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perksofbeingaharrie · 4 years

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In My Feels

Imagine born literally out of when I was in my feels

Enjoy xx.

SUMMARY

You missed Harry too much, Harry missed you back equally enough. You see each other a whole month later but not really in the best setting.

Type: angst, mentions of smut, fluff

Word count: <2000

MASTERLIST o REQUEST BOX

“This is ridiculous, Glenne. Absolutely ridiculous.”

She fumes, violently uncapping the innocent tube of mascara and proceeding to bring the brush to her eyelashes with the same velocity.

Glenne, on the other side of the video call, only hides her chuckle as she watches her best friend rant.

“No, seriously – he comes back a month after god knows from where and suddenly the first place he wants to show up to is at a random friend’s house party?”

“Terrible.” Glenne adds, powdering some blush on her cheeks.

Y/N’s rant is not done yet. “I understand he promised his friend and everything but am I bad to just want a little time with MY boyfriend after for not holding him in my arms for so many days?”

“Hey, you’re being gross now.” Glenne cuts in, picking her phone in her hand and looking her full make-up packed face in it once. “Are you ready?”

Y/N blinks at the call, realizing her task at hand. “Oh, yeah. I just gotta pick a nice lip colour.”

“Okay, so this is what you do-“ Glenne goes on and on about a plan to get back at Harry when they get to the party themselves where he is supposed to be at as Y/N finishes up fixing her look.

The plan is a vain excuse to carry on talking to one another as Glenne drives over to pick her friend up. They both know, in fact Glenne more, how terrible Y/N will get once she lays eyes on her boyfriend after a long tour.

And, the fact that it is always true makes Glenne pinch Y/N’s butt as they enter the house and Y/N blocks everyone’s way as she stands staring at her beau in awe from across the room.

They shake their heads at each other and while Glenne like a good friend touches up on Y/N’s look the last minute, Y/N spends this time to go over how she would react in front of him.

She doesn’t get much to play around with, however, because Harry himself is already walking up to her and this clearly had no part in her day dreaming.

His smell makes her knees go weak on the first sniff as he wraps his arms around her. The way his fragrance, his aura wraps her entire body at once and takes her back to all the good times. She cannot think of anymore reasons to want to pull away from him and act all cold (you know, as planned).

“Fuck,” He whispers a soft moan in her hair as he rounds his long arms more and more around her figure, peppering her hair with long, big smooches. “Fuck.”

When they pull apart, his hands immediately go up to cup her face in them while her arms circle his torso.

No matter the make-up, her eyes sparkle and become more expresses when she looks at him like that. A ghost of a smile show with the crinkles around her eyes and her soft hold enough is to make him escape this party for a minute.

“That sounds like a very regretful curse, baby. Are you sorry about something?” She teases him, her voice a tired, relaxed tone to his ears – like finally after long she is putting down her guard to someone.

His reaction to her teasing is another natural one: he snickers lowly, brushing his thumb against her cheek delicately.

“Baby.” He echoes her nickname, both of them reflexively falling closer to bring their lips on one another.

The worst is to just have to pull away after two long smooches on their lips. This tests her patient beyond comprehension, and when they pull in for a hug again, she is pulling at his blazer as if ready to tear it apart.

Of course, their moment is broken apart then and there – a bunch of friends come over to see Harry.

Harry slickly removes himself from her hold to greet his friends and their friends back in a hug. She is aware of the chances that they would circle around him one way or another and push her out of his circumference (a very common occurring for her and her famous boyfriend now).

So, without much thought, she fights her way through clinging onto Harry’s side, clutching onto his hip like a twin. His arm naturally comes to fall around her shoulders and by god’s grace, they stay in this position for the long that people wish to talk to him.

Some people approach her too but her little smile and nod here and there is all they get. Somehow, she is not in the mood to interact at all with anyone – which mostly she is not but right now especially.

With this little trick begins the series of how clingy Y/N could be.

Harry is surprised but also amused.

She does everything to make him at least hold her hand as he walks around, following behind like a lost puppy. He entertains her once in a while with a little shoulder rub, back rub, kiss to her temple and most, another peck to her lips. She is nowhere satisfied with this at any cost though.

And so, they go around and about the house together, stuck at the hip.

“What are you doing?” Harry chuckles and asks her as he finally pulls to a quiet corner in the middle of it all.

She only whines with a frown, pulling him by the collar of his shirt so that now he pins her to the wall.

His arms go around her again and he pulls her lower body to his while her shoulders stay stuck to the wall. Her arms immediately go around his neck to leverage support.

They are both a chuckling mess as his lips ghost overs her teasingly and as she struggles to pull them to her.

With the final touch of their lips, they are both moaning relief into their mouths, arms struggling to maintain a composure. Their lips lap over one another in a languid, slow rhythm, tongues breaking an even more messy angle to the romancing.

Everything, nevertheless, feels so perfect.

The mellow grinding of their hips on one another, the slow music in the background synchronizing with their groans and moans and the mismanaged, confused positioning of their arms who just want to be everywhere.

His palm curls her hair up on her head in one big fist as his fingers open to massage her top. She opens her eyes once to breathe and then she goes back into kissing him with a greater passion once she looks at him this indulged.

There is no better feeling reciprocated than when the one you missed had missed you back equally.

With all these thoughts and emotions, it is easy to ignore everything around you.

But thank you to the creators of phone ringtones for making them so loud; such a moment can only be interrupted by these devils.

“Are you kidding me --?”

She watching with big eyes as Harry pulls away to bring his phone in his hand and watch it light up.

“Damn it.” He curses in a low tone. “I think they are looking for us.”

“For you.” Her tone is so bitter that he looks up at her immediately, all concerned.

“Baby.” He pouts. “I promise we have all the night, the days. Let me just wrap this up as soon as I can and then there’s nothing coming for us.”

“Hmm.” She sighs loud, looking away from him in a savvy look.

He kisses her turned cheek. “Wait for me at the end. We’ll drive back in my car.”

He winks to her, and with a pat to her hip he runs after to complete this little obligation as soon as possible.

He is on his stomach, lying on the bed. His palms hold his chin up and his long legs are crossed in a position like a little child lazing in front of the tv.

She appears before him, sliding the doors of her walk closet open – her body in a sleek lacy set lingerie. She poses for a moment at the door, one arm sliding up the sill while the other curves on her hip.

He pounces out of the bed in just one twitch of his body reacting to her and is immediately scooping her body in his arms as their lips meet.

She is like jelly in his hold – letting him squeeze, massage, feel around as he likes and however he likes; and when he comes down to pick her up in his arms, it is the easiest task in the world.

She clings onto his upper body equally well as her legs wrap around him; and he is swaying her in his arms as he carries her to the bed, erupting a bunch of playful chuckles between them.

“We should do this more often.” He sighs so when once they are through with rounds after rounds in the night and finally laying calm and comforted beside each other.

She is covered and comfortable wrapped in the duvet beside him, laying on her stomach with sleep drooping eyes. Her face still glistens with the tiredness of their activities but the glow from her contentedness is beyond anything else.

He watches her as he lays to his side, one hand running slowly up and down her back delicately.

“Do what more, Harry?” She fakes a troubled tone.

He snickers under his breath. “You know, the missing each other too much sometimes.”

“Mmhmm.” She nods, sleepily. “I miss you always anyways.”

“Hmm?” He muses.

She smiles and lifts up on her arms, shoulders perking up in the air. “I miss you even when you are in the city; even when I have seen you the night before; or even when you walk out of the door to work every morning –“

She counts on her fingers along too.

He cannot help the goofy chuckle come up again. “That’s a little obsessive, you know.”

She gasps exasperatedly, jumping to him to pull him to herself by his neck. “That’s how I love!”

His laugh is contagious as they wrestle around in the position for a bit, ending up getting tickled and jumping away from one another at once.

“This is what you chose.” She reminds him, a big teasing smile on her face.

He agrees, moving forward to kiss her in reminder of the fact.

“All your talking’s kind of got me all hard again.” He says close to her face.

She releases a fake cry and groan, rolling onto her back. Harry is quick to grab her side and pull her as he muses in her little act. Of course, if he’s up for another round, she cannot say no. The entire night won’t be enough to compensate for all the missing this past month.

So, much convinced with the idea, Harry is the first to announce loud to the walls and furniture of the room:

“Baby, it’s on!”

#harry styles #harry #styles #imagine #harry styles imagines #imagines #writing #harry styles writing #smut #angst #love #harry styles fanfiction #blurbs #harry styles blurbs #one shot #harry styles one shot

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zilathehusky · 4 years

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The Second Gem War

Based on the Magenta AU by @spectrisinks Steven had an outburst and accidentally poofed all the gems at once. He isolated himself in fear of hurting them again, and eventually reclaimed his throne with the Diamonds on Homeworld. He got kind of ruthless and and dictator like, and his “help” became a bit more twisted and self-centered. Soooo Now we’re here.

Also Consider @theeldritchgemsau for even more dark Steven goodness! Lots of trigger warnings there though! Without further ado

Magenta thought back to what brought him here. All this fighting started when he saved Connie’s life. After all, if he hadn’t stepped in, she would have been lost to time. She would have left him. The more time passed, the more people would leave him. That’s why he made sure that wouldn’t come to pass. With his position as Diamond, it was a simple matter to have a group of “rogue gems” go after Connie. Of course, she fought back, even took down a couple. But when they eventually overpowered her and had her on the brink of fading away, that's when he swooped in and saved the day. He defeated the “assailants” and brought Connie back better than before. He didn’t understand why anyone was upset, she returned in his image, what could be more perfect? It was in that moment, staring into her eyes, his perfect reflection staring back, that he realized he could help everyone.

It would have been perfect. But they didn’t understand. Garnet swore to prevent anyone else from becoming a victim to rogue gems after Connie was reborn, and unfortunately her future vision saw right through his little performance. Magenta had hoped to save face and keep the charade up for a while longer, after all he only wanted to help them. However, it seemed that his old family didn’t see the exquisite gift he was bestowing on my less fortunate organic friends. They tried to stop him, and while it pained Magenta to do so, he could not allow them to stand in his way. Betrayed by his own family, Magenta concluded that he would have to confront them, for the good of all those he cared for.

A week had passed since the Crystal Gems had stood against him. Garnet had been preparing since the moment Magenta had left. She had let her trust in a loved one cloud her judgement before, but not this time. Though she loved Steven with all of her heart, the Steven she knew was gone. Magenta was someone else entirely, and she would not let them get the best of her. Amethyst and Pearl were coordinating the gems of Little Homeworld in creating a defense against the inevitable attack when the alarms began to sound. The sirens hadn’t gone off since Blue and Yellow had come to earth years ago. As everyone fled to their stations, dozens of hand ships descended from the sky.

The first onslaught of blasts tore apart the cliff side that held the temple, as the little house that Steven had called home was ripped to splinters in an instant. The second assault shredded through the boardwalk, the sand melting to glass almost instantly. Finally, as the fire spread, turning the forest and valley surrounding the city to ash, the aim of the ships turned to Little Homeworld. As the ships charged their blasters, the signal was given, and ships that had been left on earth took to the skies, opening fire on the armada. Explosions tore through the sky as ships fired at one another, collided, and crashed into the earth below creating fireballs that threw shrapnel miles away and left huge craters in their wake. As the chaos continued in the skies, a flash from the atmosphere above the beach of glass signaled the true start to the fight. The pink leg ship descended at lightning speeds, and as the Temple collapsed from the cliff side, the ship landed with a deafening crunch of glass and stone beneath it. The legs move forward, each step a thundering crash as it approaches Little Homeworld. Though as the ship approaches the ruins of the boardwalk, the Crystal Gems stand in its way.

“Magenta” Garnet called out, “Come out here and face us.” The leg ship pauses and Magenta exits through the bubble, he jumps from the top of the ship and lands in front of them as the group all ready their weapons.

Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl charge at Magenta, as he looks at them with a blank expression, he takes a breath and slightly above regular volume, states “Enough.” The simple word creates a shock wave blasts all of them back, the three of them landing on their feet, skidding backwards as they stop themselves. In the brief pause, Bismuth, Lapis, and Peridot take the opportunity to attack. Lapis throws a water disc at Magenta, as Peridot launches metal spears at him, and Bismuth runs in behind them, her hands forming into hammers. Magenta throws up a diamond barrier as the water disc connects with it, it splats against it worthlessly, the metal spears follow bouncing off to no avail. As Bismuth jumps over the barrier, Magenta summons his shield, blocking the hammers and pushing Bismuth back before swinging with a bubbled fist, throwing her into the burning woods.

As the main trio jumps into action again, Magenta creates a bubble around himself, Amethyst’s whip wraps around it, as Garnet’s fist and Pearl’s spear collide with the bubble, Magenta quickly expands it outward, knocking them back again. Lapis and Peridot swing in again behind them, attempting a sneak attack. Magenta jumps into the air and pulls his sword from behind him. In one swift motion, he slices through the two gems forms, and they crash to the ground poofing in an instant.

Magenta strolled over to the two gemstones as they clink to the floor, he picks them off of the ground. With a flick of his wrist, the gems are bubbled and sent off to his room in the palace. A glowing light causes Magenta to turn, coming face to face with Alexandrite. With a thunderous roar, the fusion charged at Magenta, who looked back with the same emotionless face. As Alexandrite created a gauntlet and swung its fist down at Magenta, a diamond dome barrier formed between them, Alexandrite's fist bouncing off harmlessly.

“You know..." Magenta's sighed in a sudden bored tone. "When I first left the temple I was afraid of what would happen if I let my emotions take control. I was afraid that if I let myself go again that someone could die. But in the end I decided... There’s no use being afraid of the inevitable.” Throughout the entire time he spoke, Alexandrite had begun slamming against the barrier, with hammers, gauntlets, spears, and flails but nothing managed to dent the wall between them.

"You don't have to do this Steven" roared Alexandrite as she jumps back and readies Opal's bow.

"I know." Magenta says with a sneer as he raises his hand into the air, closing his eyes as the earth begins to shake. "But there were so many butterflies plaguing my mind... it feels good to tear their wings off for once"

The noise that followed sounded like a bomb had gone off. In the distance, the ground was torn asunder as glowing light burst from the ground, as the cluster took the form of a hand. Alexandrite frozen fear, staring in terror at the towering arm as it formed a fist. In one synchronized motion, the cluster and Magenta slammed their fist down, and in an instant, Alexandrite was vanquished. The fist lifts up, then quickly slams back down again, before glowing and dissipating back to where it came from.

Magenta stepped into the fist shaped crater and slid down to the four gemstones pressed into the dirt. He picked them up and put them in a bubble that he sent off. He turned to his ship when he heard the voice of Bismuth call out to him.

"STEVEN!" She cried in a mix of concern, confusion, and anger. Magenta clenched his fist and turned around in a fury, with a look of disgust he screamed.

"THAT'S NOT MY NAME ANYMORE. I AM MAGENTA DIAMOND."

Bismuth growled and pounced at him, her hands forming blades as Steven simply deflected with a shield.

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PERSON WHO TALKED TO ME?! WHO CARED ABOUT OTHERS?! WHAT CHANGED?!" Bismuth roared as she slammed against Magenta's shield. With the same dull expression he gave the others he spoke in a matter of fact tone as he told her.

"I wanted to help people but they wouldn't let me. I WILL help them. I'll help everyone! I'll even help you Bismuth."

"What are you saying?" Bismuth growled "I don't need your help!"

With a smirk Magenta pulled something from his gem and pulled his hand back, ready to strike.

As Bismuth swung one last time, Magenta parried with his shield knocking her off balance, he swung his other hand towards Bismuth's chest screaming "Allow me to make my point!"

There was a loud clang and an echoing thud. Bismuth looked down as her blades returned to hands, she reached slowly and painfully to Magenta's arm, and the breaking point that fully punctured through her gem.

She choked in pain and looked him in the eye as she went limp and poofed, the shards of her gem fall to the ground as Magenta collects them and puts them all in a bubble. He would reforge her shards and remold her. He could bring them all into his image. He could help them all. While he watched the firing squad set Little Homeworld ablaze, he thought of how he would rebuild them from the ashes, and he smiled. He returned to his ship and set off for the human zoo with his conquest.

#steven universe au #steven universe #magenta #tw murder #tw major character death #magenta steven au #su au

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gyromitra-esculenta · 4 years

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Was nice to get a back in touch with Synchronicity. Including two big reveals re: general story that could be seen as ‘spoilers’ but I’m REALLY curious if anyone’s seen those particular things coming. Tw*tter thread. Warnings: violence, blood, slighly descriptive gore - generally a big dose of turpism, also mentioned suicidal ideation / implied suicide attempt(s), and general midfuck.

He leans back and wipes the blade on the fabric of his pants, each breath forced under control regardless of the hunger thrashing in his lungs, and the Beast curls under his tongue - dark stinging taste of adrenaline and biting cruel satisfaction.

"Aren't you precious, Sunshine?"

It twists around his neck and slithers down his arm. Jack follows its movements to the body lying under him, hand stopped millimeters from the mask covering the man's face, fingers trembling with apprehension digging its cold claws deep into his spine. The Beast nips at his ear.

"Do you truly want to know, Sunshine?"

His fingertips wedge under the mask. He idly notices the marking on the chest armor says 'S116' instead of 'S114'.

"Doesn't matter what I want, does it?" Jack slowly lifts the facemask up. The fractures propagate. The clock is broken.

There's blood, of course there's blood, on the lips, couldn't be anything else when the knife went through the throat and then up. It's his face staring back at him, younger, unblemished, blue irises almost hidden under the dilated pupils, and a twisted derisive smile.

"You did want to know, Sunshine," the Beast laughs, a menacing sound splitting the reality into fragments that do not fit together no matter how much he wants - needs - them to. "They are lambs led to slaughter, and us, we will kill them all, this I promise you."

"Clones. They're all... That's what she..." Genetically engineered soldiers. S114. S116. S76. An obsolete model to work the kinks out of the system.

The mask falls from his numb fingers. He's not even a person, only a failed copy of one, of someone else Reaper is searching for.

Everything falls apart around him, the long grass tickles the skin of his palms, and Shaanxi makes the turn on the final approach to the landing strip. This time Jack hears it, the sound of a shot, and one of the ghosts falls to the ground - but now there's a third shadow behind.

All of this is wrong, completely wrong, the gunshot, it shouldn't be here. Because when the plane touches down, when the wheels tear on the tarmac, he gets his throat cut and bleeds out. This is how it happens, that's how it's been, and how he saw it play out before.

"Did you, Sunshine? Or is that a story you told yourself to feel better?" The Beast bites into his neck with its fangs, snarling, all the pretense of prior cordiality gone, and brings him down to his knees. The blood trickles into the thirsting ground.

"All the lies told to the good doctors, Sunshine, all the fabrications, I know them all. Oh, they all came in, they did," the Beast laughs now and its bite does not lessen, "but the only one out was you. All those times, what were you trying to kill, the truth, or the lie?"

Something hard is scraping the back of his throat, the intrusion moving deeper and deeper. The water in the bathtub runs russet red, an old antiquated razor in his hand, and he cuts again and again, against the muscle, fat, and skin, all knitting back together meticulously.

A different kind of fascination - desperation maybe - why had he forgotten? Was it only because he didn't want to remember? Jack clenches his teeth, words come halting and slow.

"I don't... Did I...? Was that me?"

"One-in-a-million lucky shot, or the perfect shot, Sunshine."

He digs his fingers into the dry dust between the clumps of the grass' roots, dry even if soaked with blood, the bitter aftertaste of alcohol and crushed pills on his tongue, he doesn't remember why, can't remember why, can't remember because he will break.

The Beast quietens. Gives out a faint chuckle of satisfaction and slackens its jaws, lets Jack fall to the ground. Allows him to breathe against the red dust as it laps at the holes left by its fangs.

"What were you trying to kill?" The seductive hiss brushes his senses.

"The truth, or the lie?"

"Myself," Jack admits. "The lie. Everything's a lie, I'm not a person, there's nothing true about..." His voice hitches and almost fades. "Did I kill him? The original, the one Reaper's looking for, because he's searching for him, isn't he?"

The Beast slots its maw under his chin, needy and insistent now, nudges his head back towards the airstrip, and Jack shuts his eyes closed because facing this truth is a gnawing terror somewhere in the back of his mind.

"You wanted to know," it hisses. "Look, Sunshine."

Again, two shades walking on the side of the tarmac, Shaanxi on the final approach, the crack of the rifle - single shot - the third silhouette lowering the barrel and firing again, at the ground. His heart is trying to escape from behind his ribs, hammering against them wildly.

The plane touches down. Translucent shadows running, not important as everything freezes in place, the flock of birds stopped in motion on the backdrop of the swirling crimson sky, out of place here as the tree is, and his vision tunnels, his gaze focused on the shooter.

The vertigo is here to stay. Nausea twists in his insides. The familiarity of the mannerism - the open palm of the hand resting on the side of the Patten with fingers bent at the exact right angles - stirs panic and hate surging in one bright flash of conflicting emotions.

And the face, the cold relief that washes down his body in waves at the recognition, putting the name to the shadow like putting a period after a sentence, or a bullet in a human. Gerard Lacroix. Butcher.

"That's rich coming from you, Sunshine," the Beast chortles.

The Butcher, a nickname taken up with the kind of morbid humor people in their profession have, not much different from Sunshine. The breeze brings the smell of broiled jungle hiding under the odor of burnt fat and roasted meat.

Cloying; revolting and appetizing at the same time. Inhale. Count to five. Exhale. The Beast nudges his head back from the still nature, to the side.

Reaper. His form keeps its shape now, the face framed by the hood and stringy hair no longer changing with the ebb and flow.

Crimson eyes are transfixed by the memory that now rewinds itself in a rush to play out again, and Jack is certain it repeats on a loop here - wherever here is.

But what startles him is his doppelganger facing Reaper, fists clenched and trembling at his sides.

As long as the apparition's attention is not focused on him, Jack takes in the small details. The uniform is non-descript, no discernible insignia anywhere, but the make and the pattern, it's Blackwatch. Black bloody stain spreads from under the jacket, exactly where the seam is.

The perfect shot. The partially congealed blood spilling from his doppelganger's mouth and the dilated in shock pupils fit. He had drowned in his own blood, there, on the tarmac. Bone shrapnel tearing through the tissue, too much damage, too rapid.

"You left me behind." Desperate rage simmers in the words. "You left me," the apparition's voice raises in pitch, becomes forceful. Accusing. "You promised to take me with you when I go."

Reaper remains rooted in place, giving no indication he even notices the presence.

"I'm here. I'm here!" His doppelganger screams, clotted blood falling from his lips as he draws in heavy breaths - almost panicked, his chest heaving - and then he starts pleading. "Why don't you look at me? Why can't you see me?"

And again, defeated, hands shaking.

"Why won't you see me?"

In a way, Jack can understand him, the desperation of screaming into the void where there is no-one who will hear you, no-one that cares enough to hear you, but it's not it.

Help him find that person, she told him.

How can you find someone who’s dead, and the other choice is forcing him to understand there is nothing to be found, not anymore, only retribution remains - but this is untrue when his screaming double persists in its existence?

“He’s here. Don’t you see him?” Jack softly asks.

Crimson eyes move, shift with glacial speed to gaze at him, focused until space stumbles over itself, and Reaper is in front of him, his claws tracing the line of Jack’s jaw. It leaves him pondering their peculiar texture again, of something left to stew in warm pond water.

Then the realization comes when they brush over his lips - not claws. Fingers. The flesh shorn off on a hard surface and the bone underneath tapered to a point, both blackened by the decay permeating all - mildew and rot on his tongue, the sickening sweetness of a thing long dead

He parts his lips for the intruding finger and the taste spreads further, addictive and revolting, familiarity undercut with decomposition - all there, ready to be experienced anew.

It's not a need, it's a dependency. Now, he understands what has been lacking in his life.

A dutiful little soldier. A failed prototype. The doctors say jump, and so he does, isn't that right?

The standing orders from his Commander remain, no witnesses, no evidence, only charred bones and black ash after they pass through, and Reaper's vengeance is indeed righteous.

"See, Sunshine?" The Beast licks his fingertips, reassuring, proud even. "This is how we are together, now and always."

"Now and always," he echoes with something dark curling around, slithering into his mind and twining with every thought. All he ever needed, his orders.

"No!" Something collides with him, hard and solid. Back of his head hits the floor and Jack brings his arms up to shield himself from the unexpected onslaught. Blood splatters on his face. "You will not take my place!" His double snarls over him, raising the fist again.

The training takes over and the blow slides along his forearm as he grabs the side of the apparition's neck with his left palm, and thrusts forward with his other hand. The blade of the knife he is somehow still holding goes through the jacket. Scrapes against the rib.

The apparition leans back with a subdued gasp, almost a whine. Looks down at him with hate palpable on his face as it starts to break up into smoldering embers drifting on the air.

A kind of Déjà vu, only this time Jack is in Replica's position, and the copy is victorious.

The embers snuff out, one after another, and the black ash they turn into swirls slowly until it fades too.

Jack falls back to the floor, next to the corpse still radiating heat. The ceiling above is grey, sooty around where the wall joins with it.

Inhale. Count to five. Exhale.

There's a lot of land to cover between here and the Still Island facility. He has his orders. He climbs to his feet and wipes the blood off his face. Straps the knife back to the jacket, shoulders the plasma rifle, and curls his fingers around the Patten's grip.

#sometimes i write #r76 #reaper76 #fear!AU #gore #violence #suicide attempt #also a lot of turpism #really why 'turpism' is not something that's a general theme in european literature?#is it really that specific to my country as a bigger theme/wave/genre?

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etraytin · 4 years

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What’s Your Favorite Chapter?

Hey all! I’ve been pretty caught up in applying for the bar exam for the last few days, but I’m also still archiving the JDFF list and trying to work on my WIPs as well. Busy, busy! Anyway, I was rereading some of my old stuff when it occurred to me that sometimes we don’t see peoples’ best stuff because it’s buried in the middle of stories that are too long for the time we have or that we aren’t sure we’d like the plot of. And that’s a shame.

So all you authors who follow me, here’s a challenge! Find your favorite chapter of one of your long fics, then post it on Tumblr along with just enough background that we can follow it, plus a link to the story it came from. I don’t want to miss out any more!

Here’s mine, it’s Chapter Six of my West Wing story Such A Winter’s Day, which is a rewrite of Seasons Six and Seven (and after) with the idea that instead of joining the Russell campaign after Impact Winter, Donna asked Sam to help her get out of DC entirely. Without Donna in the campaign mix, of course, everything unfolds quite a bit differently for our heroes. But this chapter, near the beginning, is mostly just the story of Bisexual Disaster Human Josh Lyman.

Chapter Six: Interlude One, Been Thinkin’ About My Home

Contrary to popular opinion, Josh Lyman was neither clueless nor even particularly obtuse when it came to the emotions of others. Nobody got to the top in backroom politics without an innate ability to size up another person and understand what they needed, what was most important to them, what they would sacrifice for and what they would never give up. Sure, a lot of times he simply didn't care what his opponents were feeling, but that didn't make him unaware. When it came to the people he was closest to, he'd always understood more than they'd thought. It just hadn't been enough to let him keep them from slipping away.

Sam, god, Sam. He'd known Sam forever, it seemed, back in a time when they were barely politicians, barely adults at all, finding their way around Washington DC for the first time and trying to figure out the people they wanted to be for the rest of their lives. Sam had been just as beautiful then as now, dark hair and sculpted face and impossible blue eyes that lit up with every new challenge. They'd made friends at the office and would go out together to blow off steam, pick up women, get irresponsibly drunk and talk about how someday they would cut through all the bullshit and change the face of politics forever. Sometimes they'd find women to take home, sometimes they'd bring along whoever they were dating at the time. Twice, just twice in three years, they'd gotten drunk enough to take each other home and wound up in Sam's bed together. But it was the eighties, and people could experiment, and they'd nervously laughed off both those times and never really talked about it afterwards. It didn't mean Josh didn't remember.

But then Josh had gone to the whip's office and Sam had gone to New York, and though they called each other after important votes or Mets games, it wasn't the same anymore. That was how it happened, Josh had figured, and ignored the pang in his chest that might have been lost chances. Sam had dated, mostly upwardly-mobile professional women looking for suitable marriage partners. Josh had dated, mostly Washington insiders with sharp smiles and quick minds who were looking for a power husband who would one day sit in important rooms. There had been Lisa, and there had been Mandy, and then there had been a day when Leo McGarry asked a favor from the son of an old friend, and then there was Sam, looking ridiculously polished in his thousand dollar suit but with the same impossibly blue eyes and goofy grin. He'd left Sam behind and gotten on the train to Nashua, but “Josh, what are you doing?” echoed in his head the entire time. When he'd watched Jed Bartlet speak and realized what kind of president he could be, he was back on the train to New York before the rubber chicken was fully coagulated in the pans.

Working with his best friend again had been amazing, infusing Josh with the energy to run a no-money, no-sleep campaign for a candidate who couldn't even remember the names of his closest advisors from day to day. With Sam around, he had a partner in crime, someone to bounce ideas off, someone to take his own pragmatic make-the-sausage politics and turn it into something beautiful and full of the ideals Josh was a little afraid to even say aloud. And sometimes he'd meet Sam's eyes across the room, but there was Lisa (for awhile) and Mandy (until there wasn't), and neither of them were naive or reckless anymore. They'd won the election, gotten the chance to change the world that they'd always talked about. Josh knew that doing anything to risk that chance would've been crazy, but sometimes when he would watch Sam get worked up and start making passionate speeches to anybody who'd listen, he had wondered if maybe a political genius could figure out a way.

During the celebration after the first State of the Union, Leo had clapped Josh on the shoulder while they watched Sam and Toby celebrate their own speechwriting. “You'll have my job one day,” he'd told Josh conversationally. “You'll have to kick Sam's ass around the block a few times until he's ready, but it'll happen. That'll be the day, won't it?” He'd given his hoarse bark of a laugh and wandered away then, leaving Josh with his jaw on the floor and such an overwhelming feeling of pressure in his chest that for a moment he'd wondered if he was having a heart attack at thirty-eight. Pride, there was incredible pride in knowing that Leo was right, that this could really happen. Anxiety, plenty of that, over the fifty million things that Josh would have to do in order to make that happen. And loss, amorphous, nebulous, not to be examined, over something that had never really existed in the first place.

Josh had still felt the weight of Sam's gaze on him from time to time, sometimes from halfway across the West Wing, sometimes from inches away, but he didn't look up to meet it anymore. Sam was going to be president someday, but not if Josh let the things they didn't talk about turn into a noose around Sam's neck. If Josh could just ignore those looks and those thoughts, then it would be just like they didn't exist, and he and Sam could be best friends like they'd always been. Except it didn't work out that way. Not meeting Sam's long looks had slowly turned into not going out alone with Sam for drinks, turned into not talking to Sam the way he used to because he kept choking on all the things he couldn't say. He'd send Donna to talk to Sam instead, then close himself off alone in his office, an unlikely figure for a Jewish martyr.

And Donna, of course there was Donna too. Josh had still been finding his feet on the campaign trail, stumbling around with Mandy, tiptoeing around Sam, when he'd walked into his office one day and run straight into another pair of impossible blue eyes. Donna was fresh off the farm and fresh out of a bad relationship, achingly vulnerable but at the same time so brave it had made his heart clench. He'd thought it had taken courage to leave Hoynes and join the Bartlet campaign, but he'd never in a million years have had the guts to pack his whole life in an old car and drive halfway across the country for the possibility of a job that paid nothing but might change his life. Technically he'd been doing her a favor, taking her on and giving her his staff badge, but in the moment it had felt like giving her nothing more than a deserved acknowledgment. Then she'd given him her sun-bright smile for the first time, making his heart clench even harder, and he'd wondered what he was getting himself into here.

From almost the first day, he'd fallen into a synchronicity with Donna that bordered on the eerie. Her office skills were basic and her political knowledge all but nonexistent, but she had a quick mind and such strong intuition that she usually seemed to know what he meant before he even finished saying it. There were whispers on the campaign because she was beautiful and so young, but he'd deliberately chosen not to notice those things about her. Didn't he have enough problems already? In any case, the fact that she'd managed to whip his disastrous office into shape had quieted any naysayers, especially after the way he'd fallen to pieces during her brief failure of resolve back in Wisconsin. By the time they'd stepped into the Operations bullpen for the first time, he'd had no idea how he'd ever coped without her.

No matter what crisis he'd gone through, national, professional, or personal, Donna had always been there, a step or two behind him, guarding his flank as they'd waged the political battles he'd been born to fight. She'd researched for him on a thousand topics, networked all over Washington to keep him informed of disasters hiding in the weeds, taken up deliberately contrarian positions on every stance he'd chosen, just to hone his arguments to perfection before he unleashed them. For all practical purposes she'd been his deputy and protege, but in reality, on paper, she was always his assistant, subordinate to him, subject to his evaluations and criticism. He'd seen the looks she gave him from across his desk, heard the undertone to her playful banter. How could he not? Just the heat of her body when she'd sit next to him on buses or in meetings was sometimes enough to drive him to distraction. And he was no saint. He'd flirted back, bought her presents, let her tie his bow ties as she watched him from below her lashes. But he'd never touched her back, not like that. It would've been inappropriate.

Three years of detente in all directions, and it might have gone on forever if it hadn't been for a handful of skinhead assholes and a single wild bullet. Josh had no memories from the night of the shooting or the next three days, but he'd been told how it happened, how Donna had waited like a statue, dry-eyed, barely moving, through fourteen hours of surgery. He'd seen the videos of Sam on Today and Good Morning America, answering questions as though he barely heard them, swallowing two or three times whenever Josh's name was mentioned. Toby had told him once, when they were both very drunk and he was feeling lyrical, how when the word had come down that Josh would live, Donna had collapsed into Sam's arms and Sam had held onto her like his last anchor to the earth, her face against his neck, his face in her hair. Josh's first memory of the hospital was of them both, sitting on either side of his bed. Sam had been asleep with his head resting very uncomfortably on the raised bedrail, while Donna read quietly aloud from Newsweek. He couldn't remember the article, but she'd assured him that all the magazines that week were about him. He did remember how relieved he'd felt, how grateful, to wake up and realize they were both with him.

Things had been different after the shooting, in ways both subtle and profound. He'd missed three months of work while trying to piece himself back together, and Donna and Sam had both been there for that as well. Donna had run his office for him, using her own light touch to keep the assistant deputies in line and on task, freely invoking his name even when he was really too drugged to be making cogent decisions on his own. Sam had stepped in as liaison to the Hill, taking Donna's thoroughly-researched positions and turning them into an actual legislative agenda with which to prod the Congress. When they weren't working, they'd taken it in turns to look after Josh, Donna mostly in the days, Sam in the nights. They'd come to some kind of understanding during that time, one that Josh had never been a party to, but he could see it easily enough in the tight-knit alliance between them after the midterms. Maybe it was fatuous, but it had reminded him a little bit of two people who'd gone to war and seen things nobody else could comprehend.

He hadn't thought about it much at first, just grateful that the two people who comforted and confused him most could get along with each other. After he'd returned to work, though, he'd found himself swamped by inexplicable anger at times, and at other times by suffocating isolation and loneliness. How did Sam and Donna understand each other, how were they war buddies, when Donna hadn't even been there that night? When Sam's worst injuries were scraped hands and skinned knees, not a bullet through the thoracic region? (That's what it was in the hospital and in CJ's briefings, not his chest, not his heart, “the thoracic region,” like he'd gotten shot in the demilitarized zone of some unpronounceable ex-Soviet state.) How were they getting on with their lives and going on dates with unsuitable people and god, still watching him with unbearably heavy gazes from impossible blue eyes? He couldn't reach out, so he'd pushed instead, taking verbal swipes at Donna, ignoring Sam, burying himself in the work that was always his refuge from things he couldn't think about. And even after all that, after the concert and the window and Stanley, Donna had taken him home to her apartment because his was too cold, and on Christmas Day she and Sam had boarded up his window frame and then rehung the curtains so he wouldn't have to look at it till it was fixed. They'd watched black and white slapstick comedies and eaten Chinese food (Jewish Christmas, Sam had quipped,) and Josh had finally started believing that maybe people really could get better.

Things had gone almost back to normal, but then there had been the MS debacle and the hearings, and Josh had seen Sam's deep disillusionment but hadn't been able to say anything about it. It was his fault, after all. He'd dragged Sam into this, promised him the real thing and delivered a frightened, lying man with feet of clay. He'd dragged Donna into it too, deeper than the other assistants, by relying on her for so much, for being closer to her than was proper even if he'd never crossed the line. If either of them had broken, it would've been his fault. But they'd each rallied in their own way, and they'd kept his head above the water at the same time. That lasted barely long enough to catch a breath, and then it was reelection and Bruno, midnight in America and a kind of campaign none of them had hoped for. Sam got louder and louder as his voice was heard less and less, and Donna had all but disappeared, shrunk small by the incident with her diary, made invisible by the radiating presence of Amy Gardner. Josh had seen all that too, but he'd been exhausted by Sam's stubborn idealism and angry about Donna's nebulous act of betrayal and he'd pushed all of it aside to focus on the thing he could actually affect. And sure, he hadn't been entirely absent, he'd tried to comfort Sam after Kevin Cahn and the return of Lisa, and he'd actually accomplished something nice for Donna when he'd gotten her teacher a Presidential phone call. But in hindsight it had been so little, not nearly as much as he should've done, not nearly what he owed.

He'd thought things would be different in the second term. Maybe he could've sorted some things out in his own head if he'd just been given a little time to think without having to think of polling numbers and the values voters of America's Heartland. Instead the election had come and Sam had gone, and with Amy and everyone else pushing him to run in the special election, what could Josh have said to make him stay? Sam had claimed he'd be back after the vote, but Josh could see in those impossible eyes that something in Sam was desperate to escape from what had become of them. So he'd let Sam run to California, run for Congress, run screaming away from the White House and from Josh himself. Josh tried not to think about it very much, and luckily there was always work. There had also been Amy again, and he hadn't been entirely sure she was anything he wanted, but once Donna had started seeing Jack Reese, at least Amy had given him something to counter with. He couldn't say aloud why having a counter had been so important, but even with Jack and Amy gone by Inauguration, he and Donna had both been bruised by the experience.

There had been a moment on the night of the Inauguration Balls, when he'd looked into Donna's eyes and seen everything in her that was waiting for him, all the love and trust in the world, that he'd thought seriously for the first time about reaching out and taking it. Taking her and keeping her and damning the consequences for both of them. He'd already lost Sam, and something inside Josh had known that Donna wouldn't look at him this way forever if he kept looking away. But it was wrong, he'd reminded himself. It was inappropriate and wrong and it would cause a scandal that would see both of them crucified by the right wing press. That might have been nothing new for him, but Donna, beautiful, smart, intuitive Donna with her quirky filing system and no college education, she'd never have worked in Washington again. So he'd made her call him “Wild Thing,” and had put her in a cab alone at the end of the night with money to get home and his key to her place, then had buried himself in the business of the government for weeks so he wouldn't have to see the love in her eyes fading into confusion and disappointment. Sam's election had ended the way everyone predicted, and Sam had decided to take a job at a law firm in Los Angeles instead of returning to DC. Then there way Hoynes, and Zoey, and Glen-Allen Walken, and Josh didn't even have time to miss anybody.

It wasn't as though he hadn't seen something coming with Donna, obviously. He wasn't that obtuse. But he'd had no idea how he could get by without her, and he had no viable plan that would let him keep her, so the only solution was to ignore the problem and not acknowledge it at all. They'd still worked together as well as always. She'd kept him in one piece through the hell that was Carrick and Angela Blake, she'd kept his office running via cell phone during the shutdown, she'd held her own with the pardon attorney and in the Oval Office (even if she'd wept on his shoulder after learning about Donovan Morrisey.) After the State of the Union, Angela Blake had come to him to ask for Donna in Legislative Affairs, where they needed someone with an endless well of tenacity to coordinate the policy shops. It would've meant more money and more responsibility for Donna, but it would've meant her leaving Operations, reporting to his office and Communications equally and usually through his assistant deputies. It would've meant her leaving him. He'd put Angela off with some muttering about big projects in the pipeline and maybe after the midterm elections. Later he'd wondered a thousand times if he'd moved her, or if he hadn't blown her off on that damned Brussels trip, maybe things wouldn't have happened the way they did.

Josh had enough regrets to keep him in therapy well into the afterlife, but giving Donna that diplomatic passport was easily in the top three. It hadn't been the career advancement she'd wanted and there'd been no real need for the Deputy Chief of Staff and the Communications Director to have eyes on the ground in Gaza, but Toby had wanted someone keeping an eye on Andy and Josh had wanted Donna not to leave him, and somehow that translated to him sending her to the most dangerous place on Earth, armed only with a little brown book and a laptop. When CJ had stopped him in the hallway and told him about the CODEL, he'd felt the familiar crushing chest pain he associated with love and bullets. His first, sudden impulse was to call Sam, make sure he was safe, ask what he was supposed to do now. The urge passed in seconds, but hours later he did call Sam from the plane, even if all he could do was worry along with Josh. Most of that trip was a blur in his memory, till he'd gotten to that hospital room and she wasn't gone and his heart could beat normally again, even with the new Irish boyfriend there to remind him of the lines he'd drawn and couldn't cross. Then Josh had gone and done his job, and come back and this time she wasn't there or okay and words like pulmonary embolism and brain damage erased all thoughts of lines entirely. He'd stayed at her bedside for hours, thinking pleas too disorganized to be prayers, until she'd opened her impossible blue eyes and murmured his name, and in that moment there was nothing in the world he wouldn't have given her if she'd asked. But she'd been exhausted and drugged, and she'd smiled at him instead and gone back to sleep.

He'd planned on keeping an eye on her when she got back to the States. Everything had been so hard for her at first, even just dressing and feeding herself, much less navigating the hectic pace of her life. She'd come back before she had probably really been ready, but the whole world had been going to hell and he'd needed her so badly that he didn't tell her no. He'd meant to help her do things, and make sure she went home when she was too tired and took her medicine when the pain got bad. And sometimes he had, but sometimes he'd left her sitting in the middle of the hall in her wheelchair, or asked her to stay just one more hour so she could finish something vital, or avoided looking at her face because seeing her in pain made him hurt too, made him remember that he was hurting her and there was no way to fix it. He'd noticed her tension and her bursts of sullen anger, but there'd been nothing he could do, not with Leo sick and CJ struggling and the country seeming ready to fly apart at the seams, not when he didn't even know if he still wanted the career he'd sacrificed everything for. He hadn't known if he was ready to leave the White House and start all over again, hadn't known if he was strong and smart enough to do it on his own, hadn't known what it would mean for him and Donna.

She'd started scheduling meetings with him, like she were some rogue Congressman he was supposed to talk back into line, but he didn't know what to say to her, so he'd found a reason to cancel, first once, then again and again. Eight times, he'd realized later, too late. Eight times he'd blown her off, made her feel worthless instead of invaluable, until she'd stopped him in the middle of the bullpen and told him she was leaving and his mind had gone entirely blank and he'd done what he'd been doing for a year and a half: deny the problem entirely until he could think of some way to fix it. When he'd looked into her cubicle the next day and a stranger was at her empty desk, all he could see was Donna's eyes as he'd turned and walked away, still impossibly blue, but shattered and sad and alone.

It hadn't taken long to figure out where she'd gone. Donna was methodical to a fault, even when she was packing her whole life into an old car and driving all the way across the country for a chance at a job that was entirely unknown but might change her life. It turned out she'd given two weeks notice to HR, sixteen days and eight broken lunch meetings ago, had provided them with a Los Angeles post office box as a forwarding address, and the law firm of Carrington, Schuster and Hawthorne as a work contact. Josh hadn't known whether to laugh or throw something when he'd realized that she'd run away to Sam, because of course she had. He'd noted the number, knowing as he did that he'd never call, because what could he possibly say? He'd given her everything he had available to give and it hadn't been enough and she was gone and it was over. He'd flown to Houston the next day. Leaving the White House had seemed less like a gamble by then. Somehow it seemed more like an escape.

#the west wing #fanfiction #favorite chapter challenge #josh lyman #such a winter's day #josh x sam #josh x donna #poor josh has all the troubles

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freechoicedreamer · 4 years

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Body and Soul (Ch. 13)

AO3

Opening Theme

“And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children. And he said: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable ”

(Kahlil Gibran, On Children)

Storybrooke, Alice and Robyn's home

The sun is already high when Robyn and Alice begin to wake up, although for a summer morning this is not a sign that they are waking up too late. Turning around in bed, Robyn looks at Alice's sleepy, completely naked form — a tempting invitation to a new ecstasy and melting of bodies and souls. Burning with desire, she reaches out to hug her wife and pull her closer to her own naked body, not resisting the urge to kiss Alice's soft, parted lips, smiling as if in a good dream.

"Hmmm…" Alice yawns, languidly and lazingly licking Robyn's lips before passionately surrendering to the kiss, "Is it dawn yet?"

"Uh, a little bit," Robyn can barely answer, trembling when Alice deepens the kiss while erotically caressing her breasts, sensuously reaching down to touch her most sensitive and totally wet, pulsating with desire, parts.

...

They made love for almost two hours - insatiably, tirelessly and passionately in a succession of multiple orgasmic waves floating in their private ocean of pleasure. Alternating between screams and whispers, almost breathless and delirious, their moans would keep echoing in the loft in an almost endless climax if it wasn't for Alice's phone ringtone bringing them back to Earth.

"What the hell?" Robyn mutters, disheveled and still shivering from the shock waves from which they were shaken.

Gasping, trying to process and absorb the reality of having to return to a time-space dimension, Alice reaches out to pick up her phone, recognizing Dr. Maturin's office number.

"Hellooo…" she whispers with a sexy voice practically moaning, and then tries again with a firmer voice, "Hello!"

"Alice Jones?" Maturin's secretary asks.

"Aye… that's me…"

"Oh, good morning. I'm calling to remind you about yours and your wife’s appointments and IVF procedures with Dr. Maturin this afternoon, should I confirm them?"

"Sure! Count on us! Ah… Thank you and… See you soon!"

"Bloody hell, Robyn, our appointments are today, I forgot about that completely, you know, when I woke up I just had time to remember that you and I didn't need to work today and could make love endlessly, you know, cause today is Saturday!"

"I know! Me too Alice! What happened is that when I woke up and looked at you, my mind went blank and erased the appointments... I just couldn't resist your smile this morning, you looked so peaceful, so beautiful, so inviting, I had to kiss your lips and repeat last night. I can't help being completely in love and attracted to you, Alice, you do this to me…"

"You were the one putting that smile on my lips, my love, because I was dreaming of you. You and I, we were together walking hand in hand in a luminous field, full of bright spots of light in the air. They were like tiny little beings of light and some of them were just there, waiting for us to pick them up…"

"Oh… maybe they will be our babies, waiting for us…"

"Maybe… but let's start the day, Honey, we only have time for a shower and a brief breakfast - and I'm starving!"

…

"Good to know that you are both ready, Alice and Robyn," Stephen Maturin welcomes them.

"Wouldn't skip the appointments for nothing, Dr…" Alice starts to say but he cuts her, "please, call me Stephen…"

"Right, Stephen, we really want to try a double pregnancy, our only doubt was about being cross-surrogates as we initially planned…"

"You could try, but would be running more risks in a process that is already too complex and risky. I'm glad you decided to try IVF with your own eggs. At the end of the day the children will be yours the same way… So, let's take a look at your ovaries. Who will go first?"

…

After examining Alice and Robin, he confirms what they expected. "Your cycles are incredibly synchronized so today is indeed the best day for both procedures. As you obviously know, to use your own eggs you began your treatment, at the start of your cycle, with synthetic hormones to stimulate your ovaries to produce multiple eggs — rather than the single egg that normally develops each month. Multiple eggs are needed because some eggs won't fertilize or develop normally after fertilization: that means your ovaries are with the perfect production for the In vitro fertilization. What I will do now is to collect mature eggs from your ovaries and fertilize them with an anonymous donor's sperm, in a lab - the kids will be blood-related through their biological father. Then the fertilized egg (embryo) or eggs (embryos) will be transferred to your uterus. One full cycle of IVF takes about three weeks. Sometimes these steps are split into different parts and the process can take longer. Any questions?"

"No question, Stephen," Robyn smiles, "we are ready to bring our children to the Light!"

“Good luck to us and to our babies!” Alice whispers, closing her eyes and holding Robyn’ s hand..

“Lucky babies,” Stephen smiles at them reassuringly.

Olympus & Lethean Fields

Olympus

To think of fate is to think of an inevitable, predetermined course someone's life is shaped to take. That leads us to think of the 3 elderly sisters sitting around a spinning wheel: the Fates, also known as the Moirai. The first sister, Clotho, is responsible for spinning out the thread of a person’s life. The second sister, Lachesis, measures out the length of the thread, determining said individual’s life span. The third sister, Atropos, then cuts the thread (with the now-recovered prime scissors, not the spare scissors she used for thousand years after she lost her first in a bet with Blue), thus determining a person’s death. The Moirai, healthier and immortal again, go about their task mechanically and dispassionately, as if menial laborers on a conveyor belt of souls as if elderly grandmothers, quietly spinning out life; a pleasant, quaint threesome who might stop by for tea in the afternoon, and probably bring some home baked goodies as well, or so it might seem on the surface.

"Did you notice the unusually large number of souls heading to the United Realms?" Atropos asks her sisters while sipping tea and enjoying a piece of fruit cake.

"I'd rather noticed their kind: consistently Old souls… Now that I think in perspective, the big picture is clear: their Forerunners went first, ~1-2 decades ago, discounting time nonlinearities. Then, three years ago, their Pioneer, Killian and Emma Swan-Jones's daughter, was born... Last year the four Path-Breakers followed: the Nolan-Jones twins and, right after, other inseparable pair went along: he, going to the far north and she, to the far south. Now a massive group is preparing to go simultaneously and to spread everywhere in the enchanted realms, establishing a unique and fascinating balance," Clotho remarks, "if we consider the hordes of Infant and Baby souls heading to the Land without Magic..."

"You're absolutely right, those Mature souls who went in an interval of nearly 10 to 18 nonlinear years to the Enchanted Lands are already starting to raise: something huge is being forged, my sisters," Lachesis mutters preparing to continue her job, "long life to these special missionaries, there they go…"

Lethean Fields

Hand in hand, the Underworld's queen and king, Persephone and Arthur, stroll through the Lethean Fields lush meadows toward the Return Gate."I knew there was so much more than Underbrooke, even though it is the Underworld's nerve center, but I confess I wasn't prepared for such breadth…" Arthur tells her."And this is just the enchanted lands sector, many of which are now concentrated in the United Realms, in a sub-dimension of what is known as Maine by those living in the Land without Magic. The Land without Magic sectors are much broader and complex, with hundreds of million, billions perhaps, of souls - we'll go there in time, we have Eternity at our disposal, my love," Persephone explains, giving Arthur's hand a squeeze. "What I'm about to show you is a gateway for the souls reincarnating in the United Realms. The Moirai, in an exceptional behavior, asked me to go there and make sure that the almost one hundred Old Souls will get to their marks.""Old Souls?" Arthur asks, curious."Yeah… they're like Avatars. Five of them have already incarnated, it seems that there are 95 going together now." "You'll have to clarify this concept for me, Persephone, be my teacher, love," he asks, kissing her hand. As she stops to tilt her head and dive into his blue eyes, he continues, "I want to learn from the best…""Right," she grins, giving him a peck and conjuring two armchairs. "Let's sit down, then.""Let's drink a fine wine while talking, then," he magically brings the drinks, still amazed with his new powers.After a sigh, Persephone starts. “The soul’s journey is a process of evolving. This means: growing in consciousness, steadily progressing through different levels of consciousness. Only by going into all this in physical bodies experiences and choices a soul can be thrown into an extremely sharp relief in a way that is not possible otherwise. Choice and the ramifications of choice provide the essential lessons of life. In a very real sense, the soul chooses to be on Earth in order to make choices.”“Free-choice,” he states dreamily, thinking on his most recent life-changing choices.“Exactly, my Free-choice-Dreamer, as free of a choice as that one of yours which brought you to my side, as my King. For you the evolution as a mortal is complete, but as an immortal, you have all eternity to evolve. As for the mortal souls, they evolve in stages, five in total, corresponding to a specific level of development in capability and self-awareness within the individual soul. As the soul goes through each stage, covering a large spectrum of colors, or frequencies, the focus changes, more experience is gained, and consciousness expands.”“Colorful souls? How come I haven’t seen these colors?”“That’s because you haven’t trained your eyes yet, you will get there and will perceive the spectrum of their auras beginning at white (all colors) but then going through red, yellow, green, blue, to deep purple and violet. From low frequency to high frequency. The least evolved souls — the “newbies” — have a pinkish hue. The oldest souls — those nearing the end of the whole reincarnation cycle — have a blueish hue. Although the spectrum is a continuum, it can be divided into those five distinct stages or levels of evolvement: Infant, Baby, Young, Mature, and Old Soul.”“Got it… then the one hundred Old Souls you were referring to are vibrating at these highest frequencies.”“Yeah and reincarnating together, like this, is extra-rare. So much that the Molrai asked me to leave the Olympus and make sure that all of them will cross the Return Gate. No complaints on my part, I confess, I was missing you, my King…”“And I, you, my Queen… But back to what you have just told me, I have one question. A mortal at the beginning of the reincarnating cycle, the Infant soul, is a complete novice at the physical existence?” “As a human being, yes. At this first stage they are largely in a state of incompetence and terror, frankly. But through experiences and choices they learn and grow. They steadily progress from being Infant souls to Baby souls to Young souls to Mature souls. Finally, they enter the fifth stage as accomplished Old souls, the experts of human existence. As infant souls they learn about choices having to do with survival; as baby souls choices having to do with moral codes and ethics; as young souls choices having to do with mastery of achievement; as mature souls choices having to do with relationships; and as old souls, choices having to do with the nature of oneness. An infant soul would therefore not understand the choices of an old soul although an older soul would likely have more understanding of the nature of a younger soul choice having had them.”

“95 new Old Souls, then…”“This. Which is very rare. If we went to the Land without Magic return gateway sector you would see another scenario. For you to have an idea, take the incarnated souls there. The six or seven billion people on the planet span the whole range of stages, but the average is said to be somewhere just past the mid-point of stage 3. In other words, this world is currently dominated by Young souls whose primary focus is competitive self-advancement.”“And what is the reason for this massive evolved group reincarnation?” Arthur asks, already standing up and walking towards the Return Portal.“Good question to which the Moirai themselves can’t answer, yet. We'll have to wait and see... What I do know is that the physical world is approaching the climax of an unprecedented crisis. I’ve seen a lot of imbalances in the physical world, Arthur, throughout Time I’ve seen so many wars, conflicts, countless tragedies... but the world’s astral body has never been so contaminated with dark matter as it is now. My guess is that these 100 children are part of the Light, Peace and Love the world is lacking, this means their mission is likely of the noblest kind, extremely challenging and complex. Let’s see them descending, it seems that for a start everything is in order, all of them are lined up and ready to go, look at them, all smiling and shining!”“I see, love, and I can see their auras, how beautiful and bright they are!” he sighs, grinning in awe before the happy souls.

Storybrooke, Sweet-Jones' home

Stepping softly so as not to wake the babies, Killian and Emma head into their intimate living room, adjacent to the couple's suite, like two young lovers hiding from their parents to date in peace. The 4-bedroom home has retained, downstairs, the reminiscent layout of a high-ceiling living room with a mezzanine, where musical instruments and a painting studio are located. On the second floor, more properly, besides their suite-living room combo, the Babies occupy one side of a 2-bedroom-suite combo while the fourth bedroom has been converted into an office where Killian has been working full time organizing Storybrooke Police archives into databases integrated into a wider digital system. That will give a technical support to his brother, the other Killian, now the head of the recently created Intelligence Bureau of the Ministry of Justice. Although he won't be directly involved with the Police Department on a daily basis, his brother knows he can count on him as an investigative ally whenever he needs and asks for.

A remarkable ease for computing earned Killian the position of consultant for all ministries, starting when, after heated debates on Earth and Olympus about ethics codes, he developed a database for the Health Ministry's newly inaugurated Cloning Medical Center (an underground building with chambers to preserve the clones of those who authorized them to be preserved for research on the healing science). The extra-bonus is that he can stay at home helping Emma not only in caring for the twins but also in structuring the Ministry of Art and Culture. Over time, Emma plans to be more engaged at the Music Conservatory but it was a relief to discover a great number of talented musicians in all Realms - some of them are successfully running the School of Music without her direct interference.

It has been a calm morning, so far, in the Nolan/Sweet-Jones home as their sons take a nap, enabling the couple to sit there, side-by-side - a well deserved fruition of each other's company.

"Quite a change in a Princess' life, isn't it?" He teases while absently caressing her golden hair.

"Heart Island taught me well, Honey, and I have magic! Besides, you're always helping by being mega organized, and the babies are the cutest collaborators I could wish for: rarely crying, practically almost smiling, sleeping almost all night…"

"Closed fontanels…" he adds, with relief.

She chuckles at that. "You really were worried about their soft spots at the back of their heads, weren't you?"

"Sure, they were too vulnerable and too soft," he grins and raises an eyebrow. "But there is still a soft spot on top of their heads. It might seem as if their heads have grown faster than their bodies, I remember how I used to panic about that with Alice."

"The same for me, with Henry… but soon I realized that it’s normal, you know, the bodies will soon catch up," and at that Emma rests her head on Killian's shoulders, snuggling into his embrace - a love nest until one of the babies wakes up, waking up the other in the process, and they decide it's time to call their parents. Usually when that happens, they don't need to hurry up because the babies keep quiet in their cribs, and just whimper to get a major attention: for a diaper change or for a breastfeed or both. Killian and Emma work as a team; exchanges are fast and during breastfeeding he helps singing for who is not suckling...

"Listen," he mumbles, "they're awake. They may be sleeping through ~ 5 or 6 hours at a stretch during the night, but their daily naps are becoming shorter…"

"They're giggling… " she smiles, playing with his left hand band, "they feel each other's presence."

"But they also recognize our voice and will turn to look for us when they hear us. Listen, they're laughing out loud! I sure would love to be there with them but this is sort of their moment, you know..."

(Silence)

"Any news from Alice?" She asks in a low voice.

"Apart from when I was told that I am a grandfather to be, nope! She and Robyn will have a full plate with their double pregnancy and all of this is kind of… surreal!"

"I wonder if they will want - or need to move from the loft."

"According to what she told me, they are not planning to move, at least in the beginning because they simply love their vintage home. Besides, my Starfish, a mother to be - can you believe that? said that Snow and David managed to survive for quite a time with a baby there, they intend to adapt the place for their needs. Their point is, with Robyn working as the new librarian and Alice as a kindergarten teacher, the loft is strategically located. I suggested them to incorporate the downstairs floor, it's vacant now, and they loved the idea. My guess is that they will run for it."

"And did she say when they will know how many babies are coming?"

"Perhaps in the next appointment with Stephen, that is, probably soon? She didn't mention anything specific but as far as they know, Robyn's pregnancy is the unknown parameter. Alice is with only one baby, Robyn may be with two, her ultrasound and baby's heartbeat weren't conclusive…"

"Wait and see then," Emma nods, "but I can picture their kids staying a lot with their grandma, in Portland…"

"Aye, love, me too, there will be a lot of space for them there, and here as well, or in our Jolly Roger..."

"They will be loved, so much..." Emma says standing up to go to the nursery.

"Already are, already are…" Killian follows her.

...

At lunch, Henry and Violet appear for a surprise visit, "hey Mom! Hi Killian! Hey little brothers…" and the babies go all smiley at them as if recognising their brother and sister in law by sight and smell as well as by their voice.

"They are reaching out!" Violet exclaims, putting Dylan on her lap. The little boy waves his arms and kicks his legs strongly, laughing out loud and that makes Violet smile too although, to Killian's trained eyes, it is possible to sense something more in the air.

"How old are they?" Henry asks.

"Four and a half months," Emma answers, also suspicious after his nonsensical question and decides to go straight to the point "Henry, my dear Henry, you tell me, what's going on?"

"Eh… since you didn't give us a chance to quibble, Mom, we came to tell you that, perhaps… eh... for sure, I mean, we kind of... Violet and I are kind of... going to have a baby?!"

"We don't understand," Violet cuts him starting to explain nervously, "we have always been so cautious… of course we planned to marry and have kids but we wanted to wait, to study first. Remember, Emma, what you told Henry, about not going too fast? We agreed with you but then… this little bean happened!" She closes her eyes holding her belly and her tears.

"Oh Honey, don't be upset. This may be the best thing to happen in your lives and, if you will, you can manage to carry on with your studies, as you had planned, and take care of the baby. I promise that you won't be alone, alright? You see, I have one question only, for you both, and I suppose it is more of a confirmation since you are already here bringing the news: do you really want the baby?" Emma questions them and they simply nod with bright, hopeful eyes. "Then fight for your baby and for your love. What I told Henry before, what I showed him, nearly a year ago, was the easier path, or what seemed to be easier, simpler path for your growth. But, it seems, the Fates had other plans for you and, as Killian uses to say, we don't want to go against Fate, do we?"

"It seems that congratulations are in order then! Well done, Lad!" Killian tries to soften the mood by hugging Henry. "Good luck when talking to Sir Morgan…" he whispers for just Henry to listen.

"Actually," Henry whispers back, "we have already done that. It took him a while to react but in the end, it went better than expected, he seems to be really okay with the news."

"So do we, son, I'm happy for you both and for the baby - my grandkid... Emma sighs and asks, "what now? Are you moving together?"

"Well... we are practically living together, the doubt is where we are going to live after the baby is born… Sir Morgan offered his house, which is a large house and he lives alone… and I have my 2-bedroom lodge... we don't know yet, Mom, we have time, for now, I guess we will continue in my house figuring out how things will evolve…"

"You see, Dylan and Jason? More babies to play with you! What a Baby boom! Boom! Boom!" Killian winks and grins making faces and mouths at the babies and they react with happy laughs and a contagious happiness.

Storybrooke, Swan-Jones' home

Temper tantrums have never been a Hope's thing, although she knows how to be quite stubborn ("just like her mother," Killian uses to say at which Emma reacts, "strong head, determined, that's my girl!"). However today has been an exception when the 3-year-old girl insisted on being totally independent and is now struggling to deal with frustration.

She tried something on their own, to build a complex 10-year Lego castle without using magic and refused to follow instructions from her father and that triggered a crying crisis that lasted for almost one hour. She is calmer now, thanks to Killian's patience. Emma was doing groceries during the crisis climax but watched enough of it before she went out to understand that they had to be cautious…

"But Papa, Captain Jones, look at me," she says very seriously pretending the roles are reversed and she is the one in charge of the last word, not counting however that her smart father will pick up the real last word out of her next argument. "We are going to visit Zelena and Chad in the Land Without Magic !! Then I have to do things without magic there and I need to be trained!! And you can't help me because I need to do it alone!!"

"I get the part without magic, Little Pirate but, as far as I know, in the Land without Magic every child gets the help from her Papa, especially when she is playing with toys aimed at children 7 years older than her!" Killian counter argues, confident with the inclusion of the age gap, aware that the girl is really good with numbers and will get his point.

Hope listens, she really opens up to listen to her father, eyes locked with his, connected, absorbing his wisdom and his love. She remains quiet for processing his words, pensive, distant. When she comes back, her eyes are brighter.

"Alright," she finally acquiesces, conceding, "you may help me with the doors and windows and… with everything, I guess…" she sighs with a timid grin and adds: "I'm sorry, Daddy…"

…

Two hours later, Emma, who came back from the supermarket when father and daughter were finally starting to have their constructor moment together, enters the living room carrying a jar of lemon juice and three glasses, asking about their work. "How is it going? Let me see? Wow!! It's prettier than in the toy box picture, I'm impressed!! How is that possible? Hope, you can't be using magic, you have said that yourself!"

"I'm not! It was Daddy's idea to borrow some pieces from de Pirate Ship box!!"

"It's a Pirate thing, love…!" Killian grins and raises an eyebrow with an almost innocent look. "Can't help myself and Hope loved the idea, you know, our Pirate Princess needed a castle with a piracy look…"

"It's beautiful! But… isn't it ready yet?"

"Nope!" the girl, happier now and not showing any residual signal of her previous meltdown, smiles with a hint of mischief and silliness, "a garden, the castle still needs a garden as beautiful as the one of Uncle Gideon's castle… but first I need to go to the toilet, bye!!" And she puffs to the bathroom.

Hope was potty-trained and able to dress herself without assistance, among other skills, at 2-years old. She has been challenging Killian and Emma to keep up with her and sometimes it is almost tempting to tell their daughter to "stay still,” but they always allow their child the freedom to practice her physical, emotional and magic skills in the way she needs so that they can develop as they are supposed to - and they know how unique her upbringing has to be...

"At the end of the day, more than a Seer or any other exceptional title that Archie, or Blue, or Gideon may use based on modern psychology or ancient prophecies, such as Pioneer, when referring to her, our girl is just a little child trying her limits with her parents like any child of her age," Emma mumbles sitting near Killian as they stay there, sit on the floor, staring at the castle and sipping their juice.

"Says the Savior, twin of the Aligner, both married to the Survivor twins…" he chuckles and, after a pause, he continues more serious. "Hope became unusually stressed after the latest Baby Boom news this morning, not even with the first Body & Soul vision I saw her so out of her mind, love," Killian notices.

"But she was happy," Emma whispers, "I mean, initially, especially after knowing that Elsa and Cindy were pregnant. It all started to go downhill after Wish Ariel called yesterday morning to let us know about her pregnancy, remember? She stood, raised her hand to her mouth, as if in shock, as if realizing that something big was coming... and from that moment each new pregnancy confirmation made her tantrum to escalate. That was a gradual buildup for a meltdown. Although I was out this morning I knew it was coming… Killian, what did she say to you this morning, while I was doing groceries?"

"She said that something she didn't know yet was really happening. Then she said she was happy because the babies were coming and she didn't know why she was crying but she needed to cry a little. I've never seen our girl that way… shhh, she will be back soon," he whispers and, continuing with a normal volume of voice, he completes, "I wonder where we are going to pick up the Lego pieces to build the castle's garden, maybe from the box of the gas station set…?! Nope! Perhaps from the box of the space rocket set!? No, from where it would be?"

"Daddy," Hope puffs back to the living room and sits on the floor next to her parents, "I will use magic to bring the garden pieces…"

"Great idea, Little Love, once in Rome… I mean, once in the Land without Magic we will deal with not having magic. Here, in the Land with Magic, it is different! With cautious and not exaggerating, we can use magic for building a beautiful garden for our castle, why not? This is what a real Pirate Princess would do!"

"I'm a real Pirate Princess, Captain!" Hope exclaims with a grin, back to her positive self. "I'll show you how this is done!"

"Ah!! That!? I'm sorry but I will have to see to believe, little'love," Killian states defiantly and Emma giggles, admiring how easily the two connect when they are playing.

Reacting to her father's challenge, the girl stands up, tilts the head while looking at the castle, as if calculating the extension of her magic, and raises her hands with a natural elegance to produce the Lego pieces they will use to assemble the garden, "a garden with a magic portal… to the Land without Magic!!" she promises raising her eyebrows in the attempt of a wink.

PUFF!! PUFF!! PUFF!!

Enchanted Countryside, Mills-Lockesley's home

It would look like an ordinary meeting of old friends, gathered to celebrate the kickoff of Operation Body & Soul's first anniversary, if it weren't for the said friends' names: Regina, Robin, S. Regina, W. Robin, W. Regina, Liam Sr, Zelena, Chad, Snow, David, Emma, Killian, Emm and Key…

...

"Who is taking care of Dylan and Jason?" Snow asks Emm as they are sitting at the dinner table set with a banquet worthy of gods.

"Henry and Violet. Alice and Robyn were also planning to go but we left before they arrived…"

"They are already there, love," Key cuts her, "Alice has just texted saying that they are there, planning to cook dinner as soon as they give the babies the bottles with the breast milk you stocked and, after that, put them to sleep. They have just finished their bath, our two sailors... Look at these pictures, 4 adults totally soaked trying to bath two happy 6-month toddlers," he shows them his phone.

"Oh, what a splash!" Emm chuckles. "Here, take a look," she passes the phone to a curious Snow.

"Oh!… Emm, they're so cute… and have grown so much since the last time I saw them!" Snow smiles taking a look at the pictures and showing them to Zelena and Emma.

"Oh…" Emma melts enchanted by the babies's cuteness. "Let me tell you, the way they smile - as if understanding more than they should, remind me of Hope when she was their age, perhaps a bit more boyish but definitely looking like her," Emma notices.

"Who could tell they would look like they were her little brothers..." Zelena jokes, faking a surprise.

"In a way, they are," Chad enters the conversation, "at least to the Genetic Science," he explains. "But if the geneticists knew about the United Realms existence all foundations of their scientific knowledge would be shaken…"

"One more reason to keep the gates closed," Regina adds.

"The more and more there are people not agreeing with this position, Regina," Killian tells her.

"What do you mean, Killian?" Robin asks, passing the salad to David.

"I mean," Killian explains, "we have been gathered in one land with access to all 21st century technology - with virtual access to their world and all intricate chaos they live in, and people have started to discuss - and to question - about our geopolitics principles of anonymity with no interference…"

"Not to mention the young people dreaming of applying to courses not offered here," S. Regina reminds them.

"Opening the borders would integrate us into their chaos, not the other way around," Regina defends the point of continuing isolated, "they would want to explore us and our power to their own interests of domination - it would be the end of the United Realms."

"There is more than this trend, Regina," David enters the conversation. "Now that I've been more in contact with people of the Enchanted Countryside I've detected at least two trends, something like a conservative party, more aligned to your opinion, and a more progressive party, gathering those who believe that people from the United Realms should cross the borders more frequently not only to buy the industrialized goods they produce but to give them, as a form of exchange, a help in fixing their mess."

"But they aren't asking for our help," W. Robin reminds them.

"Perhaps because they don't know we exist!" Emma reasons.

"In the Enchanted Seashore I would say that the Progressive trend is a majority. Perhaps because people there look at the ocean, the open horizon, they have their back to the continent and their sight to what is beyond the horizon," Senior adds more condiment to the conversation.

"From what I've seen," Emm says, "and I haven't seen as much as some of you but enough to understand the big scenario - plus I have my husband as a great professor, right now there seems to have a global tilt there that has yielded a tumultuous far-right takeover. Although I gave up the throne, I have a background on politics since I've been educated to reign and it seems that, technically speaking, this whole picture - far right and far left extremes - is too complex for us to handle."

Hearing Emm's remarks and thinking on her own original upbringing and on how she also gave up the throne to become the Minister of Education, Snow finally speaks. "We could compromise," she offers. "Right now we are a Monarchy System aggregating many monarchies. We could evolve to a Monarchy with Democracy, thus giving voices to all trends, allowing them to be represented. We already have a Prime Minister, Robin, who has helped the Good Queen to coordinate the Ministries. What if we created a Parliament and gave the people a right to vote and elect their representatives?"

"This is interesting," Killian observes, "because what we are witnessing out there is the endangerment of Democracy as it exists in the world, with a few exceptions… In political regimes generally accepted as democratic, what happens is the delegation of decision-making power through voting. But the vote was, in most of the history of political thought, perceived as an instrument alien to the democratic order. Greek democracy was characterized by direct participation in decision making; occupants of public office were generally chosen by lot. We studied that in the Naval Academy but the question we should ask is: how has this concept evolved? Has it worked as the Greeks expected?"

"Definitely not, I'm afraid," Key answers. "What I saw when I lived there is that it has moved away from the notions of direct popular power and political equality. People don't rule, they just decide who will rule. This decision is almost random, since ordinary people, being far removed from public decisions and stuck to their own immediate concerns, are unable to make consequent political choices."

"We could change that paradigm, we could recreate a Democracy that would fix what they did wrong, learn with their errors…" David argues, already buying Snow's idea.

"You know where our worlds differ the most? What having and not having magic is translated into?" Zelena asks them all while sipping her wine. "The thirst for power and domination is the common enemy, but for them Power equals Economic Power, in other words, Money. Their most dominant system, Capitalism, is destroying the planet, destroying Nature, which is aggravated when the Liberals, representing the Financial System, assume the Power: they don't care for equality. They care for concentration of power in the few hands of a financial elite. Money is such an abstract concept sometimes but in the crudest concrete reality it defines who gets to have food and a house to live, who gets access to healthcare. It defines migratory flows, wars, poverty, misery, dignity, slavery, it defines everything surviving related."

"Money is the instrument for evilness, then," says the ex-evil queen W. Regina.

"Basically this," Chad agrees. "But it may also be an instrument for goodness, if only Mankind were less ambitious and selfish…"

"And then, of course, my mother, always revolutionary, coming up with the Democracy concept being applied in the United Realms - why am I not surprised?" Emma tries to bring the focus back to something more practical.

Regina, who had been listening in silence, finally speaks. "Matching the will to democracy with the need for representation may be an open challenge, as representatives will be encouraged to report primarily to key resource holders of their campaign supporters - and the media - rather than to their constituents. We have seen that happening in the LWM. The reduction of democracy to electoral competition represents the encroachment of the ideal of political equality and popular sovereignty that was historically associated with it."

"Asymmetries will always happen, Gina," Robin tells her, "but can be corrected with a solution which is to assert equality through Law and Justice systems. I think Snow has a point, we should be brave to take a risk and give to the people a new channel to their voice. I wouldn't be here if you hadn't run the risk of bringing me back. Mankind is supposed to evolve, generation after generation and… The new generations are coming faster than we think, look at the Baby Boom! We are not eternal, my love, we need to start thinking on their world rather than on our world. They will rule the Future, and we need to think on their paths as their own, assuring them freedom to make their own decisions - the right and wrong ones, and to learn with them, to run their risks, to live their own adventures. It will be up to them to decide if the gates to the Land without Magic will be open, in the future, weighing the consequences, pros and cons. But we owe them a chance of having a world to live and to rule, of having a Future."

"I'll drink to that, to my brother's words," W. Robin raises his glass, "then I propose a toast: To The Future!"

"To The Future!" "To The Future!" "To The Future!" "To The Future!" "To The Future!" "To The Future!" "To The Future!" "To The Future!" "To The Future!" "To The Future!" "To The Future!" "To The Future!" "To The Future!"

Olympus

As a manifestation of the sea god, Nereus was supplanted by Poseidon when Zeus overthrew Cronus. However, known for his truthfulness and virtue, Nereus and his wife Doris accepted defeat and the loss of power without protest, understanding that for a new, more prosperous era to arrive great changes and, perhaps, a few sacrifices, would be necessary. Their noble character and lovable dignity were rewarded and honored with a peaceful rest in a quiet Village at the Olympus, reserved for the retired member of their divine lineage. Sometimes Poseidon visits them - they became good friends, and in many occasions they lost the notion of time-space in endless conversations about the meaning of Life.

Today is such a day, when Poseidon goes there to visit them, but he is not going alone this time…

...

"When was the last time you saw them, Mama?" Liam asks Alice as their petite committee approaches the Retirees' Village.

"Right after I died, they went to Elysium to see me. That was the only time they left their Village but they respected my decision to not coming with them, to not wanting to resurrect. They understood my will and blessed me, anyway. You won't find more generous and wiser beings than my parents, Liam," Alice tells her son.

"That is open to debate, Mother," Liam squeezes her hand and turns to Poseidon who has just stopped. "Are we there?"

"Right here. Let's knock at their door," the god answers holding his daughter's hand and pointing to a Greek-like house.

"There is no need to knock, Poseidon…" Doris leaves the house, opening the door with a smile that brightens when she recognizes her daughter, “Halia!! You have come to see us!” Then, running her eyes over the others, they almost pop up when land on Liam and she turns to her daughter: "The resemblance of your son - can only be your child - with Nereus is striking, Halia... oh forgive me, the name is now Alice. But come in everyone, don't stand outside, come inside and make introductions in there… "

Nereus was fully concentrated reading a book when everyone entered the room. After a moment, feeling the presence and glances, he finally realizes the company.

"By the beards of the Sacred Shrimp!!" He exclaims, standing up and opening a broad smile, "Halia!! My dear Halia, what a joy having you! Come, let me hold you!!"

Trembling with emotion, Alice hugs her father and mother before the others' eyes, all moved by the reunion. After a while, Nereus remembers that they have witnesses and opens his eyes. The first he sees is Liam and, as if looking at his younger self reflection, he stops, backs off, and opens his mouth, eyes traveling from Liam to Alice and back, past everyone else on the way. Turning to his daughter, he mumbles "Is that your son? My grandson?"

Alice nods, "Liam, his name is Liam Jones..."

"Liam…" he repeats and looks at Doris, both with teary eyes. "Come closer, Liam, I'm honored by your visit. Let me hug you, Son…"

Reluctantly, Liam steps forward and extends his hand, which Nereus grips firmly with an electrifying shock. The empathy between the two is immediate, a grandfather-grandson love at first sight.

Glancing at Doris, Liam smiles shyly. "Grandmother?" he babbles and immediately also wins the old lady's heart.

Smiling, Nereus turns to Poseidon, "But what a lack of manners, ours, we didn't even welcome our guests... Poseidon, please introduce us to your friends!"

"We are thrilled to see you and Doris so happy, old friend. Here, let me introduce my companions. To my right, my son, Triton, my daughter, Ursula, and her husband, Nemo. To my left, Liam's wife, Milah and her two sons with equal names: Bealfire - they are twins, we call them wish and nonwish versions, remember when I explained the Wish Realm to you?" He winks and chuckles. "And besides them, a new good friend of us, Wish Belle. They all live in the Islands of the Blessed…"

"It's a pleasure to meet you all," Doris says puffing armchairs for them all to sit. "I'm not used to using my magic but this is an excellent opportunity to practice it, especially if it's to bring a refreshing juice and some cookies like this…"

PUFF!

Smiling with satisfaction, she offers the snacks: "Help yourselves, my dears!"

…

"So, you are telling me that you and Zeus have been humanized?" Nereus asks Poseidon, admired. "That's another surprise…"

"The whole Clone episode was life altering for us, including sharing emotions and thoughts with human souls, our Emissaries - that gave us another perspective. I know that you and Doris drink your Nectar in small doses and because of that you haven't felt the crisis as strongly as we did, but for us it was huge. We came out of that experience in mortality with a new perspective about Life and Death…"

"My father and Zeus wouldn't admit, in other times, the visit of our friends from the Elysium Fields and from Earth, such as is the case of our good friend Nemo," Triton adds.

"But Nemo is a demigod now, brother," Ursula reminds him.

"That is precisely what I am talking about. This generosity. First, Hercules and Megara, whom most call Meg, gained new physical immortal bodies. Then, Arthur, resurrecting and becoming king of the Underworld, the newest Olympian God, and Nemo, my brother in law, as immortal as any of us… a real feast with Ambrosia and Nectar!"

"And yet, Halia still prefers to remain a human soul… is that so, my daughter?" Doris asks Alice.

"Yeah, my beloved mother… Although tempting to stay here with you - I won't deny I will miss you, I'm happy being Alice in the Elysium, close to good friends, close to Liam and his true love, Milah, being able to watch our beloved ones, on Earth, through a wide screen…"

"Excuse me if I'm being nosy," Belle enters the conversation, "but wouldn't it be possible for you to compromise? I mean, Liam has a ship, you could have family meetings there from time to time, and sail in the Ocean together. After all you all have in common a deep love for the Sea! What do you think?"

At Belle's suggestion, Nereus eyes shine as two gems and he opens a broad smile, "what a wonderful suggestion, lovely Lady!" Then, turning to Liam, he asks, "you get to tell me this story of having a ship, my boy!"

"He is a Captain, Father, spent almost all his life on a ship, and you get to know his two brothers on Earth, also captains!" Alice tells him proudly.

"You will have to tell me, of course I will want to hear everything about it and about them!" The old god says, feeling his heart pulsating with renewed strength.

"You will love to hear their epic stories while sailing the Jewel of the Realm, Sir," Bealfire introduces him to Liam's ship name.

"I would love to be there with you, Son, but as a retired god I need to get permission not only from Poseidon, but also from Zeus. I think I should talk to him first…"

"There is no need to ask permission, you are free to go," Poseidon assures him, "but you could come with us to the Pantheon, we are all heading there. I promised to show Belle the Olympian Library and to the two Bealfires I promised to take them to the Arena, to practise Olympian Sports. Come with us, be my special guests, you and Doris, we will be honored by your presence."

"Thank you so much, Poseidon, Triton, all of you," Doris thanks them, "we feel alive, we feel Hope, a promise of dreaming a good dream…"

"More than dreaming, Mother," Alice squeezes her hand as they walk to the Pantheon, "we are making it happen, we are making it Real!"

#Body and Soul #Chapter 13

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terresdebrumestories · 7 years

Text

We were always gonna be forever

✗ TECHNICAL DETAILS

FANDOM: Digimon Adventure 01/02/Tri RATING: General Audiences. WORDCOUNT: 2 431 words PAIRING(S): Taiyama (brand new) CHARACTER(S): Taichi Kamiya & Yamato Ishida, with background cameos from zombies. GENRE: It seemed like the right thing to do. TRIGGER WARNING(S): - SUMMARY: Taichi seems willing to risk his life for the weirdest things. NOTE: I honestly wish I could have done a 10k + fic digging into the how-s and why-s and how much-s of this whle fic (where zombies are, really, more of an excuse than anything else) but alas, I neither have the time nor the energy, so have this instead <3

DIGIOTPWEEK 2017: [Day 1: Coffeeshop AU] [Day 2: Fantasy AU] [Day 3: Profession AU] [Day 4: Mythology AU] [Read on AO3]

“Crap!” Taichi swears once they’ve left the zombies behind them and shoved themselves into an empty alley, “we need to go back!”

He’s patting at the pockets of his ill-fitted cargo shorts, hands growing more restless each times he comes up empty handed, and Yamato’s throat constricts in apprehension.

“Did you lose you Digivice?”

There’s nothing else Yamato would ever consider going back to a compromised zone for, but for this...he’d walk in more dangerous situations than that for a Digivice, no matter whose. There’s the sentimental value, of course—that alone would be enough to make him risk a lot of things for them—but also these things haven’t even begun to lose power after sixteen years of extended use without battery change. They’re the only way they have to help their digimon partners digivolve, act as distress signal, maps and, with a little mastery of the Morse code, communication devices.

They’ve gotten Yamato and the others out of more than one delicate situation, allowed them to rescue Mr. Inoue and Mr. Kido out of a horde of corpses, and generally greatly contributed to their camp’s safety.

Sentiments aside, the Digivices are just too essential to lose.

“Who do you take me for?” Taichi hisses with a look of indignation to make a shier man cower, “Of course I didn’t lose my Digivice!”

“Then what are you making a fuss for? We’re not going back there.”

“But we’ve got to!”

Taichi’s face looks pleading, twisted with distress at the idea of leaving whatever it is behind, but Yamato refuses to be budged. There are at least fifteen corpses in this grocery store. They’re both black and brown with grime and blood as it is, breathing short and heartbeats fast after escaping by the skin of their teeth. Even assuming they survive a second run in the shop, which is a big assumption already, getting this late would mean skipping on their pharmacy run and risking being out of camp at night anyway.

There’s no way Yamato is going to let either of them go back there, especially with Weregarurumon and Greymon stuck at camp to help with the repairs.

“Taichi,” Yamato insists, hoping it’ll be the end of it, “we’re leaving.”

“No!”

They wince at the same time when Taichi’s voice echoes against the buildings on either side of them, the tone of his despair lingering against neatly parked but abandoned cars. It only takes a glance for them to move out of the alleyway, one rattling corpse already moving toward them, and Yamato doesn’t bother repressing a sigh of relief when Taichi moves away from the grocery store and toward the old commercial center their community chose as a base of operation.

They jog rather than run, keeping their strength even as they put some distance between them and danger, slipping into practiced synchronization without needing to think about it. Their hands find each other as they run, the comfort of a familiar gesture easing the knot of fear in Yamato’s guts.

Even through the end of the world, they still have each other, if nothing else.

“We really—” Taichi has to pause so he can gulp more air, sweat drawing lines in the layer of dirt and blood on his forehead before he can finish: “We need to go back. I’ve got to—”

“You’ve got to let go,” Yamato interrupt, waiting until he’s done hissing to breathe in, “I’ll knock you out and put you on my back if I have to but there’s literally nothing in the world I’d be willing to let you risk your life for!”

“But it’s for you!”

Yamato’s too stunned to reply immediately, and the long, plaintive sound of a dying animal punctuates the silence that follows, Taichi’s harsh breathing too loud between them as he tries to get it back to normal. In his chest, Yamato’s heart feels like it’s holding its breath, making itself tiny to leave Yamato’s brain enough space to process the declaration.

“What do you mean, ‘it’s for me’? What was it?”

The emotions warring over Taichi’s face are so intense it’s almost like watching a movie in stop motion: anguish, fear, crimson embarrassment flicker over his features in rapid succession, then something like intense resignation and a deep breath for courage before he says:

“It’s a ring.”

Well. You have to give it to Taichi: he neither stuttered, nor muttered.

Yamato’s brain, on the other hand….

“A what?”

“A ring,” Taichi repeats, face still redder than Koushiro’s hair but head held high, “with your crest on it. Had it custom made and everything.”

There’s Yamato’s what on the what now?

What?

“Why would you even buy me a ring?”

Taichi shrugs, like he’s fully accepted that this is the moment he dies—whether he thinks the cause will be embarrassment or Yamato is still unclear—before he gives a rueful little smile and asks:

“What do people usually buy rings for?”

Oh, okay! There’s something wrong with Yamato’s ears.

Or his brain.

Or maybe the past three months were nothing but a massive set of nightmare, and this is the part where something so weird happens that Yamato wakes up.

“Were you gonna—”

“Yes.”

“Are you—”

“You know me,” Taichi challenges, the red slowly going out of his cheeks, “you tell me if I’m serious.”

Yamato would answer that, he really would! It’s just that his brain doesn’t quite remember how to make his mouth work.

Of course Taichi wouldn’t joke around about proposing, especially not with Yamato. The guy knows what his issues are, how uptight he can be on making words match the exact and real nature of a relationship. Taichi wouldn’t just step all over that with a joke on that topic.

Somehow though, knowing that doesn’t help.

Today should have been an ordinary day, okay? Run into an abandoned store, take what they can carry to help the group survive, run back, try not to get eaten. Rinse and repeat as long as it’s necessary. Instead Yamato is stuck in place in a part of town they’ve got no business in, feeling like a certain bushy-haired someone just drop-kicked him into the Twilight Zone.

“Are you okay?”

Yamato got to the ground, somehow. He can feel the cold of it seeping into his ass, the harsh solidity of a wall with peeling paint at his back. Taichi, crouched down to put their eyes at the same level, has a hand on his shoulder, partly for comfort and partly as a way to keep himself upright.

There’s really no proper answer to that question.

Well. Yamato could go for the familiar route and swear until the static’s gone from his brain. Or, you know, just ask what the fuck is wrong with Taichi.

There’s so much vulnerability in Taichi’s eyes now, an incertitude he rarely ever unveils in front of anyone, Yamato can’t bring himself to do that. Taichi has been the most important person in his life for over sixteen years now, after all, so Yamato knows exactly how much of a gift this level of emotional openness is.

Still….

“We’re not even dating!”

Yamato’s voice pierces at his own ears, too high and strangler to be fully intelligible, but Taichi must get it because he winces, the ‘yeaaaaah, about that….’ written all over the tight tilt of his mouth. At least Yamato isn’t the only one freaking out here.

“I know, it’s stupid,” Taichi apologizes at last, hand moving away from Yamato’s shoulder, “let’s just forget it.”

“Wha—oh no you don’t!”

It’s easy to snatch Taichi’s wrist out of the air and hold it tight, a lifeline as much as a shackle destined to keep him right where he is. It’s an old dynamic between them, this tug of war between their respective brands of emotional constipation and their mutual desire to know what goes on in the other’s head.

It makes it easy to give Taichi a hard stare and warn in a low voice:

“You don’t get to drop a bomb like that and walk away! Start explaining, Yagami.”

Taichi rolls his eyes at that, but his shoulders unwind a little and, to Yamato’s relief, there’s a small smile playing at the edge of his lips.

“Remember when we had dinner with the Russian ambassador?”

“Uh, duh?”

To be fair, it’s Yamato who offered to come along. Taichi was nervous about misstepping or appearing too conciliatory or weak, and since Yamato lived in Russia for a year, he figured a little bit of a cultural bridge couldn’t hurt. It’s not like he minded people thinking he was Taichi’s boyfriend, anyway, so they marked him as a plus one.

Four hours of painfully stiff attempts at polite conversation later, Yamato was about ready to strangle Taichi right then and there if it meant getting out. Also they heard the news about the very first case of Zombie sickness that evening, but it wouldn’t be relevant until the real outbreak three months later.

Anyway. Yes, Yamato does remember.

“You were perfect,” Taichi smiles, as impervious to Yamato’s sarcasm as he ever was, “I swear I’ve heard about you being a perfectly delicious person enough times after that night to last me a lifetime. Your behavior was impeccable through and through.”

“What else was I gonna do? Tap dance on the table?”

Taichi blinks, then snorts at the remark, laughing for longer than the joke truly warrants, but it’s not like Yamato’s about to complain. It’s always been easy for him to make Taichi laugh, but it never got any less rewarding.

“There’s my favorite asshole!” Taichi wheezes after the worst of his laughter has passed, “I missed that.”

“I never stopped—”

“No, I mean...during the meal. At the embassy. Everyone was so charmed and fascinated and I kept thinking it wasn’t you. I wished you’d say something kind of offensive or start making sarcastic quips or whatever. I couldn’t wait until we went home and we’d spend an hour bitching about how ridiculous the thing was.”

The way Taichi’s expression goes from amused to wistful, eyes never leaving Yamato’s before he starts his next sentence is so fascinating, Yamato couldn’t look away even if he tried.

“It took a while before I remembered ‘home’ didn’t mean the same place for both of us.”

Yamato remembers that, too. Not the ‘home’ thing, but he remembers looking at Taichi somewhere just before dessert, hoping for comfort and finding him lost in thought instead, melancholy etched in every inch of his face as he looked down at his hands.

At least now he knows what brought that on.

His voice is more gentle than it normally would be when he asks:

“So you decided proposing was the way to go?”

“To be fair,” Taichi says with a small smile and a helpless shrug, “I did consider offering we shared a flat first, or at least asking you out.”

“Good to know you remember what normal people do.”

Yamato makes sure to squeeze at Taichi’s wrist as he says it, relieved when Taichi’s eyes drift skyward in answer.

“Yes,” he says with the obnoxious patience of one trying to explain something really simple to someone who’s being unusually slow, “I do remember. But I thought about it and I figured...we’re past dating now, aren’t we? I mean. Maybe I’m wrong but...going to restaurants and sitting there like awkward idiots while we ask each other surface-level questions? Really? You already know what I’m looking for in a relationship. I know the things you hate. I know about your messed up brain, and the things that make you cry and everything. So I just—dating’s temporary, you know? And I guess I just…I wanted us to be forever, you know?”

“We were always going to be forever, you idiot.”

Taichi’s mouth goes slack at that, and Yamato snorts as the flush returns to his friend’s cheeks, moisture shining at the corner of his eyes. Taichi wasn’t wrong, with his little speech: they do know each other better than anyone.

They’ve known each other for seventeen years, have been facing death for just as long. They know each other’s ticks and quirks, like how Taichi knows what angles to use to get Yamato to budge out of a position his stubbornness would normally keep him into, or how acutely aware Yamato is that he can leave Taichi gutted with a well-timed bout of emotional straightforwardness.

It’s just as well they care about each other too much to ever intentionally use the other’s weakness to hurt.

“I’ve known that since we first got Omegamon.”

In his more emotional moments, Yamato almost feels like he got his first inkling of it when he realized he could trust Taichi with taking care of Takeru. It wasn’t even a judgment of Taichi’s ability to care for a child, really, more of a statement of Yamato’s ability to trust anyone other than himself.

He’s learned to trust other people since, of course. At least twenty-four of them. It’s just not the same, though. Building Omegamon isn’t like in the fantasy books, where the protagonists get cut open and someone else’s heart is shoved next to their souls, but it does require the knowledge that, should this kind of things happen, it’d be okay.

Yamato would never want what he feels to bush Takeru so closely, for many reasons he couldn’t name if his life depended on it, but with Taichi...yeah. He thinks he could deal with his soul touching Taichi’s.

He’s not sure how to convey that exactly but, lucky for him, he doesn’t have to. Taichi...he’s not always the most emotionally perceptive person in the world, but he gets Yamato in a way no one else does, and they rarely ever have trouble communicating.

Being able to put what he’s feeling in a simple squeeze of his fingers and know he’s been heard is one of the many perks of that.

“So,” Taichi says after a long, pregnant but somehow comfortable silence, “not that I want to ruin the moment or anything but, with regard to what I said….”

On impulse, Yamato leans forward to plant a kiss on Taichi’s cheek, warmth curling in his belly before the words are even out of his mouth.

“I’m sure we can find someone wiling to perform some kind of ceremony.”

Technically, same sex marriages aren’t legal in Japan yet but hey, it’s the zombie apocalypse, and they’ve saved the world three times already.

The law can suck it.

#digiotpweek #Taiyama #Digimon #Yamato Ishida #Taichi Yagami #Digimon fic #Fanfiction #10n #20n

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adamgdooley · 6 years

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Rise of the Virtual Super-Teacher

How AI-powered personalization and immersive technologies are set to fundamentally transform the way we learn.

“It seems to me that it is through this machine that for the first time we will be able to have a one-to-one relationship between information source and information consumer.”

These are the eerily prophetic words of the late Science Fiction author and futurist visionary Isaac Asimov, long before Google became a verb.

“In the old days people would hire a tutor for their children and they’d adapt their teaching to the tastes and abilities of their students. But how many people could afford to hire a pedagogue? Most children went uneducated, and the only way to educate the masses was to have one teacher for a great many students, and to organize this they followed a curriculum. So we either had a one-to-one relationship for the few or a one-to-many relationship for the many, but now, there’s a possibility of a one-to-one relationship for the many. Everyone can have a teacher in the form of the gathered knowledge of the human species.”

Asimov’s tantalizing promise of scaling one-to-one instruction would, quite literally, give students the best of all worlds.

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Now let’s take this one step further, and imagine teaching a class with hundreds of students, yet being able to pay perfect attention to each one, detecting the slightest hint of confusion and projecting the appropriate reaction accordingly. This would give teachers super-powers they could not dream of leveraging in normal classroom environment.

That scenario might actually be much closer than we might think, with the advent of immersive technologies that integrate with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Since Virtual Reality (VR) relies on motion capture to work, it already has the inbuilt mechanisms capable of capturing and interpreting body language to create a “digital footprint” of each user.

The next step then is to use AI and machine learning to “teach” systems to filter, adapt and personalize interactions accordingly. It would be the ultimate fulfilment of Asimov’s vision, and something that leading academics in this space have long predicted.

“VR is the most psychologically powerful medium in history,” says Jeremy Bailenson, Communications Professor at Stanford University. In his recently published book Experience on Demand, Bailenson recounts how, although he’s been studying VR and its practical applications since the 1990’s, he is often taken aback by how much more impactful it is compared to other media, particularly where it is applied to learning, which led him to confidently assert that “almost any skill can be improved by virtual instruction.”

In his study of transformed social interaction Bailenson investigated how this could work in practice: “Unlike telephone conversations and video-conferences, interactants in virtual environments have the ability to systematically filter the physical appearance and behavioral actions of their avatars in the eyes of their conversational partners, amplifying or suppressing features and nonverbal signals in real time for strategic purposes. These transformations can have a drastic impact on interactants’ persuasive and instructional abilities.” In other words, the amount of engagement that a teacher’s avatar had with its virtual students had demonstrable impact on their engagement – and consequently in their learning.

The reason which makes VR such an effective and impactful learning tool is that it allows learners to achieve what is known as psychological presence. This essentially means that when we enter a virtual environment, we believe we are present, in spite of our conscious brains telling us that this is indeed a simulation. An important element in achieving such psychological presence is the concept of embodied cognition, which tells us that people absorb information better when performing actions themselves – rather than watching others do so or hearing/reading about them.

“Embodied cognition acknowledges that the mind and body are agents working together to make meaning of our experiences. It’s the idea that our mind alone does not dictate our worldview but instead that our cognition is shaped by the relationship between our mind and our body to inform and navigate our world, make meaning from our environments, and ultimately to result in learning,” explains educational and developmental psychologist Lindsay Portnoy.

Emerging research on VR indicate that the environment is a powerful tool from which we can create meaningful experiences that can effect great changes in our ability to perceive and understand the world around us. One study demonstrated that immersive VR provides better learning of physical movements than a two-dimensional video, and researchers from the University of Chicago found that simple gesturing in elementary students could potentially change and improve their knowledge. Current research by Disney, on the other hand, shows how VR is fast becoming seamless enough to enable it to replicate and synchronize with physical world behaviours such as catching a ball.

The advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning technology will enable such datasets to be leveraged in a responsive and contextual way. This combination of AI and immersive capabilities means that future learning environments will become increasingly personalized, adapting to the individual needs of each user in real-time by analysing their “digital footprint” data.

“I’m reminded of an article I read about a father who felt “super human” while using his Amazon Echo. He and his kids loved interacting with the speaker and found the ability to call Ubers, order pizza and play music to be truly empowering and immersive – it really felt like they were interacting with an actual person,” says Ryan Andal, president and co-founder at Secret Location, who says he’s felt the same “super human” effect while using VR: “When I imagine how many jobs will be lost through automation and AI, I’m encouraged by how VR can combine with AR to allow us to be ‘super human’ and decrease knowledge gaps, learning curves and barriers for collaboration. VR will essentially allow declining markets to rejuvenate much faster than normal because of how powerful it can be as an educational and training tool.”

Andal believes that when VR becomes more accessible and affordable, distance learning could be the medium’s most important use case, opening the doors to spreading education – in its broadest possible sense – into areas typically shut out from it.

“We often think of education in the traditional sense – children in a classroom – but I believe VR is best used for training and learning new skills or trades. In that sense, VR is a complete overhaul of what’s possible! It eliminates the need for expensive materials to practice on and can put students in an array of situations that cannot normally be simulated for training purposes. VR means students will get that coveted “real-life work” experience sooner than usual.”

We are, in fact, already seeing such practical training applications emerging in a broad range of areas. The U.S. alpine team recently turned to VR to allow American racers to memorize the hill and take hundreds of virtual runs down a fast, tricky course in preparation for the 2018 Winter Olympics. They are the first known Olympic team in the world to utilize virtual reality in their training.

Troy Taylor, high performance director for U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, believes giving a racer the ability to experience the course in VR multiple times ahead of the games gives his team a crucial competitive advantage. STRIVR, the company which developed the simulation, has been working for many years with various sports outfits such as the NFL and NBA to improve athlete’s performance through virtual training. This has been so effective, in fact that some players reported having flashbacks to games they’d only experienced in VR.

Walmart is also leveraging this to train its employees following a successful pilot program last year. The company is also working with STRIVR to incorporate VR more widely in its training. The goal, STRIVR CEO Derek Belch told The Verge in a recent interview, is to put employees in scenarios that would be inconvenient to physically re-create — like dealing with spills, or preparing for a Black Friday shopping spree.

“We’re using computer vision to map scenes, so we literally know exactly where someone’s looking,” says Belch. “Wearers might look around an environment and find the spill, for example, then answer a multiple-choice question about what effect it could have on the store,” he explains.

The global EdTech is set to grow to an estimated $252 billion by 2020, and VR is expected to capture a large proportion of that booming market. The combination of ideological and commercial incentives will therefore likely lead to accelerated development of applications and capabilities that will empower teachers and learners like never before.

Where the Internet has made great strides towards democratizing knowledge, VR will democratize experiences. Immersive technologies represent a revolution in the way we transmit knowledge and will shape how we learn and conduct business more collaboratively in a globalized, boundaryless world.

The implications of this are profound according to Bailenson: “I firmly believe that for people who love to learn, the future is going to be filled with thrilling educational experiences,” he concludes.

For those interested in exploring the potential of Immersive Technologies in Learning, the Global Education and Skills Forum will be hosting an Immersive Learning Showcase and series of insightful discussions on the 17th and 18th March 2018. GESF 2018 is an initiative of the Varkey Foundation to improve standards of education for underprivileged children around the world.