#i had to stop myself from periodically zooming in on him instead of finishing the piece | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

onlydylanobrien · 3 years

Text

Dylan O'Brien - NME Magazine Interview

Dylan O’Brien: “I was in this transitional phase – close to a quarter-life crisis”

From YA heartthrob to legitimate leading man – how the 'Maze Runner' star hit his stride after a whirlwind decade

Definitely!” hoots Dylan O’Brien when NME asks if he still has to audition. “I’m not Tom fucking Hanks, bro.” He’s clearly amused by our question, but forgive us for thinking the 29-year-old actor gets cast on reputation alone. A decade into his career, and he’s making an impressive transition from teen TV star and YA franchise hero to charismatic leading man.

New York-born O’Brien cut his teeth on MTV’s hit Teen Wolf series, before landing the lead in the Maze Runner film trilogy based on James Dashner’s hugely popular novels. Leading a band of bright young things that included ex-Skins tearaway Kaya Scodelario, Game Of Thrones’ Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Will Poulter, he honed his craft while racking up nearly a billion dollars at the box office. “My career is a constant acting class,” says O’Brien. “To be able to do the Maze Runner movies simultaneously with Teen Wolf was amazing in terms of getting in reps and working my [acting] muscle.”

Now for the sometimes tricky bit. Many actors struggle with the post-breakout period, but O’Brien is making it look easy so far. This year’s Netflix hit Love and Monsters proved he can carry an old-school family adventure, and new film Flashback (out next week) reveals an appetite for weirder, more cerebral work. He stars as Fred Fitzell, a young man reluctant to buckle down to life as a nine-to-fiver with a boring corporate job and a long-term girlfriend (Mindhunter‘s Hannah Gross). When he runs into a freaky-looking acquaintance from his teenage years, Fred becomes obsessed with finding an old high-school friend he used to drop a mind-bending experimental drug called Mercury with. It’s difficult to say any more without entering spoiler territory, but Flashback is a wild ride underpinned by the idea that we can exist in several realities at once. Even if you follow every plot twist, you might not fully understand the end. “Oh, it’s definitely a headfuck,” O’Brien agrees. “There’s not totally an answer to figure out. There’s a lot of different things that people can take from it.”

Speaking over Zoom from his LA home, O’Brien is bright, thoughtful and really good fun to talk to, especially when he relaxes into the interview, but he clearly knows where his line between public and private lies. When he first read the Flashback script, written by the film’s director Christopher MacBride, his “mind was blown” by just how much he related to Fred. “I felt like I was in this transitional phase of my life that was, you know, sort of close to a quarter-life crisis type thing,” he says. “For whatever reason, it was like me and this script were meant to be. I remember reading it and thinking: ‘I am this guy right now.'”

“There were a lot of things in my personal life that were neglected for a while”

When we ask why O’Brien felt as though he had reached a “transitional phase”, he gives an answer that’s vague but not exactly evasive. For understandable reasons, he doesn’t mention the incredibly traumatic motorcycle accident he sustained while shooting the final Maze Runner film in March 2016. O’Brien suffered severe trauma to the brain and said in 2017 that he underwent extensive facial reconstructive surgery after the accident “broke most of the right side of my face”. Tellingly, he’s never really revealed what happened on set or how it affected him.

Today, O’Brien dances around the details of the accident and other issues he was dealing with at the time, but doesn’t shy away from discussing his inner conflict. “You know, it was a lot of personal things combined with at-a-point-in-my-career things,” he says after a brief pause. He says he’d have been going through some of this stuff anyway, simply because of his age, but it sounds as though success intensified it all. “It was like this whole fucking storm of shit,” he continues. “I was simultaneously so fulfilled and happy about these, like, otherworldly and surreal things that I had experienced in terms of where my career had brought me. I had all this confidence and fulfilment and beautiful people [in my life] – such amazing things to experience at a young age. But at the same time, there were a lot of things in my personal life that were unchecked and sort of neglected for a while.”

O’Brien says that in time, he realised he had to “stop for a second” and “re-explore how I wanted my life to look going forward”. In fairness, you can see why he needed a breather: his career took off while he was still a teenager. After his family moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles County when he was 12, O’Brien contemplated a career as a sports broadcaster – his Twitter bio still bills him as a “no longer suffering Mets fan” – then began posting YouTube videos as moviekidd826. A funny, slickly edited skit titled ‘How to Prepare for the SAT in 45 seconds’, shared when he was just 17, shows he was a born performer and storyteller. YouTube success led to him getting a manager, but his breakthrough role in Teen Wolf still came out of the blue. At the time, he was treading water at a local community college and taking auditions on the side.

Still, he has since taken a rather fatalistic view of this career-making moment. “It’s totally weird because, when I think about it now, I don’t see how it could have happened any other way. I can’t picture myself doing anything else now,” he told Collider in 2011. “It was really sudden and a little random, and not provoked by anything. It was just out of nowhere. It wasn’t my intentional doing.” Today, O’Brien summarises his skyscraper career trajectory succinctly. “I guess I just graduated high school and started acting,” he says. “And then I felt like I was just flying by the seat of my pants and never got a chance to stop.” Thankfully, straight-out-the-blocks Hollywood success hasn’t taken away his sense of perspective. When I say how easy social media makes it to compare yourself unfavourably to others, O’Brien jumps in: “Yeah, that’s very true. I was watching the Billie Eilish doc the other day, and I was like, I’ve done nothing. I’m not an artist at all!”

“No one thought ‘Love and Monsters’ was going to be good!”

O’Brien is also self-deprecating when he talks about being cast in Flashback, suggesting it happened because he had such an intense connection with Fred. “I was honestly like, ‘Who is watching me right now?’ That is the best way I can describe how I was feeling when I came across this script,” he says. “Chris [MacBride, director] and I had this conversation that went so well in terms of [my] understanding this script that I think he’d sent around a lot and [that] very commonly wasn’t understood. I think Chris has even said that the night before shooting, he suddenly had this thought, like, ‘Wait, do I even think he’s a good actor?'”

Though O’Brien has firmly ring-fenced elements of his private life, he’s actually pretty frank about his acting vehicles. He readily admits he was expecting a snobbish response to Love and Monsters, a CGI-heavy hybrid of post-apocalyptic action and romcom that dropped on Netflix in April and topped the streamer’s daily most-watched list. “It means so much that Love and Monsters has gotten the response that it’s gotten,” O’Brien says. “No one thought this movie was going to be good.” His blunt honesty makes me laugh out loud. “No one did though!” he says in response. “And so, fuck that. You know, most of the people who say something to me about the movie, they’re like: ‘I watched Love and Monsters, and it was… good?’ And honestly, that just cracks me up.” For obvious reasons, we hastily decide not to share our response to the film – namely, that it was a whole lot better than expected.

In Love and Monsters, O’Brien plays Joel, a survivor of a so-called “monsterpocalypse” that has bumped humans to the bottom of the food chain. Though he’s known in his colony as a bit of a coward, Joel sets off on a treacherous 80-mile journey to find his high school sweetheart Aimee (Iron Fist‘s Jessica Henwick), which means evading the hungry clutches of various supersize grizzlies including a giant monster-frog hiding in a suburban pond. It’s a simple but pretty out-there premise that wouldn’t work if O’Brien’s performance was even slightly condescending. Instead, his unselfconscious sincerity really sells a film that has as much in common with the family-oriented Robin Williams movie Night at the Museum as darker fare like The Walking Dead.

His obvious affection for the project really comes across during our interview today. “When I read the script, I just thought it was so sweet and funny and smart and unique, but at the same time reminiscent of all these movies that don’t really get made any more,” he says. That’s a fair point: Love and Monsters is neither a fail-safe superhero movie nor a slice of classy Oscar bait. “And when they were talking about how to market this movie, it was so funny hearing all these conversations like, ‘How do we actually get people to watch it?'” he adds. “But that’s a big part of the reason I wanted to do this movie: because it felt like something I missed seeing.”

“I’m lucky to be surrounded by people who want to make something out of love”

So in a way, Love and Monsters was a risk for an actor seeking to establish himself outside of a bankable movie franchise and a hit TV show. O’Brien has only made four films since his final Maze Runner outing in 2018, and insists he hasn’t been tactical with his choices. “I don’t have anyone saying, ‘We need to get you in an Oscar vehicle’, or any of that kind of shit,” he says. “I’m really lucky to be surrounded by people who think like me: that you should do what you’re drawn to, and make something out of love.”

He’s recently finished shooting a mysterious crime thriller called The Outfit in London with Mark Rylance. Directed and co-written by Graham Moore, who won an Oscar for his screenplay to Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game, O’Brien calls it “quite possibly one of the most special pieces of writing I’ve ever experienced”. He first read the script on a plane and says he “actually stood up and clapped” when he got to the end. Considering O’Brien probably wasn’t flying Ryanair, this reaction presumably attracted a few baffled glances.

Anyway, it must be pretty intimidating walking onto set with Rylance, a multi-award-winning actor revered by his peers – Al Pacino once said he “speaks Shakespeare as if it was written for him the night before” – but it sounds as though O’Brien took it all in stride. He says he’s confident in his abilities, but admits to having a slight wobble whenever he begins a new project. “I’m always sort of re-questioning everything – like, ‘Can I even act?'” he says. “But I think there’s something very natural about that. I think even Rylance could relate to that feeling. Acting is like starting a new year at school every single time.”

At this point in his career, O’Brien has made peace with the fact that some people will have preconceptions about him based on what he’s known for: Maze Runner and Teen Wolf. “People will put you in a box no matter what,” he says. “There was definitely a time when that would get to me, especially when it felt like somebody had a perspective on me that in my soul, I just felt wasn’t accurate.” Still, there’s no doubt he wants to show us what’s really in his soul with more films like Flashback. “If anything,” he adds bullishly, “it just makes me think: ‘Right, I’m really gonna show them now’.”

‘Flashback’ is out on digital platforms from June 4

#dylan o'brien #love and monsters press #flashback press #the outfit press

109 notes · View notes

fandomlurker · 3 years

Text

A Ponderous Rewatch: Pavlov’s Mice and Cameo

So thanks to Tumblr nerfing my ability to make an admittedly absurdly long post combining the previous episode rewatch with this one, I had to do this entry in two parts.

But at least now we’re in for the real treat: The first episode in airing order that’s animated by TMS Entertainment. And hey, even the Animaniacs show itself seems to acknowledge that this is special, because theme song rhyme is…

We're Animanie! Totally insane-y!~

Pinky and the Brainy!~

…which hasn’t been done since their debut. So this is gonna be fun.

Might as well get this out of the way, then, since this episode obviously involves Ivan Pavlov. I think most people who know of Pavlov through cultural osmosis pretty much know him as just “that one scientist who got dogs to respond to the sound of bells as if they were being offered food”. This is what happened, but it’s only part of the story. In reality, Ivan Pavlov was doing research on the physiology of digestion in dogs and he noticed one day that the dogs he was studying started to drool in the mere presence of the lab technician who regularly fed them even if the technician didn’t have food with them. Pavlov developed a way to redirect the dogs’ digestive juices outside of the body so that they could be measured, and then he ran some conditioning experiments to see if he could get them to salivate in response to external stimuli that had nothing to do with food, like ringing a bell.

The year in the title card, 1904, was the year Ivan Pavlov was awarded the Nobel Prize for the previously mentioned experiments, which he published the results of in “The Work of the Digestive Glands” in 1897. Basically, by 1904 he was done with his work with dogs and he moved on to experimenting with mice…at least according to this article in National Geographic by Virgina Hughes.

With that, let’s begin the episode proper.

“At the dawn of the 20th century, Russian scientist, Ivan Pavlov, trained animals through his technique of conditioned reflex” says the narrator as we zoom in on a laboratory with Pavlov and our lovable mouse duo.

“Time to earn your dinner, my little mousey friends!”

It’s interesting how Pinky is the one that flinches uncomfortably at the loud sound of the gong while Brain simply snaps into his conditioned response. And that response? Uhhh…

“I’m a little teapot, short and stout.~”

“This is my handle, this is my spout.~”

(Is he…you know…?)

“When I get all steamed up, hear me shout!~”

“Tip me over and pour me out.~”

Oh no… This is a cute and funny scene and all, but when you know about Brain’s canonical issues with how he hates not being in control of a situation and all the traumas he’s endured (for those of you not in the know, yes, Brain does have a lot of trauma in his backstory that we learn about much later, both in the 90s spin-off and the reboot) regarding both general control and losing family and friends…there’s a bitter tinge to this scene.

He’s so embarrassed and humiliated.

He takes the cheese but he is positively fuming with rage, and I can’t exactly blame him from what I know about him.

This is made all the worse by Pinky’s innocent reaction to Brain’s little song and dance.

“Hahahahaha! Wonderful! Hahaha! EGAD, Brain, I could watch you do that dance all day! Haha, narf!”

For Pinky, this is harmless silliness and he gets to see Brain sing and dance and “have fun”, which is not a usual occurrence. But for Brain? Well...

“You have watched it all day, Pinky. Sixty-one times, to be exact. It’s a conditioned reflex to that infernal gong.”

“I’m powerless to stop it!”

Well, Brain, at the very least it’s not like you were a part of a more inhumane experiment like one regarding, say, learned helplessness or anything. …Oh wait. Whoops. (For those sensitive to animal abuse, I suggest refraining from clicking on the second link, and caution against clicking on the first if even more clinical text descriptions of such would upset you. The third link is spoilers for the reboot.)

All that aside, it seems like it’s Pinky’s turn. He gets the more traditional bell chime for his stimulus.

And the result is him going into an uncontrollable and very enthusiastic Slavic folk dance.

With violent results. I hope you appreciate that last screencap, as the animation goes by so quickly I had a lot of trouble isolating the part where Pinky kicks Brain and he goes flying.

Pinky is all too happy to get a reward of cheese, his favourite food, for doing something that he has no memory of.

“What’cha doin’ over there, Brain?”

“Contemplating your afterlife, Pinky.”

That’s not exactly fair, Brain, you know he has no control over this. To Brain’s credit, though, he doesn’t bop him or anything for kicking him involuntarily.

Pavlov leaves, playfully saying that he hopes the mice dream of cheese tonight, and the mice are immediately down to business.

“At last, he’s gone.”

“Now we can begin our conquest of the world!”

We’re already back to it being “our” conquest of the world, eh?

“Behold my latest creation, Pinky: The Vacuum-o-nator.”

Brain has never been good with naming things, has he? At least, not so far. I wonder if this will continue throughout the franchise?

Pinky is certainly very happy and impressed, though.

“It uses reverse air pressure to vacuum everything toward it.”

You know, I was just about to roast Brain for thinking that making a very odd version of a vacuum cleaner was such a brilliant thing, but then I remembered that this takes place in 1904. The vacuum cleaner as we know it was “invented independently by British engineer Hubert Cecil Booth and American inventor David T. Kenney” in 1901 according to Wikipedia, and portable vacuums were available to the general public starting in 1905.My apologies, Brain, that actually is very impressive.

Although, this all hinges on if the viewer considers episodes that take place in the past and/or at different locations than Acme Labs California to be mere Alternate Universe/What If? stories or Brain and Pinky using some kind of time machine to go to a different place and time for these episodes. (Before you tell me that this is just a cartoon and sicc the Please, Please Get a Life Foundation on me, I do this to have fun and maybe educate myself and the reader along the way. I promise I have a life. Barely.)

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Pinky?”

“Uhh… Yeah, Brain! But where are we gonna find rubber pants our size?”

Pinky, that’s… Listen, folks, don’t make the same mistake I did and google “rubber pants”. It’s not what you think it is. You will be disappointed.

BONK!

Seems like you’re enjoying yourself there, Pinky.

“No, Pinky. We’re going to use the Vacuum-o-nator to steal Russia’s crown jewels!”

Man, the animation for even this one small proclamation by Brain is so, so good. Brain standing authoritatively and holding the pen like a scepter or spear, the grand sweep of his arm as he says “no”, the serious and slightly menacing expression on his face, a violent and grabby swing of his arm on the word “steal”, and a dramatic point and look up towards the sky when he finishes. TMS does great work, folks.

“Narf! Genius, Brain!”

Look at Brain’s satisfied smile at Pinky’s simple compliment. Remember what I said earlier about Brain going through his explanations to show off to and impress Pinky? At this point I’m absolutely convinced that that’s why Brain turns up the theatrics more than necessary when going through his plans. After all, Pinky is (oddly and rather sadly) the only one in-universe who thinks Brain is a genius and a good person.

…Of course, the effect can sometimes be lessened by subsequent innocent bumbling.

“Turn it off, Pinky.”

He says this so exasperatedly yet so deadpan at the same time, it’s great.

“Oh! Right-o!”

Even Pinky immediately knows that he fucked up.

“Zort! Whew! Wild hairdo, Brain! Heh heh, I like it.”

He even pets Brain’s “hairdo”, aww. And though I personally could take or leave the ‘do, I like the pointed, sharp look this mishap’s given to his ears.

BONK!

“Now I feel cleansed.”

Okay, this one might have been a little too much, Brain.

“But Brain, aren’t the crown jewels always guarded by giant Cossacks?”

Well, Pinky, from what I know Cossacks were usually used extensively in the police force and as border guards during this time, so I guess that’s possible?

Brain picking the lock with the pen is a fun little detail.

“Don’t worry about the guards… For tonight, Pinky, at precisely 1 am, there’s a total lunar eclipse. “

Again, this is probably not a thing the average person could look up quickly and easily in the 90s and the writers most likely didn’t care about accuracy here, but there were no total lunar eclipses in 1904. There were some penumbral lunar eclipses in March and September of that year, though. Just a fun fact for you folks.

“The Earth’s shadow will completely cover the moon, blacking out all of St. Petersburg for a period of 30 seconds.”

Brain…?!? Brain, how did you get the diagram on that piece of paper to animate like that? What kind of Harry Potter-style magic bullshit is this?

I know this is a cartoon and all and I’m not truly upset but this honestly came out of nowhere and made me do a double-take.

“In that brief time, we will sneak past the Czar’s guards under the cover of darkness and steal the crown jewels…for he who controls the jewels controls Mother Russia!”

More dramatics!

“But…I thought your mother’s name was Désirée?”

I love Brain’s pose here. Very grumpy and sassy.

As for Pinky’s comment: We do get to meet Brain’s parents way later in the spin-off, though neither are addressed by any name. I’m taking this joke as canon anyway because it’s funny.

Well, well, well… Looks like we’re shaking things up a bit with an inking instead of a bonk. That’s gonna be a pain to get out of his white fur, though.

“Soon, Pinky, I will rule Russia…so from now on, call me Czar.”

Another sassy hand-on-hip pose.

“Right-o, Brain!”

“—eek! Czar Brain!”

“Come along, Pinky… Conquest awaits!”

Nice to know that despite the inking, Pinky’s still following him anyway. Plus he’s doing it with that fond look on his face again. Hmm…

What follows is a cute and ingenious sequence of Brain launching Pinky and himself through an open window via the spring force of a mousetrap. It goes by very quickly, but I just wanted to highlight a few things I managed to notice while pausing through it. Kudos to the animators again for these little details.

Pinky’s the one that wraps one arm around Brain’s shoulders so that Brain has both hands free to spring the mousetrap properly and so that they’ll be launched together.

Interestingly enough, Pinky’s the cautious one who braces for impact right away while Brain gleefully flies through the air with his arms outstretched.

The “camera” changes perspective and while Brain is still boldly flying forward with confidence, Pinky is still worried but has now opened his eyes as they fly towards the window.

Pinky’s still holding onto Brain and the Vacuum-o-nator as tight as he can. As they get closer to the window, however…

…Pinky seems to realize he’s going to smash into the wall above the window if he doesn’t let go, so he lets go of Brain. Brain doesn’t realize where his trajectory is taking him.

Pinky angles himself downward and through the open window, but it’s too late for Brain.

WHAM! RIP, Brain.

But his pain is not done! It looks like Pinky’s landing was in the soft snow. Meanwhile, Brain slides down onto the window and through the opening, only to bash into the lid of a garbage can, much to Pinky’s concern.

Then Brain falls headfirst into the snow.

And finally, Brain is clonked on the head by the same garbage can lid, which makes a loud gong noise. Someone get this poor mouse some Aspirin.

But since there was a gong noise, you all know what that means!

Cutely, Pinky joins in on the dance in the middle of it.

“Ha! Oh that was fun, Czar Brain! But let’s give it another go, right? Only this time with feeling!”

Man, that side-eye at the beginning from Brain…

Pinky’s body language is great in this episode, too. The gleeful flapping of his arms and feet and the “with feeling” gesture are fantastic examples of his more open and energetic nature coming through.

Oh hey, there’s that one shot of Brain being ticked off used in the spin-off theme song! I can’t exactly blame him for his anger here. He just went through a lot of pain in a short amount of time and was then involuntarily made to humiliate himself. Pinky doesn’t mean to be mean here—he genuinely wants to have some sing and dance fun with Brain—but it’s gotta sting to have the humiliation highlighted.

Pinky still doesn’t deserve a bonking for it, though. But it’s slapstick, so he’s fine.

Heh, “deliveries to rear” indeed.

Oh, are those jingle bells on a sleigh that I see?

Uh oh…

“No, Pinky… Not now!”

It cannot be stopped, Brain. He must dance!

Another quick detail as Brain launches himself at Pinky’s midsection to either topple him over or hold him still to get Pinky to stop.

Alas, Pinky’s dancing is too strong.

OUCH!

The face of regret.

His punishment is swiftly thwarted, though.

“…That was unpleasant.”

They take a different and more uneventful ride on a hay wagon to the palace.

I love the exaggerated perspective going on here.

Peekin’.

“We made it inside, Brain!”

“…’Czar Brain’.”

“Czar Brain.”

He says it so quietly and sweetly, aww.

“Yes, Pinky. There are fleeting moments when I even amaze myself.”

I…don’t know if it’s much of an accomplishment yet, Brain. Settle that ego down a bit.

Oh, that’s some classic Looney Tunes-style sneaking animation there.

Wait, why is the door to the treasure room just open behind them? Czar Nicolas II, what gives?

Speaking of…

Hello, Czar Nicolas II. I hope you’re enjoying your “eclipse party”. You only have another 14 years or so to live it up, after all.

“In just a few minutes, it’ll be totally dark and scary. OooOOoo!~ But don’t anyone touch me, I have cooties!”

I, uhhh. Okay, then.

Same, boys. Same. Best to get down to business.

“Behold the crown jewels of Mother Russia, Pinky. World conquest will soon be ours!”

Again, world conquest is “ours” and not just Brain’s. Also you can just tell Pinky’s thinking “I’m going to wear so much of this jewelry!”

“Now, Brain?”

“Not yet. Wait for the total eclipse.”

Speaking of…

“Complete darkness, Pinky. Start the Vacuum-o-nator…”

“NOW!”

That gonging noise is an interesting choice for a chime. Surely this ornate clock is only an omen of good things for our duo.

Pinky, you’re swooning again. And Brain…

Oh no.

Another clock! Who’d have thought Russian nobility loved clocks so much? This one has a more pleasant bell chime, though.

…Oh NO!

Well, looks like things are going to hell pretty quickly.

Goodbye, boys.

Goodbye, Czar Nicolas II! You might wanna look out for a man named Grigori Rasputin in the future, okay?

Nice hat, Brain.

“Whu--? The eclipse is over? Narf! What happened, Brain?”

BONK!

“Zort! I mean, Czar Brain.”

“We failed again, Pinky… But just wait until tomorrow night!”

“Why? What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain?”

“What else, Pinky?: Try to take over the world!”

It was a nice try, boys, but honestly I don’t know how you were going to fit all those crown jewels into that tiny improvised vacuum bag, anyway.

One last cute little detail in this episode is our mousey duo jumping up with enthusiastic determination in front of the silhouette of the moon on the last note of the theme reprise. One day, you guys. One day…

Oh! And before I forget, have another short cameo from “Plane Pals”. It’s a tiny one.

Pinky and the Brain steal a sheep off of an airplane. For what purpose? Who knows? But that’s it. I’m kind of wondering if the writers wanted to make a running joke of them making cameos to steal random things for world conquering purposes and just sort of gave up.

Anyway, so ends our recap for this post. It sure was a long one, but what can I say? There were some very cute details that needed to be shared. Have we learned anything new this time? Well, I mean, besides historical trivia.

Brain thinks both he and Pinky are great actors, despite his own near inability to lie and keep up an innocent pretense. Oh, he can be sarcastic, sure, but he can’t seem to manage to stop himself from revealing that he’s out for world domination whenever he has an audience.

For the first time we see Brain’s annoyance and humiliation resulting from him being a lab mouse. Though it’s on the more subtle side at the moment, Brain seemed extra grumpy and violent during that last episode because of the conditioning he’s unwillingly gone through. I’m curious to see if there are any more examples of this before we reach an episode touching on his origin story. Or…one of his origin stories, at least. There’s around four of them last I checked and all but one of them can reasonably fit into the others.

Pinky is truly beginning to show how much he adores Brain, which is nice. Beforehand we knew he was down with his world domination plans for whatever reason and also that he thinks Brain’s plans are great and ingenious. Now, though, we’ve gotten to the point of him literally swooning at Brain and his plans. Something’s definitely brewing there.

Next time: We get some more substantial cameos, join our mouse duo on a Fort Knox heist, and meet a new character that is both pretty important to the “lore” of the show going forward…but also doesn’t appear in person after their introductory episode until the very end of the Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain spin-off run.

See you then!

#Pinky and the Brain #PatB #Pavlov's Mice #Plane Pals

47 notes · View notes

jenomark · 4 years

Note

can you do nct 127 reaction to calling you and finding out you're in the middle of masturbating?

Taeil: “Hello? Baby?” Taeil said as soon as you picked up your phone. “Have you seen my vibrating toothbrush? It was here last time you were, and now it’s missing. I remember you’ve used it when you forgot to bring yours last week.” You froze and clenched your thighs tight. The vibrating toothbrush in question was on your clit, the back of its smooth head taking you on a happy ride. You didn’t think your boyfriend would mind if you bought him a new one the next time you saw him. “No.” you said, your voice unconvincing. Taeil exhaled and stayed silent. You were aware that he could hear the buzzing of the toothbrush between your legs, the faint sound pulsating along with your orgasm. “Does it feel good, baby?” Taeil whispered, his voice so low you could barely hear it. You moaned into the phone and moved the toothbrush over your pussy, the thought of it being in Taeil’s mouth making you even hornier. “Maybe I should get us some toys next time, yes?” he asked.

Johnny: Looking at your boyfriends ‘Kick It’ pics while he was away felt a little bit like cheating on the real thing. The photos of Johnny’s abs were high quality, so high quality that you couldn’t stop thinking about how long it had been since you kissed them. “Fuck,” you whispered. “I miss you.” You placed your hand on top of your stomach and let it slide down into your pants. Closing your eyes, you pictured Johnny laying on top of you, his lips on your neck. You opened an eye and looked at the picture of him shirtless, zooming in on his stomach and remembering what it felt like to touch. You were getting so lost in the moment that the vibrations from your phone made you drop it onto your face. You picked up the call, your voice winded, “Hello?” On the other end, Johnny sounded like he was in a good mood. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all day,” he said. “Where were you?” You looked down at your shirt climbing up your stomach, at the bulge of your fist in your pants. Johnny easily saw through you, so you decided to tell him the truth. “I’ve been touching myself to your pics,” you said. “I’m so happy you made an Instagram.” Johnny’s chuckle was boisterous and infectious. When he was done laughing, he got really close to the phone and whispered. “You can show me how happy you are when I get home.”

Taeyong: “You sound busy.” he said, his voice soft. You cursed yourself for sounding so short with Taeyong. You laid with a small rubber butt plug in your ass and a vibrator stimulating your clit. You turned it off to answer his call, your orgasm deflating like a balloon. “I wouldn’t have answered if I didn’t want to hear your voice.” you said. At that, Taeyong perked up a little bit. “I’m really bored. I think I’m going crazy,” he said. “What are you doing? Do you want to come by?” You raised the wet vibrator up and decided how honest you wanted to be with him. ” Well, “ you said. “I can’t at the moment.” You could hear Taeyong’s frown through the phone. “Is everything okay?” he asked. You stumbled over your words before gathering the courage to tell the truth, “ You interrupted me during a very special time. My special alone time. Do you know what I mean?” You could hear Taeyong trying to process, could hear his little noises of embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I will call you later..or never.” You laughed, “Taeyong, it’s okay.” After a few seconds of silence, you heard his voice as tiny and as soft as possible, “Do you think I could listen to you?”

Yuta: “What are you doing?” he asked. “Are you touching yourself? Without me? Without my permission?” Yuta’s stern voice kept your pelvis pinned to the bed. You licked your lips and waited for him to speak some more. “Who do you think you are?” he asked. “Yours.” you said without hesitation. You began moving again, rubbing your clit roughly and hoping that you wouldn’t come too early. “Stop.” Yuta said. You slowed but didn’t stop. After a beat, Yuta spoke, “I told you to stop.” You moved your fingers down into the wetness of your hole and kept them still. “Tell me what to do next.” you said. Yuta laughed. When he spoke, he sounded bored, but you knew it was all a part of the game. “Go slowly,” he said. “When you think you’re going to break, stop. I want you to keep doing that every time until you wait for me. I’m on my way. I’ll stay on the phone with you the whole time.” You did as Yuta told you, edging yourself over and over again, your clit sensitive to the lightest touch. You were covered in your own sweat by the time he made it to your apartment, your phone sliding down your neck and your legs wide open for him.

Doyoung: You were always horny before your period, but Doyoung wasn’t around. You laid across your bed and thought about calling him over, but you knew he was too lazy to make the trip. Instead, you closed your eyes and imagined his graceful fingers sliding in and out of you. You arched your back into the fantasy, the front of your shorts rubbing against your bunched up blankets. Doyoung liked to make a whiny sound whenever he had control over you, a cross between a sharp intake of breath and a guttural moan. You could practically hear it in your head as you imagined him pounding into you. Your roommate knocked on the door, making it hard for you to finish the fantasy. “Doyoung is on the phone.” she said. You got up and grabbed the phone from her without looking at her and roughly closed the door behind you. “I was just thinking about you.” you said. Doyoung moved around on the other end, taking awhile to speak. “All good things I hope.” he said. You laid back down on your bed and continued grinding your covers to the sound of his voice. You could tell Doyoung knew what you were doing but didn’t want to interrupt. He kept his voice deep and even until you came from the friction, your moans stifled against your pillow. “Good girl.” he said.

Jaehyun: You could hear the busy traffic before he spoke. “Fuck!” you said into the phone. “Jaehyun, I totally forgot. I am so sorry.” Jaehyun’s voice was silky smooth and unaffected. “You’re late,” he said. “I’ve been standing out here for ten minutes alone. Are you coming?” You looked down at the glass cock sticking out of your pussy and said, “Something like that. Give me twenty minutes, and I will be right there. Go inside a cafe, I promise I won’t be long. I got caught up. I didn’t mean to. Fuck, I am so sorry. What will it take for you to forgive me?” You sat up at an odd angle that made the glass cock inside of you hurt so you laid back down. “What did you get so caught up in?” Jaehyun asked. “Anything I can help with?” You could imagine his smirk over the phone, his handsome hair getting windswept and still looking perfect. “Wouldn’t you like to know.” you said. You could feel yourself wanting to flirt back harder, to tell him you liked to imagine it was his warm cock fucking you, but you weren’t quite there yet. “Just come fast,” he said. “And then you can tell me what you’ve been up to.”

Jungwoo: “Can you stay on the phone with me?” he asked. Jungwoo called you because he was wandering into the kitchen late at night and all of the lights were off. You agreed, taking your hands slowly out of your pants. You had been fucking your own fingers for over an hour, the rawness of your skin making itself felt. With sticky fingers, you put your phone on speaker. “Are you making something to eat? This late at night?” you asked. Jungwoo laughed nervously and said, “Maybe.” You listened to him scrounge around for food until your curiosity got the better of you. “Jungwoo,” you said. “What would you do if I said you called me in the middle of masturbating?” The rustling on the other end of the phone stopped. The sound of him clearing his throat filled your bedroom. “I would say I’m sorry,” he said. “And then I would let you get back to it.” His answer made you laugh, causing him to follow with laughter of his own. With Jungwoo, there was never any awkward moments. “And what if I said I wanted you here with me?” you asked. Jungwoo sucked in a breath and said, “I would say I’m sorry, and then I would make myself a snack because I’m hungry.”

Mark: You argued with Mark about his naivety before. You called him innocent, and he called himself unaffected by things. Even his way of debating his own awareness was too soft, too moral. You had never really thought about him in any other light until he called you in the middle of your masturbation session, your fingers knuckle deep inside of yourself. Having him call you wasn’t on the agenda, but you figured Mark’s gullibility might allow for some wiggle room. “Make it fast,” you said. “I’m in the middle of something.” Continuing to touch yourself as he talked was less about getting off to the sound of his voice and more about keeping your hands busy. Still, the sound of Mark’s gruff voice made it hard for you to focus on anything but his sexiness. “So,” he said when he finished. “Are you doing what I think you’re doing?” You let out a breath you had been holding, causing Mark to fall silent. “What do you mean?” you asked. You quickened your fingers and leaned your head back so that you couldn’t hear what he said. When you pressed your ear back against the phone, you could hear Mark’s little intakes of breath. Realizing that he was masturbating with you sent you over the edge. “After you come for me, Mark Lee,” you said. “We never speak about this again.”

WayV | Dream

#Anonymous #nct #nct 127 #nct reactions #nct 127 reactions #nct imagines #nct 127 imagines #nct smut #nct 127 smut #taeil #taeyong #johnny #jaehyun #doyoung #mark #jungwoo #yuta #just so you know haechan's is with dreams and winwins is with wayv

398 notes · View notes

sierraraeck · 4 years

Text

The Second Case (Pt.1)

BAU x OC Aundreya

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

(This is my gif so please give credit if used)

Summary: The second case with the team means revisiting Aundreya’s hometown of Chicago. It quickly becomes personal and requires her to use connections and skills she acquired on the streets. Story two.

Category: Just working a case with the team

Warnings: Normal CM gore. A case involving young teenage girls. Mentions of drugs. Cussing.

Word Count: 4.8k

A/N: Just a reminder that this is all 100% fiction and I don’t actually know how gangs work.

I did start with the team that Monday, and while I was used to things moving fast, their version of ‘briefing’ was a whole new ball game. The first case felt a lot more like a dry run than anything. I honestly felt kinda useless. They all talked so fast, especially Spencer when he rambled facts or had revelations about something the rest of us didn’t understand. As promised, I was stuck in the precinct for the entire week practically, with plenty of badges around to watch me. And trust me, all of them did. I was back at the bottom of the food chain, a feeling I hadn’t experienced in almost a decade. It was infuriating, but I was just glad to be out in the world. Mostly.

Even though the team had supposedly voted to allow me to join them, it definitely didn’t feel that way. No one hardly talked to me. I mean, Morgan and Reid didn’t even so much as look at me, and when they did, it was only to give me a weird look everytime I said something, even when I was right. Especially when I was right.

But I brushed all of that off when I realized what the next case was. We would be headed right back to Chicago, probably the last place someone like me wanted to be seen with Feds.

Garcia flashed three bodies up on the screen. “Abigail Meyers, Josie Wilson, and Mya Burns. All three were found in their backyards, multiple stab wounds, and their throats slashed.”

“Do you have an age on these girls?” Morgan asked.

“Yes. Abigail and Josie were 15, Mya was 14.”

“They had each been reported missing in the morning and were found dead later that evening,” Hotch said.

“Our unsub would have to be sophisticated enough to be able to get the girls back into their own backyards later that night without being detected by the cops or the parents, since they would all be on high alert for the girls to return in case they had just run off,” Reid said. “Any connection between the three?”

“Besides geography, I haven’t found anything, but as always I will keep digging,” Penelope responded.

“What is that in their right hand?” JJ asked. I directed my attention to what she was talking about. Garcia pulled up another photo zoomed in on their right hands. “Apparently, all three had been stabbed straight through their hand.”

“And our unsub just left the knife through their hand at the crime scene?” Derek asked.

“Switchblade,” I corrected before he could get his answer. They all looked over at me. “I’ve seen something like this before. It’s been a while, but this was the signature of a rival gang, the Angels, in Chicago before ours took it over.”

“Stabbing the girls multiple times and leaving the murder weapon was a gang signature?” Rossi asked me.

“No. Not the multiple stabbings. For a gang member that would take too long. But the blade through the hand? That’s definitely a signature,” I replied.

“Okay, so if this is gang related, why the rest of it? The kidnapping, the stabbing, the dump sight...” Jennifer trailed off.

“I don’t know, but three victims in five days? This guy clearly doesn’t need much of a cooling off period,” Prentiss chimed in.

“Exactly, which means we need to act fast. Wheels up in 30.”

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

When we landed, I went right to the precinct with Aaron and JJ. The rest went to the crime scenes or to talk to the ME.

“I’m SSA Hotchner and this is Agent Jareau and Chambers,” Aaron introduced. The head of the department shook my hand, but held it for a little too long.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” the man asked me.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t believe so.”

“Are you sure? I feel like I know of a Chambers,” he pressed.

“Sorry. I think you’ve got the wrong girl,” I replied. He must’ve been new because if he had been there even two years ago, I’m sure people still would have been talking about me. I was just thankful the FBI made good on their promise to keep my escape and new employee status under the rug. JJ and Hotch looked at me, but I just shrugged them off. As if they didn’t already know I enjoyed lying to new people about who I was. I followed them into the office where we were supposed to set up. They already had a board up with pictures and information about the victims. That’s when Garica called.

“I regret to inform you of this, sir, but another girl has just gone missing. Her name is Jayana Orion…” I stopped listening. Jayana Orion. I hadn’t heard her name in a while. She was supposed to be my responsibility. When her mother, one of the only real friends I made during my 7 years on the streets, died, she asked me to do one thing for her, and that was protect her daughter. Of course, Sydney’s husband, Todd, was still around to help take care of her, but she knew that I would be able to handle the possible threats to Jayana better than he would. Instead, I made a dumb decision which left me in a prison where I could no longer help them. And now I had completely failed her.

“... Chambers?” I was snapped back to reality, Aaron trying to get my attention. “What do you think?”

“Sorry, about what?” I asked. I was going to have to compose myself if I didn’t want them picking up on this.

“Reid called from the ME saying that each girl had cocaine in their systems. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Other than cocaine being a popular street drug, no,” I said, still distracted. “Do we know anything else about Jayana?”

“Garcia is looking into it and Rossi is talking to her father now. If he sticks to schedule, we have until tonight to find her.”

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

“So according to their phone records and laptops, all three girls were talking about how unhappy they were with their parents, but I’ve found no contact between them that is the same,” Garcia said.

“All of their parents agreed that they had been distant lately,” Rossi said.

“So, what? These girls get mad and just decide to run? It sounds to me like this would have to be a stalker,” Prentiss said.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t fit with our gang affiliated profile,” Jareau said.

“Well maybe we got it wrong. Maybe this guy isn’t gang affiliated and just picked up on one of their signatures. I mean, there are no markings claiming responsibility, and no MO that matches a gang to the T,” Morgan offered. I could tell by his undertone that he somewhat enjoyed the idea of me being wrong.

“I still don’t understand. Why the shallow cuts on the arms?” Rossi asked. The room went silent and out of habit, I started scratching my own arm. Wait, my arm. That’s when it hit me. The cuts, the cocaine, the blade through the hand, the backyard...

“Garcia, are you still on the line?” I asked.

“Sure am,” she called.

“Where did you say their phones pinged from last?” Garcia started rattling off places as I dotted them on the map. I could feel the stares on my back as I worked. I turned to face the team. “I think this guy is trying to initiate these girls.”

“What?” Morgan looked at me like I had grown a third arm.

“Yeah. The last place these girls phones pinged are from designated street corners. Each girl stood at a different pick up zone for the Angels initiation. I didn’t immediately put it together because the Angels have been disbanded for almost 8 years. During most initiations, new members ditch their phones, and are forced to take some sort of stimulant or hallucinogenic to make them more compliant. Usually new recruits are asked multiple questions while under the influence so the gang can gage if they think they will be loyal to them or not. If people don’t pass they are usually just released. Traitors, on the other hand, are punished severely. They are usually dumped at a place of significance to them or their partners as a warning. In this case, the place of significance is their own backyard. The blade through the hand was just a way the Angels marked their traitors,” I said.

“So while this guy has them, he initiates them, and then thinks they have betrayed him in some way,” Derek said.

“Which causes him to lash out, which is why we see the overkill, but continues with the rest of the procedures,” Spencer finished.

“That’s great and all, but we still don’t know why he cuts their arms,” Rossi pointed out.

“Well, most initiations have recruits cut themselves and bleed on to, or in to, something of value and importance to the gang, solidifying their loyalty. Plus, most veteran gang members have plenty of cuts on their arms from training accidents or rival gang encounters,” I answered, realizing too late what I’d just invited everyone to do. They all dropped their gaze to my forearms to confirm my theory, which were exposed due to my rolled up sleeves. I quickly tugged them down to cover the small scars littering my arms.

“So that explanation does fit, but how is he finding his victims? Garcia said she found no mutual contact between the girls, but he would have to have some sort of prior contact with them for them to know exactly which street corner to stand on,” JJ said.

“Or maybe these are just victims of opportunity? If these girls ran from their homes, they could have just ended up on the wrong street corner,” Prentiss suggested.

“Or what if there’s a second unsub?” Aaron said. “We profiled initially that this was a gang member. We then completely contradicted our profile and changed to a stalker who would know they were unhappy at home and were just waiting for them to get out of the house. But we could be looking at one of each. A stalker who does all of his contact in person, letting them know what street corner to stand on, then either he or the former gang member picks the girls up and brings them to a second location where they are initiated and killed.”

“Okay, so if there are two of them, finding the stalker is going to lead us to our killer. But where would he go once he’s already delivered a girl to the gang member?” Derek asked.

“He’s probably already stalking his next victim,” Reid said.

“Maybe not,” I proposed. “At the rate these guys are working, they would have already had to know who they wanted to take. I mean, I don’t think this stalker guy can figure out that these girls are having constant trouble at home in just under 24 hours.”

“So what are you thinking?” Emily asked.

“In a gang, there are multiple levels of people. The people in charge of recruiting usually have a certain block or region that they cover looking for vulnerable people they can recruit. So once this guy sees these girls out and around his area, he takes it to another level by stalking them, probably at night when they are with their family. But during the day? He could still be scoping out people in his region,” I said.

“So how are we going to narrow it down? There are plenty of creepy guys on the streets to choose from,” Emily said.

“True. But if things haven’t changed too much in the past 4 years since the last time I was here, I’m pretty sure I know someone who can help us out.”

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

It took a lot of convincing for Aaron, and frankly the rest of the team members, to agree to this. I wasn’t supposed to be out in the field, definitely not this soon after joining the team, but I knew someone who could help and we were running out of time. Deen had been a loyal member of the Cloaks and later joined my ring of elite criminals as an expert in laundering money. He was one of the most important pieces that kept the streets going. While he was great at laundering, he was better at listening. Somehow, he just seemed to hear and pick up on everything. I knew that if agents showed up, or even if I showed up with one, there was no way I was getting any information out of him. Hell, I was worried he wouldn’t even talk to me alone after this many years. But it was my best shot if I wanted to save Jayana.

“We’re going to a bookstore?” Morgan questioned.

“It’s his front,” I answered. It made me uncomfortable to have to give the FBI this much information on Deen. He and I always worked as a well oiled machine and I wasn’t ready to betray his trust. I was trying to give out as little information about him as possible. I hadn’t even told them his name.

“We are going to have to wire you,” Aaron said.

“No! You can’t do that,” I said.

“We can’t just let you in there to talk to some old gang friend without a wire,” Aaron said.

“You have to. I mean, I’m even worried that he’s not going to talk to me after this many years, and if he’s heard anything about my escape or joining the FBI, which there’s a chance he has, the whole plan is screwed. Plus, he’ll probably know that I’m wearing one.”

“How? Unless you alert him that you're wearing one, he shouldn't know,” Morgan stated.

“If he doesn’t know, he’ll probably check. Then we’ll lose him as a reliable contact now, and potentially in the future,” I countered. “Plus, you already have Reid and Jareau in there pretending to be customers in case anything goes wrong, or you think I’m going to try something.”

I had a point and they both knew it. It wasn’t like I was walking into a trap or like he’d set a bomb in there or anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had set a bomb for emergency purposes, but the team didn’t need to know that. If anything, he was sitting in the middle of my trap, which had always been one of my specialties. The car slowed to a stop and I got out about a block from the store.

“Remember, you are going in there for one purpose and one purpose only,” Aaron started.

“To figure out where this stalker guy is. Yeah. I got it,” I said. I crossed the street catty-corner and pushed open the glass doors. I immediately spotted Reid standing in one of the isles, skimming through a book, and JJ sitting down in a chair just a few feet from the entrance. Neither turned to look at me, already getting the message through their ear piece that I’d entered the building. It felt stupid that this seemed like a whole undercover operation when all I was doing was talking to someone who could help us save Jayana. But I guess it showed how much they didn’t trust me, and the people I was in contact with.

I confidently walked over to the customer service desk and looked the kid up and down. He was probably just out of high school and was definitely a new recruit.

“Hey, can I speak to your manager?” I asked.

He looked up at me. “Is there a problem?”

I grabbed the hem of my t-shirt and the top of my waistband and quickly flashed him the tattoo over my left hip bone. His eyes went wide. “No. There’s no problem. I would just like to speak with him if that’s alright.”

“Uh, sure, ma’am. I’ll, uh, be right back,” the kid croaked, stumbling over his words and rushing toward the door that was labeled ‘Employees Only.’ The tattoo was of a double infinity sign inside a two-ringed circle. The symbol on the left hip bone identified who was a part of my underground ring. The second ring of my circle signified that I was the leader. Deen had a second ring with dashed lines, to show that he was second in command, and as of now, in charge.

I recognized his walk first. Deen had been shot in the knee and it never healed correctly, so he always had this extra bounce to the way he walked. He shaved all of his facial hair and let his jet black hair grow a little longer than I was used to. But his cat-like green eyes were exactly the same. I almost felt relieved when he pulled me into a giant hug. He was just an inch or so shorter than me, which always made me smile when he had to reach slightly up. You’d think all gang members were cold-hearted and ruthless, which Deen could be at times, but he’d always treated me like a younger sister. A younger sister who was in charge.

“Damn, girl! It’s been too long. What the hell are you doing here, I thought for sure you’d be eaten alive in there!” God I’d missed that slight Spanish accent.

“Oh how I have missed that confidence booster,” I teased.

“You know that’s not what I meant. You could kick anyone’s ass any day. Including mine. But seriously, what are you doing here?” He quickly dropped his voice and his expression became more serious, losing the slight shock that was there a few moments ago from seeing me for the first time in a while.

“I wish I were here under better circumstances,” I started.

“But when has that ever worked out for us?”

“Very true,” I agreed. I leaned in closer to him and dropped my voice to a whisper. “I actually need some information.”

“What kind of information?”

“I’m looking for someone.” Deen glanced around the room and his eyes landed on Reid and Jennifer.

“What is going on?” he asked. I knew that he was going to start putting things together soon, so I had to get him to focus on the matter at hand.

“You remember Sydney, yeah?”

“Of course. How could I forget her?”

“Her daughter, Jayana, is missing,” I said.

“Well, have you spoken to Todd?”

“Yes, do you think I’m an idiot, of course, but he doesn’t know anything.”

“You don’t want me to answer that,” he responded playfully. I’d missed our ability to banter in the middle of a crisis, our way of keeping each other’s head above water. “So what do you need my help for?”

“I need you to help me find a guy.”

“There are a shit ton of guys around here, you’re going to have to be more specific,” Deen said. I rolled my eyes at his dry humor.

“Yeah, you jackass, I know that, but if you’d just shut up and let me finish. You remember where the Angels used to set up? The corners where they’d pick up new recruits?”

“Sure.”

“Well, have you seen anyone you don’t really recognize hanging around those spots?”

“Alionth-” he started.

“Aundreya,” I quickly corrected. I flinched slightly at the sound of the stage name I’d given myself once I took over the gang and pushed it way underground. I hadn’t heard it in so long and I didn’t want to be reminded of the last time someone used it.

“Come with me,” he commanded, taking my hand and dragging me behind the ‘Employees Only’ door. “What is going on? You show up out of nowhere asking for information on a guy that I’m sure you could scope out yourself, ask me to call you by your old gang name, and there are two customers in the store who have been here for too long and kept glancing over at us. What has happened to Jayana and why are you here?”

I knew he would start picking up on stuff. “Look. I’ve been out for only a few weeks-” I started.

“Oh yeah! That too! How the hell are you here because I’d bet my life they didn’t just let you go,” Deen asked. He stared right into me, daring me to lie to him.

“I escaped,” I said. His face contorted and he took a small step back.

“You what now?”

“You heard me.”

“That’s impossible. Most people can’t even get out of normal prison let alone ADX.”

“Well I’m here aren’t I?”

“How’d you do it?”

“Can we please focus?” I was getting restless. I knew they were only going to give me a limited amount of time out of sight and earshot before they burst in. Plus, I could feel the time slipping by, each moment as important as the last if we were going to find Jayana alive. “Look. Jayana is my responsibility. It was the last thing Sydney asked me to do and she is in a lot of trouble. If you do not help me, I will have failed Sydney’s dying wish of protecting her daughter. So will you please just answer my questions?”

Deen gave me a skeptical look, but based off the one I gave him, he knew better than to keep pressing for answers. “Yeah. I’ve seen a guy hanging around.”

“Do you know his name?”

He hesitated before answering, “Ben-somethin’.”

“Could you describe him to me?”

“Short, probably my height or a little shorter. White. Dressed like a bad boy wannabe. And now that you mention it, he was hanging around the Angels' old spots.”

“During the day?”

“Sort of. He’d be there early in the morning, then leave during the middle of the day, come back in the evening, then leave during the middle of the night. Like clockwork,” Deen said. I could always count on him to be observant.

“Would you happen to know where he is now?” I asked.

“Those aren’t customers in my store, are they?” he replied, changing the subject. Instead of answering him, I put my hands behind my head and turned around. “Don’t worry, I know you’re not wired. I already checked that.”

Right, the hug earlier. “So you’re telling me you didn’t actually want a hug?” I pouted.

He laughed. “No, I did. It was multi-purpose.” We stood there staring at each other for a while before I decided to break the silence.

“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t tell them anything about you, not even your name. I tried my best to shield your face from them as well,” I said.

“And as long as I help you out, I’m in the clear,” Deen finished my train of thought. I nodded. He was handling this a lot better than I expected. Maybe leadership over the course of the past four years helped mellow him out. “Damn. I’d heard rumors but I thought that was all they were.”

“I’m still the same person you knew from four years ago. Still doing what I have to do to survive in the best way I can.” He was silent for a while, probably trying to gage how much he still trusted me. “Please, help me. Help Jayana. Just tell me where you think he’d be, and I will get out of here and take those unwanted customers with me.”

He started nodding. “Fine. Fine. I think he’s moving in a star pattern. Starting at the bottom left, then moving up to the point, bottom right, and so on. I still can’t figure out his pattern when it comes to picking up the girls, but if he’s keeping to his usual schedule, he should be at the far right point today. But,” he said checking his watch, “not for long. You might have 40 minutes max before he leaves again.”

I did my best to retain everything he told me. “Wait, how long have you been watching this guy? I mean, how many girls has he picked up?” Deen was like no other when it came to tracking patterns and people on the street, but not even he was good enough to figure out something that intricate in 5 days.

“I don’t know. A couple months or so. I didn’t start realizing he was picking up girls until a few weeks ago.” This had been going on for a couple months? Where were all the other girls then?

“Thank you so much for this. I hope I can come back soon under different circumstances,” I said, already halfway out the door and back into the store. He came behind me and grabbed my arm, turning me so that I was looking at him.

“I hope you can too, Aundreya, but I swear to God, if anyone finds out I cooperated with Feds, or this place goes under because of this-”

“It won’t. And once they trust me more there will be no reason for them to be on my back all the time and I can come here without a plus two. And if something happens, which it won’t, but if it does, you know how to contact me. Over my undead body,” I said. Deen gave me a half smile at our old phrase, which we used to remind each other that we were loyal to the end. Lucky for us, the end always seemed to mean that of our enemies.

“Over our undead bodies,” he said with a nod. I walked toward the entrance where Spencer and Jennifer were still acting like customers. They were supposed to wait until I had exited, then slowly make their departures after me to try and make it look natural. But considering Deen already knew, and as a show of good faith to him, I decided I’d make it easier.

“C’mon guys. Let’s get outta here,” I said, waiting by the door.

They both looked at me like I’d lost my mind, Jareau opening her mouth then shutting it again.

“He already knows. I told you he would. For once, let’s make it easy on ourselves,” I said, holding the door open for them. Reid let out a frustrated sigh as he pushed past me, avoiding eye contact. JJ walked out after him. I quickly scanned the room one last time, but Deen had already disappeared again, and the young boy was back at the front desk like nothing had happened. “You’re doing a good job, kid,” I said to him, and he smiled shyly at my words. I gave him a single nod, then followed the other two out the door.

“What were you thinking?” Reid said harshly.

“What? The guy knew,” I stated.

“But what if he didn’t know? You would have just blown our cover,” Spencer said, the frustration having never left his voice. His upper back muscles around his shoulder blades and traps started twitching, a tell of discomfort I had gotten used to seeing.

“Well he did know, so it was worthless to waste time,” I replied, still following behind him.

“What if it was a theory he had, and you just confirmed it,” Spencer countered.

“Even you don’t believe that. If you did, you wouldn’t have phrased it as a hypothetical. Plus, the quicker I can get your irritatingly large brain back on topic, the quicker we are going to find Jayana,” I pointed out. We reached the car where Hotch and Morgan were sitting, and I recapped everything Deen had told me. Reid called Garcia to update her and start searching for ‘Ben’s in the area with a track record. The rest of us quickly moved towards the corner this Ben character was supposed to be at. We paired off and started canvassing the area. We’d looked for about 30 minutes and found no one.

“How reliable is your guy?” Morgan asked me.

“Reliable.”

“You sure? ‘Cause we’ve been looking for a while and none of them fit the profile or description.”

“Yeah. I’m sure,” I replied. According to Deen, we only had about 10 more minutes or less to find this guy before he took off.

“Has Garcia identified anyone yet?” Aaron asked.

“No, not yet. There are plenty of ‘Ben’s around,” Morgan answered.

“What if we start looking at cars? If this guy is going to leave soon, and based on the distances he’s going, he’s most likely got a car, probably a van,” JJ offered. We paired back off and went around looking for weird people around vans. Which was a surprising amount. Aaron’s phone started ringing, a call coming in from Morgan.

“He’s got him,” is all he had to say before we were both running back to the SUV where Morgan was already pushing a man into the backseat.

Part 2

31 notes · View notes

fox-moblin · 5 years

Text

Lay Waste

Chapter 2

Ch 1. Ch 2.

*Quick Note: Updates will (hopefully) be every Thursday, with a reblog on Friday because timezones and schedules.*

****

Twilight II

****

“Alright,” Time says, and motions for Wild to place his slate down on the table. Its screen glows with a map of Wild’s Hyrule, the various icons blinking lazily. Wild taps the screen, zooming in on a small portion labeled something Twilight doubts any of the others can read.

“Mt. Lanayru,” Wild explains. He’s better now, marginally. He’s talking more to Twilight, though whatever he’s not telling him still sits somewhere beneath the surface. He doesn’t flinch anymore, though, allowing Twilight to nudge him playfully and put his arm around his shoulder like he used to. It’s not quite like before, but Twilight’s willing to take whatever he can get.

“It’s good,” Time had said to him privately when he and Wild had returned. Twilight had looked at him, confused, until Time had nodded to where Wild was joking around with Legend. “Whatever it is you said, it worked.” He’d explained. “You’re a good older brother.”

Twilight had spluttered, choking out something like ‘we’re not- no no, I’m just, just a mentor, Time. I’m just his mentor - I’m not gonna just assume that-’ and had gone on until Time had simply placed a hand on his shoulder and gave a rare toothy grin.

“That’s the Spring of Wisdom,” Wild says, drawing Twilight back from his thoughts, and places a small glowing symbol to mark on what appears to be a pool of water on the mountain. “I have a feeling that whatever we’re dealing with is going to be situated around there.”

“What’s the journey up like?” Warriors asks. Beside him, Hyrule has a pad of paper out, writing down the supplies they’ll need for the trip. Wild tilts his head back and forth, thinking.

“Hard,” he says with a shrug, and Twilight ignores the way Sky groans under his breath behind him. “There’ll be some climbing involved, and the area’s known to be icy. That along with monsters and the storm…” Wild trails off and looks back at Time. “It’ll be a hard day.”

Time nods, his eye closed. Wild crosses his arms, looking lost in thought as he stares at the map, before glancing up at Twilight.

“We won’t be able to bring the horses, at least not up the mountain.”

Twilight sighs. He figured as much.

“Will they be okay stayin’ here?”

Wild nods, moving the map and pointing at a small cluster of buildings.

“There’s a ranch right here; I know the owners. They’ll be happy to take the horses while we’re gone. They can bring them to a stable as well, if we need them to.” He pauses and looks at Twilight, quirking his eyebrow; Twilight realizes he’s been grimacing and tries to relax his face. Wild nudges his shoulder. “They’ll take good care of Epona, I promise. Koyin even sings to her animals at night, so Epona will feel right at home.”

Twilight rolls his eyes, but the sense of relief he feels is welcomed. Hyrule looks up from writing.

“Ok, so what else do you think we’ll need?” He taps his paper. “I have the usual provisions; dried meat, cheese, bread, water, etc… I’m guessing we’ll need some warmer clothes as well?”

Wild nods.

“I can travel to Rito Village and pick up a few more Snowquill sets.” He eyes the group up and down and picks up his slate, making a note in his inventory. “I’ll need some different sizes, I guess.”

Twilight taps his protege’s shoulder.

“I’ll be fine without one. ‘Got enough pelts and warm clothes to be sufficient.”

Wild nods, but still purses his lips, tapping on his slate.

“I’ll grab you a headset, just incase.” He mumbles and Twilight doesn’t argue. With the plan set, the rest of them throwing in rupees to pay for the extra clothing. Wild looks around the group. “Anyone want to join me?”

Twilight backs away, shaking his head.

“I think I’ll get sick if I ever have to use that teleportin’ thing again.”

Wild laughs a little and turns to Sky.

“You want to come? I think you’d like Rito Village a lot.”

Sky looks hesitant, but nods after a while and moves to stand next to Wild, linking their arms at the elbows.

“Yeah, okay, let’s go-”

Wild taps his slate and they’re gone before Sky can finish his sentence. Twilight grimaces as they disintegrate, the feeling of his own experiences with teleportation coming to mind. To be honest, Wild’s way of doing it is slightly more pleasant than… Midna’s… but he hates it either way.

When they’re gone, Time turns to the remaining group, taking the list from Hyrule.

“Let’s get going then,” he says, assigning each of them a list of things to buy in town. “Aside from provisions, see how much information you can gather about the mountain and whatever’s been going on up there.”

***

Town is busy, the late morning sun enticing children to play and townsfolk to linger in the marketplace. Twilight walks with Four beside him, list in hand. He tries to keep his strides shorter, feeling a bit guilty when he notices the way Four keeps trotting forward in an attempt to keep up with him. They’re on food duty, making their first stop a small building with a pot on its sign.

“Good thing they have pictures,” Four mutters under his breath and Twilight hums in agreement. Inside they find Warriors and Hyrule, already scanning over bundles of arrows. Hyrule looks up briefly, sending Twilight and Four a quick smile, before going back to listening to Warriors comment on each of the arrows.

Twilight wanders around the small store, nodding at the owner. Each of the foods are labeled, but he can’t understand them; he wonders idly how that works. How he can understand everyone he’s met so far no matter the Hyrule, albeit with some difficulty depending on the accent, but some of the written languages elude him. Sky’s and Wild’s in particular; he figures it’s the time periods.

Next to him, Four hefts a bottle of milk in his hand.

“Think this will keep?”

Twilight shrugs.

“We’ll have to drink it pretty fast... though, maybe the cold’ll keep it fresh?”

Four scowls and puts the bottle back.

“Not gonna risk it.”

They buy a few mushrooms and apples, as well as a few bundles of rice, Four saying that Wild could probably find a way to use them. They pay just as Hyrule and Warriors finish their own shopping; Twilight notes with amusement that they’ve cleared out the store’s arrow stock. The owner looks both excited and nervous as he marks his books. The four of them leave together, chatting amongst themselves, when Twilight spots at old woman by a set of cooking pots, struggling to lift a barrel.

“I’ll be right back,” he says to others, handing Warriors his bag. His companion grumbles, but takes it and Twilight makes his way over to the woman.

“Here,” he says as he approaches and helps her lift the barrel onto a nearby shelf. She smiles and pats his arm lightly.

“Ah, thank you young man.” She puts her hands on hips and purses her lips. “Suits me right, thinking I can lift such a thing all by myself.” She grins and shakes her head. “Not as young as I used to be!”

“Naw, you look plenty young to me.”

The woman coos, her hands clasped in front of her.

“Oh my, not from around here, are you dear?” She tuts, wagging a finger at him. “If that accent is anything to go by, anyway.”

Twilight blushes, lifting a hand to scratch behind his head.

“Ah, no. Can’t say I am.” He pauses, glancing up at the distant cliffs. “Say… you wouldn’t happen to know anythin’ about what’s been goin’ on on Mt. Lanayru, would you? I hear there’s been some nasty storms.”

The old woman raises an eyebrow then sighs, shrugging.

“Storms, monster sightings, avalanches.” She shakes her head. “Here I was thinking it would all be over once the Calamity was defeated, but it seems the goddesses don’t like to leave Hyrule alone for long.”

Twilight suppresses the urge to laugh, instead just nodding along as the woman continues.

“I’d stay away if I were you,” she says, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. “That mountain is no place to be in the best of times. Now… it’s a death sentence, if I ever saw one.”

Twilight feels a chill run down his spine, but he simply thanks the woman for her help and leaves, meeting up with the others where they’re listening to a young boy talk animatedly to them.

“- and then he brought me a big sword and it was all glowing and blue! But he wouldn’t let me keep it!” The boy pouts, crossing his arms. “What a jerk!”

“Yeah, a big jerk,” Warriors laughs. Twilight tilts his head, but Warriors just winks and turns back to the kid. “So what else did Link do?”

Oh. Wild.

The boy thinks for a moment, his lower lip jutting out in thought, before he smiles and throws his hands up in the air.

“He saved Hyrule,” he yells and laughs. “There was a big monster at the castle and Link went there all alone and then the sky got really dark,” he pauses. “Mama made me stay inside, but I got to watch out the window and I saw everything.” He laughs. Twilight leans in, waiting for more, but suddenly there’s a yell and the boy turns. A woman stands in the doorway of a nearby house, beckoning to him.

“Nebb,” She calls, hands on her hips. “You have your studies to get to - stop bothering those boys and get in here!”

“Mama-”

“I have fresh cheese and apples.”

The boy, Nebb, gasps and is off without saying goodbye, only pausing once he reaches the doorway to wave at them, before he’s ushered inside. Twilight watches him go with amusement. Warriors laughs again.

“Kids,” he says and then hands Twilight his groceries, before starting to walk back to Wild’s house. Twilight and the others follow suit. As they walk, something catches Twilight’s attention out of the corner of his eye; a shrine, similar to the ones Wild has showed them before, sits high on a cliff behind the town, hidden so that Twilight might have never seen it if not for the burst of blue that signalled one of Wild’s teleportations. He watches as the light dissipates, revealing two figures, the taller of the two talking excitedly to the other. Sky is waving his arms, a smile plastered on his face as he speaks, the bags in his hands swinging wildly. Wild stands beside him, a couple of his own bags held gingerly in his arms, listening.

“Oh, they’re back,” Four says, coming up beside him. “Guess we’re going soon.”

“Yeah,” Twilight agrees and thinks of the old woman’s words. Something foreboding forms in the pit of his stomach, but he pushes it down. “Let’s go.”

***

“This is huge!”

“Well, it’s the smallest they had.”

Four makes an enraged noise and waves his arms, the oversized sleeves of his Snowquill tunic flopping about uselessly.

“Are you telling me they don’t have kids in Rito Village?!”

“They’re all birds - they don’t need the tunics. And the only Hylians that visit are usually older,” Wild says, trying to hide his laughter behind his hand.

Twilight has forgone such niceties and is openly chuckling, leaning on Wild’s shoulder. Behind him, Legend is on the floor, practically sobbing as Wind continues to take more pictures on his Picto box. Four rounds on them, his face bright red.

“Stop it!”

Legend laughs harder.

Behind Four, packing up their supplies, Time rolls his eye and stands, shaking his head.

“Alright, alright,” he says, but Twilight catches the way the corners of his lips turn upwards. “We don’t have much time and we really should try to reach the mountain before nightfall.”

“We can take the horses and leave them at the ranch up there,” Wild says, composing himself. “It’s on the way.”

Time nods.

“Then let’s go - everyone dressed and ready?”

The rest of them giving varying degrees of agreements, Four still grumbling as he rolls the sleeves of his tunic up, still looking rather lumpy.

Twilight plays with the feathers braided into his hair, courtesy of Wild, and makes a mental list of everything he has; sword? Check. Shield? Check. Bow? Check. He goes to his bag and counts his arrows, newly stocked thanks to Warriors and Hyrule. Most of the arrows went to Wild, a unanimous decision, but they all agreed that each of them should have a few, just in case. Provisions are spread evenly between everyone; without the horses to carry anything, their supplies will have to be light. Wild can only carry so much in his slate, so whatever they don’t need gets left behind at the house.

“Only that which is essential,” Legend had said cryptically when they began packing, laughing when Warriors scowled and took out another two daggers from his pack, throwing them to the side.

When they’re finally ready, bags packed and the house locked up with the rest of their supplies tucked safely inside, Wild, Twilight and Four ready Epona and Wild’s steed while the others go to retrieve their steeds.

“We’ll meet you in town,” Sky calls over his shoulder as they cross the bridge.

Twilight takes Epona out slowly, marveling at her coat in the daylight. He doesn’t bother with her saddle; he won’t be riding her for long. Wild does the same, much to Four’s chagrin. He helps the smallest of them up, laughing when Four complains about how uncomfortable his horse is; Wild’s horse looks rather offended. Twilight laughs as well, pushing himself up onto Epona with a huff.

“By the way,” he says as Wild gets settled on his steed. “What’s his name?”

Wild looks down at his horse and smiles, reaching down to brush a hand through the black mane.

“Fáelán,” he says with a small laugh.

“Good name.”

“I know.”

Four huffs.

“Can we please go before my ass molds to the shape of Fáelán’s back?”

Twilight barks out a laugh and follows Wild as he pushes Fáelán forward; they cross the bridge, Twilight peering over once more, smiling as a flock of cranes fly through underneath. The others meet them near the town stables, already mounted and ready to go.

They follow Wild up the path, their chatter cheerful, if wary of the whatever dangers lie before them. Wild points ahead as the low roof of a building comes into view, identifying the ranch they’re headed to.

He waves as he approaches and Twilight sees a young woman tending to a herd of sheep. Two dogs greet them as they reach the property, running alongside their horse. Twilight doesn’t miss the way Wild tenses, but he seems to relax soon after, jumping down to greet the woman, Koyin, and speak with her about the horses. It seems he’s warned the ranch ahead of time; she leads them to a set of empty stables, fresh bedding scattered over the floor. Twilight hums his approval when Wild sends him a questioning glance, dismounting from Epona and letting Koyin lead him to a stable.

He lingers in saying goodbye, pressing his forehead to Epona’s and running his hands over her cheeks.

“Be good, yeah,” he murmurs quietly and Epona whinnies softly. “That’s my good girl.”

He tries to ignore chill creeping up his spine. Footsteps approach and he turns to see Koyin standing behind him, a small smile on her lips.

“I’ll take good care of her,” Koyin says with a nod. “She’ll be here waiting for you when you get back.”

Twilight nods and thanks her profusely, bidding one more farewell to Epona, before going to join the others.

“Ready?” Wild asks the group and begins to lead them up the rest of the path. It winds upwards, towards a peculiar looking building that Wild just rolls his eyes at when Wind questions him about it. “A lab,” he states, a fond annoyance evident in his voice, but doesn’t elaborate. He points beyond the cliff where they stand, to the snowy peaks in the distance. Dark clouds gather over the mountain, the sky many shades darker than the one they stand under now; a storm rages down the mountainside. Twilight notes with concern how it seems to be moving closer, spreading out towards the rest of Wild’s Hyrule. Lightning illuminates portions of the mountain, while others are hidden by a white haze; a snowstorm so thick it looks like fog from a distance. Wind lets out a low whistle and Sky puts an arm around his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Legend says and crosses his arms. “Seems about right for something we’d have to deal with.”

The others chuckle a bit. Wild leans over the cliff, pointing down.

“We’ll have to climb down - it’s not too far - and then just beyond those trees is the beginning of the mountain. There’s a trail, but it’ll be covered in ice with the storm.” He hefts his paraglider. “Meet you down there, I guess?”

“Yeah, or we could race,” Legend says, excitement at the edge of his voice, but a stern look from Time silences him. Time pulls out his hook shot instead, walking to the edge. He tests the rock, before hooking his anchor to the cliff side. He turns to the rest of them, and Twilight watches wide eyed as his frown changes to a grin.

“Last one down has cucco duty next time we’re at my ranch,” he says and leaps backwards off the cliff.

“Son of bitch!” Legend cries, but Twilight’s already leaping as well, twisting mid air to shoot his claw shot and swing down. Wild falls past him, laughing, and Twilight watches as he unravels his paraglider at the last moment, landing gently on the ground next to Time, who’s laughing at the rest of them.

In the end, Warriors laments for the rest of the walk to the mountain’s base, accusing all of them of cheating. He’s quieted by the time they reach the base, Twilight having threatened to throw him off the mountain if he continues, and the group stands in relative silence as they look up. The storm rages overhead and, even without being on the mountain, Twilight can feel the harsh chill of ice and wind. He steels himself, squaring his shoulders.

“Well,” he says, breaking the silence. “Shall we?”

****

The climb is hard.

Wild had said as much, but as they fight their way through thick snow and biting winds, Twilight’s beginning to think they might be unprepared for this. They’re all shivering, even with their enhanced clothing, and Twilight’s slipped more times that he can count, his shoes unfit for icy trail they’re following. He wishes, for a moment, that he could just turn into a wolf.

Wild leads the way, constantly turning back to check on the group. Twilight catches his eye as he pauses again. The winds pick up for a moment.

“Go, Cub!” Twilight calls from where he is, a few feet behind Wild. “Just keep going!”

Wild nods and the group surges forward. Twilight curses as his foot slips again, eyes trained on Wild’s form in front of him, barely visible through the storm. He feels someone come up next to him; Time walks hunched over, his own braided hair flapping wildly in the wind.

“You good?” He yells over the wind. Twilight nods, before he realizes that Time probably can’t see him well enough.

“Yeah,” he calls back and they keep moving.

They eventually stop on a rocky outcrop, huddled together as they try to make a plan and catch their breath. Wild fiddles with his slate, the map on the screen flashing violently between an actual image and static. Twilight squints and looks out into the storm; he can see nothing but a blur of snow.

“Damn it,” Wild mutters. Legend leans over.

“Anything?” he asks, curling in on himself. Wild shakes his head. A harsh wind sweeps through their small shelter and Twilight makes a note to thank Wild later for getting him the Snowquill headset afterall. Whatever enchantment lies over it is doing wonders in keeping his ears warm; some magic, he figures, is pretty nice. Nevertheless, he pulls the hood of his pelt up over his head. Next to him, Time chuckles.

“Now you really look like a little pup,” his mentor says and Twilight ducks his head.

“Shut up,” he mumbles, crossing his arms and bringing his knees to his chest. Time laughs and Twilight feels as arm around his shoulder pull him close. He leans into the touch, reveling in the small break they have before they must continue on their trek.

“I think,” Wild says suddenly and then pauses, staring at his screen, before looking up. “I think we’re almost at the spring. Just a little further.”

“Let’s go then,” Time says and pats Twilight’s shoulder.

Entering the storm again means that Four almost gets blown off the mountain side and Sky missteps and receives a jagged cut down his calf from a slab of ice.

“I’m fine,” he gasps, shaking his head when Hyrule offers him a potion, but finally takes it when the others insist. He hands it back only half empty and glares at anyone who tries to argue.

The path levels out eventually and they’re able to walk, moving slowly up and across the mountainside. Wild digs through his slate and produces a spear of flames, which he holds high above his head like a beacon, the soft glow of its blade the only thing Twilight can make out in the storm at times. They’re silent, the only noise the howling winds around them, when something else breaks through.

Twilight almost doesn’t hear it; a different kind of howling, rising above the storm; a chorus of voices, carried by raging winds. Wild comes an abrupt stop, whipping around. He meets Twilight’s gaze, his mouth parted and his eyes wide. Twilight draws his sword and the other follow suit behind him.

The howls come again and the group tenses.

“Wolfos?” Time yells, but Twilight can see Wild shake his head, still looking rather lost. The group shuffles, listening at the howling rises and falls; they seem to be going away, fading back into the storm from which they came.

“Just regular wolves, right?” Twilight asks and looks to Wild for confirmation. “Wild?”

Wild is pale, staring out into the storm with a blank expression. Twilight moves forward and places his hand on Wild’s shoulder; his protege flinches and Twilight pulls back as if burned.

“...Cub?”

Wild blinks then shakes his head, like a dog ridding himself of water, and looks up at Twilight.

“Uh, sorry. I’m good. Just a little-” he waves his hand through the air. “You know.”

Twilight isn’t convinced, but he lets it go, allowing Wild to keep walking.

With the storm and snow, it takes another hour till they finally reach the Spring.

“It’s just over this cliff,” Wild calls, pointing. Great spires of ice mark their path and Twilight uses them as a post to lean on and catch his breath. The rest of the group seems to have the same idea, each taking a moment to rest. Behind Twilight, Time lets out a long sigh, looking up at the clouds.

“What do you think’s causin’ it?” Twilight mutters to his mentor. Time huffs.

“Guess we’ll find out.”

“Strange we haven’t met any monsters, huh.”

He expects Time to say something like ‘don’t push our luck, pup,’ but he only closes his eyes and breathes in deeply.

“Yeah,” he says, quiet. “Strange.”

It’s as he finishes speaking and Twilight prepares himself for whatever awaits them at the Spring that the entire mountain shakes with an explosive roar. Twilight drops to the ground, the path way shaking beneath him. Sheets of ice come sloughing off the cliffside and Twilight catches Wild out of the corning of his eye, pressed against the rock.

“Wind!” Sky screams from the back of the group and Twilight looks up in time to see Wind lose his balance, panic bright in his eyes as he tips over the side of the cliff. Twilight’s running before he can think, whipping out his clawshot and aiming it at their youngest member. Wind cries out as the claw grabs him, and Twilight pulls, the weight of the other hero and ice beneath his feet sending him sliding down the path.

“Twi!” He hears Wild cry out. The others grab at him, trying to him onto the path as he passes by. Warriors finally wraps an arm around his waist and hauls him back before he can go over.

“Keep me steady,” Twilight yells to Warriors and begins to reel Wind back up the mountain. Wind is gripping the clawshot for dear life, his face white. When he’s close enough, Twilight kneels down, Warriors still keeping him stable, and reaches down. He grabs Wind’s collar and heaves him up, pulling him into a firm embrace. Wind is shaking and lets out a nervous laugh as he shuffles away from the edge.

“Fuck,” he says, somewhat hysterical. Twilight steps back, helping him remove the clawshot from his shirt, apologising when he sees where it has grazed the skin, but Wind only shakes his head and thanks him, before moving back in line with the others; Sky grips his shoulder, pulling him close, and Wind nods, saying something Twilight can’t hear over the wind.

“What the hell was that?!” Legend yells and the mountain rumbles in response, sending all of them scrambling to press themselves against the wall. Up at the front of the line, Wild and Time look back at everyone. Twilight waves to them, though he’s not sure they can see.

“Go,” he calls and the others repeat it so that Wild can hear. Twilight can see him hesitate, but then the mountain shakes again, an ear splitting roar sending splinters through the spires of ice around them. Twilight covers his ears, squeezing his eyes shut until the noise subsides. “Go, go, go,” he cries and the group starts to run, slipping and scrambling their way up the path. Twilight brings up the rear, glancing out at the storm as lightning lances across the sky.

They crest the hill as the mountain shudders again and Twilight almost loses his grip as he pulls himself up over the cliff. He staggers to his feet to find the rest of the group already looking at the Spring before him.

“What the fuck,” Four mumbles and Twilight feels his stomach drop.

A dragon sits, draped over the spires of ice that surround the Spring of Wisdom, the statue at its center split in half. The head of Hylia lies half submerged in the holy water of the Spring, her face turned up towards the storm. Sky makes a choked noise, but it’s cut off when the dragon convulses, releasing a screech that sends Twilight to his knees. Black fog pours from its mouth and eyes and it lurches, writhing and clawing at the air and ice around it. Its tail whips wildly, smashing into the mountain side and sending the group reeling; Twilight feels the ground slip from under him and he falls back, rolling to the edge of the cliff. His leg goes over and he panics, scrambling in the snow until he finds something to hold onto.

“Naydra!”

Twilight whips his head up; Wild is standing in the Spring, his arms at his side with his palms up.

“Naydra,” he cries out. “Naydra, it’s me!”

The dragon roars, thrashing, its body twisting and jerking unnaturally as more and more of the fog flows from its body; Twilight almost gags as he sees it pouring from the creature’s eyes and ears, seeping out from between the blue scales that cover the length of its form. It pools on the ground like water, too heavy to be anything natural, and Twilight watches, horrified, as the snow begins to melt where it touches the foul stuff, black vapor rising into the air. Wild takes a step back.

“Naydra, please!” He tries again, still backing away. “It’s me, it’s - it’s Link!”

The dragon screams and Wild scrambles back as it lashes out with a clawed hand, grabbing at the empty space where Twilight’s protege once stood.

“Wild, get back now!” Time shouts, holding onto a pillar and crouching as the mountain shakes again. The winds around them begin to pick up, the snow on the ground mixing with that in the air, and the dragon and Spring disappear in the haze. Twilight can hear the calls of his friends mixing with the wind; he stands, uncertain, the knowledge that the edge of the cliff lies only a foot or so behind him heavy in his mind.

He thinks he hears someone call his name and then lightning illuminates the world.

Twilight looks up to see the dragon above him.

Twilight is frozen, his legs refusing to move; he stares upwards as the dragon opens its mouth and inky foulness drips from its maw. It convulses and Twilight can see its clawed hand coming up, poised above him as lightning arches across the sky again.

He doesn’t move, even when he realizes that the hand is coming closer, coming down.

“No!”

Time’s voice is the last thing he hears before the ground in front of him explodes and he’s thrown back through the air. He falls for half a second, his stomach leaping to his throat, and then he hits the side of the cliff, pain lancing through his body as he tumbles down the slope, coming to an agonizing stop on a small shelf. He lays there dazed, until he sees red begin to stain the snow beneath him. He pushes himself to his elbows, ignoring the way his body screams. He can taste blood in his mouth; it pushes past his lips, dribbling down his chin and onto the snow.

“Twi!”

He looks up and sees Wild and the others standing above him, a great fissure between them, and Twilight realizes what has happened. The mountain side is split, a jagged gash separating him from the rest of the group. He tries to sit up further, but his body refuses and instead he flops forward with a shudder. He can see Wild, staring at him with wide eyes, inching closer to the edge.

“No… don’t,” Twilight tries to say, but it comes out weak. Time makes a grab for Wild, but Wild leaps forward, landing beside Twilight just as the mountain shakes again. He throws himself over Twilight, the shimmering red of Daruk’s Protection coming up around them as ice and rocks come toppling down. Twilight can hear Time calling his name, muffled by the shield around him and Wild. Cracks form in its surface as more and more rocks crash against it and then, with a burst of light, the shield shatters and the only thing left protecting him is Wild. Twilight scrambles, trying to push Wild away, or flip them around, but his arms are weak and he’s left groaning as the energy leaves him. Wild grunts, but otherwise remains where he is, gripping Twilight’s tunic until the onslaught eventually subsides. Wild moves, sitting up slowly, and Twilight turns just enough to note the blood in his hair.

“Cub,” he mumbles and then the world shatters again.

Somewhere, above them, the dragon screeches and a shadow passes over as it crashes into the mountain, scrambling against the stone.

There’s a cry and Twilight sees Legend struggling in the dragon’s grasp as it pulls back, screaming as ice begins to creep over his body. Hyrule yells, leaping from the edge and grabbing onto the dragon’s claw, hacking away at it with his sword. The others scramble to help; there’s a flash, lightning illuminating metal, and Twilight sees Time aim his hookshot onto Hyrule’s tunic. It latches on and Time pulls, his jaw clenched as he struggles against the strength of the dragon.

The dragon jerks, rearing back, and Twilight stares, horrified, as his mentor is pulled forward off the ledge and left dangling in the air.

Wild staggers to his feet.

“Time!”

Time kicks in the air, reaching for Hyrule, and, then, everything slows as the dragon shudders. It lurches back, contorting its body, and then it opens its hand, releasing Legend, Hyrule, and Time into the open air.

They make no noise, suspended for a half a second in space, and then all three disappear into the raging storm.

A great cry rises among the remaining heroes. Twilight stares at the spot where the three disappeared, a scream building in the back of his throat, but he doesn’t have much time to process it because, suddenly, Wild is beside him again, trying to lift him to his feet. Twilight grabs Wild’s arm, attempting to hoist himself up, his feet scrambling in the blood and snow. His vision is blurry, but he can see the rest of the group struggling to hold on as the dragon continues its rampage, smashing itself against the cliff face. There’s more screams and Twilight lets out a choked cry as he watches as his friends are thrown from the mountain side, vanishing into the rising winds.

“Twi!” Wild’s voice cuts through the panic and then the dragon’s tail crashes into their ledge; Twilight feels the ground beneath him crack, pieces of it peeling away. He grabs Wild, using whatever strength he has left to pull him to his chest, and shuts his eyes.

Please, he prays.

Then the stone beneath them crumbles and they’re falling.

***

First//Next

#linkeduniverse #linked universe #legend of zelda #loz #lay waste #mobwrites #language warning #i feel like these chapters are just gonna keep getting longer and longer

179 notes · View notes

ladyfogg · 4 years

Text

May I? - 5/?

Fic Summary: Ensign Faith Diaz struggles to hide her mental illness from her fellow shipmates aboard the Enterprise until an intrigued Data goes out of his way to try to understand her behavior. At his insistence, Faith tries to figure out what she’s truly passionate about and eventually seeks the professional help she needs. Fic Masterpost.

Fic Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Data/Female OC

Warnings: tw: depression, tw: anxiety, fluff, friends to lovers, eventual smut

Screenshot by @ geekygwen

Data and Faith spoke for some time.

Despite liking the food, she seemed to eat very little of it. Data noticed her push the plate away shortly after Counselor Troi took her leave.

"Are you no longer hungry?" he asked, motioning to her food.

Faith shook her head. "Not really."

"Is it your injury?"

"No. I just don't seem to have much of an appetite these days."

"Perhaps Dr. Crusher can help."

At the mention of the doctor, Faith's shoulders tensed and she seemed to physically shrink away. Data studied the changes, fascinated by how quickly she went from calm and open, to closed off and defensive.

"It's okay." Her tone was clipped and firm. "I'll handle it."

"Do you have a personal issue with Dr. Crusher?"

Faith sighed. "Dr. Crusher is nice enough," she said. "I've just never been comfortable with doctors."

"Why is that?"

She did not answer him. Instead, she offered a tight smile. "I think I should retire to my quarters. I'm getting tired."

As she made a move to stand, Data did the same. "I am sorry if I overstepped. I did not mean to make you uncomfortable."

"You didn't," Faith said. "It was a reasonable question. I just don't like to talk about myself."

"It is my understanding that connections are forged through shared experiences and communication. If you do not talk about yourself, how can you connect with others?"

Faith remained silent, eyes drifting from Data's to stare at the floor. "I guess that's something I should think about. Have a good evening."

Data opened his mouth to speak but Faith was already walking away, leaving him confused. He watched her go, unsure of what he could have said to make her end their interaction so abruptly. He then concluded that his question regarding her disdain for doctors must have been too personal.

His gaze caught Deanna and Riker who clearly had witnessed the exchange. He walked over to them, still puzzled.

"Everything okay, Data?" Riker asked.

"I do not know. I am finding it difficult to navigate a conversation with Faith without her withdrawing."

"I wouldn't take it personally, Data," Deanna said. "Faith is going through a difficult personal time."

"I had suspected as much. Counselor, is there anything you would suggest I do to help?"

Deanna and Riker shared a knowing smile. "I think it is very sweet of you to want to help her," she said.

"We have had three separate interactions in the last four days. They have been fairly pleasant and I have found her quite competent in her work. This is a direct contradiction to Geordi's reports from before. I am simply trying to determine where the discrepancy lies."

Deanna looked worried. "She's having trouble with her work?"

Data nodded. "According to Geordi." He paused in thought before joining them at the table. "Counselor, Commander, you know each other fairly well."

"I'd say so," Riker smirked, earning a playful smack on the arms from Deanna.

"Was it easy to get to know each other? While I have had no trouble making friends here on the Enterprise, I understand it is not easy for everyone."

"Well, for one thing, it takes time," Deanna said. "Not everyone can share their thoughts and feelings as readily as others. This makes connecting very difficult."

Riker added, "Sometimes just spending time with a person, even if you don't talk, can help them to feel more comfortable around you. If you do speak, keep the topic light and carefree. Let them share when they are ready."

"Hmm." Data processed what Riker said. "Then perhaps that is the approach I will take with Faith. Thank you both."

He made a move to stand but Riker stopped him from leaving. "Wait, Data, are you saying you wish to get closer to Faith?" he asked.

"I would like to understand what is causing her shift in mood and activity levels. But she will not open up to me if she is uncomfortable. I cannot help her this way."

"Data," Deanna said gently. "It's not that simple. None of us know the extent of what Faith is going through. We cannot force help on her. I think the best approach is to just be her friend. Period. Don't do it just so she will tell you what you want to know."

He considered her words, understanding the logic behind them. He could see how his initial approach might cause more harm than good. Between their advice and Geordi's, he began to develop a clearer picture of how he wished to proceed.

"I understand, Counselor. I will keep that in mind."

He nodded toward them both before getting to his feet. As he left Ten Forward, he pondered how much Faith had invaded his thoughts of late. He had always found human interactions fascinating. Faith was exhibiting reactions he rarely had a chance to witness up close.

She was not the only thing on his mind of course. The mystery in Engineering had yet to be solved. He and Geordi had not been able to find any substantial leads.

No other pieces of machinery had been found out of place. The two that were tampered with had been monitored closely and were found to be functioning correctly. He and Geordi were perplexed.

The Enterprise had also reached the next planet in the Modrore system. It too had abandoned structures like the previous planet, far older than the others. Still, there were no signs of life. Another oddity Data was intrigued to study.

"Most interesting indeed," he said to himself.

He did not see Faith the following day, nor the one after that. In fact, they did not cross paths again until three days after she was cleared for duty. Data was not required on the Bridge and instead took to Engineering.

He found Faith hunched over the center console, eyebrows knitted together in confusion.

"Good morning, Faith. It is good to see you back at your post."

She looked up at him with a smile. "It's good to be back, Commander," she said.

Data noticed the dark circles around her eyes remained and she did not look particularly well-rested. Yet her mood seemed light and her shoulders lacked the tension he had witnessed during their previous interaction.

"What are you working on?" Data asked, moving to stand by her side.

Faith straightened up, rubbing her forehead. "Well, I wanted a visual on where the two mysterious incidents took place, so I marked them on the schematics." She zoomed out of the plans so he could see her markings. "The first took place in the tubes which was easily hidden from view. The second was in a more centralized area, yet no one saw anything. Allegedly."

"You do not believe them?"

"It's not that, I'm just not quick to rule it out that someone is lying."

"A wise move," Data said. "Are both stations still functioning at optimal capacity?"

"As far as I can tell," she said.

Data stared at the visual, tapping at the screen to input his own information. "If we calculate the distance between the two locations, and factor in the length of time between their discovery and staff rotations, it is entirely feasible the same person committed both acts without being seen."

"But they would have had to leave and come back, or hide close by," Faith said. "Which increases the chances of being discovered. The fact that they weren't is amazing considering the traffic in this area."

"There is a two-point-five percent chance they would not be discovered."

Faith hummed in thought. "Small, but not impossible."

Geordi came around the corner, heading directly towards Faith. "Ensign, did you finish running those specs I asked for?"

"Yes, Commander," Faith said, standing straight and giving him her full attention. She handed him the PADD resting on the console. "I was waiting for you to finish meeting with Carver. I didn't want to interrupt."

Geordi looked impressed as he scanned over the information. "Good work, Diaz." He glanced at the schematic laid out on the console's screen. "What's this?"

"Oh. I was curious about the incidents so I mapped them," she said. "The Commander and I were trying to find a connection."

"And did you?"

Faith shook her head. "One was out of sight and the other in plan view. The only connections are they were both Engineering related and no one saw them being tampered with. Though there is a chance it was done by the same person."

"Geordi, I have a suggestion," Data said.

"Lay it on me," Geordi encouraged.

"Would you permit me to take apart each unit?"

"What for?"

"To see if any components are missing," Data explained. "If anything was taken, it would not necessarily hinder the console's performance."

"That's true," Faith said. "Whoever did this had to have had mechanical and engineering experience. They could have easily reworked the console to function without some of the minor pieces."

Geordi considered their suggestion, arms crossed in thought. "That's a leap, but right now we don't have any other ideas. Go for it, Data." He turned to Faith. "Diaz, I'm swamped with these upgrades Starfleet is requesting. Since you found the first console and seem interested in the investigation, I want you to on this. Work with Data and report to me anything you two find."

Faith's eyes widened. "Y-You want me to take-point, sir?"

Geordi gave her a smile, handing her back the PADD. "I'm sure you'll do just fine. Just watch your head this time."

"I will make sure she does not injure herself again," Data promised.

Faith scoffed, trying to hide her smile. "I'm never going to live that down, am I?"

"Nope," Geordi teased. "Let me know if you guys find anything."

As he walked away, Faith turned to Data, fiddling with the PADD. "Guess we'll be working together," she said.

"When I'm not needed on the Bridge, of course," Data reminded her. "Which console would you like to examine first?"

"Let's do the assistant's one," she said, leading him toward the office. "Things are quiet right now so it would be the best time. Plus, I think Geordi has Carver working on the upgrades with him."

"Agreed."

They gathered several tools and got to work dismantling the console. Data noticed Faith was careful, taking her time to map the circuits with her eyes after she removed the front panel.

Data himself was able to scan it much quicker but found nothing out of place. Instead, he watched her and the way she traced her fingers over the wires, lips moving as she spoke to herself. He suddenly understood why it took her longer to do tasks than it would take others. She was meticulous, making sure everything was accounted for before turning to him.

"So far so good," she said.

Data focused on the unit. "I see no signs of tampering. All circuits, wires, and power chips are accounted for."

"At least for the main functions. Let's check the back-up ones."

It took time to maneuver through the complicated wiring and during several instances they had to pause and rethink their strategy before continuing. Data found it to be an overall pleasant experience. Her knowledge was vast and she did not seem to need to fill the silence with idle chatter.

Strangely enough, Data found he wanted to talk. "Have you been sleeping well?" he asked.

"Not really," Faith said. "It's about the same as it was before."

"Do you no longer wish to visit Ten Forward when you cannot sleep?"

"I haven't decided yet. It seemed like a good idea at the time but when I thought about it the last few nights, I just couldn't bring myself to go."

"Was there any particular reason?"

"There were several...Commander, look!" Faith drew his attention to the section where back-up power chips were stored.

Two were missing.

"Interesting," Data commented. "There is no reason for these chips to be missing."

"Yeah, it's against regulations not to replace back-ups. Otherwise, if we don't and we need them, we'd be out of luck."

Data scanned the rest of the components. "I see nothing else out of place."

"Neither do I. Let's do one more sweep and then check the other one."

They found nothing else had been disturbed. Just as they were closing things up, Carver came in to work. Data and Faith got out of his way.

"Do you need to take a break or do you wish to continue on?" Data asked.

"I'm good to keep going. I'm even more curious than before."

"I must admit, I am as well."

They made their way to the Jefferies tubes. Once inside, Faith asked, "Do you want to go first, Commander, or should I?"

"After you."

Faith began to climb and Data followed. "Faith, may I ask why you have returned to using my formal title?" he asked. It was something he had noted earlier but felt the need to address it when they were alone. "Do you no longer wish to call me by my name?"

"Oh, no that's not it at all," she assured him. "I just thought using your name would be too informal for a work setting. I don't mind if you call me Faith but I assumed you'd want me to stick to 'Commander' when in Engineering."

"A logical and astute observation," Data said. "I was concerned I had done something wrong."

Faith reached the landing and turned to face him as he continued to climb. "You were concerned? I thought you didn't have feelings." Her tone was light and teasing as if his words amused her.

"Perhaps concerned was not the proper word," Data amended. "Curious could be considered more accurate. If I did something to offend you, I apologize and wish to correct it."

Faith's face softened. "I'm sorry I made you think you did something wrong. Trust me, you didn't. Promise. I was just trying to be professional."

"That is good to hear."

"You and Counselor Troi have actually been very helpful since my accident. I want to thank you for that."

"You are welcome." Data reached the top and Faith led him to the tube where she found the disturbance. "Have you decided to see her regularly?"

"Not yet. Not in an official capacity at least. She did invite me on a walk through the Arboretum tomorrow."

"You should accept. It is a lovely place."

"I might. We'll see."

They continued on and reached the console that started the mystery. It did not look like it had been touched since they had fixed it. Just like with the other one, they began to take it apart carefully.

"Faith, may I ask what you do for recreation?"

"Nothing really."

Data frowned. "Nothing at all?"

"No. There never really seems to be any time."

"While it is true Starfleet does keep a full schedule, there is still downtime during most days."

"I just haven't found anything to hold my interest," she said with a shrug. "So I gave up trying."

"Maybe you could try painting. I have found it to be most enjoyable."

"I'm not much of an artist."

"Do you enjoy music? Why not learn an instrument?"

Faith sighed and stopped her work. "I appreciate the attempt," she said. "But I've tried already and nothing stuck."

"Perhaps you simply have not found the right outlet." Data paused, noting several wires had been reconfigured. "Faith, hand me the tricorder."

She did as he commanded, leaning in close to examine what he had found. "Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?" she asked.

"Yes. Several wires have been taken and those that remained were reconfigured to hide the change."

Faith leaned back, a pensive look on her face. "So two power chips and a handful of wires are gone. But why? None of this makes sense."

"No, it does not," Data agreed. "However, I think we should expand our search."

"Why do you say that?"

Data motioned to the tube ahead of them and when Faith turned, she saw a dark smudge on the doors leading to the next section.

"What the hell?" she muttered, crawling towards it.

Data followed and as they drew closer, the smudge became more distinct: a round palm flanked by four fingers.

"It's a handprint," Faith realized.

"Indeed. Now the question is, who or what made it?"

#commander data #lt commander data #data tng #data soong #star trek next generation

7 notes · View notes

relaxedreptile · 5 years

Text

A Phone Call (and 10,000 miles) Away

Pairing: Felix X Reader

A/N: So many of you had asked for a continuation of Lucid and while I don’t plan on writing that specifically, this is about two internet friends meeting in real life! I tried to pull from my own experiences for this one but, admittedly, it’s been a while since I used kik.

Happy May!

You owed a lot to the internet.

It had an endless bounty of information you needed to write papers, was your biggest source of things you didn’t really need to buy, and your go-to for pictures of cute dogs.

Most importantly, it’s the reason you met your best friend.

Barely anyone was a stranger to scrolling through their Instagram feed to waste time and you found yourself giving in to temptation one day during a lunch period that you didn’t really share with anybody that you knew. After seeing a post about some app called “kik” and a group chat that was being made on there, you did some investigating.

Intrigued, you made an account and commented your ID under the post (thank god you found it again) before the bell rang. Hoping you would make it into the chat and that you had made the right choice, you packed up your things and started on your way to class.

At the end of the day, you let out a silent squeal of happiness after seeing the extra notifications on your screen. You sat in your usual seat on the bus before scrolling through the messages in the group chat.

After the bar at the top let everyone know that you were active, you were sent sweet messages that welcomed you and introduced themselves.

Most of the users had profile pictures of anime characters, celebrities, or their pets, but there was one boy who had a head-on selfie.

The app told you his name was Felix and his picture told you he was insanely confident.

You didn’t really blame him all that much.

You sent an introduction of your own, still giddy because of the risk you knew you were taking by joining this group chat. You could hear your father telling you to never talk to strangers on the internet as if he was sharing the seat with you but shushed his voice out of your head after the flood of replies came in.

There were only ten people in the chat including you and it was named after the app you found this opportunity through.

Y/N: This is goodbye until I finish my homework :(

ethanlovesdogs: We love a studious queen

bridgetk123: noooo don’t leave!!

LeeFelix0915: Last minute much? Lol

Your eyes flicked over the clock that sat on your nightstand and just like you thought it would, it told you that it was barely past 6 pm, what was Felix talking about?

Y/N: Dunno bout you but I think 6 is pretty damn early for homework

LeeFelix0915: Six??? It’s like eight

bridgetk123: my clock says noon?

beyoncemarryme: Guys!! Timezones!!

girlslovegirlsboys: Time is a social construct

You mentally hit your forehead, remembering that your country wasn’t the only one in the world (because apparently that’s something one can just forget).

bridgetk123: omg!! where are u guys from??

ethanlovesdogs: The lesser known city of Los Angeles.

girlslovegirlsboys: Born in London. Raised in Belfast.

LeeFelix0915: Australia

superwholock24: Bro you 2??

LeeFelix0915: Yoooo whereabout??

While the two honorary neighbors obsessed over the revelation, you couldn’t help but feel jealous. None of the other members of the group chat really lived that close to you and this acted as a wake-up call.

Sure, you were having so much fun talking to this array of people, but was this all it would ever be? Would you ever get to meet these people?

LeeFelix0915: HBU Y/N?

bridgetk123: don’t tell me you left without telling us :(

ethanlovesdogs: maybe they’re just uncomfortable :/

You cleared it up in the chat quickly, sending the city you lived in and making a lighthearted joke about being so far away. It made you feel a little bit better, laughing about it.

It made it seem like a smaller obstacle.

Before turning your phone on Do Not Disturb, you said goodbye and glanced over at your clock again.

Fourteen hours, huh?

You managed to restrain yourself long enough to finish your math homework but couldn’t hold back after turning on your laptop to start the preparation for research project.

“How many miles away is Australia?” Your searchbar read.

10,000, apparently. Give or take.

Doable. Totally doable.

At first, you didn’t tell anyone around you about your new friends, afraid you would get shit for it.

As time went on, it got too complicated trying to cover up stories like Ethan kissing Mark Wahlberg’s star on the Walk of Fame (and getting strep immediately after) when none of the people you knew in real life were close enough to Hollywood to do it themselves.

It was honestly easier than you expected, eventually telling your friends at school or your family who you were actually texting.

The worst conversation you had about it was with your dad. There wasn’t really any judgment on his part, maybe a little confusion but that was expected.

“Doesn’t it suck, though? Not getting to see them everyday?”

It did suck. It sucked so bad, in fact, that the next thing you knew you were curled under your sheets in the safety of your bed with a lump in your chest and your fingers instinctively going to open up kik.

Your brain let them open the app but stopped them before they could send any message and sent a signal through your body that made the lump grow bigger.

Is it worth it? Will I just make this worse for myself if I pour my heart out and depend on people that I don’t get to see?

Before these thoughts had a chance to fester, your phone buzzed and you were met with a message from the chat.

LeeFelix0915: Finally someone else is on

You hesitated.

LeeFelix0915: Hello? Earth to Y/N…

Making up your mind, you clicked out of the group chat and started a new one, a private one, with Felix.

Y/N: Hey mind if we talk over here instead?

LeeFelix0915: Should I be worried

You couldn’t help but laugh before trying your best to explain your feelings to Felix in the most concise way possible, fully aware that you were just babbling and most likely weren’t making much sense but you just needed someone else to know what was going on inside your head. These thoughts were suffocating and you needed someone to give you air.

LeeFelix0915: Oh honey don’t worry about any of that

LeeFelix0915: You guys are just as much of my friends as the people I see in school everyday

LeeFelix0915: I only talk to some of those people BECAUSE I seem them everyday!! But I deal with you guys voluntarily lol that’s love

How did Felix have such a talent for cheering people up? He was like a breath of fresh air that brought happiness wherever it blew, reflecting on his name.

Y/N: Thanks Felix <3 sorry for bugging you I just really needed to get this shit off my chest

LeeFelix0915: No apologies necessary, that’s what friends are for babe

Babe. He called you babe. You held your phone to your chest and let out a little squeal, unable to help yourself.

Felix read into your silence and assumed you needed more encouragement, so he decided to send you a selfie of him in bed.

He was on his stomach, propped up on his elbow with his hair in his eyes and you couldn’t remember the last time you saw something so attractive.

LeeFelix0915: I’m going to send a picture of myself everyday from now on

LeeFelix0915: This way you can say you see me everyday

LeeFelix0915: Technology’s pretty great right?

Y/N: A couple thousand miles has got nothing on you

Y/N: Felix Lee, why didn’t you tell me you had freckles?????

LeeFelix0915: They’re literally in my profile picture

Y/N: How am I supposed to tell from that tiny circle!!

LeeFelix0915: They have these cool things called eyes now

LeeFelix0915: And zooming in

Y/N: Your freckles are too cute for you to not include them in your intro

LeeFelix0915: You think I’m cute?

Y/N: I said your freckles were

Y/N: But yes

You could feel the fire beneath the skin on your cheeks after sending the risky message and you had never felt so much like a teenager.

LeeFelix0915: Good to know

LeeFelix0915: Because I have eyes I can see you’re really cute too, judging from your profile picture

LeeFelix0915: That is you, isn’t it?

Deciding to be bold, you lay down on your bed and mimic the pose from Felix’s photo before taking one of your own and sending it.

Y/N: C’est moi

LeeFelix0915: Damn I was right

Y/N: No secret freckles tho

LeeFelix0915: Mine weren’t a secret!!

The two of you bantered back and forth for a few more minutes until he said that it was time for him to go to class. You teased him a little, about how you were already done for the day (technically yesterday) before regretfully sending a goodbye back.

You opened the photo he sent you one more time before turning your phone off and squealing into your pillow.

From then on, you and Felix began to text each other privately more and more while maintaining your attendance on the group chat. Since the two of you were on kik the most frequently (ironic, considering the time difference), it just made a little more sense to use your own chat when the others weren’t on. If something started up in the group chat, you guys multitasked and continued on with both conversations.

bridgetk123: guys guys guys guys GUYS

Y/N: what what what what WHAT

LeeFelix0915: Someone’s excited

superwholock24: Oi what’s up

bridgetk123: we need ethan here or i can’t say anything

Y/N: Ugh

ethanlovesdogs: Oh god, should I be scared?

bridgetk123: wow

bridgetk123: i thought you would be a little more excited about MEETING ME IN JUNE

ethanlovesdogs: Excuse me

Y/N: OMG

superwholock24: Why choose California when you can come to Australia and get TWO for ONE

bridgetk123: as much as i love you and your country Jisoo, California is a lot closer and cheaper lol

ethanlovesdogs: Please tell me you’re not messing with me

bridgetk123: no way. my mom is going to Hollywood for a retreat and convinced her to let me come along so as long as you’re okay with it…

ethanlovesdogs: ASDFGHJKL BITCH OF COURSE I’M OKAY WITH IT WHAT DAY ILL TAKE YOU EVERYWHERE

Before you could send your message of congratulations (you were so happy that your friends were getting to meet each other), your phone buzzed, alerting you of a new message from Felix.

LeeFelix0915: Hey can we talk?

Y/N: Is everything alright Lix?

LeeFelix0915: Yeah

LeeFelix0915: I’m just a little jealous

You didn’t have to ask to know what he was talking about.

Honestly, you were a little surprised that you weren’t jealous of Bridget and Ethan for getting this opportunity. You were just too happy for them.

LeeFelix0915: I don’t know we’ve all been talking on here for almost a year and I’ve only met up with Jisoo because he’s like an hour away from me

Y/N: It’s just a little harder for the rest of us :( believe me, I would do anything to meet all of you guys

LeeFelix0915: I know I know

LeeFelix0915: It just sucks being so cut off, you know? Even Bridget said it herself, I feel like I live in the middle of fucking nowhere

Y/N: You’re only a plane ride away Lix

LeeFelix0915: I love it when you call me that

LeeFelix0915: You have a point tho

Y/N: Think of it this way! You and I live on opposite sides of the world and we still managed to find a way to meet each other

Y/N: The universe is on our side!!

LeeFelix0915: I thank the universe for you everyday <3

Y/N: You’re so fcking cheesy Lix lmao <3

Decisions, decisions.

Your parents, impressed with your grades and achievements from your senior year, sat you down and told you they wanted to reward you.

They said they were so incredibly proud of your hardwork and told you that you could have anything you wanted as a parting gift before you were off to college, within reason.

Your eyes flickered over to your phone after hearing the familiar buzz of a notification. The screen was filled by Felix’s face (one of his daily selfies that he still sent) and you smiled to yourself, having made up your mind on what you were going to ask your parents for.

What if he doesn’t come?

You had sent the text to your parents immediately after letting them know you landed safely in Australia, desperately in need of some reassurance.

Honey. If this boy has managed to woo you like he has, it’s genuine. He’ll be there.

You smiled at your dad’s text.

And if he doesn’t, I’ll fly out and kick his ass.

You laughed at your mom’s.

Felix didn’t believe you when you told him at first and didn’t believe you until you sent him a picture of you holding the tickets (the group chat still makes fun of him for taking so long). He had immediately switched into travel agent mode, recommending hotels and restaurants and cities all over the country before Bridget knocked some sense into him.

bridgetk123: they’re going to see you dummy not the opera house

girlslovegirlsboys: How can you be sure they’re not going for Jisoo?

Once Felix got the hint, he started messaging you privately to work out everything instead.

You even fit some time in to visit Jisoo, too.

After almost two years of talking to Felix (you only had a general idea of when you joined the group chat and you kinda sorta wanted to know the exact day), you trusted him enough to know he would be waiting for you like he promised. If he wasn’t, it would be because something big came up like a giant scorpion roaming the streets or whatever other scary things lived in this country.

As you wheeled your luggage through the airport, you allowed yourself a few seconds to look around and take in the surroundings. It really didn’t look any different from home and it’s not like you didn’t understand the language but there was something about Australia that made you want to explore, try new things, embody a whole new person.

A part of you wondered if something venomous had already bitten you and that’s why you were acting this way, but the rest welcomed the new mindset.

You studied the signs above you, following the arrows that promised to lead you out of your terminal and to the entrance of the airport where you would be meeting your best friend for the first time.

Finding yourself in a densely packed crowd of people, you scanned every face looking for a familiar one before your eyes landed on a shock of blonde hair and a constellation of freckles.

Your suitcase was left behind as you ran to meet Felix halfway, ignoring the way your backpack slammed against your body with each step.

Strong arms wrapped around your waist as you buried your neck in their owner’s shoulder to pull them closer.

Felix turned his head to the side to place a kiss on your cheek, making you squeeze him tighter.

“Hey, babe.”

You giggled and pulled away slightly to get a good look at his face without leaving Felix’s embrace.

“Your freckles are even prettier in person.”

Felix scoffed to try and distract you from the blush creeping onto his sun-kissed cheeks but it didn’t work.

“I can’t believe you almost made me wait a whole two years before I got to see you.”

“I sent you photos everyday, we both did!” You retorted.

“I can’t hug photos, I can’t watch movies with them, can’t squish their cheeks or-”

You put your hands on either side of his face and leaned in. Honestly, you only had innocent intentions to shut him up, but Felix did you both a favor and closed the distance between you two.

The kiss was short, but his lips were warm and soft and Felix’s grip on your waist made your head spin. It somehow made up for two years in the span of a couple seconds.

“Come on,” he said once you both pulled away, “let’s go grab your suitcase.”

You grabbed each other’s hands, reducing 10,000 miles to 0.

#lee felix #felix #felix fluff #felix angst #stray kids #stray kids fanfiction #skz #skz fanfiction #rr:lee felix

61 notes · View notes

novaent · 5 years

Photo

** This episode was uploaded at 12PM on Nova Entertainment’s official YouTube channel.

It all starts with the happy song chosen as the opening theme. After the animation gets its moment of shine, the trainees appear again in their broken line. The news of what their positions meant was already shared and now they all knew what the risks were for the following weeks. The only thing left to share was what exactly they’d need to do.

Hyun Bin leans back, looking around at the coaches beside him. “You must be curious what will be given to you this month, so I’ll let the coaches take over.” Yonghwa nods along before speaking. “Unlike the previous month, every week will be completed with a group performance instead of a solo. Your group mates are the ones in the same zone as you are, totaling in four different groups. The theme for this week is time travel.”

There’s a grin on Hyemi’s lips before she takes over. “That’s right. No one will be traveling through time, but we will be attempting. Each week, the groups will have to choose a song from a different time period to perform. Since the '10s are coming to an end with this year of 2019, it’s the best time to do it. The first week will have to be from the ‘90s, the second week from the ‘00s and the third from the '10s.”

“The fourth week, of course, will be explained on a later date,” Minsoo adds in the finishing details. “We’ll keep monitoring you, of course, and assisting you on your training. If I were you, I’d make sure to work extra hard.” Hyun Bin prepares to say the finishing words. “So work hard, or it’ll be your last month here and a missed opportunity at debut.”

A voice somewhere screams cut, a part of recording never showed before in the other episodes. The cameras zoom in a couple of staff members as they rush towards the trainees while holding colorful things in their hands. While they start handing them out, Hyun Bin’s voice takes over until the scene eventually completely changes into a drawing. “To differenciate the trainees between SAFE and DANGER, each of them will have to wear a colorful vest that represents their current position. RED means DANGER; BLUE means SAFE, and GOLD shows who did the best the previous month. It impossible to wear red twice as such thing leads to elimination, but the vests may still change owners after the next evaluation.” Different scenes show the trainees putting their vests on for the first time and then it all just cuts completely.

Ricky appears on his chair wearing the bright yellow as it was his right. “How does the gold vest feel?” The voice questions it. “Ah, this…” The boy lets out a quiet sheepish laugh, gaze falling somewhere below the right corner of the screen. “It’s heavy, to be honest.” He nods. “Not actually heavy, but… it feels really symbolic… maybe of my time training. It’s sort of like a big sign that says I have to do extra well or what’s the point? I mean… we all have to do well but it’s sort of like I have to do perfect. It’s not burdensome, but I feel like I have to keep working to prove, to myself too, that I deserve it.”

This time its Chaeyoung with the same colored vest on to indicate the title that she had won. “How do you feel about the results last month?” They ask her and she crosses her arms. “When I was standing there, I was feeling uneasy at first. During that time, I kept thinking, ‘is he going to leave me last?’ or ‘maybe I wasn’t surprising enough?’. I really didn’t like those doubts but I think it’s because anything he would say, everyone in the room would hear.” Lowering her head, she drops her arms and continues with her response after a brief pause. “Then when it came to me, I thought that if he had anything negative to say that I should view it positively and take that negativity as motivation to do better. But once he mentioned how impressed they were with my singing and rapping, I was so happy that I couldn’t stop smiling.”

A brief scene shows the exact moment she mentioned when she was still back in that room standing in line. “This vest…” Chaeyoung points to the piece of clothing. “To some people, they may think of it as something you would want due to the symbolism it holds. To others, they may see the person wearing it as a threat - a rival they have to overtake. But to me, it has a very unique meaning.” Shaking her head, the girl tries to explain herself. “MVP means ‘the most valuable player’.” Chaeyoung does her best to speak in English before shifting back. “Valuable is something that has great worth. We have P for ‘player. So that means we are a team and the MVP is someone who has significantly helped the team succeed. For me, I think wearing this reminds me that despite this being a competition, we need to work well as a group and I have to do my best to be the glue that can help make it possible.”

When her smile starts to fade along with the rest of the scene, something that has become familiar appears. The camera shows an image from the top of the girls living room, as it did before, and then it changes to the boys. While the images play on screen, the words on the bottom change from ‘Month 1, Week 4’ to ‘Month 2, Week 1’. It was the start of a brand new month.

Solji and Wendy sit together as they go through the lyrics, both of them wearing blue. “What did you think of the song when it first came out, unni?” The younger, Wendy, asks. Solji’s brows automatically furrow. “Yah, are you calling me old? The song came out in November of 1997… I was only four,” she noted. The years of their birth appear below them. While Wendy was born in 1998, Solji was from 1993.

“Unni~” The girl adds playfully. “I’m not calling you old~.” Wendy tries a pout for full effect. “I was only wondering whether the song was one of your childhood favorites.” The screen keeps showing Wendy, except now she is in the middle of her interview. “What do you think of this week’s concept?” They ask her and Wendy lets out a laugh. “Admittedly, the 90s were difficult, since at least three of us grew up aboard. Most of the unnies were still toddlers when majority of these songs came out, while Chaeyoungie and I were born toward the end of the decade.”

“How do you feel about the results” She sighs. “I was mostly thankful that CEO Hyun Bin and the rest of you considered my performance as sufficient enough to be considered safe,” she says with a soft smile that instantly fades. “However, I felt like I was complimented on my singing before being slapped in the face. Figuratively, that is. I mean, I’m thankful that I was given a direction on what I must improve on this month. But at the same time, a little bit of validation would have been nice.” Wendy smiles. “Being in the safe team motivates me to work even harder to show that I deserve to be kept in the project.”

The one next on the seat is Solji. “I feel really good,” she admits. “I mean, I know there is still a lot to be worked on, but I’m very happy with how the first month went as a whole. Honestly, to hear the comments give to me… I’m very thankful.” A smile appears on her face. “To hear Sajangnim himself telling me that he wasn’t expecting me to impress him…” she chuckles softly. “Well, it’d be a lie if I said that I wasn’t nervous when he started with those words.”

“How do you feel about your placement?” It is Sunmi now, another member of the SAFE zone. “I don’t feel like I deserve my spot in the safe zone.” They ask her if she’s insecure. She shakes her head. “My performance this first month wasn’t the performance of a five-year trainee and for that, I should be in the danger zone. It wasn’t a good performance and honestly, the group performance, in the end, didn’ help my standing much either.” When they ask her if she thinks she did worse than everyone, she shrugs.

“I can’t really say if I was really the worst of the group but you have to evaluate everyone fairly. The fair thing would be to evaluate me as someone with more experience than half of them there. So for someone with my caliber of experience, I did badly. It’s just the reality.” Sunmi looks off for a moment. “I think people should learn to be more self-critical.”

The girls in red sit together in their own circle. It’s not easy to know you’re in danger and that much is evident in their faces. “So-” Yongsun decides to be the first to speak. “This is unfortunate but at this point, we got nothing to lose and everything to gain,” she nods her head. “How do you feel about the results?” The voice asks her this time and the girl leans back on the chair, glancing down. “Somehow, I felt lacking- Hyuna suggested the song for the last week and I thought it wasn’t a bad pick but none of the other songs were good picks either.” She smiles anyway. “I wasn’t eliminated but punished because I had been a trainee for a less amount of time. Not prepared enough and then I don’t stand out enough.”

When it’s Hyuna’s turn to speak she doesn’t sound too enthusiastic. “I have nothing to say. I feel the same as I did when I started this show.” She shrugs, reaching up to pull onto the blue vest. “I’m safe. There is nothing else to it. I suck at dancing. I’m good at rapping, which is something the public already knew.” After that, she takes a deep breath. “Can I leave now?

There are two girls now side-by-side. The cameras stare at them while they stare at their own lyrics sheet. Meiqi knocks a fist against her head to her to focus. “Sorry, I zoned out for a second,” she laughs dryly before continuing. “Are you sure we should give me that many parts? Hyun Bin said my singing isn’t that good so maybe you should take one more part of mine…” Yongsun is the one sitting with her and she quickly shakes her head. “No, I won’t do that. You need to prove Hyun Bin and everyone wrong - practice makes perfect and I’ll support you to the best of my own abilities. You just gotta remember the lyrics and I think you will do just fine.”

While she gives the other a smile, the background music clearly gets more serious. They focus on Meiqi’s reaction. “Was that supposed to be a joke or…” She looks down at her paper, taking a deep breath. For those who didn’t remember it, a flashback to the girl forgetting her lyrics during rap week plays followed by the CEO himself sharing his thoughts about it at the end of the month. “Yes, joke.” Yongsun nods her head, but the editing team makes it clear that the air feels much denser than the type you’d have after a joke.

Meiqi pulls the sleeves of her shirt over her knuckles when it’s time for her interview. “It was hard to hear,” she admits through a heavy sigh. “I’ve never… been criticized so heavily. But he’s right. It’s disheartening to hear it, you know? But it’s even worse when you know it yourself. When you think you’re decent, but then you make all these mistakes that you know aren’t you. When you let nerves get in the way and you start doubting yourself at a level you never have…” Tears start piling up in her eyes but she doesn’t let them fall. “I know I belong in the danger zone,” Meiqi’s voice cracks, forcing her to take a deep breath. “But I don’t like being in it.”

The girl appears again in front of a camera inside her empty room. She runs a hand through her hair, pushing it back even when it’s not falling into her face. “You know that saying? ‘New year, new me’?” Meiqi switches to English for the common phrase and then goes back to Korean. “I want to change it to ‘new month, new me’ because that’s how I feel right now.” She giggles, tosses her hair over her shoulder and continues. “Cam, do I look good in red? I’m going to do my best to look good in another color. Make sure to cheer me on, okay?” The girl pouts. “To everyone who believed in me, I’m sorry for disappointing you. I’ll work hard so that I can be a Meng Meiqi that you can proudly say you are a fan of.”

Someone else is fidgeting with their vest, and it is still very red. Kaeun tries to straighten it out, but it proves to be difficult. “Honestly, I thought that was the end for me. I wasn’t expecting this division, per se, but I’m glad to stay a little longer. I think I’m starting to grow attached to this place and the training, a little. Sajangnim’s words… aligned with my thoughts. I’m still searching for what I truly hope to do as a trainee, and it’s not easy.” She smiles, hands resting on her lap as she speaks. “And I was thinking maybe, just maybe, I want to rap and dance. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and there probably isn’t enough time to become an amazing rapper, or dancer, all at one go. How many steps I can progress, I’d be happy with that alone.” The girl nods, leaning against the chair slightly. “Also, this red vest isn’t all that bad looking either. I think it stands out.”

Chaeyoung walks inside an empty practice room and remains still momentarily while closing her eyes. While she does so, a text appears on the bottom of the screen to let the audience know that was not a still picture. The girl finally opens her eyes and looks at the came, getting a bit closer to wave. “Hi! I don’t know if the other member told you, but we’re going to be performing ‘I’m Your Girl’ by S.E.S.” She chuckles. “But before I resume practice, let me end this talk with one of my favorite parts from this song.” Chaeyoung takes one of the water bottles and uses it as a microphone. She starts by humming the melody before saying the first line. “I like S.E.S y’all!” And so she turns the bottle towards the camera as if it would sing the missing line. The trainee does the same thing again before laughing.

The SAFE girls are the firsts to perform and the same song Chaeyoung had given the pleasure of introducing is the one that plays. It’s a famous song that even recent female idol groups made sure to cover. Being formed by only the best trainees, they make it a good and cute performance. The DANGER girls ended up choosing the same artist as the last group, but still a different song. The angelic aura of S.E.S takes over the segment and all the girls get to shine with their talent and dreamy visuals.

The week returns to the past, right after the results are given. Hosung heads straight to his room, climbs up to his top bunk and buries himself under the blanket with his face towards the wall. He’s clearly crying, but he doesn’t want to show that. “I’m fine,” he whispers it loud enough for the cameras to catch.

Someone else follows him into the room and the same path the boy had taken before. Hugo carefully slides in beside him, wrapping an arm around him. “Hey…” The other shifts slightly so that they could both fit a bit better but he’s still facing away. “Hey… congratulations on being safe. You deserve it. Blue never was my color…” He tries to lighten the mood with a joke but it trails off weakly. “I really messed up, didn’t I?” Hugo buries his face into the back of the other boy’s shoulder. “Blue is your color, it will be. Don’t give up hope, yeah? Show them why they need you, like you showed me.”

Leaving their bed behind, Hugo is the one who appears sitting in front of the camera. “I’m safe,” he tries to say with a smile but it proves to be hard. “I feel very conflicted right now. Last week when I was here, I was saying I couldn’t leave Hosung behind, and now that’s exactly what has happened. I don’t know what to do. I wish I could help him… I hope he can move up to the safe team with me. Then everything will be good.” He nods.

Hosung shows again, except this time he is with Haknyeon, another member of the DANGER zone. “Hyung,” the younger says. “This feels familiar, huh? Cat dog from the MGAs.” Hosung looks away from the mirror and towards him with a smile. “Yeah, cat dog from the MGAs.” Haknyeon continues. “Could you… help me a bit more with my singing this month? I don’t want to bring you or BamBam hyung down… I want to be useful!” He says, determined.

The smile on Hosung’s face turns a little brighter and a bit bigger. “Of course I’ll help you with singing. Although, are you sure you want me to? CEO-nim pretty much told me I sucked.” He shrugs before pulling Haknyeon into a one-armed hug. “Better than being told that you’re frankly an awful sing,” the boy tried to impersonate Hyun Bin to the best of his abilities. “I think you’re a good singer, hyung, that’s why I want you to help me.” He smiles. “Yeah, well, I think you’re a fine singer,” he replies patting the other’s cheek affectionately. “And thank you for thinking that I’m a good singer. If just one person likes it then it’s all worth it.”

Hosung’s interview is next to air. “What are your feelings after last week’s review?” They ask him and Hosung picks at the red vest to show them. “As you can see, I’m wearing red. Normally I love a good strong accent color but this time…” He takes a shaky breath before continuing. “Was I surprised by my critique from Hyun Bin CEO? Yes. Am I happy to be on the chopping block? No. I take full responsibility for not training my vocal techniques to the level that they’re supposed to be at.”

“So who in your group will take responsibility if you all should fail?” He opens his mouth but it takes a moment before the sound comes out of it. “I will take responsibility. We are all working together in a democratic fashion but I will say that I am the one who is trying to keep them on task.” When they ask him if he’s the leader, he denies. “I wouldn’t use that label, no, more like… manager? I take notes, make sure people are eating, drinking, and resting…”

It’s a practice room this time, and the people inside aren’t wearing red. Jungwoo holds onto his water bottle while he approaches Ricky with a smile. “Feeling good? I would’ve picked you for MVP too. You helped me a lot during the group week.” Ricky looks over to him. “Oh… I think so… I guess so. Thanks… I’m glad you’re here. You did good.” He glances down. “To be honest, I’m nervous. The expectations are really high for us. It’s important that we do well.” While he speaks, Ricky fiddles with the hem of the vest. “We can’t just show a better side of us than the other teams and leave it at that, we have to be better than ourselves. Always.” Jungwoo sucks his lower lip between his teeth, chewing on it. “I know.” There’s still a smile on his face. “I feel the same way. There’s not any less pressure on us being on this team. I feel like we have to work even harder now to prove we belong here. We deserve this.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t… offer to help sooner,” Ricky utters. He pauses, leaving an awkward breath suspended between them. The scene fades over to Jungwoo’s interview. “Haknyeon is on the danger team.” His brow furrows deep. “He’s got such talent for dancing and I thought his rapping was really good! I’m really worried for him.” The boy clasps his hands together tightly on his lap. “Of course I’m worried for the others too. I don’t want anyone to go home. But Haknyeonnie is my best friend. I want to debut with him.”

Jungwoo goes quiet for a moment. “I’m glad Ricky got MVP, though. He really deserves it, especially after last week. I was going to drag the whole team down, but he really helped me with my part, and he did his own amazingly too. Wow, he’s really a force to be reckoned with.” Meanwhile, Haknyeon appears to share some similar feelings to Jungwoo when it comes to him. “It’s tough. Terrible. I let myself down.” He pauses. “If I’m being honest, I feel angry at myself. At the start of the week, I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror because seeing the red uniform made me so sad.” He looks down at his uniform and grips at it. “But I felt that… I should channel that anger and sadness differently. You know, to not let myself down again. I want to debut.”

SAFE boys start to follow along about the same path as the girls did as they take on a bright concept to start things off. The song picks are quite a contrast to what’s famous nowadays and the style change is quite apparent. The DANGER boys go for something more intense instead. The rap-heavy song features a demanding choreography which the three boys manage to handle through most of the song. It’s only the first week, but things were already getting interesting.

The camera shows an image from the top of the boys living room, and then it changes to the girls. While the images play on screen, the words on the bottom change from ‘Month 2, Week 1’ to ‘Month 2, Week 2’.

The girls are shown enjoying their meal at the common room as it’d be expecting them to. It cuts to the inside of one of the bedrooms where Sunmi sad with a packet of chips in her lap and tears in her eyes. She turns to the nearest camera and wipes her tears. “I’m alright,” she says. On the other side of the door, Wendy leans closer to the door and appears to understand what was happening inside of it. The girl returns with a cup in hand and enters their room. “Sunmi unni? Are you okay? I brought you some tea.” The girl sets the drink on top of the dresser. Sunmi doesn’t appear too interested in it. “I know that fate works mysteriously but it sucks, you know?”

“How do you find working with the girls from the safe group?” They ask Hyuna. “I love it,” she replies in a heartbeat. “I really, really like it. Everyone has something they add to the group and it’s really refreshing to see them all work hard and adapt, help each other. It’s a motivating environment. I wish we wouldn’t change. Is that selfish?” She asks, grin pulling on her lips as she laughs. “Being in the safe group is a first for me. Nova likes their dancers, and I’m… I’m working on it, but I have quite a long way to go before I even manage to get on the level of some of the trainees here, like Sunmi, for example.”

Wendy is the one to appear after her. “What’s different about this song compared to the previous weeks?” The girl looks pensive before she gives her reply. “We rarely get to do playful and flirty songs,” she says with a fond smile. “This is our chance to show off our fun and sexy side!” She bursts out laughing. “What’s the biggest challenge for you this week?” And she replies making a face. “I’m not sexy enough,” she answers flat-out. “I mean, you’ve seen the girls I’m with, right?”

The scene changes to Wendy as she tries making flirty faces at the mirror. She giggles at herself before winking. “Unnie~” She whines at Hyuna who is beside her. “How do you do it?” The other lifts her eyes from her lyrics sheet. Hyuna blinks for a second before moving closer to the younger. Instead of doing a wink, she looks at Wendy and lifts her hand to gently grab her chin and make her face her before winking at her. Wendy blinks and maintains eye contact until she starts to laugh.

Chaeyoung appears on her seat sporting the golden vest people aimed for. “I felt that I was experiencing so many emotions at once, especially this week? I couldn’t help but wonder a lot. For example, last month we were evaluated on whether we could sing, dance, and rap well, right?” The girl begins to explain her train of thought. “Then on the fourth week, we were given a task where we had to incorporate that because that’s what you see some idol groups do. But this week, I kept contemplating moreover what is the purpose of this month’s missions? Was it a review for us to see the history of music throughout the decades?”

She purses her lips as she shakes her head. “Then during the song selection process, that’s when I began to think ‘what if Hyun Bin sajangnim is testing us to see if we can adapt to various concepts?’. If we stuck with the same one throughout this month, that would be a boring performance, wouldn’t it?” Chaeyoung confesses out loud. “At some point, I even asked myself ‘what if he wants to see us adapt in general? Both in concepts and roles?’ Like rappers singing and singers rapping?” The girl tilts her head. “I thought about that a lot and it reminded me of theatre. When the actor cannot perform on stage, you have the understudy. They have to be ready for anything that could happen. Throughout this week and last week, I imagined myself as that.”

“It’s been… interesting,” Solji nods her head. “When the mission was first given, it didn’t seem that difficult, but then, as we got to picking out the songs, we realized that we didn’t know the earlier years as well as we thought. And then, of course, the later years are just so jam-packed with music that we’re much more familiar with so it was decision overload,” she chuckles. “But I think having more options is good. After all, we can talk through why something would work better than something else.”

Kaeun takes her sit, a girl with a red vest. “I liked this week’s challenge a little more, I think? S.E.S sunbaenim’s song is a long-time classic, but this week’s song was something that I sort of grew up with a bit more? It fits us, or that’s what I like to believe. Always be confident in yourself, right?” She shows a smile with a finger gun. “There’s more of a strong rap focus this week. I think that makes me nervous but, a little heart fluttering? Being in a smaller group really made me realize how much work one had to prepare because we all want to come out of the performance doing well. Since there’s only 3 of all, each of us has to do our roles really well, that’s how we help the group”.

One of her groupmates appears next. “How was our performance last Sunday?” Meiqi chews on her lower lip. “I think it went well…?” She raises her tone slightly at the end of the sentence. “I don’t want to jinx myself though… I know I’m not supposed to be proud or happy of this thing,” she says while pinching at the material of her red vest. “But I’m grateful for it, in a way. It put me in a group with two hardworking, talented, truly beautiful people. I’m really happy to go on stage with these two by my side.”

It’s the same girl, but she approaches the camera with her hoodie over her head, concealing her hair. “Cam, have you ever wondered what I would look like if I was a boy?” Her voice comes out muffed and one tug on the string unravels it and her hood falls to reveal a dark, short wig. Meiqi does her best to imitate a smoldering look. “What do you think? From today, tell people that I’m your boyfriend.”

The DANGER girls start things this time around. They’re all dressed up exactly like someone would to cover a boy group song. Their choice is strong and intense unlike their choice for the previous week. It’s a good contrast and the three girls make a good job out of their challenge. The SAFE girls also went on an opposite route from the first week, but still different from the DANGER girls. Instead of strong and intense they went for sexy and flirtacious. It’d be hard to compare the two now that their concepts are different, but people always enjoyed picking sides.

Jungwoo is laying down on the practice room floor, chest rising and falling in desperate rapidity. “How are you doing?” He calls over to his practice partner and lays still for a moment longer before stretching out to reach for his water. “Feeling good about the trick yet? I’m not.” Hugo hobbles over and descends, laying half on top of Jungwoo, head resting on his chest. “Hold me,” and he drapes a jelly-like arm over Jungwoo’s frame. “Gross,” the other complains. “I sat here to cool down. You’re not helping.” Yet he does nearly nothing to push Hugo off, just a half-hearted little shove at his floppy arm that does not nothing.

“I hate this. Dancing is so hard, especially for me with no natural ability to speak of,” Hugo complains. “It is hard,” the other agrees. “But we’ll be okay. We gotta be.” Hugo starts to move around, sitting up. “Alright, let’s get back to it.” He sighs, and Jungwoo sits along with him. “I want to debut,” he admits. “And I don’t want to leave anyone behind. But we can’t all make it, can we?”

The boy sits in front of the camera and stifles a yawn, obviously tired. “Our teamwork is great,” he smiles. “Picking songs was hard, of course. We had a whole decade of music to go through, but we all seemed to be on the same page. Last week, I was sad about who I didn’t have on my team. This week, I’m excited about who I do have.” His practice looks about just as tired on his own interview. “I’ve been working extra hard. This week’s performance is no joke.”

Hugo proceeds. “I’ve worked hard for performances before, but not endlessly like this. You get through one week but it doesn’t stop, becuase you have the next week to worry about. I imagine this is what an idol’s life must be like during promotions.” He gives a nod. “Huidong hyung has been helping us a lot with our dancing. With his help, I think I’m improving a lot faster now. He’s a good leader and a good dancer, too. It’s really comforting to be on his team.” The man smiles.

“What are your thoughts on this week’s theme?” They ask Hosung this time. “I think the song for this week is… different than what people would’ve expected of us. More mellow and not as upbeat but it still does a good job on showcasing the rap skills of our two members. Originally, the vocal parts are really high so I had to adjust it to fit my range but overall I think we fit well together.”

Haknyeon shares the same color of vest as he does and proceeds with his own answers, nodding before he speaks. “I’ve been working hard. Last week we did a song from the 90s… I was born in the year 2000 so that was interesting,” he says. “We’re doing a song from the 2000s this time. I was nine when it came out, so I know the song.” Haknyeon pauses for a moment. “Honestly, it’s still a little tough, but I’ve come to accept the reality of things. I’m in danger but being sad and angry at myself won’t do me any good. I’ve been trying to channel all of… what I’ve been feeling into putting on a good performance.”

“It’s been a month and a half. Do you miss anyone?” He doesn’t have to think much to reply. “I miss my mum. I miss having her homecooked food, I miss hearing her voice… I even miss fighting with her,” he lets out a weak laugh. “But I need to make her proud here,” the boy smiles.

The DANGER boys go first, as the girls did. As metioned by the members, their choice is more mellow instead of upbeat but also allows them to show their skills well. Meanwhile, the SAFE boys are the one going for intensity this time around. It’s a nice contrast and it’s interesting to see how every group followed the same strategy, but each one of them decided to take a different path. After they’re all done, there are still two weeks left and the fourth remains a secret.

EPISODE FIVE TEASER: It’s the end of the second month, and the possibility of eliminations leaves anyone nervous. Flashes of red and blue go by the screen as the trainees give it their best. But there’s a twist, it seems, expect it’s nothing that can be confirmed through a teaser. As the show goes by its halfway mark, will your favorite contestants make it until the end?

**Note: None of the performances were shown fully, but separate videos will be posted IC on Nova’s official YouTube channel during the week of each trainee’s full performance.

#nova:sn #nova:snep4

10 notes · View notes

lorelylantana · 5 years

Text

Chapter 7: Call to Action

The week went by slowly without Kyrie. The only upside was that in light or her absence, the teachers let me bring Belladonna to classes instead. It cheered me seeing her stumble about the classroom as the teachers gave their lectures. Some even fed her treats and pet her when she came up to them. Ever since Snapdragon found out about my talent for weapons creation, she had me work on it every day for Armed Combat. When I couldn’t form a sword she would make me practice with the dagger I could create. This meant she had me working on my technique until my arms ached.

By lunch period on Thursday I could adequately perform basic defense maneuvers for both the dagger and sword. Snapdragon had me lay off the halberd until I could create it, and Wren had me practice creating any weapons during his class.

“Why clean something when you can just send it away as soon as you’re done with it?” he had said with a little bit of a huff.

I sat down at our usual table in between Atalanta and Daedalus. I was halfway through lunch when Kennedia sat down across from me, her face pale.

“What’s up, did you finish deciphering the note?” I asked, she nodded and handed it to me. My friends leaned in and read over my shoulder.

Dear Ouroboros,

As requested, myself and the rest of the Vipers are gathering uniforms for the Diamond military. The process is predicted to take at least a month. Once sufficient supplies are acquired, we will begin to infiltrate Spade territory, where we will make camp just outside the capital. We will wait on the east mountain for the weapons. When the first day of the Festival of Colors reaches its zenith, we will make our move. We will begin by the dawn dancers, by your command.

Your loyal servant,

Constrictor

I set the page down.

“It was encrypted as well as ciphered, so it took me a few days to figure it out. But by the looks of things they are thinking of launching an attack during the Festival” She said, and looked to me.

“What should we do? I went to Blackthorn but he said there wasn’t enough proof to take action.” I felt everyone’s eyes on me. Nervous, I looked up at everyone.

“I don’t think we should discuss this here. Is there a place out of the way where we can meet tonight?” I wondered, and once again it was Kennedia that had an answer.

“I know! The castle is riddled with secret chambers and passages that cut into the mountain. They were built as a defense mechanism against invaders. Soldiers would fill some passages with traps while using others to intercept hostiles. There are so many that some have been forgotten and are rarely used, but Robin found a map in the library that has them all charted.”

“Who’s Robin?” Atalanta interrupted, slightly suspicious.

“Oh! He’s my boyfriend,” Kennedia explained shyly, “He’s a Fledgling, but I knew him before his Trial, we’re both from Heart. He helped me figure out that the note used a Caesarian cipher when I had trouble translating. Here he comes now.” She waved him over, and he sat down next to her with a smile.

“Hello Honeysuckle, is this the girl you told me about?” He greeted, looking to Atalanta, who shook her head and nodded at me.

“I’m Allie,” I introduced, “Kennedia here says that you may have a place for us to meet discreetly.” His expression lit up just like it did when I told Kennedia about the amulet.

“Oh yeah! I was reading about how the castle was built when I came across a map of the underground, and it turns out, each of the common rooms are set above a certain facility, the West Wing is right above an emergency pantry loaded to the brim with sweets. The East wing has an extra armory, and the South’s got a bunk room that would be perfect for sleepovers.” As he went on I took note of what was in what room. Because one never knows when they might need a surplus of sweets.

“What’s under the North Wing?” I asked, enthralled.

“An enchanted map room. I read that the the maps update themselves and can even draw up charts of other worlds!” He responded, and we arranged for all of us to meet there an hour after curfew.

“Wait,” Atalanta interjected, “This is all well and good, but what if we get caught? It won’t do any good if we get busted by a patrolling guard before we even have a chance to decide anything.” She made a good point, so I spoke up.

“I can escort the girls, my amulet lets me see the guards before actually running into them, so we should be able to avoid them easily, but I’m not sure about you guys.” But both Daedalus and Robin looked unconcerned.

“Don’t sweat it Allie, I created a radar that tracks incoming organisms, so I know their routes.” Reassured Daedalus.

“Yeah and I know how to use the underground passages, they haven’t patrolled the inner tunnels for years now, so I’m good.” Robin said, leaning back, satisfied with his solution. I couldn’t help but grin.

“Well then friends, I’ll see you tonight.”

An hour before curfew I walked down to the infirmary with Hawthorne on my shoulder. After we checked in with Kyrie we went to the other side of the room where the hawk was being held in a cage. I pulled back the curtains to see her cowering at the back of her prison.

“Not so quick to injure now, are we?” I sneered, still angry about what happened to Kyrie. Hawthorne touched a calming wing to my cheek before he spoke.

“Now young lady, we want you to answer a few questions, and you would do well to answer them honestly. There are smaller cages available.” When he finished I began my interrogation.

“What’s your name?”

“Briar.” She answered, eyeing Hawthorne warily

“What were your instructions regarding the note?”

“I wasn’t given specific instructions, I was trained as a messenger hawk, I was taught to ferry correspondence to and from two locations. I was taught to make sure no one knew about my messages so when I saw your raven I thought I had been found out.” I listened intently.

“Am I to assume that your employer can’t talk to you directly?” Hawthorne inquired coldly.

“None of them can speak to hawks. I only meant to ground her for a while, honest. I’m sorry.” She pleaded, and I stared at her coldly.

“I’m not sure just an apology will be enough. Fortunately for you, there may be something you can do for me to make it up to Kyrie.”

That night, I picked up the girls and together we made our way to the common room. We had to stop for a guard to pass before making our way up the stairs, but other than that the trip was uneventful, if a bit nerve wracking. Following Robin’s instructions, we went to the northmost fireplace. The mantle was decorated by a pantheon of predators. I pressed down on the serpent, and heard a click sound. The fire burning in the grate went out, and the bottom and back fell away to reveal a small hole leading to a staircase. I stepped through, followed by Kennedia and Atalanta, who each brought out a small orange glass globes of sand to light the way as soon a the opening closed.

Once we made our way to the bottom we found ourselves in a magnificent room lit by four differently colored sand filled panels mounted on the wall. In the center there was a massive round table with a glass tabletop. Under the glass was a live map of Ivaline. The table even showed the cold fronts coming towards the castle. We spent the next few minutes playing with it. Robin came into the room with a sizable sack on his back right when Kennedia was zooming in on her house in Heart. He came in shouting.

“Hello comrades! I have raided the West so that we may ponder on full stomachs! Kennedia I trust you brought the hot chocolate?” He proclaimed, brandishing the sweet filled sack like a spoil of war. He was still waving it around when Daedalus stepped into the room.

“What’d I miss?” He asked, eyeing Robin as he lowered his bag. I cleared my throat.

“Alright everyone, to business.” A few moments later, we were all seated and munching on pastries as I called the meeting to order and Kennedia poured chocolate from thermoses.

“Right,” I began from my seat on the north of the table. “Earlier this week Kyrie was attacked by a messenger hawk. We were able to intercept the hawk and the note that she carried. Now, what do we all make of the note?” I asked, and everyone spoke their own interpretation.

“Someone is planning an attack on the Festival of Colors.” Said Atalanta.

“And they plan to do this while impersonating Diamond soldiers.” Continued Daedalus.

“But why would they dress up as Diamonds?” I asked perplexed. It was Robin who answered me.

“They are trying to start a war.” He said quietly, and I gestured for him to elaborate, and he obliged.

“During the War for Ivaline, there were four factions battling each other, but as the war dragged on, they started to ally with each other. Clover Allied with Diamond and Heart with Spade. It ended up that most of the battles were between Diamond and Spade, because they were the largest factions at the time, and Heart and Clover were more reluctant to fight. The war ended, but the animosity between Spade and Diamond remained.

If I wanted to start a war, I would try to provoke either Spade or Diamond. All of the Nations are powerful in their own right, but Diamond and Spade are the only two with a formidable military. If it looks like the Diamonds attacked Spade during the Festival of Colors, Spade would immediately accuse Diamond of violating the treaty and Diamond would be outraged by the accusation. After that, it wouldn’t take much to get them both up in arms.” He finished.

“Spade doesn’t post many guards at the festival because it makes people from the other nations nervous, and native Spades are asked to leave their weapons at home for the same reason. It’s supposed to be viewed as a gesture of goodwill. The Festival of Colors is supposed to symbolize cooperation and peace between nations after the war. By having the attack ensue during the festival, where people of all nations come to visit, it would become an international incident.” Kennedia chimed in, and then we fell into a solemn silence.

“So what are we going to do about it, even if the letter is false we can’t just lay back and watch it happen” Daedalus exclaimed, and the others nodded in agreement.

“For starters, I think we should have the hawk carry out her mission.” I said, and they looked at me questioningly.

“If whoever sent the note caught wind that their message had been intercepted, they might be suspicious and change their plans. If we send Briar out to continue her mission as if nothing were wrong, they may not suspect anything and continue with their current course of action. That way, we still know what they are going to do.” I said, and we agreed to do so.

“That still doesn’t solve our problem, though.” Atalanta pointed out, taking a bite out of a chocolate muffin. “Sending the note back out leaves us open to take action, but we still don’t know what action to take.” This time, it was Daedalus who spoke up.

“She’s right, going by the letter, they’re going to make camp in the eastern mountains waiting for a shipment of weapons.” He pulled up the mountains on the table. “There are countless training expeditions there, which means that it would be easy to sneak those weapons out under the guise of training equipment.”

“However,” Kennedia added, “That also means there is a limit to how many people they can send. There are very few places in the mountains that aren’t covered by those expeditions. If they wanted to remain hidden for an extended period, they would have to take two groups of ten to fifteen people.” We spent the next half hour trying to come up with a plan. I was on my third cupcake when I had it.

“Why don’t we, the students, take care of it?” I thought out loud. “We can’t go to the teachers without proof, but maybe we can convince the students to be ready come springtime.”

Robin was the first to warm up to the idea.

“That could work. There are about two hundred students in the castle. If we all were prepared for an attack, we could easily take on thirty hostiles, even if we are a bit inexperienced. Especially if they are marked as Diamonds and surrounded by Spades.” Hearing Robin’s reasoning I spoke up.

“But even if we do subdue them and no one is hurt, won’t that still cause people to panic?”

“I think we can keep it from getting out of hand,” countered Kennedia, “As long as we prevent casualties, people won’t be as quick to blame anyone, and even if they do, they will be more likely to listen to us. Especially if we can successfully contain the threat.”

“We could find a way to gather all the years together somehow so that the more senior years can give us younger students pointers,” Atalanta joined in. “It could also serve as a time to get the Hatchlings sparring, we’re not supposed to start until next year, but I think we can all agree that the situation calls for it.”

“Why don’t we organize a student wide sleepover?” Daedalus suggested, causing Atalanta to shoot him a look. “I’m being serious, we can use the bunk room in the South Wing as a place to sleep and practice, and we can get the training weapons from the East.” He finished, and I nodded.

“The idea does have merit, but we still need to find a way to convince them to do all this.” I concluded, and Kennedia spoke up.

“Do we need to start training right away? We could just advertise it as a big sleepover being held on a weekly basis, and then after a few weeks reveal the purpose of it?”

In the end, we decided that we would organize the sleepover training sessions on Friday evenings while us five would have progress meetings to adjust things as they went on.

“Okay, let’s meet back here on Monday so we can survey the rooms and resources we have available. Before then, everyone spread the word with your classmates.” I said, and we dispersed for the night.

First

#The Spade Chronicles #eagles rising #original novel #original content #fantasy #fiction

2 notes · View notes

maiji · 6 years

Photo

Process and wip images for A House That Holds Long Limbs

You can read the pages for part 1 here (full complete version will be linked from YYH North Bound master post whenever it’s done.)

Every so often I get questions about how I work, and I also enjoy reading about how other creators make things, so perhaps this might be interesting and useful to somebody out there too. I’ve talked about my process before but never really documented and shared it WHILE working on a project, so here you can see some of my thinking and decision-making (and poor habits lol) a bit more immediately, alongside screenshots, photos and scans.

Very long, everything is below the cut, and apologies to people on mobile and anywhere else this goofs up.

One question I get a lot is “do you start with words or pictures when creating a comic?” I jump between both a lot. That said, I tend to lean more heavily on words when documenting ideas in the early stages of a project. This is because, for me:

Words pack a lot of punch in conveying detail quickly. They work better when I need to quickly communicate something extremely specific to future me. I’m a sloppy drawer, so my sketches tend to make future me squint and go, “What the hell was this supposed to be?!”

A great deal of my thinking and planning is done during crowded commutes. It’s more convenient to jot notes on my phone than to whip out my sketchbook and a pen.

(For a while I thought it’d be awesome to have some sort of app where I can type notes AND have an accompanying thumbnail sketch, and be able to drag them around or break them out into more or fewer pages. At one point years ago I thought about creating a custom app... but ultimately too lazy/busy and my current process works well enough. If anyone wants to take this idea and run with it, please feel free to do so and just let me know about it so I can try it haha.)

I usually start with a few lines summarizing the gist of the idea, enough that’s recognizable and I don’t forget the important things to build off from. From there, I start point-form outlining the stuff that needs to happen, structuring them into key scenes/parts. These scenes are not always fleshed out in order - I just add to them whenever I have ideas for that part.

Long Limbs, for example, had a progression like this:

Overall story idea: “horror story with rokurokubi, key plot point(s) happens, the end.” (There was a bit more detail than this, obviously, but we’re avoiding spoilers here.)

Initial description for Part 1 of the story: “Hokushin lured to go to somewhere. Separated from Raizen. HOW??????”

After letting it simmer for while, a solution: “Hokushin annoyed at Raizen. Opportunity for him to get away and go do his own thing.”

Gradually more detail: “Stranger invites him to go to this place to look into something/maybe has a paid job that needs to be done and Raizen is busy goofing off or whatever.”

Problem. I couldn’t resolve this chain of thought to my satisfaction. What kind of task/job can someone convince Hokushin to do on his own when he doesn’t know this person/it seems questionable? And how long will the conversation need to run to establish this as believable?

This was starting to get convoluted and I was getting annoyed because it was turning into a burden in being able to continue the story AND IT WASN’T EVEN THAT IMPORTANT. I decided to abandon this path of thinking, and left the entire story for a while.

Much later (like months?), I had an idea: “Mysterious person drops something, piques Hokushin’s curiosity.” Aha! Hokushin’s own initiative. Simple and plausible enough. HOORAY NO MORE THINKING. LET’S DRAW.

Then I realized, oh shoot, I need to figure out who this mysterious person is and what they dropped. More time passes. And so on… in between I’m always working on other things, so there’s no real creator’s block - at some point I start thinking about this comic again, and ideas work themselves out to some decent level of satisfaction and link together. Thanks subconscious!

Eventually, enough key scenes are fleshed out that I feel confident enough to turn this into a real thing. At present, for example, not all scenes in Long Limbs are totally worked out, but I’ve got enough that I ran ahead with Part 1.

Screenshot of the Google Docs notes/script for Part 1:

This is a close-to-final version. The === on top is just to separate this from notes on other stories or ideas. This is the beginning of the document, but this document actually includes many other notes and stories for North Bound. I delete them as I finish and post the pages. Every so often I wonder if I should bother keeping them, but they’ve been refined throughout the process and usually don’t bear much resemblance to the original jotted notes anymore. Long Limbs was originally planned to be a later story in North Bound, but I got especially excited about it and fleshed it out further than the others. When I reviewed the earlier stories, I didn’t think there’d be a big continuity or reader experience issue if this was finished and posted first. So I moved the messy notes for this story to the top of the document.

The page breakdown for the script is done by me generally picturing in my head how I might want the scene to go and how much action I might be able to fit on the page for good effect. I’ll sometimes start paginating without thumbnails, and sometimes will do both side by side (thumbnail and update pagination in tandem).

As you might imagine, pagination frequently changes. For example, you’ll see the script above is 9 pages instead of 10.

The original script for this section was broken up into maybe 4-6 pages, with 5-7 being more condensed.

When I started thumbnailing, I found it felt too cluttered and moved too fast.

So I stretched out the part of Hokushin and the mystery girl exchanging glances, and added pages to be able to create a (hopefully) more cinematic feel and really focus on the reason they catch each other’s eye - the bandages on their necks.

I then went back to the Google Doc and updated the script to line it up better.

I was also tweaking the dialogue at the same time and didn’t want to forget any key phrasing I liked. Dialogue is another thing I get really hung up over, often changing words up to the last second. (Sometimes this is because I messed up the size of the speech bubble, if I’m lettering on the computer...)

Thumbnails:

Pretty close to the final in this case - mainly because the sequence is pretty simple and straightforward and not many people are involved. I keep my thumbnails very crappy and rough so that I don’t get upset later when I can’t redraw something as good as the thumbnail. Bottom right was a quick attempt at designing the mystery girl.

Once I think the thumbnails are good enough - translation: I get impatient and just want to start drawing - I proceed to pencils for the actual page.

Throughout all this, I’m repeatedly reviewing script and thumbnail and playing sequences out in my head and then trying to figure out how to better direct the “camera” and the action. I may go back to the script and the thumbnails even as I’m finetuning the actual page if I encounter issues. You can see in both the script and the thumbnails that there are still deviations in the dialogue and the art from the final. Here are a few examples:

Page 3: The panels were originally 1) the setting, 2) Hokushin with his arms folded, 3) Raizen laughing, 4) we see that Hokushin is watching Raizen. After reviewing the thumbnail, I felt it’d be a better setup to flow into the scene if I switched panels 2 and 3. That’s closer to how you’d experience it in real life, or how it might be directed in a shot sequence: you enter an area/place, you hear the sound of some guy’s loud laughter filling the air, then the camera zooms up to the annoyed expression of this one particular dude and you see he’s staring at the laughing guy. Moving from bigger ambience to smaller details around the room.

Page 7: The girl was originally turning in the other direction (hard to tell because I redrew it right on top of the original sketch lol). However, this meant all the directional action would be pointing to the right - Hokushin is facing the right, and when he leaves the bar he’s angling towards the right side of the page. Facing the direction that readers will read in gives a sense of driving the action forward, while facing the opposite direction provides a bit of a mental stop. (This is something from Scott McCloud that always stuck with me.) So, I flipped the girl around.

Page 8: Script has Hokushin going “What’s this?”. When thumbnailing, I thought, “obviously it’s self-evident he’s wondering what this is when he picks it up”. It added nothing to the panel, and the speech or thought bubble would have interrupted the smooth action of him picking up the paper. So, axed.

The damn friggin’ bar and gambling: You’ll see the script mention this, and at one point I actually had the guy standing across from Raizen saying “Is this guy drunk?” I’m actually not sure if they’re in a bar or if Raizen is drinking, but neither were important to the actual story because I just needed Raizen and Hokushin to be in a place where Raizen could hang out with humans and be stupid. So I dropped these details. This is mainly because I ran into historical research problems about bars and alcohol during the Kamakura period (more on that near the end of this post), and this was the only way to stop myself from getting hung up on trying to make it “perfect” and “correct” and just get it done.

Drawing the actual pages. This part is fun!

Inking the actual pages. THIS PART IS NOT FUN :(

I don’t have very steady hands and I get very anxious about messing things up, so inking always takes me the longest. (I also get distracted easily, e.g., ink two lines and then surf tumblr for ten minutes lol). I’ve improved a lot since I started drawing comics much more frequently a couple years ago, and my choice of tools and style has helped a lot (I lean to variable lines and sketchy style, which is more forgiving than, say, a very precise art style with fixed-width pens) but I still get nervous at this stage.

I’m very lazy so I usually stick with one tool for inking. For Long Limbs I tried to effort more and actually used three. Right to left: Sailor fude de mannen for panel borders and text, Muji pen for artwork (0.4 because that was the only size available at the store when I went to get my refill), Pentel pocket brush for filling in blacks. I refill the fude de mannen and the pocket brush with fountain pen inks.

I usually ink panel borders first, then speech bubbles, then everything else. I hop all over the place and pages are generally in varying stages of completion. I also sometimes add in some more text lines because it seems like a good idea at the time - Hokushin’s complaint on page 3 about how he should have left Raizen when he got into a fight with a fish-seller in a previous story, for example. Sometimes these work, sometimes I regret it later and edit it on the computer.

Cover thumbnails and pencil sketch:

The one in the page thumbnails was the original idea, but then I thought, “seems kinda cliched. Can I get a more interesting angle where he’s not looking straight at the viewer?” (OK, his eyes are covered, but you know what I mean.) I quickly tried a few other angles and compositions, didn’t like them and ended up going with pretty much the original idea, but more zoomed in.

In the thumbnails, you can see all my little x’s indicating “ehhhh I don’t like this”. I wanted something with a particular mood/atmosphere especially with all the hands and arms, and I was conflicted between zooming out (for more environment and more arms, and the focus on the “long limbs” part of the title) or having a tighter, more close up shot. Ultimately I think the latter works better as it conveys a sense of claustrophobia, and it’s more intimate which supports the idea of psychological horror. ALSO IT’S SEXY (maybe???). The end.

Other random thoughts:

I took a lot of heart/inspiration/motivation from Togashi’s last few volumes of Yu Yu Hakusho to keep the backgrounds as lazy - I mean sparse - as possible and also speech bubbles over plain backgrounds lmao. I think it takes a lot of confidence (or maybe laziness) to be so minimalist and restrained, and it’s an impressive and economical way of working. I was always impressed that when reading those pages of his for the first time, the lack of detail never really bothered me - you had everything you needed for your brain to comfortably fill in the gaps and complete the sense of narrative and story progression, and there are still visual flourishes when the situation calls for it. So I’m trying to bring a bit of that tighter philosophy in.

Research. I struggle a LOT with not getting bogged down by details, especially when it’s something “just” for fun or “just” a fancomic. I have very lovely and helpful friends and family who every so often patiently allow me to whine and bounce things off of them, help me look things up, and/or tell me when I’m getting myopic about stuff. For all the North Bound comics, finding quick and useful historical references for the time period has been a challenge. There’s a ton about aristocracy and warriors but very little about the ordinary/common people, not surprisingly. I frequently question my instincts about what makes sense because I tend to automatically draw on similar/equivalent Chinese culture (there was certainly lots of cross-over, but not always appropriate/relevant) or Edo period references (wrong time frame! Too far in the future). I often end up losing a ton of time trying to find something with roundabout searches, and then give up and look at other comics I have close enough to the time period. And then referencing those and compounding whatever historical errors they have in them. (e.g., “Well if it was good enough for Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix it’s good enough for this rando fancomic!”) I just would like historical/subject matter experts to know I did try...

#yu yu hakusho #comics #hokushin #raizen #fanart #process #wip #art by Maiji/Mary Huang #sketches #art supplies #yyh north bound

9 notes · View notes

milaw89 · 7 years

Text

It’s Alright. (1/?)

Team Cap x Reader

Words: 3078

Story Summary: Reader is being chased by someone, not knowing what and why. She’s determined to find out why. A group of superheroes helping her but is that really such a great idea?

Author’s note: this has story been in my possession since I became a fan of The Avengers a couple of months ago. I hope you like it! I would like to give my special thanks to @giftofdreams My Bestie, my help and support.

Note: I’m not a native English speaker, so bare with me.

The local farmers market on the city square, Y/N arrived at didn’t look as crowded as it did last week she was there. The stands with different products are standing together in perfect rows. The fruit stand stands out with a variety of colours under the blanket of grey clouds. It never changed its usual place, it always stood next to the flowers and the smell of fresh baked goods from the bakery. The gray-bearded man, Ben greets her, knowing that every week it was the same order. Apples, grapes and oranges. The paper bag already waiting for her on top of the red apples.

Y/N handed him a couple of bucks, waving her hand as he checks the money. “It’s okay, see you next week,” she smiles and he puts his hand on his heart with a kind smile as a thank you; as if he didn’t expect it. To be honest the kind act made Y/N feel better about herself. Y/n grabs the paper bag, turning away as there was nothing else she needed in particular. As she strolled to the grocery store, Y/N passed a paper boy that held a stack of papers in his hands causing Y/N to frown as she took on the front page. A picture of what was a house burned down to the ground catches Y/N’s eyes.

The headline that read, ‘Mysterious fires continues, still unresolved.’

Y/N grabbed a paper, placing a five-dollar-bill in the hand of the paperboy and quickly started reading the article. Y/N’s heart stopped, eyes widened, taking in the details.

“Damn it,” she muttered. She couldn't figure out what she was doing wrong as to why the safe houses were burning down. What was their goal with burning all of those houses down? Sadly, Y/N didn't have the answer and she couldn't think of someone who did. Y/N folded the paper up, cheeks flushed red with anger that flowed through her body. Y/N skidded into an abandoned looking alley, checking over her shoulder; making sure she wasn't being followed. When the coast was clear, she pulled out her phone and dialled Gerard; her good and only friend.

“Hey, Y/N. You’re still coming in today?” He asked right away when he answered. Y/N rolled your eyes at his question, when was there a time she didn’t show up without telling him? Y/N cleared her throat, looking over her shoulder before continuing,

“Of course I'm coming! I wouldn’t miss your lesson for the world. Anyway, that’s not why I called you.” Y/N replied, biting her bottom lip, moving her gaze to the ground, kicking some small rocks away.

“Oh. What’s up?” he asked sounding curious. Y/N pulled her head up, not knowing how to tell him about the particular fire without giving too much away. Even though he is a good friend, You don’t fully trust him, anyone for that matter. It was best to keep it all to yourself, where exactly the locations were. Y/N rubbed her forehead with her arm, holding the paper bag firm in her hand.

“You know that I told you about the safe houses that were set on fire right?” Y/N surveyed the streets again before she started again. You turned around to walk out of the alleyway. You learned not to stop and hang around for a long time on one stop.

“Yeah, I remember, is it another fire?” Ger asked. “Yes, this one closer than I thought. I need to be extra careful now, which means I have to move away soon.” There was a moment of silence on the other side of the line. You knew what that meant, he's disappointed. They were good friends, he helped you so much but this was not about him, it was about her own safety.

Y/N sighed. “You know that our friendship would have ended sooner or later right? I have to keep moving to keep myself safe, Ger. I warned you for this. I assumed you were down for it. I know we make a good team together but…-” Y/N sighed, shaking your head. “We’ll talk about it after your lesson, okay?” Y/N bit her lip. You didn’t want to lose him. You turned out caring about him but being your friend meant that the friendships wouldn’t survive long. Ger begged you to stay a couple of more weeks when the fires started. You agreed with him but now the fires being so close to your hide-out. You couldn’t stay put any longer.

“Okay, we’ll talk later. Hey, Y/N.” Ger whispered. Hearing the discomfort in his voice.

“Yeah?” You looked around, then took the turn to the back of your apartment building. Don’t say the words, please don’t say the words! Y/n bit her lip harder, tasting the blood on her tongue.

“Be careful alright?” Ger said. Y/N sighed in relief, letting go of her bottom lip. He always told you to be careful. It is not unusual that he tells you that. He is always the first one you call when you got injured from fighting off men, he took good care of you without too many questions. You would love to bring him along but Ger can’t leave the gym only to his father, he needed him. With pain in your heart, you stopped in front of the door.

“Always. See you in a couple of hours.” You whispered back at him. Y/n hung up and opened the door of the building to the stairwell. You never took the front of the building, it would be too obvious if you were being observed or followed. Y/n let her eyes fall on her mailbox for a split second but turned to the stairs instead. Will look tomorrow. You decided.

Three days earlier….

King T’challa stood in front of the window glancing over the forest. The black panther statue stood tall in the sunlight in Wakanda. He turned around as some of the members of team Captain America walked in. Miss Romanoff had requested the meeting for an interesting case. A case that could save an innocent person. He would never reject a case like that.

“Your Highness, you called for us?” Steve commented. King T’challa nods looking at Captain Rogers.

“Yes, we have Miss Romanoff on a video call. Please, sit down.” King T’challa pointed at the seats. The team took their seats as King T’challa, pushed on a remote control in his hand. A black screen rolled down in front of the window and Miss Romanoff appeared.

“Miss Romanoff, tell us why you’re calling.” Natasha nods, her red hair falling down her shoulders. In the background, you could see she was nowhere near the Avengers compound. King T’challa wondered why as he observed Miss Romanoff.

“I have received a message from an anonymous person, I tried to track the person down but he or she is untraceable. That is not what the message is about though. There is a girl named Y/n. The anonymous person writes in the message that she’s being followed around by a group of people. Dangerous people.” Natasha paused.

Steve furrowed his eyebrows. “Isn’t that a case for the local police?” Natasha nods again.

“My first thoughts exactly. The message mentions that the girl hops from one house to the other within a period of two to three months. Some of those houses she has been in, set on fire last week. I have sent a document to where those houses are located.” King T’challa pushed another button on the remote. Another black screen rolled down next to Natasha. The document appeared with a map, pinpointing the locations. Sam pulls up and looked at the map. He moves the map around and zoomed in, making the map smaller to get a closer look.

“The fires happened last week?” Sam asked Natasha.

She nods. “Yes. There are six houses in total. Three burned down to the ground. The one in Russia killed a family of four, there are only three houses left untouched. In one of the three houses is Y/n staying in right now.”

Steve frowned. “I still don’t see why we have to react on this?”

Natasha frowned at the suddenly changed behaviour of Steve. That was nothing like Steve at all. He was usually the one listening in and giving out advice at the first signs of trouble.

“Cap, I wasn’t finished yet. Another mention about the girl, special powers. The message said that she killed a classmate accidentally when they were in a fight. There was a police report but it never got to court, because of her age. The girl was nine years old at the time.”

Clint chuckled. “Wow!.”

Steve rubbed his chin and sighed. “Have you looked at what the cause of the boy’s death was?” Steve asks, not believing for one moment that a nine-year-old girl could kill someone. She needed to be strong and masculine to pull that off.

Natasha nodded. “Yeah, a blow to the head, severe brain damage. The report states that the boy was teasing a smaller kid, Y/N acted out of defence when the boy started to pull on the smaller kid’s backpack. she intervened, and it got physical. The boy was pushed, hit his head and she gave him another pounce on the nose, so he hit the pavement again and then he was unconscious.”

Clint shakes his head. “She was protecting that smaller kid, but if she didn’t have punched the second time, the boy could still be alive today right?” He asked, receiving glances from the others in the room. Clint held his hands up in defence.

“Where were the supervisors?” Steve asked, turning back to Natasha.

“There were no supervisors at the moment that the fight started, only when it escalated but then it was already too late. Guys! This is not about the fight Y/n was in when she was nine! You’re missing the point. Look, there was also a name of a man, assumed to lead the group of people. we all know him and he’s kept in a guarded jail cell by Stark, Baron Zemo. This is where this case is about. What does Baron Zemo want with this girl? Still, now he has a life sentence in prison for his crimes?” Natasha was very curious about the girl and the connection with Zemo. The only problem was that she could only work on the case without Stark knowing it.

The room fell silent after hearing that name. Baron Zemo is responsible for the death of the former King of Wakanda, T’challa’s father. Baron Zemo made it look like Bucky to have done it. Breaking Bucky and making him the Winter Soldier all over again. On top of that, Baron had exposed who was the murderer of Stark’s parents. Ending that in a big clash between Steve, Tony and Bucky. If Baron Zemo was leading the group of people, following a girl with special powers. They weren’t doing it for fun.

Wanda frowned, being the first one to break the silence in the room. “Isn’t he restricted from contact?”

Natasha nods. “Yes, but I have found a document in Zemo’s stuff. I went through his inbox with Tony, as we locked him up. I never found anything suspicious until I got the message about Jaimey. I went through it again and he had contact with another man named Alexander, there was no last name, also the IP address from where the message was sent from was untraceable. They were talking back and forth about searching through the houses. They are after something and they are desperate to find it because why else burn those houses? Also, a strange thing is, he was unleashing the assassin in Buck at the same time.” Natasha explained.

“That is strange because I have talked with Zemo on the mountain before the fight between Captain and Mr Stark began. He was only seeking revenge for the deaths of his wife and kid. It didn’t seem like he had a whole other plan as he was trying to take his own life. You think there is a connection between the two?” King T’challa commented, he rubbed his chin, thinking through what he had heard so far. Natasha shrugs her shoulders.

“It could be, I don’t want to exclude that out” King T’challa nods.

“Hold on a moment,” Sam stated. Everyone turned to him. Sam walked around then stopped. “Why are you not giving this case to Stark? I mean, he can help you, you have Zemo, you could interrogate him about this right?” Natasha nodded.

“Yes, but you also remember that we signed the accords right? They won’t let us go out and find a girl as long as she’s not a threat to the world. Besides, we don’t want to put the girl in danger, even though he can’t contact people. They might get signals about us working on it.” Sam nods in understanding. The people in the room didn’t sign the accords. They were risking getting caught in action but they would still risk it for the freedom of the people.

Clint chuckled again. “The girl killed a boy with a blow to the head when she was only nine years old. It means that she is strong and if the special powers are true, we have no idea what her special powers are. The message says nothing else on the special powers right?” He asked Natasha. She shook her head.

Clint continued, scratching the back of his neck. “The special powers could be anything at this point. It’s not that there is a registration we can go to see which person has special powers and who doesn’t. How old is she now?” Clearly worried about the safety of every side of the party involved.

Natasha looked down at what seems to be the message that she received. “She is around seventeen now, the police report was from eight years ago.”

King T’challa turned to the group. “We need to find that girl, we can split up, keep an eye on the remaining houses. If that girl is still alive, we can take her and find out what’s going on.” Everyone in the room agreed with the King of Wakanda

“Do we include Bucky?” Steve asks. Everyone looked at Steve as he mentioned Bucky. They had no idea if he would stable enough to handle this case. He was still in recovery from the long surgery and finding a way to work with his new prosthetic arm.

“I’m not sure about that but I can wait here, do some research on Alexander and look through the message, finding out who wrote it. If you can contact me when you found her, I'll make sure, Bucky is ready.” King T’challa replied. Including Bucky only when necessary was better, he needed more time to adjust to his new prosthetic arm.

Steve pulled up and smiled at Natasha. “Thanks, Nat. Could you send me the documents, I want to look through them again.” Natasha nodded.

“I’ll go and find the house in Denver,” Natasha commented, signing off. The screen turned black and disappeared into the ceiling.

Clint pulled up, walking over to the map on the screen. “I’ll go to North Carolina, I can place a camera there. Hang around for a while to see if she’s there.” Clint pointed at the house, typing the address in his phone.

“What do we do when we find her, I don’t think she’ll come willingly,” Wanda stated. She has been observing the conversations in the room.

“If she doesn’t come without a fight then we’ll take her against her will,” Steve said, rubbing the back of his neck, looking at the map on the screen. “But, if you have the opportunity to talk to her, tell her we are here to help her out. She needs to know that we’re not the enemy.” Steve pointed out. The room agreed with nods of their heads.

“Am I the only one remembering she killed a boy when she was only nine years old? She is around seventeen now!” Clint stated. Sam chuckled. “What’s up with you old man, afraid to fight a seventeen-year-old?” Clint gave Sam a look, ignoring his comment.

“Prepare yourself, she’s probably scared and she’ll not trust you right away. She will not come willingly, I don’t want your bird suit to get destroyed by a seventeen-year-old girl…-” Clint replied. Sam wanted to react on the insult about his suit but Steve stopped them.

“Guys, come on. We have work to do.” Clint and Sam turned to Steve. Sam whispered under his breath. “It’s not a bird suit!” Clint snorted, shaking his head.

“Wanda and I will go to Los Angeles. If you find her, take her and meet us back here, if there are problems, and you need our backup. Tell us immediately.” Everyone nodded.

“Captain Rogers, can I have a word with you before you go?” King T’challa asked. Steve nodded. The others walked out of the meeting room, getting ready for a flight in the jet.

King T’challa closed off the second screen with one click on the remote, letting it also disappear into the ceiling. “About Mister Barnes and his new prosthetic arm. My team of experts are working with him and he gets better and better with it every day. I’m not quite sure if we should include him in this mission.” Steve scratched the back of his neck, disagreeing with him.

“What if it is HYDRA, that wants the girl? We could use Bucky to find out more about her, There is a chance, he knows the girl, worked with her. I know that this is all quickly after the surgery but if he feels fine and he can help us, we should let him. I can’t leave him out of this if he wants in.”Steve replied.

King T’challa nodded. “Alright, I wanted to hear your opinion and you’re right. I will check up on him when I can while you’re away, let me know if you need him, I can tell him about the mission.” Steve nodded, relieved that his buddy could join in if he wanted.

#bucky barnes #avengers #teamcap #mystery #avengersimagine #avengers x reader #avengers fanfiction #bucky x reader

73 notes · View notes

cosmosogler · 7 years

Text

hey.

today i got up on time and got to the office on time. i taught my lab and everyone finished. one girl asked if i had their grades.

i said “before the end of my natural lifespan i will get your grades back.”

the girl behind her laughed really hard.

when that ended i went to my office hour and very slowly attempted to drink my soup. the thermos is a little too Powerful. i helped a student get set up to practice their lab while i oversaw the otherwise empty room and clicked through some social media sites.

i think the break was helpful. it was nice to eat food slowly for once at least. when my hour was up i went back to suzanne’s office and got settled and worked on the late classical assignment and finished what i could... nobody knew how to do number 5 so i just wrote what i think i would need to do to solve it, and that i didn’t know how to start doing that, and turned it in. i briefly considered stopping at one of the offices i passed to talk about research projects, but i felt too busy and even more shy.

so i went back downstairs and caught up on ALL my class notes, and put in a word with suzanne to give john my contact details. i will try to catch him before or after class tomorrow. and i did some work for e&m.

that ended up taking all day. i didn’t get any grading done. i am avoiding it. i need to stop avoiding it. i will try again tomorrow.

at about 3:15 i went upstairs with luis to the coffee/cookie afternoon thing that’s every tuesday and thursday. today i learned, from listening to the other students talk about their textbook, that they were undergraduates. i thought all of them were graduate students.

there is a girl i have spoken with a few times. her name is also samantha. she said i was “so cute” when i roasted luis. i gritted my teeth and asked if it was the bow. she said it was the bow, and the curly hair, and the face, and that i was holding my tiny cookie with both hands, and a couple other things.

i guess... it was... good...??? to get feedback on that.

then she called me cute four more times in the next 20 minutes. i wanted to slap my hands on the table and tell her i am like four years older than her. as if being older makes you not cute i guess.

eventually i slumped in my chair and muttered “maybe YOU’RE cute.”

i think that was the response she was looking for because she got excited. i did like her glasses though, they are super round and huge. i only have “stern librarian” reading glasses. my elton john sunglasses broke at the frame so now the lens pops out. i have too many heavy things in my purse maybe. i can’t go anywhere without my game boy. just a habit by now.

that’s the only heavy thing in my purse.

then she called me cute again and didn’t seem to realize i had complimented the SHAPE of her glasses because she said “you have eyes.”

i said “you have beautiful eyes. can i have them?”

afterward when we were back in our office i asked luis if she was “like flirting with me for real.” he said sometimes people can be attracted to each other. later he texted her and then informed me it had been in jest.

but apparently i look like shirley temple. i get it from my gramma. my biological father’s side of the family also has naturally curly hair. my half brothers both have kinda soft round faces too.

i didn’t get flustered because she specifically called me cute. i got a little annoyed because it’s a Thing i deal with constantly from other people. and she did it like six times in the 40 minutes i was up there.

it feels like i worked all day? but it also feels like i didn’t get anything done. even though i was working for real and making progress through the things i was doing. like i wrote about four class periods’ worth of notes. well, three and a half. i nabbed my missing quantum notes from jake and jennica let me steal her notebook for the day since she wasn’t in the office.

i hung out with harrison for a little while. he has a masters. at 19. i made a series of jokes where harrison was becoming more and more accomplished at more and more ridiculous ages until he was a tenured professor at a university teaching phd students older than him.

eventually rebika asked me a question, i don’t remember what it was, and when i responded she answered with “i don’t care.” i said “OH OKAY.”

luis laughed and said “sammie’s triggered.”

i said “i’m pretty tilted.”

so i yanked rebika’s chain mercilessly for the next 25 minutes after that until i got ready to go home.

i biked home without running out of breath! i mean i still have trouble picking up speed again after the hill, and i got cut off in the roundabout by a car that decided to go whatever speed i was going while i was trying to get into the circle, but i didn’t pant hardly at all!

haha the roundabout was annoying though. as i approached the circle in the highest gear the car came zooming right in and cut me off, so i slowed down, and then the car slowed down, and then i stopped, and the car stopped, and then i got moving and it moved. eventually it passed and i had to try to start moving in the highest gear because i didn’t have time to switch to a lower one before i’d stopped. i got passed by other bikes before i could pedal enough to switch my gear down.

when i got home i did some dishes and fussed over snoopy and took out the recycling. then i made TERIYAKI TEMPEH!!!

except the teriyaki i bought at the grocery store was just soy sauce which made me pretty sad. because i already have soy sauce. why did they call it teriyaki if it was soy sauce?

i had to make my own except i didn’t have corn starch so it was runny.

it wasn’t my best dish ever? but it was perfectly acceptable. the rice came out really good for my first time ever making it myself. there’s something about this tempeh though that seems different from the kind i got at home, even though it shouldn’t be... they are the same brand. i can’t seem to recreate the nutty flavor. maybe it’s because i soften it first.

maybe they aren’t the same brand. the one i had at home crumbled super easy and this one i have to cut with a knife and then break apart as i saute it.

anyway i had plenty to eat, i made a little too much. at that point it was well after 8. i wanted to grade, but... i bummed around on the internet for a little bit instead. i checked my usual evening comics and then it was 9:30. that’s not enough time to do any grading so i swept my floor instead and finished up the dishes and hid some cookies around for snoopy to find. she didn’t find the last one from yesterday, which isn’t in one of her sleeping spots.

maybe i should hide them BEFORE i give her a bunch off the bat so she watches me do that instead of eating while i hide them.

i cleared off my desk just a little bit and made up my to-do list for tomorrow and now it is 10:40. tomorrow i have group therapy AND the student “care area” appointment. and three classes. but at least it’s spaghetti day and my classmates are back on schedule.

emotionally... i am doing ok i guess. i felt more focused today than i have in like ten days. i got over a big hurdle with catching up with the class notes. and i wrote down the first question of the next classical assignment so it’s... started, technically. five to ten minutes i won’t have to spend later at least.

jake also gave me a bit of a pep talk. well, it wasn’t a pep talk so much as “you’re doing exactly what i did last year with the class notes.” he seems like a Responsible Adult. and he does take beautiful notes. he said mine were great though.

and i do more homework than he did last year (which was none) so hopefully that will... help somehow. i guess.

i just need to stop procrastinating and do the hard stuff. study for e&m and not just skim the chapter without reading anything. grade. i won’t have a lot of time tomorrow with the double appointments. but i also don’t have many other things on my to-do list that i can acceptably use to put off the stressful stuff.

yeah, looking at the list, basically a third of it is taken up with just grading milestones alone.

anyway, it’s 10:48, which is three minutes after my “stop writing” alarm has gone off. so i will get ready for bed now i guess. i also stretched today for just a few minutes so i feel a little more settled i hope. back, wrist, and eye exercises are something i’d like to start incorporating into my daily schedule but i’m not sure where to fit them in. i’ll look into that after this grading adventure is no longer an adventure and more of a routine. hopefully before the end of my natural lifespan.

1 note · View note

jinkisbelly · 7 years

Text

Colors 2/?

Hellllooo

Pairing: Jongyu Rating: mm pg? pg-13

Warning: Age gap, (but everyone is legal)

w/c: around 2.3k, First part here [x], and this talks about their first date :) I hope you enjoy it

Jinki happens across a small period diner with a flirty, young waiter who is full of color.

The rollerskating rink was full of people of all ages. Parents with their children, teenagers hanging out, and people on dates. Jinki was looking at the small arcade to the left of him when he heard his name come from behind him. When he turned there was Jonghyun. His lavender hair a fluffed mess on his head and around his cheek bones, probably from the wind outside. He had a leather jacket on, dark wash jeans and combat boots. There was a bright smile on his face as he recognized Jinki. “I’m so sorry I’m late. The bus was late.”

“I was just early,” Jinki smiled softly, “You’re right on time Jonghyun.”

Jonghyun flashed a smile before nervously asking, “Can I hold your hand?”

Jinki offered his hand with the palm up with a smile, “So where do we rent skates? I’ve never been here.”

“Over there,” Jonghyun’s fingers curled around the offered hand and nodded to the right of them. “You do know how to skate right?”

“It’s been awhile,” Jinki admitted nervously.

“Well, don’t worry.” Jonghyun laughed softly, “I’m pretty good on skates.”

Once their skates were paid for, Jinki adamant about paying for them both, the found a big plush seat to change their shoes. Jonghyun was quick in tying his on and he took their shoes over to their rented locker while Jinki finished tying his skates on. When he attempted to stand up he was a little unsteady, but Jonghyun’s hand were on his hips a moment later to steady him. Jinki looked over his shoulder with a bashful smile, “Thanks.”

“I got you.” Jonghyun threaded their fingers together and smiled warmly up at him. “Let’s get on the floor.”

Jinki was unsteady, to begin with, muscles needing time for the memory of how to skate to come back into his limbs, but soon enough he could confidently push off the wood floors. Jonghyun laughed a little as he sped up to catch him, hands tight and sure between them. The lights above them swirled and it was hard for either of them to look away from each other long enough to see where they were going. After almost running into a small child a couple songs later they decided it was a good time to go get something from the concession stand and take a break.

Jonghyun ordered first, but Jinki’s hand came up to gently push his hand down before he could pay. “I got it.”

“Jinki you don’t-”

“I’ll take the same, but a tea instead please.” As the cashier completed ringing up the order and took Jinki’s credit card the man turned toward Jonghyun. “I know I don’t have to, but my Ma would probably come rushing in here with her cane and kick my ass if I didn’t at least offer. She raised me better.”

“I asked you out, though,” Jonghyun was frowning as he looked up at Jinki. The cashier went to get their order after handing them their drinks. “I’m supposed to pay.”

Jinki softly chuckled as he sipped his tea. “I’m older. I win.”

Jonghyun grumbled, but he melted when Jinki lifted his hand up to kiss the back of it. When the tray was pushed toward them Jonghyun rushed to take it and stuck his tongue out up at Jinki. With a soft, fond shake of his head Jinki followed. They found a table along the opposite wall, away from the majority of the people sitting, and far enough from the rink that the music and other sounds coming from it weren’t too overwhelming. Jonghyun was chewing a bit of pretzel behind his hand when he asked, “So what’s your fat cat's name?”

Jinki almost choked on his pizza at the question, but once recovered he replied, “Pancake. And hey don’t look at me like that he came named.”

“I’m sorry, but,” Jonghyun paused for a moment to laugh, “Pancake?”

“In his past owner’s defense,” Jinki hummed, “He does like to steal my pancakes in the morning.”

Jonghyun looked so confused he had to put his food down, “And what does he do with them? Eat em’?”

“No, he just takes it and lays on it.”

“So when I stay over in the future I’ll have to guard my pancakes,” Jonghyun happily sipped at his drink. When silence fell between them he realized what he had said, “Oh, I’m sorry I just assumed there would be another date and that I would- I’m sorry oh God.”

“Hey, Jonghyun relax,” Jinki reached over to squeeze the man’s hand with a smile, “I’m having a great time. I don’t mind the idea of you being in my future.”

“I apologize if I made you uncomfortable,” Jonghyun swallowed thickly before giving a little smile. “I’m having a great time too.”

After a moment Jinki asked, “So besides the diner, what do you do for a living?”

“I first went to college for journalism, and after I graduated I realized that working for a newspaper or a news outlet wasn’t the right place for me.” Jonghyun shrugged with a free smile on his face. “I felt caged in. I wasn’t free to write what I wanted to or how I wanted to and that bugged me, so I went back to school a year after a graduated. For art, double focusing on watercolors and ceramics.”

“Such a big contrast.”

“It’s messy but beautiful.” Jonghyun’s voice was so soft, full of his happiness as he leaned on his palm and gazed over at Jinki. “I come home covered in media all the time, but I’m a lot happier than I was at that desk job.”

“It takes a lot to restart.”

“But you should know all about it,” When Jinki looked at him confused Jonghyun continued with a little laugh, “I mean your divorce.”

“Oh,” Jinki shook his head, “I should have left a lot sooner, but I stayed for my son.”

Jonghyun swallowed slowly as he pushed around his slice of pizza, “You have a son?”

“Yeah, he’s around your age.” Jinki nervously asked, “Is that okay Jonghyun?”

“Yeah, of course, I just-” Jonghyun ran his fingers through his hair and gave an unsure smile, “For some reason the thought you had a kid in your marriage never cross my mind.”

“I’m new at this whole gay thing Jonghyun.” Jinki paused for a moment before continuing, “I spent twenty years in a relationship I felt broken in, malfunctioned. I’m unsure in a lot of things about who I am, what I want, what I deserve. It’s a new concept that there’s more to a relationship than being blamed and second-guessed all the time. This probably isn’t what you signed up for Jonghyun. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

Jonghyun softly grabbed his wrist as he moved to leave. “I wanted to get to know you and that’s what I’m getting. Please stay.”

“Jonghyun..”

“Tell me about your son,” The smile on Jonghyun’s face was soft and comforting, “You sound incredibly fond of him.”

After carefully taking his seat again Jinki quietly said, “He’s the only good thing I got from being married to his mother.” Jinki gazed down at his hand before looking up again with such a proud smile on his face. “He just graduated grad school for School psychology, living on his own. The divorce happened his freshman year in undergrad and I was afraid it would break him, but he fought through and I’m so proud of him.”

“Are you two close?”

“Incredibly.” Jinki pushed the tray to the right of them to open up the space between them. “He supported me when I was rethinking my sexuality. At the time it felt backward like it was supposed to happen the other way around.”

“I know that you’re going through so much exploring who you are, what you want,” Jonghyun reached over to squeeze his hand, “We’ll take this slow, and maybe I’ll help you find more about yourself along the way.”

“Thank you.” Jinki took a deep breath, “So on a lighter note, what’s your favorite color?”

“Black.”

“You’re a walking cotton candy treat and your favorite color is Black?”

“I’m a mystery I know.” Jonghyun finished his pretzel before asking, “And yours?”

“Blue,” A child zoomed past their table screaming scaring them both. “I do not miss that at all.”

Jonghyun snorted, “I’m kind of glad I was the youngest. I never had to experience that.”

“Do you want kids?” Jinki took the chance to ask. He was past the time he’d ever want to bring another child into the world, in any way. Better know if this wouldn’t work before they got too far into it.

With a shrug, Jonghyun replied, “Not really. My mother raised my sister and I alone, and while she loved us there was so much she wanted to do that she couldn’t do anymore. Maybe I’m selfish for thinking like this, but I love my life as it is too much to have this tiny human being that comes before everything about myself.”

“You aren’t selfish,” Jinki reassured, a warm smile on his face. “I had a child because my wife wanted one, and while I love Taemin to bits and wouldn’t change anything, there were times I caught myself wondering what would have happened if I had stayed true to what I wanted and refused.”

“Most people say I’ll change my mind when I meet the right person.” Jonghyun’s fingers gently tapped against the table as he gazed over at him.

“Changing what you want for someone else only ends in your unhappiness.” Jinki shrugged, “Besides if the person is right for you, they’ll share the same desires about children among other things and wouldn’t expect you to change.”

“Do you want more kids?”

Jinki shook his head, “It would be unfair to any child to bring them into my life at my age. I wouldn’t be able to give them the childhood I gave Taemin. Been there done that.”

“Good to know,” A slow smile was forming on Jonghyun’s face and Jinki’s tummy felt warm.

After the trash was thrown away Jonghyun smiled so big down at him, “Race me?”

“Sure,” as Jonghyun sped off Jinki snorted, “This seems a little UNFAIR!”

After stopping just before the carpet turned into wood Jonghyun beamed back at him. “Come get me, Handsome.” Jinki shook his head but pushed off the ground anyway.

He couldn’t catch him no matter how hard he tried, even when Jonghyun turned around and skated backward. After a while, he came over in front of him and smiled over his shoulder at Jinki, “Hold my waist, and hang on.”

Confused, Jinki did as he was told, and his fingers curled tighter in his shirt as Jonghyun took off dragging him along behind him. Later that night as they walked outside to leave Jonghyun was checking his phone for the bus route, but Jinki gently nudged him. “Let me take you home.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t ask that of you.”

“It’s cold out,” Jinki smiled, “Buses can be late, and I’ll get you home before it comes by this spot I guarantee you.”

After a moment Jonghyun caved, “Okay, Thanks.” Jinki offered his bent arm to Jonghyun and once the man threaded their arms together he led him over to his car parked to the left of them. Jonghyun’s eyes widened as he noticed how nice of a car it was. “This is yours?”

Jinki carefully opened the passenger door for him, a confused hurt expression on his face. “Yeah, is something wrong?”

“I’m just so used to my best friends beat up chevy is all.” As Jonghyun swooped into the leather seat he gasped quietly. Jinki laughed gently before closing the door and slipping into the driver’s side. “I feel like I should take my shoes off before stepping into this.”

Jinki snorted as he turned the key into the ignition, “So where am I taking you?”

“Oh!” Jonghyun snuggled back against the seat, “You know the apartments on Winden Street?”

“Blue roofs, the little pet store on the corner?”

“Precisely!”

“Feel free to mess with the music,” Jinki quietly stated as he pushed the button to turn it on, trot playing softly throughout the car.

“Do you like trot music?”

Jinki laughed as he turned to look behind him as he pulled out of the parking spot, “Safe to say I’m the stereotypical old person.”

“Do you sing along?”

“Oh God no.” Jinki flipped his turn signal on as he looked over at Jonghyun. “Singing is for my shower where the only audience is Pancake.”

“I’d like to hear it some day.”

Ten minutes later Jinki was pulling up to the front door of the apartments. He put the car in park and turned a little to Jonghyun. “I had more fun tonight than I have in a while. Thank you, Jonghyun.”

“So much fun that you’d want to go out again?” Jonghyun nervously asked, a little too afraid to look over at him.

“More than enough,” When Jonghyun looked at him Jinki was smiling softly at him. “What did you have in mind?”

“There’s the light show down at the zoo I was thinking about.”

“Sounds amazing.”

“Same time?” Jonghyun asked hopefully.

“I’ll pick you up. Six thirty on the dot.”

“It’s a date,” After a moment Jonghyun opened the door. One foot was out when he looked back at Jinki for a few seconds before he was leaning in to press a soft kiss against his cheek. “See you later, Handsome.”

Jinki waited until Jonghyun was inside the building, and it was only then his heart stopped feeling like it was going to beat out of his chest.

#jongyu #jonghyun #onew #shinee #onjong #jinki #age gap au

53 notes · View notes

mystical-flute · 5 years

Text

Come Sail Away Ch. 11

Ao3 || FFN || Ko-Fi

"Pharaoh… there was something you needed of me?" Azila asked as she swept into the room, brow knitted in worry as she clutched her medical equipment closer to her. "Are you ill? In pain?" Oh Ra, they wouldn't be able to recover from losing two kings in under two years Not while there were still mysterious deaths happening.

"How many deaths happened last night?" he asked, not turning away from the window.

"We have received word of three. One was not caused by any known illness. Are you feeling well, my king?"

He turned to her, his lips pressed into a thin line. "I feel fine. I'm just wondering how much longer this country can take these mysterious deaths. Are you certain there was no known cause for the one yesterday?"

"Yes my king. Your advisors did not tell you of this death?" she asked with a small frown.

"No, no. They have. I was just making sure that you knew as well."

"So it was a test."

His lips quirked into a smirk then. "Technically, yes. But not for you. I had to make sure my new advisors were actually competent enough to work under me."

She gave him a small smile. "You are a smart man, my king."

"I suppose I had to be, in order to take the throne," he replied, before heaving a heavy sigh and sinking back onto his throne. "One death then?"

"Yes."

"Even one is too many if we cannot figure out what is happening. I sent Mana to study that strange stone but… she has not found anything, other than the glow that doesn't seem to go away." The pharaoh rubbed his eyes. "This country is still in despair, despite my hard work in recovering after Zorc's attack…"

"My king… these things are not your fault," Azila said, "the people of Egypt know this."

The pharaoh let out a grunt of frustration, his fist banging against the arm of his throne. "They may know that I was not the one that ordered whatever is happening, but it is my job to stop it. To protect them. What sort of king am I if my people keep dying without any cause?"

"What sort of king are you to speak with a tone that indicates that you are giving up?" Azila snapped, before bowing her head in shame. "My apologies, my king, but Egypt is in need of a strong leader. He would not have chosen you to succeed him if he did not think you were strong enough to guide Egypt out of the darkness."

Seto's lips quirked just slightly. "How is it that you know what to say to make me feel better?"

"It is my job to make you feel better, my king. I am a doctor after all."

Azila let out a soft sigh as she appeared in Reika's bedroom, finding the young woman asleep in her clothing from the previous day, surrounded by paperwork and machines she still didn't know the names of.

"Reika…" she said softly.

The woman shot up, her eyes wide. "Oh – Azila. It's just you."

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah… sorry. I guess I fell asleep. If you could call it sleep…" Reika said with a groan, rubbing at her tired eyes.

"What were you doing all night?"

Reika rubbed her eyes again. "Watching the Battle City Finals. Yugi's currently on-board a blimp hovering above the city with their leader so… sleep isn't so easy to come by now."

Azila's eyes widened. "What? Is he safe?"

"Yugi is, yeah…" she said with a sigh. "I spoke with him last night. One of our friends lost her soul to the Shadow Realm though, so it's not great."

"Oh dear… but if I know the Pharaoh, I know he will be able to stop Marik Ishtar and protect all of the Millennium Items," Azila said with confidence.

Reika's face deadpanned as she pulled on a shirt. "Azila, you don't even remember his name. How do you know anything about him, then?"

"He saved Egypt. Why would he not be able to save you all as well?"

"Because whatever was terrorizing Egypt is different from what's terrorizing us now?"

Azila rolled her eyes. "How many times must I tell you that things will work out for the best?"

Reika simply sighed, pulling her bag onto her shoulder. "Until I see it for myself. Now, if you don't mind… I'm going to be stuck at work for the next forty-eight hours while my family thinks I'm going to a spa. Yay."

"Why did you not go with your cousin to the Battle City finals?" Azila asked with a frown.

"Because Ishizu convinced my boss that I was needed here instead for some reason. She has all that infinite wisdom because of that necklace of hers and all," Reika rolled her eyes as she spoke and swept from the room.

Azila frowned, left alone in Reika's bedroom, a feeling of dread beginning to prickle through her ghostly form. Whatever was left behind here for Reika Mutou… Azila had a feeling it was going to come at a high cost.

----

"Miss Mutou! It's been a while since you've been here. Did you want your regular bouquets?" the shopkeeper asked with a polite smile.

She nodded, forcing herself to look up at the woman. "Please. Thank you Kimiko."

Flowers in hand, Reika then made the long walk through Domino's cemetery, pausing to lay some of the flowers at her grandmother's grave, saying a prayer and burning some incense, before she continued her journey deeper into the cemetery and sighing as she sat in front of another grave.

"Your grave is filthy," she remarked dryly, carefully beginning to clean it, "is that why you keep haunting me, Noah?" Lighting the incense, she sighed heavily. "I don't understand why you've decided to invade my dreams twice in such a short period. What are you trying to tell me?"

The grave, of course, didn't speak back to her.

"That cartoon movie we watched all the time came on last night. Gave me a break from work, which was nice. Made me want to play the piano again," she continued with a sigh. "But it'd be hard to do that without you."

She sat quietly, looking at the grave in front of her, lost in her own thoughts, until her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was time for her shift to start.

Well, at least she had Akio with her, and at least she knew Yugi and the others were safe from Marik Ishtar and the Rare Hunters.

"Here, I grabbed some of the files Kenji wanted us to look at," Akio said the next evening as they settled in on the uncomfortable cots. "It looks like old business records. I don't know where Kenji and Yume would have gotten them."

"When in doubt, don't ask," Reika told her with a snort.

"Good call."

The two settled into a comfortable silence, the only sounds in the room the papers being shuffled around. It was peaceful, until an alarm started blaring through the organization. In seconds, Reika and Akio were sitting at the computers, trying to trace the source of the commotion.

"Got it," Reika finally said, the monitor finally zooming in on a warehouse. "There was a sudden burst of energy from this warehouse. The computer indicates it’s the same energy that's used in the portals. Someone's coming into the city that shouldn't be."

"Damn…" Akio whispered. "We need to head down there."

Reika nodded, pulling on her jacket. "Yeah, I'll send out a call."

Before long, they found themselves sneaking inside the darkened warehouse, flashlights lighting their way through. It was advanced, well-cared for, and the cameras in the halls showed that people were here frequently.

"I can't believe this was under our noses all this time…" Akio whispered, voice slightly muffled through her black mask. "How did we avoid finding it?"

Reika shrugged, looking around. "I don't know. Whoever owns this must be good at hiding everything. But whoever they are… we need to make sure they can't finish whatever plan it is they have."

"Wait… what's that sound?"

Reika paused, listening closely as they slowly moved down the hallway. "That sounds like a heart monitor… like at a hospital. What the hell is going on here?"

Drawing their weapons, they approached the room in question, finding a large pod inside of it.

Reika froze. Either the lighting in the room was strange or… the face she could see inside it looked… familiar.

"Oh God… is that a kid?" Akio gasped in horror. "Reika?"

Dread began to spread through her, cold and menacing as she made her way further into the room. "No… no…"

"Reika?"

She broke into a sprint, skidding to a halt and feeling the color drain from her face as she got up close to the pod.

"No!" she screamed, unaware her legs had given out until she felt her knees collide with the cold tile floor, shaking hands grasping the pod for support and pulling her mask away from her face so she could breathe properly.

"Reika!" Akio shouted, pulling her by the shoulders and forcing Reika to look at her. "What the hell? Who is that?"

A brief moment of clarity found her as she pulled her hands away from the pod and up into her hair, gripping the strands tight in her fists. "H – his name is Noah Kaiba," she sobbed. "He's Gozaburo's biological son."

"Wait – what? Then how come – "

"They told me he was dead…" she whispered. "They told me he was dead!"

"Who did, Reika?"

She suddenly went rigid as realization struck her, looking at Akio with wide, horror-filled eyes. "The Big Five did…" she whispered.

Akio stared back at her with an identical look. "Oh God. Then… that explains who has been in this warehouse. Come on. We need to get Yume and the others filled in."

Reika nodded, slowly rising to her feet with Akio's help. "I just…"

"It's okay. He was important to you, huh?"

"He was my best friend when we were kids…" she replied softly as she felt the bruising already beginning to form on her knees. "The first friend I ever had. He was hit by a car when we were twelve. I thought – I thought there was no way to save him…"

Akio kept a firm hold of her. "Well, don't worry. We'll figure all of this out."

"How?"

"Focus, Reika. We're spies. We know how to solve these sorts of things."

Reika swallowed, shaking her head as she tried to clear it. "Right. Yes, of course we will I just… I can't believe this."

"I know, but you need to focus."

"Akio? Reika? What have you found?" Yume asked with wide eyes as the two stumbled into the room.

Reika heaved in a breath. "Gozaburo Kaiba's biological son… in a pod… being kept alive after being presumed dead. We – we think the Big Five own this warehouse."

Yume didn't seem fazed, nodding slowly. "Yes, that seems to line up with the documents we've found… and with the doctor that showed up here."

"Doctor?"

"Yes. I have some agents talking to her now. You're welcome to look in on the discussion if you want. She didn't seem all that interested in a conversation."

Reika nodded, taking another deep breath and trying to steady herself and making her way to the room Yume pointed out. She paused outside the door at the voices within, and she felt herself lose a bit of color in her face when the doctor's voice registered with her.

"Dammit…" she whispered.

"I won't tell you anything. My job depends on it!"

Swallowing tight, Reika opened the door, crossing her arms over her chest as she stared down her former doctor.

"Perhaps you'll answer my questions, then?" she asked with a raised brow. "After all, it isn't everyday one finds their old best friend alive after they've been declared dead by everyone they trusted as a child."

"Reika Mutou?"

"Hello Doctor Shizuki."

"What – how – why are you here?"

Reika took a seat at the table and laced her fingers together. "I think you should answer my questions first, doctor…"

Doctor Shizuki let out a sigh, rubbing her temples. "Okay. Since you've… somehow found this place. You deserve to know the truth." Taking a deep breath, the doctor steeled her gaze and looked at Reika with a sad smile. "They were going to tell you, eventually."

"The Big Five were?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"Where are the Big Five?"

"I don't know. They disappeared over a month ago after the Duelist Kingdom tournament ended."

"But they're still giving you orders?"

"Only to monitor Master Noah and make sure his body is still healthy. That's all, I swear, Reika. I never would have agree to this if I'd known you would find out early."

"You should never have agreed to this at all!" Reika snapped back. "You should have told me the truth from the beginning. I trusted you!"

"You were too young… you wouldn't have understood."

Reika's eyes narrowed. "Not understood that my best friend was actually still alive after I thought he was dead?"

"The reason why they've done what they have…"

"What was the reason?!"

The good doctor went quiet at the question, and Reika lunged to grab her before she was pulled back by another agent.

"Reika, you aren't going to get answers from her this way… and besides, we have a bigger issue on our hands," the agent said, leading her outside so Shizuki didn't hear. "The Battle City blimp just went off the radar. There was a distress call sent out from Fugita."

There was little time for her to process that bit of information, before she was following the group through a quick portal to the Kaiba Corp Airship, finding a stunned Roland waiting.

"Fuguta, what the hell happened?" Yume asked.

"It was Noah Kaiba. He took everyone involved in the Big Five takedown plot hostage, so I assume he's working with them," Fuguta said with a small frown.

Reika rubbed her eyes. "Of course they are. Okay. So he's got Yugi, Seto, Mai, Tristan, Téa, Joey and Mokuba, I assume?"

"Duke Devlin and Serenity Wheeler as well. They insisted on going. We tried to follow them but… there are machine guns out there that stopped us," Roland explained.

Reika chewed the inside of her cheek before taking a deep breath. "We need to figure out a way to get in there without being shot. I'm a dead eye shot but it looks like those guns are on all sides. There's no way any of us would be able to get through that without looking like Swiss cheese."

"Reika. Might I suggest you take my brother along with you?"

Reika jumped and looked over. "Ishizu?"

Ishizu stepped into the room, flanked by two men. "Hello Reika. It's been a while, hasn't it? But yes, you should take Marik with you. His Millennium Rod will be able to stop any guards that might be in your path."

"Oh yeah, let me take along the guy who tried to kill myself and people I care about," Reika said with a snort. "Great plan, Ishizu."

"Marik is cured of the darkness that caused him to do that. The Pharaoh helped him. Allow this to be part of his redemption. Please."

"Fine," Yume said before Reika could protest further, staring straight at the Egyptian trio, "but he tries anything Ishizu, and he's being taken down."

Marik – the younger of the two men with Ishizu – pulled out the Millennium Rod and nodded. "I promise you. I will not bring harm to any of you. I owe a great debt to Yugi for helping to save me."

Reika adjusted the hood of her cloak and slid her mask back into place. "Let's go then."

Yume carefully stepped outside, throwing a few pieces of fruit into the motion sensor, waiting for the guns to fire. When nothing happened, the small group ran through the labyrinth, searching for anything that could be helpful.

"This place is huge. We're going to need to look through it more carefully once we find the others," Yume said, before they skidded to a halt in the largest room.

Reika's face fell as she took in her friends and loved ones stuck in pods, not unlike the one Noah was in.

"Oh my God… there's so many pods. What the hell are they planning?"

"Reika, look. There's Yugi," Marik suddenly said, pointing up at the large screen. "And… that almost looks like you."

Reika followed his gaze, eyes widening. "That is me. But – from when I was nine. Why would he be with an nine-year-old me?"

Then, her grandfather entered the frame, visibly shaken and distraught, and her eyes widened, just as Yugi also seemed to realize what was happening.

"Oh no. I know what that is. This is the day we found out my uncle was killed. This is one of Yugi's worst memories," she explained.

"From the looks of it, all of them seem to be having their worst memories. They must have trapped them there," Akio said softly.

Reika ripped her eyes away from the screen, looking at the pods. "I'm going in," she said. "I have to get to Noah and tell him to stop."

"Reika – "

"You're not going to convince me otherwise, Yume. It has to be me," Reika said, walking over to one of the pods and opening it. Taking a deep breath, she took a seat inside and watched as it closed, before closing her eyes, feeling her mind separate from her body as the blinding light enveloped her.

#yugioh fanfiction #yugioh #noah kaiba #female oc #seto kaiba

0 notes

itateverybody-blog · 6 years

Text

The Life-Changing Power of Subliminal Persuasion Video

We made a plan for ourselves to go somewhere outside of the city over the weekend. It was something we had neglected to do for most of the summer. Late May, June, and most of July had raced by, and slowly the existence of the world outside of the metropole creeped into our minds. The idea of taking a trip to the country manifested itself as a feeling strangely reminiscent of shame, or maybe embarrassment, as if the recognition of our isolation in the great grid of urban space made us feel cheap and inadequate.

Looking back on it all now, I am willing to concede that the acknowledgement of our failure to visit the world outside of our city lives and the peculiar shame it brought with it, also made us think of how much our day-to-day lives with one another was founded on the comfort of routine and habit. Chicago’s claustrophobic loneliness underscored the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly schedules (both formal and informal) that comprised the bulk of our adulthood. Work, school, trains, buses, availabilities, timing, coordinations, events, and invitations; a never-ending logistical mapping that just led to the planning of future life-operations; a broad-spectrum self-administered micromanagement.

Sadly, our relationship with one another was not much different. We managed the breaks and flows of our intimacies basically the same way we did the rest of our lives. We coordinated time spent together, we maintained open lines of communication in regards to our competing responsibilities, and we provided regular feedback to one another regarding our satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the course of our romance. After several years, it was a functional relationship, and it was precisely that functionality that appeared ugly to us, that made us feel shame. The habits and routines of our love seemed to betray the passion implied by the term, “love,” as if our affections for one another were a struggle of rational planning and familiar procedures, not the ribald feelings of uncontrollable desire and delirium commonly associated with the term.

We decided we would take a trip outside of the city, to temporarily assuage the feelings of shame we felt towards ourselves for maintaining such a functional coexistence.

Sandy had always appeared pleasing to me. At first the attraction had been sexual, then sentimental, and now merely reassuring. It was as if I had come to treat her body with a degree of objectification far deeper than that of petty chauvinism. Beyond the realm of sexual objectification was the objectification that came with the quotidian familiarity of a long term romantic relationship. Her body to me held the same status as an old blanket or a favorite stuffed animal. Something that generated a placid sensation of calmness and security; an object that is so present in one’s life, that it is not even there, unnoticed because of its consistent use as a source for emotional relief.

As I looked at her then, when this all began, her features served to reinforce her invisibility. Her tall slender build, her short brown hair, her round face, he slightly accented cheeks, her elusive green eyes, her black, wire rim glasses, her pale complexion, her thighs, her armpits, the small of her back, the moles, the acne, the pimples, the rashes, the scars, the bare skin; she was an endless collage of normal things that gave substance to the phrase, “everyday life.” Sandy was everyday life. Her body was the lived experience of this notion that separated my existence as a private self from the public world of large populations and faceless institutions. My discreet, private love.

So we journeyed outside the city. Maybe I subconsciously suspected that looking at Sandy in an unknown context might change my own self, might make me feel differently in someway and even reduce some of the shame I felt for living so functionally.

We drove for an hour or two to a state park we had looked up online. The park was a series of trails spread through a large forest preserve. There was flora and there was fauna. There were a lot of people who seemed to have had the same idea that we did. Different families and couples and friends and even lone individuals, all drawn in someway to spend time in this serene space of pure nature preserved for the pleasure of human society. A place to go in order to forget the immense logistical project of living. I felt somewhat disappointed by the crowd, initially because I felt like it would undermine the tranquility of our idealized destination but later I understood that all my fellow day-trippers were revealing the underlying pathetic logic of our own micro-vacation; like a forest full of terrible mirrors, unrelenting in their savage reflections.

Sandy and I walked through the woods, mostly in silence. I felt the need to maintain a certain air of reverence, not because I felt any spiritual connection to my surroundings, but because I felt obligated to imitate an attitude I wish I was capable of maintaining. I had not felt much reverence for anything for many years. Sandy followed behind me, letting me guide our travels with my quiet, yet obscenely performative respect for the natural kingdom. We trudged our way down to a small creek at the base of a long hill. We sat by the water for a long time and Sandy laid her head in my lap as we both watched the sun drift through the foliage of the ancient trees and the dragon flies zip and zoom across the surface of the water. I felt hypnotized by the beauty around us, or at least, that’s how I would have characterized my feelings if someone had asked me how I was feeling.

In truth I don’t think I really felt that at all. I don’t think I really felt anything.

***

On the way back from our little weekend trip, we stopped at a thrift store we had never been to before and that we never returned to again. It was there that we found the first tape. It was stuck on the rack in the bottom right corner, between, Planet of the Apes, and, Honey I Shrunk the Kids. The cover of the case featured a hazy and worn image of a peaceful beach, with waves lapping the shore beneath a tranquil sunset. Overlaid across the image of the beach was the faint outlines of a sleeping body, its head tucked into its arms as if in the fetal position. At the very bottom read the title: The Life-Changing Power of Subliminal Persuasion Video.

Sandy and I bought the tape along with a new lamp shade and a couple of cheap framed pictures.

When we came home we were tired from the long drive, and soon settled in the bedroom, in front of the television and the old VHS player. We found ourselves playing the tape, anticipating a strange, mildly amusing collection of video sequences that would soon be forgotten.

The tape began with a calm and soothing voice providing an introduction over a series of calming nature stills. The voice introduced itself as Dr. Bill Convex, co-founder and chief hypnotherapist at Open Horizons, the company responsible for the production of The Life Changing Power of Subliminal Persuasion Video. Dr. Convex explained how the tape currently in our possession contained a scientifically developed mixture of audio and visual stimulation designed to enhance the critical and creative skills of the mind. While the video would only appear to be calming footage of placid natural environments, the footage also contained visual and auditory lines of communication perceivable only by the subconscious; secret sounds and pictures underneath the surface of what the conscious mind would see and hear. These secrets were tools for the scientific reinvigoration of the brain; a power to change lives. Sustained viewing of the tape’s contents over a prolonged period of time (along with other media products offered by Open Horizons) would cause the viewer to experience an increase in mental focus, streamlining the viewer’s cognitive abilities allowing him or her to maximize the full potential of their body and mind.

Over the next 45 minutes, Sandy and I watched with varying degrees of attentiveness as the tape played in its entirety. It didn’t seem terribly remarkable to me. There was a certain lightly pleasing cheesiness to the scenes of forests and beaches scored by the abstract non-linear tones of mid-80’s synthesizers. But beyond that limited scope, I didn’t feel as if the tape had anything much else to offer. After it had finished playing, I said as much to Sandy. She expressed no opinion, in fact she said very little at all after the video was over.

***

The next day was a Monday and I usually got home from work later than Sandy, who

Got off a few hours earlier but has to leave the house as I’m just waking up. At some point throughout the day I vaguely recalled waking up in a daze in the middle of the night and noticing that Sandy was not in the bed next to me, but the thought dissipated from my mind soon after it had first occurred to me.

When I did arrive home, I walked in to find Sandy watching The Life Changing Power of Subliminal Persuasion Video by herself in the poorly lit living room. We only had one VCR that we normally kept in our bedroom, which means she had brought the tape player out of the room and hooked it up out here. She was lying back on the gray couch casually smoking a cigarette. Other than wearing her socks, she was completely naked.

When I stepped into the apartment she stared at me blankly yet deeply, as if she were acknowledging the strangeness of what she was doing but was not going to attempt to justify her behavior. I decided to remain mute on the subject and instead reached out to her side and helped myself to one of her cigarettes. We both sat there smoking together in silence, as the dulcet tones of the tape’s soundtrack filled the room, accompanied only by the creaking of the ceiling fan whirring away above our heads. The tobacco smoke drifted out from our lungs and lilted in the air as the shifting colors of the tv screen shimmered across the haze we created. It was as if the smoke from our mouths and the light beams of the tv were the point where our bodies met and blended with the video content; the indeterminate porousness that exists between the viewers and the screen.

Over the course of the night, Sandy must of watched the tape dozens of times while I skulked around, unable to ask her what she was doing. Early in the morning, I went out to the living room and turned off the blank blue screen as she slept on the couch in a rather awkward position that I could only imagine was terribly uncomfortable. Although I turned off the television, I did not attempt to reposition her. I did not think of it this way at the time, but I think I was afraid of waking her.

***

The rest of the week transformed the first night into a routine. Sandy kept watching the tape and I quietly avoided her new fixation. I didn’t know how to interact with her unusual behavior. Perhaps I lacked the emotional depth.

***

Eventually, Sandy decided to find out more about Open Horizons and their other media products as well as hypnotherapy media prophet Dr. Bill Convex. The history was not hard to find, but the facts, once related, led to further questions.

Sandy calmly gave me the details she had uncovered one night as we ate dinner. Or, at least I was eating, Sandy mainly discussed the details of her findings and pushed her food around with her fork. She had recently started to eat less and lose weight.

Dr. Bill Convex had been a revolutionary clinical psychologist working in experimental new media therapy treatments in the late 1970’s. Dr. Convex claimed to have created a method of video and audio manipulation that unlocked the persuasive potential of video, allowing for a radical increase in the effectiveness of therapeutic treatment. Dr. Convex had apparently been shunned by the mainstream scientific community, but had overtime built a national community of committed followers through his popular self-help videotapes; like the one that was now sitting in our home tape-player.

By the early 1980’s, Dr. Convex had become partners with an eccentric hedge-fund manager that was enamored with Convex’s therapeutic program, stating on record that it was responsible for his skyrocketing business success. The two men constructed a pioneering medical clinic in a small suburban town on Lake Michigan. The clinic was envisioned as both a research laboratory and an active treatment center where Dr. Convex could pursue his future studies while still working directly with patients.

One day, soon after the clinic had been officially opened, a fire erupted on the grounds and Dr. Convex as well as a number of his most devoted followers died in the blaze. The fire was due to an electric malfunction. An electrical thing. A freak surge in the power system that overwhelmed the wiring and sparked a flame. Dr. Convex was killed, along with his groundbreaking approach to video hypnotherapy. Today, Dr. Convex’s work had drifted into relative obscurity, and the clinic where he was to further his radical approach to treatment had been abandoned and forgotten - apparently nothing more than a collection of ruins on an uninhabited island just off the coast of the Michigan suburb.

Sandy seemed overwhelmed with the gravity of this background once she had summarized it for me. I leaned forward in my chair and asked her if she was okay and she smiled softly assuring me that yes, she was fine. She asked me if I thought burning was a painful death and I said I didn’t know. I said that I was pretty sure most people who died in fires died of asphyxiation rather than the heat of the blaze and she nodded gently. I speculated that death by choking was probably just as unpleasant as death by burning. She sat there silently, mulling over this cruel but probably truthful observation. Then, she quietly closed her eyes and a thin smile spread across her face as we sat there at the table. Somehow, I knew that her self-induced state of tranquility was being brought on by thoughts of the video in her mind. She was mentally replaying the sights and the sounds of Dr. Convex’s persuasion video as we sat together at the table. She was focusing her mind in accordance with the stated influences of Dr. Convex’s audiovisual inventions. I sat there awkwardly, unsure how to proceed.

***

Sandy started to skip work. At first she used up all her sick days, and then she simply stopped going without bothering to excuse her absence. She said she had to keep working on her new project. She said it would be fine for her to dip a bit into her savings in order to contribute to rent and other expenses.

Her new project was locating copies of Open Horizon’s other media products. She continued to watch the one tape we had found, but she decided that she wanted to seek out more of Dr. Convex’s special treatments. She earnestly told me that the first tape was working, that she could feel her mind growing sharper, more focused and effective. But, she went on to say, she knew there was so much more room for improvement. The enhancement of her mind revealed to her just how much more she could be enhanced by Dr. Convex’s brilliance. Her words, not mine.

She began at home by surveying the internet for any available copies of his old video catalogue. Apparently Bill Convex had been a fairly prolific hypnotherapist. Open Horizons had released 96 different persuasion video titles, supposedly composed of unique audio and video content unrepeated in any of the other tapes. In other words, each one was special, and had its own specific effect on the mind of the viewer. Sandy’s internet exploring yielded her several copies which she had shipped to the house immediately, but it was by no means the entire catalogue.

Next, she moved onto the city thrift stores and retail shops. She systematically outlined a schedule for regularly visiting every second-hand shop she felt was a reliable source for rare Open Horizon titles like the one we had found. She was now kept busy biking across the city, popping in at one of the spots on her list and carefully searching through their collections of old VHS tapes.

By the end of the second week of her new project, Sandy was a proud owner of 34 of the 96 original titles and she planned to watch them all several times. I wondered if she would ever go back to work.

***

When she wasn’t searching for more tapes, Sandy was busy watching them. She would go for hour long periods lying nearly motionless on the couch or on the floor just staring at montages of nature scenes that endlessly flashed across the screen. I would sometimes watch them with her, maybe with a book by my side as I would regularly lose interest pretty quickly. I was still struggling to understand what she saw in these tapes, and her borderline obsession was starting to make me uncomfortable. Perhaps I secretly enjoyed her in a state of hypnosis. Our relationship slipped into a new routine that proceeded according to Sandy’s continual viewings of Open Horizon’s many media products. Maybe that meant that Dr. Convex’s secret mind-enhancing techniques were really working.

She repeatedly claimed that the tapes were having an effect on her. She insisted that her mind was sharper, more acute, more focused. I pointed out that all she was focused on now was the tapes, which was technically a kind of focusing, one that basically eliminated her awareness of any other problem in her life. She nodded in agreement, with a slightly confused look of obliviousness. Apparently Sandy had understood my criticism as just further validation of the treatment’s success and didn’t pick up on the point I was trying to make.

Sandy had grown thinner every day. She was paler now too, a result of her spending days at a time indoors in front of the television screen. Convex’s tapes were causing her body to disappear while they enhanced her mind. The tapes were helping Sandy fulfill the great philosophical endeavor: a life of the mind. Sandy was quickly becoming a disfigured monster of cartesian modernity; the thinking thing beyond the limitations of the body; a kind of sickening transformation from primitive embodiment into pure mental energy, eliminating the illusory significance of daily reality. Everything else was fake. Doubtable. The tapes were real. They brought on a purity of mind that was impossible to replicate with the forgery that was normality.

I imagined Sandy mutating into a balloon, her head growing large as it inflated with air, while her body became smaller and thinner until it was only the weakest of string hanging beneath her expanding mind. She floated away into the sky, drifting in the wind until she was nothing but a dot in the horizon - a floating head lost to the heavens.

Dr. Convex’s videos had her undivided attention. He was delivering what he promised. He was focusing her mind.

***

One day Sandy asked me to go with her to the ruins of Dr. Convex’s forgotten clinic. She argued very forcefully that we needed to go and walk in the shadows of Dr. Convex’s videographic-neurological revolution. Her words, not mine.

I objected. I listed several reasons why this was a bad idea, reasons which ranged from the practical (i.e. I would have to take off work, we would have to make travel arrangements, we didn’t know how to find the place) to the psychological (i.e. her unhealthy new fixation with Dr. Convex and his hypnotherapy video tapes).

None of my arguments swayed her. The tapes had worked as advertised. Her mind was now endowed with a laser focus, and it was focused on bringing herself as close as she could to the dead Convex and his lost treatments.

In the time that Sandy had been watching and re-watching Convex’s therapy tapes, I had come to grow more and more resentful of them, the tapes that is. I felt like I had been left out, somehow. Why did the tapes have no effect on me? It was like Sandy had been selected for this video-induced madness and I had not, like it was gym class and she had been picked for a team while I had been left standing in the crowd of unwanted nerds. What was so special about Sandy, I wondered, that the hypnotherapy should work on her but not on me? Why was it that my mind had been left unsharpened and dull. I had had time to reflect on these tapes, and the confused theory of video that they were based on. My feelings of being left out evolved into a more refined critique of Dr. Convex’s entire conceptual artifice. Convex had claimed to have discovered radical new techniques of video hypnosis but wasn’t video itself a radical technique of hypnosis? What was so radical about Convex’s treatments that wasn’t already an integral part of the medium of video already? What really dated Convex’s works was not their music or their production value, it was the premise on which they were based: the misguided assumption that Convex had unlocked the hypnotic power of video. That was a hypnotic power that was already there. Video was already life-changing and persuasive.

Regardless of its insightfulness, my critique of Convex had fallen on deaf ears. Sandy remained transfixed, which only served to annoy me further. It felt almost embarrassing that she would fall victim to something explicitly called hypnosis. It seemed so much more obvious than more insidious and subtle forms of hypnosis like politics or art. Getting driven to obsession by self-described hypnosis was like falling for a con artist who tells you they are conning you while they do it.

***

Of course, my critique and my resentments were only a cover for my jealousy at not being affected by the hypnotherapy like Sandy was. I can admit that now, but at the time I was too emotionally immature to realize this, invested as I was in holding Sandy’s attention. I never realized how much I had depended on Sandy’s regular attention, something that was now stolen from me by this dead hypnotist.

***

Anyways, Sandy insisted that we go to visit Convex’s burnt out old clinic. She insisted that we walk through the forgotten ruins of a once futuristic and hopeful program for the psycho-emotional improvement of the mind. Soon we were planning a trip out west, to see the decaying palaces built on the dollars of persuasive video.

The car ride there took us through the city into the suburbs and corporate campuses collected in business parks along the highway. We rode together in silence while the radio blared pop song after forgettable pop song. Over time the clean and sleek contours of the suburbs gave way to the emptiness of soy, grown over long stretches of lonely farm plots. The sun moved across the sky and we drove and drove. We slept overnight at a cheap motel, just about where we had assumed we would stop when we were planning this little excursion. In total, we probably spoke no more than ten to fifteen words to each other throughout the whole day. The loneliness I had been feeling in our home had followed me on our trip out into the country and it had brought a creeping sense of dread along with it.

The next day we continued on our journey, deeper and deeper into the rural heart of America, past billboards and exits leading into unknown towns. We travelled up into Michigan, driving through empty roadways crowded by forests casting dark shadows on the highway.

Sandy did all the driving, even though I offered to take her place. She seemed slightly suspicious that if she were to let me drive, I might turn back or go somewhere other than our stated destination. Thinking back on it now, I probably would have.

***

I was reminded of that trip we had taken a few months ago, the one motivated by our shame; the banal trip out into the country that had felt so cheap. Our trip now felt nothing like that. There was an authenticity to it that was downright evil. I felt a queasiness in my stomach that I hadn’t felt in years, a primordial reaction to lingering anxieties creeping from the forgotten depths of childhood terrors. During the long car ride through the soybean fields, I kept thinking to myself that I should not have been so disdainful towards our past life as a functional heterosexual couple. Now that I was confronting the real I couldn’t find in our old life, I regret abandoning the illusion of comfort that it offered. Our new trip was one driven by obsession, by unchecked psychosis, by a violently real force of desire. I missed the trip motivated by shame; it seemed so peaceful in retrospect.

***

When we finally arrived in the town that sat on the coast of Lake Michigan just outside the abandoned island clinic, it was around four in the afternoon. Without stopping at a motel to check into a room or asking me what I wanted to do, Sandy drove us straight to the docks on the lake so we could find a boat to take us to the island. She was uncompromising. She wanted to see the ruins immediately.

It took over an hour, but Sandy was able to secure a small motorized boat for the evening to take us to the island. The boat was owned by an old man who seemed to have lived in the town for quite some time. When Sandy explained to the boat’s owner where we wanted to take it, he was surprised but also somewhat indifferent. Sandy had offered him quite a bit of money that we couldn’t really afford to be spending and the sum had convinced the man that renting his boat to some strange out-of-towners was still worth it. He laughed at us and said we wouldn’t find anything except charred buildings crumbling underneath the weight of nature which was quickly taking back the island that that wacky doctor had tried to claim as his own. His words, not mine. Sandy ignored this comment as she piled into the boat with one of her bags. If I hadn’t hopped in when I did, she probably would have taken off without me.

The last word the boat owner said to us before we departed was, “Careful.”

***

The ruins of Dr. Convex’s clinic were both majestical and horrendous, like roaming through a beautiful nightmare. I was reminded of the eerie glow created by the television screen late at night when Sandy played the doctor’s tapes. It was a feeling of entrancement mixed with a feverish nervous energy that bubbled somewhere in the stomach. Although I continually searched her face, Sandy did not seem to be sharing any of my feelings of anxiety. Instead, she seemed completely lost in the corroded elegance of the forgotten buildings, as if she were walking through the awe-inspiring constructions of an ancient civilization. Sandy’s borderline spiritual reverence intensified my feelings of anxiety, as I was suddenly struck with the thought that her and I were completely alone on this abandoned island and that only the aging boat owner knew we were here. It was at this moment that I also realized that I had become truly scared of Sandy, as I had no idea what she had become capable of since her prolonged exposure to Convex’s video hypnotism.

When we landed on the island, we came across an old dilapidated dock that must have served as the clinic’s main access point. We skipped landing at the dock as it appeared unsafe. Sandy brought the boat directly onto shore and we proceeded on foot from there. The front building to the clinic was a large square structure with a massive, unintended opening at its center that must have been caused by the fire. There was a front desk area that was smashed to pieces and the plant life surrounding the building had grown through the massive hole caused by the fire, as if the opening were an invitation to the earth to enter the forgotten building. Sandy stepped into the rapidly reforesting entrance and flicked on a flashlight that illuminated the hallway at the center of the first building.

After that first building, the clinic was essentially a large hexagon, with different sized sections. There were examination rooms, dormitories, a modest cafeteria, large meeting rooms for group therapy, a library of tapes (both audio and cassette) and, of course, a central complex for viewing video therapy. The viewing center featured both a small theater with a projector as well as private individual viewing rooms. In total the clinic probably comprised about seventy thousand square feet of space, spread out into a disjointed formation reminiscent of a small academic campus.

The first room beyond the main entrance was the meeting room connected with the cafeteria. These sections had suffered some fire damage but not as severe as the rest of the facility. I was struck by the fact that folding chairs were still assembled against the wall gathering dust. The buildings contained almost no other furniture, nor papers or debris or other materials one would assume would be left in an abandoned medical clinic where no one had taken the time to remove leftover objects after the fire. Why had they left these folding chairs? Surely collapsible seating would be the easiest objects to remove, why had they been left when much larger objects had been taken?

Sandy stepped towards the chairs and kneeled in front of one. Her posture appeared as if she were praying.

I turned to the left and looked over at the wall. A single phrase had been spray-painted in black letters across it. The paint had dripped down the wall, making the letters look like violent cuts in human flesh; the left over blood smears of slices made to spell out a simple command that made my anxiety boil over into real fear.

“Go Away,” read the spray-paint.

I called out to Sandy, still kneeling before the forgotten folding chairs and asked her if we could leave, maybe come back tomorrow. She ignored me and proceeded into the next room. Still feeling the fear, I asked again but she kept walking. I had no choice but to follow.

In the next room were the lost offices of Dr. Convex as well as his private examination rooms for one-on-one therapeutic sessions. Sandy now seemed to be completely lost in the hypnotic allure of this place, like she was being transported back to the heyday of Dr. Convex’s video-work. The office was almost totally decimated by fire damage, something that seemed strange seeing as the fire had left the main meeting room untouched but had created such a gigantic opening in the main entrance. It was as if the fire had been selective in its destruction, targeting the areas it felt most deserving of its unrelenting consumption.

Sandy spent what felt like an eternity in the offices and examination rooms. It was only her desire to move further into the ruins that allowed us to leave. At this point I was twitching and shaking, reacting to every sound around me as if we could be confronted by the writer of the unnerving graffiti at any moment. We stepped into the dormitories and Sandy began rummaging through the raw debris contained in each room. The living quarters for the patients were connected by a long corridor with entrances and exits on either end, with doors leading into each room running along either side. The doors into the main hallway of the dorms were still standing on their hinges, and swung in and out when pushed. As Sandy continued her bizarre exploration of each room I stood still in the hallway, counting each second and gritting my teeth. For some reason I slowly turned around to look at the doors to the hallway that were now swinging shut. Scrawled in the same hasty letters of black spray-paint we saw earlier was a request even more ominous than the previous message.

“Leave Me Alone,” it read.

I called out to Sandy and found her in one of the rooms. She was pushing around piles of decomposing ceiling panelling, what she was trying to find I did not know. I yelled at her then, I admit it. I shouted in her face that we needed to leave, that there was someone else who had come to this place after the fire, someone that didn’t want us to be there. I was scared and my fear manifested itself as anger, a panicked anger that was driven by an animalistic feeling of alarm at a looming threat to my own mortality. I had gripped her arms and my hands and I was still shouting.

She struggled free of my violent grasp and began running into another building of the destroyed clinic, taking her flashlight with her. I immediately began running after her, continuing to yell as I did. All I could do was follow the beam of her flashlight, as I was being left in the darkness of this dead place. The thought of being left in the dark here terrified me and, I admit it, increased my feelings of anger at Sandy for seeking to abandon me. I continued to shout as she ran deeper into that terrible hexagon, taking the safety of the light with her.

Suddenly, Sandy threw a door open and slammed it shut, cutting me off completely from her light. For a moment I descended into pure darkness, surrounded by the nightmare world of Dr. Convex’s lost dreams. I reached the door and threw it open to find that Sandy had stopped running. She was standing totally still in the new room she had entered; it was the viewing center where Dr. Convex’s patients would consume his therapeutic video creations.

The room looked like the site of a recent demolition. It was filled with the bits and pieces of smashed and crushed equipment and videotape - a sprawling pile of annihilated audio-video devices that had once comprised the heart of Dr. Convex’s treatment center. It was a gigantic pit of wires, broken screens, jagged chips and thousands and thousands of miles of magnetic tape. Eviscerated televisions lay about the room, their electronic innards discarded on the ground like dead antelope felled by some unseen predator. I almost expected to see a group of hyenas feasting on the chunks of spilled television guts. The fire had reached in here, but so had something else; maybe someone else. The fire had not destroyed all this equipment or all of the videotapes. There was a mysterious source of violence that had left the signs of its presence lingering around the ruins of the clinic.

As the realization of this unknown force of destruction crossed my mind, Sandy began weeping. The sight of Convex’s work reduced to rubble was too much for her and she was lost in despair.

It took a moment for me to see it, but when I did, I knew I would never forget the simple, unmitigated feeling of pure fear that it struck in my heart. On the far back wall of the viewing center was another message written in black spray-paint. It was perhaps the most direct command yet, and, in a slightly off-putting way, expressed my most immediate desire in a short, little statement.

“Leave now,” it read.

***

I woke up in the middle of the night as Sandy was putting on her shoes by the doorway of our motel room.

We had finally made our way out of that horrible clinic, back to the boat, out onto the lake and back to the home of the old man who we had said almost nothing to as we returned the keys. We had driven around the small town until we found a cheap, dirty motel and checked into our room. We had laid down and I had drifted off to a sleep, aided by the immense feeling of relief I felt that we were able to get off that terrible island.

Now I was awake in the night and I knew before she said anything that Sandy was getting ready to go back there, alone.

I jumped up out of the bed, only in my underwear and I began shouting at her again. I was pathetic and stupid, it was the only way I knew how to express my fear. After I had shouted for awhile, I stood and looked at her with big, alarmed eyes of - blurred and puffy from interrupted sleep. She gave me a look that still frightens me to this day, a look that I still think about alone at night and feel a sensation of cold dread that paralyzes me every time. She smiled at me. She gave me this big bright beaming smile and laughed. She laughed and shook her head like I didn’t understand her, like I could never understand her. She smiled and laughed and shook her head and she said that she couldn’t sleep, that she was too excited and so she had to go back to the island right now.

I lost it. I did. I can’t deny that now. I was so angry, so upset that she had decided to do this, that she would put herself in so much danger as this. The sickness in her mind, brought on by Dr. Convex’s videos, it was pushing her into a darkness that seemed inescapable to me and this made me even angrier. I remember telling her to go, then. That if she wanted to take her own life into her hands, she was welcome to do so. That I couldn’t stand what she had become. That maybe she deserved to get lost in the ruins of that horrible island. That she should go if that’s what she really wanted. Of course, it was what she really wanted and she quickly disappeared out the door and I didn’t go after her, I didn’t try to stop her, I didn’t try to convince her to stay and wait till morning. I didn’t try to convince her to be with me for the night and try to remember the way she once felt before she was hypnotized by the dead doctor who had captured her mind from beyond the grave. I didn’t do any of that. I laid back down on the bed and fell back asleep.

***

That night in the motel room was the last time I saw Sandy.

She left in the night and never returned.

The next morning I rented a boat and traveled out to the Island and searched every inch of that decrepit graveyard and found nothing, no sign of her. No campsite or footsteps or fire to stay warm: nothing. Like she had never made it there or, if she had, she had left no trace.

I returned to the mainland and called the police. I filed a missing person’s report and explained to the local sheriff everything that had happened, why we had come there and why we had gone to the island. He seemed suspicious but he made the report. He suggested though that she may have left and gone home somehow, seeing as though we had had an argument. I told him that he was wrong, she would never leave the clinic.

Within the next day I had spoken to one of our neighbors who said he hadn’t seen any sign of Sandy at our apartment. He had knocked on the front door and received no answer. It was at that point that I alerted her family.

A few days later Sandra Clara Livingston had become a full-fledged missing person and the police were searching for her in earnest. The case was being covered by the media and her parents were pleading with cameras for their daughter to come home if she was out there. Search parties were formed with paid police from neighboring counties and willing volunteers from the town by the lake where we had been staying. A huge group of searchers were dispatched to the island and they had found just what I had: no sign of Sandy.

I told Sandy’s family everything that had happened, perhaps in too much detail. I remember at one point Sandy’s father had shouted in my face, much the same way I had done that night to Sandy. He screamed that I had killed their daughter, that I had doomed her to death because I had done nothing to help her with what was obviously some sort of mental illness, something that could have been treated. I briefly tried to argue that she had technically been undergoing a kind of mental health treatment, and that that was the problem. He did not find this argument convincing. I at least tried to tell him that it was not my fault, it was the videos that had done it to her, but I knew that he was probably right. I was responsible. I watched Sandy fall into the depths of madness and I had done nothing but enable her descent.

No matter what was done, Sandy was gone. Vanished without a trace. Gone. Lost somewhere in the ruins of Dr. Convex’s temple-turned-tomb of video hypnotherapy. No more to be seen and no more to watch the specially-crafted images of therapeutic mind-focusing technology Convex had given to the world.

***

Years later comedy would follow the tragedy.

Dr. Convex’s videos are becoming popular, more popular maybe then they had ever been. There is a growing cult following driven by internet exposure on Youtube and Vimeo. Popular Instagram accounts began converting screenshots from Convex’s hypnosis videos into popular memes. Decades after his research had began, Dr. Convex was finally gaining traction, but maybe not in the way he had necessarily intended.

Also propelling the videos into their rediscovery by a contemporary audience was the juicy novelty of the disappearances connected to them. That’s right, there were more people like Sandy, people who had also had their minds radically focused and were drawn to the ruins of Convex’s clinic like moths to the flame. Each one of them had left behind family and friends and entered into some invisible realm beyond life and death; the world of the unsolved disappearance; surrounded by mystery; locations unknown; possibly alive; probably dead. Each one of them featuring a collection of people like me who had watched their loved one slip through their fingers and failed to respond to their increasing hypnosis.

Eventually the hypnotherapy videos were all made available online. Full unlimited streaming on both Netflix and Hulu. Their new accessibility almost made me laugh thinking back at how desperately Sandy had searched for those tapes, and she had never located all of them. Now they were only a credit card and a click away. Available for the world to see in an instant.

And the ruins of the destroyed clinic had been woven into this new surge in popularity. It had turned into some sort of vacation spot for hipsters who wanted to explore the strange and ironically amusing world of the forgotten facility. The traveling fans sought out the clinic like Sandy and I had sought out the nature preserve so many years ago that day we went hiking and found the tape. Convex’s dead clinic was becoming the nature preserve of the future. It made me angry thinking of all these fools trudging around the island that Sandy had held in such reverence, it almost felt like they were desecrating something a loved one viewed as sacred. These feelings in turn would haunt me, as they only served to remind of Sandy, gone somewhere in the world, out there lost in the hypnosis of persuasive video.

Myself, I am still trying to find her. But I have given up finding her in the world of living. I know now that she will only be found in the world of video. The dead world of synchronized sound and imagery, the detached world of the recorded image. I know she is somewhere in that glow of the screen, having transcended her earthly form, she must now be some sort of pixelated angel. I spend hours, days even, watching and re-watching Dr. Convex’s Open Horizons videos, waiting for a glimpse of her sitting serenely on one of those beaches, or maybe casually dozing underneath a tree in one of the peaceful forests.

And most of all, I want to be hypnotized, like Sandy was. I’ll admit it. I want my mind focused on the videos. I want to lose myself in the power of persuasion video and finally discover what it was that Sandy discovered in those endless hours of dulcet synth tones and nature scenes. When will my life be truly changed by the hypnotherapy? When will I finally find Sandy and understand the power of persuasion video?

Any day now it will come. Any day now my mind will be changed. Soon I will finally understand. Soon.

0 notes