#time to interrupt your daily program with some important stuff

[laceymorganwrites]

The Genius idiot

Word Count: 2,138

Pairing: Senku x reader

Warnings: swearing

A/N: So guess who watched Dr Stone and is utterly in love with Senku?

You didn´t like high school. At all. It was shit, the people thought you were weird and they were right, but being weird wasn´t a bad thing like they said it was. The teachers were all total nutjobs in midlife crises who didn´t have their shit together and took it out on you instead of teaching. And for fuck´s sake was the stuff they taught you boring.

The only good thing about the institution were the things you could out of the lessons, you were in the computer programming club for instance, you also were a member of the crafts club.

That´s where you met Yuzuriha, she was kind and sweet, quickly warming up to you.

You liked to think that you were friends, but when you saw her with her real friends Taiju and Senku, you knew you´d never belong anywhere like they did.

They were always hanging around and having fun, doing some science stuff you didn´t get.

It was none of your business anyway.

But still you were sad that you weren´t part of their friend group, they seemed to be so close and you wanted to be too. You never really bothered much with making friends, creating strong bonds with people in a relationship was something you never quite understood.

People were selfish, they only wanted others around them to make themselves feel better, to stop the cold loneliness that was creeping inside their hearts, to stop them from thinking about things they didn´t want to think about, about truths that couldn´t be denied.

Life wasn´t give and take. It was take all you can get and run as fast as you can.

Like there would be no consequences.

Surely enough though, you felt yourself become intrigued by the friend group, letting Yuzuriha introduce you to them.

You didn´t mind it as much as you thought you would, quite the opposite truly.

It was as if you finally found the true meaning of life, the source of genuine happiness and you finally understood why people glorified high school so much.

You never intended for people to get so close to you, never expected to have friends you could tell anything and feel save with.

And you sure as hell didn´t anticipate to fall in love with Senku.

You guessed it was the take of life after giving you friends.

It was like a sick joke, a sort of cruel humor Senku would appreciate if it didn´t involve him.

He was too busy to notice you anyway. Maybe it was better this way, but your mind couldn´t help but wander to him in the most irritating times.

Why did he have to be so cunning, charming, funny and have the same interests as you? And why did he have to be so devilishly handsome? And why did you have to fall for the person who made you feel so incredibly stupid all the time?

The only person who knew was Taiju and that was only because he too told you about his crush on Yuzuriha, even before Senku. He thought you could help him since you knew her.

It was nice having someone to talk about this embarrassing inconvenience without being judged or criticized. But that didn´t help the situation, so you two made a bet.

It was a win-win situation: it was a race who would confess first. And if things went good, the loser had to finance the first date. If it went bad however the loser had to make up a scheme that the confession was a lie and another bet.

You really tried to confess your feelings to Senku, on multiple occasions too. But he never seemed to get it, or rather you thought he did get it but simply wanted to avoid the topic to be able to concentrate more on his science experiments.

If you only knew how different the reality looked…

Senku might give the impression of complete disinterest in all things romantic, but really he was just scared of making a fool of himself, of being vulnerable, getting hurt, so he shut love out of his life.

Until he laid eyes on you that is.

And fuck did you turn his world upside down, he told no one, not even Taiju.

He was too embarrassed, after all those years of swearing never to bother in having a crush or something more, he didn´t want to admit defeat.

And when Senku thought you were giving him hints that his feelings were reciprocated by you, he suppressed every possibility of you getting together. Because that would mean he would have to initiate something, which he couldn´t do for the life of him even if he wanted to.

That was the downside of completely refusing gathering any knowledge on romance, love and honestly, just being a decent human being.

If it wasn´t science, he wasn´t interested in it.

To him, you were the embodiment of science and that was what scared him.

It especially scared him after the stone broke around his body.

He felt helpless and useless, trying to figure out how to get you back all those months.

3,700 years passed, it felt so unreal, like a number too big to count, all those years wasted.

You remembered waking up to a bunch of new faces alongside familiar ones.

The scenery was different. Very different.

“Where´s the school?” you asked, looking around and meeting Senku´s eyes looking at you with wonder, relief and another feeling you couldn´t quite identify. For an instance you thought it was the way you looked at him, but that couldn´t be.

It took a while to get used to the new circumstances, but with the quick explanation of the new faces and situation of the earth, you at least had some starting point.

Kohaku, a warrior from the village that Senku´s father built, which was still weird to you, led you to said village.

It was nice, people were running around happily and working one some science stuff.

For a world that was completely set back to year one, this fast progress wasn´t bad at all.

“You did all of this?” you asked Senku in awe, it was hard for you to hide your feelings around him after not seeing him for so long, even though it felt like yesterday. But then again, it would always feel that way with him.

He stopped in his tracks, somehow embarrassed by your praise and looked sideways.

“I could´ve never made it on my own though...” he admitted, it wasn´t like him, the Senku you knew would boast the shit about his success.

“You´re amazing, Senku! Bringing all those people together like that, building all of this… nobody could do it like you” you smiled at him and he swore his heart stopped for a second.

To avoid giving into you, he showed you around and introduced you to everyone.

They were all so nice and bright, so energetic, it was refreshing to be welcomed with such open, warm arms.

They explained their next big project and you immediately were woven into the daily routine. But you liked it that way, how else would you get used to this drastic change?

Senku was even more distant than before, but that was okay, he had much to do.

Well, it wasn´t really okay to you, but what did you expect from him? To confess feelings that weren´t there to you in such an important situation? It was vital to win the war to have the cellphone. You simply weren´t part of the plan. You never have been.

This revelation made you feel sad and lonely, especially since the whole village never seemed to shut up about Senku.

The priestess in particular sought you out to make you tell her all about him, that´s how you found yourself gushing about him to her and she gushed right back, making you like her and be jealous of her at the same time.

“You like him quite the bit, do you not?” she chuckled and you gulped before nodding.

“But don´t tell him, I don´t want to make things awkward. We have more important things to worry about right now” you sighed.

The priestess looked at you with an amused expression before chuckling mischievously.

“But he likes you too, I can tell, he´s different around you. There are no rules in love, I think that´s what makes him scared and unsure, he keeps talking about the rules, how if you follow them you will always get the right solution. I think he´s scared that there is no solution in approaching you.” she thought out loud.

“Don´t give me false hopes, he doesn´t have time to be in love nor is he interested in it” you groaned, it hurt to say it out loud.

Not wanting to dive deeper into the matter, you went back to the village where the others were.

You noticed Senku sitting away from the fire, closed off to himself, deep in thought.

Despite your better knowledge, you grabbed a blanket , walking up to him, thinking about how you shouldn´t all the way.

But now it was too late and you were awkwardly standing two feet away from him, stretching out the blanket.

“What are you doing?” he stated, eyeing you and the blanket.

His cold attitude made your heart sink, this was a stupid idea after all.

“I thought you might be cold” you quietly said, sinking the blanket and your gaze.

“And why do you care?” he mumbled, you were interrupting him sulking about how he couldn´t seem to approach you right.

“I don´t want you to be cold” you said bluntly, pondering about when the right moment to leave would be.

“But wouldn´t you be cold if you gave me the blanket?” Senku questioned, cocking an eyebrow at you.

“Yeah, but I don´t care, I can just sit nearer to the fire. I´ll be fine as long as I know you are” you answered truthfully, cursing yourself for saying too much.

“That´s illogical” he told you, making you groan.

“I know, Senku. That´s the whole point” you never heard of anyone that love was logical.

“I mean we could always share the blanket” Senku smirked, looking you straight in the eyes like a smug bastard. That wasn´t like him at all, but he regretted his bold words as soon as they left his mouth. This could only backfire.

“You...want to share a blanket...with me?” you repeated the question like an idiot.

“We are both cold, it is the only logical solution” Oh. What else did you expect? Your heart sunk to your knees and you let your shoulders drop.

“I think I´ll go back to the others” you numbly said, throwing the blanket next to him.

Why did you even try? There was a reason he was avoiding you after all.

“(Y/N), wait! I really want to share a blanket with you, but… it´s not because I´m cold” he rambled, blushing a bit at his own awkwardness. Why did he have to be like this? Why couldn´t he be smooth in those things?

You stopped in your tracks, looking at him in disbelief.

“This isn´t funny, Senku” you coldly told him, thinking he was only fucking with you.

“I know. It´s really not. It´s also not logical, at all. Nothing makes sense to me when you´re around but also everything does? If that makes sense...and I can´t concentrate and I don´t know how to feel about that but I know how I feel and… I´m an idiot” he fiddled with his fingers, wanting to take back every word he just said. You would just laugh at him. There was a reason why nobody liked him that way.

“It makes perfect sense, Senku. Because I´m an idiot too and I feel the same” you smiled at him clumsily.

Senku stood up abruptly, his eyes wide and shining with a ray of hope.

“(Y/N). Can I do the only thing that seems logical to me right now?” he said urgently.

You nodded subconsciously and before you could think about what he meant, his lips were on yours.

The suddenness of the kiss took your breath away for a minute, yet you adjusted quickly. It was like a mechanism which only worked when you two were together. You couldn´t help yourself but smile into the kiss as it commenced, you couldn´t believe this was happening. Senku´s hands were shaking as he put them on your waist, pulling you closer to him, making your heart jump.

It could´ve been a magical moment if it wasn´t for your stupid grin because you couldn´t help yourself and Senku´s clumsiness because how the fuck should he know how to kiss?

But none of that mattered, you´d figure it out together.

[healthsh39780fgea]

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[brightsun-and-darkmidnight]

Stubborn Independence

TITLE: Stubborn Independence 

CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: 5/10

AUTHOR: brightsun-and-darkmidnight

ORIGINAL IMAGINE: 

Imagine Loki struggling to adjust to someone who is independent and insists on paying for themselves all the time, even if it is a struggle sometimes. They need to do everything on their own. They never ask for help and refuse help. Just imagine Loki really wanting to spoil this person. Imagine how creative he would get to make life easier on this person who has captivated him.

+

Imagine being a talented singer at your local club. Loki comes in one night with Thor and the others (he’d rather be anywhere else but who turns down free drinks?) and gets ensnared in the voice of the beautiful singer on stage. Suddenly, his interest (and arousal) are more than piqued.

+

Imagine getting into a petty fight with Loki, so in retaliation, he puts everything on the top shelf where you can’t reach? 

AUTHOR'S NOTES: College AU. Loki is determined to take over Odin's company. He works hard and has a strict schedule for success. However, with the interference of Thor and the other four, Loki's plans are often interrupted so they can play matchmaker.

My Ao3: brightsun_and_darkmidnight

Tags: @cateyes315

 ~ ~ ENJOY  ~ ~

Loki let Sirena drive her own car while she talked excitedly about how well she was doing at Whispering Waters. Apparently the manager was considering having her perform every friday night, waitress the other times, and was going to pay her a small amount and let her keep the tips.

"How cool is that though? I mean I would be able to get my name out there."

Loki could not stop the smile pulling his lips. "You are very gifted."

"Thanks. It's not… I guess it isn't so much of getting my name known, I just like to see when people hear music. Music is proven to change or elevate moods. Its why I am in the musical therapy major."

"When do your mock classes start?"

"Next week. Frigga stated there are some people really interested in the little class."

Loki watched as Sirena parked in front of a grocery store.

She gave Loki a big smile. "Object of this game is to get snacks to eat in the car. Now go. Gogogog!" 

Sirena hurried out of the car and Loki felt rushed to do it too.

She started laughing as the car locked and ran to the entrance.

Loki easily caught up to her then opened the door. At Sirena's look he walked in and shut the door so she had to open it herself.

"What the hell?" She laughed as she tried to be the intimidating fireball she was.

Loki smirked, "Everyone keeps telling me to let you do stuff yourself."

"Well yeah. But did you need to make sure the door shut?"

"It would have been considered helping."

Sirena tapped Loki's arm with a small smile then pulled him along towards the snack isle.

Sirena was picking granola bars and some chips. "So get anything you can easily eat in the car."

"Where are we going to go?"

Sirena snickered. "Depends on when you have your next scheduled alarm."

Loki grumbled, "touche."

Loki picked out a few things but were mostly candy. After purchasing their own things they went to the car.

"With all those sweets you are going to get a cavity. Clint would yell at me all the time about what I would eat because he knows I want to loose weight and be more healthy. He watches out for me." Sirena took a bite of her granola bar.

"He does seem a bit…" Loki hesitated for the right word.

"Intimidating? Yeah he got the whole older brother thing about him."

Loki immediately asked, "Brother? So you two aren't dating?"

Sirena forced a gag and muttered "ew" several times. "No we aren't dating. We knew each other from high school. He looked out for me because I would always get myself in trouble with people. I was too nice and people took advantage of me. He would scare people away from me."

"He was trying to scare me away then?"

Sirena shrugged her shoulders. "Clint is an ass but yeah. He is a great guy. He is just pushing your buttons to see if you are good for me to...talk to."

Loki had to be cheeky. "Am i good company?"

Sirena teased. "I think so."

Loki laughed at his own question. "Was this planned out?"

Sirena pouted, "Probably. Clint is good at seeing things from way outside the picture so he is good at placing things where they are supposed to be."

Loki fiddled with a piece of candy. "Where does he want us?"

"Beside each other."

"You are being vague."

"Vague? Why is there more information you are searching for?" Sirena teased.

"Just wondering if there is more to this... How did you put it..? Beside each other, Like this, in this car discussing his master painting over snacks…"

"maybe this is part of his plans.." Sirena glances at Loki's lips as she leans slightly.

Loki starts to lean in as well. 

The kiss was short, sweet, and it made Loki happy to see her smile once the short kiss was over.

Loki smirked with a tilt of his head, "so do I ask you out or do you want to ask me?"

Sirena grinned, "I initiated the kiss, so I asked."

Loki shrugged. "Fair enough. So do I get to take you out for dinner?"

Sirena seemed hesitant. "We can do our Q and A right here."

"Do you actually have insurance on your phone?" It was the first question Loki came up with.

Sirena laughed, "that question is what you open up with?"

Loki nodded with a smirk.

She sighed before answering. "Yes I do. They won't send me a new one because I dropped the phone. Something stupid about it not being the device that stopped working and it was my fault.. But it still works and I am not worried about it."

"Alright. But everytime you show me pictures on your phone I really want to get you a new one so I can see your pictures better."

"You are not the first person to complain about my phone for that reason."

"Why not get a new phone?"

"I am worried about losing my pictures."

Loki beamed. "I could help with that. Its very easy to do that. I move files all the time for work."

"Maybe. Enthusiastic helper."

Loki thought for a second. "I could teach you how to save stuff and put it all on a micro SD card or back everything up to the cloud."

Sirena looked confused. "That was all over my head. I have no idea how electronics work. I can text, call, and set alarms."

Loki tried not to laugh but a few chuckles escaped.

"Oh come on dont laugh at me!"

Loki couldn't help but laugh at her pout and the embarrassment inside her voice.

"I didn't mean to offend."

"Whatever. So there is an intersection coming up… left, right, or straight?"

Loki asked. "Really? Okay straight."

And that was the game for the night until they needed to get back to campus.

Loki and Sirena spent more time together and Clint seemed to be warming up to Loki more. There were still threats of bodily harm if Loki "ever hurt her and I will make sure you suffer too." 

Loki genuinely promised Clint he would never hurt Sirena.

Loki found himself on a new schedule and Sirena didn't mind much of his alarms because she saw how anxious he was without some daily structure. However she convinced him into a deal; he could pay for one meal a week, and on certain days she had control of what they would do with their free time. Loki had to admit he enjoyed new experiences -especially with Sirena because she is always pleasant to be around.

Sirena never let Loki pay for anything and if he did it was an ear full and she would go buy him something if he wouldn't take the money.

He tried to get creative by leaving a little money where she would find it, but she gave it away.

Loki went so far as to order things online, have them shipped to her mailbox as an "accidental delivery." Despite the company saying to keep it she would send it back or find someone else who would use it.

Then Sirena got assigned a paper to write and was stressed out about getting it done because it was on a book she just didn't understand. She found school just as important as Loki did, so homework would carve into their time together. Loki offered his help and she actually accepted it. Loki's skills at analytical reading were useful and Sirena would get Loki his favorite drink and snacks as thanks for each study session.

They would work on homework together; at first they were alone and then they had a study group with the rest of their friends. Loki invested in a personal laptop so he could program while others worked and it didn't take long to make some friends in the computer programming department too. Friends such as, Tony and Bruce.

During a study group Sirena announced she would be in a few of the art classes soon.

Fandral teased, "I am sure Loki is going to love it."

Sirena glared at Fandral. "It is very professional. There will be no suggestive atmosphere."

A few days later, Loki was in his art class and felt a little nervous as Sirena came in. Sirena discussed with Loki alone about how the class would go and how if anyone steps out of line the teacher would handle it.

It still did nothing to comfort him once she was on the podium in the plain undergarments she once explained. Everyone was on best behavior in the class which made it easier that way, but Loki's hands sweat so much he had to keep readjusting the drawing utensils. They were never intimate other than kisses,  hugs, and hand holding but now he saw the curves of her body and was memorizing them onto paper.

Not at all troubling.

[joyful-soul-collector]

Here to Help: Chapter 1

I’m sorry I didn’t notice

Word Count: 4719

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Mentions of past emotional/physical abuse from a parent, a small panic attack, PTSD symptoms, and while Peter doesn't have an eating disorder, his behavior/the descriptions may be triggering to some

Synopsis: Tony Stark finds his intern Peter Parker living in the alleyway by Stark Tower.

You can also read this story on AO3 if that’s easier for you!

I slammed my fist against the table in frustration as the program failed again. I’d been trying to code DUM-E to fix one of my suits for the past few hours, but none of the codes I put in seemed to be doing what I wanted them to.

“Friday can you run a scan on this?”

“Sir, I’ve scanned this three times already.”

“Yeah yeah, I know, I just can’t figure out what’s up with it. I’ve had DUM-E fix my suits before, but it just doesn’t want to work today. Just try scanning it again.”

“Alright. Scanning now,” Friday said. I walked to the window while Friday did another scan, and stared down at the city below. I wasn’t too far from the ground, my lab on the higher floor was being renovated, so I had to move down. It wasn’t bad down here, I can see things better from this height. Cars didn’t look like little lego pieces, they looked more like Hot Wheels.

I also liked watching the people, I hadn’t realized how mesmerizing it was to just watch people walking and going about their day. I watched someone with a blue jacket walking down the sidewalk, and suddenly realized it was my intern, Peter Parker. I smiled, remembering how good he was with tech. Maybe he can figure out what’s up with DUM-E, I thought.

But Peter didn’t go into Stark Tower like I expected him to. He went down an alleyway on the side of Stark Tower, one that I knew for a fact lead to a dead end. What the hell is he doing?

I watched him until he was out of sight. Something wasn’t right. That alleyway doesn’t go anywhere. And he can’t be changing into his suit for patrol, he had an internship meeting with me in about five minutes, I was going to help him update his suit. So what the hell was he walking into a dead-end alleyway for?

But now that I thought about it, I hadn’t heard from Pete in about a week. He usually left me messages and called me all the time, updating me on everything from patrol to how pretty he thought MJ was. But he hadn’t spoken with me once this week. I was so busy with meetings that I didn’t notice.

A sick feeling formed in my stomach, guilt creeping into my chest. Clearly something was wrong. I had to find out what it was.

It didn’t take me long to get down to the ground floor, and I rushed out the doors of the tower, becoming more and more worried with every second. I practically sprinted through the alleyway.

“No, no no no! They’re gone! Oh god they’re all gone, fuck, no, no no no…”

I froze, hearing Peter start to sob. My heart clenched at the sound of his voice cracking with misery. I rounded the corner.

There was Peter, hands running through his hair as tears fell down his face. He was staring at a shopping cart, which was empty except for a half-full water bottle and an open trash bag. Peter looked thin and tired, and he had small patches of dirt all over his face and clothes. His tears actually made visible tracks through the grime on his cheeks.

“Peter?” I said.

Peter snapped up, his eyes wide with fear. I wasn’t used to people being afraid when they saw me, most of the time they looked happy to see someone coming along to help them.

“Peter, what’s wrong? What’re you doing here, why--” and then I saw the tent set up in the corner.

Peter looked like he was going to run for a moment, but as he realized I’d already figured it out, he started to cry even harder. He put his hands over his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut and looking very much as though he’d rather disappear.

“Oh my god, Pete, hey, shhh, it’s okay,” I said, rushing to him and pushing his curls out of his face, trying to see his eyes. “Hey, hey it’s okay, kid. Can you tell me what’s wrong? I’m here to help kid, just tell me whats’ wrong, I can fix it.”

“Aunt--Aunt May--” Peter said through broken sobs, “She, she kicked me out. She kicked me out last week. I couldn’t-- I didn’t know where else to go!”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said, pulling his hands away from his mouth so I could see his face.

“S-so I came here, and I thought I’d stay here in case you needed me for a mission, but--but I had to get a job and--and now all my clothes got stolen--” Peter broke off with a sob.

So that’s what he meant by “they’re all gone”. Someone had taken all his clothes. His clothes were some of his only possessions , I realized, looking around the alleyway. And someone just took some of the last things Peter owned.

“Do you want a hug kid?” I asked.

“We’re there?” he said, looking hopeful for the first time.

“Jesus, of course we’re there kid, come here,” I gathered him in my arms, holding him tightly to my chest.

I had far too many questions. Why did his Aunt kick him out? How did I miss this? He had to get a job? Why didn’t he tell someone? Why didn’t he tell me?

He’s so thin. I swear I’ve seen him in this sweater before, and it didn’t hang off his body like it does now. I’m not used to feeling the knobs of his spine, and his shoulders are bony and poke painfully into my skin.

“You’re way too thin kid, have you been eating?”

“Not-Not really,” he answered quietly. “I think the last time was a day or so ago.”

“Shit kid. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry I didn’t notice.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay Mr. Stark, it’s not like I made it very obvious in the first place. I didn’t want anyone to notice.”

I pulled away from him, holding his shoulders and leaning down to look in his eyes.

“Don’t tell me it’s okay. Don’t ever think it’s okay to go unnoticed. Don’t ever think it’s okay to stay quiet and suffer in silence. You need help, you get it, okay? You need help, you make sure people know and you make sure that you get the help you deserve, okay?”

Peter looked at me with mixed confusion and relief.

“No one has ever told me that before,” he said. “I-I thought I wasn’t supposed to have help, I thought I was supposed to do everything by myself. I thought…”

Peter heaved a shaky sigh, and I realized just how heavily he was leaning on my hands. I held him steady while he finished his sentence.

“Well I’m the hero right? I’m the one who’s supposed to help people, I shouldn’t need help, I’m supposed to be okay. Right? I shouldn’t have help, I’m not the person who needs--”

“Pete you help people every day, and you didn’t think once that you deserved the same kind of help you give to others?” I interrupted. I pushed his curls out of his face again, gazing into his dark, red-rimmed eyes. “You are important. You can’t help others if you yourself are hurting.”

“Yeah, I definitely feel that, I haven’t been able to go on patrol since I started my job at the Daily Bugle.”

“You work at that place?” I said. “But they hate Spider-Man!”

“It was the only place that was hiring and paid well enough for me to maybe get my own place someday. They like my pictures.”

“Is that why you didn’t call me? Because you didn’t go on patrol?”

“Well yeah, I mean what was there to report?”

“Oh I dunno, maybe that your Aunt fucking kicked you out and you’re living in an alleyway? Maybe that you don’t have a place to go and you’re starving? Maybe that you needed some help?”

“Oh. Heh, I guess I thought about it, but I didn’t want to bother you, you’ve got all this stuff going on with running your own company and everything with the Avengers breaking up, and I didn’t want to give you another thing to stress about.”

He was worried about me. He didn’t want me to stress, so he tried to shoulder all this by himself.

“Pete, you are far more important than the freaking company. You are worth the stress, you are worth the worry, and I would do anything to see you happy and healthy. But, obviously, you are neither of those things right now,” I said.

Peter gave a weak laugh, wiping the tears from his cheeks and consequently smearing the dirt more.

“No, heh, not really. Feel kinda shit to be honest.”

“So, would you like some help?” I asked. Peter paused for a moment, looking at the ground, then met my eyes and nodded.

“Yeah, yeah I think… I need some help,” Peter said.

Peter suddenly never looked more powerless. He’d been trying to hold some sort of courage, any scrap of strength he could find in himself this whole time, and it seems that he’d finally admitted defeat. He somehow looked smaller, more neglected and scared than when I had first found him back here.

“Alright then. Let’s go up to my space. We’ll get you cleaned up, I’ll make you something to eat, make you feel better. You look like you need some good food and rest. Do you need anything from your tent? They didn’t take your suit too did they?”

“No, I kept that in my backpack,” he said, gesturing to his backpack lying in the corner of the alley. “I didn’t want to leave it here even though I knew I couldn’t use it because of my job. I can’t imagine leaving home without my suit. There’s not much in my tent, just a sleeping bag and some school books I need for next year. Anything that’s really of value, besides my clothes, I keep in my backpack. So my camera, my computer, my suit, all of that stays with me all the time.”

“Alright, well I’ll get your school books and backpack, just wait here a moment.” I let go of his arms. I had barely walked a step before I heard Peter whimper.

“Mr. Stark?” I whipped around to see Peter swaying dangerously. “I think I’m gonna fall?”

“Shit.” I caught him just as he started to keel over, and Peter struggled to stand upright again. “Nope, no, stay down kid, just sit down, lean on that wall, there you go, just rest there for a moment.”

“I’m sorry, I just--I can’t--”

“It’s okay, you’re fine kid. You’re not in trouble, nothing to apologize for.” I looked down and spoke to Friday. “Hey Fri you know those special protein bars Bruce made for after he Hulks out? Could you send a suit down here with one of those?”

I heard Peter’s stomach rumble at the mention of protein bars, but oddly enough Peter didn’t look very excited.

“Doesn’t Dr. Banner need those?”

“Kid, we don’t even know where Bruce is right now. He won’t miss them. Unfortunately you probably can’t eat more than one, they have this special sedative in it that makes sure Bruce stays Bruce after his transformation. There have been a few times where he’ll have a relapse of the Hulk after a battle from a panic attack, so we put basically a very powerful anti-anxiety pill in the bar. But your enhanced metabolism won’t burn through it as quickly as with other foods, so eating more than one of that serum could cause you to fall asleep, which of course would be bad because then we wouldn’t be able to  get you cleaned up or give you any real food.”

“That makes sense,” Peter said a little dazedly. I’m not sure he’d really been listening.

I opened the flap in Peter’s tent, and I had to bite back a gasp at what I saw.

Peter had been sleeping in a ripped, old sleeping bag on the gravely alleyway floor, and upon seeing the inside I realized how little room there was in here. Peter’s books were stacked on the side, and there was an empty plastic water bottle by where his head would lay. I realized that Peter must have been filling up on water when he couldn’t afford to eat.

I found myself trying to think of all the places Peter could get basic needs, trying to figure out what Peter had to do to get by this week. Where was the cheapest place to buy food? Were there water fountains nearby? Where could he shower and clean himself? How did he get to and from work?

I left the tent with Peter’s books in hand, and found him and my suit waiting for me. My suit was kneeling down and holding the protein bar wrapper, while Peter ravenously dug into the bar.

I wished I could get this kid some food sooner, but I can’t just feed him fast food, he needs real, good food that will give him nutrients and energy. Maybe some pasta, with vegetables? Roasted broccoli doesn’t take too long to make, and I know Peter likes Fettuccine Alfredo. I’ll make that for him then, I thought.

Peter finished the bar, and got up a little shakily. But he wasn’t falling over, so that was good.

I stepped into the suit and flew up to my lab with Peter clutched in my arms bridal style. He clung tightly around my neck, though the only thing I noticed was how light he was.

When we made it up there I let his legs drop and steadied him before stepping out of the suit.

“Alright kiddo, why don’t we get you in the shower, I’ll make you something to eat while you’re in there okay?” I said, as my suit flew out the open window again and I set his things on the kitchen counter.

Peter only nodded, looking a little relieved at the thought of getting clean. I led him to the shower and showed him how to turn it on and off and control the temperature.

“You good to shower? I wouldn’t want you to fall in here,” I said. Peter nodded again.

“The bar made me feel a little better, I don’t think I’ll fall.”

“Alright then, I’ll leave you to it,” I said, setting some spare clothes on the counter as Peter started to take off his sweater and lift his shirt. But I wasn’t more than five steps away from him when I heard a strangled gasp.

I turned around to see Peter standing shirtless in front of the mirror, a hand clasped over his mouth and tears spilling from his eyes. Peter’s bones were jutting sharply out of his skin, his stomach sunken and hollow, concave between his hip bones and rib cage. Peter stared in horror at himself, as though he didn’t recognize the person there. His thin shoulders shook as sobs wracked through him, and he squeezed his eyes shut, looking rather frozen in place.

I slowly walked towards him again, and leaned against the doorway. He opened his eyes, and seemed to calm down a little at the sight of me.

“Does it scare you?” I asked softly. He looked from me to himself in the mirror, then down at the tiled floor.

He nodded.

“You know,--” I said gently, “--you can wait. We can wait till later to get you cleaned up. You don’t have to do it now. Do you want to wait until after dinner to shower?”

He blinked and thought for a moment, dropping his hand. “I… I want to get cleaned up, it’s just…” He trailed off and made a vague gesture at his reflection in the mirror.

“You could just wash off your face. Washing your face will help. That’s often what I do when I don’t have enough energy to shower after a fight. Feels better than doing nothing.”

Peter gave a little sigh, looking relieved at the compromise. He nodded and put his shirt back on.

“Meet me back out there when you’ve finished,” I said patting his shoulder as he splashed water onto his face.

I went to the kitchen and began cooking, boiling the water, putting the broccoli in the oven to roast, and melting butter in a saucepan. I started cutting the garlic as Peter came around the corner.

“Hey! You feel better now that you got all the grime off your face?”

“A bit,” he replied, walking over to the sink and filling up a large glass of water. I noticed how he had to hold the cup with both hands, trying to keep it steady as he sat down behind the counter.

“Well you look a lot better,” I said, pouring the chopped garlic into the pot of simmering butter. The delicious smell of buttery garlic filled the room and Peter sniffed the air.

He swallowed thickly as his stomach gave a hollow rumble, advertising loudly how hungry he was.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. Peter picked up his glass of water and started taking large gulps, trying to silence his belly by filling it with liquid.

The timer for the broccoli went off and I set the pan in front of him, gesturing for him to take some.

“You don’t have to fill up on water anymore. Eat,” I said. Peter reached out for the broccoli a little hesitantly, but popped a floret in his mouth with a moan all the same.

“Broccoli never tasted so good,” he said with his mouth full.

“Makes sense, you haven’t eaten in a while, and it’s even worse with your enhanced metabolism. What did you eat this week?”

“Well I had a sandwich from Mr. Delmar’s on Monday when I was kicked out, and then I had another one on Wednesday. I think he knew something was wrong ‘cuz he put extra stuff on it. That was nice.”

“That was nice,” I agreed. I made a mental note to do something for Mr. Delmar as a thank you for taking care of Peter. “So all you’ve had this week is a couple sandwiches?”

“Well, I had coffee every day at the Daily Bugle, and someone left a cereal bar on the breakroom table after work on Tuesday so I ate that,” he said, putting another piece of broccoli in his mouth. I could tell he wanted to be eating much faster, but the food was too hot.

“So not really food huh?” I said, stirring the pasta as it boiled. Peter sighed and shook his head.

“No, not really food no. I was so hungry I wanted to cry last night.”

Something inside me snapped at that moment, and I slammed the spoon on the stove with a rather loud bang.

“I’m sorry!” Peter shrieked, suddenly getting up from the chair and backing away. It took me a moment to realize what he was reacting to. “I’m sorry Mr. Stark, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m so sorry--”

“Sorry? Pete what’re you-- Oh no, it’s okay! I’m not angry at you, it’s okay,” I said. What on earth did this kid’s Aunt do to him?

Peter put down his arms but he was still breathing like he’d run a mile, and his hands shook so hard it looked like they were vibrating.

“Woah, woah hey kid? Kid look at me, deep breaths okay? Can you hear me?”

Peter nodded, but his breathing wasn’t getting better.

“Peter, I need you to try and breathe deep, okay? Breathe all the way down to your belly, okay? Can I touch your arms?”

Peter nodded again, and his breathing slowed a bit as I rubbed his arms and shoulders. I’m not sure why I was doing it, I just knew it was nice when Pep did it when I was having a panic attack. Suddenly Peter was leaning forward and hugging me around the middle, speaking into my shirt.

“I-I thought you were gonna--Gonna hurt me, I don’t--I don’t know why I thought that--I know you wouldn’t do that, I just got scared--”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s not your fault. We can work on that okay? It’ll get better, I promise kid. I’m sorry I scared you, I wasn’t angry at you, I was angry at myself. I can’t believe I didn’t notice.”

“It’s okay Mr. Stark. Like I said, I didn’t want anyone to notice. I was fine being alone.”

“You don’t have to be alone. I’m here for you. I’m here to help.”

“Yeah. I know that now.”

I held him tightly for a few moments before Peter’s stomach grumbled, reminding me of the pasta.

“Heh, your stomach’s rumbling. I think it knows the pasta is almost ready,” I said, gently pulling away to drain the pasta. Peter went silent for a few moments.

“Aunt May always told me to quit eating so much,” he said quietly.

I paused, realizing Peter was actually opening up to me now. I didn’t want to bring it up, but I’d been wanting to know why she kicked him out. What had she done to him?

“She did?” I said. Peter nodded.

“‘Quit being so needy,’ she would say. She said she’d kick me out if I kept making her spend money on me like this.”

I froze.

“She… said that to you?”

Peter nodded, looking down at the counter.

“Told me I wasn’t hungry unless she said I was. I wasn’t tired unless she said I was. I wasn’t sad or happy or angry or scared unless she said I was. I wasn’t allowed to sleep until she said I could, if she was in a bad mood, I had to stay quiet, if she was in a good mood I had to be in a good mood too. I wasn’t allowed to ask for anything, or take anything, I was only allowed what was specifically given to me.  I was only supposed to eat what she gave me, and not to take anything else from the house. I tried to follow the rules, I really really tried but some days I was just I couldn’t do it. I’d cry or I’d ask to go to bed, or I’d get home from patrol and my sandwich from Mr. Delmar’s wouldn’t be enough and I would try and find something to eat that she wouldn’t miss, something she wouldn’t notice was gone. And it worked most of the time, but I guess she caught me breaking the rules one too many times on Monday, because she told me to pack up my stuff and get out. If I wasn’t gone by the time she came home from work then she said she was gonna get me transferred out of school so I couldn’t see Ned or MJ again.”

“What were you doing?” I asked.

“I was eating a bowl of cereal in my room. She came home and I didn’t hear her come in because I was stupid and had my headphones on. She came into my room, took it, threw it out the window, bowl and everything, then told me to get out.”

I set a plate piled high with pasta in front of him, and his eyes went so wide I thought they might just pop out of his skull. Peter practically fell on the food, wolfing it down desperately, as though the protein bar and the broccoli had never even happened.

His Aunt starved him, I thought. And kicked him out when she found him eating. He was just eating, he was just trying to get by, and she wouldn’t let him. What kind of person does that to a kid? A child?

Peter was still eating rapidly, and I realized he should probably slow down. If he eats too much at once he would throw up, and he needs to keep his food, he needs the nutrition. I reach up and touched his shoulder.

“Hey, Pete--”

Peter flinched violently at my touch, and the fork he was holding bent in half beneath his fist. He calmed down not a second later though, but stared at the fork in his hands.

He didn’t seem to understand what happened for a moment. He swallowed the bite of pasta in his mouth, and set the fork down with agonizing care, as though he were holding something extremely delicate. And after that, he did nothing. Just sat there, staring at the ruined fork.

“I can get you a new fork,” I said. “I just needed you to eat a little slower, I’m sorry I scared you.”

“It’s okay, I was just startled, I spaced out,” he said flatly, still staring at the fork.

“I don’t know how this is going to get better Mr. Stark,” he continued, his voice barely above a whisper. “I know I’m safe here, I know you would never hurt me like Aunt May did. But I’m still scared. I don’t know why, but I’m so, so scared, and it feels like I’ll never feel okay again.

“And part of me… Part of me worries that maybe I deserved it. Maybe I’m broken and Aunt May was giving me exactly what I deserved, and she wasn’t in the wrong at all to kick me out. I broke the rules, so of course I got punished for it.”

I gave a deep sigh as he finished. I reached up slowly, picking up the ruined fork and turning it over in my hand.

I handed it to him, and he looked at me like I was crazy.

“What… What do you want me to do?”

“Bend it back. As best you can.”

Peter stared at me for a moment, then looked down and started bending the fork back into shape. It took a few tries for him to get it right, at some points he bent it wrong in another place, or the tongs of the fork got mashed together, and he had to separate them again. But eventually the fork looked like a fork, though definitely not the same as before it was bent.

“You’re gonna be alright Pete,” I said, looking at the fork as well. “There are going to be some setbacks of course, recovery isn’t linear. And you’ll still have the memories of what she’s done to you. But you’ll be okay. You’ll be happy, and safe, and you are loved so much. Look at me,” I said. Peter looked up, rubbing at a slight divot in the fork’s handle.

“You are not worthy of the abuse your Aunt gave you. You are not worthy of any of the horrid things she’s done to you. None of this is your fault. You are not broken.” I got up and walked to the silverware drawer. “And know that when you’re ready to start working on yourself--” I plucked his fork out of his hand. “--Me, Pepper, your friends, and all the people who love you will be here to help you become everything you could ever want to be.” I replaced it with a new, untarnished fork.

Peter stared at the new fork, and gave a small smile. He stood up and hugged me tightly.

Peter finished his plate, then went to the bathroom to shower. When he came back out again, wearing my hoodie, he stared at the pasta for a few minutes before remembering he was allowed to eat if he was hungry now. We watched tv (mainly cartoons, the nerd) while he ate the rest of the pasta and broccoli. When his head started to droop, I lead him to a spare bedroom next to Pepper and I’s. He pressed a hand to one of the pillows, muttering something about how fluffy they were, before flopping down and snuggling himself under the thick blankets.

I walked back into the dining room and picked up Peter’s still slightly mangled fork, then went back to his room to find him snoring softly, his face half-buried in the pillows.

I left the fork on his bedside table.

[chronicbatfictioner]

A Real Boy - Chapter 22

"So... King Kong is real, and even Solovar don't know what to do with it."

"Technically--" Barbara started, and then changed her mind. "Forget it. I can't even-- I don't even know what's real or not real but is... real, anymore."

Dick placed his elbow on the table and chin on his hand. "I'm with you in this. But if you're gonna say that 'technically Solovar of Gorilla City is King Kong', you're not wrong. Just... this King Kong is about three, four storeys' tall. And Solovar himself isn't even eight feet tall. He's like, seven-foot-two? Something?"

"I'm lost." Tim admitted, as he walked in to the room in the middle of the conversation.

"Hi, Lost--"

"Grayson, no dad jokes. You're not a dad, yet." Jason interrupted.

"Did my bike get home in one piece?" Dick turned to Jason.

"Definitely not, it's in approximately 142 pieces between here and Sprang Bridge." Jason replied insolently.

"Oh, cool. Considering there are about 800 pieces on that thing, means the puzzle pieces that was my bike are still big enough to reassemble..." Dick responded idly.

Tim met Barbara's glare before simultaneously rolling their respective eyes.

"Uh, guys? King Kong?" Tim finally decided to press. "I know I'm not gonna like the answer. But I gotta ask, don't I?"

"Yeah, well, I didn't like it either, but I ended up facing it..." Dick replied, shifting. Tim finally noticed and realized that under the fitted V-necked shirt, there were parallel bulges. Slight enough to not be noticed, if Tim hasn't seen the sliver of white under Dick's collar.

"You're injured." Jason, who apparently noticed the same thing, commented first.

"Pretty much. Bruised ribs, several stitches--"

"Dozen. Several dozen stitches," Barbara corrected.

"--several dozen stitches. And they all came from a freakin' King Kong."

"Dick was the damsel in distress, shrieks and all. Only Kong wasn't looking to like, rescue him from the nasties that is Men's World, but rather to devour him or something." Barbara elaborated. "And I have the only unedited footage, complete with sound."

"Dibs on watching it!" Jason exclaimed.

"It squished me." Dick said, looking almost proud. "And I gotta say that was the first I've seen Kong vs Elephant."

"Zitka was... clearly unhappy and expanded herself to be bigger than the Kong. Rammed herself onto Kong and freed Dick. The others... Arsenal was then able to shoot it with enough tranquilizer to sedate... --uh..."

"Ten gorillas?" Jason's unsuccessful attempt to not smirk was all too visible.

"Yeeeah, thereabout. Probably closer to like, twenty gorillas from Gorilla City that are larger than common gorillas by default..." Dick concluded. "And then Donna Troy moved it from Downtown Manhattan to... I dunno where she brought Kong to." he admitted.

"Best to not know, really. It was re-shrunk into its ordinary size - which is, as anyone would suspect, that of a common silverback gorilla..." Barbara finished. "Sooo... you guys got Cthulhu, I've heard."

"What the hell's going on, anyway? We've got literal made-up creatures coming out the wazoo..." Jason groused.

"I thought Cthulhu was real...?" Barbara queried.

"It is - the species. But not as massive as the one we saw on campus. Just like your Kong." Jason explained. "So yeah, what the hell...?"

"Those creatures were made up. Man-made with... Well, I'd say Lovecraft probably had the better prosaic description of the one we saw. But a massive Kong was absolutely... unimaginative." Tim remarked. "I'm just hoping that whoever did this won't do Jurassic Park next..."

"I would probably roll my eyes so hard at the first live T-rex or velociraptors I see, shoot them damn things and make steaks." Dick growled. His eyes suddenly widen. "I am, however, hoping this person isn't a sci-fi fan..." he said dramatically, glaring alternatively at Jason, Barbara, and then Tim.

Tim groaned exasperatedly. "If I see a Jabba or an ewok, organic or not, I'm gonna change them back to plastic."

Jason gasped mockingly. "But Tim! There could be creatures like them anywhere else in the universe! It's like we're alone in the whole universe!"

"Oh shut up." Tim snarled at him. "Eh... wait..." a thought suddenly hit him. "They were all man-made, organic, and sentient."

"I seriously could see a lightbulb switched on in his head..." Dick remarked as Tim mulled his thoughts, which promptly changed into the thought of 'what if all humans or magi would have an image of a lightbulb getting switched on whenever they got a brilliant idea?'

Fortunately the split second question did not interrupt Tim's main line of thoughts at all.

"They weren't supposed to be alive, or sentient, or exist. Or organic. Sizes notwithstanding..." Tim muttered under his breath after the pictures of his thought lined up a little neater in his mind.

"The person has the same powers as yours?" Barbara hazarded a guess.

"I can't make living things out of inanimate ob--" Tim said, and stopped abruptly. "Where is Lex Luthor now?"

"Belle Reve, last I checked," came Bruce's voice. "he's constantly undergoing psychiatric evaluation on daily basis. He's still there and has no contact with either his former associates or employees."

"How well do you trust the staff at Belle Reve?" Tim insisted. "I mean, he managed to make Conner. He's the only one who had managed to turn an effigy - a statue - into a human being!"

Bruce glared at Tim contemplatively - at least that was what Tim hoped for, and not anger out of Tim's insolence in doubting him.

"The staff at Belle Reve is... commanded by Amanda Waller, a staunch proponent of controlling magickal abilities and artifacts for the good of humankind, regardless of their magickal abilities or lack thereof. She will not let Luthor meddle with anyone under her watch." Bruce explained. "Some things Waller has done that I... generally do not approve of. She is a warlock, you see. But like me, she had opted for protection rather than destruction. Her methods still made me cringe, sometimes. But it is... out of my jurisdiction."

Tim could see that Bruce was gritting his teeth for the last few sentences, and Barbara confirmed his suspicion by saying, "she's like, a government-sanctioned agent. She could and has actually applied the death sentence and perform... experimental methods upon her inmates."

"Oh," now Tim cringed, too. It was public secret that the government - their government - has agencies that were authorized to do things that would be frowned upon by general morality, and that was just Tim's brain being nice. Human experimentation - through magickal or other means - was at the forefront of the reasons. Not surprisingly, death sentence was far further in the list.

Still, there was a more important question in Tim's mind that was not answered by either Bruce or Barbara.

"But do you trust her enough not to use Luthor's abilities for her own advantage?" Tim insisted.

The quiet that followed was punctuated by a distant screech of a bat, as if mocking their sudden silence filled with blatant uncertainty.

"I do not." Bruce finally said after some good long seconds. "I should have given you excuses and reasons on why, but I cannot provide you with answers that will not sound like a cliché."

"Good to know that you're not a typical adult who'd say we youngins should trust our government implicitly and explicitly." Tim deadpanned.

"I wouldn't still be here if he's like that. I'll check if Waller is in any way complicit or in any way behaving differently in the past... well, through the times of the strange goings-on, really. You'll need a broad data points to see patterns, right?" Barbara asked, and Tim froze a little at just how easy it seemed for Barbara to offer an activity that would generally constituted to a 'Big Brother' type of thing. Barbara, probably sensing his uneasiness, smiled and added, "no, Tim, I don't watch her 24/7 deliberately. But we do live in a kind of Big Brother country, after all. She was the one suggesting that the government keep watch over all of its citizens."

"Barbara just figured out ways to keep certain people out of the loop, like - you know - what the government itself would do for their secret agents and CIA and stuff." Dick elaborated.

"But if she's like, out of the loop...?" Tim hesitated.

"That's what I did, she can keep the government watching common people and hide her own people - or people like her; but she can't hide from me." Barbara smirked. "The Oracle's Tiara made it possible for me to manipulate cameras and programs to literally show what is hidden. So no, there's no need for me to keep watch on people 24/7. I'm not that dedicated. Or have nothing better to do with my time..."

"Oh, cool," Tim was interested this time. "If, say, I want to know where Dick is at certain time and date, you can find that out." he ascertained.

"Yes, if I allowed you to. But no, Tim, I don't stalk Dick, either." Barbara chuckled.

"Yeah, no... that was just an example 'cause I think Dick and Bruce - at least - would've been hidden from the government cams, anyway. But... not your cams, right?" Tim spluttered. "I mean, I've made sure that all recordings of me would at least be distorted - if not destroyed - every time I did something magickal in public..."

"...and you've done a very good job that none of us even know of your existence. I figured that if you can hide that well, it shouldn't be a big trouble for you to figure out how to reverse engineer your trick to find what you want to find, yes?" Bruce hinted, not-so-subtly.

Tim glared at him, blinking owlishly, more lost in his own thoughts than anything else as methods after methods of reverse 'engineering' camera filters started spinning in his mind.

"Right," Bruce nodded. "Just let Barbara know what you need and how we can help." he decided.

"I haven't even say I'll do it!" Tim protested out of habit.

"Your mouth denies it, but your entire body language is already trying to figure out how to solve this, little Timmy!" Dick chuckled. "So let's! I want to know how King Kong came to happen and if I can use it to make a bat that I can ride on!"

[steves-on-a-plane]

Average Avenger’s Gal Part 2

Part One Words: 1991 Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader Summary: The Reader is at the tale end of a fifteen hour shift, and Steve comes in to pick her up for a date when an irate customer storms in. He’s impressed by how well Reader handles the situation and is glad to see his services wont be needed today.

"Ugh, what a day!" You huffed as you leaned against the back counter of your store's cashwrap. You folded your arms over your chest and cast your eyes out at the sales floor. It had been one hell of a day indeed. You'd had three people call out for their shifts, and it was a Saturday, no less. The displays were positively ransacked and you'd basically been on your feet for fourteen hours.

"Just think there's still five more minutes to go!" Your cashier, Melanie, reminded you. She gently tapping on the time stamp in the corner of the register's touchscreen.

"At this point isn't that extra five minutes more of a technicality?" You winked, letting her know that you were only joking. "Thanks for sticking it out with me today."

"Anytime, Boss." Mel smiled.

"Well, I guess we'd better start cleaning. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can go home." You pushed off the counter and started walking backwards towards the front of the store. "I'll take front, you get back, okay?"

"Since when are you in a hurry to get out if here?" Melanie laughed, already going to the nearest wall to begin straightening things out.

"Since, I finally have somewhere to be tonight other than here!" You called back to here. Before Melanie had a chance to reply you bumped into someone behind you. You supposed that's what you got for walking backwards through the store. "Oh, gosh I'm so sorry!" You exclaimed, turning around. You relaxed as soon as you recognized your number one customer.

"You should be careful, walking like that." Steve warned with a smile. You noticed that he'd decided to forego the usual disguise of a baseball cap and sunglasses this time.

"I do it all the time. Would you believe that's the first time I've ever bumped into anyone?" You asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Actually, yes." Steve nodded. "It amazes me how you're always so aware of your surroundings in a store this big."

"Well I have to be." You shrugged. "I'm basically, the store Mom. I need to know what everyone is doing at all times. Like right now, I can tell that Mel is only pretending to fix that shelve." You whipped your head around and gave her a playful glare.

"How did you know?" She gasped.

"Because you always pretend to do work when nice looking guys come into the store. You're afraid to start doing any actual work in case they need help." You said.

"I do not!" She disagreed, abandoning her wall and walking towards you and Steve. "Was there something we could help you with sir? I'm sorry, my boss just wants to gossip all night."

"Oh, no thank you, Melanie." Steve told her politely. "I actually just came to see if [Y/N] was still up for our date tonight. I know you said in your text messages earlier that you worked a fifteen hour shift, so..."

"I'm only a little tired." You couldn't stop yourself from yawning. "But who knows when we'll both have the time off again."

"I'm sorry, this is your something else you have to do tonight?" Melanie interrupted. "Wait a minute, aren't you one of the regulars? You usually have on a cap and shades."

"Well, I guess it's finally time to introduce you." You sigh. "Mel, this is Captain Steve Rogers. Steve this is..."

"You didn't tell anyone that you were dating Captain America?" Melanie gasped. There was a hint of betrayal in her tone.

“It’s not like my private business is relevant to our jobs.” You explained.

“Wait a minute, so all of our regulars…Sam with the nice smile and Bruce they’re…” Melanie’s eye grew wide with realization. She wasn’t able to freak out the way that she normally would because just then a customer came into the store.

“Are you still open?” The customer said with a smile.

“Mmmhhmm.” Mel nodded. “Is there something we can help you with?” She led the customer off towards the back of the store and helped her to find the things that she needed. It was only a couple minutes before Melanie and the customer were at the cash register.

“I guess I should let you get back to work.” Steve offered. “Let me know what you feel like…”

“Hang on, Steve.” You had to interrupt him because Mel was waving you over to her. “What’s up?” You asked taking in Melanie’s distressed look and the customer’s frustrated one.

“She will not give me 20% off my order.” The customer huffed as if that should clear everything up. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other in irritation.

“Oh, I’m sorry about the misunderstanding.” You apologized immediately. You knew that in these kinds of situations it was best to make the customer feel like you were on their side. “Do you have the 20% off coupon that you would like to use today?”

“No!” The customer remarked with a raised voice. You could see Steve in the edge of your peripheral vision slowly creeping his way towards the back of the store to asses the situation for himself. “I shouldn’t need to bring a coupon!” The customer continued to raise her voice. “I shop in this store all of the time. I spend hundreds of dollars in here. I think I’m entitled to a coupon.”

“Oh.” You replied quietly. You knew the situation would only be worse if you couldn’t keep an even tone when talking yourself. You clasps your hands together under the counter so that the customer wouldn’t see how bad you were shaking with nerves. These sort of confrontations never ended well.

“Unfortunately, coupons are only for our rewards member customers and they are earned base on previous purchases.” You explained calmly with a smile you hoped didn’t look too forced. “If you have earned a coupon through our rewards program I would need to see the coupon in order for us to give you the appropriate discount.”

“I’m sorry?” The customer’s voice now seemed to crack into a new octave.

“Sorry, as I said all of our coupons are base on our rewards program…” You began to explain again, but the woman interrupted you.

“I understood what you said.” She snapped. “But I don’t think you understood me. I want 20% off my total. After all the customer is always right.” Inside your blood was boiling. There was nothing more infuriating than when a customer throws that phrase around. Because the truth was the customer is not always right, sometimes the customer comes in five minutes before you’re about to close just to harass you.

“Ladies is there a problem here?” Steve was now standing three feet away from the customer. He flashed you and Melonie a concerned look before standing up straight and showcasing all 6 feet of his muscular frame for the customer.

“No, thank you, sir.” You told Steve kindly and firmly. You dealt with situations like this on a daily basis. You could handle an irate customer on your own. “But maybe Melanie can show you our new line of coconut milk soaps?” You gave Melanie an excuse to escape the cash register, and she took you up on that offer; leading Steve by the arm away from the scene.

“Ok now I can…” You were about to offer the 20% off to the customer anyway, despite the fact that she didn’t actually have said coupon, but she interrupted you before you got the chance.

“You can find me a manager is what you can do!” The woman snarled. “All the times I have shopped here, I have never had to deal with someone like you.”

“I’m sorry ma’am, I’m the only manager on duty today.” You apologized again for what felt like the fourth time too many. “As I was saying, I can…”

“You can wait one damn minute while I call customer service.” Again, without even giving you a chance to rectify the situation the woman whipped out her cellphone and called your corporate customer service. In the end the customer service representative told you to give the woman the 20% off her total even though she didn’t have any coupons present. The customer left in a huff and the whole thing left you feeling frustrated and defeated.

“You’re a better person than me.” Melanie whistled once you were alone with just her and Steve again. “I would have let muscles here deal with her when he offered.”

“That’s not the right thing to do.” You shook your head. “As frustrating as it is the have the customer service team just give her the coupon anyway, as least the customer is happy, I guess.” You shrugged.

“Your hands are shaking.” Steve noticed as you reached out to straighten some lotions on a table.

“Oh, that happens.” You shrugged again. “You’ve heard of fight or flight? Well, working in retail neither is really an option. Fighting further with that woman wouldn’t have gotten me anything except fired. And as for flight? I’d rather she yell and scream at me than Melanie. In a way I’m responsible for her. It’s not fair to let someone scream at my cashier just because I don’t want to deal with it. So, have to smile and I have to do my best to try and make customers happy.”

“Even if it means you get screamed at for following the rules?” Steve didn’t understand.

“At least she only screamed.” Mel snorted. “Sometimes they throw stuff.”

“Throw stuff?” Steve’s eyes widened in horror. “Do they throw stuff at you?”

“Sometimes.” You answered truthfully. “It doesn’t happen very often. At least not in this store. I worked at an amusement park for a while, I had someone spit on me there.”

“What did you do?” Steve gasped.

“Called security.” You sighed. “What else could I do? People who spit on you or scream or throw stuff because of coupons, they usually have something else going on in their lives. And as much as I might want to throw stuff or yell back, I don’t, because I feel sorry for them. If getting to cut a line or a discount or something is that important to them that they feel the need to scream in my face about it, what else do they have to live for? If those little things set them off, what actually brings them joy?”

“Damn.” Melanie exclaimed. “That’s really deep. You really are a better person than me. I’m going to clean, because I want to go home. But it was nice meeting you muscles, any chance you can introduce me to a friend of yours?”

“Go clean, Mel.” You urged her. “I’m sorry you had to see all of that.”

“No,” Steve shook his head. “Don’t be sorry! That was…that was incredible, what you did. I had no idea these kinds of things happened on a regular basis. And the way you handled it! You’re shaking now but you were so calm and collected when you were talking to her. And you found a way to get Melanie out in case the situation got any worse. You’re an expert at crisis management.”

“You don’t have to build me up like that.” You said as you felt your cheeks go flush with embarrassment.

“I’m not!” Steve insisted. “I’ve seen actually hostage situations that haven’t been handled as well. I’m sorry that it had to happen, but I’m glad that I got a chance to see you in action. Women of this time never stop impressing me with how resilience you are, but I think you might be the most fascinating woman I know.”

“Awww!” Melanie gushed from two tables over.

“Clean!” You told her firmly, but with a genuine smile on your face. “I want to get out of here and change so that I can go on my date with Steve.”  

[lumo-arcanorum]

IN PRAISE OF MMM

This is another repost, but from a blog I came across that I enjoyed. Wordpress blog formats are hard to track together, so I’m also reposting this here. 

This is taken from a 2018 post by The Kite’s Cradle, a blog for a chaos magicikan and self-identified  urban druid. It’s an interesting read into the life of an actual living chaos magickian. 

This is also relevant to me in that I’m sort of inspired to take another stab at MMM, but in my own way. I’m working on an alternative liber to Carroll’s exercise. We’ll see where that goes. 

OCTOBER 9, 2018 THE KITE 1 COMMENT

I like to see a Liber Null that’s been well used. Although chaos magic has moved on since Pete Carroll wrote the seminal chaos magic book Liber Null, chaos magicians owe Pete a huge debt of gratitude for Liber MMM, the ‘studentship syllabus’ for theIlluminates of Thanateros Novice training program. And this section of his book has really stood the test of time as an introductory training programme of magic. Not that you need it, of course.

He adapted the Yoga exercises of Aleister Crowley’s Book 4: Mysticism (part 1). This in turn was appropriated from The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Read these books and you’ll notice the repurposing of the exercises from the “…system by which the practitioner can directly realize his or her puruׅṣa, the soul or innermost conscious self, through mental practices.”(Sutras, p. xlvii) through Crowley’s Thelemic “aims of religion” to the Mind Control exercises of MMM, where “to work magic effectively, the ability to concentrate the attention must be built up until the mind can enter a trance-like condition.” (Null, p. 14).

As I’ve remarked elsewhere, when repurposing a practice it really does matter when you consider the consequences. The What For is important. In this case MMM marks the beginning of Carroll’s growing reduction of ‘spirituality’ to ‘getting good at magic.’ In doing so the baby of Illumination/Enlightenment/Liberation disappears into the bushes with the bathwater.

What makes it worse is that this impoverishment of the Great Work of Magic is committed merely in the name of attaining trance states, often called ‘gnosis’ by chaos magicians. Now excuse me if I point out that trance states are about as difficult as putting on a hat. Get into self-hypnosis, brainwave entrainment, Silva Method or any number of other things and you’ll see what I mean.

By ‘get into’ I mean, of course, ‘research and practice.’ With the emphasis on ‘practice.’ Our belief systems matter less than our practice systems. Occultists are notorious for owning the books, reading the articles, having the debates and not getting down to enough solid practice.

Patanjali required practice: “practice is the effort to be fixed in concentrating the mind.” (Sutra I.14) The whole project requires dedication to practice. Meanwhile in Crowley space, Aleister once chose as his magical mottoPerdurabo: ‘I shall endure to the end,’ or ‘I’ll stick it out.’ Tells you something, eh? Pete Carroll overstates the case when he claims that the magical trances he lists require “fanatical and morbid determination,” but practice there must be. It will be demanding, it will be inconvenient, it will be a pain in the lifestyle. But do it, and magical power will come to you.

Back to that bit about how our belief systems matter less than our practice systems. Echoing the doctrinal disputes of Christendom, occultists often suffer from the ailment of Having The Right Answers. This distracts them from the necessity of racking up the practice time. You’re not a sky pilot until you’ve logged the flight time.

Now I’m not recommending that you fill your every waking moment with ‘praxis,’ the bloatware of magic. A benefit of chaos magic reductionism is that you can restrict yourself to the most economically effective and get most of it done. A few bang-for-the-buck exercises and a simple training program and you’re ahead of the crowd. Weight training starts not with the steroids but with squats, deadlifts, presses and such, the biggest exercises to get you strong quickly.

All you need is a set of exercises and a program. And therein lies another problem with occultists, especially the postmodern variety. They will program-hop, doing Golden Dawn warm-ups then switching to yoga, tryingvipassana for a week, then it’s offerings to the ancestors for a month or so before being ADHD’d by something else. Diet-hopping and program-switching cheat you out of the steady gains offered by sticking out the practice – the promise of Perdurabo. Ask anyone who can pick up twice their bodyweight.

Re-enter Liber MMM. Yes, all right, you’re an experienced magician chasing advanced stuff now. But the basics always count. Use them or lose them and end up falling upside-down through the Abyss of Sophistry and having flamewars on the Internet. Liber MMM is a – not ‘The,’ but ‘a’ – solid program of introductory magical exercises.

So what’s in it? The field of activity in Liber MMM is listed quite clearly under the three headings of Mind Control, Magic and Dreaming. (if you haven’t already done so, now is a good time to fish out your copy of Liber Null. Yes, get one)

In Mind Control, we work quickly through the exercises in the order given such that by the end of the first month we are performing a minimum of 30 minutes of Motionlessness No-Thought (MNT) daily and performing occasional exercises in Magical Trances. This core exercise set is all about developing your concentration and visualization. Motionlessness is about not shifting weight, not scratching those inevitable little itches, and so forth. It’s not about torso movements when you breathe or tics or involuntary eye movements or blinking (if those bother you, shut your eyes). Just sit still. If you gaze at a random spot on the wall for a bit you’ll very soon notice a slight tunnel vision. This is you entering a very light trance. Relax into it and your breathing will slow, swallowing and blinking are inhibited and the itches will become ignorable.

Pick a posture and stick to it. Since you don’t want to be shifting for comfort, pick a posture that’s comfortable in the first place. You may need to attend to your posture — keep it upright — to stop yourself going to sleep.

Breathing: pranayama. There’s a simple technique. In — out. And so forth. There’s not much else to it. If you’re curious about different breathing techniques by all means pick one and use if for a few days. Otherwise, and especially while becoming accustomed to the daily practice, just allow your breathing to deepen and slow naturally. Fancy breathing techniques can wait. No-Thought is an unceasing business. To start with, begin a session by just watching thoughts arise and pass away. Do nothing about them. When you catch yourself fixating on a thought, just drop it.

As you become aware of ‘space’ as it were in your consciousness where no thoughts are, as thoughts arise then simply attend instead to that empty space. From time to time you get some blessed peace, when there are no thoughts to ignore. You’ll probably notice this moment of peace only when it’s over. That empty space will become the arena into which you project visualizations, including sigils. Start with about 15 minutes (time it) daily, and then after a few days of practice add five minutes, and so forth until you’ve got 30-35 minutes practice time daily. Then keep doing that daily. Notice the repetition of the word ‘daily.’ Do not interrupt the dailiness of this practice. MNT more than anything else forges the magician.

That was MNT. If to start with you feel that you’re not doing enough training, do some Object Concentration as well. 5 minutes at a time is plenty. Remember that business of gazing at a spot on the wall? Do that, and keep bringing the gaze back to it and holding the tunnel vision effect. It’s healthy that the eyes wander — just bring them back.

With both, write in your diary what time you started, what time you finished, and any salient features.

After a month or two, if we have not already done so, we investigate works of Metamorphosis. I consider Metamorphosis a neglected aspect of Liber MMM and personally regard it as being equally important as MNT. Simply swap out habits to start with.Need help? Start here.

In Magic, I suggest adopting one or two banishing rituals as soon as possible. In this context, most banishings are simply exercises to settle you down into the moment’s work of magic or to bring you back to normal afterwards. Sigil work and any other magical work is also good, including some sort of sortilege divination – cards, runes, stones and bones or somesuch equally simple. Liber MMM explains sigilization adequately so don’t overthink it: just decide what you want, scribble and go.

In Dreaming, the practice of keeping a diary next to the bed seems to convince your mind that you really do take this seriously, and it will oblige by producing material to put in that diary. It’s not usually worthwhile to ask for meanings of dreams: I don’t believe in universal dream symbols and expect instead that our own individual network of symbolism will explain our dreams best.

I absolutely recommend recording the activities of Liber MMM in a diary. Under the general heading of the day’s date, each activity should be timed, and it should be written up such that a reader could recreate that activity themselves from the notes given. The first time a ritual is described, it should be written in full, with any symbols or technical flourishes explained fully. Thereafter it is sufficient to mention repeats of the ritual by name and add ‘as before,’ expanding only upon any differences from earlier performances.

RESULTS

Both record and acknowledge results. Recording contemporaneously both an activity and its results simply helps us to know the truth of what happened and not to be fooled by psychological heuristics including so-called tricks of memory. Acknowledging results means celebrating our victories. Some magicians handicap their morale by being unwilling to accept successes and need reminding that success is matching actual result to recorded Intent, regardless of exactly how the result manifested. They sometimes need reminding to look out for results of divinations also.

In Mind Control the result is not of nice long periods of No-Thought (nice when it happens though) so much as the abilities, manifested over time, to drop easily into inhibitory trance states, to close down unhelpful streams of thought while under pressure and to concentrate on what is currently important.

Early experiments with Metamorphosis manifest a growing comfort with behaviours which we may have used to find unfamiliar and perhaps threatening, and may give us the clue that behavioural identity is not fixed.

In Magic there’s nothing quite like totting up your enchantments done and ticking off the successes to demonstrate to yourself that your magic works and that you’re not just fooling yourself. Likewise with divinations that turn out to be accurate.

In Dreaming work the results consist of enhanced knowledge of our own symbol system and a more relaxed relationship with our own out-of-consciousness workings.

All in all, good results in these practices help develop confidence in the whole magical endeavour and a no-nonsense attitude to practice that comes as a refreshing contrast to that of many others in the magical community. So if you do this for six months – not two weeks or two months, but SIX months – you will have laid a firm foundation ofskill, consistency and durability as a magician. Any dabbler can do this for a fortnight, but in the month on month daily grind the will of the magician is forged. Thank you Pete for MMM.

Original blog post is here. 

[sad-trash-writing]

Can you do something “Who’s The Hero Of Your Story” related. I kinda want to see Daisy average life while she was juggling being Daisy Johnson and Quake. Fighting Quinn, Raina, and Garrett before Jemma came along

AO3 Link 

This turned into a massive fic so beware that it’s 10,000 words long  Enjoy!

The obnoxious beeping of the alarm clock jolted Daisy awake far too early. She groaned and pulled a pillow over her head. She had known she would regret staying out late last night when she had to work the next morning, but it was important. 

She slapped a hand down on where she thought the alarm clock was, but her hand just slapped uselessly on the nightstand. She felt around for any sign of the damned contraption, but couldn’t seem to locate it. 

That’s when she remembered she moved it across the room to motivate herself to get out of bed. Daisy groaned again, even louder. She peeked out from under the pillow and saw it on the corner of the dresser. 

She threw out a hand and quaked it, just hard enough to make it shut up. 

It exploded in a pathetic squeak of plastic shrapnel. Great, now she would have to clean that up and buy a new alarm clock. 

She rolled to an upright position. If the alarm had gone off that meant it was about 4 am. Two hours of sleep wasn’t the worst night she’d had, but it wasn’t great either. The sun hadn’t even started to rise over the horizon yet, which made Daisy feel like she hadn’t even slept. 

She yawned and started her daily routine of applying her disguise. 

Everyday that Daisy had to apply the heavy makeup and a wig just to go about her daily life, she regretted not just wearing a mask. All the other famous superheroes wore masks when they ran around their city saving people, why didn’t she?

She rubbed on another layer of black, if only to draw attention from the dark circles under her eyes. Of all the things S.H.I.E.L.D. included in her tactical suit (which she stole when she went AWOL) a mask was not one of them. Once she first went public, there was no going back. 

Honestly, she spent more time in her superhero attire than out of it. The coffee-shop barista persona felt like more of a secret identity than Quake ever did.

  She finished pinning her long, black wig in place and took one last look at herself. Sure, it wasn’t the best secret identity, but no one in the coffee shop ever looked at her long enough to recognize her from her nighttime activities. She grabbed her keys and headed out the door, for another long day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“—And a double shot of espresso with a flavor shot of hazelnut, two pumps of caramel, half a pump of almond—”

Daisy’s eyes glazed over halfway through this guy’s order. She zoned out long enough that she missed the last two shots he wanted added to his drink and just punched another two hazelnuts in there. Hopefully the amount of sugar would keep him from noticing the difference.

Once she gave him his total, he held out a pile of gift cards and Daisy had to use every ounce of self-control not to quake him out the window. 

“Daisy, your turn for lunch break,” her manager called. 

“Oh, thank god,” she muttered. She finished swiping the last of the man’s 45 cent gift cards, practically threw the receipt at him, and headed to the back to clock out for her break. 

She flopped into the one rickety table in the break room, plugged in her headphones and unwrapped her sandwich. Once she was comfortably settled, she switched her radio app to the frequency of the police scanners. 

To anyone who walked in, she looked like she was just listening to music on her break. In reality, she was monitoring the city for anything that might need superhero intervention. 

Thankfully, there was nothing yet. Just a few minor traffic offenses, some bickering neighbors that needed to be calmed, and a kid who got his head stuck in a banister. Nothing that the regular cops couldn’t handle. 

It seemed all the major plots and crimes were committed after normal working hours, which Daisy could appreciate. She supposed that the Big Three in this city had to keep up appearances with their work at the university or they would blow their covers (not that most of the city didn’t already know their ‘secret identities’). 

Summer and bank holidays were another story, which always sucked because Daisy usually had to work those and juggle time off to stop the bad guys. It was exhausting. 

Daisy’s half hour lunch was up, so she flipped the radio off and headed back into the fray to relieve her coworker. 

The afternoon was much slower. There was a fast food place next door, so very few people came in to the coffee shop to get their lunch. It was great to have some downtime, but it left Daisy leaning on the counter and watching the news on the TV across the room. She was only half listening when a story caught her attention. 

“—Ian Quinn, the city’s biggest philanthropist, announced today that he is setting up a new doctorate program at the university to encourage further education in the sciences,” the anchor said, while a picture of Quinn’s smug face hovered beside her. “The program will focus on biochemical engineering and will be fully funded, so positions will be highly competitive. Reporting from the University—”

Daisy scowled at the news. Her manager was leaning on the other end of the counter watching the story and made a ‘how about that’ noise. Daisy glanced over at him and raised an eyebrow. 

“You know, with all his money, he could be doing anything he wanted, but he keeps funding scholarships,” he pointed out. 

“Yeah, because he wants to get smart people to do stuff for him,” Daisy scoffed. 

“Come on, how can you hate a guy who’s that good?”

“Because he’s evil?” Daisy countered. 

Her manager scoffed and wandered off, mumbling something about 'crazy millennials thinking everyone with money is evil.’

Daisy rolled her eyes. The half of the population that didn’t know Quinn, Raina, and Garrett were actually the city’s resident super villains were in fierce denial that they could be evil and were convinced that everyone who thought they were was delusional conspiracy theorists. Daisy had long ago given up trying to convince them with words. She just needed to give them actual proof. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Daisy perched on the edge of the rooftop, absentmindedly flipping through all the apps she used to monitor the city on her phone. The police scanner continually rambled staticky codewords into her ears, while she flicked through security feeds of nearly every important building in the city. Nothing had come up yet, so it seemed like it might be a slow night. 

She leaned back and looked down on the towering buildings of downtown. The lights from the windows of people working late in the offices or just getting home to their apartments glittered off the steel frames of each high-rise. 

Daisy yawned and tried to pay attention to what she was supposed to be doing. It was getting hard to keep her eyes open and it was only the beginning of the night. 

The chirp of her text tone interrupted the drawl of the policemen in her ears. She frowned and opened the message. 

It was Coulson.

There’s a situation in Siberia that we could use you on. 

Daisy sighed. Coulson still wasn’t willing to accept that she couldn’t leave until she had wrapped things up with the Three. They all seemed to have a personal vendetta against her and she she had yet to work out why, but she needed to stop whatever their overarching world domination plans were first. 

I can’t come back yet. Still working, Daisy replied. 

We’re here for backup if you need it.

Daisy smiled and felt tears welling up in her eyes. Even though she had left S.H.I.E.L.D. without explanation, they were still willing to go to bat for her. The universe decided to rudely interrupt her reminiscing with a blaring siren from her phone. Daisy quickly flipped through all the security schematics she had up and found the one that was causing the fuss: it was a high-level science research lab on the other side of town. 

Given the amount of security clearance required for that floor and the sensitive information held there, Daisy had a guess on which three people had caused it. She groaned and rolled backwards off the ledge. She wound up her headphones and shoved them with her phone and wallet into a small crevice on the roof. She had broken too many phones and lost too many sets of keys in the field to risk bringing them with her again. 

She took a running start and launched herself through the air onto the next rooftop. 

One of the things she most enjoyed about her powers was that she could fly. Well, what she did wasn’t exactly flying, but it was close enough. The wind whipped through her hair and she was surrounded by nothingness. When she felt herself descending, she pushed out another shockwave against the nearest roof below her and shot back into the sky. She tried to be as careful as she could to not damage the roofs she skipped over with her powers. She got enough negative PR as it was, she didn’t need to flatten every rooftop garden in the city as well. 

When she landed on the roof of the lab, however, she didn’t try to muffle it and even sent some extra vibrations through the frame of the building. She wanted them to know she was here and that she was annoyed.

Was it too much to ask for one night off?

She felt around for the spot that would cause the least amount of damage to the building, quaked a small hole through it, and crashed through the ceiling of the top floor. Now, she just needed to figure out where they were. 

She found the stairs and trudged down a few flights, peeking her head onto each floor to listen for signs of a break in. 

Eventually, from the stairwell, she heard a deep maniacal laugh. 

She audibly groaned. 

Garrett. Great.

Not only was he taking away valuable sleeping time with his incessant talking, but he was the most unstable of the trio and tended to be the most unpredictable. 

Also, encounters with him were the most destructive. 

She charged through the door into the hallway and braced herself to fight. 

“Ah, good. It’s our close friend, Quake,” Garrett said sarcastically. Most of the ceiling lights he had already shot out, so the majority of light was from the blue glow emanating from his cybernetic limbs. His arm-of-the-day wasn’t even a real arm, but just a huge gun that attached to his elbow that crackled with a blue electricity. In his normal hand, he held a box full of paper files. 

“Didn’t picture you to be someone to take out people’s recycling for them,” Daisy quipped gesturing to the box. “I guess it’s not true when they say criminals can’t change.”

“Oh, these. This lab likes to kick it old school and doesn’t keep digital files of their more secret work. It makes it very difficult to get any kind of file transfer, so I figured I’d stop in and pick 'em up myself,” Garrett replied. 

“Are the holes in the walls your way of signing in to the guest book?”

Garrett shrugged. “You know me. Sometimes I just like to break a few things. It’s the fun part of my job.”

Without warning, he raised his gun arm and fired at Daisy. 

The blast caught her off guard and knocked her down the hall while electricity radiated through her body. Daisy grimaced. She could feel her muscles involuntarily twitching for a few moments while she tried to catch her breath. 

That was a new feature. 

“Like that?” Garrett called from down the hall. “This baby is my new favorite toy.”

“It’s something else,” Daisy hissed through gritted teeth while she pushed herself back to her feet. 

“Well, I’d love to stay and chat some more, but I’ve got to be somewhere with these. Have a lovely night,” Garrett said, his voice dripping with glee at seeing Daisy on the ground. He turned on his heel and strolled down the hall towards the fire exit like he was going for a walk in the park. 

Daisy glared in his direction. Like hell was he getting away that easily. 

She pressed her palm to the floor and focused. A crack opened in the linoleum that zigzagged down the length of the hall and opened a hole right in front of Garrett’s feet. He skidded to stop before falling through it, unfortunately, but it gave Daisy a moment to get to her feet and knock the box out of his hands with a concentrated shockwave. 

Apparently, the electric shock from before was still working through Daisy’s body and the shockwave was a little less concentrated then intended and the files exploded all over the hallway. 

Garrett growled as he spun to face her, “Those were alphabetized!”

He raised his arm gun again and fired a series of smaller blasts. Daisy was expecting them this time and dodged them while she sprinted down the hall. Her powers were great, but sometimes a little hand-to-hand was therapeutic. Daisy jumped into the air and pushed some quake energy behind her fist that she threw into Garrett’s face. 

He stumbled back with the force of her blow. That was a new trick she had taught herself. She was definitely using that one again. 

While he was disoriented, she kicked at his good knee. He faltered, but managed to raise his mechanical arm to block Daisy’s next punch. She tried another angle, which he also blocked. 

Daisy managed to land a few small hits, but nothing slowed him down much and she knew from experience that he could hold out much longer in a physical fight than she could. Unless she managed to land a few more lucky hits, this could go on for some time. Since half of his limbs and organs were mechanical, he could keep blocking her punches for hours until she was too worn out to defend herself. 

She was already getting tired and sloppy. She left herself open on the left for a fraction of a second and Garrett took the opportunity to throw his weight behind a punch with his mechanical arm.

A gasp forced its way out of Daisy’s throat at the force and she skidded back a few feet. She was pretty sure she felt her heart stutter for a moment from that. It’d probably be a good idea to avoid getting hit like that again. 

Garrett raised his arm. Daisy could see the glow from it growing brighter and he seemed to be charging a bigger electric blast. 

Definitely want to avoid getting hit with that. 

Daisy had just enough time to throw her hands out in front of her and push out an equally powerful shield of vibrations. The two forces collided and Daisy was suddenly flying again. 

This wasn’t the fun kind of flying, like when she navigated the city. No, this was the 'rocketing backwards through nothingness and hoping you don’t end up impaled on a flagpole’ type of flying. She was grateful for the first lesson May taught her, though: how to take a fall. May had said, 'you only give yourself whiplash once,’ and she was not lying. This probably wasn’t the type of falling she had in mind though. 

Daisy’s back finally collided with something hard and sharp (not flagpole sharp, thankfully, but it wasn’t comfortable). The force knocked the wind out of her with a wheeze, but she was tucked in such a tight ball, she didn’t crack her head open at least. 

She was only still for a moment, before she started falling in a different direction. 

Even in her rattled state, Daisy could tell she was heading for the ground. She flung out her hands and quaked down in an attempt to cushion her fall. It was shakier than her usual landings, but she didn’t hit the ground at terminal velocity, anyway. 

She crumpled to the ground, cold concrete pressed into her face, and tried to take stock of her injuries. Everything ached for the moment, so it was hard to get a good reading. She gritted her teeth and pushed herself upright. She couldn’t lay on the sidewalk all night. 

She instantly regretted it. The thing she had crashed into was the skyscraper across the road from the laboratory. The slight shift in her posture told her she definitely had some glass shards piercing her back. That was nothing compared to the damage to the lab. 

She could tell from the outside which floor she and Garrett had been on. It looked like it had been hit with a bomb. The window Daisy had ben blasted out of was the epicenter of a massive circle of blown windows and bent scraps of metal, which were probably once the building’s supports, jutted out at all angles. 

Daisy could see from the ground the exposed wiring sending sparks into the black hole that was once a level of the building. Papers and other bits of singed shrapnel drifted through down onto the road, where some spectators had started to gather to gasp at the destruction. 

Daisy noticed some of them were wearing lab coats or security uniforms, so it seemed the building had already been evacuated. That was the standard procedure whenever the Big Three were involved; getting in their way only led to normal people getting hurt. 

Daisy saw a streak of blue dart from behind the building. She thought she was hallucinating for a moment, until she heard the helicopter fly overhead and could clearly see the glow from Garrett’s cybernetics coming from it. 

She raised a hand, ready to quake it out of the sky, but stopped herself. They had caused enough damage tonight. There would be another chance to take them down, and it’s not like they had gotten what they wanted anyway. 

Daisy pushed herself to her feet and hoped she could shuffle away from here without drawing any attention. 

“Look! It’s Quake!” a voice shouted. 

No such luck there. 

The crowd of spectators and news reporters quickly turned their attention from the destroyed building and converged on Daisy, the notorious Quake. 

Well, time to leave. 

Daisy spared a second to make sure no one was close enough to get caught in the blast and shot into the air as high as she could manage. As soon as her feet left the ground, all of her injuries made themselves known, but she kept pushing higher. Once out of sight of the cameras, she could land wherever and make her way home. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After taking the longest way home possible and a pit stop to change into normal clothes, Daisy limped into her tiny apartment and threw the bag containing her tact suit in a corner. Even that stray movement stung. 

Daisy shuffled into her bathroom and started to fill the tub up with cold water. She grabbed a bottle of pain killers from the medicine cabinet and shook out a small handful and swallowed them dry. She pulled off her shirt, which was already starting to show small pinpricks of red along her back. Good thing she didn’t like this shirt much. 

With a tweezers and heavily gritted teeth, Daisy started painstakingly picking the pieces of glass out of her back. Luckily, most of them had gotten pulled out when she changed out of her suit, but a few stubborn ones were still in there. Once she was satisfied she got as many as she could, she headed into the living room, grabbed her tiny TV and slid it into the bathroom. 

She perched it in its usual place on the toilet and dumped the contents of her fridge’s ice maker into the now full tub. It wasn’t the best treatment, but it was the best she could do at the moment. 

She made sure she had a warm, fluffy towel next to the tub, flicked the news on the TV, stripped the rest of the way and lowered herself into the icy tub. 

Every second of gradually sliding into the cold water was torture. Not only was her body rejecting the sudden temperature change, but her exhausted muscles aggressively complained at the load of her body weight being put on them. Daisy hissed the entire way down and let out a sigh once she was fully submerged. 

Now that that particular torture was done, it was time for the next one: watching the news. She dried off her hand and turned up the volume on the TV. 

“—reporting from the SciTech building, where a reported break-in prompted the evacuation of all staff earlier tonight. Shortly after everyone was out of the building, an alleged explosion rocked the entire block, causing substantial damage to the building. Witnesses report seeing Quake, the known vigilante, fleeing the scene shortly after the explosion—”

“Really? No one saw the half-robot, glowing madman 'fleeing’ the scene?” Daisy grumbled at the TV. 

“—No word yet on what motive Quake may have had for the break-in or the explosion—”

Daisy gaped at the TV. “Excuse me?”

She angrily flicked over to the next station. This channel had its anchors and a guest speaker gathered around a table in the studio instead of in the field. Daisy recognized the guest as the grumpy old army general who every news station dragged in to trash talk Daisy. He was very vocal about not being a Daisy fan, even though they had worked together at S.H.I.E.L.D. before. 

“—have to wonder, why is no action being taken? Quake is a dangerous criminal capable of causing millions of dollars in damage at a whim. Best case, there should be a nationwide manhunt to root her out and, at the very least, an armed sniper on every rooftop in the city—” General Talbot said.

“Now, isn’t that a little extreme? Quake is the one who has been impeding the actions of the super villain trio for months. Don’t we owe her a little credit for that, even if her methods are a little messy?” the anchor replied. Daisy would thank him if she didn’t know for a fact that he was only playing devil’s advocate. He had frequently said similar things as Talbot online and only defended her when the network wanted to get Talbot incensed. 

“She’s a vigilante!” Talbot shouted, pounding on the table. 

And there he goes. 

Talbot continued to rant. “Stopping supervillains is what the police are supposed to do, which they can’t do if we have another superpowered lawbreaker flying in and bringing down buildings on their heads. If Quake would stay out of it for once, law enforcement could do their jobs—”

Daisy scowled and clicked to the next channel. As if the police has any chance of going up against Garrett and Raina. Quinn they could probably handle, but he typically stayed in the helicopter and looked smug. 

The reporter on the next channel tended to be a bit more on Daisy’s side, so Daisy was looking forward to what she had to say. The banner at the bottom of the screen read Quake: Savior or Menace? which was not wholly encouraging. 

“—the most recent incident at the SciTech laboratory damaged not only a multimillion dollar facility, but also destroyed thousands of irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind research documents. This leads us to ask, how should Quake be held accountable, when she is finally apprehended?”

Daisy groaned and slid deeper into the icy water. Quake was going to have to lie low for awhile to recover from this. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A few months had passed since the incident at the lab. Daisy refused to listen to the police scanners at night, or she would just want to suit up and jump into action. 

She knew better, though. She had to lay low for awhile until people forgot about her mistakes and only remembered the fact that she had saved their asses multiple times. Granted, this most recent one was a pretty large and expensive mistake to forget. 

At least now she had the free time to sleep at night. Not that she was actually sleeping, since every siren that drove by her window made her wonder what destruction her city was being subjected to now. 

Watching the news was a nightly struggle. Raina, Garrett, and Quinn were running rampant around the city in her absence. Daisy had lost count of the amount of break-ins they had committed in a few short months. Shortly after each, they would debut a new weapon or machine on the next excursion. 

The cops were already scrambling to do what they could and every time the police chief was interviewed, he looked more and more exhausted. Daisy had started pausing on his close ups and counting the gray hairs in his mustache, since it seemed like there were more every day. The spiteful part of Daisy wanted to watch the city fall into chaos without her to keep the trio in check.

The rational part of Daisy, however, was itching to suit up and quake them all into next week. 

She couldn’t sit around doing nothing, so she went back to what she did before she got her powers: she hacked. 

The minute Daisy got off work, she turned on the news in the background, sat down at her computer with a coffee beside her, and tapped away at her computer. She spent hours trawling through the deep web, looking for any kind of trail she could latch onto. She found the trio’s home addresses, high school yearbook photos, office hours at the university. Everything except something she could use. 

Her coffee would eventually get cold, sitting beside her untouched. Daisy thought she had a breakthrough when she hacked her way into the university’s security footage, but there were strategic blindspots in their offices and around some of the lesser used exits. At least Daisy knew where they were sneaking out now. 

Not that it helped. As much as Daisy wanted to barge into Raina’s office and smash her stupid face into her desk, she couldn’t risk it. The trio didn’t know her real name or secret identity, and she’d like to keep it that way. Raina always seemed to know more about Daisy’s past than she let on, but if she knew who Daisy really was, she would have definitely leaked it to the press by now. 

Daisy sighed. After weeks, she hadn’t found the paper trail she was hoping for that would show the trio’s shady bank history. She closed out of the windows full of code and just opened up the university’s website. 

It was a nice school. Daisy almost would have considered enrolling if she wasn’t hiding out from a secret spy organization she used to work for. And if the school wasn’t run by three super villains who wanted her dead. 

Daisy clicked through the website until she found each of their department’s home pages. The first thing that popped up was an article about how they had just signed on a new graduate student and the entire article was spent languishing about how great the trio was and how generous and blah blah blah. The poor student, who was studying some plant crap, was mentioned for about two lines before being overshadowed by her saintly advisors. 

Daisy clicked through each of the trio’s academic profiles, though they wouldn’t tell her anything new. She scowled at their smug faces on their headshots the whole time. 

One of the alarms on her phone went off and Daisy instinctually checked which one it was. 

It was a building near the university. The signal beeped just long enough for Daisy to see that all the exits were reading as compromised before they all shut off. 

Daisy frowned. That was weird. 

She opened up another browser and quickly hacked into the live satellite feed of the area. She quickly saw why the alarms had stopped going off. 

The building that was standing moments before was now a pile of rubble. Even on the zoomed out view from the satellite, Daisy could see the blue glow of Garrett’s cybernetic limbs and a helicopter parked nearby. There was some giant metal contraption that Garrett was standing beside, but Daisy couldn’t tell what it was. It appeared to be moving towards another building though. 

Daisy gritted her teeth and glanced toward her closet, where her tactical suit was safely stored. She knew she shouldn’t go out in the field yet. Especially when there was a giant building-leveling machine at play, that she could easily be blamed for. 

She couldn’t just sit around while they destroyed a whole neighborhood. Daisy shot off the couch and towards the closet. Within moments, she was suited up and rocketing out the window. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The wind whistled through Daisy’s hair as she tried to made as stealthy a landing as possible. She touched down a few blocks from the collapsed building the trio was near last and jogged closer through the alleys. As she got closer, she could hear them bickering back and forth, but she was still too far to hear what they were saying. She edged closer, sticking to the shadows. 

“—just supposed to be a test. Now that we know it works, we need to pack it up and hide it before we get noticed,” Daisy heard Raina hiss. 

“Come on, we’ve been working on this baby for months,” Garrett protested. “Let me play with it a bit longer.”

Daisy peeked around the corner. Raina was in her black crime-committing attire, but otherwise looked completely normal; no thorns, just hair and skin. Garrett was sporting his high-tech limbs, as usual, and Quinn just looked like he made a wrong turn on his way to a masquerade fundraising gala. 

Raina’s crossed arms and impatiently tapping foot made Daisy think she was lucky to get here when she did. Any later and the trio might have already been gone and left a huge mess for Daisy to explain to the authorities. 

Daisy slipped her phone out of her pocket and opened up the camera. This could be her one chance to catch them in the act. All she needed was one picture to send to the press and the secret would be out. 

And in her haste to snap the picture she forgot to turn off the shutter sound on her phone. That one tiny click was all it took to silence the trio. 

Daisy ducked back behind the wall before they could see her, but she knew it was too late. 

“It appears your 'playing’ has already attracted some unwanted attention,” Raina drawled. 

Daisy launched herself into the air, anticipating their next move. She was clear from the building a split second before Garrett blasted a hole through it. Her phone slipped out of her hand and she grappled to save it while keeping herself airborne. 

“No no no!” Daisy cursed. She watched the phone tumble to the ground and saw the pieces shatter in a thousand directions when it hit. Great. Not only was that her evidence to get the trio locked up, it was also going to take about a week to get all her tracking apps reprogrammed onto a new one. 

Not to mention, she couldn’t afford a new phone and rent this month. Fantastic. Daisy lowered herself to the ground where the trio was waiting. The massive machine they were 'playing’ with whirred lowly behind them. Garrett noticed Daisy’s attention to the machine, squared up in front of it, and pointed his gun arm at her.

“No!” Raina interjected. “You and Quinn get the machine out of here before anything happens to it. I’ll take care of Quake.”

In the few moments that Daisy wasn’t paying attention to Raina, she had shifted so her entire body was covered in thorns and Daisy could see her golden eyes glinting in the darkness. 

Garrett looked about to argue, but he growled and turned his attention to the machine. Quinn turned on his heel and took off, likely to get the helicopter. 

“Yeah, you’re not getting away that easy,” Daisy mumbled. She raised and hand to quake the machine into tiny pieces. 

Before she could, she had to dodge a clawed swipe at her face. 

Raina had a snarl fixed on her face as she flung herself repeatedly at Daisy. Daisy managed to knock her away enough to not get her face sliced open, but she didn’t have a moment to breathe or stop Quinn and Garrett from leaving, which was probably Raina’s exact intention. 

Instead of just deflecting Raina’s next attack, she grabbed Raina’s arm and landed a kick to her gut. 

That ought to get her off Daisy’s butt for a minute. 

Daisy heard the thwip of the helicopter blades hovering overhead and saw Garrett fastening the machine to a rope dangling from it. She flung out her hand again. 

And Raina was back. 

She threw herself directly in Daisy’s line of vision and aimed her claws at Daisy’s eyes. Daisy barely had the time to lean back and avoid the swing. She could feel the very tips of Raina’s fingers brush across the bridge of her nose, just barely far enough to avoid getting cut. 

Daisy stumbled from the sudden change in her center of gravity. Just in time to see Garrett standing on top of the machine, holding onto the rope it was dangling from, while Quinn piloted the helicopter up into the black sky. 

Raina’s smug face made it even worse. 

Daisy could feel the rumble building beneath her feet and spreading into the earth around her. This had to be the worst possible comeback tour ever. 

And she was pissed. 

She drew up the vibrations from her feet and pushed them into her hands which she blasted full force into Raina with a growl. 

Raina flew backwards into a nearby building. The force of the shockwave Daisy threw at her was enough to blast the brick wall inwards with Raina in it. Daisy knew from experience that Raina was annoyingly durable, though. She darted into the building, clambering up the pile of bricks and drywall to get in.  

It appeared to be some sort of lab, based on all beakers lying around, so this was definitely on the university’s campus. Hopefully, Daisy would be able to get Raina out of here with minimally more damage, since it would only mess with the students to have their space wrecked. 

Raina was already dusting herself off when Daisy mounted the rubble. 

“That’s going to be expensive to fix,” Raina grumbled. 

Daisy scoffed. Now, Raina was concerned about the destruction of property. The millions of dollars in property damage downtown meant nothing, but when it was the university…

“Why is that your problem? It’s not like you have a personal investment here, right?” she shouted back sarcastically. 

“It’s always my problem when the education of young people is at risk,” Raina quipped. She didn’t give Daisy another chance to return the banter before launching herself at Daisy. 

Daisy blocked and threw a few hits of her own. If there was one thing she had missed during her forced vacation it was getting to burn off some steam by beating the crap out of one of these jerks. 

She didn’t hold back. She threw her full strength into each punch or kick, determined to do as much damage to Raina’s smug face as possible. When she had an opening, Daisy threw out a hand and quaked Raina hard enough to send her flying over a table and scaled down the rubble pile. 

She lost sight of Raina for a moment on the other side of the table, which was never a good thing. Sure enough, Raina popped up after a few moments holding a hose that was cut through. Daisy wasn’t sure what the point of it was, until she smelled gas. 

“Sorry, Quakey, but today is not a day that you win,” Raina drawled and nodded towards the back of the lab. 

Ignoring that disgusting nickname, Daisy followed her eyes towards the rest of the (what she thought was) empty lab. 

There was a girl by one of the tables, wide-eyed, and standing protectively in front of some plant. What was she doing here? Why didn’t she run?! The one thing Daisy would never forgive herself for was civilian casualties, and Raina knew that. 

And Raina had a broken gas line and what was probably some form of lighter in her hand.

“NO!” Daisy shouted. 

The second she saw Raina’s hand twitch, she threw out a hand and sent a shockwave in the direction of the girl. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but it was better than getting blown up in a gas explosion. She threw another shockwave in Raina’s direction hoping to contain the explosion or direct it as far away from herself and other people as she could. 

The explosion was deafening. Everything went silent after the initial boom and Daisy was going to have some definite hearing damage. All Daisy saw was a mass of fire and burning building material. She was flung backwards into the opposite wall and was pretty sure she blacked out for a moment. 

When she came to, all she could hear was ringing. Dust (or smoke, it was hard to tell) filled the air, obscuring any remaining features of the lab. Daisy coughed some of the dust out of her lungs, but she could feel them burning with every inhale. 

Speaking of burning, the one thing she could see through the smoke was fire.  Flames burned in small patches of whatever they could grab onto and sucked the rest of the oxygen out of the air. 

Raina had clearly made her escape already and left Daisy to deal with the consequences. The ringing in her ears abated slightly and Daisy could hear the shrill wailing of firetruck sirens in the distance. She needed to get out of here before she was found.

She maneuvered her arms under herself and pushed herself up. God, everything hurt. The movement forced another coughing fit from her lungs. 

Distantly, she heard another cough. Shit, the girl. 

Daisy forced her own pain out of her mind and struggled to her feet. She wobbled around the piles of destroyed lab materials and leaned on whatever she could for support until she reached the back of the lab. 

A boy had appeared in the lab too and was shaking the girl’s unconscious form and shouting her name. He clearly had better cover than the girl did from the explosion, but still had some cuts and scrapes up his arms. 

The girl looked considerably worse for wear. There was a gash on head and cuts all up her arms from flying bits of the lab. The potted plant she had been so desperately protecting was crushed beneath her and there was so much blood on and around her. Daisy was never squeamish about blood, but usually it was her own or whatever poor bastard she was beating up that day. 

Never was it from an innocent bystander. Daisy felt sick. 

The girl opened her eyes slightly and groaned. Thank god, she was still alive. The slight movement brought Daisy back to the present. 

“What can I do?” She offered. She was pretty well practiced at bandaging herself up in the field by now. “I can help—”

“You’ve done enough, thanks,” the man snapped before returning his attention to the girl. 

That stung. That tone brought back the memories of when she first got her powers and blew out the windows in the base. She tried to help the team sweep up the glass, but everyone of them sent her away with the same words. 

You’ve done enough.

She was just trying to help. 

Daisy heard the calls of the first responders kicking through the wreckage. It would be best if they didn’t find her here. 

She turned and stumbled over the piles of rubble until she found a flat spot and launched herself into the air. 

She didn’t make it very far. Every system in her body protested the strain of making herself fly through the air. As gently as she could, she set herself down on a rooftop. 

She took a breather and tried again, this time only making it across one more rooftop. The more she pushed, the lower she flew with each launch. After awhile, she could barely get her feet off the ground. 

She collapsed onto the rooftop, the dust still clinging to her lungs and the pure exhaustion dragging her into unconsciousness. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Daisy finally woke up she almost wished she was dead. Everything that hurt last night hurt a thousand times worse now. It didn’t help that she spent roughly half a day curled up in the same position with her arm pinned under her body.

She groaned and moved slowly, trying to gradually stretch out her muscles.

The sun was up, but it was sinking lower in the sky already, so Daisy had some time to kill before she could make her way home. 

Once it was fully dark, she started on the slow, agonizing trek home. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Daisy’s attempt to gracefully lower herself through her window ended with her knees buckling and her collapsing on the floor with a wheeze. She quickly stripped off her tact suit and flung it into a random corner. Normally, she would be more concerned about if someone stopped by and saw it on the floor, but frankly she could not give less of a crap about it. 

Her typical ice bath to sooth her muscles was far too much effort. She grabbed her always-handy bottle of painkillers, threw a handful in her mouth, chased them with an entire bottle of water, and then collapsed on her couch and fell asleep. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In retrospect, Daisy probably should have checked her messages before passing out for another 12 hours, but she didn’t. There were a lot of things she probably should have done. 

Like go to work. 

When she finally dragged herself off the couch, there was a dozen emails from her manager as well as 20 missed calls on her apartment’s landline. Great, so she was definitely fired. She quickly called the number of the store.

The phone rang once and her manager picked it up with a cheery voice until Daisy said her name. 

“Daisy? What the hell? I called you a hundred times about missing your shift today—”

“I know, I’m sorry.” her voice came out raspy and cracked. “I got a really bad bout of the flu and have basically been unconscious, delirious, or barfing for the last 24 hours,” Daisy lied effortlessly. “Also, I lost my cell phone.”

“Oh my god, are you alright? Did you go to the doctor?” he asked, worry lacing his tone. 

Daisy smiled. Sometimes her manager was a hard-ass, but he did genuinely care about his employees. Well, the ones who actually gave a crap about their job anyway. 

“No, I didn’t want to spread my germs to the rest of the world. I’m sure it’s almost passed anyway,” Daisy replied. 

“Are you taking care of yourself at least? Drinking lots of fluids?”

Daisy glanced at the single empty water bottle that was the only thing she ingested for the last 24 hours. “Yeah, of course.”

“Well, I hope you feel better soon. I got Miles to take your shift today, so I’ll see if he can cover you for the next few days, too. Just to be safe.”

“Tell him I owe him one,” Daisy said and hung up. 

She glanced at the TV remote laying on the table. Did she really want to pick it up and watch the news? She already knew what it would be saying. 

Dangerous Vigilante Destroys University Building, Kills Innocent Student.

Daisy winced. She was really hoping that the girl from the lab pulled through. She looked alive when Daisy left, but that didn’t mean much. All Daisy could think about was how much blood there was. 

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to think of puppies and beaches or anything to get that image out of her head. 

She reached for her laptop, but then realized the news would probably be all over any site she went as well. 

In the end, she grabbed a book and retreated to her bedroom. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Daisy gave it a week before she could bear looking up any information about that night. As expected, none of the headlines were very flattering for her. 

Student Injured As Quake Levels University Building. Why Did Quake Attack Science Building? Does Quake Hate Science? Manhunt Intensifies for Quake. Directors of Graduate Studies Publicly Denounce Vigilante Quake.

No one even acknowledged the presence of Raina at the scene. Daisy scrolled through as many articles as she could manage. There was no mention of a student dying, so she had to be alive, right? If she didn’t survive, the news would be all over it. 

Sadly, there was no mention of her condition or a name of the hospital where she was taken. 

Daisy frowned and started hacking. She considered just calling around to the hospitals in the area, but given the high profile nature of the accident, she doubted the receptionist would be willing to reveal anything.

She trawled through the admission records of that night, looking for anyone in the right age group, from the area of the university, anything listed as 'explosion’ or 'accident.’ Nothing. 

She took off all her filters and scoured all the records. There were a lot of old people admitted and some teenagers with sprained wrists or ankles, but no one that could fit the description of the girl. 

After hours of nothing, she gave up. Hopefully the news would be annoying enough that they’d track the girl down for an interview when she was recovered. 

An alarm beeped on her new phone. The trio had been unusually quiet for awhile now. She opened up the notification and frowned. 

It was from a bank downtown. The back door had been opened, which no one used, except for deliveries. What the hell? Since when did they go for such obvious targets as a bank? They already had more money than they knew what to do with from Quinn. 

Daisy briefly debated ignoring it and going to sleep, but she had a nagging sensation that there was probably something more valuable than cash in the vaults. 

She groaned and shuffled to her closet where she stashed her suit. It still had a fine layer of dust on most of it from the lab that Daisy had never bothered to clean off. She brushed the majority of it off with her hands and suited up, grumbling the whole time. At least since it was a stealthy breach and not a massive hole in the wall she knew it was Raina and not Garrett. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Daisy landed at the back of the bank where Raina broke in. The only thing to indicate that anybody had gone in this door was the tiny burn marks around the lock that must have disabled it. 

She slipped through the door and closed it behind her. 

“Now if I was a pain-in-the-ass super villain, where would I go?” Daisy mused. She slipped out her phone and opened up the motion sensor monitor for the building. Nothing was tripped except the entrance she had just come through. 

She pressed her palms into the floor, closed her eyes, and slowed her breathing. She zeroed in on all the vibrations she could feel throughout the block.

She felt the two security guards on duty pacing around the reception desk two floors above her. Really earning that paycheck, boys. Then, the floor below, she noticed movement in one of the vaults. Raina was quickly moving around the vault, and Daisy could feel the very slight vibrations as each safe deposit box popped open. One thing that was odd was that her heart rate was usually high. Must be an important job.

To minimize damage, Daisy decided to take the stairs to the next level. She shuffled down the hallway until she found the vault where she felt Raina. She had never had to stop a bank heist before, so she mentally crossed that off her bucket list. The giant metal vault door looked just like the ones from the movies. Eight feet tall, with a giant crank wheel on the front and a rather intense looking combination lock. 

Daisy felt like she was breaking into Gringotts. 

The vault door was still sealed, so Raina must have gotten in another way. 

Unfortunately, Daisy didn’t have time to find that way. 

She held out a hand and prayed to Lady Justice that this would be the time she could get Raina arrested and not have people try to charge her for the cost of a bank vault door. 

Slowly, she rattled apart the gears inside. Hopefully, if she took her time, she wouldn’t permanently damage it. If she had the time she would just try to spin them until she unlocked it, but she doubted Raina would stick around that long.

  The hinges finally gave way and Daisy gave one final push to knock the door inwards. It groaned and crashed into the ground sending a puff of dirt shooting out in all directions. That probably meant the concrete floor was crushed. Whoops. 

She stepped over the door and tried to wave some of the dirt out of her face. Hopefully she could get this over with quickly. She was freaking tired. 

“Really, Raina, I thought you were beyond bank robbing. I always thought it was too cliché for—” she started. 

But the bank robber her eyes landed on was definitely not Raina. 

She looked younger. Maybe around Daisy’s own age. She was wearing an outfit made up of various shades of green that seemed like it had been pieced together from thrift shop finds. Her light brown hair hung loose over her shoulder and she had a cheap-looking mask that appeared to be cut out of a piece of scrap fabric tied across her wide eyes. The girl stood there, stuffing a massive diamond in a bag and looking like a deer in the headlights.

The only thing that made her seem less like a bad cosplayer was the tangled plant sticking out of her back with the vines swaying gently. 

“You’re not Raina,” Daisy said, dumbly. 

“No, I’m…I’m new,” the girl responded. 

'I’m new?’ Was she getting introduced to a coworker? This girl was obviously new to this supervillain thing and didn’t really look too into it. 

“Um…okay. Your first act as a bad guy is to rob a diamond from a bank? Are you guys given a Bingo card at Supervillain Orientation or something?” Daisy taunted. 

The girl stuck her hands awkwardly on her hips and scoffed. “No! There’s no…um—It’s…” she stammered. 

Daisy snorted a laugh. This plant lady was really new to this. She was much more fun than fighting Raina again. She took a step forward to reason with the woman and the woman took a step back. Oh, and she was terrified of 'Quake’ already. Good. 

“Look, you obviously are new at this and probably don’t really want to be doing this, so I’m going to let you off with a warning this time,” Daisy offered. “I’ll close my eyes for exactly a minute and all you need to do is put the diamond in my hand and walk out the door. I won’t look where you go and I might even tell the security guards you beat me. Maybe it’ll boost your street cred or something.”

Okay, the part about telling the guards was a definite lie. Daisy was not planning on sticking around that long, but hopefully this would convince the girl to give up this supervillain thing before she actually started. 

Daisy held her hand out in front of her. “If you do try to leave with the diamond, I will stop you, though. Just saying,” Daisy said. She wiggled her toes and zeroed in on the vibrations from the floor. She would be able to feel if the plant lady made a break for the door or the hole in the ceiling that Daisy saw once the dust cleared.

“Alright, counting down,” Daisy announced and started counting to sixty seconds. 

Sure, it was probably dumb to leave her guard down so much in the presence of a new enemy. She had no idea what the plant lady was capable of and could probably just as easily strangle Daisy before she could do anything to stop it. 

But if nothing else, Daisy was a good judge of character and the look in the woman’s eyes said she wasn’t capable of murder. 

Daisy heard the woman rustling through her bag for the diamond. However, she got to twenty seconds and Daisy hadn’t felt her move forward. 

“I was serious about the one minute thing, by the way,” Daisy informed.  

Daisy got to twenty-two when she felt something heavy crack her in the back of the head. 

The room spun and Daisy staggered and cursed loudly. She heard quick footsteps, but her senses were so knocked out of balance that she had no idea where the girl was heading. Maybe Daisy wasn’t such a great judge of character and the girl was coming to finish her off. 

Her world stabilized just in time for Daisy to hear the groan of the metal vault door being moved. 

She squinted and focused her eyes on the doorway where the girl had somehow lifted the vault door and lodged it back into place. She heard a whirring sound and the edge of the door glowed molten orange and seemed to be sealing itself. 

Daisy ran to it and pulled. Yep, that was sealed. She would just have to go out the hole in the ceiling. 

She positioned herself underneath it and was about to launch herself up when a gun was pointed at her face. 

“Freeze! You’re under arrest,” the security guard screamed. Hasty footsteps ran towards him and a small group of more security guards converged and pulled out their weapons. 

Nope, going out the vault door. 

She threw out a hand and quaked the door as hard as she could. The vibrations rippled out from where she directed them and spread into the walls, leaving small cracks in the surface and the door toppled outwards. 

Revealing a larger group of security guards and policemen, all with their weapons out. Guess that vault door hitting the ground was pretty loud. Great. 

Daisy put her hands on her head. She knew she was outnumbered and she knew fighting off all these guys in an enclosed space would only lead to someone getting hurt and Quake ending up more vilified. So she decided to play nice. 

“Hey, guys. I’m sure you get this a lot, but this is really not what it looks like,” Daisy said. 

“Shut up! On your knees,” one of the cops shouted. 

“Okay, rude.” Daisy glared, but obeyed. 

The troops advanced slowly and circled her. Then they all froze. They all seemed to be having some silent conversation with their eyes that Daisy could clearly read as, “No, you handcuff her.”

“You guys know I’m not gonna bite you, right?” Daisy teased.

  They all jerked their guns a little higher when she spoke. Great, this could only end well. 

Finally, some rookie cop who looked about 12 seemed to be give the short straw and slowly shuffled towards Daisy with his handcuffs bared. 

Daisy held perfectly still, knowing the slightest twitch of a muscle could end up with her getting a dozen bullets to the head. The cop jerked her hands behind her back, clamped the cuffs on, and pulled her to her feet. Daisy immediately slipped a pin out of her sleeve and started picking the cuffs.

“Now that I’m 'restrained,’ can I tell you why you’re all making a mistake?” Daisy tried. More jerking of guns. 

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say—” 

“Yeah, yeah, I know. This isn’t my first rodeo,” Daisy interrupted. “I know that when I say something, it better be the truth. So when I tell you that I was here to stop a villain from robbing the place, you should listen to me.”

“Take her upstairs, boys,” one of the cops, who was clearly in charge and suddenly found his authority now Quake was in cuffs, said. Jokes on him, Daisy had already unlocked both of the cuffs. She held them in place to maintain the illusion that she was restrained. 

Two security guards stepped forward and grabbed and arm each and started dragging Daisy out the ruined door. She jerked an arm out of the one’s grasp and planted herself, only to have two more guards clamp on. 

“If you guys would just listen for a minute, I could point you in the direction of the person who actually stole something,” Daisy protested. 

The officer in charge scoffed. “Is it the college professor? The disabled war hero? Or is it the charitable philanthropist this time?”

Daisy rolled her eyes. Great, this guy was one of those dipshits who liked to ignore the truth. 

They dragged her to the front door, which was swarmed with even more cops. When Daisy saw the news crew outside, she dug in her heels.  She needed to get through to them quickly. 

“You guys really need to listen to me. There’s a new supervillain who you can probably catch running down the back streets if you just go look!” Daisy demanded. 

“Sure, so you have less people to stop you from escaping,” one of the guards said. 

Dude, I don’t need less of you here to kick all your asses. I’m just not the bad guy, Daisy thought.

“If you could pull your head out of your butt, you would listen to me,” Daisy practically shouted at them. They were nearly to the door and Daisy could see the cameras converging. “I’m telling you, it wasn’t me. There was some plant lady. I was there to stop her.”

“Quake, Quake!” the reporter shouted, holding up a microphone. Daisy rolled her eyes and ducked her head, so her hair was covering her face. She was sure she wasn’t close enough for the camera to catch her face, but better safe than sorry. “Quake! Are you saying there’s a new villain in the city?”

Daisy resented the news for their portrayal of her, but at least they would report on what she said. Maybe they could help her publicize this new villain and help Daisy catch her. “Yes! Some lady with plants growing out of her broke in—”

She was cut off by one of the security guards shoving her shoulder and dragging her towards a waiting cop car. 

“Yeah, yeah, you can tell us all about the plant chick at the station,” he said. Daisy glanced up and saw the black sky above her was completely clear. Now or never. 

“I don’t think so,” she muttered. She dropped the cuffs, twisted out of the grip of the guards, blasted them all backwards, and then rocketed into the sky. The wind rushed past her ears for only a few moments before she landed on the roof of the bank. Luckily, there were no helicopters out yet or her escape would be much more difficult. She launched herself in the air and skipped across the rooftops in the opposite direction of her apartment, just in case. 

Well, this night had gone great. Because the only thing Daisy wanted in life was to have another supervillain to fight.

[remelitalia]

Content Marketing in 2021 and Beyond

Let’s talk about content marketing. 

How’s it doing in 2021? Where might it be headed this year and next? Is it still the king?

Content marketing continues to flourish for one very simple reason: it’s what the people want. They don’t want intrusive banners, ads, and popups.

They don’t want irrelevant messages and products that have nothing to do with them shoved in their face. They don’t want spam clogging their inbox.

People want high quality, useful, relevant, and engaging content about things that matter to them.

Craig Davis, the former Chief Creative Officer at marketing communications firm J. Walter Thompson, said it best:

We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.

That’s content marketing in a nutshell. And yes, it’s still king, but it is evolving. Consider:

Compared to outbound tactics, content marketing costs 62% less but generates 3x as many leads.

Video and voice search are leading the charge in 2021.

Over 41 percent of Americans use an ad blocker of some sort. Content is not an “ad”, and so is an effective method to get around blockers.

Businesses that use content marketing have conversion rates 6x higher on average than those who do not.

70% of consumers prefer to learn about a product from an article rather than an ad, and 4x more would rather a video than an article.

Roughly 24% of marketers plan to increase their spending on content marketing in both B2B and B2C.

SMBs that blog generate 126% more lead growth than their non-blogging counterparts.

38% of marketers publish new content at least weekly, while 91% of the most successful business bloggers publish at least once per week.

60% of marketers say content marketing is very important or extremely important to their overall strategy.

If you’re not convinced yet, any blog post on content marketing statistics will quickly change your mind.

It works. Exceedingly well.

But the thing about content marketing is – as with virtually everything digital – it’s constantly evolving and changing. Tactics and channels that worked last year, or even last month, might not deliver the same robust results today.

Digital marketers have to stay on top of the industry, paying attention not only to what the competition is doing, but where the people are spending their time online, and what they’re consuming while there.

So, what’s happening in content marketing, version 2021? Let’s find out.

Content Marketing: 2021 Current Trends

To operate on the assumption that what content marketing was it will always be is to fail at it. Horribly. In the early days, you could post a 500 word, keyword-stuffed blog post and generate plenty of traffic.

Not anymore. Content marketing is as much about watching the trends as it is about creating and sharing content.

Social Media Metrics (and Their Impact on Content Marketing)

In 2014, social media was becoming the place to post your content. In 2021? There’s no longer any debate. Facebook is the primary distribution channel for content.

But simply posting is not enough. You have to promote and measure. Seven years ago, a measly 25% of marketers were measuring their social media campaigns at the individual pieces of content level.

If you’re not monitoring your content, you might as well just throw your marketing budget out the window.

Great marketers measure, manage, and tweak. And I’m not just talking about clicks, likes, and favorites, often referred to as the vanity metrics.

Today, it’s more about comments, shares across multiple channels, discussion, and action – or engagement with your stuff – and conversions.

In a perfect world, you’d have your finger on the pulse of all three to collect the most detailed and comprehensive vital signs on your campaigns. Nowadays, 56% of marketers rely on engagement metrics to determine campaign success, while 21% focus on conversion data.

That’s an improvement from four years ago, but better still is vanity, engagement, and conversions. Between various analytics services and built-in social media platform capabilities like Instagram Insights, you have the tools to collect, analyze, and use the data that matters.

So use it.

2021 Video and Live Streaming

Video is the number one form of media in content marketing.

In fact, it’s been the most frequent answer to the question of what marketers plan to add to their tool belt for the past couple of years. YouTube and Facebook video are becoming must-haves in the digital marketing game.

Search Engine Journal discovered that their Facebook Live posts delivered 178% higher than average engagement over regular posts, and increased referral traffic by 213% over the 2 months of their study.

According to HubSpot’s most recent Not Another State of Marketing Report, the top two types of video are promotional and brand storytelling.

Why? Marketers are increasingly relying on video because people are increasingly watching it:

People watch over 2 billion videos a day on Twitter

Video accounts for an estimated 82% of consumer internet traffic in 2021.

There are 8 billion daily video views on Facebook on average.

Over half of online users – 55% – watch videos every day.

Social videos generate 1200% more shares than text and images combined.

According to Curata, the three most effective types of videos are customer testimonials, tutorials, and demonstrations. Notice that they all benefit the customer in some way. That’s key.

You don’t need a fancy recording studio, either. The camera on your phone is good enough to get started

Explore YouTube, Facebook Live, LinkedIn Live, Animoto, Periscope, Instagram, Wistia, PowToon, and more.

Pre-recorded videos used to be the preferred format at the moment, but the pendulum is definitely swinging towards live streaming. Facebook reports users watch live videos 3x longer than those that are pre-produced, and LinkedIn reports live videos earn 24x as many comments.

Point is, video – both recorded and live streaming – is a top tactic in both B2C and B2B. And online netizens love to watch and consume it.

So give it to them.

How Many Words Matter in 2021 Content Marketing?

Quality still matters more than quantity, but there has been a steady upward trajectory to blog post length over the past few years. This will continue.

The average blog post was 808 words in 2014, but was 1142 words in 2017. That’s an increase of 41%.

In 2020, the average length of a top ranking blog post is 1447 words.

It might sound counterintuitive; our attention spans are getting shorter, and we hop from page to page, website to website – but people are still willing to invest the time for a comprehensive and well-written post. (Like this one).

Just remember we’re not talking about words for the sake of words. Consumers want quality. They want detailed, relevant, useful posts. And they’re not afraid to spend some time with them. More words = more success — but only if those words are relevant.

So do it.

There are other trends to keep at least a passive eye on, everything from interactive content to the emergence of micro-influencer marketing.

Trends come. Trends go. But if you truly want to stay one step ahead of the competition, you need to make some educated predictions.

2021 Content Marketing: The Predictions

Identifying trends as they’re happening is one thing. Accurately predicting the trends before they happen is something else.

But if you do, you’re on the frontline and ahead of the curve. What might 2021 have in store for content marketing? It’s time to bring out your crystal ball.

Long-Form Original Content

Blogs are getting longer. Video is gaining ground. But that’s not what I’m talking about here.

Big brands like Apple, Google, and Facebook are investing big money in original programming, with revenue-sharing between the platform and the creators.

A service like Facebook Watch – the social media behemoth’s on-demand video space – provides a platform that allows content creators to find their audience and build a community. Those are two of the biggest goals of content marketing in one fell swoop.

The benefit of this tactic, aside from its popularity, reach, and potential is the ability to monetize the content itself.

Ultra-Personalized Content

The old way had content created and pushed out to thousands or millions of people. While that can still work depending on the quality and subject, there is a better way on the horizon.

Enter ultra-personalized content.

As we create more and more data points, and develop more and more tools for collecting and analyzing them, the ability to produce and push personalized content is becoming that much easier.

Tools like YouTube’s Director Mix, for example, allow brands to personalize videos and videos ads for hundreds if not thousands of different audience segments based on a variety of data sources and user behavior. And all automatically.

Dynamic content can help users find exactly they type of content they want.

Content has always been about relevancy, but expect relevancy and personalization to take center stage over the next 12 months or so.

Ultra-Local Content Marketing

Big brands and chains may create content at location A, and push it out for use at location B.

The problem is, location A and location B could be in different cities, or countries, or even continents.

What if rather than reusing the same content created at A, it was given some local flavor before sharing it at B? Consumers are looking for relevancy and personalization, and geography is a big part of that.

Locally produced content is not always possible. And even when it is, it’s not always done.

It should be. Content coming from HQ?

Give it a local twist. Create some of your own, local stuff whenever possible. Resist the urge to produce generic content in order to appeal to as wide an audience as possible…at least sometimes. If you’re offering products or services at a local level, make your marketing a good mix of global and local.

The axiom in purchasing these days is “buy local”. For marketing? It will be “be local”.

Delivery Channels of the Future

Amazon Echo. Google Home. Siri. Your fridge?

The Internet of Things means your content will be delivered via channels outside the usual social media platforms and websites.

Less text-heavy, more video, and succinct verbal answers. Provide the content that works with the evolving delivery landscape. Both schema markup and structured data will help. Use them.

The opportunity to secure uninterrupted and focused time with consumers will still exist, but it’s going to be more challenging than ever to act upon. In order to capture hearts, minds, and — ultimately — wallets, the smartest brands will realize that they must stop thinking like advertisers and start thinking like media companies, giving core audiences value beyond just the products and services they provide.

~Jesse Greenberg, former chief strategy officer at Ackerman McQueen

Businesses are moving away from company-focused content and towards content that is tailor-made – sometimes down to the individual level – for the customer. Relevant to them. Personalized to them. Useful to them.

That’s the present and future of content marketing.

Conclusion

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Artificial intelligence, voice search, augmented reality, remarketing, and passage indexing are all likely to impact content marketing in 2021 and beyond.

Getting in on content marketing trends is good. Do that.

Getting in on the ground floor by anticipating the next trend is even better. Do that, too. The signs are there. All you have to do create it.

Have I missed anything? What do you see as the biggest trends in content marketing for 2021? What predictions do you have about the future?

The post Content Marketing in 2021 and Beyond appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/content-marketing-and-beyond/ via https://neilpatel.com

See the original post, Content Marketing in 2021 and Beyond that is shared from https://imtrainingparadise.weebly.com/home/content-marketing-in-2021-and-beyond via https://imtrainingparadise.weebly.com/home

[phawareglobal]

Roham Zamanian, MD - Race Against PH - phaware® interview 345

Roham Zamanian, MD is the Director of the Adult Pulmonary Hypertension (PH) Program at Stanford University Medical Center.

In this episode, he discusses the 20h Annual Virtual Race Against PH 5K/Fun Run, taking place at Stanford on November 1st, 2020 #raph20virtual

Register for the 20th Annual Race Against PH 5K: med.stanford.edu/raceagainstph

Enter this week's Bubble Contest (Oct 19-23)

Steve Van Wormer: Hello, and welcome to another episode of I'm Aware That I'm Rare, the phaware podcast. My name is Steve Van Wormer from Phaware Global Association. We're bringing you another episode, focusing on the Race Against PH taking place virtually on November 1st for Pulmonary Hypertension Awareness Month.

Today, our guest is Dr. Roham Zamanian. He's an associate professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Stanford University Medical Center. He specializes in the treatment of pulmonary hypertension, right heart failure, pulmonary embolism. With 13 years of subspecialty experience work in pulmonary vascular disease, Dr. Zamanian is considered one of the leading national experts in clinical trials and drug development for PH. Welcome, Dr. Z. How are you?

Dr. Roham Zamanian: Hi, Steve. Great to be on with you. Thanks for having me.

Steve: Absolutely. Dr. Zamanian called me about a month ago, as the lead in to this race this year. Because of COVID, it’s going to be virtual, to help radiate this in a way that's a little bit different than it has been in past years. This is the 20th anniversary for the Race Against PH. But this year, as I said, it's virtual. So what are some of the things that are happening in and around Stanford to prepare for that, doctor?

Dr. Zamanian: Steve, first and foremost, thanks again for doing this and helping spread the word. This is of huge importance to us. The 20th anniversary is something that we didn't want to delay. A lot of people get together and start working many months in advance for our Race Against Pulmonary Hypertension. As you've mentioned, this is our 20th year and it's a special year for us.

It starts with organization of the race circuit. Getting all the nuts and bolts figured out. Getting the permissions from the university, because we always do it on Stanford University campus. That's one of the major things for us. We love the campus. We love how people can interact. So, it takes a village. Our front office staff gets really busy with getting the nuts and bolts down. Especially this year with COVID and the interruption from COVID, it's been challenging as you can imagine.

So, we've had to rethink this. The first step was, heck no, we're not going to let COVID get in our way. We're going to still do it. The second part of it was, how are we going to do it and what is the context in the virtual world that we all live in and how can we make this an awareness event, despite it not being in person? I think hopefully everyone will enjoy.

Steve: For people that are listening just to get information about the race, that can be done at the Stanford Race Against PH website. That is med.stanford.edu/raceagainstph. That's where you'll find all the information about the race this year and all the details. What does that really mean? When does this start? Technically, it takes place on November 1st, but a virtual race starts whenever you want. Where's it going to be held? It's going to be held anywhere this year. So, that means people can participate virtually by running, jogging, walking on a trail, on the road, on a treadmill, on a track. So, it’s your own race at your own pace, I should say. Also, wanted to let the listeners know… who does this benefit?

Dr. Zamanian: The good news is we've done a lot. Certainly, it hasn't been as much as finding a cure, but it is the path. So the race has gone to fund the Ewing Family Fund at Stanford. The proceeds have been spent on research that involves finding new therapeutics. At Stanford, we've had three therapies from bench to bedside. We're working on a third one right now.

It's gone to education. We have the longest standing official curriculum based pulmonary vascular disease fellowship in the United States, if not the world. That has graduated more than 25 physicians, I'm one of them, who have all become leaders in pulmonary vascular disease. It's supported some of their research ideas as well.

So, we've had a ton and ton of research that's been performed. I can give you examples. We have published on the basics of pulmonary hypertension. Dr. Rabinovich's lab, Dr. Vinicio de Jesus Perez, Dr. Edda Spiekerkoetter, those are all my colleagues who are in the lab and some of the proceeds have gone to help them develop certain projects.

We have a database and a biobank on the clinical side that has been really helped by some of the proceeds from the race. The things that we've published on, you can read in the literature. Including identification and recognition of methamphetamine as a cause of pulmonary hypertension and how methamphetamine use patients do with pulmonary hypertension. To looking at blood marker signatures of the disease. And looking at a disease solely based on the blood signature, and what does that blood inflammation signature tell us about the disease? So, I can list so many publications. There are hundreds of publications that have sprung out from the activities of the faculty of the Wall Center. All of them are in one way, linked to the activities of the Wall Center, including the Race Against PH.

This event is not solely an event to support research at Stanford. For us, we feel like this event is giving back to the community and raising awareness. We have, with the support of so many people in the community, some of the other sponsors and colleagues, we often have more than a thousand people show up or register for the race. We've been very, very successful too, spreading the word about pulmonary hypertension. There are even times that I walk around Palo Alto or different parts of the Bay area, I see people wearing our Race Against PH shirts. So for us, it's not only an event to help develop funds or support of research and educational mission of our program, but also an awareness event.

Steve: For sure. It's been so great over the years, and I've attended many of these. I will say all races and walks and golf tournaments and all that stuff is wonderful for any disease state, pulmonary hypertension included. But this one is very special with community, with pharmaceutical supporters, with your staff and the professionals at Stanford. Especially, these race teams with families, ones that are in the fight and that are there every year. Even ones that have tragically passed, are still very strong supporters of the work you guys are doing.

Dr. Zamanian: That's the way for us to take a step forward and hopefully move towards a cure altogether. By really taking the fight to this disease and unifying together, even in the hardest of times, in the midst of a COVID pandemic that has turned everyone's lives upside down. Really, that's the importance of this event for us. We like to say a little pandemic is not going to get in our way.

Steve: You guys have patients and families that come from all over that receive care and treatment, whether it be evaluation or transplant or whatnot. I would think that a lot of these people are not necessarily members of the local community. So, maybe they've moved back to other parts of the country, or world for that matter. So, it's kind of an interesting endeavor that there's the hope or possibility that people are going to be taking part of this virtual race from many parts across the country or the world.

Dr. Zamanian: That would be so amazing. We have had patients who come and stay with us prior to going through their transplantation and go back to their own communities. There are many people that I could think about of that nature. There are international patients. There are East coast patients of ours. I do hope that we have made such an impact for them so that they will remember to participate.

Like in many, many fields, this pandemic has really disrupted our daily activities, but it's also brought technology to the forefront. I tell you, my parents, they were not a zoom friendly mom and dad for me until the pandemic. Now, they've learned how to zoom so we could see each other. So I think that the advancement of technologies has really allowed the community, and any community, any workspace to come together, maybe even a little bit too efficiently.

We're hoping that this is going to be the platform for us to bring those patients or family members or caregivers, or whoever has been part of the pulmonary hypertension family from the Stanford University program to come back to us. To celebrate the memory of their loved ones or celebrate the achievement of their loved ones. Or take the fight to PH or whatever it is that they view this event as. I'm really, really excited that using technology, we can bring people together.

Steve: On November 1st this will be, as we said, a virtual event. So we'll have links in the show description here, how to log in. But doctors, patients, people, nurses from across, not just Stanford, but all over the community are going to upload videos and share as we see them racing in their different places. I believe you and some of your team are going to be sending us videos of that as well, or logging in on the day?

Dr. Zamanian: Yeah, absolutely. Hopefully entertaining content. And the folks who log on will get the opportunity to see their physicians in another light, shall we say? Hopefully it'll be very, very entertaining. But at the same time, I do want to say that they don't have to wait till November 1st. We have activities launched on our website, as you mentioned, Steve. Med.stanford.edu/raceagainstph, one word.

That includes a photo contest and several other activities that you could already begin to partake in. Hopefully we'll actually maybe even begin to put out some content into that website before November 1st. So, please, please go there. Look, support, and participate in the activities that are already existing.

Steve: That is true and 100% correct. Including, for this particular episode when people are listening, the one for this week that we're in is a contest called Time to Blow Some Bubbles. It's going to be sponsored by the Wall Center at Stanford. This particular contest is October 19th through the 23rd.

As we've discussed on other episodes here, PH patients do six minute walk tests. But today we're going to ask that people do a six minute bubble blowing contest. What that means is we want people to blow or create their best bubbles in six minutes. Whether that means attempting to look as goofy as possible, you can blow gum bubbles, you can blow soap bubbles, however you want to do it. However silly you want to make yourself look, you can do that. Send your photos of your silliest bubble blowing looks.

That deadline for that submission is Friday, October 23rd at 3:00 PM Pacific. So make sure you include your name on the image file. Again, the link will be in the show description here, and you can get the further details at med.stanford.edu/raceagainstph.

Dr. Zamanian, thank you. I really appreciate it. We're looking forward to continuing this all throughout October, as we go into awareness month here to the Race Against PH on November 1st.

Dr. Zamanian: Thank you, Steve. I really, really appreciate it. I have to say on behalf of the faculty and the staff of the adult pulmonary hypertension program, we're really grateful for everyone who participates in this. Go there, do the contests. You could do a little costume contest later on in the month, I think that's what's happening, as well. But Steve, I have to say that we're grateful to you and phaware for giving us a voice, as well. Frankly, what we do best is medicine and care of patients in medicine. And you all have talent. Everyone in this community has talent. We're really grateful that you and the phaware team allows us that exposure. Again, we all have personal reasons. When we come together, I hope it shows everyone, and certainly it gives me hope, that we can really make a big dent in this disease.

Steve: Well, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for being here. And everybody, we'll look forward to seeing you all between now and November 1st. Thank you so much.

Learn more about pulmonary hypertension trials at www.phaware.global/clinicaltrials. Never miss an episode with the phaware® podcast app. Follow us @phaware on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube & Linkedin Engage for a cure: www.phaware.global/donate #phaware #ClinicalTrials @PHatStanford

Listen and View more on the official phaware™ podcast site

[empmoniitor]

HOW CAN YOU MAKE SURE YOUR REMOTE TEAMS MEET DEADLINES? HERE ARE 7 TIPS

Many small, as well as large businesses, are relying on remote workers for good reasons. On one hand, it seems to be budget-friendly, and on the other hand, there is a large pool of talent out there available from which you can select for your business. However, managing remote teams is also a challenging task.

While working remotely, your workers might feel isolated and not feel like they are a part of your team, which might result in your workers not taking up their job seriously. They might start to neglect to do work on time. It is your responsibility to make sure your remote workers meet deadlines on time and are reliable. Here, in this article, we have shared 7 tips that will definitely help you out in this –

TRACK BIGGER TASKS AND BREAK THEM INTO PHASES.

When you have a larger project and choose to entrust a more difficult job to remote staff, it will be unwise to send them all of the projects at once. More extensive programs will usually be separated and divided into smaller concrete sections, with a particular timeline provided for each of these smaller projects. You should give the whole project to the remote employee after it is completed, then split it into milestones. Each of these goals will include a timeline, so if you review the first component and are convinced the remote team will do it, give the remainder of the project a green light to proceed on.

This method, you make sure half of the project is completed on schedule and the finished result is as you expect. Always, note to coordinate and track how each project process can progress, and offer feedback as well.

COMMUNICATE FREQUENTLY.

If you decide to collaborate with remote staff, you also need to connect with them. One of the pitfalls of not working in the same workplace is a loss of coordination, but this hindrance is quickly solved with modern technologies. You may use Skype or Facebook messenger, or some other service that enables easy video chat communication.

All of the aspects you need to figure out is the time period you should be working inside. Quite frequently, remote staff means specific time zones, and it’s important that you often take this into account. Because of this time difference, you can set a deadline a day earlier to guarantee that the content delivers on schedule and that you have ample time to make changes if required.

USE MANAGEMENT AND PRODUCTIVITY TRACKING SOFTWARE

In order to keep everything managed, organized, you as a manager need to make sure that your remote workers have the right platform to collaborate, edit, and submit their daily assignments. To improve and enhance efficiency there are a lot of project management tools present in the market like Asana, Todo.vu, etc.

Also, as a manager, you need to implement some great communication software like Telegram, Zoom, Skype, etc. through which communication can take place between teammates. These communication tools will be great if your team works in different time zones. You can update and send instructions to them anytime over chat.

Moreover, it is very crucial to track the progress and the productivity of your employees to create more realistic deadlines for future assignments and projects. Productivity measurement software like EmpMonitor proves to be worthy of tracking productive and non-productive hours of individuals and companies. EmpMonitor is an ultimate productivity monitoring software and time tracking tool which comprises many rich features, making it an ideal choice for companies and individuals.

EmpMonitor helps to monitor employees in real-time. It keeps a track of productive, and unproductive hours thereby giving you accurate productivity results.

It tracks down the individual’s idle time, thereby improving efficiency.

EmpMonitor records live screenshots, log every single keystroke, which helps you know what activity a particular employee has performed.

You can check your employees browsing history, apps and websites used.

EmpMonitor keeps track of your employees attendance and helps you know the absenteeism rate of your company.

It totally runs in stealth mode, thereby not interrupting your employees work.

Get detailed reports and insights in the form of intuitive charts and graphs which are easy to understand and saves time.

Other important features include – Social Network Blocking, Application Blocking, Website Blocking, Website Time Tracker,Application Time Tracker, Track Used Applications (sorted by different types), and many more.

Want to see how EmpMonitor Works ?  Get 15 days Free Trial by Clicking the Link Below –

BE A GOOD TEAM PLAYER.

Project management is all about honesty, trust, and making 100% sure that the whole team is comfortable in coming up to you with issues before they even become problems. One of the best ways to strengthen your relationship with your workers is rather than positioning yourself as the deadline-wielding overlord, you better put yourself on the team.

You will go a long way if you walk side by side, shoulder to shoulder with your team. Do not fail to communicate with your employees on a daily basis via actions, and worlds. Make them believe that you are there always to help them succeed.

People would always be inspired to reach targets and meet deadlines because they have an obligation to contribute to the whole team’s progress, rather than only having stuff finished to escape the project manager scolding.

HOLD A BALANCED WORKLOAD

As a manager, it is your major responsibility to ensure that the workload on your team is manageable and is totally realistic to meet the set deadlines. Overworked, the frazzled employees will not work with their whole hearts and lose interest. Work overload will also cause mental stress to the employees who are not at all great.

Although, there is no denying that, one cannot guarantee a smooth workflow all the time. But you can manage the workload by initiating monthly or weekly planning sessions. Motivate your remote employees, keep a check on your team and make sure they are given with enough resources and ample time to get their respective tasks done.

MEET YOUR TEAM MEMBERS – DAILY CHECK-INS

If you want your remote teams to meet deadlines on time, you must check in with your people and projects regularly. A simple check-in weekly or daily to ensure everything is running well with your team is very necessary. The rewards of checking in also go in two ways:

It allows the team leader a chance to address any questions regarding scheduling (and they’ll be truthful with you if you’ve built the correct kind of relationship).

It also offers you, as the manager, a good view of where you’re at and if there are any issues regarding work that may not be ready in time. Quick personal chats or one on one conversation is more preferable for this.

Important Tips & Tools for Team Leads to Manage Remote Workers

11 Productivity Tips For People Working From Home

Pros And Cons of Remote Work: Will Your Employees Adopt?

MAKE SURE THE RELEVANT INFORMATION IS ALWAYS AVAILABLE

One of the most vital things that are needed for your remote teams to meet deadlines is the availability of information whenever they need it. This important information includes deadlines, tasks, client details, project guidelines, and other important information necessary for completing the project on time. In addition to providing a project plan or brief at launch, make sure you have recorded the details at a location where people can find it easily.

So, the above mentioned are some of the ways to make sure your remote teams meet deadlines on time. To pull it off, you and your team need strong communication and a sense of responsibility. Also, proper tech tools stack is important to smoothen the workflow. In the end, all you need is a competitive, responsible team, on whom you can trust.

Originally Published On: EmpMonitor

[cksmart-world]

The completely unnecessary

new analysis

by Christopher Smart

April 14, 2020

TRUMP: FLIP A SWITCH AND BACK TO NORMAL

Here's how it will work: The president will flip a switch and we'll go right back to normality, as if none of this ever happened. Twenty million people furloughed by Covid 19 will go right back to work at places that will resume business as if it were Groundhog Day. Unemployment will fall to 2 percent and the Dow will shoot right up to 30,000. Employers will pay back rents and make right on past due loans. And the best part is the disease will simply disappear. Now, there are those frowny-faces who say if people jump back to life as we knew it too early, the virus will go back on a rampage, like an Australian wildfire. They'll say things like, the coronavirus hasn't changed and one person could infect an entire city, and faster than you can say pandemic, the entire country will be infected. But don't listen to those people, they're the ones who warned of the danger in the first place. President Trump is now faced with “the most difficult decision” of his life and will consult his Ouija Board and Big Business Buddies in order to know when the time is right to “Open Up The Country.” Then he'll host a big, national party like you've never seen. It will be very good. Very, very good. Just tremendous. Our numbers will be great.

DAMN THOSE GREEDY DEMOCRATS

Well, they're at it again, those blankety-blank Democrats who are trying to bankrupt everybody and everything with their horrible greed. We know this to be true because Utah Sen. Mike Lee said so: “They got greedy and now... the American people are going to suffer because of Democratic greed.” And when has Mike Lee been wrong about anything. Never — that's when. See, the Republican Party, which is hyper-sensitive to the trials and tribulations of the little guy — remember the trillion dollar tax cuts they gave to all those little, everyday millionaire people — want to put another $250 billion into a loan program for small businesses struggling to survive the coronavirus pandemic. But noooooo, the stinkin' Dems won't go along unless more money also is added for hospitals, state and local governments as well as food aid for families starving during the pandemic lockdown. Can you believe the out and out greed of those sonofabitching Democrats? It's bad enough they want to pass laws guaranteeing a living wage and universal health care, but during this crisis you'd think they'd quit with the partisanship shenanigans and do things the right way — Lee's way.

LEGISLATORS KNOW BEST (HOW TO GOVERN SLC)

This is what we know for sure: Government closest to the people is best, except when it isn't. That's been a Republican rallying cry since before they took the majority in Congress — back when they couldn't stop talking about term limits. Of course, in Utah the last person who remembered when Republicans weren't in the majority at the State House died with TV dinners and 8-track tape players. Although city governments, particularly Salt Lake City, are closer to the people, does not mean they're better — Republican legislators don't like the way they do stuff in the Capital City. For example, the Leg didn't like the way the Salt Lake City Council zoned the Yale-Harvard district to discourage McMansions, like the Garage-Mahal — so they undid it. And they didn't like the way Salt Lake City was developing its industrial west side, so legislators usurped control and called it The Inland Port of Congestion and Pollution. It's just a coincidence that former House Speaker Greg Hughes owns land in the area. So, it's no surprise that when Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall ordered folks to stay home to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus, that House Speaker Brad Wilson said legislators might undo that, too, because they know best. And besides, Mayor Mendenhall doesn't attend priesthood meetings.

WHAT KIND OF MAN

What kind of a man dismisses disease experts as they warn of a coming pandemic.

What kind of man misleads his people as a deadly virus washes across the land.

What kind of man seeks political gain while thousands fall sick and die.

What kind of man berates those who speak the hard truth of death all around them.

What kind of man brags of his 'fabulous' deeds while doctors and nurses cry out for help.

What kind of man can find within himself no empathy for the dying but sees them only as the wrong kind of numbers.

What kind of man takes credit for any success but blames others for his failures.

What kind of people would keep such a man for their leader.

Post script — So, this is the time when people put aside their differences to help each other, except when it comes to grabbing toilet paper at the supermarket — then, it's every woman for herself. Toilet paper is the new currency, kinda like cigarettes at the penitentiary. Want a surgical mask? You got any TP? During the pandemic of 2020 only essential businesses remain open — and that includes liquor stores. But some Utah State Liquor Store employees, who are on the frontlines of the deadly fight against Covid 19, have been wondering aloud why liquor stores are essential — undoubtedly they're teetotalers. Imagine if the liquor stores closed for even one week. Violent crime would go through the roof. Drinkers jonesing for their daily fix would be beating their husbands and wives. They'd be kicking over the neighbor's garbage cans and yelling at children and dogs. It'd be like putting a big sign in the window of the supermarket that said: “No Toilet Paper Here.” When times get tough, you gotta have booze and toilet paper — not necessarily in that order. Speaking of which, in countries that are a little more, shall we say, civilized, they don't use toilet paper at all — they have bidets. We know what you're thinking, who would sit on a water fountain? But if you ever had a case of Tourista in Turkey, as some on the staff here at Smart Bomb have, you would quickly be convinced bidets are the way to go. Wilson and the band will back us up on that (no pun intended). Further, you would come to believe that toilet paper is a capitalistic plot preying on people's most basic needs to sell a commodity that when used properly (sorry for the visuals) is by its very definition less than sanitary and by comparison with free-flowing water, completely lacking in aesthetics. But that's the way it is, here in America, where interrupting tradition takes a deadly plague.

Well, that about does it for another week of heroic deeds by doctors, nurses and EMTs who are risking their lives and those of their loved ones in the fight against the invisible enemy that is smaller than the head of a pin but has thus far claimed the lives of over 23,600 Americans (April 4, 8 a.m. MDT) and more than 118,000 worldwide. So, Wilson, plug in the guys and pull down your masks and take us out with a song for the times:

I see the bad moon a-rising / I see trouble on the way I see earthquakes and lightning / I see bad times today Don't go around tonight / Well, it's bound to take your life There's a bad moon on the rise...

(John Fogerty, Bad Moon Rising)

Addendum: During this difficult time for newspapers please make a donation to our very important local alternative news source Salt Lake City Weekly at PressBackers.com, a nonprofit dedicated to help fund local journalism. Thank you.

[workfromhomeyoutuber]

Silverfin: Seasoned Ruby Developer

Headquarters: Ghent URL: https://www.silverfin.com/

If you’re any good at Ruby, this is probably not the first job ad you’ve seen, so we’ve done our best to stand out while also accurately presenting what we’re all about. If it sounds like you would enjoy working with us, don’t hesitate to apply or drop us a line with questions on engineering-recruitment@silverfin.com. Ahum. Here it comes. What’s a Silverfin? At Silverfin we’re trying to apply the promise of software to the age-old industry of accounting. With our SaaS we’re automating a large chunk of the busy-work that accountants are currently handling manually, and are building new tools so they can provide better services to their customers. We aim to optimize their workflow in such a way that accountants can spend more time on the much more impactful and rewarding work of advising their customers, the business owners. The good news is we’re succeeding in doing exactly that. Every day more than 15.000 financial service professionals use Silverfin to help and advise more than 200.000 businesses. Our customers adore us! The even better news is there’s still plenty left to work on, and that’s where we hope you come in. What makes the engineering team at Silverfin special? We’re a remote-first engineering team of 25 people distributed in 14 different countries. A priority for us is maintaining proper work-life balance. We avoid meetings as much as possible, accept deadlines only when absolutely necessary, and never expect anyone to work longer hours than they’ve signed up for. A day in our working lives is pretty boring in this regard, and we feel that’s exactly how it should be. Working with us means you can be flexible with your schedule. It’s OK to disappear for a few hours in the middle of the day to run some errands, get a haircut, pick up the kids — whatever reason, you don’t need to explain yourself. You also fully decide when you take time off: our team is sufficiently varied and well organized that there are always enough people around to handle the load, and in the rare cases it’s not, we will decrease the load instead of asking people to move their holiday. Being remote-first means we favor asynchronous communication. We don’t shy away from chatting in Slack, but the important decisions or discussions are done in Gitlab issues, over email, or in our wiki, so there’s a written, persisted record. We’re mindful of maintaining long chunks of focussed time, which means we avoid @-mentions or PMs on Slack, and other triggers and interrupts. We encourage using Slack’s DnD function, especially when you’re not working! We’d be really happy to welcome you in our #dev channel, but it’s not just virtual: we make sure we regularly get to see each other in real life too. Twice a year we fly the whole engineering team together to a different location in Europe, and at least once a year we join up with the rest of the company so we can spend some time together with the other departments. What does working at Silverfin look like? We work in nimble teams around 5 people in size, with each team taking ownership of a specific set of features of the application. Teams are responsible for a full slice across the stack, so both the backend as well as the frontend of each part is maintained by the same people. You’ll be supported by our UI designer who develops and maintains HTML and CSS components into a reusable UI-framework, and even builds Vue.js prototypes where necessary, handling compatibility problems with different browsers for you, and making sure everything is responsive as well. Our ops team ensures things run smoothly, deploys happen correctly, and will work with you when issues should arise. We’re enthusiastic followers of the devops mindset, which means ops and developers work together to solve problems, and empower each-other to be self-sufficient, instead of throwing problems over the wall to the “other side”. Our stack is Vue.js and vanilla JS with a sprinkling of jQuery on the frontend and an up-to-date Rails monolith on the backend. We use PostgreSQL and Redis for persistence and caching, and everything is running on a Kubernetes cluster in Google Cloud. Our daily tools include GitLab, Quip and Slack, with Zoom as our remote conferencing tool of choice. No code gets deployed without a code-review by a peer and testing is a must. Our pipeline automates deployment when the suite is green, and deploys happen dozens of times a day. Each team is currently doing Kanban, but they’re free to follow whatever process suits them best. There are regular retros held to work towards continuous improvement. Software for accountants is not considered to be very exciting, but we have our fair share of technical challenges. To give you a sense of scale: our database exceeds 7TB*, and our largest table recently crossed the 10 billion row mark. We interface with more than 30 different external APIs, and provide third parties an API of our own. *: Our ops team noted that this actually isn’t that hard to achieve if you’re just indexing everything, but it still sounds impressive, right? What does your future look like? Personal growth is key to staying motivated. At Silverfin you don’t need to move to management in order to get promoted. We see the individual contributor track and the management track as two different growth paths which every engineer can follow and switch between. You can be promoted, including pay raises, as a contributor just like as a manager. Everyone has a €1000 yearly budget to spend on conferences, courses, workshops or other training to improve their skills and level up. This also includes accommodation, travel costs. If the conference is on a workday you’ll get paid like any normal day. Silverfin colleagues regularly visit conferences across the world. Are you going to Euruko this year? Come say hi! We’re looking to hire a lot of new colleagues, and by the end of the year we’d like to have a couple of more teams. Each new team would also need a new teamlead, and we prefer to promote from within the engineering team. This means if you’d like to step onto the management track, there will be plenty of opportunities to do so in the near future. We pro-actively keep track of who would be interested, and provide feedback and learning opportunities to work towards such a goal. What are we looking for?

You’re experienced in both Ruby and Rails, and also understand where the boundaries lie between them. You can code in Ruby without any of Rails’ training wheels if necessary.

You’re up for mentoring coworkers and can give in-depth, productive feedback during code reviews. While you appreciate the small stuff, you recognize bikeshedding and can avoid its pitfalls.

You code with reason and can justify the important decisions you made during development.

You can communicate clearly in English, both written and verbally.

You know and can apply best practices when relevant. That means the usual like version control, testing, and refactoring; but also higher level concepts such as good object oriented design.

You're aware of the trade-offs involved in proper engineering and can make balanced business decisions, keeping in mind all the stakeholders of the project.

You’ve got opinions on code design and you can discuss them, but you’re professional enough to not let those opinions get in the way of a consensus if necessary.

What can we offer you?

Actual, proper work-life balance

Choose your own working hours and work 100% remotely

Personal growth training and opportunities

Join a distributed remote-first engineering team with 25 colleagues in 14 different countries

A refreshing work environment with professional, friendly and welcoming colleagues

A €1000 yearly budget for conferences, courses, workshops or other expenses that will improve your skills

Requirements

You have at least 4 years of experience working with Ruby, or 2 years of experience with Ruby and 4 years in other languages.

You get Rails

Your work hours have some overlap with EU business hours (we require your local timezone to be within CET +/- 3h)

Nice to have’s These would be nice but are definitely not necessary. Don’t worry if none of the following applies to you.

Experience as a remote worker in a fully remote team

Experience with Javascript (ES6) and frontend frameworks

Experience working with large datasets and the problems they bring

Experience in Fintech

Accounting knowledge

Interested?

Read about how our interviewing process looks like (https://ift.tt/2Xs0x3g) 

Apply for the job right here (https://ift.tt/3b2Nzg4)

Or email us with any questions on engineering-recruitment@silverfin.com

To apply: https://boards.greenhouse.io/silverfin/jobs/4652474002

from We Work Remotely: Remote jobs in design, programming, marketing and more https://ift.tt/2y4Gb5v from Work From Home YouTuber Job Board Blog https://ift.tt/3aZobIn

[paris--vogue]

Everything you Will need To know To make Dollars On the web

Be certain to help keep an eye fixed out for info on scams on the web. Though you will find a myriad of opportunities for yourself to help make cash, some are less than savory. Study assessments of any system you want to employ as part of your on the web technique before you sign to the dotted line for anything at all.

Just one fantastic way to make money on the web is to use a internet site like Etsy or eBay to provide stuff you make your self. Should you have any abilities, from stitching to knitting to carpentry, you'll be able to make a killing by way of on line markets. Men and women want things that are handmade, so join in!

When organizing how you can generate income working on line, in no way set your eggs in a single basket. Preserve as quite a few selections open up as feasible, to make certain you might generally have income coming in. Failure to approach like this can really cost you when your primary web site out of the blue stops submitting function or possibilities.

como ganhar dinheiro na internet

Indication up for your web page that may pay out you to study emails over the system of the day. You are going to simply get backlinks to scan in excess of unique web-sites and read by miscellaneous text. This can not acquire you a lot of time and might shell out good added benefits while in the lengthy run.

A single handy method to earn a living on the web is to start crafting. There are many different internet sites that can fork out you to generate content for many people. Should you have done effectively in writing programs just before, this might be ideal for you. You will get paid to jot down website posts plus more.

If you can be a good author, there are actually lots of chances in your case on-line on the subject of building further revenue. For instance, check out out short article crafting web-sites exactly where you are able to produce content to be used for search engine marketing. Many pay back in excess of a couple of cents for each phrase, which makes it worth your whilst.

You could generate income on the net by playing video games. Farm Gold is a superb site that you simply can log in to and participate in enjoyment video games in the system of your working day in the spare time. You can find quite a few game titles that you choose to can pick from to create this a profitable and entertaining knowledge.

Build a every day agenda for yourself. On the web income is unquestionably tied to the ability to keep at it with a continual basis. This really is no swift fix to plenty of funds. You will need to work diligently each working day. Carve out a selected timeframe daily. Even an hour every day might make a large change after some time!

For those who intend to generate income on the web, be part of a minimum of just one forum very first. You will find there's lot to get learned, and you simply can do so from other people's faults, rather than getting for making your very own. Introduce yourself, inquire concerns and make connections way too. Networking for on the web money-making conditions can turn into incredibly rewarding jobs.

Attempt undertaking surveys. You will find no scarcity of on the net surveys in existence. Surveys might be a terrific way to make money on the internet. Dependent on where you take these surveys, they frequently would not pay quite considerably. On the other hand, they're straightforward to do through down time, as well as money you make from them will rapidly add up.

Prior to deciding to set your heart on earning money, established your house up. Ensuring that that you are free from interruptions can be a very important part within your success. Small children, spouses as well as other men and women can cut you off for the most inconvenient situations. Ensure that your time and efforts is your own private, in order to increase earnings.

Get paid to overview a few of the new products that are out around the current market right now. This is certainly a great way for firms to find out if their new goods undoubtedly are a hit and miss because they pays fantastic cash to obtain an feeling on them. Have the term out on these products and solutions and pull inside the cash.

Try out accomplishing some surveys on the net. You might not make as much cash when you would with a few other types of on the internet get the job done. These surveys generally do not take lengthy, they usually generally just request for the belief. If you be part of a legit survey internet site, these cents can immediately insert as much as some excess income.

Market a lot of the junk you have around the household on eBay. You don't have to pay to setup an account and may list your product or service any way that you want. There are numerous teaching web sites which you can use to have commenced the proper way on eBay.

Supply services to people on Fiverr. This is certainly a website that enables men and women to receive everything they want from media layout to promotions for any flat charge of 5 bucks. There's a a person greenback cost for every assistance that you just offer, however, if you do a large amount, the income can increase up.

If possessing your personal site is really a bit also time intensive, however , you would continue to like to generate and gain income, thing about generating articles or blog posts for current blogs. There are a number in existence, including Weblogs and PayPerPost. Using a minor investigation and also a bit of initiative, you could get set up with 1 of such internet sites and start earning money very quickly.

A lot of people find that they could make added hard cash by completing surveys. You'll find several survey sites on line that may spend you on your viewpoints. All you need is usually a legitimate e-mail tackle. These web sites offer you checks, gift cards and PayPal payments. Be truthful when you complete your information so that you can qualify for that surveys they ship you.

Do a google seek out creating wealth on the net. You might obtain a massive listing of many different solutions. As soon as you find anything that sparks your desire, make sure to do a radical search about opinions about that company. It doesn't matter who you decide on nevertheless, ensure to always be described as a bit cautious about this.

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Try to remember to produce a spending budget prior to deciding to begin to get the job done on the web. You would like to be aware of what your overhead will be, be it the cost of your pc and internet connection should your operate will be totally fully just about, or any supplies you will need if your program is usually to market goods on-line.

[ambernorman222-blog]

TOP PRODUCTIVITY HACKS FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS

As the school season is coming and you'll be shortly overwhelmed with lots of assignments. There are several pupils for whom writing isn't under a nightmare and if you're one of these then do not worry you're not alone. Now with the progress in technology becoming essay help is only a click a way. You may discover thousands and thousands of composing service which gives you with the very best essay in the ideal rate. But inquiring writing support for many of your assignment demands isn't the answer to all. You can't every time invest your hard earned cash for composing solutions, and why don't you try it on your own.

However, how? In this guide, we shed light at the top 10 effective hacks for school students. By following these steps that you can readily compose a great paper in significantly less time.

1. To-do-list:

Building a to-do-list is very important when you truly wish to find the most out of your hectic schedule. You've a lot of stuff on mind and it's not in any way possible to bear in mind each and what so why don't write down it and disperse those jobs for every day of this week. Make certain there has to be an honest deadline since it can allow you to complete your job effectively.

You're able to use a planner, whiteboard, sticky notes, programs, or whatever which you believe works great for you but be certain what you are doing is consistently in front of your own eyes.

2. Prevent ambiguity:

Bear in mind, ambiguity interrupts growth. When you have something on mind, make certain it has to be definite and unique otherwise you'll never have the ability to follow along with your to-do-list. Maintain your activity specific and maintain your mind from ambiguity. Ensure each task shouldn't be over two hoursotherwise, it may be tough for you to handle that, so split it to smaller manageable activities.

3. Learn How to say no more distractions:

One more thing which reduces growth is distractions. Should you truly wish to get the absolute most from your writing task, turn off your cellular phones, tv, in addition to some other items that distract you away from work and focus just on your own work.

4. Concentrate on challenging things :

Proceed through your to-do-list and pick the very time intensive and difficult things and do all these things on your golden hours. This is when you're able to concentrate the ideal.

5. Take naps:

Prevent doing all of the work in 1 go. Spending hours before the pc will reduce off your productivity. Rather, consider breaks and split your work into balls and you'll observe how easily you'll have the ability to finish your job.

6. Exercise:

At least take one hour out of your hectic schedule and workout every day. Exercising isn't simply necessary to the own physical maintenance but also plays a significant part psychological health. Whenever you've got a healthy mind, you eat nicely, stay nicely, and sleep well; in brief, it makes it possible to keep a wholesome way of life. Exercise plays an important function in boosting your resistance and earn endurance.

7. Stay Away from task shifting:

Avoid attempting to multitask. If you're working on a single thing better adhere with it. If you attempt multitasking it is going to reduce your productivity.

8. Practice and more practice:

Exercise makes a man ideal. There are several pupils for whom writing isn't under a nightmare and that can be only because they do not want to write. It is simple to create your composing perfect by training it on a daily basis. Writing isn't merely vital in academic life but also play a significant part in the lifetime. Thus, don't prevent it.

9. Eat healthy and Have Sufficient sleep:

Mostly pupils are night owls; they believe that they could write well during the nighttime, but really sleepless nights kill growth. However tough schedule which you have, do not neglect to take healthful meals and require a great 7-8 hours of sleep and you'll surely find a fantastic shift for you.

College life isn't any doubt the most economical one. You barely get time to get youpersonally. Nonetheless, it's very crucial to take some time for yourself whether you would like to lead a great and wholesome way of life and need to reveal your best on your course. However many missions you've got in line should you follow several straightforward steps given previously will certainly have the ability to improve your productivity and finish all them within the specified time interval. Thus, everything you will need is to think about your self and it is simple to reach your set goal.

[incoherentham]

Strategic Review - Late July 2017

Every month or so I do a review of how my life is going. I’m posting these here now

Positives:

Discovered I like pink moscato

Modified my review system with robustness and decomplecting in mind

Made a bunch of prediction-bets with myself, won a few against Lauren

Cleared out my old anki decks

Studied derivatives and parallel programming

Redeveloped some appreciation for the beauty of math

Housemates came back from their trip and started being awesome and making delicious food all the time

Made homemade sushi and soup

People came over to hang out with me and be social experiment test guinea pigs

Found some new avenues to work on mental health stuff

Negatives:

Confused about effects of supplements

Realized I'd forgotten a whole lot of stuff about R and data science

Worried about maximizing fun and The Culture(tm) at the upcoming CFAR alumni reunion

Pissed off at self-proclaimed Hufflepuffs

Wisdom teeth removal held up in insurance snafu

What’s on my Hot Loop:

Supervised Goals

General

make predictions

strategic reviews

generate + benchmark plans

Testosterone

daily Inboxes

roll to check daily

catchup periods

Community

pulse prn

Clothes

weekly redraw

CPTSD

track episodes

blocks for EMDR

Reunion

track bunnies

dedicated rfis blocks

ML

dedicated blocks for TF

paper catchup

Fathom

dedicted blocks to notate

do visualizer

Benchmarks

Meta

Decomplect - Who, what, when, where why, how

Basics of reasoning - Do the most important thing first, Feedback Loops / Go play outside, Trust your instincts

Track Hours usage

Weekly Predictions roundup every friday

Group tuning

Circling - stay present, authentic

Track speaking time, interrupts

Inboxes

Gmail inbox

Feedly Newest

Anki new/due

Calendar

Social

Speak slow, simply, loud

Curiosity mindset

Testosterone

CPTSD

EMDR

Writing Code

udacity course

programming guide

runtime api docs

Low-Level Programming cards

ML papers cards

Tensorflow cards

Laurenationship

I approve of the algorithm that is you

Level Grinding

TensorFlow

ML papers list

Sort probationary clothes

Listen to Stanford human behavioral biology lecture series on youtube

Parallel programming book, grokking 8086 architecture

Minutiae to absorb

Cooking chemistry facts/vocab from Kitchen Mysteries book

httpd how-to

types of cache associativity

derivative rules

bash shortcuts

info about dropout

what different bid/at betting spreads mean

ML datasets

deep Learning companies/groups

ML algorithms

parallel programming

eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy

intuitive explanation of sines and e

the *music plays* song

set & predicate logic notation

look at the first sharp to figure out the key on sheet music

where things go in my anki decks

file transfer over netcat

how to spell bureaucracy

estimated impact of repealing ACA

translate between orders of magnitude difference in terms of time

Misc scraps

weekly timeboxing summaries

a generator of short intimacy-building exercise (they wound up taking like an hour tho)

I am still looking for people who want to try these out

notes on intentionally building positive self-concept (h/t Kaj Sotala)

a list of awesome public datasets

a list of genetic modifications to consider, from kanzure on hackernews

notes from cryptocurrency talk

R anki cards I want

ideas for a general programming-language cheatsheet anki card template

complecting analysis of my meta/review system

things I want to have 1 or 2-syllable codewords for with my partner

misc sociological studies

meetups to maybe go to

interesting machine learning papers

news feeds I want to keep an eye on

math-heavy papers to attempt reading

website to let you draw a symbol and find out its latex code

how to make cake mix cakes awesome

how symptoms of personality disorders show up (link)

quick breakdown of supplements