#Sorry for more Hades II these days I really like this game

[evilwvergil]

"Take a bath with ..M O R O S" Hades II

#I think Moros is lovable and sweet... You can get your friends to join you in the hot springs in Hades II #Sorry for more Hades II these days I really like this game #hades #hades 2 #moros #supergiant games #gamingedit #video games #myedit #my gifs

[iturbide]

Sorry you don't mind me asking a few 5, 9, 11, 18, and 23 from the video game ask.

Thank you.

I don't mind at all! 💖

Game(s) coming out that you’re looking forward to

You know at one point in time I would have said Final Fantasy XVI, but everything I've heard for months about it has been a never-ending trash fire so now I'm mostly looking forward to it to see how bad it is.

I'm kind of interested in the new Prince of Persia game that they just announced, though? That could be interesting -- it's the first Prince of Persia they've put out in more than a decade at this point, since the Sands of Time Remake has been mired in development hell, and while I'm forever bitter they didn't continue the story from 2008, this one looks very stylish and could be worth looking into.

Also: Hades II.

A game you played completely blind with no prior knowledge of and enjoyed/loved

For recent games, I might actually have to go with God of War 2018 and God of War: Ragnarok again for this one, because it's very hard to go into games blind anymore. It used to be the norm, but spoilers are everywhere at this point: I knew the time travel twist of Awakening years before I played it, and the same is true of Breath of the Wild since I was so late to the party there. But God of War isn't a franchise I followed, so I knew nothing about the 2018 installment before I picked it up, and was blown away by what they did with it -- then I started Ragnarok on Release Day and blazed through it as fast as I could. I had no idea what was coming, and it was a glorious experience.

For older games, though...I'm going to say Assassin's Creed III, in part because of the tutorial chapters and how that reveal five hours in that you've been playing as a Templar sets up the core ethos of the game so well: that the Assassins and the Templars aren't as different as they claim to be. No heroes, only flawed and complicated human beings doing what they feel is right to try and make a better world, and how they don't always succeed despite their best intentions.

Do you prefer ‘blank slate’ main characters you make yourself or otherwise project onto, or characters with a set personality and backstory?

I think it really depends on the game. Some stories really benefit from having a character with a set personality and backstory because it informs how they interact within the setting: Kratos with his history in Greece and his war against the pantheon is ideally suited for the story of God of War 2018, because those experiences guide how he interacts with his son -- and growing out of that mold, learning to be more open with Atreus and be better than the man he used to be is part of the game's emotional core. That wouldn't work with a blank slate character, because they won't necessarily have that baggage to work through that makes the story so impactful.

By contrast, there are games where a blank slate protagonist is a great choice. Games with dialogue options are a great place to explore this because they let the player project themselves or their vision of the character into the world better than set scenes would otherwise allow. My understanding is that Dragon Age does this well, but I haven't played that one, so I have to fall back on Elder Scrolls and my boy The Worst Dragonborn who keeps forgetting about the main questline because he'd rather read every book in the Whiterun Library and get suckered into helping every little old lady that needs to cross the street rather than. Y'know. Figure out what the deal is with the dragons. Very fun having so many options for what to do and who to join, lots of great character-building potential.

A game location you really like

There are so many places in games that I really love. Honestly one of my oldest favorites is probably the first Assassin's Creed, specifically Jerusalem: the golden glow of that city, especially compared to the cold and dreary grey of Acre, was just glorious, and I loved the view of the Dome of the Rock.

Honorable mention to basically all of Wind Waker, though. I love the sailing in that game, the water has so much character in that game (the stormy seas, the way you'll rise and fall with the waves, the texture changes between little white wave caps and still dappled waters). I've never had as much fun sailing in another game, and I was hooked on the Assassin's Creed: Black Flag sea shanties -- sailing in that game was just a chore that the shanties made more bearable.

A “Wow” moment of awe

All of Journey? So much of journey. That sand slide passage, silhouetted against the setting sun against a sea of shining gold...and the ascendance at the end, too, from the top of the mountain up above the clouds (something that's even more glorious with a companion).

Also: end of Okami, with Issun spreading his paintings and restoring mankind's belief in the gods to give Ammy the power to defeat Yami. I have my issues with the ending of Okami and the sudden tonal shift from Japanese folklore to high-tech aliens, but that particular scene hits perfectly even now. I inevitably tear up at that part.

🎮 Video Game Asks 🎮

#answered #alerawolf #video game asks #cut for length because it got so long #i have a lot to say about video games #i've played a lot and there's even more i own and need to start

[nothingeverlost]

Fic: Mother’s Day (Storybrooke High verse)

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was missing class today.  I made you worry, didn’t I?”

A/N:  I missed writing these two.  Just a reminder that Belle is a high school student and Gold is her teacher and they are in a relationship.  Takes place shortly after Whiskey Soaked Fears so they’ve only been together for about 2 months.

_________________________

He didn’t worry when he didn’t see Belle for the first three periods of the day.  Sometimes she stopped by before school, but there were days when she was caught up with her friends and he was glad she spent time with them.  She wasn’t usually the first to class either, the English building where she had Lit before his class being across campus.  It wasn’t until her friends all settled in, an empty desk next to the Lucas girl, that he started worrying.

“Miss Blanchard, I hope your friend has a good excuse for not being here today.”  The bell signaling the start of class would ring any moment.  Belle was never late.

“She’s not in school today, sir.”  Mary Margaret glanced up from whatever she was doodling on her paper.  

“I hope whatever she has isn’t contagious.”  He tried to sound gruff when what he really was was worried.  He had spoken to Belle before bed and she’d sounded fine.

“She’ll be back on Monday.  I said I’d take her any homework.”  Ruby’s lips were pressed together, displeased about something.  There was no way to question her further without sounding like something more than an annoyed teacher.  He waited until they were working on their pop quiz before texting Belle.  She didn’t answer.

“Miss Lucas, if you have a moment?”  He pulled her aside after class, thankful for the excuse of the homework assignment.  “Please let Miss French know that the quiz can’t be made up without a doctor’s note.”

“She’s not sick.”  Ruby slipped the piece of paper into the folder she carried.  “It’s Mother’s Day on Sunday.”

Fuck.  He knew how hard it had been to lose her mother; he should have considered what this weekend would mean for her.

“Her dad…”  Ruby’s eyes narrowed. Apparently he and the Lucas girl felt the same regard for Moe French.  “It’s a really big weekend at the shop and her dad doesn’t handle it well.  They can’t afford to not get the flowers out so she’s there.  It would really suck if her grade took a hit because of one quiz, but she’s always doing extra work.  It won’t hurt her, will it?”

“Unlike some in class her grade won’t be swayed by a few points.”  He hid his knotted fist behind his back.  He still had a thousand doubts about being the right person for Belle, but he was there for her, damn it.  Ruby seemed content with his answer and left.  Gold looked down at his phone for a moment, contemplating calling her.  It was the start of his free period, giving him almost 2 hours before his first afternoon class.  He could easily make it to the flower shop and back in half an hour.  Forty-five if he stopped to get Belle something to eat.

“Belle?”  Burgers weren’t the healthiest of foods, but she loved them so he’d picked up two, a mix of onion rings and fries, and one large chocolate shake.  The bell above the door rang when he entered Game of Thorns, but the shop appeared empty.

“I’ll be with you in a moment.”  The bland polite voice told him she hadn’t heard his voice, which was confirmed when she came out of the backroom.  Her smile became more genuine, her eyes brightening.

“Nick.”  Her smile faded as quickly as it had come, sliding into a frown.  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was missing class today.  I made you worry, didn’t I?”

“Your friend Ruby filled me in.  She was worried about your ogre of a teacher docking your grade for an unexcused absence.”  He always worried about her, but she would only feel bad if her told her that.  The worry had only intensified since their brief break up and the knowledge that someone had scared her.

“She doesn’t know the ogre is really a teddy bear.”  Apparently her father wasn’t in the shop at all, because she wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek.

“The dragon happens to have a soft underbelly where one particular person is concerned,” he clarified before kissing her back, but not on the cheek.  “I have a reputation to protect.”

“Your secret’s safe with me, sweetheart.  Someone might catch onto how many strays you feed behind the house, though.  Or find you tutoring kids at the library.”  She tucked a piece of hair behind his ear.  “Your bark is far worse than your bite.”

“I’d be glad to show you biting, love.”  He set the food on the counter next to the register and traced her neck suggestively.  He had no trouble admitting to himself that he liked the idea of leaving a mark on her.  Making it clear to the world that she was his.  Mostly, though, he liked the way she blushed when he made the suggestion.

“It’s a good thing it’s lunch time if you’re that hungry.”  She disappeared into the back and came out with a second chair.  He tried not to think about other definitions of hunger, especially as they related to her.  She had flowers tangled in her hair and he was reminded of an illustration of Persephone he’d seen once.  It wasn’t a stretch to recognize the Hades in himself.

“I was worried you wouldn’t stop for lunch.”  He sat across from her when she took the food out of the bag.  He had bought a burger for himself mostly because he knew she was more likely to stop and eat if he did too.  “No one else is here?”

“I have a sandwich in the cooler, and some iced tea.  Dad doesn’t handle this weekend very well.”

“How are you handling it?”  He had to bite his tongue to keep from saying that Moe French didn’t handle anything well. Not his daughter’s birthday, or the basics of paying bills or doing his own damn job.  And he certainly didn’t handle being a father.

“It’s better when I’m busy and not thinking about it too much.  I like knowing that the flowers are all going to moms this weekend, and that they’ll make people smile.  That’s my favorite part of the job.”  She took a bite of her burger, chewing it more carefully than was warranted.  “I always save enough flowers to take a bouquet to my mom after everyone comes to pick up their flowers.”

“Does your father go with you?”  As much as he disliked Moe French he hoped the answer was yes.  She didn’t need to stand at her mother’s grave alone on Mother’s Day.

“He tried a couple of years ago.  I thought maybe after some time had passed it would be easier.”  Belle picked up the top bun of her burger, piling on onion rings before returning the bun.  “People handle things differently.  I like talking to her.  Dad sees it as a reminder she’s gone.”

“May I go with you?”  For a flash of a moment he felt like he understood how Moe felt.  If it was Belle lying under a stone would he be able to handle seeing the finality of it all?  He pushed the thought away; it was too painful to imagine and it didn’t make his treatment of Belle acceptable.  “Only if you want company.  I could wait in the car if you prefer.”

“You don’t have to, I really am okay.”  She shrugged, taking a bite of a french fry.  Nick put down the hamburger that he’d mostly been ignoring.  He reached out and covered her hand with his own.

“I want to be there with you, Belle.  I want to listen to any story you want to tell me, and I want to take you home after and hold you.  May I?”  She’d spent enough Mother’s Days alone.  He’d be damned if he let her be alone when he was able to be with her.  When she walked around the counter and wrapped her arms around him he had his answer.

“Thank you Nick.”  He held her for a minute and didn’t care that someone could walk in the door at any moment.  Her cheek was damp with tears when she pulled away and he wiped them dry with the pads of his thumbs before gently nudging her away.

“Eat your lunch, love.  Your fries are getting cold.”

II

“How can I help?”  He showed up the next morning with two hot teas, bagels, and fruit salad.  Moe’s car was once again missing from the parking lot and Belle was alone.

“What are you doing here?”  Belle had her arms full of spools of ribbon.

“I have food, caffeine, and a pair of hands that should be reasonably capable of doing things.  I’m not promising magic and you probably shouldn’t leave any arrangements up to me but I’m sure there’s something I can do.”  He’d returned to the shop the night before and found her leaving a little after six.  He was glad she’d let him take her out for dinner but she’d insisted on going home to check on her dad.  His bed had felt particularly empty after he’d spent the afternoon thinking he might convince her to come home with him.  

Belle bit her lip, looking at him for a minute before speaking.  “It would save me a lot of time if you watched the front.  Almost everything is paid for already, it’s mostly just reading the cards and giving them to the right person.  But it’s your weekend, Nick.  Is this really what you want to be doing?  I can’t imagine this is your favorite thing.

“You’re my favorite thing.”  He pulled her closer, kissing her gently.  Customer service was right next to personal secretary for Regina on his list of favorite jobs, but he’d do it if it meant making Belle’s weekend easier.  “Show me your system, pet.”

It was seven hours of exhausting work in which he did his best to be nice to people and smile.  His face hurt.  His leg hurt.  He kept hoping someone would complain just so he could stop being so pleasant but finally the last bouquet was picked up and Belle turned the sign to ‘closed.’

“Please tell me you don’t have to work tomorrow.”  She looked exhausted; there hadn’t been time to even take a lunch break.  They’d eaten bites of the pizza he’d had delivered between customers.

“No, the shop is closed tomorrow.  And I promise I’ll be in class on Monday.”  She popped open the cash register and started counting down the drawer.  

“Good, because I happen to know that your bastard of a science teacher won’t accept any more excuses.”  He waited patiently until she finished counting, locking away the money and reaching to turn off the first light, before tugging her close.

“Come home with me tonight, love.  Please?”  There were dark smudges under her eyes.  If she came home with him he could at least make sure she slept.  He could talk her into a hot bath and make her something to eat.  And he could hold her for hours if he wanted.  

“I want to say yes, but…”  She stopped and shook her head.  For a few seconds all he could hear was the sound of her slow breathing.  “I can’t say no tonight, Nick.  I’m going to be selfish and say yes.”

“You don’t have a selfish bone in your body, Belle.”  He was relieved that he didn’t have to try and talk her into it.

The last thing Belle did was take the flowers meant for her mom out of the cooler.  She took them with her as she locked the door and followed him to the car.

II

Breakfast wasn’t anything complicated, just eggs and toast.  It took a frustrating amount of time to take it up the stairs, though, considering the mugs of tea and glasses of orange juice he didn’t want to spill, and the leg that was aching more than usual.  His Belle, who had been sound asleep when he’d gone down to the kitchen, was now wandering his room in a t-shirt that barely skimmed her thighs.  He was just in time to watch her bend over to inspect a book, and stayed as still as he could to watch her for a moment.

“It’s hard to serve you breakfast in bed when you’re not in bed.”  He carried the tray over to the bedside table, glad to see he hadn’t sloshed any tea over the edge of the mugs.

“Good morning sweetheart.”  Warm arms wrapped around his neck, her body pressed against his.  He was tempted to ignore breakfast for a little while, to just touch her and make her forget everything else except him, but the eggs would get cold.  For the moment his need to make sure she started the day with a good meal won out.

“You should have woken me, I could have helped.  You made dinner last night.  And ordered lunch, and brought me breakfast.”  She’d fallen asleep on the sofa the night before while he’d been cooking.  One minute she’d been explaining to him the difference between hard and soft water for cut flowers and the next she’d been curled up asleep.  He’d woken her when he touched the scratch marks on her arm; a combination of thorns and the wire in the ribbons she used, she told him later when he rubbed them with an antiseptic.

“You needed your sleep, love.”  She looked much better this morning, the dark circles gone and her eyes bright.  “Besides, as your boyfriend it’s my job to spoil you.”

“You’ve never said that before.”  The tea she’d been about to drink was forgotten as she stared at him.

“What, my plans to spoil you whenever possible?”  It was ridiculous but he already had a Christmas present on order.  He was also making summer holiday plans that were tentative until he knew if she could get away for a week or just a weekend.  

“Boyfriend.”

“It’s a strange word to apply to myself but there doesn’t seem to be any other.”  He didn’t remember the last time anyone had used the word regarding himself.  Certainly not Mal; their relationship wasn’t like that.  He was used to hearing the word used to describe sixteen-year-old boys.

“It sounds so…”

“Weird?” he offered.  The English language was lacking; he’d actually looked up other options but had found old fashioned nonsense like suitor, words like lover that only described one aspect of their relationship, or the word boyfriend.

“No.  Like if you’re dating someone then there’s the stuff you do by yourself and then there’s the times you see this person.  But if you’re boyfriend and girlfriend then everything is all tangled together and you’re a couple.  Like when you talk to Mary Margaret you know that she and David share everything and if she invites you to a party he’ll be there.  Like it’s real.”

“We are a couple, and this is very real.”  And in three weeks and four days it didn’t matter who knew it.  He could tell everyone that she was his girl.  She could tell anyone too; he knew that carrying the secret was hard.  “I love you Belle.”

She set her mug down next to a plate of eggs.  For a moment he was afraid that he’d said the wrong thing, gotten too serious, but then he found himself with a lap full of Belle.  “I love you too.”

“Breakfast,” he half heartedly protested when she tugged at the bottom of his shirt.  He’d slept only in pajama bottoms but had decided that it was better to cook without so much exposed skin.

“It will still be there after.”  Changing tacks Belle took off her own shirt, or rather the shirt he’d loaned her the night before.  He’d considered buying pajamas to keep for the nights he convinced her to stay, but he enjoyed looking at her in his own clothes better.  It was a bonus that they smelled like her.

“After,” he agreed, tossing his shirt on the floor as well.  

II

“Hey mom, there’s someone I want you to meet.”  The cemetery was relatively quiet as Belle followed a well remembered path.  Colette French was buried under a willow tree.  Nick took in the dates, the last one a little more than seven years ago.  Belle would have been eleven.  When she laid the flowers against the stone only the name was visible.  

“His name’s Nick, mom, and I love him.”  She held his hand and leaned against his shoulder.

An hour later, after half a dozen stories and a little weeding they left together in his car.  She had homework to catch up on, and used his desk, stopping to drink the tea he made her.   Afterwards they made dinner together, and took the time to watch a movie before he drove her home.

On Monday she stopped by his classroom before school, just to let him know that she was there.  She was smiling.

#verse: storybrooke high #storybrooke high verse #rumbelle fic #my fic #student!belle #teacher!gold

[retro-aesthe]

Sidelines (Part 2)

(I’ve actually posted this... idk, it disappeared so I’m gonna post it again. Happy reading!!!)

Alex Danvers x fem!reader

You were watching a documentary about war remnants left by World War II in different “third world countries.” Just like a one-shot angst fic about your OTP you’ve read a thousand times, this documentary sucks you in—deep, and makes you want to continue relieving your college idealist self you’ve left behind some time ago. Back in NCU, you wanted to change the world and save the oppressed… but when you graduated, you were caught off-guard by the cruel face of reality. Suddenly, those plans of changing the world faded. You were stuck as some newspaper writer—broke, by the way—with a record of libel case under your name.

As you watched, with glimmering eyes, the old, ragged, black and white pictures being flashed in your TV, the door burst open. You jumped in surprise, higher than you’ll ever admit, and some popcorn spilled on the floor from the overflowing bowl. You turned around to check who just barged in and saw Alex Danvers with a pissed off look in her face.

You immediately placed the bowl of popcorn on the table and stood up, frown already marring your face. You swallowed the popcorn you just placed on your mouth, and then asked lightly, “What’s up?”

You felt relieved that your heart was calming down already.

“Why the fuck is your door not locked?” your best friend asked, and you can already see the angry lines getting more obvious on her face. The waves of anger raging from your best friend’s… presence were directed to you. You felt so lost because all you can think about was how she just went here to… scold you? Wasn’t she on a date?

“Um… because I’m inside?” you said slowly… confusion rising by the level as you stared at Alex’s pissed off form. The agent moved to close the door and proceeded on taking off her coat.

“I’ve told you a hundred times that you should lock the door. What if I’m some murderer? I could be murdering you right now—“

“Well, you’re not a murderer and you’re not murdering me right now. You’re my best friend and you can come in my apartment anytime. My locked door would have made me stand up—which I just did, thanks to you barging in here like some overly crazed person—and pause this incredibly heart-wrenching and mind-blowing documentary, just so I could open the door for you, your highness,” you rambled sarcastically, as you automatically went for your refrigerator and pulled out some beer.

Alex was already getting comfortable in your couch—where you were sitting a while ago—which was filled with thick blankets that made you feel like you’re in heaven.

“So… you came here just to bitch about my unlocked door…? Or, am I going to pry how your night went with a certain detective?” you asked, as you placed the opened beer bottles on the center table. You faced your best friend, having the chance to take her in. You can just imagine how your eyes turned into heart ones. Alex was breathtaking. You can’t help but envy Maggie Sawyer right now. The detective was living what you only had for a dream… at least you hope that she does know that.

“There was an emergency called by NCPD, so she had to leave early.” You watched as she drank the beer, clenching your jaw at the audacity of Maggie Sawyer to leave Lexie, on a date, alone… you would never do that even if it was your brought-back-to-life-by-Hades-because-the-god-despises-him-too editor calling. Well, you do know it is irrational to hold it over Maggie’s head (as the call was probably for the public’s safety) but, still. She left Alex alone.

“Explains why you had time to go here,” you said lightly. There was no bitterness in your tone, though your words came out flatly than you intended it to. You’ve felt neglected by your best friend these past few weeks she had been dating Maggie. Before, you’ve always had nights with Alex (because it’s the only time of the day the both of you possibly aren’t at work) at least four times a week. Now, it was reduced to sporadic once-a-week’s. You just kept your mouth shut, because you don’t know where you stand. There’s the feeling of needing to insert yourself because you’re the best friend, but there’s also the feeling of pulling back because you’re not the journalist sister, you’re just the journalist best friend.

It also doesn’t help that you’re the in-love best friend.

God, you hate yourself so much.

“Y/n…? Y/n, you still with me?” You refocused your unfocused eyes, and found Alex’s concerned ones staring right at you. You felt your eyes turn glassy, so you blinked the (possibly) tears away, and cleared your throat. You grabbed your bottle of beer and took large gulps. One thing that probably heavily grounds your friendship with Alex Danvers is alcohol. During game nights, you and Alex both dominate the available alcoholic drinks and still end up coherent enough to go home, or form syntactically—emphasis on just “syntactically”—correct sentences.

You slammed the beer harder than intended on your glass center table.

“Yeah, I am.” God, you need more.

You stood up, aware of Lexie’s eyes following your movements. You reached for the emergency bottle of (pure, as you specifically bought) tequila you had stored on your cupboard. ‘You’re loose lips, Y/n,’ you thought as you grabbed shot glasses. The glasses were just for show, since you had this great need to be loose lips and drink the entire bottle down to the last drop (which would more likely end up with you being pumped), and just tell Alex Danvers everything because Maggie Sawyer doesn’t deserve her because she left gorgeous Alex Danvers alone in their date night for some “NCPD emergency.”

“Sorry, I have like, a lot of things in my mind.” Case in point: the woman you’re talking to. “You know, article stuff,” you added, admittedly rather defensive. You filled the two shot glasses with tequila, not even bothering to ask Lexie if she wants one because you know she does because that’s how well you know her.

You pressed play on the documentary you were watching. The heavy silence masked the narrator’s voice, and you were extremely aware of Lexie’s restlessness, which you know means that she badly wants to say something. You have ignored your half consumed beer (and the now cold and indigestible popcorn), and turned on pouring yourself shot after shot of tequila. You should have followed yourself a while ago—go to bar after work.

“Are… are you okay, Y/n?” Alex finally asked. You tensed for a moment. Alex knows how much you resented that question… maybe that’s why she was so hesitant of asking you. You’ve always rambled on how it was futile to ask the question, especially if the one who asked only expects a yes or no answer. It’s much more than a simple yes or no to define if one’s okay or not.

You pressed pause once more and turned to her and smiled, finally feeling the effects of the (pure!) tequila you were drinking. Your lips were feeling numb (so you’re really half sure you’re smiling), and your tensed mind (as you so likely often describe it) was loosening up. You stared at Alex with half-lidded eyes. You have no idea why you suddenly felt drunk-hazy, as if you’ve drunk more than your limits. You looked at the tequila bottle and saw how it’s nearing empty. You frowned. Did it spill?

“I’ve only had a couple of shots… then you grabbed the bottle and basically fired shots… no difference if you’ve just drank from the bottle.” Lexie said, slightly amused. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?” You detected the shift in her tone, which was bordering concern.

Loose lips. Overly emotional. Not a good combination, especially when the pain caused by Maggie’s appearance in your life—more like in Lexie’s—is really doing a number on you. You stared at Lexie’s concerned eyes. You took a deep breath, wondering what to do or say next. With just pure instincts, your right hand moved to grab the bottle—you need to loosen up more.

“Hey, no. You’ve had enough.” Alex pried the bottle from your hands. She placed it on the floor, just slightly behind her then turned back to you. You nearly jumped off your skin when her soft hand grabbed yours, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“You’re watching documentaries, Y/n. You only watch them whenever something’s stressing you out. You drank that bottle of pure tequila as if it’s just water. You wanna tell me what’s going on?” You can’t help but let yourself give in on the appearing symptoms of crying. You’re already feeling hot, and Lexie’s smile just keeps flashing before your eyes… Lexie’s incredibly beautiful and perfect smile directed at Maggie Sawyer. You pursed your lips. Suddenly, there’s a growing anger forming inside you. You keep thinking why you hadn’t been good enough for Alex—for her to notice you. Why did it have to be Maggie? Why her? What freaking generous thing did she do for her to have the one person you’ve been praying for almost your whole life?

You suddenly felt a soft hand on your cheek. It was so comfortable, making your heart turn over and over again. When the thumb ran just below your eyes, you suddenly realized you were crying. You’re crying and Alex freaking Danvers, your best friend, was holding your hand and wiping your tears. Her eyes were full of concern and her face was so incredibly close. All you can think of is how beautiful she is and how she deserves the whole world. The forming anger was suddenly replaced by an onslaught of your love for this woman holding you.

You don’t know if it’s because of being soul-turning drunk that you suddenly can’t handle Lexie being an inch close to you. You’ve been at situations like this most of your life, but something changed right now. You can’t control yourself anymore when before, being with your best friend (since you realized you’re hopelessly in love with her) was all about control.

It was so comfortable, being this close. You taught of staying like this forever. As you stared at Lexie’s beautiful, concerned (for you) eyes, you can’t help but cry more over your missed chance of being with her. Your eyes shifted down and you can’t help but wonder how those lips were naturally pink and soft, while yours were pale and more often than not, slightly chapped. Then, with your screw-it mind taking over, you shook off Lexie’s hold on your hand. You placed both of your hands softly on her nape, and pulled her closer.

You can’t help but think that this is, indeed, the softest pair of lips you’ve ever had the chance of kissing. And you so badly want to kiss these pair of lips forever.

#alex danvers #alex danvers x fem!reader #alex danvers x reader #alex danvers imagine #alex danvers fic #supergirl #supergirl fic #supergirl imagine #maggie sawyer #sanvers #kara danvers #best friend au #reader fic #angst #oneshot

[paranoidwino]

happy birthday bloom!

Guyys, guys, do you know what day is it? It’s BLOOM’S BIRTHDAY!

Omg, @bloomsoftly it’s your special day!!

YAY!

And so I made you something. It’s not much and it’s not big, but I hope you like it? :3

Pairing: Darcy x Natasha Words: 1000 Rating: T, but probably K+

Five moments in life, plus one. 

I.

Sometimes Natasha would wake up in her bed, stiff and rigid, but never shaking or screaming.

It was the most that her body allowed her to express, Darcy reasoned.

She would stiffen from the shoulders, going so far as trying to burrow herself under the pillow or nearest duvet of their bed, and sometimes the sofa. When Nat was in one of these moods, there was nothing that could remove her from the nightmare until she woke up for reals.

She was now an expert of that particular move.

And yeah, it hurt to see her love suffer so much, so she tried to be there as much as possible every time she had an episode.

“You with me?” Darcy mumbled sleepily, her fingers tracing patterns on Natasha’s shoulders, moving the soft strands of hair.

“Mm? Oh. I’m sorry,” Natasha sighed softly, “It’s three in the morning, myla, go to sleep.”

Darcy hummed, “of course. You with me?”

And Natasha chuckled, like she always did, and sank into her embrace, “always.”

II.

Darcy had no patience for incompetent assholes down in the labs.

She wasn’t a scientist, but still ruled the department with an iron fist, albeit a flower patterned one. Many had believed her to be only a pretty face before being thoroughly annihilated.

Natasha approved.

She had shown up unannounced more than once, the first months of their tentative dating, more than willing to scare the minions in case her girlfriend needed it, but it hadn’t really been necessary.

So she took to simply bring lunch, from time to time, and hear the latest gossip as they both watched Jane being brilliant. Darcy called it her favourite sport, of sorts.

“Miss Lewis,” JARVIS interrupted them, “HR has received another complaint.”

Darcy groaned, loudly. “Do I have time to finish this sandwich or should I just give up, J?”

The AI hesitated. “It would be best if-”

“Got it, got it,” she waved a hand dismissively and bit into her sandwich with relish.

Natasha just watched her with a smile.

“What? Why are you staring at me?”

She snorted. “Nothing, nothing.”

III.

They both hated official gatherings, but not so secretly relished in playing the political game.

Darcy loved watching The Black Widow at work. She was always torn between wanting to be her and loving her, but lately, the challenge had become resisting the urge to find the closest room to have her way with her. Natasha knew it, and teased her mercilessly about it.

“Just you wait,” she mumbled over her plastered smile as the next Big Thing was presented to the audience. “Just you wait.”

IV.

Natasha loved the cold.

It was totally understandable, what with her being Russian and not actually feeling it, but Darcy absolutely despised it.

They made for a funny picture on the tabloids, with Natasha wearing her customary leather jacket and Darcy her three hats, scarves and two pairs of gloves, nursing what was the mother of all colds.

“Are you still mad about it?” Natasha asked her over the steaming mug of tea.

“Do.” Darcy pouted, sneezing loudly and making their cat jump from the bed in a hissy fit.

“Dere, eben de cad hades be” she whined, coughing.

Natasha just smiled patiently, “would a kiss make it better?”

Darcy seemed to consider the offer before nodding, “Baeebe.”

V.

“So…”

Darcy edged closer to the bed, and her girlfriend huffed from her propped up position, uncomfortably twisting her bandaged arm to properly look at her. “So, what, Darcy?”

“I was thinking…”

“...Yes?” Natasha raised an eyebrow and Darcy’s lips curled. It was kind of amusing when she tried that move on her.

“Since you’re on forced bed rest for the week…” she put her hands on the bedsheets for an added bonus, really, and snorted when Nat’s good arm swatted at them playfully.

“Darcy, are you going to spit it out already?”

“The new Pony Movie is out on DVD and we need to watch it right now,” she rushed to explain, her face smiling her best ‘please please please’ smile.

Natasha’s face twisted into some sort of  expression of comedic horror. “No. We are not watching your Flashing Sparkle-”

“Twilight Sparkle.”

Natasha’s look should have murdered her on the spot, instead she just giggled.

“Darcy, we’ve talked about our relationship’s limits. I let you drag me to sushi once every two months or so and about the weapon thingy and the samovar but, I draw the line at cutesy ponies after we watched together the last seven seasons. Watch it with Clint. Oh no. Don’t look at me like that, I said no-”

There were ponies.

Cute, pink and purple ponies trying to save their land with the Power of Friendship (’It’s the Magic of Friendship, Nat!’ Clint would say.).

Darcy was not crying. No, no she was totally crying.

She sniffled for the third time as the fireworks lit the Palace of Canterlot at the end of the movie. She dared to look at her girlfriend, who had stopped complaining and making snide comments after the first ten minutes of the movie and who was watching with rapt attention.

She snuggled closer, not daring to break the spell, and she smiled when Natasha’s good arm wrapped more firmly around her shoulders.

The ending song wasn’t yet over when Natasha’s eyes were on her. “Is the new pony in the next season?”

VI. (V + I)

“Did you know that the tabloids are speculating that we’re actually getting married in secret?”

Darcy raised her head from the pile of spectacularly useless items she’d been sorting for the Avengers Charity Grab Bag.

“Huh. Go figure.” And she went back to scavenging stuff they could actually use.

Stark had offered to fund it by himself, but Steve had argued that the community had to feel involved somehow. It still hadn’t stopped him from buying a ton of junk and donating it for the event.

“Clint’s been talking about it all day,” Natasha continued.

“Has he?” her girlfriend said absentmindedly, pawing a blue box that was probably empty.

“Yep. All hurt that he didn’t get to witness it.”

“Oh, he must be heartbroken,” she deadpanned. “Tell him he can be your witness, Jane wants to be mine.” It took them both three seconds to realize what had been said.

They hadn’t really talked about it, marriage.

“Do you…” Natasha started carefully, “are you serious?”

Darcy blinked, then smiled, “of course.”

A pile of merchandise fell somewhere, crashing on the floor. Neither of them cared.

“I love you, of course I want to marry you.”

Natasha smiled, “I love you too.”

#darcy x natasha #happy birthday bloom #darcy lewis #go bloom! #fluff

[theguyeatinghissocks]

Together: a Feast of Fortuna gift for sillyotter

Er…hi there @sillyotter! Sorry your gift’s so late into the posting period. I’ve no real excuse.

In any case, it’s done now, so please, enjoy!

Together: A Feast of Fortuna story

Hazel found it adorable how caring Frank was. All she’d done was point out the fuzzy little duck sitting in the corner of the milk-bottle stand and he’d walked over, a determined look on his face, and thrown down two solidi for three softballs.

“Frank, you don’t need to do this.” she exclaimed, affection clear in her golden eyes.

“I know,” he replied, “but I want to.”

“No powers.” said the man behind the counter, eyeing Frank with barely concealed suspicion.

Frank’s eyes fixed themselves upon the lowest and furthest left bottle.

“Let’s do this.”

He took a ball into his hand. He pulled it back into a good position. He took aim. Calculated just how much power he’d need to put into the throw to knock it out from under the other bottles. Breathed in. Breathed out. And threw…

“Two balls left.” said the carnie with an unimpressed look on his face.

Frank couldn’t believe it. He’d missed. And he’d been so sure of his throw! Quickly, he grabbed another ball and threw it with his full strength at the six bottles standing tauntingly at the back of the booth. This time, the ball hit them. But it also tore a hole through the back of the tent and didn’t stop until Frank couldn’t see it through the hole anymore. A moment later there was a loud bang as though the ball had hit something wooden, a splash, and then a loud cheer.

Frank looked at Hazel who shrugged and made a non-committal noise.

He turned back to the now slightly annoyed carnie who was sizing up the hole in his tent as though he was trying to figure out exactly how much he could squeeze from Frank and cleared his throat. The man stopped his inspection of the tent canvas and glowered scathingly at the son of Mars.

“I said no powers, didn’t I? That ball must have been going fast enough to break bones! No way you weren’t using powers!”

Frank had to admit, he might have morphed his arm a little to enhance his strength.

“Sorry about your tent.” He said, more than a bit shameful.

“Yeah, well just get on with your last attempt.” the man huffed and he threw Frank his last ball from on the counter in front of him. Frank fumbled as he tried to catch it and ended up dropping it to the grassy floor.

Straightening up again after he picked up the ball, Hazel took a hold of Frank’s arm, leant up and planted a soft kiss on his cheek.

“For luck.” she smiled.

The son of war touched his cheek tenderly and resolved to win his girlfriend that damn duck. It was the least he could do for putting up with his clumsy self.

He took in a breath and held it for a moment, sized up the bottles at the other end of the tent, watched the carnie roll his eyes, released his breath, and threw the ball.

<><><><><>

Leo watched Frank and Hazel walk past with an odd feeling of betrayal. From what he could tell, they’d not done anything against him, what with the way Hazel was hugging that weird duck thing with a content smile on her face and Frank walked beside her with a confident grin on his face and a spring in his step.

A minute ago, a surprise softball had torn through the back of the tent directly opposite Leo’s Dunk Tank™ and smashed into the target he’d rigged up to the board he’d sat himself upon. The grin on his face had vanished faster than a shot from a gun and he’d been dropped into the blueness below his feet. Now, he was drying himself off and preparing to retake his position on the board.

Putting the towel down behind the dunk tank, Leo contemplated the whole event going on around his stall. So far he’d made a grand total of 76 solidi from the happy masses of people who wanted to dunk one of the famed seven and considering he’d only spent a grand total of 48 solidi for the materials for his stall, the young mechanic had already brought in a profit. And he’d only been open for two hours!

Leo glanced about at the people about him. People of all different shapes and sizes were here. He’d seen Paolo, the Brazilian son of Hebe who spoke only Portuguese and yet understood perfectly what was being said to him, Jenny, an Australian daughter of Postvorta who, for some unknown to him reason, hated rice with a passion and a whole host of other people from a wide variety of backgrounds. He could even swear that he’d seen a number of people wearing white linen outfits that Leo had only ever seen in Annabeth’s Egyptology books.

As Leo watched the proceedings, however, he noticed something common to each and every one of these people. They each had a smile on their faces. Be they large, joyful smiles full of life and amusement or small, more shy smiles of people who were much more content simply to watch from the sidelines, the smiles were ever constant and Leo loved it. This was what he lived for.

“COME ON!” he yelled out to the crowd, climbing up onto his board again, “SEE IF YOU CAN DUNK THE GREAT LEO VALDEZ, MECHANIC EXTRAORDINAIRE, HERO OF OLYMPUS AND SUPREME COMMANDER OF THE ARGO II!”

A few of the crowd chuckled at Leo’s antics, shook their heads and moved on but a fair number more drew themselves closer to the young son of Hephaestus and brought out their wallets and purses. Really, the money didn’t matter as much as Leo made it out to but he had a reputation to uphold and metal for inventions wasn’t always just laying about but when Leo saw the corners of his customers’ mouths turn up as they took a hold of their designated bean bags, Leo knew. He had found his calling in life.

And it was making people happy.

<><><><><>

As Nico sat in the pink plastic boat, the giant neon ‘Tunnel Of Love And Also Maybe A Couple Of Spiders’ sign shining annoyingly above him, he realised that, in the few months he had been dating Will Solace, son of Apollo, he’d been forced to endure many things in the name of love. There had been the time where Will had made the young son of Hades go clothes shopping and had forbidden him from getting anything solely black. ‘It won’t make you seem cooler,’ Will had said, ‘It will only make you seem like an edgy teen who likes death metal way too much.’ Which Nico though was slightly unfair seeing as Will knew Nico hated that genre. Too much noise in his opinion. Give him Mozart or Beethoven over Metallica or Slipknot anyday.

“I still say this is pointless.” said the boy

“Come on, Nico, we’ve been over this. It may not be a once in a lifetime opportunity but I’d like do this at least once. And either way, it’s a bit late now.” returned his partner, sitting next to him and holding his hand, his fingers intertwined with Nico’s.

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.” mumbled Nico almost too low for Will to hear.

Will smiled and kissed his forehead.

“Thank you.”

“Alright, gents!” Yelled the ride attendant, a somewhat portly gentleman with a limp, trying to make himself heard over Leo shouting about his titles, “So begins your journey into the ‘Tunnel of Love! Watch out for the spiders!”

The boat lurched forwards with a loud clunk and off the young couple went, Will with a serene yet somewhat humorous smile on his face and Nico with his face buried in his jacket and a blush red enough to make Mars jealous (the planet, not the god, he was above such menial things as jealousy).

Five minutes later, the two emerged on the other side, grinning despite the spiders burrowing into their pockets. The ride had been so cheesy it had to be deliberate. The fake cherubs had each followed their boat’s position jerkily and had stuttered when the extremely obvious speaker in their mouths had shouted about how they’d be ‘together forev-ev-ev-ever’. Nico had scoffed at them but Will had hushed him and called them charming.

Yeah, to monsters, maybe.

And to make it even worse, the whole place had been decorated as though someone had let a hyperactive ten year old go insane with the pink glitter and craft paper just long enough to make it look like it was Valentine’s day at the North Pole and Santa had gone all out this year.

“Alright, I admit it,” laughed Nico, “that was better than I expected it to be.”

“I told you it would be!” Exclaimed Will, playfully pushing Nico a little, causing him to bump into whoever it was that was sprinting into the opposite direction and fall over.

“Sorry!” Nico yelled but the person had already turned a corner round a stall and vanished.

Will giggled and knelt down to help his boyfriend up.

“I love you, Nico.”

“I love you too, Will.”

<><><><><>

‘Damn it all to tartarus!’ Reyna mentally cried as she ran, ‘It’s midday and the pachinko machine still isn’t up yet!’ Reyna did not know exactly why pachinko was the roman goddess of luck’s favourite game, not even considering the camp’s offerings if there was not a machine present at the festivities. It didn’t even need to be used and often wasn’t due to the majority of the army being under 18, just so long as one was there.

Hurrying in between a ring toss stall and a hook-a-duck, Reyna looked at her clipboard. Three stalls had yet to pay for their placements, the starter for the feast itself had yet to be prepared due to a severe lack of lettuce being delivered to the kitchens and the pachinko machine still wasn’t set up!

She’d had her clipboard enchanted so it would update itself whenever an item on it was completed no matter where it was in relation to the actual event which she had thought would have made things easier but instead it had only led to Reyna getting even more agitated as she knew that stuff wasn’t done as opposed to occasionally being pleasantly surprised when something was done without her having to be present.

Growling softly, Reyna started sprinting as she turned a corner and almost immediately bumped into someone, knocking them over. She didn’t have time to make sure they were ok, however, as she had business to attend to elsewhere.

She turned another corner and was greeted with the sight of two of Artemis’ hunters sitting on her damnable pachinko machine, each with a strange device in their hands which looked like a larger version of those flip phones Reyna had seen.

At first, Reyna had been grateful when Artemis offered the services of her hunters in getting the festivities in order but now Reyna saw that they just really didn’t care all that much.

“What are you doing?!” she yelled, “There’s no time for this!” This was a very big day, one of the most important days of the year for Camp Jupiter, and these two were jeopardising their whole operation!

“Uh…” began the one on the left, whom Reyna decided to call ‘tweedle-dum’, “Destroying Michelle’s Snorlax?” At this, the one on the right, Michelle, appeared to completely forget about Reyna’s presence and turned to her friend.

“Amy, you liar! You were not! If anything-”

“If anything, the two of you should be putting up that gods damned pachinko machine!” Reyna ground out as she clenched her fists. There was only so much time in this day and if it wasn’t at least adequate…well, she didn’t know how Camp Jupiter would survive without Fortuna’s blessing.

Now, while Artemis’ hunters usually didn’t care much for the two camps but what with how Reyna had all but sprouted turned into a monster, the sight of the praetor angry made the two slightly fearful; she’d gone rather red in her anger, had closed her eyes to deal with their apparent idiocy and the way she had balled her hands into fists meant that Michelle and Amy were somewhat fearful for their lives.

“Please, don’t worry,” said Amy placatingly, “We’ll do it now, I swear on the styx!”

“Yeah,” agreed Michelle as thunder rolled, “I swear on the styx!”

Reyna rubbed the bridge of her nose and sighed.

“Fine. But it best be done within the hour.”

“Sure!”

As Reyna turned away, she knew that the two would do their job.

Now for those freaking starters…

<><><><><>

Had Piper known that Jason was such a gambler at heart, maybe she wouldn’t have suggested going over to the pachinko machines. Since their coming over to the machine, Jason had only gone and spent what had to be at least his weight in gold. Piper was only slightly exaggerating. The boy had won with surprising frequency, however, and at the moment, Piper was pretty sure he was actually turning a minor profit.

“Damn it!” yelled the son of Jupiter, hitting the machine again as a ball fell to the bottom of the machine for the fifth time in a row, finally losing just enough to make it so he’d somehow managed to break even.

“Come on Jason, we’ve been doing this for almost an hour! Let’s go get some food!” Piper had watched as Jason stood in front of the machine just as often growling at it and kicking it as he did cheering and dancing about.

“Hmm?” Jason made a noncommittal noise but as he turned back to face his girlfriend, his face softened and he sighed.

“Sure. Where’d you wanna go?”

At this, Piper’s face lit up and she fiercely hugged him, kissing his cheek softly in gratitude.

“What about hot dogs?”

“Good choice,” grinned Jason, “shall we go, milady?” He asked, offering the crook of his arm to the daughter of aphrodite which she took almost instantly.

“I believe we shall, brave knight,” giggled Piper, a smile evident on her face.

The two walked arm in arm between the stalls; it was just starting to get late so people were getting ready to shut the whole place down in preparation for the actual feast in the coliseum later.

“Hey Pipes?” Jason asked.

Piper looked up to her boyfriend’s face. He seemed to be deep in thought as his brow furrowed and his eyes were focused on something off in the distance.

“Yes?”

“What do you wanna do in the future?”

Piper was caught off guard. The future? Well she’d wanted to go to college and then get a job though that would probably mean settling down somewhere for a little while, three years at least.

“I don’t know,” returned the cherokee beauty, “I was probably going to go to college here at Camp Jupiter then get a job. Or something along those lines.” Piper had never really thought about what she’d wanted to do in the future and being put on the spot left her feeling rather awkward.

That awkwardness melted away, however, when she looked up at Jason and she saw the small smile on his face.

“I’ve always wanted to be a teacher, y’know? Training the next generation and all that. Probably find a place in New Rome while I do the training then move out somewhere and teach kids. And if any of them just so happen to be demi-gods, well, I’m definitely not just about to let monsters get them.”

Piper was surprised, she’d never thought Jason had even liked children, let alone wanted to work with them. A small, tender smile grew on her face as she gazed at his face, taking in the conviction evident there.

“That sounds awesome,” she murmured, leaning into his shoulder.

<><><><><>

When Artemis had told Thalia to take the hunters to Camp Jupiter for the Feast of Fortuna, she had initially been surprised. Then annoyed. Why should they have to go over to that very Roman camp where there’d more than likely be a possibility of reigniting the war? They should just stay away and let the two camps sort out their own disputes.

However, when Thalia had actually sat down and watched the proceedings, she was surprised at the lack of ill will present at the event. Sure, people got annoyed at the carnies every so often, but there was always laughter in the air and all of the feast’s patrons nearly always had a smile on their faces.

The atmosphere was infectious and Thalia often caught herself smiling at the people wandering about in front of her and even chuckling occasionally when someone got completely done over by a stall owner. It was all fun and games, after all, and everybody appeared to know that so they didn’t take it seriously. They simply sighed, grinned fondly, and moved on.

But it was only when Thalia saw Jason and Piper walk past, her head on his shoulder, a lazy grin on his face as he watched her laugh, that it started to sink in.

The two camps were not gonna fall out again. Inter-camp relations had grown to a ridiculous extent. She very much could have been unable to believe that these people had been at war with each other not a year ago had she not been present for the events herself.

As the day began to turn to night, reds and oranges hijacking the sky to lay themselves out on it and go to sleep, a horn sounded from the coliseum and people started to wander over for the feast proceedings.

After a few minutes of watching the good will between campers, Thalia stood up and began to move in the direction of the coliseum herself.

She continued to consider the people of the camps as she walked. These were all people, no matter how much of an eclectic group they were. And they all relied on each other to get through it all, Gaia having been defeated by a team of Greeks and Romans together had an amazing effect on many people’s mindsets and Thalia had no doubts that, in time, these camps were gonna stick together and grow closer, no matter what apocalyptic event may be occurring this year.

They’d get through it together.

<><><><><>

“…and may Fortuna bless us all!” finished Frank and Reyna together, sitting back down. Frank immediately turned back to Hazel and her weird duck thing and Reyna had pulled out that clipboard again.

As dinner had wound down and people had started to finish their desserts, the two had stood up and delivered a very regal speech on the day’s events and how they were certain Fortuna would bless Camp Jupiter this year. Annabeth could tell they wanted to say she might do the same for Camp Half-Blood but she knew they felt that might annoy the goddess, presuming what she would do as though she were mortal.

“Should we go then?” Percy asked as he prepared himself to stand up and offered his hand to Annabeth, who was sitting to Percy’s right which she took without hesitation.

A few moments of consideration later, as she watched the people the people filter out of the stone ring and out into the night, she turned to him and nodded, yawning.

Percy chuckled.

“You tired, Wise Girl? D’ya want a piggyback back to the apartment?”

Annabeth appeared to consider it for a moment as the pair stood up. Then she yawned again and she glared at him when he snickered.

“For that, you’re carrying me the whole way. Including the stairs!” She said, to which Percy blanched. Their apartment was on the top floor of a 10 story block and Annabeth really wasn’t amazingly heavy but that was still a lot of stair to do.

Eventually Percy just sighed and crouched down for Annabeth to hop on, which she did without hesitation.

And then they were off, meandering back to their shared apartment that they had bought after the second Giant War.

The two went in silence, each enjoying the other’s company, satisfied to watch as the reds and oranges that dyed the sky darkened as dusk made itself known.

“Hey Percy?” mumbled Annabeth sleepily.

“Yeah?” Replied the son of Poseidon.

“You know I love you, right?”

Percy frowned. What had brought this on?

“Just as much as you know I love you. Which is way too much to be in any way safe for either of our healths, by the way,”

Annabeth giggled dazedly and buried her head in Percy’s back.

“I just feel like I don’t say it all that much.”

“You don’t need to if you don’t want to. You show it in other ways.”

“I just want to make sure you know.”

Percy smiled at that.

“I know, Annabeth. I love you too.”

After that, it didn’t take long for Annabeth to fall asleep and start making what Percy found to be cute snoring noises.

Of course, that left him alone to deal with the ten flights of stairs back up to the apartment.

But Percy had no doubt, not just for right now, but for forever, that they would be fine. They would survive, as long as they were together, they’d laugh and smile and kiss and love each other.

Forever.

As night settled over the camp, people of all different types laid their heads against their pillows and went to sleep, the future uncertain but they all knew that they’d get through it.

Together.

#fof2017 #sorry it's so late

[re-rift]

A Ballad in Three Acts || Itoji || Epilogue

I.

Death was blissful for Itoji Miyagi.

The bang of the gunshot to his neck was nothing compared to the resolving note, the final chord Itoji played before dying a somewhat gruesome, if not comparatively mundane death. The warmth of blood travelling down his neck-- a phantom sensation more than anything else-- was more like a warm hug, an embrace from behind, reminding him that, despite everything, he did live. He lived for as long and as well as he could, well enough to be able to bleed over what he loved most.

The light was blinding but it also felt cleansing, washing away all the sins he had committed in this life-- maybe cleansing enough to be absolved of them. Had he done enough, he wondered, until the very end? Was he good enough in this life? The thought always plagued him, every decision he made in this crisis making him wonder if he deserved what came next. Well, whatever the case may be, he was about to find out. 

And so the light came, and it came, and it had not stopped coming. Itoji Miyagi wakes up staring at a light rather than… being in the light. That couldn’t be right, could it? He looks up, realizing that he’s lying down in some sort of pod, his own breath fogging up the glass above him. The pod opens, and suddenly the afterlife looks a lot like a laboratory. Slowly, hesitantly, he sits up, taking in the room around him. There’s more pods, and more people, is that--

The sigh is familiar and unfamiliar with the relief that touches it; a noise of someone trying to sound exasperated but succeeding only in appearing to release a breath that was being held. It’s short, like the footsteps that follow. It’s short, like the amount of time Itoji gets to process before arms wrap around his shoulders.

A gentle motion, meant not to jar him too much. The hand that rests on top of his head is gentle, too. Mingzhu hugs him, chuckling softly.

“Good morning, Itoji. You really did sleep in a bit too much, dear.”

A quick “Ah-?” escapes Itoji as he’s hugged, still taking in everything going on. Of course the voice, and the gesture, are familiar. Too familiar. And, with everything that’s happened so far, he assumes the worst—

“Mingzhu-san? Oh, no, they… they got you too…?!” His eyes begin to water.

Another laugh, this one punctuated by a pat to his head. “Now, now. Surely you don’t think me that careless as to go and do something silly like die. Fufu, I suppose it’s something of a long story -- in fact, you did us something of a favour...” That explanation could come in a moment. For now…

“You are not dead. None of us are.”

“I— None of us are—“ No, Itoji Miyagi had definitely died. There’s even a faint sharpness on the back of his neck, a warmth, the embrace of death still lingering around him… Or maybe he’s mistaken it for Mingzhu’s embrace. Mingzhu, who is most certainly alive, embracing Itoji, who most certainly died… Could it really be? Could he really…

Before he can stop it, the tears start running down his cheeks, and his mouth contorts to stop him from crying out in joy. He lets out the faintest of whimpers as he gently pushes Mingzhu off of him to wipe his tears— “Y-Your clothes, I-I don’t want to cry on your clothes”— and start looking around the room, recognizing the people around him, both those he had watch die and those he didn’t. 

Against all odds, Itoji Miyagi had cheated death twice.

“Oh, Mingzhu-san… What… How…” He does a scan of the room again. “Hades-san… I-I have to apologize to…”

Mingzhu leans back, giving Itoji the space to look at the room lined with pods that had become far too familiar to them; they can barely remember the unease at seeing it for the first time. And--

They give him a wry smile.

“Ahh, well… funny you should mention that. Regarding that favour you did us…”

He certainly had missed a lot, hadn’t he?

II.

For trapping him in a killing game for Lorde knows how long, Itoji is treated quite well by the Valhalla staff.

It takes a few days for everything to sink in-- the fact that he had died and yet is living now. He’s caught up on everything that he had missed-- killing the mastermind was the most shocking of it all, of course-- and he can’t believe that, despite the circumstances, the nineteen (or, eighteen, he supposes-- who would’ve thought Tomio to be a serial killer?) of them had survived two killing games. It feels selfish, almost, that he was able to cheat death twice.

But he can’t help but feel that this wasn’t an accident. For the first time since his first mutual killing game, he could picture himself living beyond tomorrow, beyond the next week. The future feels tangible, as if he could mold it with just one hand, even if the other’s been tied around his back. For the first time, maybe in his life, Itoji was excited at the prospect of living. And yet, there’s a pit in his chest that still hasn’t been filled, a grief that will stay with him forever… 

It’s another day of looking out the window into the futuristic world he’s found himself in from his accommodated room when a Valhalla staff member walks into his room, an oddly grim look on their face. They had been coming in periodically to give him updates-- health updates, how travelling back would ultimately work. It’s nothing out of the blue, but for whatever reason, they seem to approach Itoji with hesitation.

“Miyagi-san, I have an update on your home rift,” they say. Itoji turns his attention to them, cocking his head in curiosity. “I… I’m not quite else sure how to say this, but… Your home rift no longer exists.”

“It… It no longer exists?” Itoji repeats.

“It seems… the passage of time on your home rift was much more accelerated than we expected. Its universe has died, in simple terms.” They pause, looking down at their feet as they cement what Itoji has already realized. “There… There is no rift for you to go back to. I am so sorry.”

Itoji waits, sitting patiently, waiting for his heart to drop. For the sadness to hit him all at once, the same way it did when he realized Riho was dying, when he realized he had killed Senka, when he realized he had killed Hades-- but it doesn’t. He finds tears welling up in his eyes again, yet, despite it all, he can’t help but… smile. 

He imagines a world-- perhaps this futuristic one he’s found himself in-- where he can live again. It feels like so long ago, and perhaps now it really has, since he was able to do exactly what he wanted. His heart begins to beat faster, and he feels another embrace rush across his whole body-- relief. The tears stream down his face as it all sinks in. There was no death on the horizon, no more despair. No more apocalypse to fight in, no more people depending on him to save the world… 

In a way, this is (almost) everything he’s ever wanted.

“Miyagi-san?” the staffer repeats. “Are you alright?”

“I-I,” he stutters, “I… I think I’m going to be okay,” he says. 

As he’s wiping his tears, the door whips open. He hears panting, and, looking up through teary eyes, he sees a familiar woman. Long shiny red hair, familiarly warm red eyes, tearing up exactly in the same way he is. When he opens his mouth to speak, she does so at the same time, and their voices melt together in the same perfect harmony.

“Ito-chan,” she says.

“Ri-chan,” he says.

Riho rushes towards him, arms wrapping each other, and in an instant, Itoji Miyagi is whole again. 

III.

Muscle memory is a beautiful thing.

His fingers glide over the keys with grace, not a second thought taken to the notes being played. He hears, and he reacts, just as an accompanist should. 

The violin sounds exactly how he remembers it to sound, and the keys he plays complement them perfectly. 

His eyes closed, he doesn’t need to see to know that all of this isn’t just in his head-- that he isn’t alone anymore. 

This, he thinks, this is everything I’ve ever wanted.

#Epilogue #Itoji #submission

[tripstations]

Travel Through Canada and the U.S. This Summer Holiday

This month, we are celebrating two nations’ days by reading our way through Toronto, Montreal, and 1930s Kentucky.

Chai Factor is set mainly in Toronto.

The Chai Factor

In the Chai Factor by Farah Heron ($22.99, HarperCollins Canada), Amira Khan is just about done grad school. She comes back to her grandmother’s Toronto home to work finish her paper in the quiet of her basement apartment to discover her grandmother has rented it out to a barbershop quartet, who are practicing for an upcoming rehearsal.

While a small town north of Toronto gets mentioned in this book, Toronto has centre stage and Heron, who calls Toronto home, describes the city perfectly.

“The giant maze of hallways and escalators of Toronto’s Union Station was a nightmare to navigate on the best of days, but in the early hours of the evening rush, it was a sea of people as well.”

We spent a lot of time on Toronto’s transit system as Amira takes the TTC, its subway and streetcar, from place to place including its downtown waterfront.

Amira also spends a lot of time within Toronto’s public library system including the Toronto Reference Library, the “perfect place to lose a couple of hours in research.”

We get to hang out in the Sparrow, a local haunt, which in real life is now closed, but during the book Amira and her friend Reena hang out there frequently. “It was the kind of place with brewed coffee at all hours and decent beer on tap. And a killer Sunday brunch.”

There are a lot of Canadianism in the book.

“Reena giggled again. ‘All right, all right, sorry, Meer. No boyfriend, just school work. But you have to admit, this is funny. A gay, Muslim, lumberjack barbershop quartet living in your basement. You couldn’t make this up if you tried’…”

The Canadian apology: “Years with a temper worse than Hades’ meant she knew when to grovel, and being born and raised in Canada meant she knew how to apologize.”

Amira and Reena walk to a downtown beer festival, and Amira notes Toronto’s multiculturalism.

“The sun was setting over the horizon, bathing the sky in a rosy, almost otherworldly glow. There was nothing Amira loved more than Toronto in the spring. She was born and raised in the city, and she loved that her home was the kind of place with a Peruvian coffee house next to an Afghan Kebab shop, next to a Jewish deli wafting with the scent of bagels from a wood-burning oven.”

The Birds That Stay is set in Montreal and surrounding towns.

The Birds That Stay

In Ann Lambert’s murder mystery The Birds that Stay ($19.95, Second Story Press), set in Montreal and the towns surrounding the city, we learn the history of some of the place names including Ste. Lucie, “the village of eight hundred or so souls about six minutes from her house and an hour northeast of Montreal, was named for a fourteenth-century saint who blinded herself because she could not bear to witness all the sins in the world. Or she popped them out herself to discourage a persistent suitor, having sworn to preserve her virginity, of course. Every July, a few hundred Italian Montrealers emptied out of yellow school buses and paraded her statue (a woman carrying her two eyeballs on a platter) through the four streets in town.”

Police officer Romeo also mentions how the towns are named after saints, suggesting the irony as the province is “staunchly secular.”

“Saint Lawrence, after whom the massive river that encircled Montreal was named, has been roasted alive. Sainte Agathe had refused the advances of a Roman perfect and for that had her breasts cut off. Saint Hippoltye had been torn apart by horses.”

We learn that maybe you shouldn’t drive in Quebec.

“She made the first hair-raising turn onto the 329, accelerating like a torpedo not to get rear-ended. Driving in Quebec was unlike anywhere else, really. Crosswalks? Don’t even think about it. Drivers tried to hit people in them.”

We learn about Quebec’s food – hot dogs ‘stime’ (pronounced “steam-y”) or toastes, and poutine – french fries covered in melting cheese curd, drowned in brown gravy or “la sauce brune”

Hockey gets mentioned, although Remeo admits not liking the sport: “All Canadian boys were supposed to play hockey. It was something that was never questioned. It was like baseball to Americans. Soccer to Latin Americans. Cricket to Indians.

“Romeo’s shameful secret was that he never liked hockey. He didn’t see the point of chasing a puck for hours and hours on end. He didn’t like the hyper-masculine bravado of the coaches and the desperation of the fathers for their sons to be the best. Every Quebecois boy was supposed to dream of playing for the Montreal Canadiens, and every father seemed to think it was a possibility.”

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is set in the 1930s in Kentucky.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michelle Richardson ($22.99, HarperCollins Canada) is set in 1930s Kentucky at a time when people were out of work and starving. Then U.S. president Teddy Roosevelt created jobs to help get people working including the Kentucky Pack Horse Project, which saw mainly women deliver books and other reading materials to some of the hardest to reach places in Kentucky. One such woman was Bluet, nicknamed for her blue skin.

Despite the hardships and sadness – and there is lots in this book – there is also beauty as Bluet appreciates her home and it shows in her descriptions of the places she travels to deliver her books.

“At the mouth of the woodlands, Junia (a mule) rooted herself to a halt and perked her ears. After a bit of coaxing, I urged her on into the belly of the woods. Inside, dark earth, leaves, rotting logs and crawling moss rose among the pine saplings, cottonwoods and honey locusts and the canopied the beaten path, pulling me deeper into my thoughts.”

Book Women travelled through tough parts of the countryside to deliver their parcels of books, magazines, and newspapers, but after going through woods and streams, Bluet finds herself on Lovett’s Ridge:

“Layers of dark-blue mountains stacked in the distance, at every turn their cuts rolling, deepening, then lightening to shades of blue-greens from the day’s passing clouds. The air blew fresh and breezy. Scents of apple blossoms lifted from a nearby tree, and honeysuckles clung to a crumbling split-rail fence as swallowtails and fat-legged bees flitted above the old timbers and dipped for nectar. Ii was a alive. You could feel the heartbeat of this mountain…”

We celebrate Independence Day in Troublesome Creek.

“Women carried cakes, pies, and tasty eats and arranged them on red-checkered cloth tables. Menfolk sliced watermelon and made a dandy spread of deer sausage and other game they’d trapped for the festivities. Folks gathered at the Company store to chatter. Families claimed patches of grass in shady spots and spread out quilts and baskets groaning with prized recipes.”

A copy of these books was provided by HarperCollins Canada and Second Story Press for an honest review. The opinions are my own.

The post Travel Through Canada and the U.S. This Summer Holiday appeared first on Tripstations.

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[starcitizenprivateer]

Whisperer in the Dark

Writer’s Note: Published originally in Jump Point 1.1, this story takes place before the events of The Lost Generation.

People complicate things. That’s what they’ve always been good at. Take a look at any functioning civilization and you will see chaos, confusion, and frustration. It could be human, Xi’an, Banu, Vanduul, whoever. We may look different, be built different, but boil us down and you’ll find the same insecurities, fears, and anxieties gnawing.

Tonya Oriel watched the yawning abyss outside the window. Kaceli’s Adagio in 4 gently wafted through the otherwise empty ship. Scanners cycled through their spectrums on the hunt for any flagged anomalies.

The void. It was pure. It was simple. It was permanent.

A calm serenity huddled around Tonya’s shoulders like a blanket, the kind that can only exist when you are the only person for thousands of kilometers. Everyone else can have Terra, Earth, or Titus, with their megacities teeming with people. Never a moment where there wasn’t a person above, beside or below you. Everything was noise. Tonya needed the silence.

Her ship, the Beacon, drifted through that silence. Tonya customized almost every hardpoint and pod with some form of scanner, deep-range comm system, or surveying tech to get her further and further from the noise.

The problem was that the noise kept following.

* * * *

After three weeks on the drift, Tonya couldn’t put it off any longer. She was due for a supply run and to sell off the data and minerals she’d collected. After repairs, new scrubbers, and a spectrum update, she hoped she’d have enough for some food.

The Xenia Shipping Hub in the Baker System had been the closest thing to a home she’d had for the past few years. Tonya set her approach through the shifting entry/exit patterns of ships. The station’s traffic was busier than usual. As soon as the Beacon docked, her screen buzzed with a handful of new messages from the spectrum. She passed them to her mobiGlas and went to the airlock.

Tonya paused by the entry and savored this last moment of solitude as the airlock cycled, then hit the button.

The sound of people swept inside like a wave. She took a second to acclimate, adjusted her bag and crossed into the masses.

Carl ran a small information network out of his bar, the Torchlight Express. An old surveyor for a long-defunct terraforming outfit, Carl traded moving minerals for slinging booze and information. Tonya had known him for years. As far as people went, Carl was a gem.

The Express was dead. Tonya checked local time. It was evening so there was no real reason why it should be like this. A group of prospectors sat at a table in the corner, engaged in a hushed conversation. Carl leaned against the bar, watching a sataball game on the wallscreen. His leathery fingers tapped out a beat to some song in his head.

He brightened up when he saw Tonya.

“Well, well, well, to what do we owe the honor, doctor?” He said with a grin.

“Don’t start, Carl.”

“Sure, sorry, doctor.” He must be bored; he only called her that when he wanted to pick a fight. Tonya slung her bag onto the ground and slid onto a stool.

“Anything interesting?” Tonya pulled her hair back into a tie.

“I’m great, Tonya, thanks for asking. Business is a little slow, but you know how it is.” Carl said sarcastically and slid a drink to her.

“Come on, Carl. I’m not gonna patronize you with small-talk.”

Carl sighed and looked around.

“At this point, I’ll take any patrons I can get.” He poured himself a drink from the dispenser. Tonya swiveled her mobiGlas around and showed him her manifest. He looked it over. “Running kinda light this time, huh?”

“I know. You know any buyers?”

“How much you looking to get?”

“Whatever I can,” Tonya said as she sipped. She could tell Carl was annoyed with the non-answer. “I need the money.”

“I might be able to get you ten.” He said after a long pause.

“I would give you my unborn child for ten.”

“With all the unborn kids you owe me, you better get started.” He said. Tonya smacked his arm.

One of the prospectors drifted over to the bar with empty glasses. He was young, one of those types who cultivated the dirty handsome look. Probably spent an hour perfecting it before going out.

“Another round.”

As Carl poured, the prospector looked at Tonya, giving his looks a chance to work their magic. They failed. Carl set a fresh batch of drinks down. The prospector paid and went back slightly deterred.

“I think someone liked you.” Carl teased.

“Not my type.”

“Living?”

“Exactly.” Tonya watched the prospectors. They were really in an overtly secretive conversation. “Any idea what they’re here for?”

“Of course I do.”

“Yeah? What’d they say?”

“Nothing… well, not to me anyway.” Carl pulled an earpiece out and held it out to her. Tonya wiped it off and took a listen. Suddenly she could hear their conversation loud and clear. Tonya looked at Carl, stunned.

“You have mics on your tables?!” She whispered. Carl shushed her.

“I deal in information, honey, so yeah.” Carl said, almost offended that he wouldn’t listen in on his customers.

Tonya took another sip and listened to the prospectors. It only took a little while to catch up. Apparently Cort, the prospector who tried to woo Tonya with his ruggedness, got a tip from his uncle in the UEE Navy. The uncle had been running Search & Rescue drills in the Hades System when their scanners accidentally picked up a deposit of kherium on Hades II. Being the military, of course, they couldn’t do anything, but Cort and his buddies were fixing to sneak in there and harvest it for themselves.

Kherium was a hot commodity. If these prospectors were on the level, they were talking about a tidy little fortune. Certainly enough to patch up the Beacon, maybe even install some upgrades.

Even better, they obviously didn’t know how to find it. Kherium doesn’t show up on a standard metal or rad scan. It takes a specialist to find, much less extract without corrupting it. Fortunately for Tonya, she knew how to do both. “You’ve got that look.” Carl said and refilled her glass. “Good news?”

“I hope so, Carl, for both of us.”

* * * *

Carl offloaded her haul at a discount so she could set out as quick as possible. Last time she checked, the prospectors were still at the Express and from the sound of it, they wouldn’t leave for a couple hours, maybe a day.

Tonya disengaged the Beacon from the dock and was back in her beloved solitude. The engines hummed as they pushed her deeper into space, pushed her toward a lifeline.

The Hades System was a tomb, the final monument of an ancient civil war that obliterated an entire system and the race that inhabited it. Tonya had it on her list of places to study, but every year Hades was besieged by fresh batches of young scientists exploring it for their dissertation or treasure hunters looking for whatever weapon cracked Hades IV in half. So the system became more noise to avoid.

Tonya had to admit that passing Hades IV was always a thrill. It’s not every day you get to see the guts of a planet killed in its prime.

Then there were the whispers that the system was haunted. There was always some pilot who knew a guy who knew someone who had seen something while passing through the system. The stories ranged from unexplained technical malfunctions to full-on sightings of ghost cruisers. It was all nonsense.

There was a loose stream of ships passing through Hades. The general flight lane steered clear of the central planets. Tonya slowed her ship until there was a sizeable gap in the flow of traffic before veering off toward Hades II.

She passed a barrier of dead satellites and descended into Hades II’s churning atmosphere. The Beacon jolted when it hit the clouds. Visual went to nil and suddenly the ship was bathed in noise, screaming air, and pressure. Tonya kept an eye on her scopes and expanded the range on her proximity alerts to make sure she didn’t ram a mountain.

Suddenly the clouds gave way. The Beacon swooped into the light gravity above a pitch-black ocean. Tonya quickly recalibrated her thrusters for atmospheric flight and took a long look at the planet around her.

As was expected, it was a husk. There were signs of intelligent civilization all around but all of it was crumbling, charred, or destroyed. She passed over vast curved cities built atop sweeping arches meant to keep the buildings from ever touching the planet itself.

Tonya maintained a cruising altitude. The roar of her engines echoed through the vast empty landscape. The sun was another casualty of this system’s execution. The cloud systems never abated so the surface never saw sunlight. It was always bathed in a dark greyish green haze.

Tonya studied the topography to plot out a course and set the scanners to look for the unique kherium signature she had programmed. She engaged the auto-pilot and just looked out the window.

Being here now, she kicked herself for not coming sooner. It didn’t matter that this was one of the most scientifically scrutinized locales in the UEE. Seeing the vastness of the devastation with her own eyes, Tonya felt that tug that a good mystery has on the intellect. Who were they? How did they manage to so effectively wipe themselves out? How do we know they actually wiped themselves out?

A few hours passed with no luck. Tonya had a quick snack and ran through her exercise routine. She double-checked the settings on her scans for any errors on the initial input. A couple months ago, she was surveying a planet and found nothing, only to discover on her way back that there had been one setting off that scuttled the whole scan. It still bugged her. It was an amateur mistake.

She brought up some texts on Hades. Halfway through a paper on the exobiology of the Hadesians, her screen pinged. Tonya was over there like a shot.

The scope gave a faint indication of kherium below. She triple-checked the settings before getting her hopes up. They seemed legit. She looked out the front. A small city sat above endless sea of dead trees lay ahead. It looked like an orbital laser or something had hit it excising massively deep craters from buildings and ground.

Tonya took a closer look. The craters went about six hundred feet into the ground, revealing networks of underground tunnels. They looked like some kind of transport system.

Tonya looked for a suitable landing spot with cover from overhead flights. If she was still here when the prospectors showed up, her ship would be a dead giveaway and things would get complicated.

She strapped on her environment suit and respirator. She could check the ship’s scanners through her mobiGlas but threw another handheld scanner/mapper in with her mining gear just in case. Finally, she powered up her transport crate, hoping the anti-gravity buffers would be more than enough to lug the kherium back.

Tonya stepped out onto the surface. The wind whipped around her, furiously kicking up waves of dust. She pushed the crate in front of her through the blasted forest. Gnarled branches clawed at her suit as she passed. The city loomed overhead, black silhouettes against the grey-green clouds.

Her curiosity got the better of her so Tonya decided to take a ramp up to the city streets. She told herself the detour would be easier on the crate’s battery. Smooth streets are easier for the anti-grav compensators to analyze than rough terrain.

Tonya moved through the barren, empty streets in awe. She studied the strange curvature of the architecture; each displayed an utterly alien yet brilliant understanding of pressure and weight dispersal. This whole place seemed at once natural and odd, intellectually fascinating and emotionally draining.

The kherium signature was still weak but there. Tonya maneuvered the crate around destroyed teardrop shaped vehicles. Pit-marks in the buildings and streets led her to suspect that a battle had taken place here however many hundreds or thousands of years ago.

The crater closest to the kherium was a perfect hole punched through the middle of the city into the ground. Tonya stood at the edge, looking for the easiest way down. The crate could float down but she would have to climb.

In a matter of minutes she secured a line with safeties for herself and the crate. She stepped over the edge and slowly rappelled down the sheer wall. The crate was making what should be a simple descent a little more complicated. The anti-grav buffers meant that any kind of force could cause the crate to drift away, so Tonya needed to keep a hand on it at all times. To make matters worse, the wind started picking up, flinging small rocks, branches and pieces of debris through the air.

A shrill scream tore through the air. Tonya froze. She heard it again and looked for the source. The screaming was just exposed supports bending in the wind.

Suddenly she realized, the crate had slipped out of her grasp. It slowly drifted further out over the crater, the swirling wind batted it around like a toy. Tonya strained to reach it but the crate floated just out of reach. She kicked off the wall and swung through the churning air. Her fingertips barely snagged the cargo before she slammed back against the wall of the crater.

Her vision blurred and she couldn’t breathe from the impact. The HUD went screwy. Finally she caught her breath. She took a moment or two before continuing down.

The scanner from the Beacon couldn’t isolate the signature any clearer to determine depth so she had to rely on her handheld. The kherium looked like it was situated between two tunnels.

Tonya secured the crate, climbed into the upper tunnel, and tied off her ropes. She checked her suit’s integrity in the debris-storm. The computer was a little fuzzy but gave her an okay.

She turned on a flashlight and activated the external mics on her suit. The tunnel was a perfectly carved tube that sloped into the darkness. Tonya couldn’t see any kind of power or rail system to confirm her transport tube theory. She started walking.

Hours passed in the darkness. Tonya felt a little queasy so she decided to rest for a few minutes. She sipped on the water reserve and double-checked her scanner. She was still above the kherium and it was still showing up as being in front of her. That much hadn’t changed.

She heard something. Very faint. She brought up the audio settings and pumped the gain on the external mics. A sea of white noise filled her ears. She didn’t move until she heard it again. Something being dragged then stopped.

IR and night vision windows appeared in the corners of her HUD. She couldn’t see anything. In the vast stretches of these tunnels, there’s no telling how far that sound had travelled. Still, she went to the crate and pulled the shotgun out. She made sure it was loaded, even tried to remember the last time she had cause to use it.

Tonya started moving a little more cautious. She doubted it was the prospectors. For all she knew it could be some other pirate or smuggler down here. Regardless, she wasn’t going to take any chances.

The tunnel started to expand before finally giving way to a vast darkness. Tonya’s night vision couldn’t even see the end. She dug through her supplies and picked out some old flares. She sparked one.

It was a city. A mirror city to be precise. While the one on the surface reached for the sky, this one was carved down into the planet. Walkways connected the various structures built out of the walls on the various levels. She’d never heard of anything like this before. Everyone speculated that it was civil war that destroyed this system. Was this a city of the other side?

She came to an intersection and the first real sign that the fighting had spread here. A barricade of melted vehicles blocked one of the tunnels. The walls were charred from either explosions or laser-blasts. A shadow had even been burned into the wall.

Tonya stood in front of it. The Hadesian seemed to have a roundish bulky main body with multiple thin appendages. A thousand year old stain on a wall is hardly much to go by, but even as a silhouette, it looked terrified.

A cavernous structure was built into the wall nearby. Tonya approached to examine the craftsmanship. It was certainly more ornate than most of the other buildings down here. There weren’t doors down here, just narrow oval portals. There was some kind of tech integrated into the sides.

Tonya decided to take a look. It was a deep bowl with rows of enclosures built into the sides. All of them were angled towards a single point, a marble-like cylinder at the bottom of the bowl. Tonya descended toward it. There was a small item sitting on top. She kept her light and shotgun trained on it. It was made from a similar marble-like stone as the cylinder. Tonya looked around. Was this some kind of church?

She leaned down to get a better look at the item, careful not to disturb anything. It was a small carving. It wasn’t a Hadesian shape. Not one she was familiar with. She weighed whether she should take it.

Tonya’s head suddenly swam. She stumbled back and steadied herself on the enclosures. After a moment or two it passed. A subtle stabbing pain started to ache in her arm. She stretched it, trying to work out the ache. She took a last look at the small carving.

Tonya stepped out of the ornate building and brought up her scanner. The kherium was close. She followed the scanner’s directions into the dark and twisted tunnels. Her eyes stayed locked on the growing glow of the screen. She tripped over something. The scanner clattered across the floor. It echoed for a minute.

Tonya shook her head slightly. This place… She turned her lights back right into the face of a rotted corpse, its mouth open in a silent scream.

“Hell!” she yelled as she scuffled away from it. She looked around. There was another form on the floor about twenty feet away. A strongbox sat between them. The initial shock subsided.

Tonya got up, grabbed her scanner and walked over to the first body. Its skull had been cracked open. There was no weapon though. No club or bar nearby. That was odd. The other one had clearly shot himself. The gun was still in his hand. They were definitely human and based on their clothes; they were probably surveyors or pirates. She didn’t know what kind of elements were in the air here so she couldn’t give an accurate guess how long they’d been dead but suspected months.

She shuffled over to the strongbox and kicked it open. Kherium. Already extracted and carefully wrapped. Sweet relief drifted through the exhaustion.

“Thanks guys.” Tonya gave them a quick salute. “Sorry you aren’t here to share it.” Something flitted across her IR window.

Tonya snatched up her shotgun and aimed. It was gone. Her breathing became rapid and shallow as she waited. Her finger hovered over the trigger. She pumped the gain on the external mics again and scanned the hall. The whole time, telling herself to calm down. Calm down.

Every movement of her suit amplified a hundred times in her ears. She tracked the rifle through the tunnel, looking for whatever was in here with her. Something came through the static. Close.

“Welcome home,” it hissed.

Tonya fired into the dark. She spun behind her. Nothing down there. She racked another round and blasted anyway. The shots blew out the speakers in her helmet.

She grabbed the strongbox and ran.

Ran through the slippery, sloping tunnels of pitch-black, now in total silence. She passed the intersection, where the Hadesian still raised its arms in terror. She kept looking back. She could swear something was there, just beyond the range of the IR, watching from the static.

Tonya sprinted up a rise to see the grim overcast light of the exit, now just a pinhole. Her legs burned. Her arm killed. All she wanted to do was go to sleep but she wasn’t going to stop. If she stopped, she knew she would never leave.

She pulled herself up the rope and pushed through the blasted forest back to the Beacon. Thirty seconds later, the thrusters were scorching earth. One minute later, she broke atmo.

As Hades II drifted away, she tried to steady her nerves. Her environment suit slowly twisted on the hanger in the decontamination chamber. She noticed something.

The respiratory functions on the back were damaged. The fall in the crater must have done it. It bashed up the feeds and she was getting too much oxygen. The headaches, nausea, and fatigue… even that voice. Even though it chilled her still. They were all probably just hallucinations and reactions to oxygen poisoning.

Probably.

Tonya set a course back for the Xenia Shipping Hub in Baker. She had goods to sell, true, but right now, she wanted to be around people.

She wanted to be around the noise.

Back in the decontamination chamber, the tiny Hadesian carving sat on the floor.

THE END

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#star citizen #squadron 42

[inexcon]

RSI Comm-Link: Whisperer in the Dark

Writer’s Note: Published originally in Jump Point 1.1, this story takes place before the events of The Lost Generation.

People complicate things. That’s what they’ve always been good at. Take a look at any functioning civilization and you will see chaos, confusion, and frustration. It could be human, Xi’an, Banu, Vanduul, whoever. We may look different, be built different, but boil us down and you’ll find the same insecurities, fears, and anxieties gnawing.

Tonya Oriel watched the yawning abyss outside the window. Kaceli’s Adagio in 4 gently wafted through the otherwise empty ship. Scanners cycled through their spectrums on the hunt for any flagged anomalies.

The void. It was pure. It was simple. It was permanent.

A calm serenity huddled around Tonya’s shoulders like a blanket, the kind that can only exist when you are the only person for thousands of kilometers. Everyone else can have Terra, Earth, or Titus, with their megacities teeming with people. Never a moment where there wasn’t a person above, beside or below you. Everything was noise. Tonya needed the silence.

Her ship, the Beacon, drifted through that silence. Tonya customized almost every hardpoint and pod with some form of scanner, deep-range comm system, or surveying tech to get her further and further from the noise.

The problem was that the noise kept following.

* * * *

After three weeks on the drift, Tonya couldn’t put it off any longer. She was due for a supply run and to sell off the data and minerals she’d collected. After repairs, new scrubbers, and a spectrum update, she hoped she’d have enough for some food.

The Xenia Shipping Hub in the Baker System had been the closest thing to a home she’d had for the past few years. Tonya set her approach through the shifting entry/exit patterns of ships. The station’s traffic was busier than usual. As soon as the Beacon docked, her screen buzzed with a handful of new messages from the spectrum. She passed them to her mobiGlas and went to the airlock.

Tonya paused by the entry and savored this last moment of solitude as the airlock cycled, then hit the button.

The sound of people swept inside like a wave. She took a second to acclimate, adjusted her bag and crossed into the masses.

Carl ran a small information network out of his bar, the Torchlight Express. An old surveyor for a long-defunct terraforming outfit, Carl traded moving minerals for slinging booze and information. Tonya had known him for years. As far as people went, Carl was a gem.

The Express was dead. Tonya checked local time. It was evening so there was no real reason why it should be like this. A group of prospectors sat at a table in the corner, engaged in a hushed conversation. Carl leaned against the bar, watching a sataball game on the wallscreen. His leathery fingers tapped out a beat to some song in his head.

He brightened up when he saw Tonya.

“Well, well, well, to what do we owe the honor, doctor?” He said with a grin.

“Don’t start, Carl.”

“Sure, sorry, doctor.” He must be bored; he only called her that when he wanted to pick a fight. Tonya slung her bag onto the ground and slid onto a stool.

“Anything interesting?” Tonya pulled her hair back into a tie.

“I’m great, Tonya, thanks for asking. Business is a little slow, but you know how it is.” Carl said sarcastically and slid a drink to her.

“Come on, Carl. I’m not gonna patronize you with small-talk.”

Carl sighed and looked around.

“At this point, I’ll take any patrons I can get.” He poured himself a drink from the dispenser. Tonya swiveled her mobiGlas around and showed him her manifest. He looked it over. “Running kinda light this time, huh?”

“I know. You know any buyers?”

“How much you looking to get?”

“Whatever I can,” Tonya said as she sipped. She could tell Carl was annoyed with the non-answer. “I need the money.”

“I might be able to get you ten.” He said after a long pause.

“I would give you my unborn child for ten.”

“With all the unborn kids you owe me, you better get started.” He said. Tonya smacked his arm.

One of the prospectors drifted over to the bar with empty glasses. He was young, one of those types who cultivated the dirty handsome look. Probably spent an hour perfecting it before going out.

“Another round.”

As Carl poured, the prospector looked at Tonya, giving his looks a chance to work their magic. They failed. Carl set a fresh batch of drinks down. The prospector paid and went back slightly deterred.

“I think someone liked you.” Carl teased.

“Not my type.”

“Living?”

“Exactly.” Tonya watched the prospectors. They were really in an overtly secretive conversation. “Any idea what they’re here for?”

“Of course I do.”

“Yeah? What’d they say?”

“Nothing… well, not to me anyway.” Carl pulled an earpiece out and held it out to her. Tonya wiped it off and took a listen. Suddenly she could hear their conversation loud and clear. Tonya looked at Carl, stunned.

“You have mics on your tables?!” She whispered. Carl shushed her.

“I deal in information, honey, so yeah.” Carl said, almost offended that he wouldn’t listen in on his customers.

Tonya took another sip and listened to the prospectors. It only took a little while to catch up. Apparently Cort, the prospector who tried to woo Tonya with his ruggedness, got a tip from his uncle in the UEE Navy. The uncle had been running Search & Rescue drills in the Hades System when their scanners accidentally picked up a deposit of kherium on Hades II. Being the military, of course, they couldn’t do anything, but Cort and his buddies were fixing to sneak in there and harvest it for themselves.

Kherium was a hot commodity. If these prospectors were on the level, they were talking about a tidy little fortune. Certainly enough to patch up the Beacon, maybe even install some upgrades.

Even better, they obviously didn’t know how to find it. Kherium doesn’t show up on a standard metal or rad scan. It takes a specialist to find, much less extract without corrupting it. Fortunately for Tonya, she knew how to do both. “You’ve got that look.” Carl said and refilled her glass. “Good news?”

“I hope so, Carl, for both of us.”

* * * *

Carl offloaded her haul at a discount so she could set out as quick as possible. Last time she checked, the prospectors were still at the Express and from the sound of it, they wouldn’t leave for a couple hours, maybe a day.

Tonya disengaged the Beacon from the dock and was back in her beloved solitude. The engines hummed as they pushed her deeper into space, pushed her toward a lifeline.

The Hades System was a tomb, the final monument of an ancient civil war that obliterated an entire system and the race that inhabited it. Tonya had it on her list of places to study, but every year Hades was besieged by fresh batches of young scientists exploring it for their dissertation or treasure hunters looking for whatever weapon cracked Hades IV in half. So the system became more noise to avoid.

Tonya had to admit that passing Hades IV was always a thrill. It’s not every day you get to see the guts of a planet killed in its prime.

Then there were the whispers that the system was haunted. There was always some pilot who knew a guy who knew someone who had seen something while passing through the system. The stories ranged from unexplained technical malfunctions to full-on sightings of ghost cruisers. It was all nonsense.

There was a loose stream of ships passing through Hades. The general flight lane steered clear of the central planets. Tonya slowed her ship until there was a sizeable gap in the flow of traffic before veering off toward Hades II.

She passed a barrier of dead satellites and descended into Hades II’s churning atmosphere. The Beacon jolted when it hit the clouds. Visual went to nil and suddenly the ship was bathed in noise, screaming air, and pressure. Tonya kept an eye on her scopes and expanded the range on her proximity alerts to make sure she didn’t ram a mountain.

Suddenly the clouds gave way. The Beacon swooped into the light gravity above a pitch-black ocean. Tonya quickly recalibrated her thrusters for atmospheric flight and took a long look at the planet around her.

As was expected, it was a husk. There were signs of intelligent civilization all around but all of it was crumbling, charred, or destroyed. She passed over vast curved cities built atop sweeping arches meant to keep the buildings from ever touching the planet itself.

Tonya maintained a cruising altitude. The roar of her engines echoed through the vast empty landscape. The sun was another casualty of this system’s execution. The cloud systems never abated so the surface never saw sunlight. It was always bathed in a dark greyish green haze.

Tonya studied the topography to plot out a course and set the scanners to look for the unique kherium signature she had programmed. She engaged the auto-pilot and just looked out the window.

Being here now, she kicked herself for not coming sooner. It didn’t matter that this was one of the most scientifically scrutinized locales in the UEE. Seeing the vastness of the devastation with her own eyes, Tonya felt that tug that a good mystery has on the intellect. Who were they? How did they manage to so effectively wipe themselves out? How do we know they actually wiped themselves out?

A few hours passed with no luck. Tonya had a quick snack and ran through her exercise routine. She double-checked the settings on her scans for any errors on the initial input. A couple months ago, she was surveying a planet and found nothing, only to discover on her way back that there had been one setting off that scuttled the whole scan. It still bugged her. It was an amateur mistake.

She brought up some texts on Hades. Halfway through a paper on the exobiology of the Hadesians, her screen pinged. Tonya was over there like a shot.

The scope gave a faint indication of kherium below. She triple-checked the settings before getting her hopes up. They seemed legit. She looked out the front. A small city sat above endless sea of dead trees lay ahead. It looked like an orbital laser or something had hit it excising massively deep craters from buildings and ground.

Tonya took a closer look. The craters went about six hundred feet into the ground, revealing networks of underground tunnels. They looked like some kind of transport system.

Tonya looked for a suitable landing spot with cover from overhead flights. If she was still here when the prospectors showed up, her ship would be a dead giveaway and things would get complicated.

She strapped on her environment suit and respirator. She could check the ship’s scanners through her mobiGlas but threw another handheld scanner/mapper in with her mining gear just in case. Finally, she powered up her transport crate, hoping the anti-gravity buffers would be more than enough to lug the kherium back.

Tonya stepped out onto the surface. The wind whipped around her, furiously kicking up waves of dust. She pushed the crate in front of her through the blasted forest. Gnarled branches clawed at her suit as she passed. The city loomed overhead, black silhouettes against the grey-green clouds.

Her curiosity got the better of her so Tonya decided to take a ramp up to the city streets. She told herself the detour would be easier on the crate’s battery. Smooth streets are easier for the anti-grav compensators to analyze than rough terrain.

Tonya moved through the barren, empty streets in awe. She studied the strange curvature of the architecture; each displayed an utterly alien yet brilliant understanding of pressure and weight dispersal. This whole place seemed at once natural and odd, intellectually fascinating and emotionally draining.

The kherium signature was still weak but there. Tonya maneuvered the crate around destroyed teardrop shaped vehicles. Pit-marks in the buildings and streets led her to suspect that a battle had taken place here however many hundreds or thousands of years ago.

The crater closest to the kherium was a perfect hole punched through the middle of the city into the ground. Tonya stood at the edge, looking for the easiest way down. The crate could float down but she would have to climb.

In a matter of minutes she secured a line with safeties for herself and the crate. She stepped over the edge and slowly rappelled down the sheer wall. The crate was making what should be a simple descent a little more complicated. The anti-grav buffers meant that any kind of force could cause the crate to drift away, so Tonya needed to keep a hand on it at all times. To make matters worse, the wind started picking up, flinging small rocks, branches and pieces of debris through the air.

A shrill scream tore through the air. Tonya froze. She heard it again and looked for the source. The screaming was just exposed supports bending in the wind.

Suddenly she realized, the crate had slipped out of her grasp. It slowly drifted further out over the crater, the swirling wind batted it around like a toy. Tonya strained to reach it but the crate floated just out of reach. She kicked off the wall and swung through the churning air. Her fingertips barely snagged the cargo before she slammed back against the wall of the crater.

Her vision blurred and she couldn’t breathe from the impact. The HUD went screwy. Finally she caught her breath. She took a moment or two before continuing down.

The scanner from the Beacon couldn’t isolate the signature any clearer to determine depth so she had to rely on her handheld. The kherium looked like it was situated between two tunnels.

Tonya secured the crate, climbed into the upper tunnel, and tied off her ropes. She checked her suit’s integrity in the debris-storm. The computer was a little fuzzy but gave her an okay.

She turned on a flashlight and activated the external mics on her suit. The tunnel was a perfectly carved tube that sloped into the darkness. Tonya couldn’t see any kind of power or rail system to confirm her transport tube theory. She started walking.

Hours passed in the darkness. Tonya felt a little queasy so she decided to rest for a few minutes. She sipped on the water reserve and double-checked her scanner. She was still above the kherium and it was still showing up as being in front of her. That much hadn’t changed.

She heard something. Very faint. She brought up the audio settings and pumped the gain on the external mics. A sea of white noise filled her ears. She didn’t move until she heard it again. Something being dragged then stopped.

IR and night vision windows appeared in the corners of her HUD. She couldn’t see anything. In the vast stretches of these tunnels, there’s no telling how far that sound had travelled. Still, she went to the crate and pulled the shotgun out. She made sure it was loaded, even tried to remember the last time she had cause to use it.

Tonya started moving a little more cautious. She doubted it was the prospectors. For all she knew it could be some other pirate or smuggler down here. Regardless, she wasn’t going to take any chances.

The tunnel started to expand before finally giving way to a vast darkness. Tonya’s night vision couldn’t even see the end. She dug through her supplies and picked out some old flares. She sparked one.

It was a city. A mirror city to be precise. While the one on the surface reached for the sky, this one was carved down into the planet. Walkways connected the various structures built out of the walls on the various levels. She’d never heard of anything like this before. Everyone speculated that it was civil war that destroyed this system. Was this a city of the other side?

She came to an intersection and the first real sign that the fighting had spread here. A barricade of melted vehicles blocked one of the tunnels. The walls were charred from either explosions or laser-blasts. A shadow had even been burned into the wall.

Tonya stood in front of it. The Hadesian seemed to have a roundish bulky main body with multiple thin appendages. A thousand year old stain on a wall is hardly much to go by, but even as a silhouette, it looked terrified.

A cavernous structure was built into the wall nearby. Tonya approached to examine the craftsmanship. It was certainly more ornate than most of the other buildings down here. There weren’t doors down here, just narrow oval portals. There was some kind of tech integrated into the sides.

Tonya decided to take a look. It was a deep bowl with rows of enclosures built into the sides. All of them were angled towards a single point, a marble-like cylinder at the bottom of the bowl. Tonya descended toward it. There was a small item sitting on top. She kept her light and shotgun trained on it. It was made from a similar marble-like stone as the cylinder. Tonya looked around. Was this some kind of church?

She leaned down to get a better look at the item, careful not to disturb anything. It was a small carving. It wasn’t a Hadesian shape. Not one she was familiar with. She weighed whether she should take it.

Tonya’s head suddenly swam. She stumbled back and steadied herself on the enclosures. After a moment or two it passed. A subtle stabbing pain started to ache in her arm. She stretched it, trying to work out the ache. She took a last look at the small carving.

Tonya stepped out of the ornate building and brought up her scanner. The kherium was close. She followed the scanner’s directions into the dark and twisted tunnels. Her eyes stayed locked on the growing glow of the screen. She tripped over something. The scanner clattered across the floor. It echoed for a minute.

Tonya shook her head slightly. This place… She turned her lights back right into the face of a rotted corpse, its mouth open in a silent scream.

“Hell!” she yelled as she scuffled away from it. She looked around. There was another form on the floor about twenty feet away. A strongbox sat between them. The initial shock subsided.

Tonya got up, grabbed her scanner and walked over to the first body. Its skull had been cracked open. There was no weapon though. No club or bar nearby. That was odd. The other one had clearly shot himself. The gun was still in his hand. They were definitely human and based on their clothes; they were probably surveyors or pirates. She didn’t know what kind of elements were in the air here so she couldn’t give an accurate guess how long they’d been dead but suspected months.

She shuffled over to the strongbox and kicked it open. Kherium. Already extracted and carefully wrapped. Sweet relief drifted through the exhaustion.

“Thanks guys.” Tonya gave them a quick salute. “Sorry you aren’t here to share it.” Something flitted across her IR window.

Tonya snatched up her shotgun and aimed. It was gone. Her breathing became rapid and shallow as she waited. Her finger hovered over the trigger. She pumped the gain on the external mics again and scanned the hall. The whole time, telling herself to calm down. Calm down.

Every movement of her suit amplified a hundred times in her ears. She tracked the rifle through the tunnel, looking for whatever was in here with her. Something came through the static. Close.

“Welcome home,” it hissed.

Tonya fired into the dark. She spun behind her. Nothing down there. She racked another round and blasted anyway. The shots blew out the speakers in her helmet.

She grabbed the strongbox and ran.

Ran through the slippery, sloping tunnels of pitch-black, now in total silence. She passed the intersection, where the Hadesian still raised its arms in terror. She kept looking back. She could swear something was there, just beyond the range of the IR, watching from the static.

Tonya sprinted up a rise to see the grim overcast light of the exit, now just a pinhole. Her legs burned. Her arm killed. All she wanted to do was go to sleep but she wasn’t going to stop. If she stopped, she knew she would never leave.

She pulled herself up the rope and pushed through the blasted forest back to the Beacon. Thirty seconds later, the thrusters were scorching earth. One minute later, she broke atmo.

As Hades II drifted away, she tried to steady her nerves. Her environment suit slowly twisted on the hanger in the decontamination chamber. She noticed something.

The respiratory functions on the back were damaged. The fall in the crater must have done it. It bashed up the feeds and she was getting too much oxygen. The headaches, nausea, and fatigue… even that voice. Even though it chilled her still. They were all probably just hallucinations and reactions to oxygen poisoning.

Probably.

Tonya set a course back for the Xenia Shipping Hub in Baker. She had goods to sell, true, but right now, she wanted to be around people.

She wanted to be around the noise.

Back in the decontamination chamber, the tiny Hadesian carving sat on the floor.

THE END

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