Dean x unknown Daughter, Sam x unknown niece, badass!winchester Reader- is this a thing? Because it should be.

Word Count: 2367

Seven Devils- Florence and the machine

I double checked the accelerant before lifting it from the bin and carefully placing it in my backpack. The mayor had just left with his escort for the night and I had at least three hours before he was due to be home from a meeting with some other big shots. More than enough time to make sure the right wall burned and the fire department got here to put it out before the real evidence was destroyed.

I unzipped the front pocket and checked the flash drives and fishing wire again. With a deep breath, I zipped it up and closed the back zipper before slipping the straps onto my shoulders and tightened them. I tugged at my gloves and cracked my neck. Bumping into those idiots had messed with my head. Of course they had to find me now. If those assholes somehow got in the way… I didn’t want to think what I would do.

“Morons,” I whispered as I pulled my favored lock picks from my jacket pocket. Time to work.

The backdoor was a joke, I made it through both locks in under a minute. Then entered the code into the alarm next to the door. “Loose lips sink ships,” I grinned while locking the back door again and made my way upstairs.

The bedroom was exactly where Rosalie said it would be and the secret room opened with the right pressure on the right board. Who would think the man actually kept wood plank walls for anything other than an ulterior motive?

The dark room had two switches and I hit the lower one drenching the room in a low red glow. He didn’t spare any expense in here. The bed against the wall was equipped with fuzzy black cuffs on red silk sheets. The chains that restrained the cuffs gleamed even in the low light. I walked over to the computer in the corner with the old school webcam attached to a large monitor.

The password for the computer was even worse than the joke of a lock and alarm. HotforTeacher. Which wasn’t one of the outfits Rosalie had talked about. Maybe he thought he was clever that way.

Darius’s blank eyes flashed before me, JJ’s pretend smile while his face held too many shadows. I shook my head and shoved the invading images and thoughts away. I could banish it all, I just needed to finish this.

I pulled out the flash drive, plugged it in, and with a few little commands downloaded the files. A little bit of play with some internal code that I would have been completely lost in had Marco not shown me a few things and introduced me to the genius that taught him and, wah la. Rosalie’s videos were gone and my selected videos were in play instead.

I scrolled through the other folders labeled by name or his version of a nickname wishing I could erase them but I would only be erasing his crimes. He had enough help with that through the years. All those names would get their payback when the videos were found. He would be punished. He wasn’t getting out of it this time. I was entering the proof into evidence that he was the last to see some of those girls alive.

It was the only thing I could tell myself as I opened the player and clicked play all. The queue should play long enough that they heard it, give enough probable cause to knock the door down if the fire didn’t open it. Then I stepped out of the room and secured the secret door.

I splashed the accelerant all along the wall and across the floor of the hallway to the window then splashed some down the stairs. I put the bottle of accelerant down on its side in front of the side table. The fishing wire went around the back leg and then I tugged the wire with one hand. I caught the table and the fat candle atop it with the other. Perfect landing.

I opened the window behind the side table and threw the spool of fishing wire out before shutting the window just enough again. The fishing line was snug. I lit the fat candle and waited, making sure it stayed lit. Then satisfied, I walked down the stairs careful to avoid stepping in the accelerant.

With a few quick codes into the alarm box to wipe the history for the last thirty minutes and then the alarm re-engaged, I left the house almost exactly how I found it. I trekked around to the backyard and found the fishing wire spool in the bush under the window. I looked up with a whispered prayer and yanked. The light bloomed once then the slow bloom as all the synthetic fibers of the hallway runner caught and fed the hungry flame.

The sirens wailed, his alarm system notifying the right authorities immediately. The line in my hand went slack, the part on the other side of the window melted away. I pulled the rest to me and backed into the bushes then climbed the tree.

The sirens grew closer and I watched the flame dancing in the window. From my vantage point, I could see the wood planks being eaten away revealing the metal beneath, the very obvious door way now exposed. My breath hitched, my heart beating against my chest. Questioning whether my accelerant was too much, if I had misjudged the speed the firefighters would move at. Did they know what kind of man he was? Would they let that slow their steps?

No, real innocents lived nearby. Even if they knew, they wouldn’t let others be hurt. They couldn’t. They needed to get there in time. These people expected quick response. They never doubted it.

Darius’s blank face, his dull eyes flashed in front of me again. Would he approve of my methods? His feral, agonized scream filled my head and I winced, gripping onto the tree trunk. I pressed my face into the rough bark trying to crush the blooming memory I didn’t want to see. Not now.

Darius’s head crushed against the curb, the two gleaming white teeth skittering across the sidewalk, the agonized scream in my ear as rough hands held me back.

I screamed against the tree, the memory too much and too easily overtaking what I needed to do. I needed to leave, needed to move, but I was frozen in that moment I never wanted to remember. My fingers dug into the bark biting into my skin. The pain brought me back, centering me here and now. So close to the justice I had worked so hard on. If someone heard me… pointed me out…

I glanced around but I was still behind the extra curtain the tree provided in the dark and the sirens wailing so close must have drowned me out. Besides, everyone’s eyes would be on the fire. I looked across the yard to the window filled with flame and smoke and then the window burst out, the flames sucking in the oxygen like a greedy lover.

Two firefighters burst through the gate carrying the heavy hose around before unleashing the battering ram of water. I needed to move but the water slowly killed the flames until the fire was gone. The secret door was revealed and waiting for them, begging to be discovered.

I waited in silent fear and hunger, clinging to the tree far too tight as they went inside taking their sweet time to check and clear each room. Then finally they made it to the bedroom. I heard the call pour through the broken window. They thought someone was in there. Sound was still coming from beyond the secret door warming me that my gamble had paid off. He had spared no expense to make sure that room was never found from the hallway and it had kept the heat and fire away from the evidence that would damn him. 

Two of them took off the hinges and removed the door, the screams poured out of that small room and spilled from the window. What would the neighbors think? That someone was just afraid? The mayor had a female in the house when the fire went up? But the firefighters entered the room slowly and I wondered what they thought as the sounds distorted. But my job here was done and hopefully the police officers that had arrived on the scene would be taking the computer with them. There was a lot of evidence on there and I really didn’t want to send the videos to the media.

At least, that do-gooder cop would be all over that. Hopefully, she’d get the call. Rosalie said she had helped her out and I needed to believe someone would make sure it didn’t get swept under the rug. But I had a plan for that too. Taking out the whole precinct wouldn’t be good for the neighborhood though.

I climbed out on a thick branch over the yard behind the mayor’s and dropped. I disappeared without a problem and quickly moved through two other targets. My last stop was easier even though his security was slightly better. I left his gift, the final drive in my bag, and was back in my apartment watching the news of the fires only forty minutes later. I smiled at the screen when Detective Briggs carried the computer out of the house with that asshole cop next to her carrying a sealed box.

They would be seeing everything they ever wanted soon and worlds would implode. I raised my water bottle in salute, “happy hunting, detective.”

I chugged the water watching the flashing lights behind the woman talking into the camera. The flashing lights and all the concerned people standing around watching like vultures.

We didn’t even have that when we needed it. Not that any of the people who would’ve been around would have intervened, not when Big Daddy was there. Fear was a very powerful thing.

 JJ swung me up in his arms and spun as he let out a loud whoop whoop! I was laughing and holding on tight. His eyes were sparkling when he let me slide down his body, his smile more than I could ever ask for. “We did it.”

“We certainly did.” We both looked down to the acceptance letters on the small table. San Francisco State and a full ride scholarship. We were finally getting out.

“We need to tell them. We need to plan how to get away.” JJ squeezed my hand, his excitement rippling through him and into me.

“Let’s go.” We turned to the door and JJ reached for the knob, but it ripped out of his hand and Darius was in the doorway. His eyes wild.

“D…”

“We can’t stay here,” he rasped out and pushed his way inside.

“What..?” I couldn’t breathe. I met JJ’s gaze and he knew something was off as well, it only made my chest clench tighter.

“Go get your things. The duffle bags are in the closet, whatever you can carry,” Darius didn’t stop moving, collecting the cash we had stashed in random hidey-holes throughout the small house. 

“D…”

“JUST GO!”

JJ flinched back and I pulled his arm, “come on.” I met Darius’s gaze and a shiver raced down my spine. Something bad had happened and he was just trying to keep it together. It was terrifying. I knew he was just a man but he had always been so sure and strong. A solider, a leader, more than us.

We packed quickly, whispering how we were planning to leave anyway, we were just upping the timeline. Trying to calm each other even though we didn’t understand what was happening, only that the one person who had always been strength personified was shaking. Trembling from something I was too afraid to focus on.

We rushed into the small kitchen and froze. Darius stood next to the small table with two bags at his feet and two sheets of thick paper in his hands. His eyes finally rose and flicked between the two of us, “you…”

I squeezed JJ’s hand, “we were just coming to tell you and Marco.”

Something flickered across his face but he shut it down and folded the papers, shoving them in the envelopes before handing them to us. “Good job.” He nodded, his brows furrowed and his jaw taut like he wanted to say something else but just nodded again. “Let’s go. Your future awaits.” He forced a smile but the worry, the fear drenched the room making the air around us heavy. I was underwater and trying to breach the surface but couldn’t even find which way was up.

JJ and I, hands clutched tightly, followed Darius to Marco’s tiny apartment. Darius burst through the door and we slammed into his back when he froze. I leaned around and saw Rafi, the leader of Marco’s crew standing in front of him. His gaze shot toward us and he shook his head.

“You need to leave. I can’t help you anymore, Marco, but I’m not going to stop you.” Rafi stated so quiet and still.

Darius picked up Marco’s two bags with one hand and pulled the back of Marco’s shirt. Marco turned around, his eyes red but fierce. “Let’s go.”

I met JJ’s gaze and knew whatever was happening, neither one of us had a clue. Darius pushed us out the door and JJ wouldn’t let go of my hand or I wouldn’t let go of his.

Darius said something about our acceptance letters and Marco’s face lit up for just a moment, “someone got us that place by the beach, huh?”

 I still remember the feel of that smile I gave him when I thought we had won and beat the odds. We had finally made all that hard work pay off and got out. I just forgot the part about actually getting out before celebrating.

It was the last smile before the world tilted and everything fell apart. The last genuine smile I had in me.

Taglist: I see you! @thefaithfulwriter ,@dalia-artistik ,@justkending , @the–real-wombat , @donnaintx​   was there anyone else?

[spiderman-spoilerman]

SPIDERMAN EXPOSED BECAUSE OF TAYLOR SWIFT ADDICTION: What Is Peter Parker to Spider-Man?

This shit that has been going on for months now has finally been solved. For the longest time I’ve been following Spider-Man oh so very closely, eager to find out his identity—not to expose it to the media vultures, oh no, our hero deserves more than that. But… to satisfy my own curiosity. He’s the only Avenger hiding his identity, you know? You’d think they’d be okay with it after all these other superheroes get to run around freely…

Anyway!

As you all know, countless names have been linked to Spider-Man. He seems close with Tony Stark, but that’s hardly relevant. There’ve been links to JD Slinger, the American Pop Singer, in a very poor attempt to sell records—you’re not Hannah Montana JD fucking Slinger! Stick to your trash music!!!

However untrue and disappointing Slinger’s attempt at fame is, he’s not the only one with musical elements that is linked to Spider-Man.

A few months ago, a viral video entering adorable and kind of pedos-get-the-fuck-out-of-here-territory circulated around the internet and into our nightly news, as does every baby goes viral video does. You can check it out on the link below for a good dose of endorphins.

[Link: Baby boy wants to be Taylor Swift, re-uploaded by djflash]

[Description: A six-year old boy is standing in the shower with a towel draped over his body like a makeshift cloak, he is clutching his tooth brush on and seems to be furiously lip syncing. The camera shakes as the person behind the camera stifles laughter.

May Parker, the original uploader and aunt of the then-toddler Peter, asks: Aren’t you tired Peter? From all the singing? You’ve been singing for two hours. Aren’t you cold?

Peter is intensely staring at the mirror as he lip-syncs but pauses to look at May. He says in a tired and raspy voice: Yeah, but, but my fans! I need to sing, Auntie May, for the fa— [looking harried] DROP EVERYTHING NOW, MEET ME IN THE POURING RAIN—

The sound of Peter singing is drowned by May’s scream as Peter falls on his butt, having jumped with his passion for the song, and tripping.

It cuts off with May laughing while taking Peter in her arms, phone capturing her picking him up and hearing Peter crying as he tries to get back to the mirror: It—doesn’t hurt May. Need to get back—my! My concert!

Video ends]

Now how does a viral video of a baby Taylor Swift fan connect to Spider-Man?

Well, May Parker posted it on Facebook when Flash Thompson, who claims to be a good friend of Peter Parker (although I highly doubt this, he’s only in it for the clout and Spider-Man’s love, click here for more on Flash), decided to share it to everyone. One of his reposts on Twitter propelled it to viral success.

Weeks later, May Parker decided to bless us again with more content by taking a video of her now teenage (17 years old—PEDO’S STAY AWAY) nephew singing, once again, a Taylor Swift song.

[Link: I’m so glad im seventeen and can properly thirst upon this wonderful hooman]

[Description: They are in the kitchen this time and May Parker is being discreet with her video-taking. A Taylor Swift song ends softly from his phone’s tiny speakers. A Spotify ad interrupts but the video cuts it off two seconds later for another Taylor Swift song to filter in.

We take in the scenario. Peter is in his pyjamas, shaking his booty while singing Stay Stay Stay. He flourishes his hands a few times, dramatizing, “That’s when you came in wearing a football helmet, and I said, [he changes voices] “Okay, let’s talk” [he finishes one pancake and pours a new batter in before using the ladle as a microphone, as if in anticipation for the moment, and, back bent, face scrunched up, belts: STAYSTAYSTAY I’ve b EEN LUH-VING YOU FOR QUITE SOME TIME- TI-HIME! YOU THINK THAT ITS FUNNEH WHEN I’M—OH MAN, I spilled batter on my shirt!”

The camera shakes with May’s silent laughter. Peter does not seem to notice. He looks side to side, almost as if he is looking for something to wipe the batter with, but there are no paper towels in sight and his shirt is dripping with the excess batter the size of his fist.

In the most compelling, and understandable, moment of decision making, Peter has chosen not to be responsible and strips instead, to the utter delight of seventeen-year old’s in the world (and ONLY those younger than that! Pedos, I swear to god, if I see you, I kill you, that last blog was the last time you make me burn my eyes!)—a wonderful set of abs and toned muscles you would not expect from a seventeen year old boy singing to Taylor Swift with the squeakiest voice in the world.  Adorable. Ten points for my good boy ranks.

The video ends with Peter staring further at the shirt and licking at the batter before it violently cuts off to the roaring laughter of one May Parker]

It is peculiar, to watch May navigate the wonders of technology, too, because the first video was on her Facebook years unnoticed before Flash Thompson unearthed it for the world to see (Mr. Thompson, what exactly were your intentions going through a beautiful May Parker’s Facebook pictures?). But this time, she also apparently intended to send it to Peter’s friend’s Instagram account. However, the fluke came when she posted it and tagged them instead.

People who have followed her upon the first viral video have now decided it to be God’s work to distribute the video, making it viral within days. The very same people were the ones who noticed that Peter Parker’s singing style is the very same as Spider-Man’s.

I hear you gasp. Well, of course. I spit my tea as well, when I realized it too.

See, unless you were living under a rock, about a year ago, Spider-Man was exposed as a Taylor Swift fan when he saved a ten year old girl and began teaching her about the History and Influence of Swift’s discography and career, before proceeding to sing with her the hit song Speak Now. All of it was caught on camera, of course.

The people who spread this new video started a conspiracy theory that Spider-Man and Peter Parker are very similar people. One user @finn-man-the-aquaman pointed out that Spider-Man and Peter Parker’s voice are very similar. Another user @maxine_and_spider-man compared the dance moves from the two videos, putting frames of each steps beside each other, and found that it was so uncannily similar that it couldn’t have been a coincidence. It was an interesting point to make, because both Peter and Spider-Man had particular steps, all seemingly on a whim, but also matching each other perfectly. They are by no means good dancers, God no, but their whimsical dancing looks like two bad dancers following one choreography, couldn’t follow it technically but committed to it emotionally.

Twitter user @emiliar summarized it the best: the chest pump, the feet extension, the little jig, and the butt shake, before leaning backward and singing at the height of their emotions— apparently this is a common dance choreography?

To which @pissshitcry responded with a video that would bring us the wonderful breakthrough that I’ve been walking you all through.

[VIDEO uploaded by spidermansavedmetwice]

[Caption by @pissshitcry: No. Apparently: ]

[Video Description: Spider-Man is swinging through the buildings before stopping by Midtown High School, in front of a harried looking student, screaming frantically, and this is it folks: CAN YOU GIVE THIS TO NED LEEDS, TELL HIM SPIDER-MAN THANKS HIS FRIEND PETER! tHANKS! Before zipping away

Video ended]

Now. Okay. I know, calm down guys, I’m trying so hard not to run up the hills and do an Irish Jig, because I am so, so, so excited about all these new revelations! Nobody has quite documented this, too, so people, watch out for more of my content in a few weeks.

SO! Implication one: Spider-Man knows Ned Leeds.

Implication two: Peter Parker helped Spider-Man somehow.

Implication three: Spider-Man knows Peter Parker.

Cut, do it again, but with more emotions: SPIDER-MAN KNOWS PETER PARKER.

Let’s zoom back to a few weeks after the viral hits and Taylor Swift posts a video of her watching the video and then saying into the camera, with that iconic red lipstick and perfectly sculpted eyebrows: I have never thought this would be something that will happen to me in my career ever, but seeing a super-hero sing praises about me and teaching my [and she quotes from Spider-Man’s erratic explanation about her history] “unattainable song-writing prowess equal to that of the rock singing legends of ye old—” really does bring a smile to my face! More than that, Peter Parker is an absolute cutie too! He looks like such a sweetheart, baking those pancakes, apparently, for her aunt? Be sweet to your aunts guys! But also. I came here to cordially invite both Spider-Man and Peter Parker to come out to my concert in New York in two weeks! I’ll be there May 25th at the Lincoln Center, and maybe we can all sing together!”

She ends the video with the iconic Spider-Man wrist flip. The video has been circulated and has now gained over an estimated 100 million views.

It sparked a buzz of interest among the people, Peter Parker having received much of the spotlight. He hasn’t said anything in relation to Spider-Man but had reluctantly agreed to go to Swift’s invite. And I cannot emphasize the reluctant part. Kid looked so uncomfortable, but maybe he’s just shy!

Okay. Now, this thing is the most glaring indicator of what I will be telling you. The night of the concert. Everyone is there for Swift, but everyone is also there waiting for the much-awaited Spider-Man and Peter Parker saga. Halfway into her song list, Taylor Swift stopped to talk. The time has come.

Peter Parker walks into the stage, and the crowd welcomes him with adoring cheers, similar to Swift’s entrance herself. She introduces him, even though she absolutely does not need to, and the people scream their approval.

When Swift gives him his own mic, he almost drops it before catching it with his incredible reflexes. Swift calls for Spider-Man to reveal himself, much to the delight of the crowd, chanting his name as if it was a concert for him, which, in many ways, it kind of was. However, Spider-Man didn’t appear after that and the duo had to continue on.

It was a cute performance, with Parker stumbling a few times before getting the groove with Swift and belting it out as well. Everyone joins in on them singing and enjoying her old songs, Swift smiling and laughing the whole time.

Peter leaves the stage Spider-Man plushies and roses thrown for him, to which he received with a graceful bow. Swift resumes her concert after a few hearty jokes thrown in—but wait! What’s that?!

A screaming insect crashes at one of the large LED walls at the stage and the camera [and the collective crowd] is surprised to see the superhero—SPIDER-MAN!

“Ehehehe, hello Miss Taylor Swift, Ma’am!” He says, in a particularly deeper voice. Autotune? Before they sing it out, as they would—Swift laughing, and Spider-Man trying—Spider-Man explains that he was nervous meeting Peter Parker, before scrambling to correct that it was Swift he was nervous about meeting.

Swift then teases Spider-Man about a potential crush, which.

BRINGS US TO MY BREAKTHROUGH POINT.

TAYLOR SWIFT WAS ABOUT TO BRING US THE GAY COUPLE OF THE CENTURY, BUT SPIDER-MAN WAS TOO CHICKEN TO GET TO IT.

Okay, alright, I hate pedos, and we don’t exactly know Spider-Man’s age but we do know that he’s very young, what with all the pop culture references he’s been dropping with the intuition of an internet native. So, he’s young, alright? Possibly Gen-Z, even. Here’s a post you can see about his age analysis.

SPIDER-MAN. HAS. A. CRUSH. ON. PETER. PARKER.

[Insert hand chopping movements]

AND THEY ALMOST HAD A CUTE MOMENT ON STAGE HAD SPIDER-MAN BRAVED IT THROUGH.

PETER PARKER, AND I MEAN, PETER PARKER! SPIDER-MAN HAS A CRUSH ON YOU!

We’ve established that Spider-Man knows Peter Parker. They’ve met. Peter has possibly helped, or even saved Spider-Man himself. Now, saving a superhero is something that not just anybody does. And Parker himself is a student at Midtown Science High—he’s a smart kid! And seeing as these events just happened months apart, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to imagine them meeting again, perhaps, with Parker making pancakes in dewy mornings, and a tired (and yearning) Spider-Man is watching from the windows as Peter dances along to Swift’s songs.

The watching from the windows theory and thus getting to know the choreography might not be so creepy if you factor in the fact that Spider-Man might be hiding his crush for Parker’s safety!

It is like the modern incarnation of Super-Hero romance, only now, its more inclusive! To exist in such a beautiful world, and to watch such an innocent tale bloom in this cruel, cruel world. We could only hope to see more of them together, maybe as something... more?

--

COMMENTS:

reblogged by thunderstrike: this is like someone trying to overanalyze twilight for some depth—THERE ISN’T ONE!

thunderstrike reblogged by spidahmanna: come on, give them some credit at least for recounting the most batshit insane crossover in the universe as we know it so far

reblogged by skdfas: this person needs help, but very entertaining to read

reblogged by nedleads: oH MY GOD 

reblogged by kliyon: new ship, age appropriate Spider-Man x Peter Parker

reblogged by ekeke: um yes, i need a dash of meet-cute with one cup of flavored angst—soda please, I like it to hurt— large fluff, a BFF serving of some of them yearning, and a happy sad-meal for one please.

reblogged by unaunann: im done with this site, who wants to burn the internet with me?

3, 000 reblogs in 1 day

--

 Tony, reading the blog: Hmmm…

[Later]

Tony: Okay so I read this blog and I have remedied it.

Peter: Oh my god thankyoumisterstark I swear I didn’t mean to—

Tony: You are now the biggest shareholder for Spotify because I know you don’t want me to pay for a premium account, but if you’re gonna listen to those damn ads while singing to Taylor Swift, at least earn from it, you know?

Peter: …that’s what you took from the whole thing?

--

NEXT ARTICLE: The Avengers film a parody of Queen’s I Want To Break Free. Is Captain America is as beautiful as Rogerina, or is he too buff??? Tony Stark is an iconic drama queen, perfect for Freddie Mercury, and more!

[fictionalarsonist]

inconspicuous bad apples - ch.03 : alibi

pairing ›_taekwoon ⨯ reader ⨯ hakyeon feat. ›_ vixx wonshik & jaehwan ; got7 jinyoung ; cha minjoo (child oc) content ›_angst ; murder ; police au ; serial killer au ; mature language ; smoking ; drinking ; violence ; blood ; age gap relationship ; divorce rating ›_pg-13 word count ›_ 2.5k  

tag: @tanithrea​

「 ao3 | mobile m.list | inconspicuous bad apples m.list

[ ch.01 | ch.02 | ch.03 | ch.04 | work in progress ]

The next morning you walk in the station with your backpack hanging from one of your shoulders, you let yourself fall on your seat and chuckle at the image of Jinyoung sleeping soundly despite the odd and very uncomfortable position on his desk. His head falls sideways on his chair and his feet.

 Wonshik walk in, almost dressed up nice and tidy, proud of his uniform, carrying a tray of coffee and some delivered food over to somewhere else.

 “Good morning, Lieutenant”, he greets you, bowing his head slightly as he passes by you.

 “Morning”, you greet him back, kicking your backpack under your desk, “Gimme some of this coffee”

 Wonshik stops by your desk, setting down a plastic cup before pouring coffee in it.

 “Another one for the sleepyhead over there”, Wonshik pours the coffee and you add the sugar and cream you know Jinyoung usually adds, “Thanks”

 Wonshik goes on his way while you lean over your desk to throw a heavy file on Jinyoung’s table, making him awake, startled.

 “Good morning, sleeping beauty!” You laugh as he presses his closed eyelids with his fingers and rubs them, trying to get rid of the tiredness, while tries his best to sit up straight without complaining about the pain.

“Why didn’t you sleep upstairs?” You ask, standing up to place his coffee on his desk.

 “We spent the night interrogating the playboy. What time is it?” He asks, still confused and flustered. You look at your watch.

 “07AM”

 Jinyoung sighs and let his head fall back. “That prick is useless, really.”

 “Why?”

 “He won’t say anything. Because he doesn’t seem to know, but the forensic team found something”, he says sitting up straight again and reaching for a file to hand over to you when you get it from his hand he goes for his coffee.

 Jinyoung sips on the coffee as you read the file.

 “What is this crap? Drug-induced amnesia?” You look up in disbelief at Jinyoung sipping on his hot coffee, “Is this real thing?”

 “Hmm.” Jinyoung nods, swallowing the hot coffee, “Very much. Apparently the playboy has been playing hard with his options and recently he’s been consulting a countryside traditional doctor that makes herbal tea and traditional medicine. The forensic has a sample we found in his room, they’ll send the results when it’s ready. The bastards get to sleep and still complain about it”, Jinyoung mutters the last phrase in a moody tone as he drinks more of his coffee, “Ah~ I’m hungry now”

 “That’s great. Where did we get this from?” You ask trying to read the unrecognizable words in latin or whatever puzzling language that’s written along with the ones you do understand.

 “It came from the hospital he was admitted to after the fight with Jongup”, Jinyoung sips on his coffee as he rolls his chair to sit closer to you despite the divide between the desks, “His doctor confessed. There was more than just his usual intake of his usual drugs, including one that’d be most possibly curated by only with a special twist to it.”

 You sigh tiredly, edging yourself on your seat. “This could invalidate his signed confession.”

 Jinyoung manners his head and shrugs. Then, pauses to look at you closely.

 “Lieutenant, you seem to be enjoying this~”

 “You’re seeing way too much into it, Detective Park.”

 Jinyoung hums to himself with a crooked smile and pushes himself away from your desk.

 “I wouldn’t be so happy about it, Lieutenant”, Jinyoung says, knowing your mind has already went back to the possibility of re-investigating the case, assimilating as a serial killing case, “The media is on this like vultures and… I heard the Head Prosecutor wants to wrap this up as soon as possible.”

 You throw the closed file on the table at the mention of your still father-in-law, knowing how much of a headstrong the man is. It would take more than your stubbornness to turn this around if the man has his hands on this case.

 “If you’re right, it’ll happen again and they won’t be able to blame the playboy again. If we get it before narcotics-” You cut Jinyoung, moving on your seat, feeling unsettled.

 “I wish we wouldn’t need another dead body for them to take this seriously. Whoever the killer is escalated from homeless women, to prostitutes, to random girls and people kept sweeping it all under the carpet. Now, with Kim Da Eun’s case-”, you sigh in frustration, pushing your hair back, “Do they just expect a maniac like this to just… Stop?” You chuckle bitterly to yourself, “Head Prosecutor Cha has his head up his ass that might just be true.”

 Jinyoung fails at hiding his amusement when you curse your father-in-law.

 “I’ll just- You know, pretend I didn’t hear that.” He says, tapping his ears lightly with his first and middle fingers and stops when he stands up and walks backwards from you, “I’ll go grab some breakfast for him, okay? Anything for you, Lieutenant?”

 “Egg toast, no bacon. And tomato juice”, Jinyoung nods in response.

 As he turns around to leave almost bumps into none other than your Captain, Sung Dong Il, storming into the station. Jinyoung’s unapologetic pushed away by your Captain and turns around with his eyes open wide, brows furrowed in confusion. Not only you, but everyone else in the station watches as the Captain marches in wearing the official uniform. Jinyoung glances at you, trying to figure something out, bt you seem as lost as everyone else.

 “Maskot!” You Captain’s outburst makes Wonshik shot up from his seat in alert.

 “Yes, Captain!”

 “Prepare the conference room. Be fast!”

 “Yes, sir.” Wonshik salutes and rushes to do as he’s been told.

 “Park Jinyoung!”

 Jinyoung points at himself.

 “Me?” That makes Dong Il stop throw a glare at him.

 “Who else? Get these ready for the conference,” Dongil stops and comes closer to Jinyoung, speaking more quietly. “No one can take a peek, you understand?”

 “Yes, Captain.”

 “Good.” The man nods, unbottoming his uniform suit, “You’ll be in charge to hold the conference until it’s ready to start. Don’t curse.”

 “I wouldn’t.” Dongi snorts at the detective protest before turning to you.

 “What?” You ask, annoyed before he can say anything.

 “My office. Now.”

 He storms off to his office and you follow him with your eyes, before grunting lazily to stand up.

 “What’s his problem?” You complain.

 “Ah!~ Seriously, working in this department is really stressful!” One of the detectives sitting close to you complains, “Our superiors are always having mood swings. I want to retire.”

 “At 35?” You ask the man complaining as he messes up his hair, “Are you crazy?”

“I bet my salary this is about that spidey senses our Lieutenant has.” Jaehwan’s voice is not so subtle as he speaks.

 “Hey, I can hear you, asshat!” You throw a pen in his direction without much effort.

 “Sorry, Lieutenant.” He sends you an empty apology.

 “Don’t you have a goose chase to attend to?” You mock him, recalling his current case.

 “Yea, yea… Mock me all you want, Lieutenant. But, when I drag Bang Yongguk in this station with my own hands you’ll be the one to pay for the celebratory dinner!”

 “Oh-ho~ Is that so? Really.” You hold back a chuckle, standing up and making your way to the Captain’s office, “Make sure to not bite your own tail in the process, Detective Lee.”

 You warn as he clicks his tongue, watching you push the Captain’s door open and disappears inside the office. Jaehwan looks at Jinyoung who’s staring at you through the wall-sized glass window, the blinds are pulled down, but open and the people in the office can only see partially - including Jinyoung. No one can hear anything, but Dongil’s raged expression when he looks up to you worries Jinyoung, although he knows it shouldn’t it’s something that can’t be helped.

 “There goes your promotion.” He holds back when Jaehwan startles him with his voice maliciously speaking closer than he thought the other detective is. He looks at the other and plays it out with a scoff.

 “What does that come from?” Jinyoung asks, making an effort to turn his back as the Captain drawns the blinds closed and you throw yourself on the sofa carelessly.

 “You know what,” the other says with a crooked smile, standing on the way of a very busy Wonshik and leaning an arm the younger shoulder, “the Captain retires, our Lieutenant takes his place and there you are. Perfect scenario. Am I right, maskot?”

 “Don’t be jealous. It doesn’t match your personality.” Jinyoung provokes as both man part ways, not really being in the mood to talk much more than that.

 “Is it truth?” Wonshik asks in curiosity and one of Jaehwan’s brow perks up to look at the department's youngest member.

 “What?”

 “That Detective Park will be promoted along Captain Sung retirement and the Lieutenant take over”, Wonshik asks innocently and that makes Jaehwan laughs enjoyably.

 “You really don’t know anything. Do you?”

 Jaehwan laughs, but stops as soon as he sees Wonshik’s eyes brimming with curiosity, he stops walking and grabs the younger to do the same, holding the other in place, he waits for some passerby disappear, until both of them are alone.

“Listen here,” he starts, “Since you’ve been here for a while you gotta make up your mind to whom you want to be loyal to,” Jaehwan explains, “Most people stick to the partnership. So, I’m gonna tell you this… Park Jinyoung isn’t eligible to take any major role, he’ll never move a step from where he is right now. Like our Captain, his name is tainted.”

 ***

 “Close the fucking door!” The Captain as soon as you step one foot into the office. His anger vividly expressed, “I should’ve been against the Commander as soon as he pulled you in this case of all people. I could’ve pulled you out as soon as I saw things going smoothly. I’m no good for this job anymore, because of you, you know? All because of you!” Dongil let out his rent standing behind his desk while you stared at him with your puzzled expression.

 “I have- absolutely no idea what-” You try saying with a shrug and your hands shoved inside the front pockets of your pants.

 “Sure you don’t.”

 Dongil interrupts and takes large, angry steps to the wall-sized window, reaching to close the blinds. He saw Jinyoung with his eyes fixated on you. Your Captain never said and would never say anything regarding this. Not one bit, but it never meant that he was oblivious. His eyes travels back to you when the blinds are tightly closed, he found you sitting on your typical spot in his office, looking comfortable as you are, at home as you feel.

 “Then, what?” You ask, out of patience.

 Dongil should know being angry wouldn’t have any effect on, you’re never scared of anything. Never was. This got you here, but could ruin you as well. He would be damned if this wasn’t, at least, one of the reasons why your marriage is - in his opinion - so regrettably over. The old man pleaded to heaven it would work while knowing all the reasons it wouldn’t, you and Cha Hakyeon… Anyone could see the end, but you’re always defiant and Hakyeon found his change to rebel in you, for a good reason. At first Dongil thought it was just a rich guys rebeling to his rich, powerful parents, but Hakyeon loves you, he saw enough to know.

 “I don’t know if I should congratulate you or have you take a few days off duty. You need to sort out your life now, it wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

 Dongil sees your eyes darkening, your rather carefree manner vanishing as you hear his words.

 “I told you before-,” he starts again, sitting apart from you, grunting as he settles his old bones on the comfortable armchair, “You can’t solve every case trusting your guts, but this time… This time I’ll bet everything I have in your spidey senses, Y/n”, he says fondly.

 “What are you talking about”

 “The playboy’s confession doesn’t add up to his toxicology test. He’ll only be arrested for drug use and smuggling,” he explains, “The only lead we’ve got is with your theory and you better be right. You’ll hold the presentation. The Commander will be here at the afternoon?”

 “Sure”, you sort, self-assertive.

 “The Commander isn’t happy and he’s coming down to announce the outcome to the media, we’ll also be starting a new investigative team. I’m putting you in charge, so make sure you have the people you trust around you because the man is sending one of his lap dogs to spy on everything”

 “Who?”

 “I don’t know yet, but- It’s clear they don’t like you. Don’t disappointment me.” 

 “I won’t.”

 He sighs. And there’s a pause when all the tension kind of dissipates and you can tell the old man is just tired of it all.

 “Y/n, I want you to listen carefully now, okay?” You nod yet again and he it’s not the kind of response Dongil wants. “I won’t speak as your captain now, but as an old friend,” he makes another pause, leaning forward, looking in your eyes, “I’m not saying this because of me or you promotion or anything,” he starts, “But, particularly, I think it’s quite odd the Head Prosecutor Cha let go of this so easily knwoing you would be the only to lead the serial murder case-”

 “Now, I’m the one asking you to trust me, sunbae.” You speak up, looking directly in his eyes, “I know what I have to do.” Dongil sighs and hangs his head low.

 “All right. Just- be careful.”

 ***

 It doesn’t matter how confident you look, you’re skin twitches when you think about it. Taking this case means a lot more than it did before, losing it means losing everything. Beads of sweat form on the line of your hair, the room is suddenly too confining and overall hot.

 ‘Minjoo. I’m sorry’ - you think to yourself, but you can’t find it in yourself to feel regret or pained about it. You know what you have to do and you won’t step back. You blindly get to your desk and start to gather the folders, everything you need to make the presentation for the Commander and his lap dog when they’re here. Well, the other team members will be there too. You’ll need help from someone from Narcotics, maybe Taecyeon, an old friend, come over to lend a pair hands to the team.

 Jinyoung, Jaehwan, Taecyeon, the maskot, Detective Jung, Doctor Lee from forensic and his assistant… Those were the first names in your list. Who else? People you trust. You paused and looked around the troubled station now that something big was about to happen everyone was in an uproar.

 “Jinyoung!” You call as soon as he walks in and he makes his way to you immediately, “That breakfast- How about now?”

 You start walking away and Jinyoung leaves his current task at his desk before yanking his jacket out of his chair in quick, swift motions to follow you, without so much as a second thought.

⇽ chapter 02 | chapter 04 ⇾

[cerastes]

Years ago, I wanted to make a game. It didn’t pan out due to problems in the team, but I’ve always kept the plot and details of the game dear and never really put it out there in hopes of turning it into a short story instead, some 11 to 13 chapters. However, the more I think about it, the more I realize it is impossible to do so in a direct manner, due to how Video Game the core concept is, that is, it simply wouldn’t work in a literary format, at least not with the same oopmh it’d have as the game I conceived it as. Today, I will reveal all of it, in part because I want to get it out of my chest, in part because I don’t want for this to go unshared and forever trapped in the sands of “maybe one day”. A writing prompt I have pending has to do with this, and that is still coming, but otherwise, this is all about the game I wanted to make, “Notches”, a side-scroller action-platformer game.

Big, long post under the cut. It’s a design document, after all!

This is Part 2, in which I will explain the Shattering and the Grievous Attack mechanics, gameplay mechanics exclusive to Lantern Boss Fights, which are different from the regular Boss Fights we’ve discussed so far. We’ll also get acquainted with three boss fights: The Spider-legged Doctor, Delwin, The 4th Lantern of Manjha, Mirko, and The 6th Lantern of Gemini, Cecile/Vogt. We’ll explore the boss fights themselves as well as the lore of the characters and their place in the story.

Here’s a link to Part 1!

Let’s change up the pace and introduce a Boss Fight that isn’t a dual boss fight! Doctor Delwin Pardosa shall meet you as the boss of the Anti-Soul Laboratories stage. Delwin “wields” what seems to be several small black cubes with blue “veins” that float around him, but you’d be surprised to hear that this isn’t what’s most notorious about Delwin! See, out of his right shoulder, four massive, long, thick spider legs protrude, upon which he normally stands. He looks like a regular scientist, he does, with a lab coat, some khakis, and a coffee-stained green shirt, just, with four massive spider legs protruding from his right shoulder, slicked back hair, black hands with blue veins, and long fangs that suggest that maybe there’s nothing mere about this human any longer. It seems the good doctor has been playing with things we should say “no” to, morally speaking, but would immediately say “hell yeah!” to should the chance present itself (don’t lie). In any case, Doctor Delwin opens up with saying “You’ve caused enough trouble, you little skunk. You’re coming back with us, senseless or limbless if you must. In fact, you get to choose, and I recommend the former”. Summergale simply smirks, golden smile flashing a shine, and responds with “You know, Doc, I always none too subtly wanted to throttle your pencil-pushing neck, I just really wish it wasn’t under these damn circumstances, man”. Delwin lowers his gaze just slightly, his cubes still floating around him in orderly chaos, and murmurs back, “Believe me, Summer, neither did I wish for this, but you leave us no choice”. The cutscene ends, and the fight begins. Delwin has immense mobility thanks to his mutant spider legs, being able to move fast and to stick to the walls of the arena. You must constantly stay on the move while dodging the cubes he seemingly magnetically throws at you. Whenever a cube has missed or you have shot it to deflect it, don’t get careless, because cubes then re-lock onto you and go at you again! There’s three different kinds of cubes: Small, Medium, and Big. The Big ones only go at you once before returning to Delwin, the Medium ones will go at you twice, while the Small ones will pursue you three times before going back to the good doctor. For the First Phase, he mostly just sticks to the walls and ceiling while launching cubes at you, with the occasional swipe of a big hitbox leg to catch you off guard when you’re all up in his grill, shooting the hell out of him. Of note is, if you can get close enough to him, using a Ruby Shot (point blank explosion shot) will knock him right out of the wall or ceiling, making him crash onto the floor and leaving him vulnerable for a couple of shots. Usage of the Ruby Vulture technique (using Ruby Shots to navigate mid air via the explosions, launching yourself in the opposite direction of where you shoot a Ruby Shot midair) is recommended, although in moderation, as many Ruby Shots will exhaust your Mana quickly! Once you reach 75% of his HP, Delwin’s true strategy, Phase Two, begins! Using the magnetic connection between his hands and his cubes, Delwin assembles the cubes together in different shapes, creating Weapon Formations. By combining his many cubes in different shapes, Delwin is able to create different weapons, using a rich diversity of attacks. He’ll sometimes form the cubes in a Sword Formation, always Dyed blue, swiping at you a number of times before dissolving the formation (or immediately, if you clash it thrice). There’s also the Guillotine Formation, which consists of a number of cubes swarming you quickly, colliding with you for no damage, but pushing you and trying to hold you still, while the rest of the cubes form a guillotine blade above you, which soon comes chopping down for big damage. Melee and shoot at the cubes rapidly so you can move out of the way in time, simply jumping or Quickstepping away won’t work! Delwin can also form the cubes together in a Flak Formation, forming several autocannons around him briefly before they all begin shooting a barrage of bullets at you. Keep moving or you’ll get caught! Last but not least, there’s the Prowler Formation, which assembles the cubes into many different flying pods that pursue you and open fire autonomously while the good doctor tries to bum rush you with spider kicks. Watch out for the shots and the spider leg strikes, and don’t panic! The Prowlers are Dyed red, so shoot them out of the air while timing your Quicksteps so as to not get hit by Delwin’s spider kicks and stomps. Keep dodging and responding appropriately to each Formation until you empty his life bar, making him collapse, the cubes falling helplessly, raining around him as the harmlessly hit the floor. The “STAGE COMPLETE” message begins to appear from the bottom of the screen, but as the letters ascend, Delwin knocks them away with a spider kick. “No! Not yet! You stubborn fool, you selfish imbecile! It doesn’t end like this! I’m dragging you back comatose if I have to, Summer!” As he yells, Delwin’s life bar reappears, and it fills back to 30%. This begins the Third and final Phase of Doctor Delwin. Standing up on his human legs, not his spider legs, Delwin raises an arm and assembles all of his cubes in Prowler Formation, in which they will remain for the rest of the fight, and then produces a retractable baton. Not using his big mutated spider legs, the doctor moves far less than before, but he moves around with Quicksteps now that, much like your own, have i-frames. He becomes practically impossible to hit with his Quickstep spam, and attacking too much will prompt a counterswing or leave you open to Prowler fire. His Prowlers are still Dyed red, but shooting them out just temporarily puts them out. He’ll Quickstep towards you and swipe, during which he becomes Dyed blue. You can clash with him by using melee, and you’ll enter a button mashing mini-game, in which you must press melee or space (if you don’t feel comfortable with mashing your right click too hard so as to not abuse your mouse) repeatedly as Summergale clutches the baton and tries to overpower Delwin. Be careful! Prowlers still shoot at you in this situation, not dealing damage but giving advantage to Delwin, so shoot down as many as you can before engaging in the clash. If Delwin wins the mash-out, he bashes the baton against Summergale’s head, damaging and paralyzing her before lashing out at her with all four legs, hitting her for heavy damage and blowing her away. If Summergale wins the mash-out, she throws the baton away, grabs her rifle by the barrel like a baseball bat, and swings it violently at Delwin, dealing a heavy damage and leaving him at a smidgen of HP (near 8%). After this, the player loses control of Summergale as she drops her rifle, approaches the downed Delwin and puts him in a Sleeper Hold. You must then mash Space again to slowly deplete the rest of his life bar. This is more of an ‘interactive’ cutscene at this point, with Summergale pleading for him to just give up while he keeps screaming back at her. “It’ll all be over before you know it, you dumbass! Let me do my job!” Summergale chastises as she chokes Delwin out. “You... Arc damned... Fool... You won’t surv... We can find another... Way to do this... Summer... Think of Sigrun and... The rest of...!” As he finally hits 0% HP, he’s finally out for good, unconscious, and you’ve defeated Doctor Delwin. “There’s simply no time, Delwin...” Summergale murmurs before picking up her rifle and moving on as the “Stage Complete” message pops up again. Momentum opportunities come from interacting with anything Dyed (clashing melee against his Sword Formation and shooting Prowlers), but otherwise, don’t expect much Avalanche against him; he’s a cautious man, which is reflected by how little Momentum you receive (by design, you’re expected to get one, maybe two Avalanches against him).

Haunted Tea Sets reveal that Delwin, along with Sigrun, were the ones that found Summergale in the first place. As her body was carried by the river, they were the ones that were there and hauled her out of it, immediately bringing her back to Delwin’s laboratory in Oflans, the only place remotely technological in the otherwise small town, where they tried their best to care for her. Delwin might be a doctor, but he’s not the healing kind of doctor, so it was all a process of trial and hopefully no error. Summergale was lucky that Delwin was adept enough, and when she woke up, she thanked him and introduced herself as... As... Ah, hey, sorry, do you know who I might be...? Those words came out of her mouth as Sigrun and Delwin looked at her with concern: Amnesiac and beaten up all over. No doubt whatever left her to die in the river didn’t go easy on her. She also made a rather honest and rude comment on his spider legs, but Delwin would like us to not go into that. Delwin is a magitech and physics-focused scientist who enjoys a productive partnership with Sigrun the Blacksmith: He comes up with innovative designs, and Sigrun helps him with the manufacturing process. Sigrun’s clearly much more interested in the more traditional kind of weaponry, but the techniques she’s learned from making Delwin’s ideas into reality has been an invaluable experience. While Sigrun and Summergale became fast friends, the same cannot be said about Delwin and Summergale. Their relationship was vitriolic, and not in the fun and games way, but Summergale knew he was a good man despite his crude, caustic personality, and Delwin knew she was a good woman despite her rowdy, devil-may-care attitude, so they put up with the situation and had a real, if unspoken, respect for each other. Delwin was heavily opposed to Summergale interfering with Markus when he came to squat, but following the voice of her heart, and also Sigrun’s cheering for her to break his nose, she went and beat him up. He’s also the one who cooked up a method to get in the castle: By using samples of Summergale’s blood that he took to determine her blood type in case she ever needed a blood transfusion (a thorough man, this Delwin), he made a “blood perfume” that he sprayed on himself, Sigrun, and Axehilt, riding on the hypothesis that Ceoca Castle searches for specific blood matches in order to determine who goes in and who doesn’t. Seeing as the castle let them in, it seems he was right! Or not. It’s not the blood perfume that let them in, as an out-of-the-way Haunted Tea Set will reveal. The blood perfume was a red herring crafted by the good doctor, and the castle simply recognized Delwin, as he used to work in its Research And Development division at the Anti-Soul Laboratories, where he is a boss. This is lightly hinted at because, while Sigrun and Axehilt are lost as all hell and basically wandering around having their own adventure while hoping to come across Summergale, Delwin knew more or less exactly where to go, as there IS a sense of consistency even with the spatial chaos that rends and twists the castle’s insides, and he banked on Summergale needing to go through the Laboratories. His dialogue is intended to imply that he was waiting for her there, unlike Sigrun, who runs into you. Delwin’s spider legs... Will be elaborated on later.

But that’s enough of these outliers, right? Let’s talk about the Dim Lanterns. The Dim Lanterns are Royal Operatives of Phebea that answer directly to the King and Queen of Phebea, and while they are an elite unit dispatched for important tasks, they were assembled for a very, very specific purpose, and to be able to carry out this important mission, Phebea, a small time kingdom trapped between giants, developed truly remarkable weapons: The Lanterns. The Lanterns possess great power and allow very specific manners of rending reality apart to accomplish something or emulate an ability, and nothing like them has ever been created before. Armed with these, the Dim Lanterns were loved by those who knew of them and feared by those who opposed them. When Ceoca Castle closed up, however, people stopped seeing them, and rumors immediately began popping up that, perhaps, it was them that put the chairs up, turned the lights off, and locked those doors...

The Dim Lanterns serve as the main “Boss Squad”, if you will, in the game. They are very explicitly hostile towards Summergale, and she’d REALLY love to know why this is. Let’s talk about the first Lantern you meet in battle! Mirko The 4th Lantern wields the Manjha Lantern, visually identical to a regular railroad lantern, which Mirko holds by the handle. swinging lo and forth with his every footstep. However, this Lantern endows Mirko with the ability to use razor light. Every light source in a radius around him can be controlled into tendrils of cutting light by Mirko. Mirko is actually a very early game boss, and as mentioned previously, the first Lantern you fight. The purpose of Mirko was not only to introduce the player to Lantern Bosses, but also to drive home the point that Notches is in media res, as in, things were definitely happening before the start of the game, things you can and will find out about, but that you don’t initially know, even if the characters do. When Mirko shows up, his upper torso is covered in bandages and he clearly isn’t at his best. “You ended up coming, you mongrel! Couldn’t just leave it alone, huh? Turning around and walking away just isn’t in your dictionary… And I banked on that.”. Summergale shakes her head and simply points her rifle at him. “I already mangled you once, I sure as hell can and want to do it again”. Mirko fakes a guffaw and then turns his Lantern on, a myriad of tentacles of light sprawling out of the bulbs. “Oh no, don’t get me wrong, you lowlife. We’ve already won. The party’s already going on in the Throne room, and there’s no way for you to stop the gears. I’m just here for myself. Can’t quite let you walk away after leaving me like this, now can I, mongrel!?” The fight begins and, as Mirko is an early game boss, he’s very straight forward and not too fancy. A bit of etymology! “Manjha” is cured and gummed thread covered in powdered glass used in kite fights. The Manjha Lantern takes its name from this thread, as its ability to manipulate light into something physical is used primarily, but not exclusively, to generate hundreds of light threads to cut down foes. Mirko will telegraph long range attacks and lash out with tendrils of light in different patterns: Two tendril thrust, three tendril ascending lashes, a number of tendrils raining on you from above, attempting to pincushion you to the ground, etc. He’s straight forward and attacks with his razor light as you’d expect. Hitting 75% of his HP adds a new move: Matches. Mirko will produce three matches on one hand and, by striking them against his coarse, falconer-like leather gauntlet, will light them. Mirko then flicks the lit matches at Summergale. Lit matches are a source of light, and thus, fall within the jurisdiction of his power, letting him sprawl tendrils of light from them, thus giving Mirko a lot more points of attack from which to strike at you. It all becomes a fight about managing his matches (by shooting them) and dodging appropriately. Shooting matches will award Momentum. Mirko also functions as the tutorial for the Shattering mechanic. Shattering is exclusive to Lantern Boss Fights, and it involves attacking the Lantern during a specific window of time (Shatter Moments) to inflict Shatter on the boss, and what does Shatter do? It functions as a special stun state that allow you to land a Grievous Attack on the boss, powerful attacks with special animations that deal considerable damage. Mirko’s particular Shatter Moment is when he’s striking his matches, taking attention off from his Lantern. Hitting the Lantern doesn’t deal damage to the boss (usually), but it does deplete their Lantern HP, which takes the form of icons depicting their Lantern under their HP bar. Each boss has different amounts of Lantern HP, with Mirko having 2. You hit his Shatter Moment twice, and BAM, you earn a Grievous Attack. The moment you earn a Grievous Attack, a marker will appear somewhere on the arena, such as right next to the boss, or a few character’s width away, or maybe above the boss. Move to the marker during the Shatter Stun and then use Shoot or Melee to use the Grievous Attack. In Mirko’s case, you need to stand right next to him. Using Shoot results in Summergale hitting Mirko in the stomach with three consecutive uppercuts, lifting him off the floor and then using her rifle while he’s above her to stab him in the stomach, exploding him away with a Ruby Shot. Melee, on the other hand, has Summergale thrust her hand in his bandaged injuries, draining a ton of Mana from his and then kicking him away. This deals less damage that the Shoot Grievous, but it seals away his Match attack for a while and restores your MP! That’s the general rule behind Grievous Attacks! A Shoot Grievous does a lot of damage, while a Melee Grievous recharges all of your MP and inflicts a debuff on the boss, usually locking away their most powerful attacks for a bit. Knowing whether to use Shoot G or Melee G is essential: Do I go for big damage? Or do I seal an annoying attack for a while at the cost of damage? I want the player to ask themselves this question when fighting different Lantern Bosses! Maybe you’re good at dealing with the particular attack the Melee G seals, so you go for extra damage instead! Maybe you particularly have trouble with the move, so you seal it and thus are able to deal with the fight much more easily for some time, racking up damage! It’s up to you! This continues until he drops. Simple! Very early game boss, and in fact he was designed with “First boss of the game” in mind. He’s actually the prototype of the Dim Lanterns in general, with a simplistic power compared to those of his peers. As the boss ends, Mirko curses your name and bleeds out, forcing a stiff, bitter laughter as the light abandons his eyes, reminding you that “the ball is already rolling, mongrel...!”. And so ends Mirko’s life, his Lantern shattering. Instead of her usual Stage Complete pose, Summergale instead takes out a small knife and carves another notch on the stock of her rifle.

...However, this is not the last you see of Mirko! Well, in a way, it is, but remember what I said before? That Mirko was meant to show that the narrative of Notches is in media res? Well! Let’s introduce a new gameplay mechanic! Some Haunted Tea Sets unlock boss fights that took place before the game’s start in the form of playable flashbacks. After unlocking certain Haunted Tea Sets that have to do with each other (let’s say, for example, #3, #7, and #21), the memories jostled by these associated flashbacks will unlock a new memory in Summergale, which allows her to remember or reminisce about events that took place before the game’s chronological beginning, especially fights! Mirko dies as the first boss, but MUCH later in the game, you unlock his Flashback Fight! In this fight, Mirko is much tougher. He’s not wounded and he’s at top condition, unlike the ‘first’ fight, which had him severely wounded. I had the idea of giving Mirko a pretty big HP bar in the first fight, but only filled up to around a third of its total capacity, to reflect that he was badly, badly wounded. Now, that big HP bar is full, and Mirko gets access to his full moveset! Unlike the prior fights, I will begin explaining the lore and plot of the fight, and then proceed to the boss fight per se, as it is important to know the context for Mirko’s second round (but first chronologically) to make sense of a big part of his arsenal this time around.

Mirko is the 4th Lantern of the Dim Lanterns, a hot headed young adult who’s got what it takes to talk the talk and walk the walk. Rising the ranks of the Phebean Army quickly thanks to his motivation and vim, he was hand-picked by the King to participate in the Lantern Project after winning an unsanctioned fistfight tournament the soldiers organized by themselves and that the King caught wind of. The King of Phebea, a capricious man with an intense love for the people and the things the people did for entertainment, disguised himself as a civilian and attended the tournament, cheering and jeering with the best of them. After Mirko won, some bad cats that didn’t particularly agree to his underdog victory, mostly due to losing big at the betting table, were looking to introduce Mirko to their daggers, but the King, a man with experience in the realm of rotten eggs due to his political background, immediately caught on and announced his presence, stopping them in their tracks and inducting Mirko to the good life of high society and elite guardsmanship. After a brief stint as a royal guard and tavern hero at Ceoca Castle, the King asked him if he wished to volunteer for the Lantern Project, and Mirko, eternally thankful to the King, accepted. Mirko was assigned the 4th Lantern, the Manjha Lantern, which made good use of his imagination and stamina to properly draw out the hidden potential of the otherwise simple Lantern; The Manjha Lantern was always meant to be a support Lantern to the others, not one to operate by itself. The ability to manipulate light as a hard construct might sound simple, but it is its simplicity that makes it so strong: By functioning as support to other Lanterns, he effectively can keep their Lanterns safe by erecting razor tendrils from them, as their Lanterns, being a source of light, fall under the jurisdiction of his power.

When Markus reported that someone name of ‘Summergale’ had thoroughly trounced him, Mirko immediately departed the castle and headed for this backwater village. Though he didn’t find her in Oflans, he simply asked if anyone knew where she was, and the townspeople, who admire the Dim Lanterns and Summergale, thought he came to offer her a job with them, and immediately told him her whereabouts: The Jalibu Plains, to the northwest of Oflans Town. The Jalibu Plains were known for being beautiful and full of greenery, and on that particular day, Summergale was accompanying the wheelchair-bound Benson Lomprat, aspiring mapmaker, through the plains so he could properly draw the map of the geography on his up-and-coming map. The Lomprat Family (more on them later when we tackle the plot in full!) is the household that took Summergale in initially after she was found in the river. Benson, 15 years old, the son of the household, has always been handy with ink, his dreams of drawing an accurate map of Phebea were only slightly curbed by his disability. He didn’t want to make just any old map, oh no, he wanted to make a truly dedicated, detailed map of his homeland, with illustrations and trivia of the flora and fauna, where one could find cultural heritage, the whole nine (and more!) yards. Summergale would take the passionate Benson on treks through the Oflans countryside to help him with his dream. Unfortunately, this particular outing to the Jalibu Plains would see some problem: Bugbears. Creatures native to these plains, these brutish monsters are intensely territorial, and while they usually keep to the hillside borders just outside the Plains, they sometimes intrude, and today seemed to be one day. There’s a cutscene here, where Summergale and Benson have some small talk before two Bugbears arrive and threaten them. “Alright, Benny, hang on tight, I’ll deal with these punks before the ink on your feather dries!” “...That sounded cooler in your head, didn’t it, Summer?” “I’m going to feed you to them.” The cutscene ends and you fight these two enemies. Despite their intimidating appearance, they are actually an easy fight. However, once you finish them off, a clapping is heard in the distance. It’s Mirko, and he compliments you on your fine riflemanship: “...Well, you were always pretty damn formidable with your hands.” Summergale is shocked, as that statement implies he knows her. “Wait... You know who I am? E-excellent…! Please, please tell me, who was I in the past?” It’s here that Mirko realizes she’s amnesiac, and he can only laugh. Plead as she might, however, the mysterious man refuses to divulge any information, and ultimately says “beat it out of me, if you can, you filthy dog!”.

The real boss fight with Mirko begins now. His patterns are far more complex and he plays a lot more with delays to throw off your dodge timing. Unlike before, shooting at him wildly will prompt a counterattack in the form of him catching your bullets and shooting them back at you with Light Tendrils if you overdo it. He also uses the matches from the get-go, meaning you can have to keep an eye out for his multiple sources of light and their fluid attacks at all times. Unlike the first fight, Mirko also tosses out flashbangs, which, if your are caught in the blast radius off, stun you, but even without the stun effect, they produce short-lived, VERY damaging masses of Light Tendrils. The flashbangs are Dyed red, and shooting them makes them explode. If you can shoot one in front of Mirko, he will become stunned himself, an act that awards you plenty of Momentum. His Lantern HP is now 5 instead of 2. However, the true terror of Mirko starts at 50% HP. When he hits half health, a small cutscene begins in which he yells “Every time…. Every time! You Arc damned obstinate, obscene mongrel! Even back in the castle, every time, you…!” A myriad of tendrils sprawl out of Mirko’s Lantern and start piercing the Bugbear corpses, making them rise on their feet as puppets controlled by Mirko’s threads of cruel light. The fight resumes, and now you have to fight the ever-rising Bugbears as you handle Mirko himself simultaneously. Emptying the Bugbears’ HP bars makes them collapse momentarily, but Mirko soon enough sews them back together and makes them rise and haul with his Tendrils. In addition to his prior strategies, now he organizes team attacks with the Bugbears, such as making them rush you and then attacking you right after you Quickstep with a tight timing, or making them do a grapple attack that holds you in place while he uses a powerful charge attack or throws a flashbang to deal big damage to you. Mirko’s Flashback Boss Fight is meant to be a fairly difficult micromanagement-based fight that tests you on quick decisions, but it’s still mid-game level stuff. The Bugbears are pretty fragile, and if you hit Mirko with the flashbang trick, he loses control of them, making them crumple. It’s all about finding the right timing, as there’s a lot to keep in mind, but Mirko and the Bugbears are rather slow. Keep a calm head, deal with each attack as it comes, and you should emerge victorious.

After the fight, Mirko, gravely wounded, still refuses to speak a word about Summergale’s past, claims this isn’t over, and rips open the Bugbears, spreading their blood around in a spectacular manner. Summergale is about to go at him again, but Benson cries out to Summer, warning her that they must leave immediately: Bugbear blood is pungent, and it attracts other Bugbears, enraging them. The area will soon crawl with Bugbears from all the blood spread from these two, and so Summergale gives up and takes Benson and herself out of there… But not before Mirko says one last thing: “It doesn’t matter if you have your memories or not… It’s already begun, and not even you can stop it now. Just go back to your hovel and await the great news, traitor”. Summergale didn’t quite fully understand this, but her stomach felt like a bottomless chasm when the words “It’s already begun” reached her ears: She didn’t know what that meant, but just judging from her body’s response, she knew something: It was bad, and it had to do with her.

Well… More on Mirko later, when we tackle the plot in full. He is, in a way, one of the catalysts of the story, after all. After this, they meet in the castle and Summergale kills him, as mentioned previously.

But enough about Mirko, let’s meet the last entry in this post… Or shall I say, Entries. Plural.

“Another dual boss, Dreamer?” you no doubt asked yourself. No, but at the same time, yes! That’s my answer, and this is my explanation: The 6th Lantern of Gemini, Cecile/Vogt.

In an area known as the “Numb Gaol”, the otherwise unnamed underground prison of Ceoca Castle, Summergale and the player, surrounded by torture tools and chains that have not seen sunlight in years, will do battle with Cecile. Cecile, much like Summergale, is tanned, which contrasts beautifully with her light blue hair. However, neither of these is the most striking aspect of Cecile, oh no, that’d be her crown of horns. Cecile’s eyes are completely covered by what can only be described as a crown of horns. Cecile is a Glaistan, from the Glais Commonwealth, a country in the Southern Half of the continent known for its goat-like people. Most Glaistans have a set of two long horns, but Cecile is an abnormality, possessing instead an innumerable amount of smaller horns that grew like an unkempt garden on her forehead area and around her head, covering her eyes. Cecile wields the 6th Lantern, the Pact Lantern, which looks exactly like a traffic light. Cecile wears the seemingly unwieldy pole-supported traffic light on her back without a problem, which contrasts with her purple robes with silver patterns. The Glaistan expresses her gratitude for being able to confront Summergale, telling her not to worry about the torture tools surrounding them: She plans to kill her at the first opportunity. Summergale responds with “What, you don’t want to hear how I did that in the first place?”, which is immediately shot down by Cecile with “Oh, don’t try to to get any impassioned hint from me like that. Mirko already told me you don’t remember a thing. It’s a pity you’ll die without knowing why… You won’t be able to repent in the afterlife, and the mere thought makes me ache, but it is what it is.”

“Tch… Arc damned slimy bastard made sure to let everyone know about my little memory loss problem, huh? Hey, I’ve come this far, at least talk to me a bit. You’re going to kill me, right? At least let me know what I did to you all!”

“...No,” replies Cecile, “there’s no need to te… To te… Hrrrg… YYYYYOU FLACCID BACK ALLEY WHORE, YOU’VE GOT A LOT OF NERVE SHOWING UP HERE!”

As she’s saying this, Cecile suddenly clutches her chest, and her horns begin to shift, opening the way to her eyes and accommodating themselves more orderly, on her forehead and to the side of her head, completely unlike the unkempt garden of horns she previously had. Her red eyes now visible, it seems her change was not only physical.

“You! How dare you forget about everything! How dare you just relinquish your sins as if you weren’t the one who ki-- No, shut up, Cecile, I’m letting her have it! This bitch will die regretting what she did, she doesn’t deserve a pleasant passing!” -- ‘Cecile’ convulses once anew, and her horns become an messy crown that covers her eyes again -- “You don’t get to decide that, Volg. On the off chance that she beats us, she’ll armed with more knowledge, and knowing is half the--” -- Cecile’s horns shift once again -- “BY THE ARC, yes yes, it’s half the damn fuckin’ battle, yes, you say that every time, would it KILL you to look up some new phrases or proverbs? You ok we beat her to an inch of her life, then I tell her, then we kill her, then?” -- Volg once again turns into Cecile -- “That’s acceptable, actually.”

“Well, you can tell my amnesia is particularly terrible, because there’s no way I would otherwise forget a freakshow like you,” snarks Summergale as she assumes her combat stance.

“My, how rude.” “Choke on dick and die!”

Cecile and Vogt reply in quick succession and the Lantern Boss Fight against Cecile/Vogt begins.

Cecile and Vogt are two personalities that are housed within the same body. Cecile is the more rational and calm of the two, while Vogt is rowdy and aggressive. Despite their fundamental differences, however, the two consciousnesses usually find a middle ground where they can agree to do something, for they come from the same psyche, after all. The Pact Lantern that they wield has the special power of allowing the wielder to do “intrinsic transactions”. That means they can trade aspects of themselves for other aspects, or to heighten something they already have. Cecile and Vogt, however, utilize the Lantern in a different manner: Cecile, a skilled and intelligent spellcaster, trades her physical faculties for heightened mental faculties. This manifests around her as a transparent green ‘command center’ that surrounds her (imagine keyboards, monitors, a little spinning radar, etc), with the Lantern standing tall behind her as the centerpiece. She floats around very slowly, but she is constantly bombarding the player with different spells. As she’s traded most of her physical faculties, she can only move her arms and hands, and does so to operate her ‘command center’, which is how she launches spells (it makes her own advanced spellcasting easier to comprehend to herself by associating some physical actions to it is the lore reasoning, and the design reasoning is that it looks cool). Cecile bombards the player with the Four Elements, in contrast to her otherwise technological look (intentional; she might be using the primordially technological Pact Lantern, but she is from a Southern Half nation, and an expert traditional spellcaster), all of which have a different tell before assailing Summergale. The Glaistan will shoot quick blue-Dyed Firebolts directly at Summergale, (you can melee these to absorb them; the tell is her mashing on her keyboard), splash around blobs of water that remain suspended in the air before sharpening into ice spikes that descend all at once (you can shoot attack these blobs in any manner to get rid of them, which is recommended as they are numerous and descend quickly and all at once, which might catch you off-guard as you’re dealing with other attacks; the tell is Cecile spinning a steam valve with her right hand), creating a Summergale-sized wave of earth that comes from behind you or, if used on one of the platforms in the arena, makes that platform unusable for a while (there’s nothing you can do about these other than dodge them; the tell is her yanking on a lever with her left hand), and creating delayed blasts of wind where you stand (keep moving, nothing to do about these; the tell is Cecile manually making the radar device on the command center spin faster with her hand). Cecile moves slowly across the air and doesn’t really do much to defend herself other than viciously launch attacks. Periodically, an Earth Carapace generates around her, which takes a couple of shots or melees to break, and if you hit her too many times, she’ll use a blast of wind to propel herself away, regenerating a set amount of Earth Carapace. At set intervals, however, Cecil will tag Volg in by yelling her name. When Volg is in control, she becomes a completely different boss. Volg’s usage of the Pact Lantern is to trade “perception” for “wrath” and “instinct”. In place of the ‘command center’, Volg wears a transparent red spiritual armor, and instead of using magic, she uses the Pact Lantern itself as a large polearm-club. She attacks in a variety of ways by swinging the traffic light around. Her main attacks are a warcry followed by a quick thrust with the Lantern, dragging the Lantern across the ground in an uppercut motion to launch damaging torture tools at you (Dyed red), and spinning the Lantern rapidly to deflect shots and advance towards you. Shooting at Volg is mostly useless, as she will block most bullet. All of her attacks, however, are dyed Blue, and clashing is how you mostly will defend against her. Trying to simply dodge her around is going to get you beaten to pulp, as most of her ferocious moves have follow ups with very strict timing to dodge, or frame trap you entirely if you don’t clash. Volg can also stomp hard on the ground to make torture tools near her bounce upwards, catching a cleaver between her teeth, and VERY quickly lunge at you with the Lantern, spitting the cleaver either mid-sprint or immediately after the attack. Unlike Cecile, Volg is an expert physical fighter, especially trained against ranged foes. Volg can also tag Cecile back in by yelling her name.

So, how do you even deal with this boss? Cecile is what I’d call “HP Phase” and Volg is what I’d call “Lantern Phase”. When Cecile’s out, you mostly have to dodge, Quickstep, and disable her attacks while putting damage into her. If her floating away is too annoying, use the Amethyst Shot (Chain shot) to pull yourself to surrounding platforms, to the ceiling, or, if you can, to hit her and pull her to you. Summergale’s melee attacks drain magic, remember? Chain her in and melee her to debilitate her magic powers while refilling your own Mana. Directly after meleeing Cecile, she’ll use her wind to pull herself away from you, but will fly noticeably slower, attack slower (and her magic is smaller), and generate Earth Carapace slower. Melee her a certain amount of times, and you’ll forcefully make the AI tag out. It’s important to note that Cecile will cancel out all of your Gem Shots except Amethyst Shot with her own magic, so you’ll rely mostly on normal attacks and Chain for this. While she’s Volg, shots are mostly useless, and instead of dodging, you’ll want to meet her attacks with clashes. Volg phases are mostly to deal Lantern Damage and fill Avalanche when mastered. Clashing any of her attacks builds Momentum, every third clash you land directly against the head of her traffic light Lantern will take one Lantern HP out of her total of 4. But watch out, Volg’s attacks reduce a lot of Momentum if they land! Taking out one Lantern HP from Volg stuns her momentarily, dissipating her “armor” and letting you hit her for increased damage (especially with a Ruby Shot, the explosive one). Do NOT use Amethyst Shot (Chain shot) on her, as she’ll catch the chain’s head and throw you across the screen with a special counterattack. The main advantage to use on Volg, as mana allows, is to use the expensive Topaz Shots (hitscan thunder shots that immediately travel the screen and deal good damage, but use a third of a full MP bar per pop). Volg can block bullets, but not thunder, which will electrify the metal Pact Lantern and hurt her. The optimal moment to use it, however, is when she’s preparing her Lunge attack! Once she has caught the cleaver between her teeth, get ready. The moment she starts running at you, hit her with the Topaz Shot. This will cause her to crash from the velocity and force of her sprint being broken and will send her cleaver flying, Dying it red (remember this). At this moment, you can attack her directly briefly, BUT, if you are a true Notches pro (and you are), you can wait until the cleaver is aligned with her. If you shoot the cleaver at the right moment, it will be sent hurtling towards Volg, hitting her for big damage and giving you a huge boost to Momentum. Once only 15% HP remains, whichever boss is currently active will get away from your and say something (Cecil: “That’s far enough… Volg, she cannot leave this gaol alive! Engage Blood Pact!/ Volg: “Damn you, damn you, damn you! Oi, Cecil! That’s enough shitting around! Blood Pact time!”). The active boss then sends the Pact Lantern into overdrive, changing their color to yellow and emitting a powerful aura. Cecil and Volg can now tag each other in and out extremely fast, mid-attack even, so it will become a test to everything you’ve dealt with so far. The way this works is that Volg will mostly be in command, leaping at you, and while she’s midair, she’ll tag to Cecile, who’ll let out a magic attack or infusion, and quickly tag back to Volg so she can finish the melee attack. It’s a strategy based on their perfect coordination, but you can use this against them! Remember how Cecile blocks Gem Shots and Volg blocks normal shots? Using two shots quickly followed by a Gem Shot will trick Volg into trying to block the Gem Shot as if it were a normal shot, getting hit. Likewise, using two Gem Shots followed by a normal shot with get Cecile mixed up and make her unable to block it. The advantage of the former is obvious, but why would you depend on the latter strategy? To hit the Lantern, of course, and deal Lantern Damage. Shots directly to the Lantern in this phase deal one Lantern HP. With so little HP remaining, it might be wise to do so! Keep up the mix-ups and finish them up in whatever way you wish. Grievous Attacks against Cecil are activated directly below her. Shot Grievous makes Summergale use her Chain Shot to pull her to herself, blasting her away with a point black explosion from the Ruby Shot, while Melee Grievous makes Summergale use her Chain Shot to pull herself up to Cecile, punching her square in the face and bringing her all the way to the ground with, disabling her flight, Ice Spikes, and Earth Carapace temporarily. Grievous Attacks against Volg (including the Blood Pact phase) are activated adjacent to Volg. Shot Grievous makes Summergale jump kick Volg in the chin, land behind her as she’s collapsing backwards, pressing the barrel of her rifle against her back, lifting her, and letting loose three consecutive Topaz Shots pointblank, while Melee Grievous makes Summergale give Volg a firm uppercut to the chin, followed by gripping her rifle by the barrel like a baseball bat, and smashing it against Volg’s kneecap, disabling her dash attacks and slowing her down temporarily.

After being defeated, Cecile lies midst the many torture tools. “And so, you claim another one of us, you greedy nobody… Haha…”

“...I couldn’t convince you to at least give me a hint, could I?” Summergale inquires as she looms over the dying Glaistan.

“You’re getting nothing out of m--EAT SHIT.” interrupts Volg with her usual glamour.

“Ah. The other one. Well, I don’t exactly have all the time in the world, so I have to get going.”

“Wait,” Volg hails, standing up with what little strength her broken body has left. “...I hate your guts, but I ain’t a pussy like Cecile. You fought us directly and you beat us. If nothing else, I can give you a hint -- Volg, stop right now, die with some dignity! -- I should say the same to you, Cecile. It’s over. We already played our part, we can just keel over and die, knowing those Urelian shitheads will get what’s coming to them.”

“...So you’re really targeting the Ureles Empire. Don’t you realize that this will only fan the flames of their wrath!? I hate those bastards as much as the next girl, but I also know how to not sign a death warrant for my country!” yells Summergale.

“And whose fault do you think that is!?” Volg chastises as she crumples once more, her wounds too great for her. “We had the perfect plan! We had the perfect way to exterminate all of those bastards in one fell swoop! And you ruined it all in one day, you smashed this carefully calculated clusterfuck of righteous retribution!”

“I… Did? How could I alone have done that?”

“Ask your partner over there,” Volg whispers as she points at the rifle. “The second notch holds the answer, you sick bastard.”

“The second notch?”

“Yeah… That rifle should have had two notches carved on the stock when you came by, no? Ever wondered about them?”

“Who did I kill?”

But Volg simply smiles. “See, Cecile? Someone that doesn’t know anything can’t feel any pain, but give them a little morsel… And… Suddenly… They realize just how badly… They are starving…”

With Volg’s sick smile, Cecile and Volg pass away, not before taking one last jab at Summergale: Giving her just enough information for her to realize just how little she knows. Summergale silently takes out her small knife and carves not one, but two new notches on the stock of the rifle.

As for their lore, to close up this post, Cecile used to be a single consciousness, but during the tests and development of the Pact Lantern, she grew very close to a rowdy scientist named Volg. The two became inseparable friends, if not more, who would often banter and take jabs at each other, but all in good fun. Cecile was a foreigner from the Glais Commonwealth, and while Phebea is known for its hospitality for foreigners, the ambiance in the castle was a little different. While not xenophobic, the royal guard is rather nationalistic, so Cecile, who was brought in by the King of Phebea as his Court Wizard, received a rather cold treatment. Volg, on the other hand, always treated her fairly and warmly, if not lacking at all in friendly vitriol. During research, however, a certain incident occurred in which an Ureles Empire spy found his way to the Laboratories one day, late at night. Volg, who was the only one still working there, saw him, and just as she rang the alarm, a poisoned dagger thrown by the spy pierced her neck. By the time help came, Cecile included, Volg was already dead. Consumed by her wrath, Cecile eviscerated the spy with her deadly magic, swore revenge, and volunteered for the Dim Lanterns project. The Pact Lantern’s special ability is to do “intrinsic transactions”, and so Cecile’s first transaction was to bring Volg to life. By sacrificing part of herself, Volg was revived! In her mind, at least. Rather, what Cecile did was give part of her identity away so it would become a facsimile of Volg who would live in her forever. It was the only solution she had, and ever since, Cecile and “Volg” have shared a body, a mind, and a reality submerged in denial. Cecile’s horns move way to reveal Volg’s eyes when Volg is the dominant personality because Volg’s eyes were Cecile’s favorite part of her, and the Pact Lantern’s power was so absolute due to Cecile’s conviction that she could revive her this way that her body changes to fit this ideal. In other words, it’s an unnatural metamorphosis brought by the Lantern. Change the inside enough, and changes reflect on the outside, after all.

Well, that’s that for this post! I hope you enjoyed it. The next post is more technical-minded, with stuff like controls, level design, and other such things. See you next time!

[joshuamadrid]

Josh Madrid – JetSetFly’s 8 Step ‘Personal Business Branding & Affiliate Marketing’ Cheat Sheet for 2020

What Exactly Is A PERSONAL BRAND?

You already have a personal brand right now. If you google your name online that’s whatever your personal brand is. Whatever comes up, high school team stats, jail records, social media. Whatever you search online when someone searches your name that’s your personal brand. Everybody has one, some people have ones that are profitable, while others not so much. Maybe it’s going negative and hurting your bank account.

Search me online, you’ll find major publications like Forbes, Huffington Post, ABC, NBC News, Wikipedia, my website, my YouTube, and social media. You can find everything there, so that’s the type of personal brand you guys want.

When you start building your personal brand, the bigger you get you’ll want to make sure you have a more solid brand, no matter what. You’ll always have haters, you’ll always have people talking shit on you and people might try to say negative things about you online. That’s why if you have a strong personal brand, it doesn’t matter what’s online that’s negative, because of the solid stuff, the positive stuff that’s actually true stomps that out.

Just to make it clear you DO NOT NEED to be rich to build your brand.

Channels

The first thing you’ll want to do when building your personal brand is channels. You have to know what channels you’re using (This information is very important so you should be taking notes.).

What do I mean by channels, if you went to build a really strong personal brand, you need to be on every single channel?

A channel is a social media platform, and content creating the platform. For example, YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Sound Cloud, Podcast, and twitter.

Here’s the reason why you can’t have a strong brand on Facebook and Instagram if it doesn’t connect to other platforms. Not everybody is going to follow you because everyone isn’t on your favorite platform. This is why you have to realize when building a personal brand that, yes it’s for you, yes it’s for your brand but it doesn’t matter what you want or likes. You’re building your personal brand so other people, maybe people of higher stature buy your products, people who would want to work with you, so they know who you are.

It doesn’t matter if your favorite platform is Instagram or YouTube if you aren’t on Facebook and that’s where all the people who need to see your personal brand are at, then it doesn’t matter. You have to be on every single platform. Make sure you have these platforms written down. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Medium, Sound Cloud, iTunes, YouTube.

Content

JetSetFly scammed by the 9to5Scam vultures. This was made on fiverr.com for $5 and is great for personal branding.

The next thing you’ll want to do is you’ll want to have content.

You may have heard the phrase “Content is king.”

To build a strong personal brand you have to push your content out to the different channels. When you have content, the thing you have to realize is that once you start creating content you have to be consistent on how much you post, how often you post, and the quality of the post. For me I post on Instagram 5–6 times a week, so if I were to not post for an entire week, then I come back, my followers are going to recognize that and they are not going to build brand loyalty. If you want a strong personal brand you’ll need brand loyalty.

I usually post on YouTube 3–4 times a week. If I don’t post on YouTube 3–4 times, I’m going to start losing subscribers and lose momentum. People are going to realize I’m not a reliable source and not constant with the content I put out.

Snapchat every single day and night. 24 hours around the clock, you’re always going to see something on my Snapchat story and Instagram story. It will never ever be blank, not if I’m dead, dying, or sick. I’m always going to have content around my story. My followers know I’m always going to have content on my story. They will never be disappointed if they go. Maybe it might be a little less than tomorrow or it might be a little bit more the next day but there’s always going to be content there.

My followers will see me as a reliable source, someone they can trust, that’s very key if you want to build and make money with your personal brand. Your audience needs to trust you, my audience and supporters, the people that are apart of this community know that I’m always going to be pushing out content.

Not only do you have to put out content, but you also have to put out relevant content. Whatever audience you want, whatever niche target audience which you are trying to target, you need to put out content that is relevant to it.

On YouTube, I’m trying to build an audience around people who want to live a free lifestyle, people who want to create additional income, entrepreneurs, and people who want to become their own boss.

What am I creating content around? I’m creating content around my lifestyle around me, how I’m my own boss, so people can see that and learn how to do it.

Instagram, I want people to become motivated, I want people to work, I want people going out there and achieving their dreams the same way I have done for myself and the same way I’m doing every single day.

So what do I post? Motivational content, inspirational content, my life, my journey, I talk about it on my Instagram and Snapchat, about how what I have to go through to get where I am at. Again Content needs needs needs to be consistent.

This is key, this is crucial if you want to make money off your personal brand, you have to expand it.

A lot of people, I see this as a common problem, they think that they can just post good pictures, post some good captions, post it on their story every once in a while but they never expand. They think that their 1k, 4k, 10k, 20k followers are enough and by posting good stuff you’re going to grow.

You want to grow you have to put in the work. I used to put 6, 8, 9, 10 hours into building my brand, on top of the 8–10 hours I was putting into building my business. I knew how equally important it is to have a brand as well as a business. The brand will be here 10 years from now the brand might not. You have to be able to expand.

Building a personal brand works very well on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, twitter every platform like I said. The two biggest and easiest platform that I would start with if I were you today, in the next 24, that you can start building your personal brand would be Facebook and Instagram.

Freeways to build on Facebook

Here’s what you want to do, let’s say you’re in the entrepreneur niche, maybe you’re in affiliate marketing, maybe drop shipping, maybe you’re in SMMA, this is what you want to do. Nobody knows this little secret but its very simple. This is how you build free traffic, huge audience, and a huge following, all you do is search your niche and you find Facebook groups in your niche.

Again, before you do this step you have to have the channels right, you have to have a Facebook account, Instagram account, you have to have that good content that is consistent. Then you can expand.

After you have good content you’ll want to go to Facebook and search to make money online, affiliate marketing, e-commerce, drop shipping, SMMA and find Facebook groups. There are tons of Facebook groups that have 5k, 10k, 20k, 100k people in these groups. A lot of these groups get spammed, they get spammed a lot to be completely honest with you guys, its pretty annoying but here’s how you filter out the spam and actually build your audience around people who are quality people.

What you’re going to want to do is go to these Facebook groups, look at all the posts made in the last week and look at the one that has the most engagement. Its probably going to be someone with a success story or someone with free value, its usually those type of things. Look at everyone who liked it and everyone who commented. These are the most engaged people inside the Facebook group.

Very simple, click click click, you add everybody that liked that post without commenting on that post. If you do this in 6–10 Facebook groups next thing you know you’ll have 5,000 friends.

Next step after you have 5,000 friends, that’s a lot of stuff on your news feed and a lot of people you don’t know, but that’s a lot of people who are interested in the same thing you’re interested in. Once these people are engaged, once they love your stuff, once they are commenting on your stuff and following you, you can use a friend remover or defriend them and re-add people again, but this comes later.

Instagram, what’s a free way to do it?

Follow and unfollow people.

A Very simple trick not a lot of people do it because it takes a long time. I built a brand back in 2014 on Instagram following and unfollowing accounts from my local area sold that Instagram page for a couple of thousands of dollars and it only had 10,000 followers, but it was a very high target niche, that’s the power of Instagram. I did that in high school when Instagram wasn’t even that cool.

Let’s say I want to be in the real estate industry or the sales industry, I’m going to look at who engaged with Grant Cardone’s pictures and videos on his Instagram. I’m going to follow all of them and if they follow me back, I might stay following them or I might unfollow then, it just depends.

You can make a lot of connections this way, people are going to connect with you, but again your content has to be relevant to what they are interested in, whether its real estate or sales.

So you use the follow and unfollow strategy on Instagram, you can follow up to 7,500 people, then you can’t follow people anymore. But be careful with this because if you go too fast and you follow people too fast, Instagram will block you from following people.

You want to scale, the first day follows 5 people, the third day following 15, and you want to increase by 5’s. Once you get up to 50 starts going up by 10–20, then 100 a day, 150 a day, 200 a day. You want to increase scale, by the end of the month maybe you can follow like 200 a day. I think you can do 300 actions a day, so 200 follows and 100 unfollows would be 300 actions, so you’ll want to do that. But don’t start off too fast, don’t get too excited, don’t go the following everybody, you will get blocked and it’s going to ruin your entire plan.

Instagram follows and unfollow and Facebook is adding everybody that is active inside of the groups that are related to your niche.

Paid strategies are very simple. Instagram you can run paid ads or you can run shutouts. Find an account that is related to your niche, say that I like cars, I’m going to find a car account, send them a picture of a car, and ask for a shout out.

Show them a picture of my car, because that’s the niche I’m trying to build. They might say its $20, or $200, I’m going to pay the amount, I’m going to get the followers, they are going to follow me and now they will be apart of my brand.

For Facebook, you’ll want Facebook ads. Facebook ads are very cheap to run, as long as you know how to run them.

Engage

If these people are following you and you’re following them back. You’re going to want to engage with their content. Facebook post, you’re scrolling down and you see all these people and somebody says “Hey just made my first $10k mouth”. You comment “Congrats dude! I’m on my way there too!” or “Congrats man, good work, keep it up!”.

Somebody posts a picture on Instagram of a picture of their car, “Hey nice car dude! I love that car!”. You want to engage with your audience very actively. Try to get them to engage back, ask them questions, if you want someone to engage back with you to ask them questions, this is how you build a relationship.

That doesn’t build a relationship or your brand. You want to engage with a question.

That’s the same thing with Instagram and Facebook, you want to engage, like people’s photos, spam them, you want them to get to know who you are. You want your profile picture and name popping up in their notifications multiple times because you added them first, they don’t know who you are. So you need them to get familiar with who you are, that’s how you’re going to build your brand.

GIVE

Next thing you’ll want to do is Give Give Give.

What you’ll want to do for 6–12 months, maybe three months at the minimum, just give out free value, free content as much as you can. This is how you build your brand; this is how you assert yourself as an authority figure.

Everybody wants to start a personal brand or sell shit overnight. That’s how you destroy your personal brand, that’s how you damage your brand. For those of you guys just trying to make money quick off your personal brand and not actually provide any real value or not actually change lives and not have a purpose bigger than you, you will fail and you will make no money.

In about 1–2 years you will not be relevant. The way I built my brand I will be relevant 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, I can promise you that, I can put money on that. That’s just the truth because I have done the proper steps.

I see so many people today on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, running ads and trying to sell shit. They haven’t really done anything yet or given out any free value and they think that just because they buy all this designer shit (You don’t always have to flex designer shit.) They buy it, then they try to sell shit and think that’s how you build authority, that’s not how you build authority, but don’t get me wrong designer shit is cool, I have designer shit. That’s not the point, the way you build authority is by giving, giving, giving value.

There are multiple ways you can do this like give out free E-books. You don’t even have to write the E-books, if you do that’s better, that’s what I did, but I heard there are websites out there where you can license E-books, you can buy it, give it out and claim rights, but I’m not really sure how that works.

Collect Emails, the whole reason you’re doing this is to build a community

Write blogs, share blogs (if it isn’t written by you) if you’re the main way they are getting their information, even though it’s not actually by you, they will associate that value with you.

Make videos on Snapchat, Instagram put them on your stories. Give out value, have your captions give out value. Inspire people.

Facebook, make 2–3 statues a day with pure value, motivation, pure relatable content for your target niche. You want people to know that you’re that guy or girl that’s always giving value, helping people, letting others win, putting people before yourself. If you’re inside a Facebook group, provide more value than anyone else. Here’s how you get a lot of followers on Facebook,

I have over 8,000 followers on Facebook and I haven’t even used it in a year, I built a massive following on Facebook in a few months and I made a lot of money on it (probably over a few $100,000). So here’s what you do, you go to Facebook groups, opportunity groups, make money groups, you know niche-targeted groups and provide value, that’s it. No sell, no close, no dm me for more info, trying to sell people on that bullshit, fuck that just give value.

For example, “Guys here are 5 tips” or “Here is an article on how to do this” or “Here’s what I’m doing now and its working.

Just give value, and what’s going to happen?

Everybody is going to like it, everybody is going to comment on it, now you have the most recent and most active post in that group. People are going to start to naturally add you on Facebook, and if you don’t accept their friend request they become followers (That’s how you build your followers.)

Read Full Content Here: https://medium.com/@Jetsetfly/should-i-go-to-college-df8ef74cd6e9

[boiledleather]

Mirror Mirror II

Our anthology Mirror Mirror II, edited by Julia Gfrörer and myself, is now officially for sale from our publisher, 2dcloud, and from our own webstore. Click here to order and see an extensive preview, or click here to buy it from Julia directly.

Contributors include Lala Albert, Clive Barker, Heather Benjamin, Apolo Cacho, Sean Christensen, Nicole Claveloux, Sean T. Collins, Al Columbia, Dame Darcy, Gretchen Alice Felker-Martin, Noel Freibert, Renee French, Meaghan Garvey, Julia Gfrörer, Simon Hanselmann, Aidan Koch, Laura Lannes, Céline Loup, Uno Moralez, Mou, Jonny Negron, Claude Paradin, Chloe Piene, Josh Simmons, Carol Swain, and Trungles.

Our contributors come from Australia, Brazil, England, France, Mexico, Russia, Wales, and the United States. The youngest is 24. The oldest is 77. The majority are women. They are trans and cis, straight and queer. They make comics, zines, fine art, music, film, literature, and journalism. For our book they made work basted around horror, pornography, the gothic, and the abject. They made dark, vulnerable work that reflects the dark, vulnerable world, in hopes that confronting it moves us toward empathy.

Here’s what people are saying about it:

One of the 10 Best Comics of 2017 - The Verge

One of the Best Comics of 2017 - The A.V. Club

One of the Best Comics of 2017 - The Beat

Starred Review - Publishers Weekly

Honorable Mention - The 2017 Publishers Weekly Graphic Novel Critics Poll

“This anthology earns that most potent of horror descriptors: it is truly, deeply unsettling.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"This collection doesn't just feel haunting; it feels corrosive." —Juliet Kahn, The Verge, "The 10 Best Comics of 2017"

“Mirror Mirror II is troubling and challenging, but it is also rewarding and stunning—a thrilling experience that readers won’t soon forget.” —Shea Hennum, The A.V. Club, “The A.V. Club’s Favorite Comics of 2017 So Far”

“In a year that many have found bleak and depressing, Mirror Mirror II managed to channel this energy into one of the most riveting visual experiences of the year....the best horror comics anthology available.” —Phillippe Leblanc, “The Beat’s Best Comics of 2017”

“This book should win all the design awards for 2017. It’s as magnificent as the contents are (purposely) horrific.” —Heidi MacDonald, “The Beat’s Best Comics of 2017”

“It awakens the long-underused [horror] genre and pushes your fear buttons in ways you could never have anticipated. It’s hard to pick the most memorably mind-devouring portion.” —Abraham Riesman, Vulture, “8 Comics You Need to Read This June”

“Each comic or illustration feels like a peek into the mercurial depths of the individual artists, never just sex and horror for provocation’s sake. That honesty can be revealing for readers as well — when was the last time a horror/sex anthology taught you something about yourself?” —Jordan Darville, The Fader

“A sexy, creepy book which is daring in the topics it addresses...It does not shy away from how complex and difficult its subject matter is. It’s also a sumptuously designed, beautifully illustrated compendium of some of the most talented alternative comic creators working today.” —Tom Baker, Broken Frontier

“The book is an eclectic mix, beautiful and unsettling, with a strong erotic element....Mirror Mirror II is an immensely strong book, full of varied, challenging work that will not disappoint fans of the featured genres. If you come across a copy, I highly recommend picking it up.” —Pete Redrup, The Quietus

“Reading this is like dreaming — though whether you’re immersed in a nightmare or a wet dream is unclear....This book is like a porn stash you’d find in the cupboard of a medieval demon.” —Dan Schindel, Hyperallergic

“Mirror Mirror II is at once a frivolous memento mori and an outright challenge to your own personal space.” —Austin Lanari, Comics Bulletin

"At a time when real, human-rights-violating terrors abound, and the collective stomach is weak...Gfrörer and Collins see the genre as a processing mechanism to sort out repressed anxieties, echoing critics such as Robin Wood who has argued that the 'horror genre is a struggle for recognition of all that our civilization represses or oppresses.'"—Minh Nguyen, AQNB

“I'm not going to lie, this one really messed with me. If I were listing comics that challenged me the most in 2017...this would have been number one with a bullet....Collins and Gfrörer push to the very edge without going over it, with stories that show the strong link between eroticism and horror. It's really unlike anything I've ever read.” —Rob McGonigal, Panel Patter

“High quality smut.” —Will Menaker, Chapo Trap House

“Kind of feeling [it]” —Kevin Huizenga (Ganges), “Notable Comics Read in 2017”

“Early contender for best graphic novel of 2017.” —Philippe LeBlanc, The Beat

“This is a book that provokes, that pushes and pulls, that strips down to the bone and re-clothes in different flesh any notions you might have about horror, pornography, and abjection. It’s wonderful....I haven’t had a book challenge me this much in a long time.” —Sarah Miller, Sequentialist

“A thought-provoking, richly entertaining collection from some of the most exciting comic artists working today. A must read for fans of the horrific and perverse.” —Bryan Cogman, Game of Thrones

“An impressive collection of beautiful depictions of grotesque things and grotesque depictions of beautiful things.” —Alan Resnick, Unedited Footage of a Bear / This House Has People in It

“Editors Sean T. Collins and Julia Gfrörer have assembled an exquisitely creepy and seductive new collection of comics with Mirror Mirror II. From Uno Moralez’s pixelated noirs to Dame Darcy’s ornate Gothic ghost stories, the wide range of horror here is fantastic, as characters creep and fuck in the shadows of unimaginable darkness throughout. It’s certainly the perfect, freaky anthology for you, your lover, and all the demons in your mind.” —Hazel Cills, MTV News / Jezebel

“Mirror Mirror II invites the most innovative creators working in the form today and proves just how expansive the pornographic and gothic can be, encapsulating the pop cultural, fantastical, and realistic in one fell swoop.” —Rachel Davies, Rookie / The Comics Journal

I am so proud of this book and hope you enjoy it. 

[inappropriatefangirlneeds]

Gotham s3ep12 “Ghosts”  Personal Review

“Okay. Weird” ..  “But not illegal.” Warning spoilers below

“Please don´t leave just yet” BRUCE WAYNE says to Mrs. Kyle. Before that the ornament OWL gets examined, the one they stole and people died for. And yes I do very much like to know why this thing is so important as well and thank you Gotham that might have been the most interesting seconds of this plot: Bruce puts the owl aside and sun shines on it, revealing a map or something. I´m curious! Better be useful, Luka died for that.  Anyway it´s all about SELINA KYLE´s mother who was an orphan and left at the same step as she did leave Selina and now tries to make up for over a decade of neglect. Selina is not having it she is angry. Her mother brings a box to the Wayne Manor that they should give her daughter and omg Bruce is so precious in this, he tell her to stay and try reaching out once more! Well done Bruce! He brings mother and box to Selina and they hug. They all have dinner and get along well. Daughter and mother bond over robbing Alfred and it´s glorious. It feels like a happy family and I really like that but why do I got a bad feeling about this.. Bad feeling gets some fodder when Selina accompanies her mother going into her hotel room. Some guy wants money. At first I thought Mrs. Kyle might work together with that guy but she does seem truly worried? Selina is quick to offer Bruce´s money. Like when did that happen, at first she did not even take the offer of a shower and warm place to stay now she is spending his money. Okay it´s not for her but someone else but still. Mother says this is her past and that the Wayne boys should be warned because they are not to be messed with ..  Dear, ALFRED PENNYWORTH is really into Mrs. Kyle, and .. really?! .. I thought he would look down on her just as much as he does on Selina and despise her, but then again both are horrible with the parent role so maybe that connects?   

“Let the vultures have at me.” Okay now I do call bullshit how does OSWALD COBBLEPOT  not know that he has been doing good for the city. He seemed to have been involved as much that he knew he was doing good for the mob interests he gotta know that stuff at least some tendency. Like yes, he did not know how to do the bar thing with Butch but now I´m starting to get annoyed. Once he finally gets the memo that things are alright he is all smiling and “How´s my hair” and that´s more the penguin I want to see. Also for fox sake can´t they have him be happy for more than a second. They just throw shit at him that keeps piling, this is not fun anymore. Being mayor could have been so great and good for him why always skip that stuff. Anyway TARQUIN, deputy chief of staff elegantly offers his assistance and also arranges some national TV interview. Meanwhile “someone” digs up Elijah van Dahl´s corpse and gets spooky. Oswald´s sanity certificate shatters, how symbolic. Oswald sees his dead father wandering around and even warning him about a birthday boy that should not be trusted. Tarquin gets some birthday cake and Oswald finds a corpse in a bag,  one thing leads to another. Tarquin gets murdered.  “You are a sick man! What are you plotting? What's the angle? Who are you in on this with?” Yes Oswald that´s what you should be asking but honey, dead people can´t give you answers. I feel sorry for the both of them, this is a mess. Oswald thus is late for his TV interview, which of course can only take place in this mere moment, but makes it “Sorry I´m late, mayor stuff”. TV lady told him she is no fan of him and wow she really isn´t, she suggests Oswald murdered his family to inherit the money. NO! You don´t do that lady. I mean from her point of view yes you do very much do that and question the whole thing but god damn it. Anyway I´m pretty annoyed as well that Oswald did not seem to be able to answer her question about how he has archived doing good for the city but I can let that slip because I so deeply relate to that “Well ..” I really don’t like this plot, what annoys me most is probably the question of: Don´t other people see Clayjah van Spook ? Like have him spook around in Oswald´s place at night okay, but have him show up at the TV interview?! Why isn´t Oswald all like .. stop, hold that man that looks like my dead father. Or just stop that man. Like it does not make him look much more insane than running of and even saying “to hell with the people” This is annoying me so much. On a bright side: I like TARQUIN the way he presented himself was just lovely. And I adore his elegant reaction of *gets hit .. well, better place this cake carefully, so it won´t go to waste falling on the floor. Why did he have to go so early. I´m a bit pissed at Ed for setting him up like this. EDWARD NYGMA is still in full rage mode and wants Oswald to suffer plenty before putting him out of his misery. BARBARA is still all excited about getting a new empire to play with and meanwhile CLAYFACE is worried about his performance, the voice issue again ..

“That´s the law, this is family” HARVEY BULLOCK explains to Jim Gordon who is watching Mario Falcone´s funeral and is absolutely right. Jim feels guilty, wants to do something but for once thinks about his actions and leaves. Damn it LESLIE THOMPKINS really fits into that mob family. I´m more and more thinking about her being at least as much into the family as into Mario. And damn it Mario, he deserved better. Least I´m glad that seemingly he indeed was a decent person. [Why the heck did Victor not like Mario??!] LESLIE shows up at the GCPD “You´re the real virus, Jim”  and I think what a drama queen but then again she is right. Nathaniel and Mario had the same infection, one is dead and one isn´t. Jim could have shouted at her instead of shooting Mario. She might have died then, or not. Given the way they showed Jim last week I do blame him up to a certain extent as well but that whole thing is annoying too. LEE & FALCONE have a mob moment discussing the death of Jim Gordon. “Blood for Blood”  Falcone say and wants Jim dead. Falcone also says that Jim was more like his son than Mario in some way and, really?! Like they had some thing, but they barely met. What kind of judgment is that?! Anyway Lee spits hate and wants him dead too but Falcone says Jim is his, and that it anyway is a decision Lee has to live with without doing it herself, he is used to it. “Everything bad that's happened in my life has happened because of him.” “If Gordon dies, it's a weight we'll both have to carry. I'm used to such burdens.” LEE later visits BARNES to get to know more about the infection, thinking she might have had a life with a cured Mario but Barnes gets into full, no okay about 60% executioner mode (I´m surprised that he stopped the screaming that annoyed Jervis so much,  maybe the blood just did not prepare his vocal cords for this) and Lee changes her mind. She tells Falcone to spare Jim. Falcone tells her she still loves him.   Why is listening Falcone to her?! It´s still about his son and he is still dead.

* Leslie wants Jim dead for killing her love interest. Edwards wants Oswald suffering and then dead for killing his love interest.  Don Falcone tells Leslie she talks of hate and revenge because she does not want to acknowledge  that she still loves Jim Gordon. Is this meant to be a parallel?

 “It's inevitability, Jim. Embrace it.” We have gone from S1 Everyone loves Jim to everybody wants to kill Jim. What a development. NATHANIEL BARNES declares he still wants to judge, jury and execute Jim and he is pretty confident that he will get out of Arkham and do as he declared. And omg that was great acting! Then VICTOR ZSASZ visits Jim Gordon and raids his kitchen. He warns him about Falcone wanting him dead but drops a hint that he does not. “Nice shot on Mario, I never liked him.”  [Why?!] Omg, omg .. Zsasz could have an own agenda?! Do we finally get to know things about his loyalties about how he works and all that stuff we have been wondering about for so long?! I´m totally excited. Also I´m totally worried. This could get so messy. Also I can´t quite wrap my head around why he would hint something like this but still carry out orders like usual business. Like does he care about his own opinion?! Anyway I guess I got to wait for more answers. [But please Jim & Zsasz .. gotham you´d make me happy] Later Falcone orders Jim to get killed and Zsasz goes after him with two new fellow hitmen, who promptly get probably killed. Zsasz does not even bat an eyelash anymore when Jim uses one as cover and puts several bullets into them, seems this has become usual business. Why do people still work with him? [Or did he pick some he did not like anyway and was plotting to have Jim get away all along, for Mr. I do good work that was pretty much not good work there in the kitchen] Jim beats him, biig surprise, and points a gun at him, it clicks and it´s not loaded .. would Jim have shot him if?  Jim leaves. Round two happens in his place but Falcone calls the whole thing of. Victor Zsasz leaves without any of the usual words of  “oh please boss, let me kill, and murder, pretty please” ... this is suspicious, okay maybe I just want to see it as suspicious.

“These days I no longer say impossible. Unlikely.” LUCIUS FOX says when examining a dead/again girl. She was stabbed, she was fried with electricity, took a walk and died again. The morgue is more like a motel HARVEY says and he and JIM make their way to it. DWIGHT does not know how  the corpse could escape but he worked at Indian Hill so he might have a clue and the Detective Dream Team follows him to a weird but not illegal gathering. Dwight got a Jerome patch on his back (someone tell me again patches are stupid and insignificant.) The crowd is dressed in Jerome memorial straight jackets and in for a good laugh. Guy on the stage shows some cut together Jerome material. Everyone is blind, bla and just believing the establishment´s lies, bla sanity is just a prison, bla .. wake up and be super duper enlightened and chant the same stuff as your fellow cult members. The GCPD Boys put a stop to the laughter but can´t catch Dwight. Instead VICTOR ZSASZ shows up and Jim is oh, shit! while Harvey is all oh shit?! and legitimately pissed about the question mark. As he tells Jim later, Jim should have told him. While Jim thinks it´s just his business because Zsasz is a professional, has great work ethics and only after him Harvey points out that he pretty often stands beside him and dear please tell me Harvey was aware of that great double meaning. Harvey always got Jim´s back. Jim should honor that with giving him a bit more of that quite vital information. Falcone appears and calls Victor back. Jim approaches him and all I can think is whatever comes out of your mouth better be an apology and he does say “I´m sorry”. Phew. Basic decency. I´m relieved. Falcone says that if it were his choice he would be dead .. giving Jim something to think about. Lee. God please no.

“You´re a good egg” I am so glad that Gotham is keeping this man that could kill you shows up in your kitchen eating your food thing, like I´m really glad this keeps happening, I love that .. also I might really have to move, this .. and all the fancy bathtubs..

* Diseases & Viruses 1. Alice Tetch´s Blood = Virus in the literal sense  “This virus isn't the disease. It's the antidote.” Nathaniel Barnes says to Lee about being infected with the blood. Lee believes in a cure but Barnes does not want to have that. There is an interesting parallel to the second kind of Virus they have established.

2. Jerome´s Cult = Virus in the metaphorical sense “There is nothing more contagious than laughter.” Jerome announced in Season 2 and established the grounds for what we see now. People spreading and adding to his message. They see it, such as Barnes sees his infection as the antidote: “What you call sanity, it's just a prison in your minds that stops you from seeing you're just tiny little cogs in a giant, absurd machine, Wake up!” Moreover with them trying to bring back Jerome from the dead there is an additional little parallel established when Barnes talks about the Virus restoring his body “I've never felt better in my life. Clearer, stronger. More focused. Even now, I can feel it coursing through my veins. Restoring my body.” With Barnes it’s the blood infection and Jerome will be resurrected by the contagious laughter he spread.

3. Jim Gordon  = Virus as moralist (mis)interpretation ?  “You're the real virus, Jim. You seep into people's lives until you destroy them.” Lee says.

 I´m tempted to apply the bible exegesis thing here but I´m struggling with the fourth type of interpretation and who cares anyway. And there has been disease talk in Gotham before all this but I´m too lazy to look stuff up .. for now..

* Omg that mouse running through the storage house

[loadingseeker540]

Songbook List

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world. Find album reviews, stream songs, credits and award information for 100 Hits: American Songbook - Various Artists on AllMusic - 2009. Search the world's most comprehensive index of full-text books.

American Songbook List

Songbook List Korg Pa 1000

What is this songbook?

Discover the lastest mySongBook tabs for electric and acoustic guitars, basses, keyboards, drums, vocals and more. Share your videos with friends, family, and the world.

This is a curated collection of songs I like to play on acoustic guitar or piano,with useful performance notes, generally written with a mediocre-at-best malevoice in mind.

Where do I get it? Giuseppe verdi rigoletto.

The html version is almost definitely what you want. The “split” html version breaks each page into a separate HTML file, useful if the massive HTML file is making your phone sad. The html version,styled for mobile devices (some weird layout issues, but it’s the best I can do).

I’m stuck in 2008 and I really want a PDF.

The pdf version (paginated for printing) A pdf versionstyled for kindle (some weird layout issues, but it’s the best I can do)

I’m indecisive and that’s too many songs to pick from.

I’ve organized some acoustic jams around themes and have packaged sub-songbooks accordingly; more ideas are welcome. Here are the ones we’ve done so far:

Songs released between 1955 and 1965 Songs released between 1966 and 1975 Songs released between 1976 and 1979

American Songbook List

(See below if you’re wondering why I picked those weird boundaries..)

Songs of the ‘60s

Songs of the ‘70s Songs of the ‘80s Songs of the ‘90s Songs of the 21st century Billy Joel songs Movie and TV themes

Songbook List Korg Pa 1000

My personal “set list” (guitar) My personal “set list” (piano)

Can I change keys?

Yes, the little arrows next to each song title transpose the song.

Can you send me all the mp3s?

Obviously not. However, I can point you to this Spotify playlist:

Spotify Web link Spotify URI

..that I try to keep up to date.

What are the little buttons in the corner of the HTML version?

The “?” button takes you to a random song (great for icebreaking at jams when no one wants to commit to anything). The “home” button takes you back to the table of contents. The “play” button starts the screen scrolling, after which you can use the “>>” and “<<” buttons to scroll faster or slower.

You can also press the space bar to start/stop scrolling, and while scrolling you can use the right and left arrows to scroll faster and slower. Pressing ‘R’ will get you a random song. I’ve found that in the heat of the jam, the keyboard is usually easier to operate than the mouse.

How did you make it?

The songs are all in Chordproformat, with a few extra tags that I’ve added to make it easy to puttogether the songbook. In particular, I use the “preferred_key”tag as an indicator to my parsing stuff that a song should be transposed to aparticular key. I wrote some code (can share on request) to do some reorganization of the text files, to sanity-check for consistency on things like punctuation and capitaliation, and to generate a songbook file with theright keys. I then use the awesome program Songsheet generator toprint html and pdf files. Some more C# code uses pdfclown topost-process the html a bit, generate the mobile and key-specific versions,and open up the pdf file and re-paginate it so that if you printdouble-sided, you won’t have to turn pages in the middle of a song. Then I take it to Kinko’s and pay $5 to have it spiral-bound. (Sidebar: I recently learned that the fact that I still say “Kinko”s” is one of many ways people know I’m old).

The mobile version is a good idea, but the layout is quirky.

I know. If you have suggestions re: css, printing format, better ways totell the html how to paginate, etc., please email me.

The Kindle version is a good idea, but it’s out of date wrt the HTML version.

I know. I only use the HTML version, and the Kindle version requires a bit of manual intervention to print, so I basically only update the Kindle version when someone emails me. Even the non-Kindle PDF is lagged by about a month.

If I notice mistakes, should I tell you?

Why the weird year boundaries for the smaller songbooks? Microsoft teams sketching.

I started organizing casual jam sessions around themes, usually “songs from this era”, where an “era” is around a decade. At first I was going to start with “songs of the ‘50s”, and not only did I not have enough ‘50s songs, but I also found that a more natural style boundary fell at 1955-1965, putting songs I think of as “pre-rock-era oldies” together. Then the next one logically had to be the decade after that, ending at 1975. But then the ‘80s made more coherent sense, so I went back to mod100 boundaries.

SongBook manages your song collections with lyrics and chords.

Tap or click on a chord to see it's definitions

Automatic formatting for current screen size, auto-zoom auto-scroll

Includes comprehensive, extensible chord libraries for guitar, ukulele, mandolin and many more

Transpose songs on the fly or permanently

Define your own playlists/sets for concerts or practising

Based on the popular chordpro format

Full offline capable - no Internet connection required

Available for many platforms: iPhone/iPad, Android Tablets and Phones, Windows PCs, Windows Tablets, and macOS

Cross-platform sync with Dropbox, , Google Drive, or MS OneDrive

Download - Buy It - App Privacy Policy

SongBook is used by many artists and bands around the world. Here are just a few of them:

The B Sides

Bear Claw Bob

Ben E. Brady

Blackjack, BluRox & The Funtones

Bubba and The Boys

Carte Blanche

David Asbill

DeMugPugs

Erica Vulgaris

The Fabulous DOO VAYS

Ginger Ackley

It's Just JR

Jammin' James & the Wing Women

Jazz behind Beech

The Jerome Ukulele Orchestra

Joe Riccardello

The Journeymen Band (Melbourne)

Kevin Patt

Louisiana Scramble Band

Menno Valley Sound

Mesa Regal Ukulele Band

Mike Ellis Variety Band

Mike Terry

Motion

The Nasty Boys

The O’Kaysions/Jimmy Hinnant

Rubia

The Repentant Sinners

The Scouser/Richard Willacy

Simply2

simply.abigail

String Thing

Steve Thomas

Steven Szydel

The Storm Crows

The Vultures

Waterlanders Lelystad-choir

Wayne Shearer Singer-Songwriter

WhiskySmoke

White Angels

Wild'n'Mild

Wood & Steel

Do you use SongBook in your band or as a solo artist and want to appear in the list above? Please let us know.

[juditmiltz]

Show me the money: Canadian, European investors increase stakes in SoFla RE

(Illustration by Sebastien Thibault)

South Florida real estate has long been a haven for foreign investment, but for years, that meant South American money more than anything else.

Today, the region’s reputation as a mature real estate market is growing larger on the global stage, experts say, and South Florida is becoming more of an attractive destination for large institutional foreign investors from around the world. European and Canadian investors now account for a much bigger share of foreign investment in the residential and commercial markets in the tri-county region, according to a report by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and data provided by Real Capital Analytics (RCA). And Asian countries remain engaged in the area. Singapore has been among the top five investors three times in the past three and a half years, and China accounted for the second largest source of foreign investment in 2016.

“There is capital that is coming out of markets like the Middle East, like Europe, increasingly they are viewing South Florida as a place to invest comparable to L.A. and New York, but with somewhat better pricing power,” said Ken Krasnow, Colliers’ executive managing director for the South Florida region.

Canada goes commercial

The largest foreign investor in the commercial space over the past two years has been Canada, which invested $389.3 million this year as of August 2018 and $775.6 million in 2017, according to the data.

Long attracted to South Florida residential properties in order to escape the dreary winters of the north, Canadians are showing interest once again in expanding into local commercial real estate.

“The residential and commercial investments are complementary, and you gravitate toward what you know,” said Jaime Sturgis, the CEO and founder of Native Realty Co., which specializes in leasing and investment sales in emerging markets throughout the tri-county area.

Glenn Cooper, president of the Florida-Canada Chamber of Commerce, added that Canadian investors are looking for bargains. “They are looking at buying a large number of units … they might even send a Canadian real estate fund down here to do rentals,” Cooper said.

Cooper said part of this growth could also be due to the emergence of Canadian banks in South Florida, including Natbank and Desjardins Bank, which now has four branches in South Florida. Having their local banks here has made Canadians more comfortable with investing in real estate in the area, Cooper said.

Another factor in recent developments in the Canadian- South Florida real estate equation could be the emergence of new Canadian companies in the area. Bombardier opened a Learjet facility at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport, and Canadian pharmaceutical giant Apotex is planning to move its U.S. headquarters to Miramar next year. As more Canadian companies expand in the region, some hope that the increased exposure to South Florida will increase their real estate investment in the area.

However, the uncertainty surrounding the North American Free Trade Agreement could cause some Canadians to hit the brakes. President Trump has warned that Canada will be left out of any new free trade agreement if a “fair deal” with the United States is not reached. This could have huge ramifications for Canadian companies that do business in the U.S. since it would mean they would have to pay more in taxes to transport goods across the border.

For now, though, the region is enjoying the uptick in Canadian and European investment, which is set against a backdrop of a broader increase in institutional investment everywhere.

According to the research firm Preqin, as of August 2018, the number of global institutional investors who put more than $1 billion into commercial real estate was up 13 percent from the same period in 2017. “The bigger trend is that pure institutional capital … is really the driving force on the commercial space,” Krasnow said.

Last year, the German investment fund Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK) paid $283 million for 1111 Lincoln Road and an adjacent property in South Beach, marking one of the biggest deals in Lincoln Road’s history. In total, Germans invested $317.3 million in commercial real estate in South Florida in 2017, according to the data.

Meanwhile, just five years ago, the second and third largest investors in South Florida commercial real estate were Argentina, at $120.3 million, and Brazil, at $39.1 million, according to data from RCA.

But in recent years, South American countries have dropped completely out of the top five when it comes to foreign commercial investment in South Florida, according to RCA data on commercial transactions of $2.5 million or more as of August 2018.

“Unless the money is already out of the country, [South American investors] are dealing with a dollar that is more expensive,” said Alan Lips, an attorney at the Miami-based law firm Gerson Preston.

Residential market

The same broader trends affecting foreign commercial real estate investment in South Florida are impacting the residential market. Currency devaluations have weakened the buying power for South American countries, brokers say, while there is more interest from Europe.

Although data from NAR shows that 46 percent of foreign residential investment in South Florida in 2017 still came from Latin America and the Caribbean, Canadian buyers made up 19 percent of non-U.S. buyers in South Florida’s residential market.

(Click to enlarge)

There’s more parity between the Canadian and U.S. dollar, which is appealing to Canadians; they may also be attracted to the local prices, which are looking better than those back home. U.S. home prices rose by 4 percent in the second quarter of 2017, according to NAR, while prices in Canada’s residential market rose by 11 percent over the same period.

Toronto, in particular, has some of the fastest rising real estate prices in the world. There, housing prices have risen 60 percent in the past five years, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board as reported by the Financial Post.

Real estate prices have skyrocketed in Canada’s biggest city in part because of an increase in Chinese investment there, which has helped to increase the average condo price to $972 per square foot in the downtown area, according to the Globe and Mail. Comparatively, luxury condos in downtown Miami have an asking price of $848 per square foot, according to Miami real estate consultancy Condo Vultures.

“Real estate is taking off in Toronto,” said the Florida-Canada Chamber of Commerce’s Cooper. “We are seeing a lot of Canadian hotel owners, investors and groups coming down here.”

Shahab Karmely, owner and CEO of KAR Properties, said that about 30 percent of the inquiries at his planned 2000 Ocean Condominium in Hallandale Beach have come from Canadian buyers. Many are very price sensitive, which is what draws them specifically to Broward County, he said.

Simon Mass, CEO of the Toronto-based brokerage the Condo Store, said that Karmely’s project has many features that are attractive to Canadian buyers, including the fact that the units will be fully finished.

“Canadians don’t want decorator-ready … they want to move in hassle-free and that’s going to be key for them to buy at preconstruction or under-construction sites,” Mass said.

Mass added that in the past six months, his firm has been approached by half a dozen South Florida developers “seeking to have their product marketed through our Toronto offices.”

Europeans have also taken a greater interest in South Florida’s residential real estate. European buyers made up 18 percent of all foreign residential real estate investment in the area last year, according to RCA.

Alicia Cervera Lamadrid, managing partner of Cervera Real Estate, said that about half of her foreign clients at Aston Martin Residences come from Europe. “For the first time, we are seeing an equal interest between South Americans and Europeans,” she added.

The French could also see an investment opportunity in South Florida housing prices, as those in Paris have soared in the past few years. In France’s capital city, housing prices have increased to more than 9,000 euros per square meter — which converts to about $900 per square foot — one of the highest rates ever in France’s history.

Henry Torres, founder of the Astor Companies, said that over the past year, he has seen an increase in French buyers at his planned 10-story Merrick Manor project in Coral Gables. “One of the things they like about Coral Gables is we have schools here that cater to the French,” Torres said, adding that the climate helps, too.

Ultimately, those watching the real estate market in South Florida say that the makeup of the foreign investors may shift, but the demand from elsewhere around the world will grow.

“People love to put money in America, and they want to put it in premier cities,” said Ed Easton, chairman of the Easton Group. “I do believe there is still a lot of money that would like to be here.”

from The Real Deal Miami https://therealdeal.com/miami/issues_articles/northern-exposure/#new_tab via IFTTT

[alfredrserrano]

Show me the money: Canadian, European investors increase stakes in SoFla RE

(Illustration by Sebastien Thibault)

South Florida real estate has long been a haven for foreign investment, but for years, that meant South American money more than anything else.

Today, the region’s reputation as a mature real estate market is growing larger on the global stage, experts say, and South Florida is becoming more of an attractive destination for large institutional foreign investors from around the world. European and Canadian investors now account for a much bigger share of foreign investment in the residential and commercial markets in the tri-county region, according to a report by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and data provided by Real Capital Analytics (RCA). And Asian countries remain engaged in the area. Singapore has been among the top five investors three times in the past three and a half years, and China accounted for the second largest source of foreign investment in 2016.

“There is capital that is coming out of markets like the Middle East, like Europe, increasingly they are viewing South Florida as a place to invest comparable to L.A. and New York, but with somewhat better pricing power,” said Ken Krasnow, Colliers’ executive managing director for the South Florida region.

Canada goes commercial

The largest foreign investor in the commercial space over the past two years has been Canada, which invested $389.3 million this year as of August 2018 and $775.6 million in 2017, according to the data.

Long attracted to South Florida residential properties in order to escape the dreary winters of the north, Canadians are showing interest once again in expanding into local commercial real estate.

“The residential and commercial investments are complementary, and you gravitate toward what you know,” said Jaime Sturgis, the CEO and founder of Native Realty Co., which specializes in leasing and investment sales in emerging markets throughout the tri-county area.

Glenn Cooper, president of the Florida-Canada Chamber of Commerce, added that Canadian investors are looking for bargains. “They are looking at buying a large number of units … they might even send a Canadian real estate fund down here to do rentals,” Cooper said.

Cooper said part of this growth could also be due to the emergence of Canadian banks in South Florida, including Natbank and Desjardins Bank, which now has four branches in South Florida. Having their local banks here has made Canadians more comfortable with investing in real estate in the area, Cooper said.

Another factor in recent developments in the Canadian- South Florida real estate equation could be the emergence of new Canadian companies in the area. Bombardier opened a Learjet facility at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport, and Canadian pharmaceutical giant Apotex is planning to move its U.S. headquarters to Miramar next year. As more Canadian companies expand in the region, some hope that the increased exposure to South Florida will increase their real estate investment in the area.

However, the uncertainty surrounding the North American Free Trade Agreement could cause some Canadians to hit the brakes. President Trump has warned that Canada will be left out of any new free trade agreement if a “fair deal” with the United States is not reached. This could have huge ramifications for Canadian companies that do business in the U.S. since it would mean they would have to pay more in taxes to transport goods across the border.

For now, though, the region is enjoying the uptick in Canadian and European investment, which is set against a backdrop of a broader increase in institutional investment everywhere.

According to the research firm Preqin, as of August 2018, the number of global institutional investors who put more than $1 billion into commercial real estate was up 13 percent from the same period in 2017. “The bigger trend is that pure institutional capital … is really the driving force on the commercial space,” Krasnow said.

Last year, the German investment fund Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK) paid $283 million for 1111 Lincoln Road and an adjacent property in South Beach, marking one of the biggest deals in Lincoln Road’s history. In total, Germans invested $317.3 million in commercial real estate in South Florida in 2017, according to the data.

Meanwhile, just five years ago, the second and third largest investors in South Florida commercial real estate were Argentina, at $120.3 million, and Brazil, at $39.1 million, according to data from RCA.

But in recent years, South American countries have dropped completely out of the top five when it comes to foreign commercial investment in South Florida, according to RCA data on commercial transactions of $2.5 million or more as of August 2018.

“Unless the money is already out of the country, [South American investors] are dealing with a dollar that is more expensive,” said Alan Lips, an attorney at the Miami-based law firm Gerson Preston.

Residential market

The same broader trends affecting foreign commercial real estate investment in South Florida are impacting the residential market. Currency devaluations have weakened the buying power for South American countries, brokers say, while there is more interest from Europe.

Although data from NAR shows that 46 percent of foreign residential investment in South Florida in 2017 still came from Latin America and the Caribbean, Canadian buyers made up 19 percent of non-U.S. buyers in South Florida’s residential market.

(Click to enlarge)

There’s more parity between the Canadian and U.S. dollar, which is appealing to Canadians; they may also be attracted to the local prices, which are looking better than those back home. U.S. home prices rose by 4 percent in the second quarter of 2017, according to NAR, while prices in Canada’s residential market rose by 11 percent over the same period.

Toronto, in particular, has some of the fastest rising real estate prices in the world. There, housing prices have risen 60 percent in the past five years, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board as reported by the Financial Post.

Real estate prices have skyrocketed in Canada’s biggest city in part because of an increase in Chinese investment there, which has helped to increase the average condo price to $972 per square foot in the downtown area, according to the Globe and Mail. Comparatively, luxury condos in downtown Miami have an asking price of $848 per square foot, according to Miami real estate consultancy Condo Vultures.

“Real estate is taking off in Toronto,” said the Florida-Canada Chamber of Commerce’s Cooper. “We are seeing a lot of Canadian hotel owners, investors and groups coming down here.”

Shahab Karmely, owner and CEO of KAR Properties, said that about 30 percent of the inquiries at his planned 2000 Ocean Condominium in Hallandale Beach have come from Canadian buyers. Many are very price sensitive, which is what draws them specifically to Broward County, he said.

Simon Mass, CEO of the Toronto-based brokerage the Condo Store, said that Karmely’s project has many features that are attractive to Canadian buyers, including the fact that the units will be fully finished.

“Canadians don’t want decorator-ready … they want to move in hassle-free and that’s going to be key for them to buy at preconstruction or under-construction sites,” Mass said.

Mass added that in the past six months, his firm has been approached by half a dozen South Florida developers “seeking to have their product marketed through our Toronto offices.”

Europeans have also taken a greater interest in South Florida’s residential real estate. European buyers made up 18 percent of all foreign residential real estate investment in the area last year, according to RCA.

Alicia Cervera Lamadrid, managing partner of Cervera Real Estate, said that about half of her foreign clients at Aston Martin Residences come from Europe. “For the first time, we are seeing an equal interest between South Americans and Europeans,” she added.

The French could also see an investment opportunity in South Florida housing prices, as those in Paris have soared in the past few years. In France’s capital city, housing prices have increased to more than 9,000 euros per square meter — which converts to about $900 per square foot — one of the highest rates ever in France’s history.

Henry Torres, founder of the Astor Companies, said that over the past year, he has seen an increase in French buyers at his planned 10-story Merrick Manor project in Coral Gables. “One of the things they like about Coral Gables is we have schools here that cater to the French,” Torres said, adding that the climate helps, too.

Ultimately, those watching the real estate market in South Florida say that the makeup of the foreign investors may shift, but the demand from elsewhere around the world will grow.

“People love to put money in America, and they want to put it in premier cities,” said Ed Easton, chairman of the Easton Group. “I do believe there is still a lot of money that would like to be here.”

from The Real Deal Miami https://therealdeal.com/miami/issues_articles/northern-exposure/#new_tab via IFTTT