#we don’t know what they were like before but can infer they’re more calculating now than ever

[figueroths]

is it way off base to think the butt crushers are/were trying to help lucy but, because they didn’t have the breadth of experience as say the bad kids have through the sheer variety of encounters, just couldn’t face whatever god or monster came for her (or came for all of them)? and now they’re seeking a resolution with better skill and intention following a huge motivating loss

like maybe their heel turn is more about revenge on lucy’s behalf and the bad kids just happen to be in their way because the bad kids are always at the center of some deep shit lmao

[jessiebanethedragon]

White Sands Warm the Cold Sea (pt 9)

Summary: the reader, betrothed to a disgusting Coruscanti Lord flees her home world and lands herself in a plethora of trouble, a ship of clones, and one pirate captain whose cold exterior needs much more than the tropical seaside sun.

Chapter one

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Warnings: Swearing, takes place in time periods where women have dowery's and suchlike. The readers' dad and betrothed are asses.

Chapter Nine: The Night at Sea

The second you attempt to reach behind to untie your corset, your arm spasms. The collision with the hull of the ship has left you shaken and battered and in no position to twist your body to undo the double knotted ties Seil, your handmaiden, would have tied. And your heart aches when you think of her.

You know that you shouldn’t sleep in the dirty clothes and the corset, but with the secure double knots there is no way to undo the ties yourself. And so you pull yourself into the hammock, landing face first, when your back muscles give out, into the netting tied to the wall. With a groan, you don’t even bother trying to move, and you pass out on the ship - having been through the ringer for what feels like a million times in one day.

☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠

“Where is she?” Hunter grumbles when Tech returns to the group, looking up at the stars Hunter was using to calculate their ETA.

“Probably asleep in Echo’s hammock I'd guess.” Tech says plainly, and he watches as his sergeant’s face hardens.

“You need to learn how to follow orders.” He snaps, before going back to the map.

“Sarge,” Tech starts, “you’re displaying worrying symptoms.” He decides on. And under the hat he sees his eye twitch.

The barrage never ended, and the cannons never ceased. How much ammunition either side had left was impossible to guess. This creeping barrage was working. But only just. All they had to do was keep the separatists busy, the regs should be able to manage that at least. And rescue missions were the best kind of mission out there these days…

In the medical bay, Hunter shakes, the wookie child is long gone, and his vod have returned to keep their sergeant company while he heals. They’re angry, and resent him for the return-to-ship order from before. But the carnage that was left of Kashyyyk proved how right he was in securing the safety of Clone Force 99.

“Hunter, your hand.” Tech says looking at the cuts and mangled tissue.

“Kriffing door wouldn’t open.” He explains through drugged eyes. Thinking that the war is over. It has to be over. If not now, it has to be over soon. They can’t continue like this, there can’t be more missions like this. The war has got to be over soon.

Outside, the artillery starts firing again.

Hunter looks at Tech, watching the goggles reflect moonlight, and realises something that, in the chaos of the day, went unnoticed.

“Did Wrecker even lock the cell door?” He interrogates the shorter man in front of him.

“I don’t know.” Tech answers honestly with a shrug. “But even if he didn’t. You know he made the right call.” Hunter grunts in response.

“She’s a Aaray. A danger to us all” He says.

“We’ve been in worse predicaments.” Tech states. Watching as Hunter walks away from yet another conversation of theirs, and he wonders to himself, how long it will take for his captain to start screaming because of nightmares on this clear, calm, night at sea.

☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠

Everything on your left side hurts. The hit from the ship has battered your skin, muscles, and bones. Sleep evades you because the only thing you can focus on is the pain. And when even laying down becomes too much, Gonk moves herself out of where she was curled on your back as you clumsy step out of the hammock, and begin to tread outside.

The three boys are asleep, and part of you chides yourself for being vulnerable in front of them. They could have thrown you in the birg - or worse. But a bigger part of yourself says that you can trust them. Probably more so than you’ve trusted anyone in your life. It’s a naive thought - and perhaps it’s built off of never having someone you can trust before, but a part deep inside of you jumps onto and clings to the idea of putting your faith in these men.

Maybe Crosshair was rough around the edges, and from what you can see, his glare stays with him while he sleeps. It makes you smile a little. And Wreckers exposed scars, they scare you, but the eye patch was so typical of the pirate stories you heard as a child, it’s like living in a fairy tale.

Someone clears their voice behind you.

It’s the Captain, or rather Hunter. Now only in his pants, and tunic, that's been bunched around his forearms in his sleep.

“Plotting something else perhaps?” He asks, crossing his arms in front of him.

“N-no,” you say, annoyed at how easily he makes you nervous. “I couldn’t sleep, I wanted fresh air, and they…” You pause, looking back at the crew. “They’re more manageable when they’re asleep.” The captain lets out a puff of air that's not in annoyance, and you take that as a small victory. And he watches when you crane your neck to look at the stars. He knows it’s because you feel awkward, but in another life, he would’ve found your curious eyes endearing.

“Am I missing something?” Crosshair asks, having woken on his own, and deciding to investigate the scuffle outside.

“Didn’t want the Aaray skulking around the ship.” Hunter answers, “nightmares?” he asks his brother, watching him shake his head no, and with that, one tension is lifted from the sergeants shoulders.

“Are you in pain?” Your voice comes out softly, and they both stare at you unabashedly. “I only mean, i just,” You go to explain. “From earlier the side of the…”

“Hull.” Hunter corrects on instinct, before chiding himself for doing so.

“The Hull, when you caught me…” You motion randomly with your hands as if that helps communicate to Crosshair what you mean, and he stares at you looking tired and vaguely annoyed.

“You’re in pain.” He tells you. And you’re a tad taken back because it hadn't shown on his face that he knew what you meant, let alone made the connection as to why you were awake and hence asked if he too, was hurting.

“I’m okay, I just wanted to…” you try to brush it off

“There’s no point in lying.” Crosshair interrupts, watching at Hunter’s features soften when he also takes in your appearance, leaning against the door, tense and radiating anxiety. He wonders if you’ve ever felt pain like this in your life. Living on a velvet cushion of upper class coruscant would call for little more than flimsiplast cuts. He watches you shrug off Crosshair's comment, intent on being the smallest problem you can possibly be. The man that Hunter was before would be reaching out for you, your messy hair, soft features, and innocence that he knows lesser men are itching to take advantage of.

“You should take that off.” Crosshair nods towards your dress and you gape at him.

“Crosshair!” Hunter barks on instinct, and not standing for the disrespect. He sees your face flush and your arms go around your waist protectively.

“Have I missed something?” A forth voice joins them outside of the bunks and Hunter inwardly groans. Now Tech is awake, what he hoped would’ve been a private nightly stroll has turned into some kind of situation report.

“Shockingly the Aaray is being uptight.” Crosshair moves to the opposite side of the doorway you’re leaning on.

“I don’t think it is fundamentally uptight to want to preserve my own modesty.” You say incredulously, and Hunter notes that you resort to your training as a lady when you become nervous. Just like his men resort to being soldiers when faced with problems.

“Crosshair!” Tech exclaims, glaring at his brother - he really needed lessons in things that are appropriate to say, and things that are not.

“I’m only asking you to take the corset off.” Crosshair says smirking, enjoying how flustered everyone is. And Hunter sees something flash in your eyes.

“Do you think you’re funny?” You snap, and the sniper stops smiling. “Is this a game to you? Clearly you have no concept of the ramifications on a woman should she ever do something like that. Or you have no concept of how dresses and corsets work - which wouldn't surprise me given your temperament.”

Hunter catches a small grin on his face, you’re alive tonight and he hates to admit that he likes it. The inference that Crosshair is too unintelligent to understand womens garments or that no women has let him close enough to understand them is both funny and potentially accurate.

“He does have a point.” Tech chimes in.

“Tech!” Hunter shouts, expecting better from him.

“I mean it might be adding pressure to areas already in pain.” He says quickly, his face as red as a zarrabak. And no one is surprised that he’s caught himself up in the conversation.

Behind all of you - Wrecker snores.

“I-I… can’t.” Your voice is small, and you’re looking at the floor, embarrassment pings in everyone's hearts when they realise that this is an important issue to you, and they’re talking about it like you’re not even present.

“We can give you private space if that's what you require.” Tech speaks up. And when you pause you can hear the waves crash in the night.

“Thank you.” You stammer out. This whole ordeal has become very embarrassing and as much as you want to deny the pain and tell the clones it’s nothing, you know both Crosshair and Tech will see right through whatever lie you construct.

“It’s, it’s just that…” You pause again. Maker if you tell them you can’t do it yourself you’re going to look as pathetic as you feel. “I would need assistance with the ties…” You mumble the last part to your bare feet that poke out under your dress. When you have the courage to look up again, all eyes are looking at Tech. The latter of the three simultaneously having decided he was most equipped for the job.

“Have at it, loverboy.” Crosshair jeers at his brother, and now both you and Tech are blushing madly.

“I’m surprised you're not jumping to the occasion.” Tech cracks back at him. And if you weren’t so self conscious in this moment you’d roll your eyes at how much they argue. Hunter remains deathly quiet.

“Unless she wants it cut off as i’m usually-” “Alright! Alright!” Tech cuts him off, and moves towards you while Crosshair snickers.

“Turn ‘round.” Hunter barks, and while you might think he’s telling you, he’s actually giving an order to Crosshair, as the trooper made no move to divert his eyes. And as Tech undoes just enough buttons to start loosening the corset he sees how taught the ties have become and yanks it towards him for leverage.

“Tech!” You squeal and gasp, trying to get away from him and he accidentally constricts you more. Sending pain shooting all over you as your injured body is put under more stress.

Hunter turns around at the sound of pain and sees both of you shaking, he knows you must be beyond embarrassed and Tech even more so. Your moss coloured dress is unbuttoned and the back pushed aside to reveal the cream corset. Hunter sighs, and pushes his brother aside.

You hear an ‘ow’ from Tech as well as what you suspect is Crosshair's hand connecting with the back of his shorter brother's head. As they walk away you shiver as you realize the captain is standing behind you.

“You’re fine.” He says plainly. Nimble fingers working at the knots quickly, you shake in the absurdity of it all, and the feeling of Hunter exhaling into your hair and neck as he works.

“This is so unbecoming.” You mumble to yourself in shame, jerking when you feel the tips of his hair brush against your skin.

“I recall you saying ‘fuck’ earlier.” Hunter scoffs at you, “I think you’re past unbecoming.” silently praising himself when one knot becomes free, whoever tied them must have known what they were doing because it feels more complicated than half the sail ties on the Muraduer. Then again, your activities of the day probably didn't help the situation.

“Captain, you’re basically undressing me.” You tell him, looking over your shoulder just in time to watch him still at your words. The part of his face you can see in this position is covered by the tattoo, but what the moon and stars manage to light up is stunning nevertheless.

“If you’re worried about modesty, I can’t see any more of your skin than I could before.” He reassures you, and you’re beginning to wonder what kind of man he really is. Hunter is so tender at this moment, so gentle. And yet you know what lies underneath.

Technically what he just told you is a lie, he can see the expanse of your back, and parts of your shoulders. But the way your brows creased in concern as you look back at him makes lying worth it as you relax a little bit. Trying to be annoyed at you for causing him grief, he goes back to the knots.

You gasp and clutch your chest as you feel him loosening the string as the last knot comes free. And you see the shock in Hunter's face when you whip around so he barely catches a glimpse of the slip that sits underneath the corset.

Maker, he thinks to himself, you’re so disheveled and scared by a simple act. He grits his teeth at the thought of how Nython would treat you, someone like you needed soft and gentle touches, words of affirmation. Hunter’s grinding his teeth together as he realizes the pride Nython would have in hurting someone as defenceless as yourself.

But then he thinks about how you held your own against his own crew today. And the captain of the Havoc Marauder thinks you’re not as defenceless as you look.

Tags: @the-mandalorian-clone-lover @peacefulwizardfox @rex-meshla @s1st37 @and-claudia @kamino-mermaid @thelambandthewolffe @starwarsmeninhelmets

@bronvin @myeternalsin @sweetsunflowerkisses @loverofclones @beizm @gunsmoke-blu

@logina6 @wondergal2001 @lafy-taffy @lafy-taffy @m-o-o-n-s-g-o-o-n-s

@starskenobiwan @lordellbell @kaetavlos @violetjedisylveon @​​vergol @Lackofhonor

[nagisasstunningpersonality]

Korosuu Translation - Chapter Three

Sorry, I know it's been a while. Actually, this chapter was super long so I took a very extended break from this entire thing. But I'm back now. If you're new here, this is OFFICIAL content! It's an untranslated (so far) short story, you can find chapters one and two here. I do also need to put out a trigger warning for this one as it involves some voyeurism.

Mirror Time

“Oh right… it seems like there’s a possibility.” Chiba returned to his own desk, and took out his notebook, writing utensils, and a triangle ruler. Chiba started to explain to Hayami, who was stood in front of his desk looking down at his notebook, whilst looking at the diagram. “When you hit the wall with a bullet, it flies out at the same angle as it flies in. Like this.”

[Illustration] A diagram of a sphere bullet ricocheting off a wall. The angle between the bullet and the wall before hitting the wall (incident angle) is the same as the angle between the bullet and the wall when it flies out (reflection angle).

“If you aim without Korosensei noticing, it seems like you can’t do it with a single ricochet.”

At Hayami’s words, Chiba nods whilst writing another line in his notebook. “That’s right. At least twice, but preferably three times or more, but if it ricochets too much the error will increase, and the momentum will drop. We might have to experiment with how many times it’s practical.”

“So, how do you aim for that? I get how to do it once, but I can’t really imagine twice or more.”

[rest will be under the cut, this chapter's long]

Whilst holding his mechanical pencil, Chiba leaned back in the chair and folded his arms. “That’s the problem. For example, in order to hit the target I’ve written here twice, you have to calculate the points that satisfy this diagram.”

[Illustration] An experiment conducted by Chiba to see if it is possible to snipe the target as inferred by the article. By solving the graphic problem as shown in this diagram, it is possible to deduce the point of the wall to aim at in order to hit the target with a bullet.

Whilst he was speaking, Chiba drew a number of right angled triangles on the diagram.

Hayami looked at the diagram and frowned a little. “What’s this? I have to solve this every time?”

“Solving it is necessary,” Chiba replied, and then began to calculate the first position to hit the bullet.

With a sideways glance, Hayami turned to the back of the classroom, where the black metal box usually stood.

“This kind of problem, we could figure it out right away with Ritsu.”

The Autonomous Thinking Fixed Gun Unit AI (classmate) – which is called Ritsu by Class 3E, has been removed since the beginning of the week for maintenance. It’s only for two or three days, but it’s the first time the whole body has been taken out and maintained.

“Even so, I don’t want to rely on her.” Chiba checked the problem he had solved many times, took out the airsoft pistol from his bag, and then stood up. “This is an assassination to see how much I can do as a sniper. I feel like I have to think for myself.”

“Huh? Well, I don’t know.”

“So, Hayami, I want you to place the target in the exact location shown in this diagram.”

Chiba said it simply, but actually aiming was quite troublesome. After accurately measuring the distance with a measuring tape brought from the store room and positioning it, a desk is placed there and a yellow balloon that looks like Koro Sensei is attached.

[Illustration] How to ricochet to a Korosensei balloon…

Chiba had to determine his own standing position and the point at which the bullet would hit first.

“This is bad, can you call move to the window?” After all the work was done, Chiba called out to his friends in the classroom.

With faces full of interest, everyone moves towards the window as they were told, and Chiba squeezes the pistol’s trigger in the direction of the X mark that’s written in chalk on the blackboard. The bullet that was fired hit the blackboard and ricocheted off with a dry sound, then rebounded off the wall on the corridor side, before it headed for the target in the back of the classroom.

The first shot was more than a meter off. The second one was about 30cm. The third and forth shots also missed but not as badly as the first one, and the fifth one hit.

“You did it!”

The classmates who were watching cheered as the balloon broke with a banging sound. But, Chiba’s facial expression didn’t match the mood.

“What’s wrong? Is it that you can get more accuracy if you aim a rifle from a vantage sniping position?”

In response to Hayami’s words, Chiba shook his head. “No, that’s not the case. I knew I could do it this way, but… the problem is that,” Chiba pointed to the blackboard, “it takes too much time to figure out the point with the current method. Actually, there’s also height differences, so we have to do the same calculation in the vertical direction.”

[Illustration] In reality it’s necessary for the sniper to consider height differences. In the case that the sniper and the target are different heights, the ricochet snipe will follow such a trajectory.

[Plain view] A view of the room looking down from above.

[Elevated view] A sideways view. A three dimensional route that seems complicated can be simplified in this way by breaking it down into a plain view and an elevated view.

Takebayashi, who was listening, sighed. “Isn’t it double the work? Isn’t that even more unrealistic?”

“What if you do the calculation first, then everyone can guide Korosensei?” Nakamura said.

Chiba shook his head. “There are two problems with that. One is that you can’t guide the target the way you want. Especially when it comes to such a sever shooting like this, even the slightest misalignment isn’t good.”

Hayami nodded. “It’s not easy for Chiba to make such fine adjustments at this range. What’s the other thing?”

“I want to try and do this assassination without anyone’s help. I also said it before but, it’s kind of a stubbornness thing.”

“Is that right?”

Chiba looked down at the notebook on the desk. “The legendary sniper actually serves a number of moving targets. In other words, they’re aiming in the shortest amount of time they can. That’s something like a method we’re unaware of, or I wonder if there’s a special calculation trick.”

When he said that, Chiba was hit on the shoulder, and raised his head.

Okajima is standing there with a grin. “When you said that, I felt like I realised something!” Okajima gave a big thumbs up and a fearless smile as he said so, looking suspicious in front of Chiba and Hayami.

“Come on boys, get out!”

The fifth class of the day was a PE Class. The classroom is occupied by the girls, and the boys are kicked out into the corridor to change clothes.

“Sometimes I want the boys to do it before. B-because I’ll always only just make it.” Shiota Nagisa complains, stood with a rolled up PE uniform under his arm.

“What are you talking about, Nagisa? It’s fine, this our time to face our fated challenge.”

“Okajima kun, don’t you think it’s irresponsible to do this method by trial and error?”

Ignoring Nagisa’s strained smile, Okajima took a small mirror out of his pocket with a strangely calm expression. Additionally, he also took out a selfie stick.

“Hey you, isn’t that what the girls beat the hell out of us for using the other day??”

Whilst Terasaka Ryouma was gazing at him dumbfoundedly, Okajima tore up some adhesive tape into small pieces and started to attach the mirror to the tip of the selfie stick.

“Well, look. It was a mistake to hold it in a position the girls could see. This time, it’ll be perfect.”

“Isn’t this only adding more flaws to a plan full of holes…?” Said Kimura Justice.

“Hehe, look at it,” Okajima extended the selfie stick smoothly, and started to explain with a calm facial expression. “Well, while the girls are changing clothes, the windows on the corridor side are covered with dark curtains. Therefore, you can’t see what’s inside as it is but-“

“No, it seems that the curtains are there to stop us seeing.”

Ignoring whoever’s voice pointed that out, Okajima continues. “By some blessing, there’s just one small gap in the top window due to a slack in the curtain. The other day I was found by holding a mirror directly here, but today I won’t repeat the same mistake.”

“Then what will you do?”

After turning a fearless smile to Terasaka, who was tired of his face, Okajima held his selfie stick over his head.

“A while ago, when Chiba and the others were trying to shoot, I was secretly setting up the mirror in the classroom. I was pinpointed by the story of the ricochet. One mirror will soon be exposed, but many more mirrors are placed so subtly that no matter how vigilant the girls are, they won’t notice they’re being peeped through.”

[Illustration] Okajima’s new voyeur method, which improves on the experience found using mirrors for voyeurism and relays it with multiple mirrors so it will not be noticed. In principle, no matter how many mirrors you use, what you see from here can be seen by the other party.

“Ah-….. I thought that was the case,” Kimura showed a forced smile.

“Maybe this was in the calculation – huh?”

Okajima looked up at the mirror, frowned at him, and moved his selfie stick slightly. “Okay, I saw it!”

Okajima smiled in gratification, did a small triumphant pose, and deliberately took a compact digital camera out of his pocket with his free hand.

“What’s that?” Nagisa pointed a finger with a dumbfounded look on his face.

Okajima answered with a grin. “As you’d expect, I couldn’t bring out a camera. That would be just like talking loudly in the corridor about taking voyeur photos. That’s why I always carry a point-and-shoot with me in case of these situations. Please pay attention to the point that I don’t compromise with a smart phone.”

No one was listening to that, but Okajima completely disregarded the air in the room and released the shutter.

FLASH!

The camera’s strobe flashed and emitted a small sound.

“Oops, I wouldn’t usually make this kind of mistake,” Okajima said as he turned off the strobe and released the shutter again.

“O-KA-JI-MA!”

The door of the classroom opened forcefully, and the girls in their PE uniforms jumped out at once.

“Agh!”

With a well-coordinated move, the girls cut off any way for Okajima to escape. Okajima shouted with a half cracked voice whilst he was being pulled down on the spot and kicked with terrifying dexterity.

“W-why did I get exposed? The plan should have been perfect!”

“We could see the light from your strobe!” Kataoka looked down at Okajima with a dangerous expression on her face.

“That’s forbidden, Okajima kun.”

At the voice, the girls turn around and look over their shoulders. Standing in front of the open door was Koro Sensei holding a steaming paper bag from his open mouth.

“The idea isn’t bad. It’s not bad, but don’t forget that what you can see through the mirror, you can see from the other side as well. Additionally, if you use a camera’s flash, you may as well be saying ‘please notice me!’.”

After putting up with that speech, the girls shouted all at once. “Why do you look so self-important, you shameless teacher!”

“What kind of motive is there for suddenly coming in through the window when we’re changing!” Kataoka glares at Koro Sensei whilst pulling out a knife for the enemy teacher.

“Niyu, nyuya?! It’s a misunderstanding! I’m trying to inform distorted people like Okajima kun!”

“There’s no use in arguing!”

Moving with all their practised skills, the girls simultaneously held their weapons at the ready for their enemy teacher. They attacked a cowering Koro Sensei by firing BB bullets and using their special anti-sensei material knives.

“That’s why it’s a misunderstanding – hya, my shopping bag tore, and the bao buns I bought with great trouble are-“

Koro Sensei broke out into Mach speed and escaped.

Nagisa muttered. “Bao buns… ah, Koro Sensei was in Shanghai today.”

“Gee, what is this?”

In the background, Okajima, who had footprints all over his body, looked at the compact camera monitor and frowned. When Terasaka, who was standing close, looked into it, the photograph was the figure of Koros Sensei with an armful of the bao buns in a paper bag, pulling a peace sign in the direction of the camera.

-End-

The locker room talk really spoke for itself, huh?

[isitgintimeyet]

Just a Friend

Hope you enjoy the next chapter of this story. Thanks to you all for reading this. You comments are lovely to read.

Thanks to @wickedgoodbooks for the beta

Previous

AO3

Chapter 5: From Facebook to Friends

When I was a little girl, Uncle Lamb would sometimes take me into university with him. I would creep into the lecture theatre and sit at the back watching him as he enthused about Phoenician trade routes, or long gone military strategies. I didn’t really understand what he was talking about, but I loved it anyway. The passion he had for his subject matter thrilled me.

And once the lecture was over, I would join him in his office and we would squeeze together in an old armchair, drinking hot, sweet tea while he tried to explain the principles of a three thousand year old civilisation in words a seven year old would understand.

The armchair is now in my office at the hospital. It looks more than a bit incongruous amongst the standard NHS furniture. The rich green velvet fabric has faded to a shabby eau de nil colour and years of shuffling bottoms have left a large depression in the seat cushion. But I won’t have it reupholstered. I love it as it is. It’s a great reminder of my wonderful uncle. I sit in it and somehow it comforts me, like a soothing hug.

**********************

I glance at the clock as I walk into my office, paper cup of hot, sweet tea in hand, and head straight for Lamb’s chair. Gratefully, I sink into its depths and take a tentative sip of the steaming liquid before closing my eyes for a moment. The surgery was long; much longer than anticipated—having taken all morning and most of the afternoon, in fact. It had also been far more complicated—my original plans for keyhole surgery had to be changed, but, eventually, we completed the operation successfully. I’m always proud of my theatre team, but never more so than in situations like this.

And now, after hours of concentration, I feel in need of some light relief. I can go home, have a wonderfully reviving shower and then what? I know that Dougal is taking Geillis out for a meal tonight, so she’s not available. Mary and Anna are both working nights this week, so no joy there. Other friends live too far away for an impromptu midweek activity.  I could go to the gym. I should go to the gym. Or… more likely, I’ll go home, have cheese on toast, a glass of wine and watch ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ for the fifteenth time instead.

I reach for my phone to check for messages.  A notification for a Facebook friend request appears on my screen. I very rarely get new friend requests—other than the odd random gentleman hoping, I presume, to make some sort of connection. I always delete immediately.

And, yes, the request is from a gentleman—one Jamie Fraser. The profile picture is definitely Samsonite Jamie, even wearing the Scotland rugby shirt I fingered whilst foraging through his suitcase. I click accept. Why not? I don’t think I have anything too embarrassing on my posts. In fact, I don’t use it very often at all.

Neither, it seems, does Mr. Fraser. His cover photo shows a very youthful bunch of Scottish rugby supporters and his recent timeline seems to comprise mostly of being tagged in photos by Laoghaire Mackenzie. Is it my imagination, or does he have a resigned look on his face on each of their ‘selfies’?

My tea is cool enough to drink now without scalding my tongue. I put my phone down and take a large gulp whilst considering tomorrow’s workload. My job is a series of highs and lows. Today, for example, started as routine, slumped to a worrying low, before peaking at a very relieved high. Tomorrow appears to be an easier day, certainly—a review of patients’ case notes in the morning followed by an outpatient clinic in the afternoon. All follow up patients, and all doing well as far as I know, so tomorrow is shaping up to be a very good day.

I open up my phone again. Facebook messenger is encouraging me to ‘say hi to your new Facebook friend.’  Without thinking, I send a little waving hand emoji to Samsonite Jamie.

I have no sooner put the phone down than it pings. Waving hand returned. I smile. What are we… thirteen years old? Next I’ll be asking him out for an Irn Bru and a bag of chips.

Ping again.  

You owe me…

Shit! The stain on his t-shirt, no doubt. I watch the dots on the screen. Perhaps he’s calculating the cost of a dry cleaner, or a new t-shirt.

You promised me an ice cream.

You up for buying one for me tonight?

I hesitate for a moment. I hope Jamie doesn’t think I’m after him or anything like that. I mean, he’s not really my type. As I’ve said before, I’ve always been attracted to academic, cerebral kind of men like Uncle Lamb, rather than Viking marauders.

And I’ve never subscribed to the idea that men and women can’t be friends. One of my closest friends at university was a man—Joe Abernathy.  If it wasn't for the fact that he is currently three thousand miles away, working in Boston, I would be arranging platonic ice cream outings with him.

So, deciding I have nothing to lose, I type my response.

If you can get to the kiosk by 6:30, it should still be open

A brief pause, then the response.

Great. See you there?

****************

Even at a distance, I recognise him sitting at a table next to the kiosk. No white t-shirt today, it looks like some sort of check lumberjack shirt. I breathe a sigh of relief. Not what I would call ‘first date’ clothing. Which is handy, seeing as I’m wearing ripped jeans and an oversized Aran jumper. I’m clean, presentable and fresh-smelling but definitely not dressed to impress.

He stands up when he sees me and greets me formally with a handshake. His hands are warm and dry—no nervous, sweaty palms here, which is another good sign. His shirt is blue, red and cream flannel and actually quite hideous.

“I hope this ice cream lives up tae ma expectations,” he says with the merest hint of challenge.

I crane my neck and look him straight in the eye. “No doubt at all. Cherry bakewell, is it? Double cone?”

“Aye. With a flake too. Compensation, ye ken.”

He stands aside to allow me to make the purchases. Before accepting the cone, he picks up half a dozen or so paper napkins and stuffs them in the pocket of his jeans.

“I’m prepared fer ye now. Do yer worst, Ms Beauchamp.”

I ignore his clear inference and follow him to a nearby bench.

“I can manage to eat and walk at the same time, you know,” I say in mock indignation.

“Hm,” he replies. “All the evidence sae far suggests the contrary. I need proof afore I believe it.”

There’s a moment of silence as we both focus on our ice creams. I lick neatly all the way around, trying to prevent any rogue drips trickling down the cone. Jamie pulls the flake from his cone and consumes it in two mouthfuls. He looks at me and laughs.

“Caught me. I’m a bit of a bugger fer chocolate,” he mumbles before swallowing.

“Right,” he continues, much more clearly now. “I suggest we get all the boring stuff out of the way. Ye ken, name, age, family, job, blah, blah blah. I’ll go first, if ye like.”

I nod my agreement.

“Sae, I’m James or Jamie Fraser. I’m thirty years old. Since our last conversation I am most definitely single. I live in Glasgow, obviously, but grew up on a farm near Inverness. My parents still run the farm. I have one sister, Jenny, who’s married tae Ian, my childhood friend. I have one nephew—a grand little lad known as Wee Jamie and a wee baby niece, Maggie . And I dinna think it’ll be long afore they’re joined by others. They all live here in Glasgow. My job, weel, I have a business—FraserFood—recipe boxes delivered tae yer door.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of that. ‘From farm to fork.” That’s you, is it?”

He smiles proudly. “Aye, it’s me and ma family. Looks like ma marketing manager is doing a fine job, then.”

“Oh, forgot tae say, after the blah blah, ye have tae tell one confession. Only a wee one, mind.” He takes a large mouthful of his ice cream.

I purse my lips. “Really, and what if I’ve nothing to confess?”

Jamie snorts with laughter and does a funny sort of blink, screwing up his face and closing both eyes. Is he trying to wink? If so, he’s failing miserably. I try to look angelic and sin free. Judging by the look of scepticism on his face, It doesn’t seem to be working.

“Sae, my confession is, dah-dah-daaaah,” he does a fake fanfare, trying to build suspense. “I wanted tae be yer friend on Facebook because I wanted tae see if there were any photos of ye in Barcelona, with all yer...er… accessories.”

I feel myself redden. I’ve just remembered catching Geillis on Facebook the other day at work and I’m pretty sure I know what’s coming next.

“Verra interesting… in particular, the one with ye and six penis shot glasses. How d’ye manage tae get two of them in yer mouth at the same time?”

I inwardly curse Geillis and her desire to live her life through social media.

“Excuse me,” I reply somewhat primly. “I don’t think we’re at the Q and A stage yet.”

“So,” I continue in a lighter tone. “Me. Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp. I’m thirty two and I’m a paediatric  orthopaedic surgeon, here at the children’s hospital. I love my job so much, I can’t begin to tell you. As of two weeks ago, I am thankfully single. I was born in Oxford and moved up here when I was twelve, when my Uncle Lamb became a professor at the university. He brought me up, you know. Raised me when my parents died in a car accident... I… er...I was four at the time.”

I can feel Jamie looking at me, but I can’t raise my eyes. Telling people about my parents never gets any easier, no matter how many times I say those words. I concentrate on picking bits of wafer off my cone and throwing them to the ducks loitering nearby, waiting for some sort of treat.

“So it always was just my uncle and me.” I carry on talking. “Then he died… seven...seven years ago…” I can hear my voice start to crack as I fight back tears. A hand creeps into my vision and I gratefully accept the proffered paper napkin and wipe my face.

“Och, lass.” He says softly.

I clear my throat. “I'm sorry. We were having a nice conversation and then there I go, getting all teary. It’s just, well, we were a team, Uncle Lamb and I… the two musketeers. He was my hero.”

Blowing my nose in a most unladylike way, I toss the napkin into the neighbouring bin.

“And that’s pretty much me. As for a confession, well… I suppose it’s kind of one.”

He raises one eyebrow quizzically, making a better job of that than the whole winking lark, I think.

"Ok, well,  when I had your case, I tried to ring before I emailed you. I called the number in your case… twice. A woman answered and told me I had the wrong number—"

"Laoghaire."

"I know that now. But she obviously knew how to get onto your phone."

"Why did ye no' tell me?" He smiles as he says this. It's not a reprimand.

"I would have but you seemed to be coming to a conclusion anyway. No need to add more fuel to the fire."

"Happen ye're right."

He notices me shivering and gets to his feet. “Aye, there’s a bit of a chill. Fancy a wee walk tae warm up and we can carry on wi’ round two. It’s a quick fire round.”

I stand up and we move away from the pond. The ducks have already lost interest in us since they realise that we’ve nothing more to offer them. It’s pretty quiet in the park now, the cooler evening air seems to have kept people at home. The gravel crunching loudly under the soles of our shoes, I glance down and notice Jamie’s doing a sort of awkward stuttering movement with his feet. He’s clearly trying to match his stride pattern to mine. Which isn’t easy when his must be a good few inches longer than mine. Nice, considerate gesture, though.

“Sae, quick fire questions and answers. Ye can go first,” he says generously.

It only takes me a moment to think of a question that I have been wondering about ever since I explored the contents of his suitcase.

“What were you doing in Barcelona? I mean the contents of your case weren’t really fun-weekend-away stuff.”

“Nah, ye’re right. It wasna a holiday—flying visit only. I was there on business—talking tae a food wholesale company. Serrano ham, chorizo, saffron, that kind of thing,” he explains, a look of excitement on his face. “We’re expanding our range, starting with Spanish influenced recipes. A full three courses ready tae prepare, plus wine delivered straight tae yer door. Dinner party FraserFood style.”

He can’t stop smiling as he talks about these plans. And his hands move animatedly as he continues to elaborate on his new venture. His business is obviously his passion. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t got the desire for a relationship with a girlfriend—FraserFood seems to be his one love. No girl could compete.

He stops talking for a moment. “And here I am, boring ye.”

I shake my head. “Not at all, it’s really interesting.” I don’t have to lie. It’s the truth. My mouth is watering at his description of albondigas and flavoursome chicken and chorizo with cannellini beans. I’m ready to sign up for this delivery service any time.

“Sae, ma turn tae ask a question. Tell me, d’ye like this shirt?”

I try to stifle a laugh. The question is so unexpected and the shirt so awful. Trying to be diplomatic, I search for the right words, evading the actual question. “I’ve only seen you in white tops before, no colours.”

He sighs. “Ye’ve only seen me twice afore... anyway I dinna think ye need tae say any more. I ken ye’re being polite, but ye’re a terrible liar. I can tell by yer face ye dinna like this shirt. Laoghaire hated it, always made me change it. I did wonder if that was jes’ her being difficult. But apparently no’.”

“Sorry, I didn’t want to be rude.”

“Ye dinna need tae apologise, Claire. Being honest is a good thing, is it no’? And friends should always tell each other the truth. And that’s what I think we’re going tae be, Claire— friends. D’ye no’ agree?”

I crane my neck  and look Jamie straight in the eye. “Yes, I do… friends.”

[tiramisiyu]

【未定事件簿】 Tears of Themis: Main Story 6-22 Translation

Translation Masterlist | Video

Chapter 6 – Tiger’s Accomplice Ghost (Parts 1, 2): 6-1 / 6-3 / 6-5 / 6-7 / 6-9 / 6-11 / 6-13 / 6-15 ♦️ ♦️  6-16 / 6-18 / 6-20 / 6-22 / 6-24 / 6-26 / 6-27 / 6-28 / 6-29

Information on the Chapter title (helpful to know): Wikipedia | My notes

--

Pax CEO Office

Lu Jinghe: Are all the places that Qin Shan went to before he fell ill here?

Wen Chen: Mhmm, all the ones from one month before his illness are here.

Lu Jinghe: He sure lived in a sumptuous way. Basically not a single meal was eaten at home.

Lu Jinghe: He really ended up going once to each club house, high-end hotel, and restaurant that he could reach in the whole city.

Wen Chen: Do you need me to collect the records from a larger amount of time prior?

Lu Jinghe: Not for now. Wait for me to go through this one month first.

Lu Jinghe placed the materials he was holding down, reclined in the leather chair, and massaged his temples.

Lu Jinghe: Are there any updates on that Assistant Hang?

Wen Chen: Assistant Hang is named Hang Jiahe. Her parents by legal relation have no blood relation with her – she was adopted.

Wen Chen: But because it was a relatively long time ago, I have not found the detailed adoption information yet.

Wen Chen: Hang Jiahe took the place of Qin Shan’s assistant at the beginning of this year, around when Xu Ping disappeared.

Wen Chen: She is an assistant in name, but it seems like her authorizations are very large.

Wen Chen: Some resigned Heirson personnel said that Hang Jiahe is a fox who exploits the might of the tiger. There are also people who speculate that she is Qin Shan’s lover.

Lu Jinghe: Lover?

Lu Jinghe: Ever since Qin Shan divorced, he has never married again. I’ve also never heard of him having media gossip before.

Wen Chen: Qin Shan’s familial circumstances in adolescence were decent. His father worked in real estate – they could be considered as… a little rich.

When Wen Chen said “a little rich”, he furrowed his eyebrows very seriously, as if he was assessing the standard of being rich.

Wen Chen: After, the Qin father’s business failed, and the company went bankrupt. Qin Shan’s lifestyle also took a nosedive.

Wen Chen: Qin Shan sought work after graduation and joined his ex-wife’s Xu family’s Xingrui Estates company. He acquainted with his ex-wife, and they got married very quickly.

Wen Chen: After, Qin Shan gradually rose to high ranks in Xingrui, relying precisely on his wife’s nepotism.

Lu Jinghe: Like so, he still dared to cheat, hah.

Perhaps Qin Shan’s past marital history wasn’t known at the public level, but it was no secret in the upper-class business circles of Stellis City.

Wen Chen: Yes. To give financing to the real estate company, Qin Shan had ambiguous relations with a female top executive of a financial company.

Wen Chen: It was that female top executive that talked about this matter with Qin Shan’s wife, having Qin Shan’s wife manage him well, and to make sure that he wouldn’t come out to harass anyone else.

Wen Chen: Due to this, Qin Shan’s wife divorced him quickly, and had him leave the marriage with nothing.

Lu Jinghe: No wonder. Heirson’s business could also be considered as large, yet Qin Shan’s never mixed in with the top crowds.

Lu Jinghe: Have you found about the source of funds used by Qin Shan to establish Heirson?

Wen Chen: It involves an overseas investment company. Though I have preliminary results, I still can’t be completely sure.

Wen Chen: I already have people doing detailed investigation. When there is accurate information, I will report to you again.

Lu Jinghe: Mhmm, speed up the work. We must find the clear truth behind that Assistant Hang and the capital backing Heirson.

Wen Chen: Yes, second young master.

--

Wen Chen retreated from the CEO office. Lu Jinghe took out his phone, scrolling through the message and incoming call records, his face completely pitiful.

Lu Jinghe: Why won’t you send even a single message? I really have no news whatsoever on you.

As he spoke, Lu Jinghe looked towards the table, flipping through the desk calendar on the table.

Lu Jinghe: Alright, we did chat in the morning in the group chat, but several hours have already passed.

Lu Jinghe: Getting in touch with you now will probably affect your investigation.

Lu Jinghe: Ugh, then I’ll consider the big picture, and I’ll wait until the weekend when you can relax to ask you out.

--

Mo Yi’s House

Mo Yi, who basically never pulled all-nighters, slept after he returned home, only waking in the afternoon. Seeming somewhat exhausted still, he brewed a cup of hot coffee and took it to the coffee table.

Mo Yi: The experience of pulling all-nighters and working overtime is probably not unfamiliar to you.

He turned on the electronic photo frame. In it, there were photos taken on outings with the girl – there were single-person ones, and ones with two people.

Mo Yi: If it’s possible, I also hope that you won’t have to work this hard.

Mo Yi: When I calculate it, it’s been a very long time since I’ve collaborated side-by-side with you.

Mo Yi: Recently… have I been too passive…

On the flickering screen on the side, a progress bar on the comparison of data was displayed. The day was almost done, yet the progress bar was only at 50%.

Mo Yi: I still have not obtained results, so it seems that I have no suitable reason to look for you.

Mo Yi: Looks like I need to think some more about this. Losing to other people cannot be allowed.

--

Antiques Shop, 3rd Floor

Lying on his arm, Xia Yan reclined on his bed, spinning his phone with his left hand in a state of absolute boredom.

Xia Yan: …

Xia Yan: The people in the identification department are getting worse and worse. They’re just a few note pages, so aren’t they spending way too much time on this?

Suddenly, Xia Yan’s phone vibrated. His hand slipped, and the phone nearly dropped right onto his face.

Xia Yan: Hello, Brother Yang, is something up?

Xia Yan: …

Xia Yan: Why are you the one contacting me? What about the identification department people?

Xia Yan: …

Xia Yan: Okay, I got it. I’ll go and see right now.

After hanging up, Xia Yan jumped up from the bed, opening the computer on the work counter.

In his recent mail inbox, there was a detailed report on Kong Moli’s notebook.

Xia Yan: Heirson Factory Unnatural Staff Deaths name list…?

Xia Yan: …

Xia Yan: Seems like… it probably is related to certain things…

Probably because he had no ideas for now, Xia Yan sighed and closed the computer.

He reclined back on the bed and picked up the phone again.

Xia Yan: Oh well, I’ll rest first and then think. Otherwise, if you find out, you’ll harp on me again.

Xia Yan: What about you, are you doing alright now?

Xia Yan: If you’ve encountered difficulty, don’t force yourself to bear it on your own – you’ve got to tell me.

--

City Police Station

Yan Wei: What? Don’t catch him for now? Why?

When we came out the meeting room, Yan Wei told us that they had already found Fu Qiao. The police were in the middle of secretly tailing Fu Qiao; they did not immediately capture him.

Zuo Ran: Right now, whether it’s for Zhou Nan’s case or Chen Hanzhang’s illegal drug dealing case, we already have lots of witnesses and testimonies. What we lack is objective, physical evidence.

Zuo Ran: If we capture Fu Qiao now, it’s very likely that he’ll say nothing at all, or he’ll say only things that we already know.

Zuo Ran: This will not provide any substantial help in solving this case.

MC: I agree with Lawyer Zuo’s view, because…

There is no point in catching Fu Qiao right now, because…

> It’ll beat the grass, only to scare off the snake > Fu Qiao might be able to find where the blackmail leverage is

MC: Lawyer Zuo and I have inferred that Zhou Nan’s death was used to make Fu Qiao into Chen Hanzhang’s Ghost.

MC: As a Ghost, Fu Qiao must want to destroy the blackmail leverage in Chen Hanzhang’s hands.

MC: Chen Hanzhang is in custody right now. To him, this is a good opportunity.

MC: On the other hand, illegal drugs hold no importance to him. It’s too unrealistic for him to want to take over for Chen Hanzhang’s illegal drug dealings.

MC: But he’s recently gotten into contact with the drugs. This indicates that the place where Chen Hanzhang collected the blackmail leverage is highly likely to be the same as where the drugs are kept.

MC: If we don’t capture Fu Qiao, we might instead be able to follow him to find concrete evidence and catch this criminal gang in one net.

Yan Wei: But how do you two know that Fu Qiao went to search for the blackmail leverage, rather than purely slinking off?

Zuo Ran: That’s why we’re saying for the police to not catch him for now, and to only follow him secretly and observe.

Zuo Ran: If Fu Qiao is only running off to the north area to hide, and he makes no other movements, then you can capture him in one or two days.

Zuo Ran: If Fu Qiao is investigating and searching in the north area, or goes straight for some clear target location, then it’s very likely to be the place where Chen Hanzhang has kept the blackmail leverage on the Ghosts.

Yan Wei: What you’ve said makes sense.

Zuo Ran: Aside from that, if Chen Hanzhang requires custody time to be ended early, or your application for the extension of custody time is not approved, I recommend that you simply let her go.

Zuo Ran: Change it from custody to residential surveillance.

Yan Wei: You want to do the same as with Fu Qiao, by having Chen Hanzhang bring us to the evidence herself?

Zuo Ran: Yes. If you continue to detain her in the police station, she will not provide information anyways.

Zuo Ran: You might as well let her go and see what movements she makes. Give her a stage, and let her finish singing the performance.

Yan Wei: Chen Hanzhang’s alertness level is very high. It’s very possible that after letting her out, she’ll bide her time before the police stop their surveillance.

Zuo Ran: Of course, we can’t passively wait for her to move. We can provoke her.

MC: Lawyer Zuo, what you mean is…

When our eyes met, I immediately understood Zuo Ran’s plan.

MC: We can have Qing Zhian put out news to the people in Wiley Financial and the Ghosts that he knows…

MC: Saying that someone called Fu Qiao knows where the blackmail leverage is.

MC: The boss of the Ghosts might change.

Zuo Ran: That’s right. With Qing Zhian’s experience, even if he has never come into contact with Chen Hanzhang’s core business, he is still someone who has serviced the company for many years. He’ll be credible.

Zuo Ran: As soon as these remarks spread, under the situation of having been detained for so long and having her movements limited, it’s highly likely that Chen Hanzhang won’t be able to sit still.

Yan Wei: You both really are something – this is a good plan.

Yan Wei: I’ll listen to you, and I’ll go make arrangements now.

[alyasalias]

Dabi Theory

I have a theory that Dabi is secretly on the Hero-side of things...or at least not 100% on the Villain's side. Spoilers for the Training Camp Arc as well as for the latest fights in the manga. You have been warned.

I've been re-reading HeroAca lately and I'm currently at the Summer Training Camp arc. I just got to the point where Eraserhead is fighting the Dabi clone and I noticed something odd: what Dabi said. Dabi tipped them off to the fact that the students were the target. Sure, what he said could have been a jab at the heroes...but I wonder if perhaps it was a veiled message like what Hawks did with Endeavor and the book.

Magne was quick to figure out the fact that someone spilled the beans on "Bakugo Katsuki" being their target and she/they seemed really panicked that it had been found out. Through the process of elimination, she/they deduced that Izuku must have fought Muscular, 'cuz there were only a couple of people on their team that she/they believed could have been the leak. It seemed like secrecy was a big deal for this band of villains.

Dabi's a smart guy as well. We've seen very little of him, and know even less about him...but we know he's calculating. We know he's not impulsive or whatever. He was the one in charge of recruiting Hawks when recruitment was usually Twice's job. He was the one that had the most contact with Hawks and also the one that trusted Hawks the least out of all of the Villains. He even lied to Hawks about the Nomu attack. "It was supposed to be tomorrow--in a different location"--Hawks said to him. Through his actions, we can kind of infer that Dabi is a cunning and calculating sort of person. I don't think he's done anything on impulse. He doesn't seem like some for-laughs villain that'll spill the beans for fun.

So...yeah, what the Dabi-clone said to Eraserhead got me thinking: what if Dabi has been on their side all along...or at least he's not 100% on All For One's side. He joined the League claiming to be inspired by Stain or whatnot...so the whole "punish the 'Heroes' that aren't selfless enough" sort of thing. We know that Twice doesn't control what the clones think, know, or feel. The clones know everything that the originals know at the point they were cloned, so the Dabi-clone wasn't saying all of that because it was Twice's words...they were Dabi-prime's words/thoughts/actions.

Dabi's a smart guy--he always has been. He had know way of knowing what Eraserhead and the teachers/adults knew. It was a chaotic situation--the teachers were panicking, trying to corral all of the students to the building. The students were scattered over a large area. There was mass confusion--that would have been clear. It would have been safe to assume the teachers didn't know what the Villains were after or even if they had a goal in mind for this particular attack. For USJ they had a clear objective: they wanted to kill All Might but All Might wasn't there when they got there--they admitted that much. Hosu and the Hero-Killer incident(s) were a bit more of an unknown for the side of the Heroes, and the way everyone talked about it made it seem like they believed Stain had joined the League and that's why the Nomu were there...so as far as the Villains know, the Heroes believed that Hosu was a coordinated attack with the Hero-Killer simply to attack things. Then we come to the training camp..."the students are the target" wouldn't be their first thought, I'm pretty sure. If I were one of the teachers I'd be thinking, "crap--do they think All Might's at this camp?" or even "damn...they found us somehow. Is there a traitor in our midst that leaked the information or is it just a coincidence that the Villains are here now and they decided to attack for no reason like in Hosu?" Officially, to the characters within the HeroAca universe at least, the students haven't been the target of Villain attacks. They were involved, but they weren't the primary targets at any point up to the present.

Dabi's a smart guy, so I don't think he'd leak information even in jest. He seems like the type to keep his mouth shut rather than go for a way to rile up his opponent. He had nothing to gain from tipping off Eraserhead to the fact that the students were their target. Sure, it'd cause a panic and it'd take a while for the teachers to narrow down which student they were after...and maybe Dabi hoped to capitalize on the confusion that sort of panic would spread...or on the despair aspect if they failed to realize it was Katsuki until the last moment. However...I just don't think Dabi's that sort of person.

I think Dabi intentionally leaked the information to Eraserhead and disguised it as a jest. He intentionally waited until the clone was dying before he said it too and we've already established that the clones think/feel/know/act independently from Twice. Twice doesn't control the clones.

So...yeah...why leak the information, right? I have two theories on that. It's possible that Dabi's a secret agent--like Hawks--sent by some Hero commission or agency or whatever to infiltrate the League. Maybe a group realized that the whole "inspired by Stain and he was working with the League" rationale was a good cover and they sent Dabi in. Personally, I don't see too much support for this theory as of yet. We don't have anything on Dabi's backstory. Even his reveal to Hawks on what his real name was or whatever was blacked out in the manga. It's only fan theories that suggest he's Todoroki Touya. My second theory, and the one I think is more probable at this point with the evidence we have: Dabi is very much like Spinner--he's not on the Hero's side or the Villain's side, he's a man who was inspired by Stain and wants to do something about the plague of undeserving 'Heroes'. We see that sort of story play out in other media too--in the Doctor Strange movie they portrayed pre-mystic-arts-Strange as a pompous doctor that chose his cases based on the fame it would awarrd him rather than on saving lives. Heroes in it for the fame or for the money exist in HeroAca too and Stain hated them--All Might and Deku are currently the only people he believes worthy of the title of 'Hero'. Spinner held fast to those ideals, stopping Magne from killing Izuku during the training camp. It proved to me that Spinner, at the very least, isn't fully aligned with the League. He's following what he believes are Stain's ideals. He'll go along with their plans and whatever so long as All Might and Izuku aren't harmed (from what we've seen so far). I wonder if Dabi's the same way...but slightly more cunning. We know Spinner was a NEET and whatever before joining the League and at times he seems kind of lost or like he's being indoctrinated more and more into the League. If I assume Dabi's "smarter" than Spinner and that he did his homework on Stain...I believe that it's possible Dabi tipped off Eraserhead to the students being the target because of his beliefs. Stain wouldn't want to harm the children. The children aren't Heroes. Sure, they're Heroes-in-training and some of them have motivations that Stain would detest...but Stain did try to spare Tenya when he first saw him and realized that he was just a student. Maybe Dabi decided that an attack on students at a training camp wasn't in-line with Stain's ideals. They brought the fight to the students without provocation. Nobody said "well, this will be a hit to Hero society and All Might if we were to kill/kidnap a few students at camp". Their objective was to capture Bakugo Katsuki because they believed him to have the ideals of a Villain due to what they saw of him at the Sport's Festival. Stain wasn't interested in making Villains. In his own way, Stain was trying to create a better society. He was trying to get Heroes to wake up to the heart of the matter--to be altruistic and all. He wanted to create a world where Heroes did things for the sake of the people--not for fame, Hero-points, or money.

The more I think about this, the more I'm thinking that Dabi's tip-off that the students were the target was deliberate. He may not have been on the side of the Heroes, but he didn't want to see kids get kidnapped or killed. He didn't engage any of the students directly either. Their task was to capture Katsuki and go away and he recalled the Nomu just in time--preventing it from killing some students (potentially unknowingly). Also, there's that scene where he's clearly staring at the bushes that Aoyama was hiding behind. It's likely that he saw Aoyama and chose not to fight/kill a cowering student.

This theory also fits in with the latest fight we saw with Dabi too. Dabi vs. Hawks and Tsukuyomi. Hawks is number 2 on the Hero charts--the chart that Stain would have disapproved of. Hawks is a super popular Hero--he's famous--that's something else Stain would hate. Saving people's lives shouldn't become a spectacle or something that makes someone famous or whatever in their eyes. So...I think that Dabi wasn't just wary of Hawks joining the League...I think that if Dabi's an avid Stain-follower he never trusted Hawks in the first place because he disliked what Hawks represented in Hero society--#2 Hero of a broken system and basically the face of what hero-fame looks like. Stain wouldn't approve of Hawks being some super popular symbol. He can save people and make it look effortless with his feathers and whatever...Stain would probably be angry that Hawks gets paid to do it and that he gets all the fame and whatever...like "if it's gonna be that effortless for you and whatnot, then do it and move on...you should be doing it and you shouldn't be basking in the praise and glory--just save the people without stopping to be thanked and praised." It also fits with Tsukuyomi being able to run away with Hawks too. Lights are Dark Shadow's weakness and Dabi's is a fire Quirk--it would have been a really bad match up. Maybe they only got away because Dabi realized a couple of things: 1) Tsukuyomi was a student and 2) Tsukuyomi was acting like a true Hero in that moment. He wasn't just following orders or saving Hawks for the fame and glory. He saw his mentor up there and he moved without thinking to protect someone he saw needed help. He stood up to face Dabi, putting himself between the one that needed saving (Hawks) and the threat (Dabi) despite the fact that they were a poor match up. Stain would probably approve of Tsukuyomi's actions here--staring death in the face for no reason other than "I saw someone that needed help and I came to give them help".

[gofancyninjaworld]

Meta: What rough beast slouches to be born?

Right, webcomic chapter 125 has raised quite a few questions about cyborgs and I purposely left it aside. Until now.  I’m sorry for the length, but I’m only allowed one ‘readmore’. :(

What we knew

Many moons ago for us, 9 or so weeks ago for them, Genos showed up at Saitama’s doorstep like a refugee from another world, telling a tale of destroyed towns, rampaging cyborgs, and desperate revenge quests.   It’s seemed rather far-fetched, particularly as not much has happened on that front.   Over the course of the story, we’ve had little bits of independent corroboration about the veracity of his story.  The town that he was born in was definitely erased from the map.  Yes, a cyborg is wanted in connection with the incident. 

But where is that guy? Does it have anything to do with the powered suit-flogging cyborgs seen early on the series? Does it have anything to do with the ‘glimpse behind the scenes’ chapter the manga offered us with Drive Knight (but no context as to how that glimpse fitted into the wider story)?  Come to that, where are all the cyborgs?

To start with, there are a lot of cyborgs of various sorts in OPM.  Quite a few moons ago, I wrote a bit about them, drawing a distinction between those who used parts to replace lost function and those who looked at it as a change of identity: “Is the Organization a Claw Analogue?”

 Chapter 125 has been surprisingly good about confirming some of what I surmised about cyborgs, but it’s brought some very good additional information!  On we go!

There are cyborgs; and then there are Cyborgs

Our ambassador through the world of cyborgs is new Neo Hero recruit Koko (Solitude), who modified his body for the world of cyborg fighting, only he was a little too successful and no one would bet on him.  We see him scanning various people and passing commentary on them.

The first to give him serious pause is Webigaza, who lost six months of life to getting her body modifications done -- no wonder she’s pissed off that her rival has self-destructed in the interim.

Koko is shaken by her having 71% of her body modified.

obsessive determination is terrifying to look at

Percentage body modification of the sort Koko is used to seeing, 30% maximum, you can do right here right here and now.  It’s equivalent to losing a leg and most of the other. Here and now, we can also do brain implants to control tremors or fits or some neurological conditions,  replace part of the heart, spine fusions, quite a few bits and pieces.  The sort of modifications Koko is used to seeing are very functional ones that make sense for someone looking to get an edge in fighting for money.  They’re also along the lines of what we’ve seen with One-Shotter or Death Gatling.

If you lose and replace all four limbs, that's 50% of your body modified. While quadruple amputees unfortunately exist IRL,  I don’t know if anyone has had the kind of money, physical fitness and pure grit to do that.  Nevertheless it’s not technically impossible. 60% sounds about right before you're now looking at breaking into the more vital parts of your body.  The point at which the risk involved just can't be justified in terms of restoring function or health. I’m emphasising that because I’m going to come back to this point.   He’s shaken because modifications that extensive aren’t about simply gaining an edge; they’re being willing to exchange serious bodily harm for serious power.  It says a lot about who Webigaza is.

Within the Hero Association, I think we do know a hero round about that 60% mark.  Jet Nice Guy comes to mind.  He sports an armored exterior, powerful artificial limbs (which will need internal reinforcement to not just rip up his body), but his innards are all human. After the way he started to bleed out after Nyan slashed him, I realised that the reason it looked like intestines when the Deep Sea King ripped him open is because they were... >.<  Sorry, dude. 

the worst of both worlds -- too modified to have an easy life, still too weak to deal with the real monsters that exist

Scary enough, but then the security staff come in to stop the kerfuffle that Koko and his buddy, Mars Leo, were causing.  Koko scanned them and was stunned into horror:

as disciplined and ruthless a pair of killers as you could never hope to lay eyes on.  Definitely not frothing at the mouth, these two!

These two have modified themselves so extensively they’re almost inhuman. 94, 95% body modification is equivalent to having only 3.5 - 4.2 kg of live mass left assuming an original live mass of 70 kg.  And, if the similar naming convention didn’t tip you off to it, it’s around the sort of hyper-extensive modification we see Genos having. [See under the readmore for a first-principles estimation I did a long time ago.]  Maybe Drive Knight too if he’s a cyborg.   What kind of power have they exchanged their human bodies for?  What kind of people are willing to do that to themselves? Koko is very sure that he does NOT want to know.

When he tells you who he is, believe him

That’s dating advice often given to ladies overlooking obvious red flags  but it goes with great force in OPM. ONE has characters tell us who they are early on, even if it doesn’t mean anything to us for a long time. 

And he’s had Genos be a particularly straightforward and truthful character.  He doesn’t always interpret things correctly, but he says it exactly as he sees it.  Looking at the way the high percentage cyborgs we’ve met thus far either be very inhuman looking or completely disguised as regular human beings,  he’s chosen an appearance that puts both his humanity and mechanical nature on display.

Something that the chapter has brought up that I've kept saying to people on the Discord and on Reddit: there is no medically justifiable reason for Genos to have a body as modified as he does.   Which Genos TELLS US for fuck’s sake.  His giant wall of text is a synopsis, no more and no less.

When he says that “...I asked Professor Kuseno to perform a procedure to modify my body. Then I was reborn as a cyborg for justice...”  (Viz)  “...I begged Dr Stench (sic) to transform me into a cyborg and I was reborn as a cyborg who fights for justice...” (Boon scanslations, who copied verbatim whoever did the webcomic version). It’s nothing to do with health.  Feel free to have whatever headcanons you like, but please don’t confuse them with the story.

But it doesn’t end there.  I look at Destro and Erimin and realise that there’s another perfectly truthful statement that’s been staring us in the face.

Genos knows. Why would he ask a mechanical engineer who uses a wearable battle suit and pilots armed drones to modify his body, let alone modify it to such an insane degree?  Because he knows that Dr Kuseno knows how to build cyborgs like the one who destroyed his town.

We don’t know if Destro and Erimin have any responsibility for the destroyed town, but someone of their ilk does.   Which brings us to a third nakedly truthful statement. When Genos talks of not believing that he could be defeated by anything other than the rampaging cyborg, he’s not anticipating winning because he’s suicidal.  It’s because he’s aware that if he’s throwing rock, so too is his enemy: mutual annihilation is the best he can hope for.

At least until he met Saitama. And started to hope for not mutual destruction, but victory (check the difference in chapter 108 of the webcomic).

a world away from the attitude of mutually-assured destruction he started with.

Stepping away from the text a bit, it casts a different light on why he’s been so desperate to learn from Saitama. Learning Saitama's secret is his balance-breaker. He wants something other than rock, that is guaranteed to smash whatever rock his enemy might throw.    But that’s not all there is.   As Garou said, once he discovered Blue Fire’s flamethrower, once you know how a freakish weapon works, you know it.  Any edge a new weapon might give Genos is liable to be studied and replicated  (see how quickly Dr Kuseno was able to reverse engineer and adapt the principles of G-4′s curving energy beams).   But Saitama’s strength is unphysical: no matter how closely you inspect his body, you can never relate the physicality of Saitama’s body to the power he can generate.  That unphysicality, that’s what Genos wants too.   It also puts in context why he’s been so fascinated by psychic power and wants to learn it if at all possible.

neat trick, I’ll take two!  Genos dodging G4′s beams in chapter 38, and putting the principle of them to good use in chapter 120

And finally, since in his world, knowledge is literally power, it gives yet another layered reason Genos is so determined to keep anyone else from becoming Saitama’s disciple.  If they learn his secret too, then the advantage he seeks will be lost.  (that it doesn’t work quite that way for Saitama is a fact for us to enjoy and for him to find out).

Nothing is as scary as a human being

Nothing is as scary as a human being is one of the things that Reigen says to Tome on occasion. It’s in full force in OPM.  Monsters may be strong, but they all live in the now.  Only a human being could have put together the Monster Association.   When it comes to cyborgs, their abilities may be inhuman but their thoughts, imaginations, morals and appetites are all 100% human.   It’s a terrifying combination.

There’s something I missed when I likened The Organization to a Claw Analogue. In Mob Psycho 100, the protagonists are children and they're fighting an organisation made up of over-grown children -- adults who have refused to grow up. In One-Punch Man, the protagonists are adults and the bad humans in the story are very much adults too.   With calculated cruelty and depravity to match. When The Organization bares its claws for real, this is going to get so brutal.

If Genos has not been standing still, then neither has his enemy.  From the manga, even if we hold Drive Knight blameless and independent of all this mess, his besting Nyan told us that cyborgs can indeed come crazy-strong and highlighted how much more work Genos had yet to do. It also highlighted how very clever and calculating cyborgs can be -- well, they’re human, duh!  If I was worried for his prospects then,  in the webcomic, Genos is nowhere near as psychologically, physically or emotionally ready as his manga version is.   And the guys who look to be his enemies aren’t going to be cutting him any slack.   They’re very real.  They’re not mad.  And they’re closer than he ever imagined.

Fighting monsters is barely adequate preparation for whatever it is that’s to come.

Whenever Genos gets dragged into whatever it is those cyborgs are up to  -- or runs into it, since he claims he’s still hunting the rampaging cyborg -- ‘rough’ doesn’t begin to describe it.

Extra Stuff

Edited from an answer I gave on Reddit to the question of how much of Genos was still organic about 2 years ago.  It’s unexpectedly relevant!

Short answer: by mass, under 10% , assuming he would have weighed  approximately 70 kg. By function, quite a bit.

 The long answer.

I’m going to write this starting from what is most readily observable and readily inferred to the least. In appreciation of this being a work of fiction that treats physical laws lightly, I too am taking a more-or-less approach and will keep technical terms to a minimum. I'm also not a medic and I don't play one on TV -- assume generous hand-wavium. Items in {curly brackets} are incidental notes you can skip.

Level 0: Canonically observable.  The least controversial observation is that Genos does have an organic brain. Genos does not live in a lab, but is able to live largely independently, including being able to eat whatever he likes with no ill-effect. Not just that, but he lives an active and hard-fighting life that appears to do him no permanent harm (I will return to this in a few paragraphs).  What can we take from this?

Edit: There is also ONE’s initial settings for Genos, which I quote here from the Hero Data Book

ONE: There's no need to visit Dr. Kuseno's place every time when his wrist break down, because he got his own spare parts at hand. Dr Kuseno's Lab is there In case for a big reparation job, a drastic upgrade or an examination.

It’s tempting to think that because we see that he definitely has a brain that’s all there is – the brain in a jar phenomenon, so to speak. Something a lot of people miss is that the spinal cord proper isn’t optional either -- it’s a core part of the central nervous system.  Spinal cords are a lot shorter than most people think they are, averaging 12 inches long for women and 15 inches for men.  The rest are nerve processes that can be cut and will regrow (within limits). We’re also happy to allow for nerves and their endings -- there must be an interface for the prosthetics so they're under the fine voluntary control that we see. However, that’s not all that there can be. The Cartesian mind-body duality is completely wrong when it comes to physiology. Our brains are intimately bound with our bodies and our bodies with our brains. So what does one need?

Level 1: Perfusion. This is the most obvious one. Without a blood supply providing oxygen, glucose and removing waste products from our brains, we have 4-5 seconds of consciousness available, 2-3 minutes in which we can escape brain damage and 8-10 minutes in which not to die. So, number one is a reliable blood supply.  Absolutely necessary therefore are a means of generating the various blood cells, perfusing and distributing them and disposing of damaged cells (red blood cells have a lifespan of 1-2 months). While not as acutely important, a self-sustaining blood supply is also the basis of a functioning immune system.  It's a bit of an oops moment when your super-killer cyborg catches a cold and dies.

Accordingly, bone marrow is essential as a source of hematopoietic (blood-forming) stem cells. A suitably reduced blood vessel and lymphatic vessel system is also needed to run the blood where it needs to go. {An awesome feature of living beings is that new blood vessels will be recruited to where they need to go and redundant branches pruned back, a process known as vascular remodelling}. A reduced liver and possibly spleen will be needed to appropriately destroy worn out blood cells. At least one functional kidney, in the role of producing the hormone erythropoietin, without which red blood cells will not be formed. Not essential: a heart and lungs, which he definitely doesn't have. How much blood is needed?  I’ll come to that answer once we’ve tallied how much body is needed.

Additionally, since part of perfusion is getting rid of metabolic waste, a liver and kidney will be absolutely indispensable.  

Level 2: Homoeostasis. A living organism has a very narrow range in which its internal environment, such as oxygen saturation, temperature, pH (acidity or alkalinity) amongst other things can vary without harm.

There are around 40 or so hormones, the signalling molecules that keep us going as functional concerns, regulating such things as blood pressure, salt/water balance, available energy, sleep cycle, body temperature, mood, immune system... the list goes on. Each has a stupid number of secondary functions and interacts with others in a ludicrous number of ways (note highly scientific language). Their levels vary and change on the order of seconds to hours. It's a good job that the main organiser of homoeostasis, the hypothalamus, is part of the brain. {Incidentally, this is why a brain-dead cadaver cannot be kept ‘alive’ on life support indefinitely – everything falls out of sync and eventually to pieces.} To do this artificially is to have your cyborg never leave the lab: if you're not constantly monitoring and adjusting levels, then they will die. Fortunately, as mentioned, a living, functional brain has the control network needed to keep everything working without the extensive and expensive effort. Just add air, water and food (in that priority).

At this point, we've already met most of the organs needed to maintain homoeostasis in their capacity of maintaining a blood supply. We need to add some bone, not just to serve as a niche (living environment) for the bone marrow and its stem cells mentioned previously but as a source and sink for minerals, the adrenal glands and the thyroid gland. Finally, one must not forget pancreatic islets -- or it'll be for nothing as he goes into a diabetic coma.

Level 3: Energy.   Speaking of food, a brain needs essential fatty acids for turnover and lots and lots of glucose for energy. It’s entirely possible to supply nutrients as total parenteral nutrion (TPN for short).  People whose digestive systems have completely failed get individually formulated TPN solutions, which requires that they spend several hours a day feeding it into their blood supply. Not something we see Genos do.  And yes, you heard it here: not everyone poops, but everyone sure as hell pees.  While a brain only weighs about 1.5 kg, it uses up about 500 calories a day as glucose, so 700 ish calories a day should suffice for all the needs of his live mass. This bears no relationship to the amount of food we see Genos put away on occasion. Why hasn’t he wrecked his liver in a matter of weeks? The answer would appear to lie in the artificial digestive system Dr. Kuseno has given him which turns food into biofuel. It must be patched into a feedback loop which allows it to only supply what’s physiologically necessary at any given time. Lucky for some!

Level 4: So how much body does that add up to exactly?  Nothing says you have to keep the necessary organs and blood vessel network the same size. With only a 1.5 kg brain to support, many can be shrunk a good 50% if not more. A total living mass of 7 kg would be quite feasible. We know from organ-on-a-chip experiments (and from unfortunate people who have lost part of their organs) that provided the essential architecture of the tissue is respected, they will work fine. Nothing says you have to keep them in the same place as the original organs were -- you can encapsulate it all in a can and shorten the nerves serving the organs to a more rational, manageable length. It's nice and compact and can be protected as heavily as the brain is.

Now we’re in a position to answer how much blood Genos has. There are about 70 ml of blood per kilogram of body weight, so at ~ 7 kg, we’re talking about 500 ml of blood. For comparison, the typical 70 kg person has 5 litres of blood. Why does this matter?  Because it allows us to answer a question many may be curious about: how often does Genos get hurt?

The answer is: Almost Never. With so little body, and with most of that body consisting of aptly named vital organs, even small injuries can turn catastrophic in no time.  Genos will bleed out with around 150 ml of blood loss, which is less than half of what is donated in a typical blood donation.  Horrible and dramatic as the smashes he gets into are, it’s more akin to a Formula 1 race car tumbling end over end and catching fire, only for the driver to walk out unscathed.  His cyborg parts are replaceable and can be sacrificed to protect what’s irreplaceable if need be.

[multiverse-in-archive]

GLaDOS and What She can Potentially Tell Us About Chell’s Character

((So decided to make an analysis, finally, after reading way too much into GLaDOS’s voicelines.

When it comes to blank slate videogame protagonist characters, admittedly I’m the type to analyze them based off of what you can and can’t do in the games they’re in without a consequence of some sort [like death or contradicting one of the few previously established character traits] as well as how the other characters react and interact with them. It’s really all I get to go off of.

Now, I know GLaDOS is not the most reliable resource to analyze Chell off of, considering not only her bitterness and bias, but also that not all of her observations of Chell are accurate. After all, Chell is not mute, just refuses to speak out of spite.

However, she’s the only character we have that has the most insight into Chell as a person, and with things that she’s either exaggerating or straight up lying about, we can distinguish that by what can be observed of her in the gameplay. Plus, with some of them, I doubt she’d bring them up if there was no reason for her to believe bringing them up wouldn’t hold some truth or exploit some sort of insecurity. She’s the calculating type that aims for weak points she sees rather than just throwing shit out and hoping she gets lucky, you know?

“But didn’t she write the files? Or lie about what was in them?”

She may have edited and/or exaggerated them, but I think at least some of the things were already there before she got her hands on them. After all, there’s this. Which would imply that the scientists themselves would have made those comments in the files.

And considering how uncooperative Chell was with her application process [refusingto even speak to HR, answering essay questions with nonsense in bianary] then they’d probably thought rather bitterly of her, and it would reflect in the file.

[Side note, don’t really agree with the Half Life Wiki suggesting that Chell signed up for this {at least, willingly} when everything in the Lab Rat comic pointed to the opposite being the case.]

Now with all that out of the way, let’s finally have a look at some of GLaDOS’s comments about Chell and how they reflect her based off of what we the players see of her in game or what we can infer her reactions are to them by how GLaDOS approaches them.

The Fat Jokes

"Congratulations. Not on the test."

"Most people emerge from suspension terribly undernourished. I want to congratulate you on beating the odds and somehow managing to pack on a few pounds."  - Portal 2, SIngle Player Campaign, Chapter 2, Test Chamber 3

"Hmm. This Plate must not be calibrated to someone of your... generous... ness. I'll add a few zeros to the maximum weight."

"You seem to have defeated its load-bearing capacity. Well done. I'll just lower the ceiling."

"Look at you. Sailing through the air majestically. Like an eagle. Piloting a blimp." -Portal 2, Single Player Campaign, Chapter 3, Test Chamber 9

“What, but Chell’s not fat-”

Yeah, I know, this is just more about what Chell’s potential response to it is.

And telling by how this tends to be one of GLaDOS’s go to's, it does seem like it’s something that at least annoys her.

Then again, though, it could also be just GLaDOS trying to poke at the most common insecurity among women. And I think GLaDOS even admitted to that being the reason she goes to it so often here and here. So it’s really up to interpretation.

Though personally, I think it’s something that annoys Chell but at the same time it doesn’t really get to her, if it makes sense? Just a nuisance at worst.

Comments on Chell’s Parentage [or Lack Thereof]

"It also says you were adopted. So that's funny, too." -Portal, Boss Battle, After Curiosity Core is destroyed

"Don't let that 'horrible person' thing discourage you. It's just a data point. If it makes you feel any better, science has now validated your birth mother's decision to abandon you on a doorstep." -Portal 2, Single Player Campaign, Chapter 2, Test Chamber 3

"I'm going through the list of test subjects in cryogenic storage. I managed to find two with your last name. A man and a woman. So that's interesting. It's a small world." - Portal 2, Single Player Campaign, Chapter 3, Test Chamber 15

"I have a surprise waiting for you after this next test. Telling you would spoil the surprise, so I'll just give you a hint: It involves meeting two people you haven't seen in a long time." -Portal 2, Single Player Campaign, Chapter 3, Test Chamber 16

"I'll bet you think I forgot about your surprise. I didn't. In fact, we're headed to your surprise right now. After all these years. I'm getting choked up just thinking about it." -Portal 2, Single Player Campaign, Chapter 3, Test Chamber 17

Surprisingly the orphan/adopted jokes are actually fewer than I remember. With how Wheatley tried to imitate GLaDOS by throwing around “fatty” and making a comment about Chell being adopted that one time, I kinda thought that it was almost as common as the fat jokes.

Though, to be fair, the adoption comment goes back as far as the end of Portal, and GLaDOS actually did a whole bit where she pretended that she found Chell’s parents. So it left more of an impression on me than the fat comments actually did.

As for whether or not it’s true? It’s most likely. After all, the adoption/orphan comments are protocol for specifically dealing with orphan test subjects. Also in general Aperture seems to have it out for orphans in that test subject type listing thing. [credit to the-wheatley-core go check them out cowards-]

"But Chell’s a daughter from bring your daughter to work d-"

The file said she’s adopted, so ye. Adopted daughter is still daughter.

Furthermore, the Bring your Daughter to Work Day incident probably orphaned Chell all over again, so she’s like. An orphan twice over.

As for Chell’s feelings on this? I think from what GLaDOS says here that Chell probably did not take the surprise very well. Granted, she probably wasn’t expecting it to actually be anything good. She probably didn’t have her hopes up. But she was probably seriously pissed that GLaDOS went through all that trouble just for it to lead to... nothing. All for the sake of mocking her.

Further implied by GLaDOS rubbing salt in the wounds.

I think this would mean that this is a bit of a sore spot for Chell in general and that this was one of the few moments that genuinely upset her.

Calling Chell a Horrible Person [and a Loner]

"You're not a good person. You know that, right?"

"Good people don't end up here." -Portal, during the later part of the Escape

"All your other friends couldn't come either because you don't have any other friends. Because of how unlikable you are."

"It says so right here in your personnel file: Unlikable. Liked by no one. A bitter, unlikable loner whose passing shall not be mourned." -Portal, Boss Battle, After Curiosity Core is destroyed

"Well done. Here come the test results: You are a horrible person. I'm serious, that's what it says: A horrible person. We weren't even testing for that." -Portal 2, Single Player Campaign, Chapter 2, Test Chamber 2

GLaDOS really goes into calling Chell a bad person. There’s like. So many instances of this.

Though I don’t believe that Chell’s a bad person necessarily, there can be some things that might make one believe she is [outside of bias and clear guilt tripping/gaslighting].

If you’ve read my Chell headcanon shit, you might remember that I state that I think that Chell’s a rather spiteful person. Not only does she stubbornly refuse to speak purely to spite Aperture as a whole, but it’s implied from her file that she gave the scientists a lot of grief, to the point they recommend not ever testing her [it’s stated to be her tenacity, but tbh I think for Chell spite was at least a major motivatorfor her tenacity. After all, what else did she have?]. And once again, it seems that they view her rather bitterly if GLaDOS didn’t put that in the file herself.

Not to mention that GLaDOS manipulates her into destroying the Morality Core by appealing to her spite. After all, it’s not possible in game to simply do as she says and return it to her. You have to destroy it.

Even Wheatley caught onto Chell acting out of spite. He tried appealing to that when trying to convince her to get onto the conveyer belt to the mashy spike plate.

As for the loner bit, that seems to hold true to, considering how well Chell took the isolation she had to suffer. As far as she knew in the first game [at least at first], she was all alone and didn't so much as crack.

Not to mention in the second games the other characters' reactions imply that she's rather standoffish overall.

That combination can lead to someone being rather... difficult to work with...

But to be honest, I think she’s also capable of compassion, or at least mercy, and can be cooperative if she finds you trustworthy enough.

For the compassion [or mercy depending on how you view it] I have some examples that I’ll elaborate on in the Companion Cube and Wheatley sections, but there’s a couple of others I can get into.

Remember when I said I partially judge a blankslate character based off of what is and isn’t an option gameplaywise that doesn’t result in consequence.

Not only is it optional to save the Oracle Turret without consequence, but it even rewards you with an achievement and some neat foreshadowing from the character.

Then there is the time that Chell found GLaDOS at her lowest; a potato, being eaten alive by a bird.

Now, gameplaywise, you can’t advance without PotaTOS, hell, PotaTOS sits on the switch in the nest you find her in, but story and characterwise, Chell could have just went on her way, let her suffer the her fate at the hands [or talons/beak] of the bird. And yet she scared the bird off of her.

And it’s not like she knew that the place was going to self destruct or that she needed GLaDOS to survive, because that wasn’t brought up until after Chell scared the bird away.

As for the cooperativeness, I want to elaborate more on that when I get to Wheatley’s section, but I will say, she did work pretty well with GLaDOS in the later half of the game, despite how shakey their alliance was. Even risking her life to disconnect Wheatley from the chasis long enough for GLaDOS to fix everything. Just going off of the slim chance that she could survive it with GLaDOS’s intervention. It was no guarantee, she probably would have thought she was dead either way if she didn’t have at least a sliver of a thought that GLaDOS would pull her back in to safety.

Now imagine how well she'd probably work with you if she genuinely believed in her partnership with you.

It may have gotten a bit off track there, but my point is that GLaDOS is not completely unfounded with her being “unlikable”. It’s clear that she holds a lot of resentment for her situation and reacts spitefully because of it, and that combined with her being a rather distant person can make it hard to deal with her [and in fact might be a deal breaker for some], but at the same time, she’s not completely unreasonable and bitchy just so long as you’re either harmless or have good intentions.

Chell’s Sense of Fashion

"That jumpsuit you're wearing looks stupid. That's not me talking, it's right here in your file. On other people it looks fine, but right here a scientist has noted that on you it looks 'stupid.'"

"Well, what does a neck-bearded old engineer know about fashion? He probably - Oh, wait. It's a she. Still, what does she know? Oh wait, it says she has a medical degree. In fashion! From France!" -Portal 2, SIngle Player Campaign, Chapter 3, Test Chamber 15

Now, this is probably the shortest one because this is the only instance [that I know of] where GLaDOS pokes fun at her sense of fashion. And since it never comes up again, this is probably something that she sensed did not bother Chell one bit.

Though telling by how Chell had the upper half of her jumpsuit folded down and tied around her waist to expose her tops, it does seem like she cares about fashion a tad [probably favors both fashion and function], but doesn’t seem to care what other people think of her tastes, just what she likes.

The Companion Cube

"While it has been a faithful companion, your Companion Cube cannot accompany you through the rest of the test. If it could talk - and the Enrichment Center takes this opportunity to remind you that it cannot - it would tell you to go on without it because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you."

"You euthanized your faithful Companion Cube more quickly than any test subject on record. Congratulations." Portal, Test Chamber 17

"Oh. Did I accidentally fizzle that before you could complete the test? I'm sorry."

"Anyway, here's a new cube for you to project your deranged loneliness onto."

"I think that one was about to say 'I love you.' They ARE sentient, of course. We just have a LOT of them."  Portal 2, SIngle Player Campaign, Chapter 2, Test Chamber 7

Ah the faithful Companion Cube, everyone’s best friend. And an instance where GLaDOS tries to emotionally torment Chell while still trying to pass herself off as a automated voice back in the first game.

Is the cube truly sentient? I don’t know.

Does Chell care about it? I don’t think GLaDOS would have brought them back in the second game and taunt her with them if she didn’t believe it would cause Chell some distress.

She even gives it back to her after setting her free.

Whether or not it can talk or feel anything, I think it’s clear that Chell is rather fond of it.

Side note, I swear to god throughout Test Chamber 17 in the first game I heard like. Soft, faint humming whenever I held it. Am I just crazy? Did any of you guys experience that too? help-

Wheatley

"I have only met one other team closer and one of them was an imbecile I had to destroy."

"The other? Well..."

"I don't think I want to go through that again." -Portal 2, Co-op Campaign, Unlocking Course 4 for the first time

I don’t know about you, but I’m fairly certain the team she’s talking about is Chell and Wheatley. There is literally no other pair that would fit that description that we know of. Sure, she didn’t destroy Wheatley [literally, anyways], but he is her definition of an imbicel that she had to deal with. And Chell has not worked with anyone else before Wheatley [Not directly anyways], and it’s pretty obvious that “the other” is who GLaDOS was referring to.

And while she didn’t get to see all they did together, she witnessed Chell put enough of her trust in him to follow him to escape, even despite her best efforts, and she bared witness to the fruit of their labor later.

I think she sensed a sort of chemistry between them, noticed how well they worked together. She even felt the need to ask permission to kill him. She probably wouldn’t have if she didn’t have reason to believe that Chell was at least at one point close to him.

So that begs the question; does she really believe Chell actually did all the work?

I don’t think so.

Again, she witnessed Chell faithfully follow Wheatley, so it’s reasonable to assume that she was following his lead. Not to mention that this is not a type of strategy that Chell has attempted on her own before. Chell’s strategy in the first game was to simply to bide her time, portal in and out when the opportunity arises, destroy shit, and just wander until she got results, basically [she was kinda following Rattmann's directions, though]. This strategy was too subtle, too quiet, to be Chell’s. She even said so herself; "And now I'monto all of your little tricks." And she'd recognized that this is not how she do.

Not to mention that they all know that Wheatley knows Aperture and all its inner workings better than Chell, so even if she wanted to sabotage anything, she wouldn’t know what and where they were.

I believe she saw an opertunity to split them apart in the form of Wheatley’s betrayal. More specifically to turn Chell against him. After all, she was very quiet until he lowered the lift back down.

Of course that backfired into her turning Wheatley against Chell and Wheatley promptly turning her into a potato. Opps-

“But if they were as close as GLaDOS believed them to be, why didn’t she catch Wheatley? After all, it’s not an option to catch him in game.”

Well remember, Chell has only just met him at this point, so it’s fair that she doesn’t immediately trust him with what she’s been through. Not to mention that the last time that a core was dropped, it was a trap.

Though, I believe after that, she realized he was sincere and steadily warmed up to him. It’s never an option to drop him whenever you pick him up, after all. Now granted, you can’t progress if you could drop him down a pit, but I think characterwise we can assume that she’s just unwilling to do so, regardless of how useful he was to her in those instances.

Furthermore, I think she grew to trust him throughout chapters 3, 4, and 5, as again, she very willingly followed his lead and had faith that he would help bust her out, waiting patiently for him to do so.

Sure, she diverted a bit to flesh out his plan some [although if you wait long enough at the turret assembly line, he does tell you what to do, so this could be another instance of her following his lead without question, though I like to think because of her problem solving skills that she does it herself, but either way!], but it’s still his plan that she’s trusting him with regardless.

Plus, I think Wheatley being as casual with her as he was during chapter 5 is implication that they both felt safe with each other at that point. At least, as safe as you can feel when hiding from a pissed off over powered blood lusting AI while being forced to wander around in the dark with only a flashlight to guide you.

And yet she kept him at arm's length by not speaking to him. I doubt it was anything personal against him though, so much as it's become a long time habit and way of protecting herself at this point. So long as they were both still in Aperture, anything could happen. So to her, keeping an emotional distance from him and not verbally responding was probably the safest bet.

That, however, was what made it so easy for GLaDOS to destroy their partnership. The lack of communication would ultimately lead Wheatley to believe that Chell did not appreciate all his help, that she agreed with her even.

Chell's shutting him out ultimately led to a self fulfilling prophecy.

Welp, this took all fucking day to write, but here we go. Hope this made sense. This is just my interpretation, so take it with a grain of salt. Hope it was a fun read either way, and if I’m mistaken on something, feel free to let me know. ^^

Edit: Fixed some grammar and other mistakes, elaborated on some points, aaaaand gave credit to the little snippit of the low risk human acquisitionthing siiiince I did not get that myself-))

[loveafterthefact]

Love After the Fact Chapter 25: Sometimes, You’re an Idiot All the Time

By popular demand, have some boomer dad and his husband, the voice of common sense

First  Previous  Next

“He has to be up to something,” Alfor growls, pacing his quarters. “I just don’t know what.”

“Who are we talking about?” Coran looks up from his datapad. Lance requested some research on potential trade avenues. Specifically, he wants to know why they were discarded. Coran had been delighted for an opportunity to help his son, delighted that Lance had reached out.

“Keith,” Alfor spits.

Coran sighs, hanging his head. “Darling, you can’t be serious.”

“He is the enemy,” Alfor hisses, trying to impress upon his husband the entirely nonexistent gravity of the situation.

“Really?” Coran turns in his spinning chair, sending his son a file and tossing his datapad onto his desk.

“Yes, really.”

“Okay, Alfor. Dearest. Darling. Light of my life. Star of my sky. Explain it to me. Explain to me how a nineteen-decaphoebs-old kit is our enemy. The same kit who is currently training a platoon of our troops for castle defense. The same kit who is currently holding court alongside Lance every movement now. The same kit who studies in the library, tries to learn our laws and customs, and has begun making mindful alterations to be enacted on the first of the decaphoeb, in accordance with our legal process. Let’s hear it.”

“He’s dangerous. He's vicious. He threw a soldier across the room! He's a trained killer-”

“Enough.” Coran sighs. How can he get this through his husband’s thick, paranoid, traumatized head? He gets up, grabs Alfor’s hand. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”

Out in the gardens, walking the path, Coran gives it a few minutes to let the fresh air reach his beloved moron’s overly suspicious brain.

“Alright. So you went to speak with Keith. Is that correct?”

“Yes. Why?”

“So what did you learn about him?”

“That he hates me.” Coran winces. “Also, he didn’t have friends back on Daibazaal. One has to wonder why…”

“Just the facts, darling.”

“Also, he’s a trained killer. He’s a supreme fighter. I watched him from the shadows not a varga ago! He talks about killing the way you talk about the properties of scaultrite! Lance doesn’t have a chance against him!”

“Uh-huh.”

“I caught him earlier flirting with our son! Our! Son!”

“Oh, for- Alfor, they’re married! That’s a good thing.”

Alfor grumbles, scowling. Coran sighs.

“You don’t know that. You don’t know what he’s capable of. You don’t know what his schemes are, what he might do to Lance. That’s our son, Coran!”

“Okay, so, underneath all of those paranoid ramblings, what I’m hearing is that you’re worried that Keith will hurt our son because he is an insidious, evil little monster capable of destroying the world.”

“Now you understand!”

Coran smiles, shakes his head. He really does love this man. Even if he’s being a… what did Keith call Lady Renli the other quintant? Ah, of course. Even if he’s being a ‘fucking idiot’.

“I think I understand,” Coran murmurs, squeezing Alfor’s hand. “It’s been quite hard for you, hasn’t it, learning to treat your lifelong enemies as friends? Then, you’re expected to welcome one into your home, and into your family. In addition, you give him your son, your legacy and heir. Lance is at his mercy, and seems to be getting attached.”

“Well, that’s-”

“I am so very proud of you. You’ve grown so much.”

“Thank you-”

“But you are in the wrong. You’ve only been thinking of him as a Galra. Let’s try thinking about him as a person, okay? You’ve had a conversation with him. You’ve watched his behavior. What have you learned about our son-in-law?”

“He’s…” Alfor wracks his brains. “Young. Just a kit. Too young to be married, obviously.”

“Generally, yes. We prefer that people are adults before they get married.”

“He’s, uh. Shy. Quiet. Smart. Fierce, which is contradictory with shy and quiet but holds true. Uh. Inexperienced?” Alfor’s heart drops into his stomach. “Inexperienced…”

Coran smiles. “Yes, darling. Now, you have your idea of what Keith is, so perhaps you could take a moment to consider an alternative perspective on who he is?”

“Okay,” Alfor mumbles, appropriately abashed.

Change gets harder as they get older. Coran's been lucky enough to have lived an extremely varied life. It makes him more adaptable than his husband. Alfor's only ever really been two things: a soldier and a scholar.

“Imagine, if you will, a child taken from his family and home, arranged to marry, live, and share a bed with a powerful stranger with a less than stellar reputation. This child is out of his depth, drowning in culture and responsibility he was not at all prepared for. Do you really imagine that child is a cold-hearted, calculating spy?”

“No. He-” Alfor’s shoulders drop. “He’s probably very scared.”

“I think that’s an accurate inference. Can you even imagine how he must have felt when Lance pulled him away at the wedding banquet? What he believed was about to happen to him? And yet, that boy went anyway. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t have been half so brave.”

“Killing Lance probably would have been easier for him,” Alfor murmurs. He knows something of Galran mating bonds. If he really thinks about it, that’s a brutal reality to stare in the face. Bonded to someone who does not love you.

“I imagine Keith feels much the same way. Or did, some phoebs ago.” Coran smiles. “You know what I think?”

“What do you think?”

“I think that you’re projecting. You’re frustrated that you don’t have a good relationship with your son and you’re jealous that Keith is forming one.”

“That’s completely unfounded. I have no problems at all! With anything!”

Coran smiles, sly. “Right. So you’re saying you have no problem being virtual strangers with your son while he and Keith go chastely kiss all over the grounds? They’ll probably make love for the first time in the grotto where you taught him to swim and think nothing of it at all-”

“That’s cruel, love.”

“But my point is made, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Your point is made.” Alfor sighs. “He’s my boy. Allura does better without me, but Lance…”

“It gets to him. I know.” Coran lifts their joined hands, presses a kiss to the back of Alfor’s. He sits them down on a bench under a singing tree.

“Keith says that Lance wants to be a hero.”

Coran chuckles. “I wonder where he gets that from." Alfor offers a weak, sad smile. "He wants you to be proud of him, too.”

“I am proud of him! I see how smart he is, how hard he’s working on his marriage, how hard he’s working in court! I’m seeing it! I’m seeing him and it’s beautiful!”

“Have you told him that?” Coran asks, holding one of Alfor’s hands between his in his lap.

“Yes!” Alfor’s face falls. “I just don’t think he believed me.”

“Well, maybe it’s not enough.” Coran sighs as Alfor wilts. “Maybe you need to show him. Show him you’re interested in his life. I think once you've begun to repair your relationship with Lance, you'll feel better about Keith.”

“I… At this point, I wouldn’t even know how. The last time Lance and I had a real conversation about something, he was nine, telling me about how he wanted to live on the back of a cosmic whale.”

“That sounds quiznaking awesome, actually. You just need to find an opening. Then, ask him a question. A simple one. ‘What have you been working on lately?’ ‘How are things going with Keith?’ ‘Do you have any ideas for the Frost Ball?’ Just show that you’re interested in his life and how he’s doing. He loves you, Alfor. Just as much as I do.”

Not sure of how else to convey all the feelings in his chest, Alfor pulls his husband in for an embrace. One that is returned without question or thought. It’s a given, but never taken for granted, that affection offered is affection returned.

Love is a complicated thing. Alfor himself had married and fathered his first child while watching his eccentric adviser charm the court with tales of various interstellar adventures. Inevitably, Alfor had found himself charmed as well. It was ultimately a newly expecting, deeply amused Melinor who told him to go for it. He had, quietly, and found his life beautifully enriched.

In spite of complicated circumstances, some things never change. Adventurer, adviser, lover, husband, king- Whatever they are to each other, Alfor is the provider and protector. Coran is the heart of everything. He feels like home, even after all these years.

The embrace doesn’t last long. The thing about getting older is feeling time slip through their fingers. And they have gotten older. Alfor’s forehead is lined with centaphoebs of worry just as Coran’s eyes are lined with smiles. Besides, there’s little to convey here that hasn’t already been conveyed, that isn’t conveyed in every breath they’ve taken since the very first time Alfor took his hand all those decaphoebs ago.

Coran hums, something catching his eye. Alfor twists on their bench. It’s Lance, smiling as he leads Keith by the hand through the hole in the garden wall. As they watch, Lance whispers something in the Galra prince’s ear. Whatever it is, it makes the Galra laugh, small and quiet. Alfor notes the way his indigo and gold eyes light up as he smiles at Lance.

He feels a very specific kind of heartbreak.

[theholycovenantrpg]

CONGRATULATIONS, JENNA! YOU’VE BEEN ACCEPTED FOR THE ROLE OF BASTIEN AVALOS.

Admin Rosey: Jenna, I cannot emphasize enough how in love I am with the way that you captured Bastien. He was one of the characters that is driven singularly by passion and impulse, and he is the one character that takes a person’s heart and never lets go of it until he tires, then goes for another. From your ideas for development, to the para sample - this application holds you captive just as Bastien does. The Holy Land isn’t ready for Bastien to enter center stage, but boy, I definitely am. Thank you for this wonderful application - and please, be handle our hearts gently...before smashing them to pieces.  Please create and send in your account, review the information on our CHECKLIST, and follow everyone on the FOLLOW LIST. Welcome to the Holy Land!

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Jenna Age | 21 Personal Pronouns | she/they Activity Level | My activity really varies throughout the week! I work on weekdays ( gross, I know ), and am also completing an honours degree this year so will mostly be around on evenings and on the weekends!! My aim is usually to get on for replies every couple of days, but I generally make myself available for plotting every day! Timezone | gmt+10 Triggers | REMOVED. How did you find the group?  | in the tags! but I recognised your names from diverona and just knew I had to apply!! Current/Past RP Accounts | https://marymacd.tumblr.com/ // https://leonagw.tumblr.com/

IN CHARACTER

Character | Bastien Avalos

What drew you to this character? | Wow, okay, where do I begin? Bastien is a very different character to the ones I usually play, and I think I was initially drawn to his recklessness. Bastien doesn’t just flirt with danger - he courts it, and I find this very fascinating as I’ve always tended to play very strategic, cautious, and calculated characters in the past, which Bastien just isn’t. I think there’s lots of potential to develop him as a character - both in the way of coming to terms with his past and exploring the events that have brought him to where he is, and in terms of his future - now that he’s had his autonomy ripped from him and burdened with a responsibility he never wanted, and one that he’s quite ill-equipped for, there’s definitely a lot of room to develop him in very interesting ways.

I’m also drawn to the idea of portraying a mortal walking among immortals - and yet, having very little regard for his own mortality. He’s spent his whole life running headfirst into danger - picking fights he knows he won’t win just for the sheer thrill of it - just to get a few battle scars and a great story at the end of it. It’s fascinating to me that, out of all the characters in this group, he’s perhaps the most vulnerable due to his status as mortal, and yet he acts as though he’s unbreakable, living life with a sort of heedlessness that is so uniquely human. He’s aware of his limited lifespan in comparison to those around him, but he’s determined to do as much as he possibly can with the time he has, to ensure that he leaves a great story behind when he goes.

What future plots do you have in mind for the character? |

001. SINS OF THE FATHER - Listen, the potential to explore Bastien’s relationships with his family was far too rich and complex for me to pass up putting it first. Let’s start with the obvious, shall we? Bastien killed his father - obviously, it was in defence of his mother, and I don’t necessarily think that he regrets what he did ( only that it put him into a position of power and left him responsibility he is neither equipped nor wanting to handle ), but it definitely has left an impact on him. Though not specifically mentioned in his bio - I think it’s very unlikely that Bastien has told anyone what really happened that night ( the family probably lied it away, that the former Lord Avalos was murdered by someone seeking some kind of retribution before fleeing in the night, never to be seen again ), and I think it would be very interesting to see how this guilt plays on him, and how he struggles with having to feign anger at the mystery of his father’s demise while knowing full well what really happened. Yes, Bastien may be a dumbass, but he’s not as stupid as everyone thinks, and he knows that the truth of what happened to his father coming out would be bad not only for him, but for his whole family, and he’s going to do whatever it can to keep the secret from surfacing, even if that means lying to the ones closest to him ( of course….. I, personally, would love for people to find out what happened to his father eventually, the drama of it all is too much to pass on ).

I would also love to explore how the death of his father has shaped his relationships with the rest of his family - his mother in particular. Though his sisters may have their suspicions, I also feel that they’re likely as in the dark as anyone else regarding the circumstances of their father’s death ( and, honestly, he wasn’t a particularly nice man, so none of them have any intention of digging any deeper into it ). However, Bastien’s mother knows exactly what happened, and, more importantly, why. I’d honestly love to explore the idea of her being angry with Bastien for what he did - for jeopardising the family name and putting himself in harm’s way yet again, despite it being to save her life. In my head, she cares more about Bastien’s wellbeing than her own, and thinks that what he did was a mistake that he didn’t think through ( which, to be fair, he did not ). Also, now that Bastien is Lord Avalos - how does this change their relationship? It’s a responsibility he never wanted, but one that his mother insisted he must take on after the death of his father. I think there’s the potential for a lot of resentment to build between them, which is particularly interesting ( and sad ) because I think they have always had a fairly strong relationship throughout Bastien’s youth and early adulthood.

002. ADAM & EVE - Let’s! Talk! About! Evangeline! In all seriousness, I think that the relationship between Basien and Evangeline has so, so much potential and is definitely one of the main reasons I was drawn to the character in the first place. I mean, best friends who are practically closer than family is one of my favourite tropes. I really think of Evangeline as being one of the only things that really keeps Bastien grounded - he’s reckless and foolish at the best of times, and she has the potential to be a counter to this rashness. At the same time, Bastien’s immaturity ( for lack of a better word ) can help lift Evangeline and invite some youthfulness into both of their lives. I don’t want to infer too much about their past or their current relationship, as this is obviously something I want to discuss with Evangeline’s mun, but I do want to discuss the secrets that Bastien is keeping from Evangeline. For one, their connection states that he knows the truth about what happened to Evangeline’s parents, something she herself doesn’t know, and something he’s been keeping from her ( for what he believes to be her own good - but, really, shouldn’t Evangeline get to be the judge of that? ).

But, what happens when she finds out what really happened, and that her best friend has been lying to her for so long? Again, I don’t want to assume anything as this is entirely up to Evangeline’s mun, but I do think there is the potential for some drama™ here. Bastien didn’t do what he did for bad reasons, he’s not a sinister character, and he genuinely thought he was doing the right thing - but I can definitely see a world where it doesn’t come across this way. Along the same lines, I think that if Bastien was going to tell anyone about what happened to his father, it would be Evangeline. I don’t imagine that he’s told her yet, but I can definitely see this as a possibility. I think he would be worried about how she would react, and I can really see it going either way ( again, this is all subject to the interpretation of Evangeline’s mun ), but her reaction ( especially in light of what happened to Lady Treme ) is again, something which could be very interesting to explore.

003. A SEAT AT THE TABLE - Does Bastien deserve a seat at the Round Table? Absolutely not. Will he work hard to ensure he is respected and taken seriously? Also no. Bastien and responsibility are two things that nobody would have ever previously thought to associate. Growing up, Bastien seemed to exist on the periphery of his father’s world, a reckless kid always looking for trouble and never bothering to learn from his mistakes - he was an unwelcome stain on an otherwise pristine Avalos legacy. Nobody in any position of power thought to take the former Lord Avalos’ heir seriously, and perhaps many of them prayed the father world outlive the son ( it wouldn’t have been too unreasonable an assumption to make, given the number of times Bastien would return home late at night, bloody and bruised after picking a fight with someone he shoudn’t have ). Perhaps many of them were rightfully surprised to see Bastien take his seat at the Round Table following the untimely demise of his father - perhaps they’d been expecting him to simply walk away from the responsibility, to throw in the towel and leave the Round Table without an Avalos for the first time in history.

He’d wanted to - power and responsibility weren’t well-suited to Bastien’s personality. Sure, he had a knack for military strategy, and he wasn’t a bad fighter on his own, but he never saw himself as a general, as a leader, and he certainly doesn’t see himself this way now. He’d been willing to walk away from it all, but urgent prompting from his mother forced Bastien to rethink this position and take up a seat of power that he never imagined himself holding. He’s angry, of course, that his life has been whittled down to this - that he didn’t see this coming when he’d taken his father’s life, but he’ll do it for the sake of his family. I’d love to explore Bastien’s newfound responsibilities, and how he reacts to this. There’s the potential for a great amount of resentment to form - he never wanted this life for himself, he always imagined himself surmounting to bigger and better things, and, yes, he’s angry that he has to spend his days playing politics when he could be out exploring the world and living a life worthwhile.

I do see a possibility of it all becoming too much for Bastien - of him wanting to give up and escape and start anew. I’m not really sure how this would play out, in all honesty, but I think the resentment that Bastien has towards his life and his position could be very interesting to explore. I also would love to develop Bastien’s connections with the other members of the Round Table. I don’t imagine anyone will take him very seriously, and his naivety leaves him open to manipulation and sabotage. How do the others perceive him? How will they use him? This is the aspect of Bastien that is the most vulnerable - because he has no idea what he’s doing, and I’d love to see this come back to bite him, I’d love to see someone use this to their advantage, and against Bastien’s.

004. REFLECTION OF THE PAST - Although he isn’t aware of it, Bastien’s current life isn’t his first. He’s the reincarnation of Adam - how does this affect the way that he lives? I don’t imagine that Bastien is very aware of this fact, sure, he has strange dreams from time to time, and can’t help but feel as though he’s experienced certain moments in his life beforehand, feelings so familiar that he can practically grasp them - but he never stops for long enough to think much of them. As the memories of his past life begin to come back to him more clearly, I’d really like to explore how this impacts the way that Bastien lives. Is he doomed to simply repeat the same mistakes that he made in the past, or is there room for him to forge his own destiny? I think that Bastien likes to think of himself as a free spirit - all his life, he was actively rebelling from the part that his father wished for him to play, seeking out danger and relishing in the thrill of adrenaline pumping through his veins, rather than playing politics or making power grabs or leading the military with a steady hand - I think it would come as quite a shock to him to realise that he hasn’t really been becoming his own man at all - that he was simply following in the footsteps of a past life. I think it could actually be, potentially, quite upsetting for Bastien, and trigger some serious changes and introspection on his part. Of all my plot ideas, this is probably the least fleshed out, but I really want to explore how this impacts him, as I think there’s potentially a lot of room for some serious character development on the back of him realising that he’s just a copy of someone who came before.

IN DEPTH

Driving Character Motivation | I think, more so than anything else, Bastien is driven by passion. He’s certainly not the type of person to sit around and think things through before he does them - he doesn’t consider consequences or the why of his actions until later on. He chases whatever he imagines will be the most exciting use of his time, what he thinks will make the best story later on, what will make him feel the most alive. He’s not motivated to think very far beyond what is happening right in front of him, to consider how his actions might have repercussions for himself or for others later down the track. He’s motivated to follow whatever will serve him best in any given moment - whether it be pleasure, a thrill, or material gains. He flirts with danger not to test his own mortality ( okay, a little to test his own mortality ) but because he finds there to be no better feeling than that of pure adrenaline coursing through his veins. His loyalties and beliefs come second to that search for adventure, that search for the next high, the next story, the next great escapade.

Character Traits |

+ CHARISMATIC - exercising a compelling charm which inspires devotion in others. + PASSIONATE - having, showing, or caused by strong feelings or beliefs. + OPPORTUNISTIC - exploiting immediate opportunities, especially regardless of planning or principle. - RECKLESS - heedless of danger or the consequences of one’s actions; rash or impetuous. - MERCURIAL - subject to sudden or unpredictable changes of mood or mind. - IRRESPONSIBLE - not showing a proper sense of responsibility.

In-Character Para sample |

It’s raining.

This kind of weather would usually annoy Bastien ( there’s far fewer possibilities of what to do with oneself when the weather is poorly ), but, today, he’s glad for it - while the rain mixes with tears on his mother and sisters’ faces, it manages to conceal the fact that, were it not for the unfortunate weather, Bastien’s own cheeks would be perfectly dry. His eyes are not spilling a single drop, his breath does not hitch, and his limbs only tremble from the cold - his knuckles turning white as he holds an imposing charcoal umbrella over his head.

For one normally so consumed with emotion ( one to whom anger and joy come in equal, loud measures and often within the same beat ), Bastian looks almost akin to the statues he currently finds himself surrounded by - stony faced and lifeless. Normally his face can tell a story all on its own - one of joy, or triumph, adventure, or defeat - and perhaps, to the uninformed observer, his current sterility could be chalked up to grief or to shock, but, in truth, he has quashed any emotion he might feel so as to avoid the catastrophic mistake of letting something slip that he’d prefer the public weren’t privy to. His mother had warned him - you’re grieving. You’re grieving. You’re grieving.

He wasn’t grieving.

Perhaps it should be a concern, he thinks, as he gazes at his father’s headstone ( some ironic inscription about a loving husband and father stares back at him, mockingly ), that he doesn’t feel anything akin to sorrow - the emotion he’d expect most people to feel when attending their parent’s funeral. Perhaps he should be sad - after all, this is the final day of his life as he knows it, is it not? The final day where he is able to wake up and enjoy a clean slate, to have possibilities stretched out ahead of him, tantalisingly close and yet just a stone’s throw out of reach. This ceremony marks the end of his father’s reign as Lord Avalos, and tomorrow morning, the title and responsibilities that come with it will fall to him. It’s a rather unenviable situation, he’d say.

He glances sideways at his mother - she’s sobbing quietly as one of his sisters recites some old poem. He’s suddenly angry, the desire to shake her and scream washes over him - he wasn’t a good man, mother, he had no love for us, mother, he would have killed you, mother - but then he remembers how she had screamed as Bastien plunged the dagger he’d been gifted for his twenty-fifth birthday into the heart of the man who had raised him, remembers the silence that followed as they had cleaned his blood from their clothes, and the urge goes as quickly as it had came, replaced again by stony faced resolve.

It’s been raining for the past two days, and Bastien can feel himself slowly sinking into the mud underfoot.

He’s not cut out for leadership, he thinks. Sure, he has a knack for military strategy, and a keen interest in it ( this is perhaps the only thing he and his father had had in common ), but general? A seat at the Round Table? It all seemed like too much of a stretch for the man who just a few weeks ago was picking fights with men twice his size in the city square for a bit of fun, the man who had three fake teeth because the real ones had been knocked out by quicker, stronger opponents, the man who had skirted responsibility for most of his life. If he’d had time to think, he might have tried a different method to stop his father from laying a hand upon his mother ( it had been a blur, though, adrenaline taking over and the urge to protect stronger than any rationality ) - but this was the problem, wasn’t it?

Bastien didn’t think. He never did. He’d always been a doer - acting with his heart and leaving his head to deal with the consequences later on ( if he ever did deal with them - too often it seemed he simply walked away from the messes he made, leaving a trail of skeletons behind him wherever he went, hoping desperately to outrun them lest they grab hold and pull him back down to face the music ). Now, suddenly, he’s expected to take up a position of power, of responsibility - to represent not only his family ( which he’d never done a particularly good job of ), but all of mortalkind. He’d tried to run from this, too, but sometimes fate is too powerful to escape. His mother had insisted he grin and bear his new responsibilities - he’d hurt the Avalos name enough by this point, hadn’t he?

It seems almost like a cruel twist of fate - that someone who had become so used to avoiding responsibility would be suddenly weighed down by one so great. Suddenly dashed were all of Bastien’s hopes to live life as a free man - to go where he wanted, to do as he pleased. This had never been the life he’d envisioned from himself - from the moment he could dream of something beyond himself, he’d dreamt of a life beyond all of this - beyond the rigid structure his father had long tried to force him into, beyond the rules everyone around here seemed so keen to follow blindly. He’d quickly earned the reputation of reckless, foolhardy, untoward, tempestuous, and he’d secretly reveled in it. Now, he can practically feel the eyes of his father’s former associates boring into the back of his skull - waiting for him to make a mistake, to claw their own way into power.

It’s ironic, really - they’re waiting to make him a villain, yet everything he’d done until now would suggest him to already be one.

He’s become quite accustomed to feigning grief over the past few days - it wasn’t too much of a stretch, really, he’s always been a terribly gifted liar. Not always for nefarious purposes, mind you. More often than not, his lies were altruistic in nature. He’d spin elaborate tales of grandeur and chivalry out of petty fights for his sisters and classmates. He’d convince his mother that the ghastly gash above his eye would heal up just fine ( it didn’t ) and that it didn’t even hurt ( it did ). He could brush off concern or anger or disappointment with a flash of his teeth and a little white lie, he could bounce from person to person, emotion to emotion, leaving everyone he met with a slightly different impression depending on what they wanted to see. And he could keep secrets buried deep in his chest, rotting him from the inside, when he felt they might do more harm when spoken aloud.

He could lie about this, then, too. He could lie that he was ready ( and willing ) to take on this new responsibility - just as he had feigned shock at the sight of his father’s dead body. Just as he had feigned anger that no culprit had yet been found. Just as he could feign mourning around his sisters, or remorse around his mother. Just as he could feign grief - just as he is right now, the fat droplets of rain serving as decent enough replacements for genuine tears. He’d handle this - of course he would handle this, just as he had handled everything else in his life up until now - with a laugh and a grin and a great story at the end of it.

“Bastien,” It’s his mother speaking, she tugs gently at his arm. The ceremony is over. He hadn’t even noticed that people had started to file out of the cemetery. “It’s time to go.”

Extras | Pinterest / Mock blog

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my application ( again )! I love the look of this group, and I love Bastien, and I hope I get the opportunity to write with you all soon!!

[thuskindlyshescatters]

Team RWBY and the Very Long Day

Or maybe... not as long as you’d expect?

When the team reaches Atlas Academy and are brought on a tour, they’re dead tired. Now, as someone who’s gone on a number of college tours myself, I totally can relate. And plus, the team has had a really long day -- Volume 6 Chapter 10 through Volume 7 Chapter 2 have all been the same day.

However, it feels a lot longer for us than it should, since we saw it over a nine-month period, and they only experienced it in a day. But how long was that day specifically?

There’s a couple factors we need to consider: time zones, hour of sunset, flight hours, and actual in-show events. By evaluating this, we will determine: How long of a day were the past 6 chapters of RWBY? Is their exhaustion justified by canon events?

Spoilers, math, and lots of pointless reading below. 

I) Time Zone

According to this map (the fifth image) from the second “World of Remnant” short, we get a pretty good approximation of the location of Atlas. Argus is on the U-shaped peninsula a third of the way from Mistral to Atlas. Ideally, time zones would work in 24 hour-wide increments, so assuming there is NOT a huge Pacific-like ocean around Remnant’s back half, there is approximately a two-hour time difference between Argus and Atlas. This means the sun sets on Argus earlier than Atlas -- however, Atlas is further North, so sunset may be earlier for them relative to someone at a lower latitude in their timezone. Additionally, it also means the team may experience around two hours of jet lag upon arrival. 

II) Sunset

When the gang arrives in Atlas, it is night time. In Volume 6 Chapter 7, they arrive at Argus in mid-afternoon. Because the next episode’s scenes with Cordovin at the base and Maria in the garden do not have the same warm lighting, we can infer that those took place the next day, sometime during the middle of the day. They receive news that Oscar is missing and begin their search -- however, unless they were searching for him like in Volume 1 Chapter 16 (if you recall, that was 12 hours), it’s likely they were out of the house for no more than 4 hours. From the end of Volume 6 Chapter 8 to the end of Volume 6 Chapter 9 might have been from, call it, 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM -- meaning sunset was sometime within those hours. It is wintertime in the Northern hemisphere of Remnant (quick summary, it’s been about a year since the end of Volume 3 Chapter 12), so assuming they don’t have daylight savings time, this is a pretty reasonable estimate for when the sun would set in a city whose latitude is comparable to that of Paris. If we take a quick look back at Atlas, it is MUCH farther North than Argus, and is pretty much in the Arctic. If we compare map distances, Atlas might as well be in Iceland, as Paris and Reykjavik are 1,396 air miles away from each other. In December in Iceland, the sun sets at around 3:00 to 4:00 PM. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable that people would still be up and about when it appears to be night time in Atlas. 

III) Flight Hours

What this means is that the team, in order to leave Argus during daytime (earlier than 5:30 PM) and to arrive in Atlas during nighttime (later than 4:00 PM) when there is a two-hour time difference between them, it works out to assume that the minimum time a flight on an Atlesian dropship would take from Argus to Atlas would be 4 hours. Even more generous would be to allow them 5 hours, considering the pace of the vehicle. 

IV) Events

I’d like to start with the evidence we see in Atlas and work backwards to make a fair assumption about when they arrive in Atlas. The amount of people on the streets and the fact that Dr. Polendina’s pharmacy is open makes me want to believe it’s before 6:00 PM. The Faunus miners we see on the passing vehicle makes me wonder if this is accurate, however, because I would assume the miners would work more unreasonable hours than that. I will chalk this up to be a case of world details being more important to show punctually than consistently. Anyways, if we say it’s 5:30 PM in Atlas when they arrive, then it’s likely 3:30 PM in Argus when they depart (accounting for a 4 hour flight and 2 hour time zone difference.)

Now, for the real numbers:

Ruby’s role in the heist takes place more or less in real time, while Blake and Yang’s excursion with Adam is punctuated by breaks of which we cannot know the duration. Therefore, knowing that Blake and Yang rejoin the group in Volume 6 Chapter 13, I will only recount the “cliff-side” events, as it were, to calculate the duration of the heist itself.

Volume 6 Chapter 10

We have no idea when the heist begins. Cordovin, being a military officer, would probably want Weiss to arrive at a sharp hour, so let’s call that hour “X:00″ o’clock. Based off of our previous calculations, the end of the heist must occur at around 3:30, so depending on their length, this hour could be 3:00 PM. (Spoiler: it totally will be.)

The episode begins on the Rooster Teeth website at 2:08 minutes, and from there it pretty much goes in real time until 4:50, which is the moment when Weiss loses scroll signal with Ruby. Ruby loses signal with Weiss at 6:02, so we can deduce that those next 1:12 minutes of Ruby’s timeline are occurring simultaneously with what we see of Weiss. From the beginning of the heist to when Ruby loses signal is 2:42 minutes in real time (how efficient of Weiss!). From 6:02 to 11:02 is the next realtime sequence, at which point we cut to Blake and Adam, but again, we’ll be ignoring them for now. Now, the heist has been in progress for 7:42 minutes; it is X:07.

Volume 6 Chapter 11

The episode officially begins at 2:08 again. The first scene of them talking lasts until 4:01, when it cuts away from them planning to attack. Let’s be generous and give them 30 unspoken seconds where some offscreen planning occurs, making that first sequence about 2:37 minutes. Then, the sequence continues from 4:01 to 9:44 (no, I’m not counting slow motion because that’s dumb). Then, we cut away again. This episode’s total real-time stacks up to 8:20 minutes. Therefore, the heist has now been occurring for 16:02 minutes, so it’s about X:16 o’clock.

Volume 6 Chapter 12

This episode actually starts at 1:57 -- wow, wild. It runs continuously to 7:25 (no, cutting back and forth between dialogue doesn’t fucking count), making this section 5:28 minutes. We cut away to Bees, but we return to Cordovin at 11:42, pretty much exactly where it left off, and that carries on to the end of the episode at 12:54. The total of the episode comes out to be 6:40 minutes, since the Bees got a lot of murder screentime. We are also now 22:42 minutes into the heist, and it is X:22 o’clock.

Volume 6 Chapter 13

Cinder and Neo take up the first few minutes of screentime, so the episode starts for our main heroes at 3:33. It kind of carries over from the previous episode, but there’s enough fighters in the air that I’ll give them 90 seconds of cushion time to compensate for realism. I will also add 30 seconds between when Weiss says they destroyed the mech to when they’re all in the airship taking flight at 4:21. Since they like skipping time so much for dramatic effect, I’ll add ANOTHER 30 seconds between when Ruby realizes she has to face it alone and they hatch their second plan at 8:39. I’m going to stop the clock at 9:55 because Ruby yells for Jinn and stops time in-universe until her Silver Eyes moment at 11:16, which, while awesome, is the first event that occurs once time speeds back up to normal. So that whole first section, including padding, was 8:52 minutes. Then, from Silver Eyes to the end of this time section when they time skip to their arrival at 13:14 is 1:58. Finally, the episode cuts to credits at 16:51, the last line being “welcome home,” making the total for the episode 14:27. 

I’d like to note that the episode was 10:50 minutes before they timeskipped to their arrival, so it was 33:32 minutes into the heist and X:33 when they left for Atlas. We said earlier it would be best if they left at around 3:30 PM, and what do you know: the number works out! We can therefore pretty confidently say the heist began at 3:00 PM, which will be important later.

Volume 7 Chapter 1

That’s right folks, we’re not done! Now in Atlas, it is 5:33 PM, just like we predicted it would be. The line “welcome home” is said at 0:38, where I’ll be starting the clock for this episode, but I’ll add the 3:37 of dialogue that occurred the previous episode. They cut away to some pretty Atlas shots while they descend into the city, so I’ll provide 60 seconds of offscreen time. From there, we stay in real time until they put the ship down, which I’ll again provide another 60 seconds for. After their encounter with the MAGA (Make Atlas Great Again, obvs) hecklers, let’s say they walk for another 60 seconds before reaching Piedro’s pharmacy. Continuing to the end of the episode, it’s pretty continuous, except for the extra 90 seconds I’ll provide for them being loaded into the airship. The realtime total for this episode is 18:24 minutes, so it’s been 4 hours and 51:56 minutes since they began the heist, and it’s now 5:51 PM in Atlas.

Volume 7 Chapter 2

The episode starts at 1:46. Let’s be generous and say they’ve been in the air for 2 minutes so far. The episode plays out pretty much in real time until 15:18 where we enter Penny’s montage, so I’ll add about 3 more minutes of travel time to and from Ironwood’s office within Atlas Academy and account the Ironqrow moment for the time it took offscreen for the rest of the group to start Penny’s tour. Then, because I’ve been on many a college tour myself, I expect they’ll be walking for about 10 minutes before they start to feel like they need to collapse. So, in total, this episode takes 29:02 minutes of real time, bringing the amount of time since the start of the heist to 5 hours and 20:58 minutes, making it now approximately 6:21 PM.

In that time, various members of the team have singlehandedly overwhelmed two Argus soldiers, taken control of an airship, fought brutally with their archnemesis, battled a giant mech, flown into the barrel of a cannon, murdered a man, entered a maelstrom of Grimm, obliterated a behemoth of a Final Boss, taken a 4 hour flight, fought an onslaught of new Grimm, reunited with former besties, sisters, and colleagues alike, been arrested, and worst of all gone on a college campus tour.

V) Conclusions

I don’t think the team is suffering from that much jetlag, but I’d definitely be exhausted with that much happening even if it was only 8:21 PM in “my time.” (International travel takes a lot out of you, man.) Additionally, they probably got up earlier in the day (maybe around 9:00 AM, Argus time, if it was a lazy morning), so at this point, they’ve been awake for 11 hours, assuming no one took a nap on the airship.

However, I was surprised to find that even though all 6 of these episodes happened in one day, the actual heist part took only 33 minutes, and their first day in Atlas was about 47 minutes, maybe actually longer. That means that a LOT of the bullshit I listed above was packed into 33 minutes, and the remaining time stretched out over a leisurely hour or so. This post also was made on 11/09, so it might even happen that the next episode CONTINUES this exhausting day, in which case, expect an update.

TLDR: In conclusion, the team deserves to be tired AF because of all the crazy stuff that’s happened to them today. However, they were not awake for an exceptionally long time, nor did the events in Argus actually take up much of their day, much to my surprise.

What was the point of this again?

[sciencespies]

Eerie stars of 'dark matter' may be behind largest gravitational wave detection yet

https://sciencespies.com/space/eerie-stars-of-dark-matter-may-be-behind-largest-gravitational-wave-detection-yet/

Eerie stars of 'dark matter' may be behind largest gravitational wave detection yet

On 21 May 2019, from a distance of 7 billion light-years away, our gravitational wave detectors were rocked by the most massive collision yet. From analysis of the signal, astronomers concluded that the detection was the result of two black holes smashing together, weighing in at 66 and 85 times the mass of the Sun respectively.

But what if it was something else? A new study offers a different interpretation of the event. It’s possible, according to an international team of astrophysicists, that the two objects were not black holes at all, but mysterious, theoretical objects called boson stars – potentially made up of elusive candidates for dark matter.

The gravitational wave event, called GW 190521, was a spectacular discovery. The object that resulted from the merger of the two objects would have been a black hole at around 142 times the mass of the Sun – within the intermediate mass range that no black hole had ever been detected before, called the black hole upper mass gap.

That was extremely neat, but there was a huge puzzle – the 85 solar-mass black hole allegedly involved in the collision. According to our models, black holes over about 65 solar masses can’t form from a single star, like stellar mass black holes.

That’s because the precursor stars that would produce a black hole in this mass range are so massive that their supernovae – known as pair-instability supernovae – ought to completely obliterate the stellar core, leaving nothing behind that could gravitationally collapse into a black hole.

While our understanding of the formation of stars as ‘twins’ doesn’t neatly allow for pairs of stellar black holes to be born close enough to combine, it’s likely that the explanation is two smaller black holes merging. But if we go by the data alone, another model fits even better. 

It’s possible that the black hole was the product of an earlier merger between two smaller black holes.s, that the black hole was the product of an earlier merger between two smaller black holes. Led by Juan Calderón Bustillo of the Galician Institute of High Energy Physics in Spain, the research team has determined boson stars would be a perfect match for the numbers.

“Our results show that the two scenarios are almost indistinguishable given the data, although the exotic boson star hypothesis is slightly preferred,” said astrophysicist José Font of the University of Valencia in Spain.

“This is very exciting, since our boson-star model is, as of now, very limited, and subject to major improvements. A more evolved model may lead to even larger evidence for this scenario and would also allow us to study previous gravitational-wave observations under the boson-star merger assumption.”

Boson stars are, at the moment, purely theoretical, and have never been detected before, but they are of increasing interest to astronomers, particularly in the search for dark matter.

They are, like black holes, predicted by general relativity, and are able to grow to millions of solar masses at a very compact size.

As we have previously reported, where stars are primarily made up of particles called fermions – protons, neutrons, electrons, the stuff that forms more substantial parts of our Universe – boson stars would be made up entirely of bosons. These particles – including photons, gluons and the famous Higgs boson – don’t follow the same physical rules as fermions.

Fermions are subject to the Pauli exclusion principle, which means you can’t have two or more particles with the exact same quantum states, which includes the space they sit in. Bosons, however, can be superimposed; when they come together, they act like one big particle or matter wave. We know this, because it’s been done in a lab, producing what we call a Bose-Einstein condensate.

In the case of boson stars, the particles can be squeezed into a space which can be described with distinct values, or points on a scale. Given the right kind of bosons in the right arrangements, this ‘scalar field’ could fall into a relatively stable arrangement.

Boson stars might actually look a lot like black holes, except for one characteristic: they don’t have an absorbing surface that would stop photons, or an event horizon, so they would appear totally transparent. They’re basically compact blobs of Bose-Einstein condensate in space.

The countless particles making up such massive stars would ironically need to be incredibly light, with millions of times less mass than an electrons.

Interestingly, this kind of ultralight boson would also be a candidate for dark matter - the unknown, unseen mass responsible for all the extra gravity floating around the Universe that we can’t account for. So finding boson stars would go at least some way towards solving one of the biggest mysteries of the cosmos.

According to the team’s calculations, if GW 190521 was a merger between two boson stars, the masses and distances involved would be different, but it would solve the problem of that 85-solar-mass black hole.

“First, we would not be talking about colliding black holes anymore, which eliminates the issue of dealing with a ‘forbidden’ black hole,” Calderón Bustillo said.

“Second, because boson star mergers are much weaker, we infer a much closer distance than the one estimated by LIGO and Virgo. This leads to a much larger mass for the final black hole, of about 250 solar masses, so the fact that we have witnessed the formation of an intermediate-mass black hole remains true.”

In the team’s scenario, when the two boson stars collided, they formed a larger boson star that could have become unstable and collapses down into a black hole, so it’s actually impossible to tell whether the boson star interpretation is correct, even if we could see it clearly across the revised 1.9 billion-light-year distance.

Instead, the analysis gives us the tools for studying intermediate-mass gravitational wave events going forward in the context of boson stars as well as black holes, with the hope of finding answers in the future.

“If confirmed by subsequent analysis of this and other gravitational-wave observations,” said astrophysicist Carlos Herdeiro of the University of Aveiro in Spain, “our result would provide the first observational evidence for a long-sought dark matter candidate.”

The research has been published in Physical Review Letters.

#Space

[kafziels]

weird shit i saw freshman year (2016-2017, part two)

again this is late and mildly nsfw

-we were talking about the sexual connotation of 'thrust his maids to the wall' in Romeo and Juliet and Matt asked to give an example sentence but he said 'I thrust my thing into her' needless to say everyone lost it

-English teacher told us he met a guy who said guys get 'periods,' saying he gets moody and anxious around the 28th every month

-same teacher called Leonardo DiCaprio a baby. 'He's just a baby!'

-ok we're currently in a bad omen, the power went out twice, then we saw a black bird in the hallway (IN THE SCHOOL) and then seconds after the fire alarm went off, turns out a generator blew out

-plot twist: we continued school that day

-english teacher was explaining what the nurse meant when she said Juliet has a bump on her head 'as big as a young cock'rel's stone' - a rooster's nut. Which is word for word, he also said a rooster's balls. And when he said 'rooster's nut' someone yelled 'BUST IT' and he said 'no. that's disgusting.' And hE STOOD UP AND GOT HAND SANITIZER AND HE WAS RUBBING IT ALL THE WAY UP TO HIS ELBOWS, NOT BREAKING EYE CONTACT WITH THIS KID THE ENTIRE TIME

-'my mom takes so long to answer her damn phone. I could get a letter back from Africa faster than her. I get a letter from some fuckin African kid named chicken mcboob nugget faster then my mom'

-*watching romeo + juliet in class* 'she's not IN the fish tank, giana'

-guys pointing bananas at each other like guns

-English teacher is giving an example to the class like 'say you go to Panda Express and you get orange chicken. and the you get another plates of orange chicken. and then you get a third plate of orange chicken. what can you infer is gonna happen sooner or later?' and a girl yelled out 'DYSENTERY'

-'what's your favorite chinese food?'

'PANDA'

'no chinese FOOD'

'P A N D A'

-football jocks behind me in study hall telling each other 'bro you look like a teddy bear'

-a girl in the hall yelled out 'DOES ANYONE HAVE A TORTILLA CHIP'

-English teacher: "ok so imagine me cutting annie's head off with a golden axe-"

-someone brought a guinea pig to school, lost it, and now it's roaming the school.

-'mr. randolph I have sss. sensitive scalp syndrome.'

-a girl had a coughing fit and my English teacher said 'if you're gonna die...do it quietly'

-a guy yelled to his friends across the hall 'I didn't touch ANY of his junk'

-there was a security guard in the hallway crying during the daily playing of the national anthem

-they're playing jazz music over the school's PA system???

-the classroom phone rang in choir while we were singing a grease medley and the teacher answered by singing along with us. when he hung up he said 'the principal was not impressed with my song.'

-the other day I saw a kid open a highlighter and put it on his lips like chapstick

-'mr. randolph did you have heelies when you were little'

'no i had friends'

-someone asked my history teacher a question and he responded by fake crying and saying 'I don't care' in the most pained voice I've ever heard

-'anybody got a toothbrush' in the middle of class

-'paris needs a cock ring'

-english teacher has a huge bleeding cut on his hand and all that's on it is a Barbie bandaid

-'I am death's boy toy' *cue mom friend turning around with a disappointed sigh*

-a girl came into history crying about a breakup and saying 'don't date people they just wanna ruin your life' and the teacher said 'is there anyway you can ruin your life more quietly'

-they just called every girl named Abby down to the office. the announcement was a whole minute long

-someone in the back of my study hall is brushing his teeth. the nearest bathroom is across the school. I don't want to turn around

-I was taking notes in english and someone in the hall yelled 'WHUP' and then we all heard a smack. I think someone fell

-*sniff sniff* 'smells like communism'

-'I was choking on some popcorn in German class while we were playing bingo so I'm sitting there like 'ECH' the whole class but I won bingo so it's ok'

-English teacher: 'were talking about salty farts here'

-'do babies fart?'

'YES THEY DO AND ITS DISGUSTING'

-there's a girl in my English class who, every so often, with no regular schedule, brings an entire jar of Nutella to class and eats it

-someone in history farted and a girl said 'that was a fart'

-history teacher was one his phone and a girl (same one from before) was like 'oooo I see you on that phone texting ya girl just HIT SEND' and the teacher said 'actually someone in my family just died but thanks'

-someone compared my English teacher to guy fieri and he said 'are you seriously body shaming me here' he said the same thing upon being compared to homer simpson

-'if I could strangle you with your ponytail I would' -english teacher 2017

-'that guy assisted at jesus' birth he's so old'

-choir teacher was very happy today. He was seriously considering getting neon hair extensions in class

-'is it susan boyle?'

'NO, SHUT YOUR MOUTH'

-someone mentioned the musical 'the book of mormon' and an actual mormon in the classroom got offended and the other guy got written up to the office. this is high school

-'if you're giving human qualities to a bear is it personification?'

'the bear was evading his taxes'

-English teacher: 'I'm gonna throat punch the next person to mention the boss baby movie'

-mid-choir class a dude burst into the room, grabbed the tissue box, and ran out. I have never seen this guy before, I don't even think he goes to school here

-English teacher is wearing a pink polo shirt and black skinny jeans right now (as I type)

-when one of the teachers greeted another, he dabbed

-'let me guess: she can twerk'

-'if tad and annie have a dougie-off....I will add 12 bonus points to everybody's final.'

-someone walking in the halls making the loudest whistle I've heard in ages, then tapping on the walls, why am I scared

-kid putting hemp lotion on: 'if I don't get high in the next 5 minutes I'm slapping you'

-during a shooter drill our choir teacher pulled a softball bat out of a closet in his office to explain he could use it if he had to. The bat said 'big daddy' on the end

-a girl at the end of an empty hallway just screamed out 'OH MY GOD I LOVE CHILI'

-middle of English class, the room got quiet for a moment and we all heard a scream. English teacher shrugged and got back to the lesson as if it was normal???

-during musical rehearsal: 'the shoe does not fit. NO SHIT. SHE ISNT THE PROTAGONIST.'

-'I was gonna grab a calculator but today I found out I'm black.' -friend who has always been black

-'that was such a huge yawn. I thought you were gonna swallow your face.'

-'why would you not want to be called a potato?'

-'WE'LL GET TO THE BUTTHOLE LIPS EVENTUALLY, EASE UP'

-'let's say I had an altercation with a hedgehog'

-my english teacher just threw a yard stick at someone, missed and hit someone else, then justified it with 'I had to use my staff'

-'why are you petting my leg'

'it's...firm'

-a guy in math: *leans over and whispers* 'is it weird that I'm black and I like to cover myself in flour and sometimes I think about putting myself in hot oil' (this is the same guy from the calculator incident)

-my big white english teacher, giggling like a child: 'are you throwing gang signs in my class?'

-the assistant teacher who everyone teases for his clothes? yeah I saw him in the hall on my way to class, he was wearing white pants with rainbow diamonds on them and a red sweater vest. I'm afraid.

-English teacher: 'can you go back to your seat and stop staring at me like someone who had to stop taking a dump early and is just...walking awkwardly cause they had to pinch it off'

-two dudes were talking with their heads out the bus windows so they could hear each other and the one guy said 'dude I had a mayonnaise sandwich for lunch it was awesome'

-English teacher followed through and held a dougie-off and the whole class got 14 bonus points on our big tests as a reward for two people participating

-a girl in the front of the class threw 3 packs of graham crackers to her friend in the back and another girl went 'what is this, the damn food drive?'

-in the middle of english we heard a cackle that I can only describe as purely villainous

-conversation I overheard between two boys at lunch:

'you think you're so cool what do you want a fuckin cookie?'

'yeah actually'

'well go buy one'

'I'm broke!'

'I know'

'What did you do this morning?'

'I dunno, what did YOU do this morning, twizzlers?'

-'that's like three fruit snacks, man. that's not a good deal.'

-there's an outbreak of whooping cough right now and everyone is running through the halls screaming 'WOOT WOOT' and that's the most I've heard that phrase since 2012

-a kid shaking his friend by the shoulders saying 'mr. krabs, you KNOW the secret formula!!'

-in English we needed an APPROPRIATE definition for 'thrust' (see last time) and a girl yelled out 'DO THE MOTION' when the teacher called on someone so he replied with 'DON'T CORRUPT HER'

-during exams someone was doing bird calls (like those exotic birds that go 'OOAAAA OOAAAA')

-in homeroom people were fuckin BARKING

-we're watching Marley and Me in english class and there's like 5 seniors crying, the one girl keeps saying 'he's a good boy...he's a good boy...'

-a girl next to me in math is giving a bj to an off-brand capri sun

[strictlyastronomy]

The Oldest Light Visible To The Naked Eye

7.5 billion light-years

Photo of the Andromeda Galaxy by Kees Scherer

What is the oldest light a person can see using nothing but the unaided eye? By “oldest”, we mean how long ago, from today, the light came to be after its origin, including time required to transit from the source to the Earth where it can be observed. The answer to this question turns out to involve the ways in which astrophysical light sources make and emit light, how sensitive the human eye-brain system is to light, and a remarkable amount of luck. 

There are relatively few ways that light is produced in the universe, all of which involve the conversion of energy from other forms into light. For light at visible wavelengths, meaning those to which the human eye is sensitive, the dominant source in the universe is stars. Starlight is created deep within the interiors of stars, where pressures, temperatures and densities are so high that the nuclei of atoms are squeezed closely together. The tiny difference in mass between the nuclei that go into and come out of the reactions leaves the scene in the form of light, and some of it is at the right wavelengths for the eye to see.

But that light doesn’t leave the scene immediately. The exotic conditions inside stars keeps the light effectively “trapped” for some time. The light particles, or ‘photons’, bounce around, scattering off of electrons, other photons, and atomic nuclei. Since there is no preferred direction for the photons’ travel after these scattering events, they “random walk” outward from the interior of the star. For a star with the mass and radius of the Sun, this process takes about one million years.

Eventually a photon generated near the core of the star random-walks its way far enough outward in radius that it encounters a region called the “photosphere”. The photosphere is a region of constant radius from the center of the star at which the probability is larger that a photon will be scattered away from the star — and will keep going once it does — than it will be scattered back down into the star. It is therefore the ‘visible surface’ of a star like the Sun that we can see through telescopes on Earth. We can’t see any further “into” the star because at depths below the photosphere, the star’s atmosphere becomes opaque. The random walk of light out of the core of a star means that the sunlight we see today was actually forged a million years ago, deep within the Sun’s core.

It is often written that when we see the Sun, we actually see what it looked like eight minutes in the past, given the time required for its light to transit the 150 million kilometers, or about 93 million miles, between its surface and the Earth. Light travels through the vacuum of space at about 300,000 kilometers, or 186,282 miles, per second. Dividing the distance between the source and the observer by this number yields the amount of time needed for light to traverse the distance.

So, putting this all together, we can infer that the oldest light visible to the naked eye, if we’re talking about starlight, is about a million years plus the light travel time from the source to the Earth. The next question is therefore: what is the most distant source of starlight that the unaided human eye can see? We know the limit of sensitivity of the eye to light, which corresponds to stars who have a brightness of about +6.5 or +7 in units called magnitudes. Imagine being under a very dark night sky, far from city lights; the very faintest star visible in the sky would have about such a brightness.

But all of those individual stars we see in the night sky are all inside our own Milky Way, and within a distance of only a few hundred light years, where one light year is the distance light travels in one year, or about 9,500 billion kilometers (5,900 billion miles). The light travel time doesn’t add much to the million years since that light was forged in the interiors of those faint stars.

However, the human eye can see further when all of the starlight in a distance source is combined. For most people, the most distant object observable with only the unaided eye is the Andromeda Galaxy, an object with a similar number of stars as our own Milky Way. Various ways of estimating the distance to Andromeda give a value of around 2.5 million light years. But if individual stars in the Milky Way are only visible to a distance of few hundred light years, why can we see Andromeda from so far away?

The answer has to do with concentrating all of the light of an entire galaxy into a piece of the night sky that is relatively small, and a concept called surface brightness. Even though Andromeda is relatively far away, the collective light of all of it stars yield a glow that is strong enough to be visible to our eyes from Earth. Most other galaxies are much further away than Andromeda, concentrating their light into even smaller regions of the sky, which put them below the threshold of visual detection.

Of course, stars aren’t the only source of light in the universe. Some stars reach the end of their lives through colossal explosions known as supernovae. Sometimes this happens when a massive star runs out of fuel in its core, causing the core to collapse under the weight of the star and blowing off all but the compact remnant of the core into space and releasing an incredibly amount of energy.

Other stars evolve in pairs and experience runaway thermonuclear detonations; the steady brightness of these explosions helped astronomers figure out that the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating. Then there are other events, like the merging of pairs of white dwarf stars, neutron stars, or even black holes, that may complete destroy both partners in the gravitational dance and briefly become the most luminous objects in the universe.

The brightest such object ever seen to date was given the generic-sounding catalog name "ASASSN-15lh”. At its brightest in June 2015, it reached a luminosity more than 50 times that of the entire Milky Way galaxy, at which point it was radiating 570 billion times as much energy, per second, as the Sun. Knowing that rate, and taking into account the inverse square law of light, we can work out the distance to the object that emitted the light. It was far too faint to be seen with the naked eye, at a distance of 3.8 billion light years from Earth. But what if ASASSN-15lh had been closer?

Supernova ASASSN-15lh (right) and its host galaxy (left). Images: The Dark Energy Survey, B. Shappee, Las Cumbres Observatory, and the ASASSN team

If we take +6.5 magnitudes as the faintest light the unaided eye can see from Earth, we can calculate the distance to the brightest objects nature produces, seen at the very threshold of human vision. Running through this calculation, we get a value of about 32.6 million light years. While we don’t know exactly what caused the explosion of ASASSN-15lh(*), and the light it emitted, we can work out how far away something with its intrinsic brightness would be if it were visible to the unaided eye in our night sky.

Maybe someday, when people look up at the night sky and see a new star that wasn’t there the night before, it will actually be an extremely rare object like ASASSN-15lh. If that new star is right at the edge of visual detection, the people who see it with their eyes alone will witness 30 million year-old light that left its source long before there were ever humans on Earth(**).

(*Some readers might know that quasars and gamma ray bursts are potentially more energetic than supernovae and therefore could be the source of light visible to the naked eye. But since these objects were more common in the early universe and are very rare now, they’re (probably) mostly too far away to yield a glow that reaches naked-eye visibility.) 

(**A gamma ray burst seen from Earth in 2008 from source 7.5 billion light-years may have been briefly observable without optical aid from Earth, but there are no reports that it was actually seen. Thanks to John O’Meara for pointing this out.)

[inktuitive-blog]

The Scientific “Success Lever” That Turns You Into Someone Who WINS At Life

(Even If You’re Broke, Hopeless, Or Have No Skills)

Question:

How do you get the faith and confidence to go for a big new goal... if you’ve never seen yourself do it before?

…if you have no evidence you even can do it?

How can you take the first step to accomplishing your dream... when you have no clue what that step is?

…or if you have no proof it’s even possible?

How can you squelch that nagging voice—that makes you feel like a failure before you even try?

Prior to doing anything new, bold, or exciting... questions like these can haunt you. They can kill your success before you even start…

And those SAME questions have thwarted millions of people from achieving their dreams and changing the world—in ways we’ll never even know.

But listen: Those questions are completely irrelevant! They’re the wrong ones to ask. Because…

They Violate The

Way Your Brain Works.

Why?

There’s a “Success Lever” in your brain no one told you about…

If you know how to use it, you can do all kinds of things you never thought possible. You can achieve your wildest dreams. Seriously.

Science has proven it. And when you see it happen in action, there’s NO argument against it!

Anyone who has ever done anything new, defied the odds, or achieved something no one thought they could…

…was using THIS Success Lever!

All the technology that exists around you… including smartphones, the Internet, and the satellites that bring you countless astounding benefits—even the screen you’re reading these words on right now—

…they were ALL conceived of in someone’s head before they existed.

They started as a THOUGHT. Then they were brought into existence. And there’s no doubt you can bring whatever YOU want into existence, too. But you HAVE to use your brain the right way!

So let’s talk about what this success lever is, how YOU can use it, and make any limitation irrelevant in your journey to greatness.

To begin, and help you understand this…

Here’s A True Story:

Experimenters once wanted to test how basketball players learn free throws. So they compiled test subjects from the University basketball team and divided them into three groups:

Group 1: Practiced free throws 20 minutes a day for 20 days.

Group 2: Did not practice at all.

Group 3: Spent 20 minutes a day imagining they were throwing the ball at the basket. When they missed, they would imagine they corrected their aim accordingly.

The results of this experiment? Were AMAZING:

The group that practiced 20 minutes a day improved in scoring by 24%.

The second group—with no practice—showed no improvement.

And the third group, who practiced in their imaginations—improved in scoring by 23%.

That’s only ONE percentage point difference from actual practice.

Obviously, imagination is powerful…

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Tip Of The Iceberg:

Any real, experienced hypnotist knows—when he tells his hypnotized subject his finger is a red-hot poker…

…the subject will not only wince in pain when the hypnotist touches him. The subject’s skin will also physically turn red, swell up, and even get a blister.

Now, hypnosis is nothing magical—it’s merely bringing the subject into a state where his mind will believe whatever the hypnotist suggests.

And that’s what’s incredible:

The mere BELIEF is what causes the subject’s body to form a blister.

His mind sent signals to his lymphatic system that there’s a hot poker. And it reacts as if extreme heat is there - when it’s not. THAT is how powerful a belief can be!

But you don’t need to be hypnotized for this to happen:

Non-hypnotized, wide-awake college students have been asked to imagine one of their hands is immersed in ice water…

And thermometer readings showed the temperature dropped in the ‘treated’ hand in every student who did it.

Weird, right?

There’s something profound about this phenomenon. It can help you achieve your goals—and it’s more than just “positive thinking”.

Here’s what we mean:

Pretend You’re About To Catch A Baseball—

And You Also Think Of Yourself As An Outstanding Catcher…

When you see the ball flying high in the air… you’re not consciously calculating where the ball is going to land.

You see the ball, then you just run.

Deciding how to run, and why, and how far to run happens automatically, doesn’t it?

You don’t go, “Wow, that ball is coming fast. I need to turn around, and then move my left leg and then my right… and then jump two meters… and reach out with my left arm and catch the ball…”

No—it all happens automatically. It’s not conscious. Something else is doing that for you...

What’s more—if you feel you’re a BAD catcher, you wouldn’t catch the ball at all. Even if you tried.

Why?

Because YOU set a GOAL - by thinking of yourself as a bad catcher. Then your body carried out the automatic process to meet it.

Make sure you understand that last sentence. It’s vital to your success.

Once you don’t catch the ball, you’ll take that as more proof that you’re a bad catcher. It reinforces the belief. And the cycle continues.

But if you think of yourself as a GOOD catcher and you don’t catch the ball—you’ll still find ways to see yourself as a good catcher: Maybe there was some wind. Or it was a tough ball. Or you didn’t focus.

Maybe you’ll even improve more by taking those things into account next time—and the idea that you’re a good catcher will be even further reinforced.

How is this different from mere “positive thinking?”

Because it’s about your entire SELF IMAGE. Which is…

The Holy Grail Of

Achievement:

Here’s where it gets REALLY interesting:

Dr. Maxwell Maltz, in his book Psycho-Cybernetics, didn’t think the “unconscious mind” was a “mind” at all…

Instead, he described it as an impersonal goal-striving machine…

The same kind of machine that exists in a guided missile—that adjusts the course of the missile based on its GOAL.

On a missile, the machine’s goal can be to direct it to where heat is, or where an object is on a radar screen…

But the goal-striving machine of your unconscious doesn’t seek heat—it seeks an outcome YOU determine.

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Scary Part…

Your unconscious goal-striving machine can’t tell the difference between what you want and what you don’t want in life!

“What you want” is ignored entirely by your unconscious…

All it takes into account—is what you believe to be true.

Including what you believe to be true about YOURSELF.

Which, as you’ll see in a second, is usually NOT based on reality!

That’s why a faulty self-image is the single biggest limitation you can put on yourself. You literally cannot achieve anything outside of your self-image.

Your unconscious will only let you do, or feel, or BE the things that are in accordance with it!

And, as you saw in our baseball example, your unconscious is doing all the work to get you to your goals. So...

If you want to accomplish exceptional things,

this can be dangerous.

Because—the truth is, most peoples’ mental assumptions about themselves are totally arbitrary.

They’re not based on real “proof”.

Maybe you failed at catching a baseball as a child on the playground, ONE time. Then the other kids humiliated you and said you suck at sports…

That humiliation could have formed a belief inside that you’re not worthy.

And that ONE experience could have solidified your self-image relating to baseball: you suck.

You might even carry that self-image with you for the rest of your life. When objectively—you weren’t any worse at baseball than the other kids were that day they made fun of you. They just wanted to pick on you.

Might sound weird, but that’s exactly how this stuff works.

Your entire self-image—the idea you have about “the type of person you are”—is based on what you picked up from past experiences, what you inferred about those experiences, and what you imagined about yourself.

If you’re like most people, a good portion of your negative self-image was formed based on misconceptions, errors, delusions, or mix-ups that you don’t even remember making!

This is important because it determines…

The Pictures You See:

Every day, your imagination creates mental pictures. Whether you’re trying to or not, it’s always happening.

When you remember the past and think about how things might turn out for you in the future, you’re creating pictures in your mind...

You also use these pictures to “simulate” what your options will look like if you’re presented with a choice.  You make decisions based on the situations you imagined.

Your decisions are NOT based on reality. They’re based on imagined pictures. And not only that…

You can’t separate your self-image from any of the mental pictures you create.

Crazy, right?

Now—your unconscious mind (i.e., your goal-striving machine) accepts ALL of your mental pictures as your goals.

Doesn’t matter if they were good pictures or bad ones…

They could be pictures in the form of worrying, anxiety, regret, or spite—or they could be pictures in the form of excitement, aspiration, hope, or pleasure…

They’ll ALL be accepted and acted upon in the same way. Your unconscious doesn’t judge.

And then...

Behind The Scenes…

Your goal-striving machine works tirelessly to achieve the goals you unknowingly set when you imagined pictures.

Whether those goals are good or bad, whether they’ll help you or hurt you—your subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference!

It JUST works to achieve them.

And once it gets you there, you’ll have more “proof” that whatever you believed was true!

So whatever self-image you have... is strengthened by proof that your unconscious provided.  

Following me? Good.

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Now—

Sometimes, humans like to be right more than they like to be successful. So they don’t even acknowledge this process exists.

But your self-image sets ALL the “boundaries” for what you’re able to accomplish! If you want to change your life and make it thousands of times better, THIS is how!

It is not possible to act in a way that is counter to your self-image. Your unconscious won’t let you.

That means your self-image created every win and every failure you’ve ever had in your life...

And it will also determine your destiny.

Woah.

Now Here’s The GOOD News!

You can ALWAYS change your self-image. Any time you want.

You’re never too young or too old to do it.

Once the concept of your ‘self’ has been changed...

...other things consistent with your new concept of self will be FAR easier to get…

If you have fear of public speaking… procrastination… problems starting a business… feelings of inadequacy, or if you just want to see yourself as “better” at whatever you do…

You can solve ALL of that by changing your self-image. And it’s not as hard as you think.

Keep reading. Because here’s...

The Biggest ‘Hack’ For

Human Achievement - Revealed:

Read the following sentence TWICE, to make sure you understand it:

Your brain and nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a “real” experience.

Here’s why:

Every experience you’ve ever had is an imagined one anyway!

Not to get all “Matrix” on you—but you aren’t operating directly on reality. None of us are.

Everything you see, hear, touch, think, taste, and feel ALL comes as raw data through your nerves.

Then, it gets artificially “constructed” by your brain... which is working to make sense of the ‘data’ you get from your senses.

Your brain puts together the data from your senses to construct a “map” of the world...

And when you’re going about your life... you’re interacting with the map. Not with reality itself.

This brings us to a quote from a guy named Alfred Korzybski -

“The Map Is

Not The Territory”

Remember that!

Here’s why this is useful for your success: Pretend you’re hiking through the woods. And you see a bear.

But it’s not really a bear—it’s just a tree that looks like a bear in the dark. But when you see it, you have no idea it’s a tree. You 100% believe it’s a bear!

When that happens, you’d react the same way you would if there REALLY were a bear in front of you, right? You’d feel the same adrenaline. Your heart would beat faster. You’d get hyper-focused. You’d probably try to run, too.

All because you imagined the bear to be real.

Your brain built a “map” with a bear in it—when one did not exist in reality.

In the same way, your unconscious can act on what you IMAGINE to be real. Even if they’re counter-productive... Like the idea you’re a bad catcher, or that you’re inadequate at public speaking, or that you’ll never make over $5,000 per month.

They’re things that are in your MAP that are not there in reality.

Now—for the most part, the “pictures” and “maps” in our heads are reasonably accurate…

They help us navigate the world, avoid getting hit by busses, and determine whether a stranger at the bar is attractive.

But remember the college students who imagined their hand in ice water and it got colder? How the human body will give itself a blister if it imagines a hot poker? How an athlete’s free throws can improve with mere visualization?

These are all examples of the body reacting as if something is real... when it’s not:

The MAP was real! So it didn’t matter.

Now our ‘maps’ are usually accurate enough to help us survive and reproduce. But when it comes to achieving financial or career success, or any other success for that matter…

YOU have to create the right map! If it’s not working for you, your map doesn’t align with reality.  

And that’s EASY to fix...

Just realize this:

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Why Not Imagine A Good One?

If you imagine the reasons you won’t succeed at something when others can…

…your body will produce physical responses that stop you from succeeding. Just like it’ll produce a blister with no heat.

Your body literally will not allow you to succeed if that’s in your self-image.

On the other hand—if you see yourself as ‘able to achieve anything you want’...

...your unconscious mind WILL work to get you there!

If something is possible, and you have enough focus and persistence to do it… your only limitation is in your head.

That goes for anything—a career position, starting a business, public speaking, or excelling at a sport or an instrument.

How do you get a better self-image?

You’ll gain a MASSIVE advantage when you…

Train Your Imagination

For 30 Minutes A Day.

It’s easy. Here’s how:

First, close your eyes.

Imagine taking the actions that will get you the success you want—as VIVIDLY and as DETAILED as possible. Remember, your unconscious ‘goal-striving machine’ responds to PICTURES.

While you’re visualizing, pay attention to the small things—the sights, sounds and the objects…

It’s important to make it as REAL as possible—with bright colors. In 3-D…

See yourself acting and reacting appropriately, successfully, ideally…

Imagine everything as if it were already true…

KEEP experiencing it in front of your mental eyes—and FEEL it, too. Every part of it.

When you make a practice of vividly imagining yourself succeeding at what you want - over and over…

…this will be built into your unconscious. It’ll be stored as positive thoughts and experiences for future reference. And it will be “added” to your self-image. Because your unconscious won’t know it’s not reality.

Do “imagination training sessions” for a BARE MINIMUM of 21 days in a row...

And do NOT expect any results during the initial 21 days—that’s simply how long it takes to program your brain and nervous system to begin automatically moving you toward your goal.

Got it? Good. Now...

Here are the mistakes most people make with this:

1. Imagine End Goals.

You need to have a clear goal or target, and you must conceive of it as already in existence—now.

Either in actual or ‘potential’ form…

For example, anytime someone sets out to find a new creative idea or the answer to a scientific problem… they’re only successful when they assume the answer already exists—they just have to find it.

Their unconscious sees they believe it’s a truth—and guides them to it.

Achieving success is no different.

2. Don’t Worry About The “How”

The job of your conscious mind is to give your unconscious the “end result” goals you desire.

But don’t worry if the means to achieving those end results aren’t obvious to you at first.

Figuring out the “means” to getting there is NOT the job of the conscious mind.

That’s the job of your unconscious!

Your conscious mind’s job is to:

Keep finding and giving your unconscious the BEST information relating to your goal—so it has more to work with, and...

Visualizing and supplying your unconscious with the right mental pictures - day, after day, after day. So train your imagination!

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Your unconscious will figure out how to reach your goal by trial and error—the same way you feel around in the dark to find something.

The worst thing you can do is take the “error” part as proof of your old self-image—the one you want to get away from.

If you make an error, simply realize that’s your unconscious mind “feeling around in the dark” to make you successful. Keep going.

4. Trust Your Unconscious And ACT

Trust your unconscious—or goal-striving machine—to do its work.

Don’t “jam it” by getting too concerned or anxious about whether it will work or not.

“Let it” work, rather than “make it” work. It operates below your consciousness, and you can’t “know” what is going on beneath the surface.

Plus, its nature is to operate spontaneously according to present need.

So you have no guarantees in advance of the situation you’ll need it in! You simply have to dive in with faith.

Your unconscious comes into operation as you act.

NEVER wait to act until you have proof. You won’t get it. Act as if the proof is already there. Your unconscious will reward you for that.

Do the thing—and you will have the power.

5. Supplement Your Imagination

With ACTUAL Success Images

Your unconscious mind thinks in images. It responds best to vivid, striking pictures that provide it with goals about who you want to become…

And these images need to be consistent. Day after day.

So if you only rely on your imagination... the images you just “conjure up” can be inconsistent or vague...

People often have a hard time focusing on the SAME image when they have to imagine it over and over for weeks with no “reference point”.

But if that image changes too much from day to day, it can send mixed signals to your unconscious. It can “jam” your goal-striving machine...

That’s why it’s important to incorporate real life images as well as imagined ones...

It feeds your unconscious mind the same images over and over, consistently.

That makes your goal “take hold” faster. And...

That’s the reason we put so much detail

and vibrant colors into our canvas wall art:

To program your unconscious mind with goals that make you automatically strive for success…

…to wire your conscious mind to create more meaningful, rich, and powerful pictures - as you train your imagination to acquire a new, better reality. A better ‘map’.

...And they simply inspire you daily, too. Not to mention, they’re stunning to look at - and WILL get you compliments from guests!

The truth is...

Our pieces are designed to act as a compass…

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[gldngrl7]

Karamel Fic: Edging Toward Synchronicity (7/8)

Title: Edging Towards Synchronicity

Author: gldngr7

Rating: Explicit

Began: March 11, 2017

Chapters: 8

 Feedback:  Encouragement and constructive criticisms are always welcome.  Flames are destroyed with my freeze breath.

 Tagging: @mon-kai-el, @actualpuppychriswood, @pwettypwita, @contygold86, @karamelizedlove, @kelbottumbles, @starcrossed-comets, @emarasmoak, @fangirlintheforest, @ships-sailing-in-the-night, @lostin-the-desert, @somos-poeiraestelar

      So open your eyes and see

            The way our horizons meet

                  And all of the lights will lead

       Into the night with me

             And I know these scars will bleed

                     But both of our hearts believe

        All of these stars will guide us home

 --Ed Sheeran – “All These Stars

  Chapter 7/8

It’s never been so difficult to crawl out of bed and get ready for work. Usually he’s the one leaving her, but this time the shoe is on the other foot as she considers and rejects the idea of taking a sick day.  Of course, that wouldn’t fly with her boss, who knows full well she doesn’t get sick.  Kara encourages Mon-El to go back to sleep, hoping that he’ll be able to get some rest without the specter of night looming over him.  He’s already fallen back asleep by the time she finishes her shower and dresses in her slacks and light sweater over a button-up blouse.  Taking one last look, Kara resists the urge to kiss his forehead before gathering her purse and keys and slipping out of the apartment.

 Her day will ostensibly be spent on the hunt for the elusive new hero, Valor, about whom the public clamors to hear.  She considers telling James the truth about Valor’s identity.  Of course, working as closely with the DEO as James does, his discovery of the truth is only a matter of time, but Kara decides it’s best to break the news in a place accustomed to keeping secrets, rather than one dedicated to exposing them.

 Later in the morning, she’s glad she made this decision in advance, or she might have folded like a cheap picnic table when she looked up to find him leaning against the door jamb to her office.  Only moments before, she had just finished putting the room back to rights after last night’s less-than-professional, but thoroughly satisfying, use of her desk.

 “Oh!” she startles, sitting up straight in her chair.  Even going so far as to adjust her laptop and coffee cup so that they sit perfectly straight on her desk, to project her most professional image.  “Hey James,” she greets, before clearing her throat.

 “I can’t believe I snuck up on you,” he teases.  He leans, one shoulder against the jamb, one ankle crossed jauntily over the other, with his hands tucked into his pockets.  “You’re usually more on point than that.”

 “I’m not usually expecting people to sneak up on me at work.”

 “Then you haven’t been a reporter long

“Fair point,” she concedes, her laugh a little more nervous than she would like.

 “But seriously…you’re distracted.”

 “I have a lot going on these days.  You know…secret identity and all.”

 “And the new boyfriend,” James injects, in a measuring tone as though testing the waters before him.

 Kara’s eyes widen and she adjusts her glasses on her face, studiously avoiding eye contact until she can marshal her limited cool.  “Oh….”she drawls, screwing her lips up nervously. She knew James would have to find out eventually, but telling him seemed…awkward.  Although maybe not as awkward as him finding out from other, unknown sources.  “How did you….” She clears her throat while simultaneously emitting a nervous chuckle. “How did you find out?”

 James tilts his head to the side.  “I wasn’t sure until just now.”

 Kara fidgets uncomfortably, pulling at the hem of her blouse.  “What gave it away?” she asks, praying that she and Mon-El hadn’t been caught on a camera somewhere in a compromising position.

 “A little bird might have whispered something to my ear.”

 “A little bird?”

 “He may work at the DEO now, but Winn and I still talk.  Daily.”

 “How does Winn know?” she asks, really hoping they weren’t caught on a security camera.

 “Deductive reasoning, apparently.  You may have noticed…he’s kind of smart like that.  So…how long has this been going on?  Winn and I suspected something when we saw you together at Lena Luthor’s gala.”

 “At the gala?” she laughs forcefully, shaking her head.  “No, no, no…that wasn’t…we weren’t…there was no—“

 “There was something there,” James interrupted.  “Maybe you didn’t know it yet, but other people noticed.  I noticed.  A certain chemistry that defied your initial distrust of one another.”

 “It’s very new,” she concedes.  “But good…great!” she corrects, self-consciously not wanting to sound like she thinks she’s settling.

 “I’m not sure I understand him,” James confesses.  “He seems…shallow, but you must see something there.”

 Kara’s instinct to defend the man she loves rises within her, but she stuffs it down, telling herself that James hasn’t had the chance to see what she sees.  “That’s my fault,” she mea culpas.  “I judged him harshly when he first arrived, James.  I let my prejudices get in the way of seeing what was truly there.  And I’m afraid those prejudices may have tainted the way others viewed him as well, including you. But underneath that shallow façade there’s a good man, a deeply loyal man who’s able to see me as more than just plain Kara Danvers, or Supergirl, Hero of Earth.  He just sees Kara Zor-El.  He sees me…and he cares about me.”

 “I cared about you,” he points out.

 “But…he’s not human, James.”

 “And that matters,” he infers.

 “James,” she begins, stepping out from behind her desk, “I would always have to hold back with you.  Every hug…every kiss…every touch…carefully calculated not to hurt you.  I couldn’t risk that…someday I’d slip up and forget.  I’m not sure you understood that.  How could you?  I didn’t even understand it…at first.”

 “But Lois and Clark….”

 “Clark grew up in this planet.  Eliza explained it to me like this: his musculature was literally in infancy when he arrived on Earth.  His muscles developed and reached maturity here and somehow, over time, he was able to make human strength, human speed his default setting.  He only turns ‘Superman’ on when he needs to.  He’s able to physically compartmentalize better than I am.  Not that it won’t ever happen for me, but it could take years…decades, even.  With constant practice.”

 “But with Mon-El…you don’t have to,” he finally begins to see the bigger picture, the realization dawning in his eyes.  “You can have a life right now instead of decades from now.”

 “That’s right.  But I don’t want you to think that I’m with Mon-El because he’s my only choice.  Remember when I told you I was worried that I would never find someone that would know me, someone who could be my perfect partner?”

 “I remember.  I told you…you would find someone.”

 “Well, you were right.  I found him. And what we have isn’t based on mere physical compatibility.  It’s based in shared histories and, even though our planets were rivals and very different culturally, there’s still a commonality there that can’t be ignored.  It’s something we can build on, something we want to build on.”

 “I hear you,” James replies, crossing his arms at his chest and taking a deep breath.  “But if he hurts you, I’ll beat him with a lead pipe.”

 All things considered, it is the best reaction she could have hoped for. Kara lets loose an easy smile. “The line forms behind Alex.”

 “I guess that’s fair.”

 “I’m sorry, if you felt like I was hiding it from you or something. That wasn’t my…our…intention.  It’s just that….”

 “It’s new,” James supplies.

 “Exactly.”

 “I understand.  Sometimes you need to keep new relationships in a bubble for a while.  To protect them while they’re fragile.  I apologize if my questions forced you to reveal it before you were ready.”

 “No need to apologize, James,” she shakes her head.  “The truth is, I didn’t know how to tell you.  I’ve never been in this situation before.”

 “Then it’s good we got it out of the way.”

 “One might even say a relief.”

 “So...about the other thing…how’s the search going?”

 “Search?”

 “For the new guy…?” he prompts, leaning forward.  “The story I assigned you.  Ring any bells?”

 “Oh!  Of course. I’ve got some pieces that need putting together.  Several eyewitness reports of seeing a man in a black hoodie siphoning electricity from transformers in the business district.  One of those times occurring on or around the same time as the bridge incident.  That can’t be a coincidence, right?”

 “I wouldn’t think so.  What’s your next move then?”

 “Well I was thinking that…some of the buildings in the business district have traffic cams positioned on top of them.  I thought I might see if any of them could get an angle on our mysterious man in black.  What do you think?”

 “Worth a try,” he shrugs.

 ‘That’s what I thought,” she replies, adjusting her glasses on her face. “And I have a few follow-up questions for some of the eyewitnesses, so I need to track them down.  Did Snapper say anything…about assigning me the story?”

 “He had difficulty talking…because of the steam coming out of his ears.  Just a heads up though, he may have implied that he would assign you a story in the near future designed to extract some outstanding professional dues from you. Prepare yourself.”

 “It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?”

 “And as embarrassing as humanly possible,” James confirmed.  “How you handle it will test your mettle as a reporter, I’m fairly certain of that.  You can still back out, you know?  I can give the story to someone else….”

 “No!” she cries, perhaps just a little too emphatically.  She chuckles, and plays off her sudden attack of zeal.  “Good stories always have their price,” she quotes, determined to see the Valor story to the end.  If for no other reason than to protect Mon-El.

 James smiles, recognizing the mantra.  “It took Clark a lot longer than you to learn that lesson.”

 “He can be a little thick sometimes,” she quips, sharing a conspiratorial smile with the man that knows her cousin even better than she does.

 James tilts his head back and laughs, the sound echoing down the corridor.  “Truer words were never spoken.  Well, it seems like you have work to do.  I’ll let you get to it.”

 “Thanks, James.  For everything,” she acknowledges.

 “I just want what’s best for you, Kara.  You know that Clark sent me here to look out for you.”

 “Yeah,” she nods.  “And I appreciate everything that you’ve done.”

 “It seems like Kara’s got her personal life covered now.  But I’m always going to have Supergirl’s back,” he vows.

 “I never doubted it for a second, James,” she assures him.

James Olsen had been a crush; she can see that clearly now.  A crush born of loneliness and the frantic search for a mate that swamps some people when they’re in their twenties with no partner in sight and the weight of a burgeoning career bearing down upon them.   And maybe she had seen a hint of safety in him because deep down she knew it would never work.  He had been older, a mentor, and emotionally entangled with another woman – a woman Kara liked and respected, which had made it even messier.  She had pined for him, like a little schoolgirl pining for the older boy that never quite paid her enough attention.

 But why then, when the stars aligned and the timing was just right, had her gut screamed at her to withdraw?  Perhaps it was because her heart needed to be free for something else. A better fit.

 Kara feels somewhat lighter, having revealed her relationship to the man who only a few months ago had been the focus of her romantic interest, and this sudden release of emotional baggage has her feeling bold and suddenly feistier than usual.  “Oh!  I saw on the news wall coming in this morning that Guardian had an active night.”

 “He busted a drug ring and managed to stop a random kidnapping,” James nods, smiling.

 “What are the police saying?”

 “They’re not exactly happy.”

 “I bet!” she replies, as though this outcome should have been obvious.

 “What do you mean?” he asks.

 Kara shuffles through some of her Valor notes, trying to get them organized in order of priority in terms of follow-up.  “The kidnapping is great; he saved someone in the moment.  But the drug bust…cops usually spend months building cases for those things and a vigilante swooping in at the last minute has a tendency to ruin all of their hard work.  Cops don’t like getting scooped either, and when they do…the criminals with good lawyers can get them off on a technicality.  Turns out things like warrants are actually necessary.  I wonder how many months of taxpayer funded man-hours went into trying to nail those dealers.  As a reader, and a taxpayer, I would be interested in know that.  Maybe the reporter you’ve assigned to the Guardian can follow-up on that angle with the police.  You know, I bet Maggie Sawyer could find out.  You met her at the bar…right?”

 “Oh,” he exclaims, recalling that night when Alex introduced her new friend to the group.  “Right, right.  We’ve met before.  Anyway…man-hours notwithstanding, Guardian left the dealers tied up, surrounded by 28 kilos of Oxy.  I don’t think they’re going to have a problem making their case.”

 “Maybe…maybe not.  Talk to Maggie.  She’s been assigned to track Guardian.  I’m sure she’ll be a good source for inside information on the investigation.  Whom did you assign?”

 James fidgets uncomfortably and the silence is telling.

 “James?” she inquires.  “Who’s the reporter assigned to the Guardian story?”

 He clears his throat.  “I am,” he replies.  “I’ve been tracking him.”

 Kara’s noticed James apparent man-crush on the vigilante—everyone has noticed it—and considers calling him out for his clear confirmation bias, but thinks better it.  After all, when it comes to Valor and his story, she’s not exactly impartial.  And it’s even worse because she’s knows who Valor is, knows his secret identity, while James’ opinions are shaped purely by Guardian’s actions and not by who the vigilante is beneath the lead-based mask.

 Or…are they?

 Lead-based mask….

 How many people know about her weakness to lead, that it hampers her abilities, particularly her x-ray vision?  Out of necessity, it is a secret so tightly kept that only the people of her inner circle know about it.  People she trusts.  Because if it ever got out to the criminal element it would spread like wildfire and her job would become significantly more difficult overnight.  So how is it that this Guardian, a self-styled hero of no apparent super powers, wears a lead-based armor, with a mask that covers his entire face?

 Almost as if he expected to be x-rayed.  Almost as if he anticipated her every move to identify him, understood her playbook.  

 Maybe…Guardian understood her playbook…because he helped her write it.

 “What do you think you’re doing, James?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

 “What I was always meant to,” he replies.  He saw the moment the proverbial light bulb went off over her head and knew she had made the connections.

 “You have no idea what you’re getting into,” she insists, her brow crinkling with concern.

 “I worked with your cousin for fifteen years,” he contradicts her, “and then with you.  I’ve been a sidekick long enough, Kara.  It’s graduation day.”

 “You could be killed!”

 “I’m aware of the risks.  And it’s better than living a life on the sidelines, wanting to help but always getting shoved out of the way.  Do you think I made this decision over night?” he asks.  “This has been coming for years.”

 “I can’t let you—“

 “Can’t let me?” he interrupts.  “I am a grown man, with vastly more life experience than you.  Nobody tells me what I can and cannot do.  Not Clark and certainly not you.  You know…Clark talked about how one of the reasons Krypton died was because of the arrogance of its people, and the eagerness with which they played God.  He said it’s one of the reasons he hesitated to become Superman.  He was afraid he would forget how to be human, and that he didn’t want to turn into one of them.  Didn’t want to repeat their mistakes.  Apparently you don’t have the same misgivings.  You want to stop me? Have me thrown in jail.”

 With that, he tilts his head a bit and stalks out of the room, walking away before she can gather her racing thoughts and call after him.  Kara drops into her chair, fuming. She wants to go after him and tell him how dangerous this risky lifestyle is for someone without impenetrable skin, but she knows that this building is not the place for such a discussion.  And she also knows nothing she says will change his mind.  Not now.  Not after he’s caught the hero bug.

 Her anger drops down to a simmer when she begins to think about it instead of letting her emotions run rampant.  Not long ago she spent several days on Earth-1 with a collective of heroes fighting off an alien invasion from the Dominators.  Some of those heroes, like Barry Allen and Heatwave (she felt a strange shiver, like titillation mixed with mild revulsion just thinking about him) were meta-human with powers bestowed on them by an infection of dark matter.  But others were not: like Oliver Queen, a normal man whose body and archery skills were honed to a weapon by time spent on a deserted island, or so he said.  Or Sara Lance, a trained assassin (reformed) with unparalleled fighting talents, both in hand-to-hand as well as the bow staff. And probably any weapon put in front of her, really.

 The point is, she realizes, that there are others out there, human beings, who have heard the call and risen to greet it.  She left Earth-1 feeling like she had made a true, if somewhat reluctant, friend in Oliver Queen, and he is only doing what James Olsen wants to do.  How can she offer support to Oliver, Sara, John Diggle, Ray Palmer, and all the others who put on a mask and a suit with nothing to back them up but their wits and their hard-earned skills, and not offer James the same hand of alliance?

 It strikes her then, out of the blue, that she’s not angry because James decided to become a masked hero.  She’s angry because he did it without her.

 Kara will have to inform J’onn, if his abilities as a telepath haven’t already revealed James’ secret to him.  If she’s going to offer James her support it’s going to be in the most overwhelming way possible, she smiles.  From now on he’ll have a team to back him up, strategies that don’t include stepping all over official police investigations, and an eye in the sky looking out of him, whether he wants it or not.

 She spends the better part of the rest of day, doing exactly what she promised James she would be doing.  She tracks down a camera with a half-decent angle and manages to walk away with a flash drive with five hours of unseen footage to go over.  If she finds anything incriminating or revealing Winn will be able to hack the mainframe and replace the original with looped footage. Thankfully, the follow-up question to her eyewitnesses lead nowhere – exactly as she’d hoped.

 A full day of damage control under her belt, Kara decides to head to the DEO, where she is surprised to find Eliza waiting for her, along with Alex, in the conference room.  

 “Eliza, I was going to call you,’ she says, throwing her arms gently around her adoptive mother.  “What are you doing here?”

 “After your call last night, I couldn’t sleep at all.  I’m just so worried about Mon-El, sweetie.  How is he doing?”

 “Mom says he had flashbacks when you got back to the loft last night,” Alex added.

 “I’m sorry, honey, I just assumed you told Alex.  You two were never good at keeping secrets.”

 Kara shakes her head.  “It’s fine. I was going to talk to you both anyway. I don’t know what to do.”  Just seeing the empathetic expressions on their faces, brings a rise of emotion from her chest.  It is so easy, when she is with him, to forget that he’s driving towards a cliff with leaking brake fluid.  But here with her mother and sister, and their matching faces of concern, she remembers that what he’s going through is no stroll through the park, and if not handled with care, could end on a tragic note.

 “What is it?” Eliza asks, acknowledging that there must be more to the story is her second daughter is practically reduced to tears.  “Did something else happen?”

 “It’s worse than we thought,” she confesses, finding it difficult to drag air into her lungs.  “I overheard him in the bathroom early this morning…talking to someone.”

 “Talking to…whom?” Alex asks, her eyes squinting with suspicion.

 “His step-brother Ral.”

 “He has a step-brother…?”  Oh…wait,” Alex stops, allowing Kara’s words to truly sink.

 “Had a step-brother,” Kara corrects. “Ral died on Daxam…of course.”

 “Okay,” Alex nods, crossing her arms.  “He was talking to a dead person.  That’s not that unusual when people are grieving.  People go to cemeteries every day and talk to their lost loved ones.”

 “That’s just it, Alex.  He wasn’t talking to Ral.  He was having a conversation with him; of which, I was only able to hear half.  You know…the living half.”

 “He’s hallucinating,” Eliza concludes.  Kara’s mom cups her elbow and draws her to the chair and leads her to sit, before commandeering the one next to her.  Alex perches behind her mother, leaning an arm on the tall back of the conference room chair.  “It’s unlikely that this just began happening last night.  Kara.  In your recent conversations with him, did you have any reason to suspect he was experiencing hallucinations?”

 “Such as?”

 “Did he talk to someone not there while in your presence?”

 “Never,” Kara answered, but taking a moment to consider the question from deeper angles.  “But…there were times when I felt like I didn’t have his full attention.  That his eyes were being drawn elsewhere?”

 “But he never gave you any more overt clues that there was more going on than he was showing you?”

 “I mean…I think I sensed he was hiding something, but overt?  No.”

 “That’s good,” Eliza says, turning back to look at Alex for her consensus. Alex nods in response.  “That’s very good.”

 “Brief Reactive Psychosis isn’t uncommon when someone experiences a major trauma,” Alex explains.  “It can happen when you lose a loved one and Mon-El lost far more than that.  His brain is trying to deal with that and this Ral has become the Avatar for that loss.”

 “But, from what you described, he hasn’t completely lost touch with reality and that’s good.”

 Alex agrees.  “It appears that he knows he’s hallucinating, because he’s taking steps to hide it from you…and everyone else.  When the hallucination integrates with reality, it’s much harder to shake.”

 “So…what do we do?”

 “Normal protocol for treatment is to administer anti-psychotics to deal with the immediate problem and then follow-up with psychotherapy, but….”

 ‘This isn’t a normal situation,” Eliza finishes.  “We have no way of knowing how he’ll react to antipsychotics.  And the limited blood samples I had, I’ve spent testing potential treatments for his lead allergy.  I’ve had some progress on that, by the way, but this seems like the more pressing issue.”

 “Without knowing more, we need to assume that his psychosis could take a turn for the worse at any moment.  Mon-El should be hospitalized, both for the safety of others and for his own well-being.”

 “Safety of others?” Kara asks, realizing what Alex was saying. “You want to put him back into a cell?”

 “Isolation,” Alex corrects.  “For his own good.”

 “But in a cell,” Kara answers, only partially succeeding in stuffing down the rising panic.  “After everything we—after everything I—put him through when he first arrived.  After Medusa?  You want to put him back in a cell like he can’t be trusted.”

 “Kara, he’s on the verge of a full-blown psychotic break.  It sounds like he’s fighting it for the moment, but there’s no predicting how long he has before his mind completely fractures and he can no longer tell the difference between the hallucination and reality. And if that break happens and he experiences another flashback like the one he had last night…Kara, I know it’s painful, but locking him up really is the best for everyone.  At least until we can find a way to purge him of the hallucination.”

 It is a gut-wrenching decision, and one Kara had hoped would be only a worst case scenario.  But here she is being asked to make the decision to lock him again.  This time was infinitely worse than the first. Kara recalls Mon-El’s remorse over accidentally injuring a drunk college student after a friendly arm-wrestling match and she knows that Mon-El wouldn’t want to harm anyone else.  “Okay,” she nods regretfully, making her decision. “We’ll play this your way.  We’ll lock him up.”

 A noise at the doorway gets her attention and she spins around to find Mon-El standing at the doorway, a look of abject betrayal on his face.  So caught up in their conversation, none of the women had noticed his arrival, to their detriment.

 “Mon-El,” Kara exclaims, frightfully.  “How long have you been standing there?”

 “Long enough,” he replies, his voice low and his eyes hard like titanium.

  ****

 Mon-El putters around the loft, finishing the washing of the sheets and then making the bed to the best of his abilities.  He watches a few episodes of a delightful show called ‘Chuck’ before his mind begins to wander to more lascivious territories.  Ral, the best ‘wing man’ a brother could ask for, is right there with him beating the drum.

 “So....” Ral drawls as she sprawled across one Kara’s living room chairs, looking like the most bored person on the planet.  “Nth metal?” he posits. “Think she’ll go for that? That’s a lot of trust you’re asking.”

 “She trusts me,” Mon-El reassures Ral confidently.  “Look how far we’ve come in so short a time.  I would never hurt her and by now…she knows that.”

 “But all the activities,” Ral clears his throat suggestively, “you’ve participated in have been with the clear understanding that she could overpower you at any time if she felt uncomfortable.  I mean, she won’t be able to get out of cuffs made from N-metal.”

 ‘That’s the idea.”

 “That might bother her.”

 “It might also give her a few moments of feeling like a normal human, in a controlled and sensual situation.  It’s not like I’m going to be hurting her.  Besides…as always…the choice is hers.  She only needs to say the word and I stop.  Her trust is the most valuable thing I’ve ever earned.  I have no desire to lose it.”

 “So how are we…you…going to get your hands on the Nth metal shackles?”

 “A little distraction, a little sleight of hand, a pinch of super speed,” Mon-El shrugs, unconcerned.  “Not to worry, my friend.  Which reminds me…I should get moving.  I need to spend a few hours at the DEO before I start my shift at the bar tonight.”

 “Lead the way,” Ral says.

 Mon-El had hoped to sneak into the DEO unnoticed and retrieve the shackles before anyone was the wiser, but upon his arrival Winn accosts him as though he’d been trolling the security cameras for any sign of him.

 “Buddy!” Winn greets him, a huge grin on his face, that Mon-El can’t help but think is a little artificial.  Only yesterday, after his coming-out as Valor, Winn had seemed angry at him for reasons he had never determined, but now that seems to have been wiped away like footprints in a sandstorm.  Winn throws an arm around Mon-El’s taller shoulders, who retreats a bit, confused by the sudden shift in attitude.

 “I thought you were mad at me about something,” Mon-El replies.

 “Mad at you?” Winn asks, hoping to play off yesterday’s attitude as a circumstance thoroughly misread by Mon-El.  “What are you—oh!  Are you talking about my mood yesterday?  That can happen sometimes.  I was under a lot of pressure,” he obfuscates.

 But Mon-El is as adept at perceiving deception as Winn at assembling proverbial puzzle pieces.

 Recognizing that camaraderie isn’t getting him anywhere, Winn changes his tactics.  “Did I mention that I’m sorry for being a tool yesterday?” he chuckles uncomfortably, shoving his hands into his pockets.  “Look, man, I was short with you and that wasn’t fair.  Maybe we can go to the bar sometime and talk about it over drinks and darts.  I’m going to need to get drunk for that conversation,” he cringes.

 With a flash of inspiration, Mon-El sees the whole board, all the pieces he was missing yesterday because he was too caught up with worry about the consequences of becoming Valor.  The joking about his sex life combined with their discussion about Romeo and Juliet, which makes much more sense now that he has crucial context, provide a moment of clarity allowing Mon-El to hypothesize about Winn’s recent behavioral shifts.  “You know about me and Kara, don’t you?”

 “Apparently not that drunk,” Winn mutters with a wince.

 “What gave it away?”

 “I’m a pretty smart guy, Mon-El, and your subtlety needs refining. It was clear you were ‘seeing’ someone, but when you mentioned Romeo and Juliet a cohesive picture managed to form.”

 “I’m sorry if you were…are…hurt,” Mon-El says.  He stuffs his hands into the pocket of his jeans, mirroring the man in front of him, both of them a little wide of their comfort zones in this discussion.

 “I’ve known a long time that Kara doesn’t see me that way.  I was angry at first, sure, but not so much about her.  I was angrier at myself for not being what she needs.  And that has nothing to do with you.  Besides, I talked it over with James and he made me see that it wasn’t about Kara, it was more about the fact that I don’t have anyone in my life right now.”

 “You talked it over...with James?” Mon-El asks, apprehensively.  “So James knows?”

 Winn’s face falls.  “Oh man, I’m sorry!  I didn’t think!  I just had all this stuff in my head and I couldn’t talk to you about it, and James is my friend and—“

 “Relax, Winn.  It was going to come out sooner or later, but I should give Kara a heads-up so she’s not blindsided.”  Mon-El scans the CIC for his girlfriend.

 “She’s still at CatCo,” Winn informs him.  “I’m afraid if she was going to get blindsided…it’s probably happened by now.”

 “Great,” Mon-El sighs.

 “Don’t worry,” Winn attempts to reassure his friend.  “It’s probably a conversation they need to have.  James is a gentleman and Kara can hold her own. Try not worry about it.”

 “I know all of that and yet it doesn’t make me feel any better.”  He doesn’t know James all that well, but his read on the man is that, like Winn, he once had romantic designs upon Kara. Designs which may be still very much in play.  But he also senses a man of honor beneath all of that and believes James will surrender the field should Kara make it clear that’s what she needs.  

 But Mon-El’s biggest concern isn’t about James, it’s about Kara, as usual. Forcing her into an emotional confrontation on any timeline but her own probably isn’t the best battle plan and can potentially drive her farther away.  Mon-El hopes that such a confrontation doesn’t result in a heartbroken Kara who’s protected her heart by saying things she doesn’t mean.

 “Luckily,” Winn says, distracting Mon-El from his thoughts, “I have just the thing to take your mind off your worries.”

 “And what might that be?”

 “J’onn came to me this morning and ask me to license a certain Kevlar fabric from Kord industries.  Now…my memory can be spotty sometimes—that’s me being self-deprecating, by the way—but I seem to recall that we were just talking about that material night before last….” Winn trails off, waiting for Mon-El to confirm.

 Mon-El crosses his arms, schooling his face to remain willfully passive.  He knows exactly where this is headed and he plans to enjoy watching Winn get there.

 “No?” Winn asks, shaking his head slightly, completely unaware that Mon-El is playing him like a string quartet.  “Okay…well, J’onn didn’t say anything else, he just did that inscrutable, enigmatic, arm-crossing head tilt, eyebrow-raise thing that he does and walked away.  Now, Kara may be able to shoot white-hot laser beams out of her eyeballs, but I’m good at working things out and I think I know what’s going on here.”

 “You do?” he asks, his face a mask of (faux) innocence.

 Winn glances around like he’s a burglar on lookout and leans toward Mon-El, lowering his voice.  “You’re him, aren’t you?  The new guy?”  He manages to ask without hardly moving his lips at all.  “I mean…it’s not exactly a secret around here that the security could be better.”

 “And?”

 “And you’ve been living in this place for that last few months, meaning you probably know your way around like it’s the back of your hand.”

 “What does that even mean?” Mon-El intentionally stalls.  “Like the back of your hand?   How does one know the back of their hand?  I mean…let’s face it,” he chuckles, “it’s easier to get to know the front of your hand, am I right?  One can become quite intimate—“”

 “It’s just a figure of speech,” Winn responds, completely clueless that Mon-El is attempting to distract him.  “It means to know something really well.”

 “The subtext was clear,” he reassures him, before insisting, “Subtext is my talent.  You become an expert at subtext when your life depends on it.”

 Winn opens his mouth to speak and then slams it shut, his head tilting curiously.   Mon-El mentally kicks himself for letting that tidbit from his past slip.  “What does that—“

 “Nothing,” Mon-El interjects with a shake of his head, suddenly happy to return to their original subject.  Ral stands behind Winn, his arms crossed, one eyebrow raised, as though he is expecting something from him.  He swallows with some effort, his mouth suddenly flooding with a bitter taste on the back of his tongue.  His stomach clenches and rolls as he fights off the onset of nausea, his vision turning white and grey around the edges.

 “Hey, are you okay, buddy?” Winn asks, his voice becoming serious.

 Mon-El marshals his strength and his long-ago honed ability to wear a smile in almost any situation, no matter how humiliating or painful and takes a step away.  He throws his hands up in the air and grins.  “You got me!  Don’t know,” he chuckles forcefully, “don’t know why I ever tried to pull one over on a genius like you.  I’m the guy.”

 Winn’s eyes glaze over as he lets this news sink in for a moment, before his face lights up like a fireworks display.  “I knew it!” he exclaims.  “Who else knows?”  There’s a desperate gleam in the younger man’s eyes like he needs to be thrown a bone, or the collective disappointments he’s experienced this week will become too much.  

 Conspiratorially, Mon-El’s eyes do their own sweep of the surrounding area, over Winn’s head before answering.  “Well, J’onn…obviously.  And Kara.”

 “That’s it?” Winn inquires excitedly.  “I made third on the list?”

 “J’onn and Kara both tell Alex everything…if she hasn’t figured it out already.”

 “Fourth,” Winn corrects.  “That’s okay…fourth is awesome.  I can live with fourth.”

 “You’re definitely in the loop now,” Mon-El confirms.  “I’m sure James will find out soon.  He assigned Kara the story on me…uh Valor...so eventually she’s going to have to spill the beans.”

 “Well I hope she does it soon,” Winn frets a little.  “I’m really not good in keeping this kind of secret from my friends.”

 “You mean about how you and James are…what’s the word? Moonlighting?  As this new hero Guardian?”

 Winn’s jaw drops, opening and closing like a landed fish gasping for water.  “How did you…how did you…?”

 “Subtext,” Mon-El answers, his eyebrows waggling.  “I see things, Winn.  As you pointed out…up until last night, I lived here.  When you’re always around people have a tendency to forget that you’re there around every corner.  My quarters were right next to the training room.  You two had more than a few chats about his ‘suit’ and I have a super hearing.  And I’ve noticed how antsy and defensive you both get when Kara brings up Guardian. You’re not the only one who can put together pieces.”

 “You haven’t said anything to her, have you?”  Mon-El can see a sheen of perspiration bead up at Winn’s hair line as the man’s voice grows ever more nervous.

 “I think you’d know it if I did.”

 Winn imagines Kara’s rampage.  “Good point.  Are you going to?”

 “It’s not my secret to tell,” Mon-El decides.  In all honesty he’s had other things to worry about, and the moments when he’s caught the peripherals of Winn and James in the midst of their new hobby have been thoroughly entertaining.  Too entertaining to want to put it to a premature end.   “But don’t think I won’t, if I think for a moment your extracurriculars are putting her in danger.”  There may be more to worry about now than just her.

 “Understood.”

 “Now what was it you said you had for me?”

 “Oh right!  The design for your suit,” Winn shifts instantly into a mode of excitation.  “I thought we could look them over, talk color scheme, make any changes you think necessary, and maybe get some measurements so I know how much material to license.”

 “Sounds like a plan,” Mon-El agrees.  If Kara isn’t here, he like the idea of having something meaningful to do that isn’t running endlessly on the treadmill or binge watching programs on Netflix.

 “I promise I’m going to make you look great!” Winn enthuses, leading Mon-El back to his bank of computers.  “Just you wait.”

 TBC

 ****