#with the power of hundreds of exploding suns

[rummikubcube]

If not baby why baby shaped?

[yandere-wishes]

｡ ₊°༺ Pink Pony Club ༻°₊ ｡

⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆Yandere! Dr Phosphorus x Reader ⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧

⋆.𝄞𝓟𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓟𝓸𝓷𝔂 𝓒𝓵𝓾𝓫 𝓑𝔂 𝓒𝓱𝓪𝓹𝓹��𝓵𝓵 𝓡𝓸𝓪𝓷𝄞˚.⋆

✮★✮ Oh Mama, I'm just having fun, on the stage in my heels it's where I belong, down at the Pink Pony Club, I'm gonna keep on dancing at the Pink Pony Club. ✮★✮

⋆☠︎︎⋆ He lets the music roll over him, allowing the drums to melt over his flames and bleed into the marrow of his black bones. When you dance, you have to focus on the turn out of each step, on the wave of your arms, when to stiffen when to loosen. It makes it all so easy to forget the pain of being constantly on fire. To forget the melancholy that festers inside you. When the adrenaline is this high, you can only make out the strobing neon lights and the dazed amusement of the crowd.

⋆☠︎︎⋆ It's hard to hate the music and the lights, to shy away from a crowd so easily fascinated by the gleeful macabre. It's really the most sanity-inducing thing you can cling to when your body has turned into the thing you once loved. When you've become your research after watching your old self die in a furnace at the hands of those who once wielded all the power in the world. Funny how we make our own monsters, funny how the thing that kills us, is nothing more than the very man we once tried to kill, now engulfed by his own invention. Phosphorus spins, left leg, right leg, jump, and twirl.

⋆☠︎︎⋆ The dancing, the music, the clapping, the lights, it's all so perfect for melting away the terrible things that slither inside him, to burn away all those good memories until the kill and the luxury are all the remains. It's getting just too easy to forget his son's face, to forget the smile his wife gave him on their wedding day.

⋆☠︎︎⋆ There's a moment between moments when the world seems to stop. It's only then that he notices you, or rather notices what you're wearing. It's the dress he thinks, pink like the mushroom clouds he'd once adored, like the sunset framing devastation. Or maybe it's the way you have your hair so cruelly tied. Tight circle above your head like an atom waiting to explode. In a flash it's over, someone is handing him a drink. Another sitting on his lap. And he's thrust harshly back into reality, back to a world of trying to forget.

⋆☠︎︎⋆ Phosphorus is and always will be a man of logic. A man of science. He lets his fingers glide over the stack of pristine hundred-dollar bills. To think he'd spent his whole life begging for a quarter of all of this. Begging for scraps of funding to save the lives of thousands. It had all been so important once. Still, he can't help but let his mind wonder, what could he build with all of this? What could he solve, discover, create? He tells his men to lock it up in the safe, he's not ready to go back to all of that just yet.

⋆☠︎︎⋆ The next time Phosphorus sees you, he's half sunken into the plush couch of the VIP lounge. It's been a long day, a long tough day. Everything had gone wrong and all so right in the same breath. This time your dress is the shade of clouds marred by the blood of a dying sun. He should know this shade from the history books he'd used to read, the shade of skylines behind ancient temples. Back then he'd been trying to understand. Understand what he's not quite sure, he'd been so desperate to pry every little answer from the world. To chew their solutions, breaking them with his teeth and spitting out his own variation, his own thesis. He'd been so utterly convinced of his own intellect, convinced that reading Saadi at the same time as the latest research paper on Nuclear decay meant understanding the world.

⋆☠︎︎⋆ He watched with staunch fascination as you tried to dance. Following your friend's steps, heels stepping awkwardly completely out of tune. You bend your knees, sinking to the floor. And Phosphorus can't think of any excuses for why his cheeks feel hotter than usual. Why his eyes are permanently affixed to the sway of your arms.

⋆☠︎︎⋆ He thinks you look just like nuclear fission dancing in the limelight with your friends. Like you've split your own body to create them. Little atomic nucleus dancing under his microscope. You look perfect, your toned legs amplified by the radioactive pink of your heels. Long neck he'd love to kiss decorated with a thin string of gold. You don't look a thing like the other girls at the lounge, you look like an experiment beckoning him, seducing him into cutting you open, and observing how you explode.

⋆☠︎︎⋆ He's been following you keenly, trying to see what happens next. It's the fourth week in a row that he's forgotten about dancing for the crowd, about the girls who used to hang off his arms. He's too devoted to this experiment. "Nuclear scientist finds atomic bomb inside ancient temple from the bronze age". Phosphorus examines the sway of your hips, the bob of your head, and the crude kicks of your legs. There's something wrong with those heels, they're too thin, too high, inviting everyone to stare at you. But he's quick to shove them away, circling you from afar. He can't let anyone tamper with his experimentation. Certain matter performs differently when it knows it's being observed. So he allows the notion of invisibility, making you feel unobserved, safe in your own ignorance.

⋆☠︎︎⋆ He hasn't felt this alive in years. This ecstasy tastes utterly sweet, pure saccharine. It's the same thrill as watching your particles stabilize after days of trying to find the right frequency. Watching them organize into the right motion. And isn't that what you are? An ionized atom. After all, what is dancing if not ionization, if not trying to lose a part of yourself you can no longer bear?

⋆☠︎︎⋆ He's late tonight, rivals had somehow bled in and were after the safe from Phosphorus' newest heist. He'd burned them to a crisp and danced on their ashes until they flew away. But that doesn't change the fact that he's late, too late in fact. When he rushes through the door, men nervously run behind him. His eyeless sockets fall upon an uttermost dreary sight...

⋆☠︎︎⋆ The problem with people is that they never truly appreciate beauty. They treat it as if it's something to conquer something to tame. They never bother to understand it, to study it from afar whispering prayers of gratitude for bearing witness to this new discipline. The man's body is too close to yours, head following your lips, as you awkwardly try to sidestep. The moment you try to flee he grabs your wrist. You scream, no one ever hears screaming through the bass and the rhythm.

⋆☠︎︎⋆ There's smoke in your eyes, sickly-sweet honey in the back of your throat. It's all too acrid but at least the hand assaulting your wrist subsides. The thing in front of you glows green, an acidic neon green that feels too familiar in shade. You watch as the skeleton seizes your shoulders, such a warm touch hearthlike in every way. He pulls you closer till all you can smell is null and all you can feel is smothering warmth.

⋆☠︎︎⋆ You never quite quiver under his touch, never fully shy away when he cups your jaw and tilts your head. It's like you want the radiation, want to feel his nuclear essence bleeding into you. Maybe then you'll be whole. Maybe then neither of you will need the music, and the lights, and the crowd to feel whole.

⋆☠︎︎⋆ You never belonged in the clubs, it was painfully obvious you could never mold to their dances, their music. Your heels never fit right. Phosphorous knows he's been trying to do the very same for all so long. Neither of you needed to kill off your electrons, to throw them away to ignorant nobodies who would sooner hurt you for their own voracious motivations. "Give me your electrons and I'll give you mine." Phosphorus tucks your head into the crux of his shoulder, "I'll fuse with you so you'll never need anyone else."

⋆☠︎︎⋆ Phosphorus' hands mirror yours, swaying overhead before falling lower like the cascade of a wave. Side step, side step, stop, and bend. He thinks this is better than any club, any choreography he could do by himself. He feels so whole dancing only for your eyes. He feels so happy having you dance only for his eyes. Your palms touch as you circle slowly. Dancing like the airy rotation of electrons. There's no more dancing at the Pink Pony Club.

⋆☠︎︎⋆ What do you call a dance that feels like merging two atoms? What do you call it when your heart feels like the denotation of a bomb? He presses his lips to yours slowly, feeling the nuclei crash, a nuclear reaction, his tongue hum between your teeth endeavoring to melt away your fear. His fingers, dance across your hips heating up, leaving burning hearts and hand prints, claiming you as his, making you death just like him.

Lost the request for this but thank you so so much to the sender!! 💞💋💞💋

[97linelover]

The Idol‘s Encore - Choi Seungcheol

summary: meeting an idol was crazy enough, but getting close to him,makes it all even crazier.

content: Idol scoups x non Idol reader, fight,angst, sad end,fluff,smut, drama, heartbreak I’m sorrryyyy

wc: 1.5 k

a/n: I really think that’s how it goes. Dating in this business? Hard.

Lollapalooza was unreal and Cheol looked so so so good!!!

As you navigated through the bustling stadium, weaving through the throngs of fans, you followed closely behind your best friend, who was practically sprinting toward the stage. The entire place was alive with energy, people running and shouting, excitement buzzing in the air like an electric current. The fanbase was wild, and it was barely 11 a.m.

You somehow made it to the barricade, squeezing through the sea of people — all of this, for her. The things you did for your best friend. The heat was intense, the sun already blazing down, and there were no clouds to offer any relief.

Your best friend, always the social butterfly, was already chatting animatedly with a few others nearby. They were all Carats, all equally thrilled to be there. You stood beside her, nodding along, but truthfully, you were just hoping the time would pass quickly. Concerts weren’t really your thing, and although you liked the occasional song, this wasn't your scene.

But to your surprise, the crowd was lively yet well-behaved, and time seemed to move faster than you expected. The acts were fantastic — energetic, polished, and engaging. The organization was impeccable too. Staff moved through the crowd, offering free water and ice cream to keep everyone cool under the scorching sun. It was a thoughtful gesture, and it made the heat more bearable.

As the opening notes of the music filled the air, the crowd exploded into cheers and screams. Fans around you were losing their minds, singing along at the top of their lungs. You couldn’t help but laugh softly to yourself, amused by their enthusiasm. You weren’t as familiar with the songs, only knowing a handful of them, but there was one person on stage that you knew all too well.

Choi Seungcheol.

He commanded the stage effortlessly. His sleeveless shirt clung to his toned arms, revealing his muscles as he moved. The way he looked out over the crowd, scanning it with an intensity that seemed purposeful, sent a small shiver down your spine. His eyes swept over hundreds of faces, and then, as if by fate, they found yours.

The instant his gaze locked onto you, you saw something change in his expression. His eyes brightened, and for a moment, it felt like time slowed down. He started to make his way down from the stage, stepping right up to the barricade — right in front of you.

He sang directly to you, his voice rich and powerful, never breaking eye contact. The fans around you screamed louder, sensing something special in the moment, but you barely noticed them. It was like the world had shrunk down to just the two of you.

He had found you. And you knew exactly what that meant.

Tonight, at 10 p.m., you would meet him at the park near his hotel.

But how had all this happened?

It started just a few days ago. Your sister had been at a K-pop party that Saturday night while you had decided to wander around Berlin. You’d had a craving for donuts and hot chocolate, so you found yourself in a quaint little café, settling down with your book. The smell of fresh pastries filled the air, and marshmallows floated in your steaming cup of hot chocolate as you opened the first chapter.

The bell above the café door jingled softly, and you glanced up to see a tall, handsome man walk in. You tried to refocus on your book, not wanting to be rude, but you couldn’t help overhearing the interaction at the counter. The cashier was struggling with English, and it was clear the man didn’t speak German.

With a sigh, you closed your book and stood up, walking over to the counter. “What do you want? I can order it in German for you,” you said with a small smile.

He looked relieved, smiling back at you. “I was just trying to order a water.”

“A water? Do you know it’s basically a rule to drink hot chocolate at this time of night?” you teased, laughing a little.

“I’m on a strict diet,” he said, pouting slightly.

“Not tonight,” you grinned. “I’m ordering you a hot chocolate. No arguments.”

He chuckled but didn’t resist. “If you insist.”

After placing the order, you paid for his drink and a donut, feeling a bit mischievous. As you turned back to him, you introduced yourself. “I’m Y/N, by the way.”

“I’m Seungcheol,” he replied, and your eyes widened in recognition.

Of course — the handsome stranger, the strict diet — it was your sister’s bias, Choi Seungcheol.

“You know who I am, don’t you?” he asked softly, a hint of something like disappointment in his voice.

You nodded. “Yeah, my sister’s a fan. We’re actually here for your concert.” You took a sip of your hot chocolate, trying to keep things casual.

“And you?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Are you a fan too?”

You shook your head with a smile. “Not exactly. I’m just here for my sister. I know a few of your songs, but I’m not a big fan.”

His grin widened. “Well, I’ll take that as a compliment. At least you’ve heard of us.” He took a bite of the donut and sighed dramatically. “This is going to cost me an extra mile on my run tomorrow.”

You laughed. “Don’t stress about it. One donut won’t ruin you.”

Seungcheol looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “You know, we’re always filmed from every angle. It messes with your mind sometimes, seeing all these sides of yourself that you don’t like.”

“I don’t think you have any bad sides,” you said, half-joking but also flirtatious, and he chuckled, wiggling his eyebrows.

“You think I’m good-looking?” he teased.

“As if you don’t already know that, Seungcheol,” you retorted, standing up to grab your bag.

“Leaving already?” he asked, quickly getting to his feet to follow you.

“I was planning on walking around a bit more. You’re welcome to join me if you want.”

He didn’t hesitate, and the two of you spent the rest of the night wandering through the quiet streets of Berlin. Time flew by as you talked, eventually finding yourselves at a small playground, where you lay side by side on the swings, gazing up at the stars.

“Will you be at the show tomorrow?” he asked softly, turning his head to look at you.

You nodded. “I’ll be there with my sister. She wants to be up front, so I guess I’ll be at the barricade.”

His eyes darkened with a playful intensity. “So, you’ll be watching me from up close, huh?” His hand gently brushed your cheek, sending a shiver down your spine. “I’ll make you a deal. If I find you in the crowd tomorrow, we’ll meet here again at 10 p.m., and... I’ll get my kiss.”

You gasped, cheeks flushing. “You want that kiss so badly?”

“You have no idea,” he murmured, and you found yourself nodding.

“Deal.”

Now, just a few hours after the concert, you sat on the swing at the playground, replaying concert videos on your phone. He was half an hour late.

With a sigh, you put your phone away, feeling a sinking disappointment. Of course, you’d been foolish to think this could be real. Seungcheol was an idol — why would he be interested in someone like you?

As you walked away, you muttered under your breath, “Stupid. Stupid boys, stupid me.”

You were halfway back to the hotel when you felt a hand grab your arm, pulling you into the shadows. “I’m so sorry,” a familiar deep voice said.

You looked up, heart pounding. “Seungcheol?”

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispered. “We got held up with interviews, and when I finally got to the playground, you were gone. I had to find you.”

“I thought you played me,” you admitted softly, trying to hide the hurt.

“Never,” he said firmly. “I wanted to see you more than anything.”

You leaned closer to him, whispering, “Did anyone follow you?” He shook his head, his expression soft yet intense.

Without another word, you closed the distance between you, pressing your lips to his. The moment his hands pulled you closer, your heart raced, and your mind went quiet. His lips moved in perfect rhythm with yours, and the world around you seemed to disappear. That kiss—it made you feel alive in a way you hadn’t before.

He pulled away just enough to whisper against your lips, “Do you want to come upstairs? Fans could show up any minute now.”

You nodded, breathless. “Sure.”

You followed him through the quiet corridors, the space between you feeling like too much. The air was thick with tension and anticipation, every step increasing your need to be close to him again.

The door to his room had barely closed behind you before he had you against the wall, his hands exploring, his lips on yours again, more urgent this time. Every touch was electrifying, every kiss deepened the connection between you. It wasn’t just physical—it was intense, overwhelming, and all-consuming.

Time blurred as you spent the night tangled together, losing yourselves in each other. Moments of tenderness and passion intertwined as you explored each other’s bodies, finding new ways to make each other smile, gasp, and laugh. The intimacy was raw, yet filled with affection. By the time Seungcheol finally fell asleep, he was wrapped around you, his breathing soft and steady as he rested his head against your chest.

You lay there, your hand gently stroking his hair, your heart still racing from everything that had just happened. It wasn’t just about the physical connection—it was the unexpected bond that had formed between the two of you.

As the first light of dawn began to filter through the curtains, you stirred awake. Seungcheol was still asleep, his arms wrapped tightly around you, his breathing slow and peaceful. For a moment, everything felt perfect—like a dream you never wanted to end.

But as you lay there, reality started to creep in. The world outside this room was different, harsher. Seungcheol wasn’t just any man; he was an idol, adored by millions. And you… you were just a girl from Germany, someone who had stumbled into his life by accident.

You sighed softly, careful not to wake him. It was easy to get lost in the fantasy here, in the quiet intimacy of the early morning, but what would happen when you left this room? He had a life in South Korea—a public, highly scrutinized life. And you? You had your life in Germany, far away from the spotlight and the complexities of fame.

Seungcheol stirred beside you, his eyes slowly fluttering open. He smiled sleepily, pulling you closer. “Good morning,” he whispered, his voice still heavy with sleep.

You smiled back, but the weight in your chest only grew heavier. "Good morning."

For a moment, you stayed there, wrapped in each other, neither wanting to face the inevitable. But as much as you wanted to stay in this perfect moment forever, you knew the conversation couldn’t wait.

“We need to talk,” you said softly, pulling back just enough to look him in the eyes.

Seungcheol frowned slightly, sensing the seriousness in your tone. “What’s wrong?”

You bit your lip, unsure of how to start. “This… last night, it was incredible. But you know we can’t keep this up, right? You’re an idol, Seungcheol. You live in Korea. And I… I’m just a girl from Germany.”

He sat up, his expression darkening. “What are you saying? That last night didn’t mean anything?”

“No, it meant everything,” you quickly reassured him. “That’s the problem. It meant too much. But you and I… we live in two different worlds. How can we possibly make this work? We just met, you don’t know me and I don’t know you“

Seungcheol ran a hand through his hair, frustration building in his eyes. “I don’t care about the distance. I don’t care about what anyone else thinks. I want to be with you.”

Tears stung your eyes as you shook your head. “But it’s not just about us, is it? You know how it is for idols. The fans, the media… if they found out, it would destroy you. It would ruin everything you’ve worked for.”

He clenched his fists, his jaw tightening. “I don’t care about any of that. I’ve spent my whole life doing what’s expected of me. For once, I want to do what I want.”

“But at what cost?” you asked, your voice breaking. “Do you really want to throw everything away for me? For someone who lives on the other side of the world?”

Silence hung between you, thick and suffocating. Seungcheol’s eyes softened, the fight draining out of him as the reality of your words sank in.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. And it’s funny because we just met, but we talked about things nobody knows.“

Tears slipped down your cheeks as you reached out, cupping his face in your hands. “I don’t want to lose you either. But we have to be realistic. We can’t be together… not like this.”

He closed his eyes, leaning into your touch. For a moment, you stayed like that, holding onto each other as if you could stop the inevitable from happening. But deep down, you both knew the truth.

With a heavy heart, you pulled away, grabbing your clothes and getting dressed in silence. Seungcheol didn’t stop you. He simply sat there, watching as you prepared to leave, his face a mask of heartbreak.

Before you left, you turned to him one last time. “Maybe one day things will be different. But for now… this is goodbye.”

His eyes were glossy, but he nodded, understanding that there was nothing more to say. "Goodbye, Y/N."

And with that, you left the room, your heart breaking with every step. As you walked down the hotel corridor, you realized that some love stories don’t have happy endings—not because they aren’t real, but because the world isn’t ready for them.

Seungcheol would always be a part of you, a memory tucked away in your heart. But your worlds were too different, the distance too great. And no matter how much you wished otherwise, some things were just not meant to be.

Seungcheol would just be a beautiful memory tucked away with he thought about lollapalooza 2024.

[canmom]

I've been watching Star Trek, and also been learning about boats. Like, a big boat is more stable in the water, so you don't get tossed and turned so much when it's rocked by waves or turning.

Now, on Star Trek, they do the dramatic tilt-y cam and actors flinging themselves around. This makes sense when the ship is hit by weapons, but sometimes they do it when they are navigating asteroid fields and such. The original Enterprise (from the 60s) is 288m long, similar to a modern cruise liner, 127m wide, 73m wide, and 190,000 tonnes. Surely even a high-speed jaunt through an asteroid field would be barely felt on the bridge (which is the tiny raised part in the centre of the saucer)?

Hello anon! You're not wrong that like, there is a lot of artistic license in Star Trek's treatment of astrophysics.

The 'asteroid fields' seen in Wars and Trek are presumably inspired by the asteroid belt in our solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It is true that there are a lot more big space rocks in the asteroid belt than there are in much of the rest of the solar system. However, space is really very big so there's a lot of room for big rocks. Spacecraft are routinely able to pass through the asteroid belt without coming anywhere near an asteroid (which is good, because at space velocities, collisions are really catastrophic).

The largest asteroids such as Ceres are nowadays classified as 'dwarf planets'; they might be as big as around 1000 kilometres in diameter, which is about 1/12 the diameter of the Earth. Many other asteroids are also hundreds of kilometres big. With the dimensions you've given me, if the Enterprise collided with such an asteroid, it would be a 'bug on a windscreen' kind of situation and the Enterprise would certainly not come off better for the experience.

However, most asteroids aren't quite so big. Here's a log-linear graph of the size distribution of asteroids:

There's about a million asteroids a kilometre big, and about ten million a hundred metres across; at some point the asteroids become too small for us to track, but I assume this approximately power-law distribution holds down to some small size.

Now, that sounds like a lot of asteroids, but the thing is they're spread across an absolutely enormous region of space. They cover a range of orbital radii of about 1 AU, which is to say the distance between the Earth and the sun, and a range of orbital inclinations about 20 degrees:

So, assuming we had about 10 million asteroids of 100m or bigger, that turns out to be about 1E-27 asteroids of that size per cubic metre of space. Which is to say you'd need to explore a cube of about 900,000km on a side to find even one asteroid that big. Space is really, truly, extremely very big. So, far from this kind of scene (src)...

...you'd be lucky to see even one rock outside the window. As Wikipedia puts it:

Contrary to popular imagery, the asteroid belt is mostly empty. The asteroids are spread over such a large volume that reaching an asteroid without aiming carefully would be improbable.

Now, OK, that's our solar system's asteroid belt. What about in deeper space? The thing is, big space rocks don't tend to just hang out. Our solar system's asteroid belt is presently thought to be a result of Jupiter disrupting the coalescence of planetesimals into a planet during the formation of the solar system. So in general, without a Jupiter, either your big bundle of space rocks has enough kinetic energy to spread out into space like a gas, or it doesn't and their mutual gravity causes them to collapse into a big clump, forming something planetish.

The Star Trek/Wars picture of a bunch of space rocks just kind of floating around doesn't make any sense on astrophysical timescales; about the only way you might see that is if some kind of much bigger rock has very recently exploded, and especially if you're in orbit around something or other which can keep the particles reasonably close together. The rings of Saturn are a great example, consisting mainly of bits of ice smaller than 10m. Saturn's rings are probably the closest place we know to a scifi asteroid field, but they are also incredibly thin, in many parts only tens of metres across.

So in short 'asteroid fields' in the depths of space are kind of not a thing. But what if they were?

On a boat, you are held against the water by gravity; you have various restoring forces, e.g. if the boat dips under water, it gets pushed back out by buoyancy. This causes, in physics-speak, oscillations on various timescales. The dynamics of ships are very complicated, but it has a lot to do with the buoyancy of water rather than collisions with solid objects. Here's Casual Navigation, pretty much my go-to source for any questions about how boats work, explaining the physics of ships rolling, and ways we mitigate that:

Water buoyancy applies a kind of 'soft' force spread relatively evenly across the surface of a ship, so the ship responds mostly rigidly by rolling around, maybe flexing a bit. But when ships actually hit something hard, even something like a sandbank, it tends to go very poorly for them.

In general, a spaceship is not very much like a boat. Space is, notably, a place where there aren't any fluids. Most of the ways that vehicles move on Earth don't really apply in space.

On the ocean, land or even air, objects in motion tend to stop (or at least fall downwards) due to friction and drag, and you need a constant supply of energy to stay moving in a straight line. In space, the opposite is true - you keep moving along your orbit unless you provide energy to change direction. Rocket acceleration is very limited and you try to do as little as possible. With real spacecraft, you mostly move along a ballistic trajectory, applying 'burns' with your rocket at just the right moment to push you onto a new trajectory - or you have a very weak but efficient engine like an ion drive which very gradually nudges you onto the trajectory you want.

In hardish scifi, we can handwave a lot of this complexity away by imagining amazing futuristic technologies like fusion torches and antimatter drives, which allow us to follow 'brachistochrone' trajectories, where you accelerate at something like 1g all the way up to the midpoint of your trajectory and then flip around and slow down. These have their own worldbuilding implications (which is to say the difference between a really fast spaceship and a weapon of mass destruction is basically which way you point it), but it allows you to get on with your plot without having your characters spending years in transit.

Star Trek is not hard scifi, although it sometimes likes to cosplay as it, so trying to apply this kind of standard is a fool's errand. Still, let's consider it. In Star Trek, spaceships move around in two ways. They have something called a warp drive, which allows FTL by distorting spacetime - it is presumably inspired by the Alcubierre metric (edit: no it isn't, it actually predates Alcubierre and he took inspiration from star trek in naming his solution a 'warp drive'), a solution to the field equations of general relativity that allows you to move a 'bubble' of spacetime at FTL speeds. There are many reasons to think the Alcubierre metric wouldn't actually work, or be survivable inside the bubble if it did; how it would interact with matter in the path of the bubble is unclear, but it seems quite likely it would scrape it all up at the front of the bubble and then perhaps release it at the destination in a blast of ultra-high-energy radiation. At least getting hit by asteroids is not a concern...

For slower-than-light travel, Star Trek ships apparently move around with something called an 'impulse drive', which is just a fusion rocket. (We shouldn't ask questions like 'where do you keep the reaction mass' or 'why doesn't the spaceship spin when the force vector is off-axis').

So, as far as space rocks, the big concern is that at high velocities, collisions with any tiny meteorites on your path have more and more energy, much like being shot with a bullet. It's less about shaking the ship around and more about damaging it, because at this kind of scale and energy, rigid things don't tend to stay rigid when they collide. Real solutions to this problem include things like layers of thin 'whipple shields' which break up the meteorite into small fragments before they hit the spacecraft. There's some crazier ideas out there, like spraying hot droplets from your engine's cooling system ahead of the ship to intercept dust grains and catching them with magnetic fields as you accelerate forwards.

I don't know that much Trek lore, but my understanding is they have some kind of magic 'shield' that prevents damage when they git hit by weapons. This presumably stops any space rocks from smashing right through the decks. But as you observe, the rapid camera shaking doesn't make a lot of sense either: it suggests some kind of shock going through the structure of the vessel. The ship is somehow getting hit by something with enough momentum to shake it violently but not throw it off course or severely damage it. That's not really how structures on this kind of scale work.

Of course, the main purpose of the screen shake is dramatic: you need to convey the characters are in a dangerous situation, and if they're all just sitting calmly in the set watching things play out on the screen, that doesn't really 'sell' it. Just like a wrestler pretending to be injured, you need your actors to convey the stakes of the space battle, and throwing themselves around the set is a very cheap way to do it. The asteroid field serves as a scifi version of a choppy sea or ice floe, adding an extra element of constant tension; it doesn't really matter that it doesn't make sense.

Much the same dramatic techniques are still used in more recent scifi, even relatively hard scifi such as The Expanse - observe the use of camera shake (though milder than in Star Trek), reaction shots, characters helpfully providing commentary ('they were expecting that', 'I'm putting us into a spin'). Or this scene; we link the action 'outside' (the full 3DCG space scenes) to the action 'inside' by changes of lighting (there's no real reason for turning the lights blue during combat except that it looks cool), bullets punching through the ship (so scary), and characters getting pushed around by g-forces. The plot contrives for the ships to do a close flyby while strafing each other with machine guns. This is a thrilling scene, and it relies on much later iterations of the 'shake the camera' concept - to link what is happening 'outside' to the characters we care about 'inside'.

Here is a breakdown of what is apparently the first, iconic Star Trek battle scene from which everything else follows:

This sequence is essentially taking most of its cues from submarine movies such as The Enemy Below: the two ships are attempting to figure out where the other is and get in an advantageous position. It is mostly a prediction battle between the two captains, both presented as honourable gentlemen types in what is essentially a duel. The mechanics of the ships is largely based on thin scifi skins over boat stuff.

In general, Star Trek takes various measures to make the captain and bridge crew the main people who 'matter' to a story, which keeps the cast and sets to a manageable size. The thing is, of course, that modern ships are much bigger than the sort of historical ships that could be imagined to be led by a charismatic captain having heroic exploits. There are thousands of people supposedly on board the Enterprise, but you wouldn't know it from the way the characters act.

It's notable that the inspiration here is a WWII movie, pretty much the last time big ships fought big ships. (Star Wars also takes most of its cues from WWII). The principle activity of modern warships seems mostly to be making a political gesture by floating around somewhere, maybe launching some missiles or planes. It's been a long time since we've seen ships having battles with other ships, and ships were a lot smaller then. A military officer is, as I understand it, someone who's a lot more like a politician or company manager, whose job is to keep a large and complex organisation running smoothly. (No doubt you remember the old saying about logistics and tactics.)

So more than the dubious engineering of having the bridge rattle around, I think 'the bridge crew are all charismatic geniuses from whom all the action flows' is the really big liberty that Star Trek takes with its storytelling, from which a lot of other things follow.

Everything in the sequence from Balance of Terror is designed to ratchet up tension for the bridge officers as much as possible - and we see the screen shake and actors getting thrown about here too. In a naval battle, this makes sense: a big explosion near your ship will cause a wave in the water which will rock the ship. In space... not so much. For example, a big shake happens when a nuclear weapon goes off near the Enterprise. A nuclear weapon deployed in space is mainly there to cause heating, not to push things around. But the big moves of the battle are punctuated by everyone getting thrown about: it's a way of saying 'something important just happened'. If the nuke went off and we didn't hear anything, but Kirk was just like 'ok cool, that missed us, good job' it would feel less significant.

Over time I'm sure this device got diluted down until nearly anything would result in people flopping about! But yeah, tl;dr: it is purely a dramatic convention leaning hard on WWII movies, not something that makes a lot of within-the-fiction sense if you think about it at all.

What would space battles look like in real life? We can only speculate, of course, it may never come to pass at all. But if it does, probably it's going to be more a story of shooting expensive missiles at extremely long range to hit things that are too far away to see without a telescope, rather than thrilling close-range dogfights or tense naval mind games. And with humans being very squishy and not taking well to extreme acceleration, you probably want to avoid having them on your ships if you can help it. Which is a bit of an obstacle for a dramatic presentation, unless you want to focus on the disconnect between the comfy air-conditioned drone control room and the horrible destruction being wrought on the ground - and honestly that is a very relevant thing to want to do in the present era.

Plenty of people would still presumably be in harm's way in the space war. But the problem is that in general, the story that people want to tell with military fiction is about heroic characters whose individual efforts make a difference to the course of The War. Not just someone having a bunch of meetings full of incomprehensible acronyms and then randomly dying to a missile that was launched from the other side of the solar system that their side's interceptor system failed to catch.

[themindofachronicdaydreamer]

Edible Arrangements

fluff nation plot: your husband brings home some special brownies to share with you. content: use of marijuana, together since Jujutsu High, married (reader referred to as wife), little makeout but sfw, we are pretending geto never left gojo and is still in the picture as a sorcerer and gojo's best friend for my own mental state thank uuu word count: 4.1k satoru gojo x reader note: ahhhhhhhhh not everyone's cup of tea ik! but i thought this idea was fun since Gojo is practically on crack 99% of the time to begin with. warning i didnt proofread too thoroughly so be wary of that!

Gojo can be a lot to handle sometimes.

And by sometimes, that means most of the time.

Generally speaking, Jujutsu sorcerer Saturo Gojo is an acquired taste; his personality is one that could easily drain the average person's social battery. He is known for his unpredictable nature and impulsive ideas which are simultaneously (and somehow impressively) thought through. Knowing the sorcerer meant accepting the fact that you may never know what will happen next with him. He habitually leaves everyone around him on the edge of their toes, wondering what his next antic will be. One second he may be in an intense fight with a curse, overtaking them without a drop of sweat; the next, he might as well be spending hundreds on sweet treats he insists he needs in order to survive a second longer. While he is widely well respected for his powerful abilities and techniques, he is also commonly viewed as childish and immature. Upon first impression, one may incorrectly interpret his behavior into thinking he is on drugs - how else can he be so... out there? Yuuji once described his teacher as 'unseriously unserious' - a truly apt description.

So when Gojo struts into the door of your shared bedroom, an excited smile on his face with his hands hiding whatever he's holding behind him, you know something is up.

"Honey, I'm home!" Gojo cheesily announces his presence, entering your apartment in search of you.

""m in here," you lazily call out to him from the bedroom. You had been relaxing in your shared room after a long week, waiting for your husband to come home and alleviate all of your worries as only he can do.

You hear footsteps growing closer to the door, each step more excited than the last. The door swings open and reveals the white-haired man with an almost animatedly wide smile. His hands are behind his back, holding something, you presume. He looks more excited than he normally does coming home to you - and that is saying a lot for your Satoru. It is always his favorite thing to come home to your presence. You are sure of this, so why is he extra giddy today?

"Hi, pretty girl," he greets sheepishly. "Long day?"

"Toru," you remark, excitedly dragging the end of the name only you are allowed to call him. "Yeah, I'm exhausted. Feels like this is the first time I've had time to relax in forever. How was work for you?" You move to sit up from your position in bed as you spoke, resting your head on the palm of your hand, your elbow leaning on the pillow next to you to give you a better look at the handsome man in front of you.

The evening sun tickles you through the bright window next to you, granting you an angelic golden glow. Gojo feels every beat of his heart to the point he contemplates the likelihood of it to explode out of his chest - and, if anything, at least his cause of death would be from your beauty, because he doesn't think anything else could ever even kill him. The sight of you laying down in your bed, in the home you share, in the life you have built together, with the love you share so deeply, makes Gojo so excited. He just wants to dote on you all night, an eternity of worshipping you being all he dreams off. Satoru savors the moment he takes to admire you. How is it even possible that not even his six eyes can comprehend how beautiful you are?

Nonetheless, Gojo is on a mission and could not get too distracted this early on, or he would never get around to convincing you of participating in his plan for the two of you tonight. Even if you look so cuddly and cute wrapped in your blanket and all cozy in bed, or even if he wants to jump right in with you and snuggle the night away. He has plans he must stick to - urgent plans.

"It was like usual. Y'know, trained a little, threw the kids around some, yada yada. The boring stuff," he begins, walking toward you as he speaks. He sits on the edge of the bed with his hands lingering behind him in an attempt to keep them hidden from you. "But, now that I am home to my beautiful wife I love with my entire heart, soul, and all six of my eyes, I have something to share with you!"

You smile as you sense your cheeks warm, shaking your head and responding, "What are you scheming this time?" You were much used to his tendencies to act in the spur of the moment, like the one time he convinced you to teleport halfway across the world with him to be tourists in New York City on a random Tuesday work night. You reach your arm toward one of Satoru's to attempt to bring whatever he's hiding to light, or even, really, just feel his touch, but his infinity doesn't permit you to get as close as you wish. You frown and look up at him in curiosity; he usually never has his infinity on with you.

"Patience is a cashew, darling. Wait, and you shall receive, or whatever those sayings are," Gojo confidently speaks as you hold back giggles at his misspoken proverbs. His eyes anxiously scan your figure before he continues, "It doesn't matter what they actually say anyway because of what I have brought home to share with you!"

You try to cut in to ask what he means, but he continues speaking over you in a rush. to get his next words out. His hands quickly leave his back, coming back together and presenting a little white box to you, all while he is blurting, "Shokogavemesomeediblestotrywithyou!" Gojo tilts his head, a cute, toothy smile beaming in your direction and opens the box containing delicious brownies to display them for you.

You are taken aback - not because you were against the of edibles with Gojo, nor because of Shoko's part in this. This isn't the first time the topic of edibles or anything regarding that has arisen. Satoru and you had done your fair share of partaking in that realm, like your monthly "baked baking" nights with Shoko or Suguru's failed attempts at growing hemp in his dorm at Jujutsu High. This is a normal concept for the two of you; your confusion is caused by what the special occasion seems to be causing him to propose the brownies in such a way. It's not your anniversary, nor is it a holiday. Why does he look like he has something else up his sleeve?

"She did now?" you responded with a teasing smile. "What, did she get tired of waiting for me to be able to schedule a baking day?"

"Oh, no, don't worry, baby. She just knew you were exhausted and wanted to cheer you up if she could," your husband smiles at you. You smile back, but feel there is something else Satoru wants to say. He continues, "I mean, she only knew because I was worried about you and gave her the idea to make them for us as a way of telling you how proud I am of you."

Ah, there it is. You were waiting for him to take all of the credit for his act of kindness. You note to thank Shoko later and try to come up with a day that works for the two of you ASAP. You have missed her in your recent busy weeks.

"Tonight, we are going to eat these brownies, watch movies, and relax. And then, we are going to sleep in in the morning and get our beauty sleep. No ifs, ands, or buts. Is that alright with you, baby?" Gojo queries.

"Of course, Toru," you hum. Ever since he opened the box to show you what it held, it had been a yes, but he had been so excited that you wanted his adorableness in the moment to last a little longer. "How could I ever say no to you?"

"Easy question: you can't," he quips.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm aware. Now hand one over."

"Sweets, do you know how much I fucking love you?"

-----

A bit over an hour later, the two of you sit across from each other on the floor of your kitchen, music faintly playing in the background. While you may claim otherwise, the effects of the brownie from earlier were definitely making their appearance. Everything was now extremely funny and embarrassing memories from high school were being shared between the two of you.

You cross your legs over the tiles beneath you and the cold of the floor lightly tickles your thighs. "Do you remember," you begin, struggling to hold back your laughter, "the first time we met?"

"Of course I do. It was love at first sight," Satoru muses. He sighs dramatically, placing his arms behind him for support to lean back on. He crosses one of his insanely long legs over the other one, stretching them to be beside your figure. Gojo closes his eyes with a ruminative smile overtaking his features before "The second I saw you from across the courtyard, I fell deep. No going back."

"Not me," you confess, although he already knows your love story by heart. "You were so annoying! I remember at one point, I was so overwhelmed, I told Suguru to get you a leash to keep you away for at least an hour or two."

"You are hurting my heart," Gojo feigns sadness. He brings his hand to his chest as if to make sure his heart was still there. "I knew we had something real special from the moment I met you. Just couldn't get away from you"

You think back to Gojo sauntering over to you as you were listening to music, sitting peacefully alone against a tree. He oh-so arrogantly walked across the entire field, abandoning his friends mid-conversation in preference of getting to know you. He introduced himself and sent you with a flirty wink you could only awkwardly smile back at. He already was a lot, but bearable; that was true, at least, until he decided to invade your personal space you cherished so much and sat next to you against the tree.

"Yeah, is that why you ripped my earbud out of my ear and shamed my music taste?" you jest.

"Your fault for listening to Hollaback Girl so casually," Gojo quips in return.

"How else was I supposed to hype myself up for the first day at a new school?" you giggle as you speak. "Although, looking back, it was an interesting choice."

"So interesting, it made me go bananas for you," he teases. He taps your knee with his own as a laugh escapes you. His hand grabs yours, toying with the gemstone mounted on your finger; a proud symbol of your eternal promise of unity. "And now, you're my wife, so clearly, it was a foolproof way to make you fall in love with me!"

"And your humility really helped your case," you lightheartedly jab at him while typing on your phone to add a new song to the queue.

"Oh, yeah, that too. Y'know, I've always thought I have a good sense of humor," Gojo brags until he hears the background shift from a low-key vibe to the upbeat anthem that was currently bringing the two you so much nostalgia - Hollaback Girl.

"Dance with me!" you jump to your feet, grabbing your husband's hand and tugging him to follow you. You move to a more open space out of the kitchen and in the living room, pretending to do cheerleading moves to match the music. The two of you work together to queue more songs, being your own DJs for your two person dance party. You get lost in the music together, the other's presence being all you need.

Eventually, you both decide to grab some water.

"Missed you. Missed your cute lil' laugh," Gojo confesses as you grab a bottle of water from the fridge.

"Toru, you've seen me every day this week," you respond, tossing the water to him, grabbing another for yourself, and closing the fridge. Satoru swiftly catches the water and nears to you. A sigh escapes him as he wraps his arms around your waist.

"And? We don't get us time as often as we used to," he whines into the embrace. Letting go so he can look at your face, he brushes hair out of your eyes. His rests his palm on your cheek, speaking, "You gotta take more time to yourself. I was getting worried."

"You're saying that as if you're not the Strongest,' you respond with a lighthearted giggle. You love how he worries about you - it is just another way he shows you how much he loves you. He is the Strongest, that much is true. It is not a light weight for him to have on his shoulders, yet, he still worries about how you - a Grade One sorcerer, less powerful than him by a landslide, nothing really "special" about you like how Gojo is - are doing. He bears the weight of the world, so much expected from him solely due to some unique traits he was born with. Still, somehow, he makes you feel like the only thing that matters in the history of the universe itself. How can one person live with a pressure such as the one he holds, yet still be so loving toward you?

"'m serious, baby. You've been doing so much. A break every now and then doesn't hurt," he smiles at you. Leaning in closer to you, he whispers, "Got it?"

"Got it," you whisper back. Gojo takes the opportunity to connect his lips to yours for a quick kiss. After several over-exaggerated kisses to your lips, he moves to kiss every inch of your phase. Not a spot goes untouched, as if this were the last time he would ever be this close to you. Every square inch of you, because there are not enough ways in the world to show just how much he loves you.

Laughing at his antics and him continuing , you giggle before you say, "Love you, Toru."

He kisses one of your cheeks, saying "And I," another kiss to your forehead, "totally," another one to the opposite cheek, "love," another to the tip of your nose, "you," one to your chin, "more." He gently places one last kiss to your lips, your face flushed from his smother of affection.

He pulls back, a small whimper leaving your mouth from the lack of his warmth. His lovesick smile is all you can see, and you wish nothing more than to stay in this moment forever.

But Satoru, once again, has other plans for the two of you.

"Raid the kitchen for some snacks with me?" he says as he poses slightly, a goofy look to his face as he waits for you to grab his now outstretched hand.

"I'd love to, kind sir," you say in a fake posh accent. After giving him a quick curtsy, Satoru uses raises both of your arms to spin you. He smoothly pulls you into his arms so that he is hugging you from behind.

"M'lady," he begins into your ear, "you must know that I have been struck by the most dangerous disease known to mankind."

"Oh dear! What has ailed you?" You gasp, turning to face Gojo. His arms embrace your waist lightly as he sways you back and forth to the music.

He leans down so his lips are right at your ear, his voice low as he answers, "I got a bad case of..." he takes a deep breath, "the munchies!" Gojo begins to tickle your sides and you squirm in his grasp.

"To-Toru! Stop!" you say between laughs. "It tickles!"

"That's the point, sweets!" he says, but stops anyway and moves to his main objective. Gojo is already halfway across the kitchen before he finishes saying, "C'mon, babe! I'm getting hungrier by the second and I got extra sweets at the market earlier when training Megumi that I am dying to eat right this second."

Not even ten minutes pass and the fridge is wide open, yelling at you and Satoru to shut it. The pantry is open and the freezer is starting to sweat from how long you have been searching through it already. You are starting to think that maybe, you have been infected with the munchies as well. Everything was looking delicious.

Satoru is eating from a bag of jumbo marshmallows he had in the pantry for s'mores with Shoko and Suguru next weekend, but he figures that he can just run to the store tomorrow, because these were so sweet it was addicting. You finally close the freezer, having found your favorite ice cream Gojo had picked up for you beneath all of the other pints. You shut the fridge as well, but only after grabbing the bowl of fruit you had cut for yourself for a snack earlier.

"Thank God. That thing was so annoying," Gojo says regarding the incessant beeping of the refrigerator, his words all muffled from the marshmallows in his mouth.

"Sorry, baby. Couldn't find where I put my fruit earlier. Can you pass me a spoon?" You request.

"Course," Satoru nods and uses his free hand to open the drawer beside him and slides the spoon across the counter. You move to grab it before it slides off of the counter, but you miss. The spoon plummets to the ground with a little ding when it connects to the tiles you were sitting on not too long ago.

That's when the laughter started.

You kneel over, hand covering your mouth as you begin to laugh. Gojo is doing the same from his side of the counter, about to fall to the ground. A little snort escapes you, causing Gojo to laugh even harder. You look like little kids with how much you are laughing over the tiniest thing.

"Whoops!," your husband eventually manages to wheeze out.

If you didn't know any better, you might think you have been laughing for hours before you can finally catch your breath again. Gojo keeps clumsily knocking things over, and every time you think you are about to calm down to a rational level, he does another thing that was just so funny. It's a neverending cycle.

You feel like you are having an out of body experience, with your skin tingling and your mind afloat. You have forgotten at this point what you are laughing at in preference of eating your ice cream. It tastes amazing and you do not think there is anything in the world you have had that compares to the pint you are digging from.

Your ice cream is so delicious that you have zoned out for who-know's-how-long. Between scooping ice cream from the container and staring brainlessly at the counter in front of you, you figure the brownie has made it's way through your system by now.

Gojo is quiet beside you, which is rather abnormal form him. When you finally find the strength to pull yourself out of your daze, you look over to see him floating around, practically bouncing off of the walls. His eyes are closed and he looks at peace, but he is bouncing like a TV logo after a movie has been paused for too long.

You place the lid back on your ice cream and put everything back where you got it before questioning, "Toru, baby? You good?" He smiles at your voice, pulling down his blindfold that has become such a part of his identity. His eyes glow, which almost distracts you from the way he looks so... thoughtless.

"Mhm, all good, lovie," he says happily.

"What you doin' over there?"

"Just hanging around," he says, flipping upside down midair, a cheesy smile on his face. You can tell he has recollected himself from whatever meditative trance he was only moments before now.

You start walking toward your bedroom, saying "Well, I'm gonna lay down if you wanna join!"

Immediately, you hear a thump indicating his feet hit the ground and the sound of steps rushing after you.

-----

"Mmmmmmmm," Gojo moans out. "They are so soft and squishy." He lays in bed with you, one arm resting behind his neck, and the other around you laying against his side. He uses the free hand not behind his neck in order to reache back into the bag of marshmallows and stuff more into his mouth. "Like fluffy clouds I can chew."

You lift your head from it's spot on his shirtless chest and smile up at him. A bowl of freshly popped popcorn sits on the bedside table (your husband cooked it up for you when you said you never watch a movie without some popcorn), easy access to quench your seemingly never-ending hunger. A rom-com plays, neither of you really paying attention to it, preferring each other's presence instead.

"You talk about all your sweets like that?" you tease.

"No..." Gojo says suspisciously. "Never. Mostly. Only sometimes."

"Yeah, yeah. I'm sure," you roll your eyes in an exaggerated manner.

"Don't worry, you're my favorite sweet," he reassures and leans in closer to you. "Always."

Satoru's lips are so close to your own. The ones that told you "I do", the ones that whisper sweet nothings after a long week like this past one, the ones that tease you relentlessly.

"Mhm, always," you repeat, but all you can think is how you want him.

His lips are the softest thing you have ever felt touch yours. You think about the first time you kissed back in high school; it truly is crazy how velvety his still feel against your own. His lips gently press onto yours, speaking a language only the two of you can comprehend. A sense of urgency increases the tempo of the song you create together. He nips at the bottom of your lip, and you let our a small whimper while his tongue takes the opportunity to enter your mouth.

He tastes like sugar.

He leaves one last lingering kiss on your lips, then separates to tell you, "You seem happy."

"A little," you agree, flustered and missing his lips on yours. "Thanks for helping me relax. Means a lot to me."

"Anytime, princess. Say the word, I will drop everything to help you out. Even if you don't say anything, I'll still try and help. I just love you too much," he responds.

"I love you, too."

"Aw, you're so cute, babe. So obsessed with me. I need to take a picture and show everyone how bad you're down for me," he coos, causing you to shy away.

"Toru, stop! You did you even hear yourself? If anyone is down bad, it's you!" you defend.

"I mean, you did marry me, so I'd say it's you," he teases back.

"You married me, too!"

"Awwwwe! So cute all angry! Pose for the camera!"

Bonus

With a box of Shoko's favorite mochi in one hand, you use the other to open the door into her office.

"Shoko!" You exclaim as she says your name, running to hug you. She smells faintly of cigarette smoke, causing you to feel guilty for not checking in with her as much as you usually do. Her smoking tends to get more frequently depending on her stress level.

You hand her the box of mochi, saying, "Here, take these."

"Ugh, my favorite. Thank you," she says. "Did Gojo's special plan go well?"

"I'm assuming that was all your idea?" you laugh.

"Kinda. It was honestly more of a selfish thing on my end. Satoru had been visiting me every hour while you were on missions and I figured he could use them to chill out," Shoko groans. You smile at the though of your husband being so worried about you while you were gone, even though you were texting him updates the entire time. "You gotta stop leaving me to deal with him alone."

"He's such a big baby sometimes," you chuckle. "He did say something kinda smart the other night, though."

"Oh, no," Shoko says as she prepares herself for whatever is about to come out of your mouth.

"We should make a 'bakery' business and name it 'Edible Arrangements'!" you announce. You fan your hands out as if emphasizing the proposal - one that you definitely were not serious about, just trying to humor your husband.

"You two are helpless."

-----

i always struggle with how to wrap things up so im sorry it was kind of abrupt but i hope you like it !!!! thank u for readingggg. again im still learning and didnt really proofread so my apologies for mistakes or anything but yeah love uuu

[int-writersmind]

Steady?

Peter Parker x Reader

Summary: It's been a few months of you and Peter's situationship, a run in with Spider-Man has you reconsidering your feelings for him.

Word Count: 2.5k

Genre: Fluff (w/ some notes of Spice/Smut nothing crazy tho)

Final Part of Potential Customer (could be read as a standalone)

The warm shine of sun was a great reprieve from the cold, brisk, late fall air. You hurry down the sidewalk, dodging and weaving through the crowd of people that blocked your path to work, you were rushing back from a doctor’s appointment in a different borough. You pull at your long red scarf, as you wait with a growing group of people for the sign to turn from a red hand to a white stick man.

Suddenly, Boom! 

An explosion from one block over causes everyone in the vicinity to scream, scramble, and panic in many different directions. You had been in the city for a few years now and understood where you lived and the type of spanx-wearing, super-powered beings that were your neighbors. But for whatever reason, the only interaction you ever had with them came in the form of watching recaps on the news or clips on social media after the fact. 

Now, you were in the middle of something major, and if you didn’t react–

“Guys I know the weather’s brutal, but I don’t think TNT makes great firewood!”

As you move behind the corner of a building, you look up and notice a red and blue figure swinging above you. That outfit and that voice only belong to the city’s resistant arachnid base hero– Spider-Man. 

You know you should get to safety, hell you really should be getting the hell out of here. But still, like many other New Yorkers in awe of the city they live in, you found yourself watching as Spider-Man tussles it out with some newbie criminals.

Spider-Man flips and jumps out of gunfire, webbing up nearby garbage cans and tossing them back in response. All with quip-y dialogue to boot. Actually, now that you think about it, his jokes reminded you of Peter’s, that customer-turned-occasional-hook-up you were seeing recently. That Peter you were desperate to make more than just a hookup–

“Make any sudden movements and I’ll blow ya brain out that pretty head of yours!”, you felt a hand cover your mouth, the coldness of the barrel of a gun pressed against your temple. “I won’t hurt ya, just need ya so I can get out of here.” said the petty Criminal, with the gun to your head and the other hand guiding your shoulder forward. The panic was settling in, but you didn’t want to make any sudden decisions that would put you in any more harm. The Criminal was panic-y himself, whipping you left and right as he headed away from the scene of the crime, his head on a swivel.

“...And this little piggy thought the Big Ole Spider didn’t see him run away.” With one sudden turn, the Criminal stopped in front of a light post where Spider-Man crouched on top of the blub. “Don’t worry, I’ll have you on your way in a jiffy.”

“Don’t you move Spider-Man! I’ll do it!” said the Criminal.

“Whelp, haven’t heard that a hundred times.”

The Criminal turns the gun outwards, but before he can shoot, a web shoots out, Spider-Man ripping it out from his hands. In one swift motion, Spider-Man leaps from the lamppost behind the Criminal. The Criminal in turn throws you off of him, causing you to fall to the ground. Spider-Man double kicks the Criminal, one in the back, one to the head, knocking him out.  

“Are you ok?” Spider-Man goes to offer you a hand but stops mid-way, his head snapping towards the Criminal. In two motions Spider-Man shoots a web toward the Criminal, pulling out a bomb from his chest, and another web shooting towards you pulling you close to him. “Hang on tight.”

Spider-Man swings the bomb so that it explodes in the air, while he swings away, you in one arm, your own arms locked around his neck.

He swings you far from the explosion, your stomach lurching as if you were on a thrill ride with too many drops, the cold wind whipping past your head. You tried your best to hold in your screams, the guy saved you, the least you can do is not blow out his ear drums. But the longer the swinging continued the more you thought he was extending this trip for his own pleasure.

After a few more swings, Spider-Man lands the two of you on a residential building's rooftop garden. He gently places you down on the ground, it takes you a minute to compose yourself.

“Thank you Spider-Man, I definitely won’t forget this day.” You say, in between gasps.

“Now you’ve joined the exclusive club of those who swung with Spidey!”

You place your hands on your hips, “Don’t know if that’s something I’m glad I achieved. Seems like you took the scenic route to get to safety.”

“Maybe I was trying to show you a good time. Can’t get those views from anywhere else.”

You felt your cheeks redding a little, “Careful Spider-Man, sounds to me like you’re flirting.”

With a quick little backflip, Spider-Man lands on the edge of the rooftop, perching like he was on the lamppost. You, now glad to be on solid ground, move closer to him, arms crossed against your chest. “Maybe I’m just a flirtatious guy?”

“I don’t know how my boyfriend will feel when he hears about this.”

Obviously, you couldn’t see, but you can almost feel the dumbfounded look on Spider-Man’s face ,like he was surprised at your response. “Boyfriend?”

“Well, I guess he’s not actually my boyfriend,” You start to pace back and forth, “But this guy I’ve been seeing…well, I don’t know…there’s just something about him. We spend a lot of time together, doing…certain activities…but after, when it’s all said and done, we just have these moments where we’re just really clicking together. Conversations about everything and nothing at the same time, sharing jokes with one another.

 “God, I just love it when he laughs, and when he smiles you can see that he has a slight chip in one of his teeth, on the left side, I think it’s adorable.” Almost as if he wasn’t thinking, Spider-Man’s hand goes to his jaw, stroking the left side of his face, strange if you think about it. 

“Sorry, I know you have tons of stuff that you would rather do than listen to some random person's relationship drama. Weirdly, you’re like really easy to talk to.” You say, rubbing your hands together before sticking them into your coat’s pockets.

“They don’t call me Friendly-Neighborhood Spider-Man for no reason.” You chuckle at his response, “Anyway, I hope you tell this boyfriend-non-boyfriend of yours how you really feel about him, I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”

“Will do, and hey, stay safe Spider-Man.”

With a two-finger salute, Spider-Man backward dives off the side of the roof, you rush forward just in time to see him shoot a web and swing back to the former scene of the crime.

You back away from the side of the roof, suddenly aware of where you were, or in fact–

“Wait? How the hell do I get down from here?”

~

You burst through the front door, a few minutes late since thankfully Spider-Man left you closer to your work rather than further away, lucky huh? What was not so lucky was the five minutes it took to get off the roof.

You murmur apologies to your fellow co-worker as you take your position at the front counter, relieving them to go in the back and sort some new shipments. You barely unzip your jacket before the front door even dings, causing you to go into straight customer service mode. Well, until you notice who the “customer” actually is.

“Oh, hi Peter.” You sigh, reaching up to take off your hat, shoving it into your jacket’s pocket, shimming out said jacket, and throwing it to the side, still leaving your scarf on. “Um, didn’t expect to see you? Need something?”

“Uh, yes, no, kinda?” He chuckles dryly, rubbing the back of his neck as he approaches the front counter. “I was just in the neighborhood and thought I swing bye, ha-ha…”

“Always glad to see you,” You lean over the counter, resting both elbows on the top so that you’re closer to Peter. “Hey, you free tonight for some certain activities.” You wiggle your eyebrows suggestively, giggling to break the tension, Peter laughs back in response.

“Yeah, yeah, definitely,” Peter’s eyes dart from each of your eyes, down to your lips, then back up to your eyes. “Um, actually can we do more than just certain activities? Like dinner or something?”

You feel your face begin to heat up again, rising from the pit of your stomach, up the back of your neck, showing on your cheeks for Peter to see. “Sounds…cute, good actually, real good. But nothing fancy, I have this recipe that this elderly regular gave me a few days ago that I want to try. Says it’s popular with a lot of young men.”

“Sounds good to me.” Peter’s eyes are still locked on yours, his gaze piercing through your soul, but in a good way. Actually, it was kind of turning you on, almost more than other things he’s done to you in the privacy of each other’s beds.

“Peter, were you really in the neighborhood, or were you coming to see me?”

“Can’t both of those statements be true?”

“Oh, so you saw Spider-Man? He stopped this heist or robbery, whatever, around the block from here actually.”

Peter breaks eye contact, locating one of your hands and taking it in his. “Ugh, I must have just missed him. You’re not hurt or anything?”

“Oh no, Spider-Man made sure I was safe and sound, personally.”

The two of you laugh.

“Hey, stop flirting with the customers and do some actual work!” Your co-worker says, peeking their head from the back of the shop.

“I guess I better get out of here, don’t want to get you in any more trouble.” Peter says, looking down at your hands still intertwined, not yet ready to let go.

You bring up your interlocking hands to your mouth, placing a kiss on Peter’s. “Bye, Peter.”

You let go of him, slightly pushing yourself off the counter when suddenly Peter pulls you back close by the ends of your scarf, placing a kiss on your lips. His cold nose brushed against yours. When he moves back, lips barely away from yours, you can’t help but sigh in response. Like a character in some kind of romance novel. “Too much?” he asks.

You just smile and shake your head no, “Your nose is cold, here take my scarf.”

You lift your scarf off your head and place it over Peter’s, throwing one end over one of his shoulders. “See you tonight.”

“Yeah,” Peter walks backward, winking as he walks out the door, “Later!”

~

Ding-Dong!

Of course, the doorbell rings right at the moment when you are getting ready to make your sauce for the pasta dish. You debated whether or not to let the doorbell ring some more, finally pulling yourself away from the stove.

When you open the door, you’re met with Peter standing there with a modest, but gorgeous bouquet of flowers (one flower hanging by a thread), and your scarf hanging from his neck.

“My goodness, Peter you shouldn’t have,” Your hands hover close to the bouquet, eyes darting from the flowers to Peter’s eyes. “Ah, you really shouldn’t. I hate flowers.”

Peter’s face falls, shock, panic, and fear, (maybe everything all wrapped up at once) play across his face. “Oh-Uh, I just thought–”

“Oh, hon,” You pull him close by the ends of your scarf, mimicking what he did earlier. “I’m just fucking with you.” You kiss him gently, deepening it as Peter kisses you back. Is this what this thing between the two of you was becoming? Visiting each other at work, having dinner together, causal kisses, flowers? Peter must want this relationship to be more than just a casual hook-up too.

You both break the kiss off, still remaining close, looking at one another deeply. You blink rapidly to pull yourself back into reality. “Come in, dinner’s almost ready.”

~

Empty plates and cups half filled with budget wine lay to the side on your table in your living room. The two of you were too wrapped up in conversation on the couch to even reach for your drink.

“Yeah, I guess I was just really lucky, being in the right place at the right time to get that picture. Front page and everything.” Peter resting his head on his hand, his elbow resting on the top of the couch.

“Luck and craziness” You sat, legs tucked underneath you, body turned towards Peter, hands wringing in your lap. “You know, these conversations are actually still interesting even with all our clothes on.”

“Yeah,” he reaches for your hand again, holding it in your lap, “But maybe I’m still imagining you naked, in my bed.” He moves in closer, “Sweaty, hair stuck to your face…”

“Wow, someone’s bold this evening.”

“I don’t know, I just feel…I don’t know…”

You go to push back a little tuft of brown hair behind his ear. “I get it, babe.”

Peter groans in response, leaning forward, pecking at your lips. “I know you like using pet names as jokes, but I just…love it when you say them.”

“Ok, Love,” you say as Peter keeps moving forward until you move your legs from underneath you. Peter kisses you into the couch, holding your face with one of his hands. “Darling?”

“Yes?” Peter says, in between kisses on your lips, face, and neck.

“Can I ask you something?”

Peter stops immediately, looking at you directly, “Yeah?”

“Can we…can we be more than just…god, can we be more than just certain activities? I know you said you didn’t…don’t have the time for a serious relationship and all, and I know I said it was ok and all…

“Yes, yes, of course,” Peter says.

“Yes?”

“I-I know what I said, and maybe this-this might be difficult to juggle but,” Peter caresses your face with his thumb, “I wanted this to be more for awhile but didn’t know how to bring it up. Maybe the flowers were a bit on the nose.”

You run your hands across his face, just like you did so many times before, Peter nuzzles his face against your hand. “Ok so let’s make this official. Peter Parker, will you go steady with me?”

Peter chuckles, “Of course, I’ll go steady with you.” He kisses you deeply again, caressing your head as he does so. 

You're so caught up in the moment, in the kiss, that nothing else matters in that moment. The more he kissed you, the more your body craved every inch of his, and you felt just the tiniest of guilt for it.

“I know I agree to a nice simple dinner, but can we…”

“Oh god yes,” Peter smiles before lowering himself down your body, “But let’s start a little differently, can I?”

“Oh yes please…”

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Oh wow, first series done! I hoped you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I have another Peter Parker x Reader (since I'm still on the Parker train *choo choo*) in the tank, which I'll post Wednesday and have plans for a holiday theme PP x reader series, than maybe I'll take a break from writing Peter Parker??? Idk don't want to burn out on him but we'll see.

Anyway comment if you like, so I'm not just talking into the void, but no pressure! Thanks again and see you next time!

masterlist

[i-love-zelda-16]

Rebirth ~ chapter 1: Voices

entire work summary:

Link wakes up in the Shrine of Resurrection. Or… at least… a different Shrine of Resurrection. He’s scared, confused, and of course, without the entirety of his memories. But he’s not alone; someone has been watching over him these past few years.

Follow the Hero of the Wild on his journey to discovering who he truly is after he is stolen and killed as a child by the Wicked Man of the Desert and revived by a copy of the Shrine of Resurrection.

Will Link recover who he was by going against who he is? Will he overcome the malice that has resurrected him and saved his life?

And what happens if you mix two opposing eternally bound spirits into one?

READ ON AO3

entire work notes:

Hey everyone! This fic is inspired by this post by @hazeleafyy and they gave me permission to write this. super cool au idea, and i’m so excited to get this going! I have absolutely no idea how long i want to make this, and i have done no planning whatsoever, but it’s fine right? I usually don’t really plan my fics because that makes me feel restricted idea-wise. but anyways, let’s get this going!! (ps. this is gonna be in present tense, committing now, because after reading Adjuration, my brain is stuck and won’t revert, so present tense it is!!) @orika03 saw ur comment on the post, so here ya go :D

chapter summary: Link wakes up.

chapter notes: This is so frickin cool. Oh my gosh. btw i’m on mobile so the formatting might look weird on a different device sryyy

chapter word count: 821 (short and sweet :D)

(banners ~ @cafekitsune)

“Run! Now!”

A voice beckons him…

He doesn’t recognize it…

“Link!”

…

Link…

A name? He thinks so.

“You can’t kill him! Please! He’s the—”

The voice seems upset. Panicked. Afraid.

“He’s just a child! Why do you want him—”

A child?

“We’re… going to protect you, Link… no matter what.”

…

The voice doesn’t seem sure.

***

And then, the world explodes.

Blinding, all-consuming, frightening light floods into his vision, as an urgent voice calls to him, whispering into his ear.

“Link… Link…”

A name. His?

“Wake up, Link…”

The voice is soft, light, gentle. Something purely instinctual in him tells him he can trust the voice, the warmth, the light.

Yet, something else tells him that he cannot. The thought is a dark cloud blotting out the others— the light. Like the day shifting into night, the moon replacing the sun in the sky.

Against his own silent wishes, he flutters his eyes open, just barely slitting them open enough to see the brightness of the world, blinding him once again.

He’s decided. He hates light. It always buts in when you don’t want it to. It’s annoying.

But this time, when light flashes into his eyes, it isn’t that annoying gold. It's calm, comforting, peaceful, familiar…

Red.

Red…

Why does he like red? It feels nice… it feels like… like… healing… like power…

Once his eyes take their sweet time adjusting to the new brightness, he starts to take in the details around him. His head feels… surprisingly clear. It’s able to take in every nice detail with incredible accuracy, like the wires and pipes dangling from the ceiling, the cool sensations of the strange, dark liquid surrounding him, the soft yet technical fabric of his maroon underwear, the only clothes currently on his toned and heavily scarred body—

Link stops.

Link? He just called himself Link… Maybe that is his name…

Link sits up. The dark liquid splashes a bit around him.

Link’s eyes narrow. How is he here? Why is he here? What is here?

Where the hell is he?

He takes another look around, carefully inspecting his surroundings instinctively. From what he can tell, he’s in a shallow bath of an unknown, black-ish liquid. The bath itself is on a small pedestal, raised from the rest of the ground. Hundreds of cords, cables, and pipes hang from a large hub in the ceiling, connecting to his pedestal. Each one pulses red, transporting some sort of power to his bath… maybe it’s the liquid?

Link notices now that when he moves, the liquid reacts. When he places his hand around in the shallow substance, it wants to climb up his arm. Black and red tree branches slither up his body like veins, leaving trails of coolness on his skin.

He likes it.

It feels… comforting… in some strange, eerie way he doesn’t understand.

He removes his hand from the liquid, hovering it above the surface. The veins trickle away off of his skin, dripping back down into the bath. As they fall away, so too does that sense of warmth and comfort.

The liquid is somehow supplying him health.

Therefore, he’s decided he likes the liquid.

“You’re awake.” A deep voice echoes from the shadows, “Good.”

Link whips his head around to face the direction of the voice. He doesn’t utter a word in response.

“She was going to wake you one of these days…” the voice mumbles annoyedly under its breath.

She?

“Hm.” It pauses to consider. “Well, there’s nothing we can do now. Seventeen shall be fine.”

Seventeen?

The figure of which the voice belongs to steps out of the shadows.

He is tall and large, with dark skin and flaming red hair. Golden jewelry decorates his forehead, arms, and chest, and a robe is lazily draped over one of his shoulders. A long, slender katana rests on his left hip.

Link hasn’t decided whether he likes him or not.

“I would think that you would have many questions…”

He does. Where am I? What is this liquid and why do I like it? What is this bath? Who are you? … Who am I?

Link stops again.

Who… am… I…?

The question lingers in his mind for a moment. He… can’t remember. He has no recollection before this point in time— nothing whatsoever.

Well, that’s certainly frightening.

He ushers the question forward, towards the man.

“Who… am I?”

The man grins.

Link sees now that he is holding a smaller sword by his side.

The man takes a few steps closer towards Link. He kneels down beside his bath and sighs, cocking his head, still grinning.

Link has no idea of whether this man can be trusted or not.

“Who are you?” The man repeats Link’s question. He fiddles a bit with the red tassles on the sheath of the smaller sword in his hand, before abruptly thrusting the blade towards Link.

“The Hero.”

Thank you again to @hazeleafyy to letting me use ur AU idea!! this is gonna be so cool, and i promise to do ur idea justice!!!

[lilangeldeath]

Diary #1 - my manifestation woes & solutions

honestly sort of making my own thing as far as how i manifest because a lot of people online either take goddard completely off the rails or are just saying a whole lot of nothing, going on for paragraphs but not really saying much. i have changed the way i manifest and the movement is so strong and fast. my old self was not fully understanding and was not fully accepting.

before, i was persisting and affirming but i didn't have as good of a self concept as i thought i did. the reason i wasn't getting manifestations in the way i wanted was because i deep down believed that those things just weren't possible for someone like me, for multiple reasons.

i didn't believe i was the operant power in a real way. i just kept saying it to myself. i kept getting confused as to why people were saying things like that i needed to completely detach from my desire and stop thinking about it. why would i desire or even try to manifest something i don't give a fuck about? that makes no sense.

now i see a different type of detachment, such as the sun. the sun rises every day, as it has my entire life, and everyone else's entire lives, and we don't think twice about it. we just know the sun will come up tomorrow. it's just the way things are, because of the way our very universe is structured. it is the same with detachment and being the operant power. show me where in any religious text it says god or the gods affirmed 10k times that there would be light. it just isn't about robotic repetition until you see results. you have to be in the state deep down instead of worrying about 5,000 methods and "breaking the rules", because there literally are no rules when god is in you.

i let my worries and stresses get the best of me because i truly believed that, no matter how hard i tried or what i did, it just wouldn't happen. or would be instantly ripped away the second i got a taste of my manifestation in the 3D. because that's what had happened my entire life. no matter what method i followed or how long i stayed in the fulfilled state, it just led to psychosis because the manifestation would never show up, or would show up perverted and twisted into an abomination, or would get millimeters away from me and then explode into nothing. like the bunnies in mona awad's novel, bunny. every plan, place, job, goal etc i wanted to achieve just fell apart no matter what i did. i followed literal hundreds of different people's different advice over a decade and it did nothing but make my life worse.

and that was because i was too busy trusting other people about how to manifest and what manifestation even is. i didn't even like the word manifestation because it just reminded me of manifest destiny: a "god given right" to terrorize and ruin millions of innocent lives and turn the earth into a stinking pit. which is coming soon, by the way. there's not much time left. no amount of manifesting is gonna save us from going extinct. sorry. there's not enough of us who actually care to save that.

now the reason i have been getting so much movement and so much more power is because i let go of all my hangups and doubts. i had to go through severe psychosis and almost ruined my entire life because i had to transform, my old self had tried hundreds of belief systems/religions/faiths/practices and nothing was working. that's when i realized the connection between all religions and faiths, that god is within us. sounds simple, goddard says it all the time. but i only understood it on a surface logic level. not on a deep level. because nothing ever worked out for me. i couldn't put full faith into something that i had 0 guarantee would ever work out for me.

i'm just supposed to believe a bunch of random people on the internet, who 99% of the time have no proof and no testimonials, who make a living off this type of content? of course they're going to sell me anything that makes my deep pain, hurt, loss, grief etc feel better.

honestly in my opinion most manifestation advice sounds like either 1. a way to grift people out of money

2. a way to trick people using psychological manipulation into no longer pursuing any of their desires, by tricking them into HAVING to work on themselves so that way when their desires never come, they didn't even care because they worked on their shit poor self esteem enough to give up on all previous desires, and keep doing this in a cycle until they just give up on manifestation entirely because they're so content in themselves they don't care to have any goals for it, a way to trick people into giving up with extra steps.

i want to write more about how i perceive the idea of creation, which i prefer more to manifestation, and how i perceive persisting, affirming, wavering, old story, new story, all of those trendy buzzwords that every creator says something WILDLY different about.

the amount of manifestation content online is so overwhelming and confusing, especially when so many content creators sell law of attraction as law of assumption, or vice versa, or mix them together, or misquote people, or make up whatever they feel like about it and expect other people to be able to get it, when they're really just sort of using word salad with buzzwords in it for views and attention.

i kind of want to create a guide or tips or something, but the truth is just because something works for me doesn't mean that's what will work for you. you are the god, you have to find out what works for you. if you like scripting, revising, sleep tapes, subliminals, whatever it is, doesn't mean other people will or vice versa.

i guess it will mostly be just me journaling about my ideas and sharing it, and if it helps others then that's great, and if it doesn't resonate with you then you don't have to care about it. it really is that simple.

[indigos-stardust]

Flicker

Hundreds of years ago the fire moth people, or Nari'shi, lived on volcanic Islands to the South. Unfortunately, there was a catastrophic period of forest fires in the nearby lands that spread from the wild, to crops, and finally villages.

The Nari'shi contain the ability to generate enough heat to create flames. This is because they naturally have a sixth sense to read energy through their antennae and have a much higher resistance to the natural heat from the volcano's they live nearby and depend on. Due to these factors, they can use their own stores of energy and release that through the friction their thick fur creates in fast movement. They even had group dances that would create sparks from the fast movements and touches.

However, that ability to create flame is why they were blamed for the tragedies that continued, even if they was no real evidence they had done those things. Due to complicated politics of the time, including the greed and power tactics of many leaders, they were used as scapegoats for not just the fires but many other things.

During their season of Dormancy And Rest, or Winter, many attacks were made against them using cruel techniques. IN the end their rule was dismantled and they were forced to pay for "retributions." Having no home and no wealth, they agreed to contracts that essentially trapped them and their families in generations of forced labor, abusive surveillance, and working conditions that violated many human rights.

Most work in the Fire Works, where their energy is used either to forge weapons with their fire or create magical energy capsules for a variety of purposes. It's a grim and gruesome reality. Schooling and any method for empowerment or escape from that lifestyle are banned using racist ideas to back it up.

Red, or rather Flicker in this au, worked and lived in those horrible conditions. One day, an older man who had taken care of him, was being yelled at by one of the surveyors. He was too slow. It didn't matter that he was overworked, exhausted, and slowed down by the years of intense labor. He'd be punished for his slowness anyways. Most of the time, the only reason it happened was just to make an example.

At a certain point, everyone reaches a limit. Even though it was stupid, and the elder man begged him not too, Flicker tried to defend him. Tried to make an excuse or aid him in some way, to make the pain less. Things only escalated unfortunately. Then other people were roped into it. More serious threats were made.

Flicker, well, he ended up determined to defend him. And with his own temper his own flame flared up. So hot it broke his own restraints. Apparently, he was "gifted" with a strong fire. People like that were sent down to the Tartarus Plant. No one ever came back from there. No one that ever went there saw the sky again. The beautiful sun would be a dead memory.

So he ran. Sure, it was a rather explosive escape. Sure, if he was caught he'd face a fate worse than death itself. Maybe he accidentally did cause several fires because of the adrenaline and lack of restraint paired with this "gift" (more like a curse.) Miraculously he manages to escape on a raft. Or well, he would've been shot down if Flicker did that. The Island was full of guards.

It's more accurate that they thought he died and then he thought he died when the small boat exploded around him. Flicker wasn't exactly sure what happened. A selkie folk, who knew the ocean and its depths, wouldv've realized that he'd been dragged off by a vicious rip current. And managed to survive purely because he was entangled in a boyyant piece of the small boat he stole.

As for the whole "drowning" issue? No clue on that, for all anyone would ever guess is that either some guardian spirit was watching over him or maybe he just was so near death and hot that he just created an air bubble from all the water he was heating up. Who knows honestly.

Of course, when he washed up in some small cave on the cliff side of some foreign land, he had to admit he was relieved. Sure, there was no way out due to the tides that blocked the exit of the cave. Perhaps, he'd never leave this place and he'd just starve inside, it wasn't like he could swim. Honestly, it was better than whatever fate was awaiting him at the Fire Works.

But then he noticed a frozen chunk of ice near the corner of the cave. At first, he thought it was a strange rock, he'd never seen ice before. There was even clams growing around it as well. He felt droplets melt as he touched it. While he observed the strange thing, he noticed a strange shape inside. So, he melted through it. And then...

A MEAL- Okay, it was probably some dead disease infested animal that died some unfortunate death- But cmon! It PROBABLY wouldn't kill him and honestly- Maybe he could make this work! He'd get enough energy from eating that weird freaky looking animal and maybe he'd learn how to fish! He could just- Drink the water dripping from the stalactites above! He'd survive!!

Well, that's what he thought before he was about to try to cook the dead thawed thing and then it suddenly opened its eyes and shrieked and bit him. Oh, and then it turned into a whole freaking man with weird white hair and crap.

Then the guy started screaming more! Sure, maybe it was because Flicker was screaming too- But in his defense he didn't expect his dead meal to just BECOME A RANDOM GUY?

Things calmed down and they established that they didn't want to kill each other. Then they both demanded what the hell was up with the other dude in the cave. Apparently "Buwe" was trapped in ice or cursed or something. He seemed strangely concerned for Flicker though, Flicker couldn't really understand why.

After a bit of peace and making up for the "accidentally trying to eat/bite you" scenario with some fish that Buwe had caught they chatted some more. Buwe was determined to take Flicker home with him. But the more Buwe talked.. Yeah, Flicker wasn't exactly schooled, but he started to realize everything this guy was describing.. From money and the state of the kingdoms and whatever else? He sounded like he was alive when the Nari'shi were free.

So, they started to put together that Buwe's entire family and tribe were probably dead because apparently he'd been frozen in ice for over two hundred years.

Buwe, brilliant man that he is, decides he's going to cope by adopting Flicker. Flicker, who doesn't want to die and is appreciative of this strange man who has provided food and protection find's himself accepting this agreement. Even though he's literally an adult but apparently, "Smol brother is smol brother" was enough reasoning for Buwe so this was just his life now.

They tried to go back to Buwe's old village, but after seeing the way the grief absolutely wrecked Buwe, Flicker encouraged them to find a new life elsewhere together. Buwe agreed and they set off.

[vivi-the-goblin]

Campaign idea I've LONG had but would require a fair bit of setup: time loop adventure. The party is having dinner at the tavern, when a rumbling rocks the foundations of the earth. Everything explodes in a wave color, sound, and immense pressure, but it parts around them the crest of a wave to a ship's bow. That bow being a small imp-like creature, screeching with the effort to maintain whatever shield is keeping the wave at bay. As quickly as it began, it ends, the world outside the bubble going greyscale. "Noble heroes," the creature pants, slowly turning. "The world hangs a second from death, I'm afraid I have to break my oath and call upon you once...Who the fuck are you!?" It collapses to its knees as it sees its intended targets, one table over. Epic heroes with legendary kit. Despite trying to maintain a low profile the party might even recognize them, or at least the gear spilling out of their robes. Most seem to be shrinking into their armor, though the gnome's just turning green. The whole bar is doing the same, come to think of it. "HOW. HOW DID I MISS. I- ok, ok. I can work with this. That's fine. they used to be chumps too, we just had more time to work back then. Hi. Welcome to the end of the world. If you want to roll it back, we can talk." The paladin's all for it. The rest of the party is conflicted, but they eventually decide they've got nothing else to do. First thing though, who is this? "Got a lot of names, been around for a while. Maintain time, maybe you've seen my work? Yeah, not gonna have it undone by a punk with a wish. One that wished for more wish granting items, and again with with all of those, until eventually they had enough for thier whole tribe of hundreds. and the tribe had one wish, a wish with enough power to bind even the gods." "They wished for 'Goblin'. And with neither the world or the goblins themselves having any idea what that's supposed to mean, creation answered with 'Yes.' There's not a thing under the sun that's not becoming goblin. Or over the sun. The sun's not outta the question eith- look, it's everything, ok? I don't know the reach, I don't want to either, I just know we can't stop that blast." The party grumbles. how do they save things if the gods themselves are bound? "I can chuck you back in time. Only about a day, I had to snap most of myself off when the corruption started. We can do this for a while, but we have to do this. Find out where they are. Figure out how to get to them. and somehow stop them. Can't be that hard, right? they're just goblins, right?" One way to find out. Basically this would start out consequence free. The world is set up, and full of FAR stronger creatures...at first. If they die they lose thier gear, but NOT thier info, the day just resets. Milestone experience, the players will slowly level up as they discover things. Discover how to get what they need more efficiently, skip parts, etc. I said 'at first.' Once they've gotten far enough, gotten their bearings, etc...they notice something's slightly different. Someone's slightly greener and nobody notices. A butterfly is a little goblin with goblin-patterned wings. something slightly changes in thier loop. next loop the little time gremlin's got a green ear. maybe they notice the bubble's slightly smaller. You've learned how things work, now execute. Whether you progress toward a failstate by amount of deaths/loops, or just give the illusion by going off progress, the pressure ramps up. The dragon they have to convince? goblin dragon. The city? slowly becoming goblins. Wild magic starts effecting party members, as even the concepts of reality start becoming goblin, under a sun that's starting to tint green. The bright side is you could do a bunch of the prep right at the start, and have far less to do as things progress. That's also the downside however, and the reason I haven't done it yet.

[deepspaceboytoy]

The Siege of Tremaine, Part 6

“I am the Lord High Admiral Herius Iolanthus Victus, crowned Prince of the Imperium, commander of the warship Invictus. This system is now under my protection. Flee now and I will let you run. Stay, and I will gun you down where you stand. I will scour this system clean of you and your allies. Do not expect mercy. Do not expect kindness. Admiral Victus, out.”

-Warning broadcast from the Invictus as it broke Tremaine’s atmosphere. Message was broadcast in 1,157 different Igorian and Aberinian languages. The message was broadcast only one time. Exactly 60 seconds after broadcast, the Invictus began firing on any ship still under combat footing.

July 10th, 2677. It is the beginning of the end. The Siege has a reached a fever pitch. Tremaine is bruised and palsied, caught in the throes of world-death. The atmosphere is on fire, ionic supercells breaching the firestorm as battleships fall to the surface like rain. The air is ash and dust, the ground scabbed and diseased.

Tremaine is dying, one artillery shell at a time, wracked by superstorms and firewalls and the megaton rain of orbital bombardment. Sixty million boots stomp the life out from it, the battles never ending now, one skirmish or assault bleeding into the next. Time is measured in rounds fired, bombardments calculated, bodies exploded. Nothing else matters now. The system will be won or lost on Tremaine, and the Imperium and Igorian Republic alike know this.

Domask Fayatan commits his forces utterly, abandoning the concept of reserves as he tries to drown the Imperial forces in a tide of amphibian bodies. For the first time since the Siege began, the core of legion territory on Tremaine begins to buckle and sunder under the sheer weight of enemy numbers. The last days have begun. Five million legionaries put aside any thought of retreat, and set about selling their lives to the last. Fort Zama, Point Rain, Port Voltun. The last walls are finally under assault. Corvus Nino, son of the late Legatus Primus Nino who had led the defense long past when anyone else would have failed, stands atop the walls of Fort Zama, ready to carry on where his father fell. There is no step back for either side. The commitment must be made, the resolve must be found. Victory will only come after full and total dedication.

The first move comes from the Legion lines. As one, the 1st Legio Stella Draconum rises from their fixed positions, draws combat blades, and charges the Igorians. One hundred thousand of the finest soldiers in Imperial history, a legion that has existed since before humanity left earth, flowing like a tide into the serried ranks of Igorian militia. Legionaries simply run through the waiting Igorians, power armor boosting them clean through bodies and barricades. The 1st Legion drives into the heart of the forces assembled in front of Fort Zama, and they reap a grim toll in those first few moments, speed and fury carrying them hundreds of meters into Igorian lines. And then they die. First by ones and twos, and then tens and twenties, hundreds and thousands. Cohorts vaporize instantly, entire maniples disintegrating at once.

But the Legion accomplishes what it chose to die for: the opening is made. The Igorian lines are dissolved, fortifications blown open. And the wall guns of Fort Zama speak; tens of thousands of guns, roaring a barrage a million shells strong in just the first few seconds. New suns bloom in the center of the enemy, plasma annihlators and hyperfusion rockets releasing millions of degrees of heat into packed and disoriented Igorian troopers. Macrobombs and thermobaric eradicators, tankbusters the size of city blocks. Every weapon the Imperium can wield has been brought to bear, and as the artillery of Fort Zama speaks, the Igorians watch a million of their comrades die in a second. The radwaves and heat blooms melt another half a million where they stand. And then the killing begins in earnest.

The wall is breached ten minutes later, and then it is breached again, and again, and again and on until there are more breaches than standing sections, and the Igorians are in among the Legions, and guns and strategy have been cast aside for blades and fists and sheer animal instinct. Fighting flows like a river through the city-sized fort, each street host to combats that would be legends if not for how many played out simultaneously. Heroes bleed and die in scores, and the unremembered dead commit feats of bravery that entire mythologies could be spun out from. No one will know. No one will remember. No one will witness.

Up the Center Trackway, the 91st Siege Legion fights its last day. The Legion-Master Tarrius Vane stands along his men, even as they are brought down by the Skilax Rangers of the Igorian Army. At the Seraph Barricades, 11th Legio Ferrata Dux counts the last magazines, smokes the last cigarettes, exchanges the last meaningful look. The last six hundred Legionaries know what is coming. Anastasia Abbas, who had only just taken command in the days before the Siege, gives the order. The charge begins, the last of the Legion dying to buy time. Just a little more time.

A day passes. As dawn breaks on the 11th, half the fort is gone. Communications have broken down completely, and word has been lost from both Point Rain and Port Voltun. Zama is alone. Corvus Nino fights in the heart of the battle, coordinating the defense of Battery 8-11, a cluster of hyperfusion rocket launchers that vomit a tide of rockets into the captured sections of the fort. 3 whole legions stand here at this one junction, the core of legionary resistance. Three times, the Igorians have tested the defenses, and three times they’ve been thrown back. A fourth will push the legions. A fifth could break them. By days end there will be forty-seven. The streets and buildings around the battery will be rad-blackened and incendiary scorched, but the line will not break until the order to retreat is given. All throughout the fort, similar battles are waged, casualties an afterthought in the feverish fighting.

The sun sets. Central Command is all that remains, five legions drawing their line in the sand. This is it, the final position, the last wall. The end. Outside the fortified square, the Igorians gather strength. There is nothing left on the planet to stop them, and their commanders know it.

And so night falls, both sides readying for the sword-fall of morning’s light.

It is heralded with rain. Not the greasy, sick rain that has plagued Tremaine for over a year, thick with chemicals and the smog of apocalypse; no, it is clear rain, and it is pouring.

It is the third day.

At 07:23 Terran Adjusted Time, July 12, 2677, the Invictus breaches Tremaine’s bruised and atrophied atmosphere. The ship has burst from Realm-space inside the atmosphere, and the rain falls from the melting Realm-frost of translation into realspace. A primordial leviathan, Invictus hangs in the sky, blocking the sun. Her black hull is silhouetted by the distorted rays of sunlight peering through around her. She is singular. She is infinity. Her size and scale defies reason, defies perception, defies good sense and nature. She is a mountain of alien hypermetals and exotic energies. She is a hulk of battle-steel encrusted in guns and hangars and close defense weapons. She is a god of old, a war totem of the heavens. She is strength and deep, cold, senseless violence. She is an icon, a graven image of incalculable damage and unknowable fury.

Her shields are lowered, arrogant in her own supremacy, even as megaton rain falls from the Igorian fleet. Solar beamers and volcanic lances gouge into her armored skin, skyscraper sized backbreaker missiles burying into her to unleash massive payload detonations. She does not flinch. And in the silence of the forgotten Siege, she fires.

Domask Curaxis Hrota Fayatan served the Igorian Federal Republic for 72 illustrious years. His record of service outstripped any other domask in Republic history. His victory roll rivaled that of any commander in the galaxy. One moment, he stands on the bridge of the carrier Ulkas’Ronta, and the next, his atoms join those of a million Igorian sailors in orbit over Tremaine. The Fleet is no more.

From the belly of Invictus falls a numberless tide of Drop Assault legionaries. So many fall from her embarkation decks that it appears as if towers of blackened earth have risen to greet the void leviathan now abusing Tremaine’s atmosphere. Black-armored legionaries land among the Igorians, and set about driving them from the fort. Nino leads his own troops out from the square, and a rushing wave of legionaries flows out into the streets and barracks blocks, stopping only when it reaches the walls, driving what’s left of the Igorian army out into Tremaine’s wastes. Invictus’ soldiers do not stop.

Similar miracles happen at Point Rain and Port Voltun. The Invictus has broken the Siege.

On the 13th, Crown Prince-in-Exile Lord High Admiral Herius Iolanthus Victus accepts domask Ioltun’s unconditional surrender. Later that day, he accepts one from Fayatan’s successor. The last remaining civilians in the Tremaine System are starlifted to other worlds in other systems, and the Imperium begins recovering what it can. One of the last items recovered from the world is the standard of the 1st Legion.

By January of 2678, the Tremaine System is declared recovered, though it means little in the long run. Tremaine, once a verdant and prosperous sector capital, is no more than broken rock, finally shattered in the days after the Siege from the unending tectonic abuse. It will take decades to restore the sundered orbital ring of the Tremaine Military Staryards, and the surface is a stormwracked hellscape. Some of the original population will resettle on titanic stations in orbit, or on Cygnus, Suebi, and Cyprii, but in the ashes of the aftermath, the Tremaine System will never recover.

Neither will the Igorian Federal Republic. Staggering numbers of troops and ships were committed, and with the failure of the Siege and the success of the Imperial counterattack, the war will swiftly deteriorate. On August 9th, 2679, the Unity Wars will officially end, the IFR dissolved only 114 years after its formation from out of the First Igorian Civil War. Clans Berakth and Ferathtz will suffer similar fates, both being absorbed by the Clan Kilaurus, newfound allies of the Imperium. In the aftermath of the war, the Igorians will fall into a second civil war, before forming the Igorian People’s Republic in the years to come.

The war will change the face of galactic politics in its wake. The Imperium Humanum, long in ascendancy, takes its place as the premier galactic power, its position unchallenged after the devastation. Imperial allies, primarily the Benden Military States and Zentilluss System-states, will recover quickly, dividing the galaxy between the Imperium and its associates, and the Horagint Confederacy and its network of client states.

Perhaps the greatest legacy of the Siege, however, is how it will cement Herius Victus’ reputation on the galactic stage. No longer just a legend inside the Imperium, his actions in singularly lifting the Siege, and in his conquest of the Igorian capital Ava’cumish, will make him a specter to the rest of the galaxy.

[giulliadella]

“I looked up and saw the stars, and I was ready to be one.”

My theory on how Bill destroyed Euclydia

Let’s get one thing straight: Bill wasn’t the one who killed his planet. But he was the cause of the death of his dimension. He wasn’t born powerful either, quite the opposite (but that’s a story I’ll tell another day).

The euclydians had lived on Euclydia for millions of years, and the star that was probing their planet was a billions-year-old yellow giant that had already completed its cycle. Bill was the only one who could look up, and from an early age he learned to masterfully use the only power of the euclydians: the power of flight.

Bill had a great fascination for his sun, and he was the only one who noticed that the star had been changing in recent years. It was getting bigger, dimmer, and its color was getting redder and redder.

A little after he came of age, Bill decided that this must be a sign. His favorite star was talking to him, calling him. So, floating, he went to his direcion.

The truth is that this star could have exploded at any moment. It could have happened in a few minutes or in a few years, but it would have exploded and taken the only planet around it with it. But when Bill touched it, he blew it up.

The star would have become a supernova or a black hole, but Bill managed to transform it into both. The vacuum that the explosion created was so great that all the other stars in that tiny universe were drawn closer, and the supernova was so massive that it hit those stars.

Bill triggered a chain reaction, thousands of stars exploding without even completing their cycle. That universe was fragile and small, it couldn't handle it and began to collapse.

In physics, nothing is created, everything is transformed. Everything around us is nothing more than stardust. But that also means that nothing is ever destroyed.

Where did the dust, radiation and metals from thousands of stars go after their universe was destroyed?

Bill

Bill is a star. In fact, he is more than six hundred thousand stars compacted inside his body. That is why he is so powerful. If everything around us is stardust and Bill is a supernova, then he can rewrite everything. Reality is in his hands, and this power is impossible to exhaust.

In reality, when he died, all this energy had nowhere to go and opened a hole in the multiverse. A hole where all the stardust came together to create a new 2D world…

I don't have enough knowledge in astrophysics to analise this, but it's for sure a cool idea. One major thing I think could be improved on is the idea that little Bill could have touched a giant star. Stars are like so, so hot. Even dying giant stars are insanely hot, like up to 7000K hot. Nothing biological could approach that close to a star. Now, of course, if there was magic involved, then yeah, I can buy that.

I have my own theory about how Bill got his powers, but I can't write about it here, because I plan to add it to my fanfiction one day and a lot of people who read that thing follow me here, so I can't spoil that for them.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Stellar pyrotechnics on display in super star cluster

Astronomers have unveiled an explosive cosmic fireworks display of stars interacting with their environment. This dazzling spectacle—due to powerful winds flowing from the stars—marks a major milestone in the ability to study the formation of the largest stars and to better understand how they affect their environments.

The researchers used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe Westerlund 1, a so-called super star cluster with hundreds of very massive and potentially thousands of lower-mass young stars, with the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). Westerlund 1 is located across the Milky Way galaxy about 12,000 light-years from Earth.

The newly obtained JWST images of Westerlund 1 show many evolved, massive stars violently shedding their outer layers with bright patches throughout the image. These extended structures are known as "winds" and show a surprising diversity in their shapes. The results provide details of the process where enormous amounts of energy from stellar winds and radiation are smashing into the local environment. This forms complex structures and stirs up the giant gas cloud, in which these stars are embedded.

"We were really surprised to see all these different wind structures in Westerlund 1, as we expected most of the gas and dust to be blown away by the highly energetic radiation emitted by the massive stars," says Kristina Monsch, a Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, who helped lead the research.

"The fact that there is so much dust and gas in Westerlund 1 suggests that massive stars play an important role in shaping their environments, possibly even influencing the formation of stars, similar to our sun."

Westerlund 1 is one of the closest and most massive young star-forming clusters in our galaxy, and it contains many rare supergiant and hypergiant stars, with masses ranging from eight to 100 times that of our sun.

Such stars live fast and die young with ages of only a few million years, which is in stark contrast to lower mass stars like our sun that live for billions of years. Massive stars use up their hydrogen fuel much faster than lower mass stars, while at the same time losing most of their mass via winds and explosive outbursts from their outer layers, which JWST can observe at infrared wavelengths.

"Despite being rare star-forming environments in our galaxy today, supermassive star clusters were very common in the early phases of the universe," describes Mario Guarcello of INAF—Astronomical Observatory of Palermo in Italy, who led the JWST observing campaign.

"Westerlund 1 is therefore one of the best testbeds for extending our knowledge of the formation of stars, especially the most massive ones. The observations simply look like a cosmic fireworks display; the data is showing us that many stars and planets are born in incredibly explosive environments."

Compared to the sun, which will enter its red giant phase in five billion years or so, massive stars impact their local environments shortly after their formation, and eventually explode as energetic supernovae, leaving behind neutron stars or black holes. Only one supernova is expected to have gone off so far in Westerlund 1. However, more than 1,500 are expected over the next tens of million years.

"The discovery of these extended winds surrounding the massive stars in Westerlund 1 was only possible because we stared at the region for over six hours," says CfA astronomer Joshua Bennett Lovell who co-led the analysis of the JWST MIRI data.

"But the time investment was worth the reward: we can now see a wide array of winds and ejecting material, vital clues to directly measure how young high-mass stars influence their surroundings."

"We pushed our detection limit down to the smallest stars that can form," explained Juan Rafael Martínez-Galarza, also from the CfA, who supported the MIRI data analysis. "Thus, we will be able to determine the true content of the cluster and to measure properties such as the mass distribution of its stars, down to the regime of the least massive stars in the cluster."

These results were presented today at a press conference at the annual winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in National Harbor, Maryland. A paper describing this work is published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal.

The discoveries were made as part of the Extended Westerlund 1 and 2 Open Clusters Survey (EWOCS) project, an international effort led by Mario G. Guarcello from the Palermo Astronomical Observatory (INAF) in Italy, aimed at studying the formation of stars and planets in the massive super star clusters Westerlund 1 and 2 using the James Webb Space Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Monsch and Bennett Lovell from the Center of Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) led the JWST MIRI data calibration of Westerlund 1, which revealed the extended gas structures emanating from the most massive stars in the cluster. Juan Rafael Martinez-Galarza and Konstantina Anastasopoulou, both researchers at the CfA and Jeremy J. Drake (Lockheed Martin), also played important roles in the analysis of these extensive datasets.

TOP IMAGE: This image of Westerlund 1, one of the most massive young super star clusters in the Milky Way, combines data from JWST’s MIRI and NIRCam instruments to reveal detailed structures within the cluster's environment. The color image reveals intricate details of gas and dust in the cluster, with longer-wavelength mid-infrared emission (red) highlighting warm dust and gas, shorter mid-infrared emission (green) tracing complex structures of cooler dust and gas, and near-infrared emission (blue) showcasing the brilliant light of young, massive stars embedded in this cluster. These observations provide important insights into how stellar winds and radiation from massive stars interact with the surrounding material, shaping the cluster's morphology and influencing its evolution. North is 15 degrees to the right of up and east is to the left. Credit: D. Capela (University of Lisbon), M. G. Guarcello (INAF-OAPA) and the EWOCS team

CENTRE IMAGE: MIRI RGB stage 1 image of the nebulosity associated with the M-type super-giant W26. The positions of the surrounding massive stars, along with the "triangular nebula", are marked. Credit: Astronomy & Astrophysics (2024). DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202452150

LOWER IMAGE: JWST MIRI images in the F1130W filter of the resolved stellar outflows in the four M-type supergiants of Westerlund 1. In the same panel as W26, the asymmetric outflow from W9 is also visible on the right-hand side of the image. Each panel has a size of 40″ × 40″. Credit: Astronomy & Astrophysics (2024). DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202452150

BOTTOM IMAGE: NIRCam RGB images of the pillar in the western cloud. Left panel: red F466N, green F405N, blue F200W. Right panel: red F1130W, green FIOOOW, and blue F770W, created using stage 1 data in order to avoid saturation. Credit: Astronomy & Astrophysics (2024). DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202452150

[salvosfinest]

The Cowboy's Eyes - Ch. 2

[Content warning for: light depictions of gore & outdated usages of the word "homosexual".

Dat's it.]

Cosmin Mihai.

Manager. Friend. Lover.

The words still rung in his ears.

“I love you, Cooper Howard.”

There had always been rumors that Cosmin was an unmarried workaholic with far too many male guests. Not many friends, though, like he kept everyone at arm’s length. But not Cooper. They were thick as thieves.

“Cosmin? He's stubborn. But he's good at his work. I mean look at you!”

After his last manager retired, Cosmin came in to continue his career. A brightly colored flag of a human being, with a face that came straight out of the Marines. Barb had always criticized their partnership, given the rumors that Cosmin was a homosexual, communist, or both.

“I just can't stand that they can do whatever because they have more money!”

Anti-capitalist sentiment, sure, but with megacorporations running everything, who wasn't? They “wiped the slate clean” just to turn a profit. What a sick fucking joke.

Rousing himself out of his train of thought, Cooper realized that the sun had set on his and Cosmin's watch. “Lucy is younger. She gets to rest first.” He had brought a well-maintained anti-materiel rifle out to keep an eye on the horizon. Laid out in a rickety sniper’s nest was the best way for him to utilize such a skill.

One that Cooper never knew he had.

He looked the damn same as last Cooper saw him. Dark hair, meticulously faded and kept cropped, a charming amount of stubble, and the kind of musculature that would send lesser men to their knees. Not his usual type, but he could never get over the ideals that were drilled into his head.

Reaching down from his chair, he had aimed for Cosmin’s ass, wanting to startle him—

“No.” Stern. He took his watch seriously. Couldn't blame him. A deathclaw would level his entire home in an instant. “Do you wanna talk about the last couple of hundred years, Cos?”

“...I was frozen for most of it.

“Frozen, and yet you didn't come searchin’ for me once you were outta there.”

“Coop-”

“No, don't Coop me. You have a lot of explaining to do.”

In the back of the scope, Cooper barely saw his face twitch, then fall some, eyes still focused on its target. “I thought you died. Your name disappeared from Vault-Tec’s servers. So I made a living here. Killing-”

Cooper saw it too, picking up the binoculars next to his chair to get a better look at the movement in the distance. Horns, a gruesome mouth - a deathclaw.

The sound was deafening even for him, shaking the nest just slightly to further dampen the recoil from such a large rifle. In his binoculars, the deathclaw's armored head exploded, pieces of viscera flying outwards.

Its headless body fell a few seconds after.

“How in the hell… did you learn to shoot?”

“Practice.” There was the beautiful sound of Cosmin chambering a new round, and a grunt as he settled back in.

The man he knew was gentle to him - even in their roughest moments, Cosmin practically worshiped him. Something that Cosmin had always wanted, he confessed once. After the Battle of Anchorage, he was the right person for the right kind of role that the people wanted to see. A handsome face with a righteous set of morals, and the experience off-screen to back it up.

Cosmin was a hard-working yet gentle man that had everything going for him professionally, until Cooper's fall out with Vault-Tec. Then both of their reputations were ruined, but Cosmin still found work for him, even amidst rumors that the great Cooper Howard was a homosexual communist.

Oh how far they've fallen.

“How many years…?”

“Five. I've been out here for five years.” Cosmin stood with his rifle, back to Cooper to aim it out at a distant target, the sleeves of his jumpsuit tightening as his arms held the weight of the rifle. He didn't need power armor. He was strong without it.

Like he always was.

“Got a caravan coming through. They're not going to cause a problem.” Cooper realized he was staring, a flush of heat battling the cold of the nighttime desert. He had been numb to his feelings of abandonment, but here? They threatened to bubble up to the surface. Cosmin had been surviving in the Sierra for five years and was still the same man as before.

“Cosmin I-” He stopped when the now-prone sniper turned his head to gaze at him in his peripheral vision. “I'm sorry, sweetheart, I'm not the man you knew before the war.”

“Don't care.” He saw his jaw clench some as he shifted on his stomach, eyes forward. “You didn't shoot me in the head when I was down. Means you still harbor some feelings about me, don't you?” That wave of heat went through him again, centering itself in his cheeks. Did he?

…

He did.

Some two hundred years earlier…

“So, to quash a rumor - are you really a homosexual?”

It was “boy’s night”, a night where Cooper could just be around his male friends without worry. Barb had her own girl’s nights, even if they were few and far between these days. Cosmin’s house had a pool and it was nigh a hundred degrees outside, so it was perfect for a very sweet mojito and a swim.

Cosmin stood up in the shallow end, knees bent to keep his upper body in the water, arms resting on the concrete rim of the pool, head tilted up to gaze at the reclined Cooper. “Do you think you can live with the truth?”

“Of course! You're plyin’ me with the sweetest mojitos this side of the Rockies and you think I can't handle a little truth. Pfff.” He took a sip of said mojito, using its straw to hide a smile. There was always guilt around his happiness around Cosmin.

“I am.” Safe to say, Cooper wasn't entirely surprised. With how much skin and muscle Cosmin showed in his professional life, he must be peacocking for somebody.

“Nobody special?” That caused Cosmin’s brows to furrow, turning around so his back was to Cooper. Even his shoulders had definition–

“Not really. I look up to someone but they always fall short and can't handle having expectations put on them.”

“Expectations liiiike?” He wasn't usually such a gossip, but he had grown curious about his manager - he had been hurt by Barb’s coldness regarding her job and Vault-Tec’s ridiculous rules for their vaults. Cosmin was a comfort. “Like having morals. They're with me to get closer to you. To Vault-Tec. Even men outside the industry. I… don't have many people I can trust.” It took Cooper a moment to think, consider his options. Clearly, Cosmin trusted him.

Silence hung in the air, threatening to strangle them both if nobody said anything.

“I'm bisexual.” The words spilled from Cooper’s mouth clumsily, something he had never said in decades. He had mourned the thought about living how he wanted once he became America’s cowboy. He knew Cosmin did not care one bit. With the increasing tensions and threats of nuclear war in the US, he wanted someone to know.

“Wait– really?” Cosmin turned to finally look at him, dark eyes clearly fixed on his face, which rivaled the heat of the outdoors. Unable to form words, Cooper just nodded once, sitting up in his beach chair to try and dispel the uncomfortable knot in his throat. He watched as Cosmin climbed out of the pool, eyes following how his muscles shifted under his skin to bear his weight. Oh fuck.

The mojito was taken from his hand and fear welled up in his chest, unsure if Cosmin was going to make a move or worse. Instead, his hands were held, Cosmin’s forehead touching his - this was intimate. Gentle. Considerate. “Thank you for trusting me.” He whispered, taking one of Cooper’s hands to kiss his knuckles, which made his heart jump into his throat.

He had latent feelings for Cosmin. He didn't realize it until he had to confront it. That respect, that adoration, things that he lost in his own long-term relationship, it all bubbled to the surface without warning - and in the moment it did, his head was tucked against Cosmin’s wet shoulder. He didn't feel bad contributing to it, but something was gnawing at his heart, screaming that it was wrong for him to be weak in front of a man and not his wife.

“Sshhh. Ssshhh, it's okay.” His voice was so quiet, fingers stroking through his hair. He never imagined himself in such a position, crying like a child in another man's arms. It was freeing, almost, but he didn't want Barb to see him as weak when she needed him most.

Not an hour and a shower later, he found himself tucked against a sleeping Cosmin, his mouth open slightly as he slept. He felt… safe.

Fuck.

[maccreadysbaby]

Project: Killcode

batfamily + oc insert

tw: gore

wanna read more? here’s the table of contents!

want to read the first fic in the hundred days series so you understand what’s going on here? here it is!

...

part fifty-four

❝ NUMB ❞

MONDAY — OCTOBER 31 — 2:38AM

BENTLEY NEVER MOVED. 

For a long time, he didn’t move. He just held Asten’s head close, his mind racing but completely empty all at once, unable to do anything other than merely sit. He couldn’t cry. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe.

Jason never moved either. Rockie and Layla hadn’t left their spot a few yards down the hallway. Bentley might’ve noticed on a normal day that Rockie was on the floor there, now, crying, and Layla was doing her best to comfort him, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. 

The alarms eventually stopped blaring, and the entire facility was shrouded in a heavy silence that no one dared break.

Three years ago, when Asten had been on that rooftop setting Gotham on fire, and Jason yelled to everybody else that his heart wasn’t beating — that had been the most terrifying moment of Bentley’s life. Because, well, how could the world keep spinning without Asten Evans?

Now, covered in his blood and unable to move, Bentley was pretty sure the Earth had stopped orbiting the sun.

What did they do now?

Someone walked out of one of the adjacent facility hallways. Bentley saw it in his peripheral. Past Jason, and a good ways away, a figure came into his view. Black and yellow, and small, with platinum hair and a sickening smile.

“What happened… Babybird?”

As soon as he heard her voice, Bentley’s head nearly exploded with the amount of deafening white noise that started whooshing in it. He felt everything and nothing all at once — he could feel the simple sensation of the air moving through his windpipes, of gears turning in his head, he felt every minuscule strand of Asten’s black and blue hair that was brushing against the side of his face. He felt every single milliliter of blood that was still lingering in his veins, every single gallon of water moving below the facility, and across the campus, and in the school buildings. He felt gallon after gallon of blood screaming from tanks somewhere in the facility from kids who had already died, and he felt his own blood, his own bile that he’d left in the floors around the place. He felt Jason’s blood, and Rockie’s blood, and her blood, and everyone’s blood. Their hearts pounding and pounding and pounding in his ears, slamming like drums, but going unheard because the one heartbeat he thought he would always hear wasn’t there anymore.

Slowly, he stood, letting Asten shift gently from his arms into Jason’s, who still hadn’t dared move. Bentley couldn’t feel anything. He couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t see anything but her, staring right back at him, smiling.

The entire facility they were standing in groaned and rumbled dangerously. 

In a millisecond, with a deafening noise, water started to gush out of every minuscule opening in the building — between the floor tiles, where the ceiling met the walls, between doors and out of light fixtures. If the water couldn’t find a path, it made its own, cracking tile and bending metal just to find its way out, flooding into the hallway hundreds of thousands of gallons at a time. It swirled and swelled in the hall like an ocean during a storm, circling Jason and Asten, Rockie and Layla, leaving them untouched and dry, but roaring everywhere else like a hurricane.

The Secret Keeper shouted in surprise, flinching away when the water started gathering at her feet, building up to her ankles, then to her knees at a breakneck speed. “What- How the hell are you doing that?! You can’t use your powers here!”

Bentley said nothing. Didn’t move. The water started to slither and climb up her legs like snakes, taking hold of her wrists, her ankles, lifting her up off the floor, stringing her up just like Tyler had done to him. Water was bubbling on the ceiling there, and a cord of it came down, slinking around her throat and tying itself into a noose.

The rest of the water released her extremities and left her hanging by the throat, in a noose of crystal clear water, just like she’d done to him.

The Secret Keeper made a noise of desperation as she began to choke, clawing and grappling at the water around her neck to no avail. The liquid in the hall all seemed to quiet, now, moving in slow motion instead of a raging storm as she choked to death

“Bentley,” Jason mumbled. Bentley didn’t look down at him, but he could feel the salty wetness on his face that reinforced his need for vengeance all the more. “Don’t kill her, Bentley.”

Bentley watched the Secret Keeper claw at her throat, gasp and wheeze for air, her amber eyes bulging, face going beet red at the lack of oxygen.

“Don’t kill her, Bentley,” Jason repeated. “Please.”

Bentley barely heard him.

But then, a whisper came from underneath the noise and chaos; a voice he knew, soft and quiet but booming in his head, singling itself out from the rest of the sound like it was quieting everything else around it. “Bentley, you’re going to kill me!”

It was Charlie.

He blinked, and then he inhaled. There was a distant noise, a subtle click-click-click-bam! that he recognized. His eyes drifted over to the side, and he caught sight of Rockie, standing, unlatching his gloves and letting them clack on the tile.

That’s about when Bentley remembered; in order to work down there, Rockie’s powers had to work even through the EM.

Which meant he had them now.

Bentley exhaled, and the noose slowly slipped from around her neck, the four cords of water returning to her ankles and wrists and stringing her up again like a starfish.

“I’ll kill you!” She shrieked, the cords of water lowering her down so her eyes were only a little higher than Bentley’s. “I’ll kill you and everyone that has to do with you!”

Rockie touched her exposed left hand.

Immediately, his own hand started to glow a strange, orange-ish yellow. Just like Bentley had watched when he tried to siphon Georgia’s powers in the alleyway, Rockie’s feet slowly eased off the floor so he was levitating, and his eyes turned a bright, glowing amber. An expression crossed his face like he was in pain. 

Bentley watched the entire spectacle, water floating around them in large blotches. Rockie floated higher in the air until he was nearly touching the ceiling, his hand glowing until it was brighter than the lights in the hallway, bathing everything in a golden light that Bentley had to squint through to see anything.

And just as quickly as it started, it ended. 

With a thump, Rockie hit the tile, and the Secret Keeper went slack in the restraints made of water.

And it was silent.

Slowly, the liquid released her unconscious form and let her rest on the white floor, crawling over to Rockie instead. It slid under him, careful to leave his clothes dry, and slowly moved him away from her, back over to where Layla was. A streak of platinum had settled at the fringe of his hair, just like Jason’s. A streak of her platinum, even the very tone of the color echoed against Rockie’s forehead.

Bentley’s eyes drifted to the Secret Keeper -- unconscious, defenseless, and now, thanks to Rockie, completely powerless.

My body is still under the influence of my father’s mind control — he has a chip in his head, and one in mine, right at the base of my skull. 

A tiny sliver of water, barely smaller than a needle, floated up under The Secret Keeper and stuck itself in the skin on the back of her neck. Slowly, the water eased around, cutting through skin and tissue until it found the small mind control chip, secured itself around it like a string, and dragged it all the way out, all the way through her skin with a splatter of blood.

Bentley said nothing. Didn’t move.

Slowly, all the water began to dry up, forcing itself back into the cracks and crevices where it had come from with subtle popping and groaning noises.

In the midst of all the sound, Layla stepped out of her spot and took a few brave steps toward The Secret Keeper, examining her unconscious face closely with a cringe. Bentley saw her blue eyes trail the terrible stitched smile. With a subtle touch to the top of the Secret Keeper’s head, Layla’s power to restore what had been destroyed came and went. 

When she moved, and he could see, the Secret Keeper’s stitched smile was gone, the skin restored, her platinum hair painted back to blonde.

No smile, no amber eyes, no psycho mind control. Now, it was just Charlie.

Bentley looked down. Back at Asten, painted in red, at Jason, arms wound tightly around his unmoving, unseeing body. The everything and nothing he was feeling came strangely close to becoming something.

Then, someone else’s footsteps came. From behind him. Jason looked up at them. Bentley didn’t move.

“Get them out,” Jason managed through clenched teeth, glancing at Bentley, then back at Rockie and Layla momentarily, the former of which was now emerging from his brief unconsciousness.

Someone grabbed Bentley’s shoulder from behind. “Come on. I’ve got you.”

It was Robin.

There was more conversation. Conversation that prompted Layla and Rockie to get up and leave as best they could. Conversation Bentley didn’t hear, because he was too busy staring at Asten, listening intently for blood that would never pump, for a pulse that would never beat, for a tiny sliver of hope in an otherwise dark and colorless world. And he stayed that way, staring, until someone grabbed him, gently escorting him toward the exit.

Asten kept getting farther away. 

“No,” He murmured, reaching out for his brother, for the sea of red and white that was fading away. Arms came from behind him and kept dragging him on. “No, Asten!”

He just kept getting farther away.

“No! Asten!” He shouted, suddenly feeling like vomiting as his view of his brother was suddenly obstructed by a white wall — he was going up the stairs.

“Asten! No!” He shouted, a terrible burn surfacing behind his eyes. He tried to pull away from the hands, but he couldn’t, so he screamed instead. A terrible, gut-wrenching, heart-breaking scream that left his throat raw and maybe, just maybe, had enough feeling behind it to wake his brother up from the dead.

“ASTEN!”

And then the hands pulled Bentley out of the facility.

—

Next thing he knew, he blinked, and he was standing outside of the Aristotle building, Robin clutching tightly to his arms.

There were police cars everywhere, bathing the pitch back middle-of-the-night Redwood campus in spasming flashes of red and blue. There were sirens wailing in the distance, and dozens of ambulances parked around the grounds, more coming and going with each passing minute. There were police and paramedics and parents and students and people, absolutely, everywhere.

“Bentley!” 

Bentley hardly heard his name being called, but eventually, someone settled in front of him. It took him a solid thirty seconds of staring at black and purple hair to deduce that it was Vera.

There was more conversation. He wasn’t sure if they were talking to him or not, and if so, he didn’t respond. Robin let go of him and someone else grabbed him. Vera. When he snapped back into reality enough to deduce his surroundings, she was crying. Robin must’ve told her. About…

With a few pitiful sobs, she leaned forward and hugged Bentley tightly, silently.

For a second, Bentley wasn’t sure what he felt. He thought he might throw up. He tried to bring his arms up around her but he couldn’t get them to move. 

Asten was dead.

Vera was holding onto him so tight, in a death grip, almost. He might’ve thought about it more, but he couldn’t.

Asten was dead.

She was saying something — he couldn’t tell what. She was touching his head. Her hand was in his hair.

Asten was dead.

Bentley fell over.

He wasn’t sure what had moved or triggered or opened inside of him, but suddenly, he was able to cry. Except it wasn’t so much crying as it was screaming with the accompaniment of tears and the occasional choking sob. He wasn’t aware of much, but he knew Vera was there, and she was holding onto him, and that’s about all he could process through the unintelligible weeping that had overtaken him. Crying so hard he couldn’t breathe through it, that it left his throat raw, his lungs fighting for air so hard they were burning. His eyes were completely impossible to see through, his sobs forcing themselves out of him from somewhere so deep each one threatened to make him vomit.

Asten was dead.

He dissolved into a screaming, sobbing mess, and stayed that way for a long, long time.

—

The next time he came back to himself enough to make out his surroundings, he was sitting, his legs dangling out of the back of an ambulance. In silence. No longer crying, but trembling vigorously; he was pretty sure he didn’t have any tears left in him anyway. He felt… empty. Rung out, like a towel that someone was trying to get really, really dry with their bare hands. Like between the chaos, and the crying, and the puking, and the trauma, there was absolutely nothing left in his body. No feelings, no tears, no thoughts, nothing.

Someone squeezed his trembling hand.

It took him far too long to notice that someone was next to him, and far, far too long to pinpoint who it was. He wouldn’t have been surprised, if he could feel, which he couldn’t. It was still Vera — sitting next to him in a matching white jumpsuit, her black and purple hair in a knot that may have once been a ponytail instead. Her fingers were intertwined with his, and she was staring off into space, not crying anymore, but her red rimmed eyes and flushed face implying that she had been. They were both sitting with the same thin white blanket wrapped around their shoulders.

Bentley didn’t know how long he’d been there, but the sun was rising, the golden light cutting across the Redwood campus. Maybe six in the morning. There were still a ton of officials and officers and paramedics and students scrambling around, but less than there had been, he thought. Maybe. He didn’t know. He couldn’t tell.

There was a pinch on his left arm. He glanced down just enough to catch a glimpse of an IV tube that disappeared somewhere above him. Attached to the ambulance, he guessed.

What was he gonna do now?

He looked back out at the crowd, raking his eyes across everybody, trying to force his brain to work enough to decide who he was seeing. A lot of the students he didn’t know. He saw Tyler in the distance, almost right across from him, being tended to by a paramedic on the back step of an ambulance. It looked like they were just cleaning scratches or something.

A few scans later and he caught sight of Rockie in the midst of the massive crowd, standing alone, a paramedic beside him and touching one of his shoulders gingerly with latex-gloved hands like they were trying to pinpoint a source of pain. His face was blank, his inhuman green eyes so dull they looked utterly human, the whites bloodshot but his face empty. He had his metal gloves back on now. Bentley could see the streak of white in his hair even from where he was sitting, shining in the sunrise and reminding him way too much of her.

Two more scans and he found Valor and Koa. They were harder to see, and Bentley only found them because Valor’s giant platinum wings were sticking out like a sore thumb. He and Koa were up in the back of an ambulance, sitting in the seats around the little stretcher thing inside, which was housing a person. Valor's wings were not tied up anymore, and Koa had no muzzle. Maybe Varian was lying there, in the ambulance. That made the most sense to Bentley.

 They were speaking quietly to each other over whoever was in the bed, and seemed relatively alright, which told Bentley they didn’t know about… what had happened. Not yet, anyway.

Layla was sitting on the back of an ambulance closer to them, sort of to their right but diagonal, sharing a white blanket with Chloe. Chloe’s face was mostly blank, empty, while Layla was crying her eyes out. Bentley knew why.

He only spotted Summer when she whizzed past them, going here and there and wherever she was needed like the entire place was an ambulance-filled pinball machine. The only one of his friends he couldn’t see was…

Bellamy. Where was he?

Suddenly, with a loud sound and a warp of light, Titus appeared in the center of the chaos with a man and a woman held close at both sides. A student in a white jumpsuit ran to them as soon as they appeared. 

He watched Titus step away from the reuniting family, a few more students immediately crowding around him, rambling on until he disappeared again. Going to get parents that weren’t close enough to make it fast, Bentley guessed. 

With a soft exhale, he leaned over until his head rested gently in the space between Vera’s neck and shoulder. She didn’t say anything, and neither did he. He was so numb he didn’t even manage to feel sick anymore, the only thing left in the wake of the worst day of his life being an overarching, terrible exhaustion.

He felt her arm come vaguely up and around him.

He watched Titus flash in and out of sight for a long, long time. He appeared again with men and women and family members galore, all of which received one or multiple students in white jumpsuits clambering over to them, just to be swallowed in tight, teary hugs.

But Bentley’s family was here. They were in the facility. Working. They were the ones getting students out the doors. Every now and then, Bentley even saw them; Nightwing carrying a jumpsuited child out to the paramedics that couldn’t have been over seven; Red Robin leading out a small group of kids who were too afraid to walk alone; Orphan communicating gently in ALS to translate between a student and a police officer. Signal using his power to get the most critical students outside first; Spoiler sitting in the back of an ambulance with a group of girls, trying to calm them down. Red hood and Robin hadn’t emerged again. Batman hadn’t emerged at all.

They were all there, all doing their jobs, all saving lives. Which meant that no one would be coming to pick Bentley up.

And for some reason, that kind of hurt.

Bentley breathed in and out, deep, watching Titus warp away and then appear again to reunite a family a few moments later. At some point, police started bringing the kids from the dorm buildings out, too — because there was a sudden influx of students not wearing jumpsuits that Bentley had just noticed. He guessed it could’ve been happening all this time. He wasn’t very good at paying attention.

Eventually, when the sunrise was shining on them more so than it had been, Titus warped into view with someone Bentley knew.

It took him a few moments to actually pinpoint who it was. It was a guy; he looked young, with tan skin and dark hair and deep brown eyes that Bentley had seen several times, though never in the flesh. His eyes were wide, scouring the dozens and dozens of police and ambulances in a panic, and he had this sort of… California look about him.

Bentley must’ve realized it was Artimi at the exact same time Koa had. Because, as soon as it dawned on Bentley, Koa shot out of the back of the ambulance he was in like a God damned bullet, flying across the campus grounds in a flash of white before he slammed into him, hard, in a terribly tight and terribly comforting looking embrace. Bentley could hear Koa crying from all the way across the crowd.

Not five minutes later, a man and a woman were teleported there. The man, he recognized from a Secret Keeper fever dream — and his suspicions were confirmed when Valor went out and found them, guiding them to the ambulance that was holding Varian. It was his parents. 

Bentley just watched, silent, as families reunited. He saw Layla’s parents show up, not thanks to Titus but squealing into the hellish campus in a car all on their own, finding her and whisking her away from all the chaos. Summer’s aunt, the Dean, was there, but she couldn’t get Summer to stop helping, so she went about tending to other students in the meantime. Did she know about all of this? Or had she been left completely in the dark? Was she a mastermind, or had she known nothing at all?

A while later, a blonde woman showed up to retrieve Chloe. Maybe it was her mother? Bentley wasn’t sure. 

As the time went on, as the ambulances left, as the police interrogated kids and sent them home, the crowd thinned, and the majority of the ones left were the students who had no hope on their faces that anyone would show up for them.

Among those kids were Rockie. He was a ways away from Bentley, now, sitting on the edge of the fountain between Aristotle and Columbus because they needed the ambulances for more injured kids. Paramedics and officers checked on him every now and then, and he always shot a blank smile their way. Bentley couldn’t help wondering what would happen to him now. His parents had been killed, he had always been there, at Redwood. What would he do? Go into the system?

Also among those kids was Valor. He’d moved to a different ambulance near Bentley’s when Varian’s parents had shown up, sitting just to their right a few vehicles. Bentley realized he’d gone there because someone else was in the back of that one — someone small, in a white jumpsuit, that Bentley could only assume didn’t have parents to come pick him up, either.

Bellamy.

Bentley might’ve made the effort to go over there, if he had the willpower to do much of anything. Which he didn’t.

Instead, he just sat close to Vera. Didn’t she live with her aunt, here in New York? Why hadn’t she been picked up yet?

He felt her arm that was around him shift in the slightest, her hand coming up to rest on his head. 

“She’s in Tokyo,” She said softly; the first words Bentley had managed to actually hear in hours. He slowly realized that she must’ve read his mind, but he didn’t care. Not even a little bit. 

She didn’t ask why Bruce wasn’t there yet — and he was thankful for it.

They fell into silence again, for a good, long while.

And then suddenly, Vera shifted, glancing around the crowd like someone had yelled her name, though no one had.

“There’s another telepath here. I can feel them,”

Bentley sat up and looked at her. She seemed puzzled, and he didn’t really know why.

“Telepaths are rare,” She continued, as though he’d announced his confusion openly. Though, to her, he probably had. “I was the only one here… before that scary girl.”

Bentley watched her eyes rake across all the remaining people outside and inside the ambulances, sticking on their faces and appearances. He thought about Charlie, but it couldn’t be her; Rockie had taken her powers away.

And suddenly, Vera’s gaze stuck on someone. It was a boy, in a white jumpsuit across the way, sitting in the back of an ambulance. Bentley couldn’t see much from where he was, but he looked older than them, with a mop of shaggy black hair. Maybe even older than Rockie and Valor. He was getting his blood pressure and vitals checked by a paramedic.

Vera’s face was the color of a sheet of paper.

“What’s wrong?” Bentley asked softly, though he couldn’t really bring himself to put any feeling behind the words. They came out as a simple, necessary response to a concerned look.

Vera swallowed thickly, her eyes growing glassy. “Bentley.”

He didn’t say anything, but gave her his undivided attention. She climbed out of the ambulance slowly, her hand sliding out of his and leaving him feeling strangely cold. She squinted into the distance, and her hand floated slowly up to her lips, her eyes going from glassy to watery.

 “Bentley… that’s my brother.”

She turned backwards to look at him suddenly when she said that, like she was asking for permission to leave. Bentley wasn’t sure why.

He flicked his eyes to the black haired boy across the way. “Are you going to go?”

Vera nodded sheepishly, turning back around to look at the boy across the grounds. Bentley suddenly realized her hesitance.

She didn’t want to leave him there.

Bentley looked down at his hands. “I’ll be fine, Vera. Go.”

Vera looked back at him, then across at the other boy a few times, before finally, she hurried away.

And Bentley was left by himself in the back of an ambulance. Covered in Asten’s blood. 

He saw Vera approach the boy cautiously, like she was worried may not have actually been him. The massive teary hug that ensued told Bentley it was.

And he just sat there. He saw Red Robin carry a small child in a white jumpsuit out of the Aristotle building. He saw Titus bring another long lost pair of parents to a student. He saw Vera and her brother, the brother that had been lost for six years, both crying across the way.

And he just sat there. Why couldn’t he feel anything anymore? Why did it feel like he was seeing his own life from the opposite side of privacy glass?

A loud car suddenly squealed into the parking lot behind their dorms. Bentley saw it — it was a black Mercedes that skidded to an abrupt stop right between the buildings. A black Mercedes that he knew.

Someone got out of it. It was a man, a man that he knew just like he knew the car. Someone else got out of the passenger’s side. Another man. The man that had been driving was looking right at him. That man was suddenly running.

Like the whole thing was a sudden shock to his system, Bentley started crying again before Bruce even made it within ten yards of him. Not three seconds later and he was swooped up in big arms, ambulance blanket and all, pulled from the vehicle and swallowed in something that felt strangely like home.

Bentley snapped his arms around Bruce’s neck in a millisecond, digging his face into his shoulder to quiet his deep sobs and gripping the back of his jacket so hard he thought his knuckles might crack. 

Why was Bruce there? Wasn’t he supposed to be Batman? Wasn’t he supposed to be helping? And who else had gotten out of his car? Bentley hadn’t paid enough attention.

“I’ve got you, chum. I’m here,” He said softly, his voice thick and layered with countless emotions Bentley couldn’t read into right then.

“Asten’s dead,” Bentley choked, coughing hard, hardly able to form the words and even less able to hear them, to comprehend them, to believe them. “Asten’s dead.”

Bruce said nothing, but held onto him tighter.

Another hand suddenly touched Bentley’s head -- a hand that couldn’t have been Bruce’s, because Bruce was holding him tight and Bentley could feel both of his.

He shuddered, lifting his head up just enough to peek his crying eyes over Bruce’s shoulder. Dick was standing there, out of his Nightwing suit and in his civvies, tears streaming down his face and leaving dots all over his blue hoodie.

Bentley could feel Valor and Bellamy looking at them. They weren’t very far away, and if he hadn’t been having the second most horrendous sobbing breakdown of his life, Bentley may have felt bad. They didn’t have anybody.

Neither did Rockie.

Valor and Bellamy may not have had a family to come pick them up, but Rockie really, really didn't have anybody. His parents were dead, the people who had raised him for his entire life were now dead or going to prison, and he’d lost all his friends to a betrayal that wasn’t really a betrayal at all.

Bentley saw him watching, by the fountain. He looked really sad, standing over there alone, and the moment Bentley’s gaze almost met his, he wiped his eyes and turned away.

With a subtle, uncompleted hand movement against Bruce’s back, Bentley signed to Dick: go. 

And he pointed at Rockie.

With no response and no hesitation in his blue eyes, Bentley watched Dick go. They ended up being too far away to hear, but Bentley saw Dick arrive and speak. He saw Rockie try to brush him off, and Dick do his Dick-Grayson way of staying, and for a moment, they spoke. Bentley couldn’t hear them, but he saw Rockie’s mouth move in a familiar way. A familiar word. The only word Bentley seemed to know anymore.

Asten.

And then, just like that, the sixteen year old erupted into a mess of gaspy sobs and tears, and Dick Grayson was the one who held him.

Bentley wept. And Rockie wept.

Everyone wept, and Bentley decided the sun was now orbiting them, because the day grew golder, and time went on.

But the world wasn’t allowed to spin without Asten.

--

tag list that KINDA works

@fleur-alise @sarcopterygiian @gayboss-too-close-to-the-sun

@xiaonothere

@skylathescholarly @flyrobinflyy @bookwarm0-0

@custommadeazula

[jukti-torko-golpo]

A Moment with the Mothers :

Aadya

I was blindly running through a dark landscape. The ground was rough and stones were piercing into my foot. I dared not stop running. Some shriveled black corpse-like hands were taking form and trying to pull me into the darkness. Their nails dug into my skin and left bleeding gashes. A putrid stench of death, decay and blood filled my nostrils. I was exhausted. My lungs seemed to burn. The place was infernally hot. But those creatures were painfully frigid.

I stumbled and fell. Panic seized my heart. The creatures caught up with me. Their presence brought back forgotten grief, fear and hatred. I felt anger, helplessness and every other negative thought that had ever crossed my mind.

A deafening humkaar reverberated through the terrain. It was terrifying. But it brought a strange sense of safety with it. I saw a few creatures crumble to dust around me. A pair of feet appeared in front of me. The skin was like the primordial darkness of the universe. It was stained with a blood-red alta and adorned with anklets made of exploding stars. I looked up and found Devi towering over the entire terrain. Her dark flowing locks formed the sky above. Her eyes burned with the power of a thousand suns. Her tongue was hanging out, dripping blood. She was naked. Time started and ended in the expanse of Her body. She was adorned with celestial bodies. A mundmaala hung around Her neck. A gleaming golden kharga in one of Her hands. A golden bowl in another hand, blood sloshing around inside it. She seemed to hold the entire cosmos in Her third eye. A strange mixture of fear and relief gripped my heart.

She jumped and landed among the creatures of the shadows. Her scimitar flashed like golden lightning. And bodies of those creatures piled up on the floor. She danced with a bloodthirsty frenzy, trampling over hundreds of those beings. I trembled with fear at the violent sight in front of me. Kaalratri danced the dance of destruction. She then turned towards me. Rage burning in Her eyes, She let out a blood-curling scream. She ran towards me. I was paralyzed with fear. A part of me was wildly flailing inside me...trying to run away. Another part pinned her down waiting for the Devi. She stopped in front of me and swung Her kharga. I closed my eyes. It went through my neck with an excruciating pain.

Tears rolled down my face as I opened my eyes. The pain had faded away quite a bit. I was shocked at what I saw. A shriveled decaying form of me laying dead at Her feet. I broke down in fear. All the ugliness that was within me lay in front of me now.

I started to drift into a sleep and the darkness around me seemed to dissolve away. When I woke up I was in the middle of a beautiful forest clearing. Large arching trees provided such cooling shade with their embrace. A little brook was trickling nearby. Birds were chirping all around. I was in the womb of Prakriti. The Devi appeared again. dressed in a soft white saree with a broad red border. Her skin was glowing like a blushing dawn. Her eyes held me with such tenderness. She smelled like chandan. She smiled and called me to Her. When I went near her She held my cheek and I started to heal. All the wounds started closing up. Every strained muscle seemed to relax. The exhaustion seeped away. I felt rejuvinated. Her hand had such a cooling touch...just like a cooling breeze against a burning feverish forehead.

She sat on a rock and I sat at Her feet with my head on Her lap. I cried my heart out to Her, long hidden grief, confusion, fear...along with feelings I have never been able to explain to myself. She held me close...humming some ancient melody to me. Not a word was spoken, but so much was conveyed.

Everything seemed to make sense suddenly....every turn that my life has taken, every person that I have met, every day I have lived through, every bit of gyaan I have acquired, every aspect of samsaar that I have learnt so far...all of them has to contribute towards slaying that demon within us, the ugliness within us. Every moment lived leads to slaying the darkness withing us and laying our existence at the feet of The Mother.

She embraced me and dissolved into me. I woke up with a start. My fever had gone down after two days. I was sweating, I felt like someone had breathed in a new life into me. The sunlight formed a strange pattern on my floor...a Trishula.