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coffeephilter · 5 years

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More Cyborg!Yang world/story info

Since I’ve gotten some asks for more info about this AU

This is just what I had in mind for the story in my head, if you want to write stuff for this by all means go for it! Don’t feel you need to follow any of this. I guess this might be helpful for the people who wanted to write short drabbles about it.

I’m super honoured that people have been interested enough in this story to ask about it! My one request if you wanna write stuff for this is at the very end.

Long AF post under the cut

So the initial idea was Yang ends up a cyborg being forced to work for the Atlesian military bc they saved her life. Its like very very AU plot and society wise

Setting bruh:

- There’s grim but no salem

- U thought Atlas was corrupt b4 well get ready for NG+ Atlas since clearly they’re okay with turning people into cyborgs and using them for their own desires

- Atlas is a major player in terms of fighting the grim which is how they get away with unscrupulous behaviour like forcing people into the military. They use their military to help protect other kingdoms but in return those kingdoms kinda end up at their mercy (side note do any of the other kingdoms even have an army in canon??? We know mistral has a police force and Vacuo is allegedly lawless aside from Shade academy)

- It boils down to bigger army diplomacy – and Atlas is the only one with a giant robot army and everyone else doesn’t really have an organized military aside from kingdom police and the odd hunter/huntress

- The robots are pretty mediocre when it comes to grim (as we’ve seen in canon lol) so Atlas’ solution was “let’s try our best to monopolize the worlds hunters/huntresses” (not unlike them funneling their students into the military in canon but like worse)

- There are no formal hunting schools, if you learned how to fight grim it was because someone was around to teach you or you were in the Atlesian military

- People who fight grim outside of the military are kind of like mercenaries since there aren’t any international hunters licenses

- There’s still anti-faunus racism so the white fang still exists – their big target is Atlas who mistreat the faunus civilians and overwork the mine workers

- Menagerie also exists

Character tingz:

- I imagine the main cast around 19-21 age in this

- Ruby and Yang were taught how to fight by their dad – Patch is small and doesn’t get much help from the military

- Weiss and Winter are a part of the Atlesian military – they disprove of Atlas’ methods but want to protect people and don’t know how to fix the corruption (though they try oppose the treachery in small ways) They’ve seen how things are going and know that if they need to leave before then end up on Ironwoods bad side. Weiss knows about Atlas’ corrupt ways but is still kind of naïve about the mistreatment of faunus

- Blake is a part of the White Fang (they taught her how to fight) and is still with them at the beginning of this story. Like in canon they’re getting too violent for her tastes and she’s starting to question their leadership (Adam)

- JNPR are in Mistral – the 4 of them became friends somehow and work to protect the city from Grim

- Ironwood – believes defeating the grim to be top priority and isn’t afraid to make sacrifices to do it and that ends up clouding his morals. Doing what he believes is for the “greater good” has taken him down a dark path

- Raven’s off doing whatever with her band of thieves – if she shows up it would be mostly for Yang’s character development in realising she doesn’t need her approval as opposed to being an actual antagonist

It’s PLOT time:

- Ruby and Yang (& Tai for that matter) are pretty well known around Vale as strong fighters. The two gals get asked to come help defend Vale from a large grim attack

- The WF is trying to use the attack as cover for some nefarious deeds but Yang spots them & tries to intervene which is how she gets majorly injured while trying to fight Adam

o I haven’t really thought about the method of execution but I guess getting hit with moonslice twice and then getting pushed off something tall would a fairly believable way to lose 1.75 arms and end up with a spinal injury

- Blake’s on that mission but doesn’t find out about that part until later – and she is horrified, packs her bags and takes off into the night

- Ruby finds Yang and that’s when some “generous” Atlas personnel offer to save her – for a price

- Yang’s taken to Atlas and finds out that Atlas basically owns her ass now (like chase u down send u to prison if you run kind of own)

- Once recovered she gets assigned to Winter’s team – which is how she meets Weiss

- Yang’s not a huge fan of authority and likes to rebel which gets her into trouble and sometimes she ropes Weiss into that trouble – which is how they eventually become unlikely friends

***this is probs where I’d start the story if I was writing it and have the previous bits explained through dialog and flashbacks as the story continues. Id probs start it off with my fav brotp (ice queen and yang) milling about the atlas base

- Tai must stay and protect Patch now that they’re short a fighter, meanwhile Ruby is trying to get to Atlas, which is a task in itself since most of the air vessels are under strict military control. She takes a ship to Mistral in hopes of getting a ship from Argus to Mantle and becomes friends with team JNPR – who aren’t pleased with the way Atlas treats their kingdom

- One day Yang is sent to quell an alleged WF attack in the mines and witnesses some terrible treatment of faunus. Coincidentally Blake is also there on a ridiculous one-woman mission to free the faunus of Atlas after having left the white fang. Blake explains shes not with the WF

- As if on cue, the actual WF end up showing up forcing Blake and Yang to fight them (AND SPEND TIME TOGETHER FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THIS STORY LOOOOL). They kick wf butt. Blake is distrustful and would like this Atlesian soldier to stop following her and Yang is gay and charming. They part ways before Yang’s backup shows up, but im sure they’ll see each other again soon right? Blake also doesn’t notice the whole cyborg thing since its mostly covered by Yang’s uniform

- Word gets out that Yang allegedly helped a member of the WF escape Atlas personnel. Ironwood is tired of her rebelling and wants to make an example of her. Winter finds out before he can though and sends Yang and Weiss off during the night. (she wants Weiss to be free of Atlas and tells her she’ll follow when she can).

- On their way out of Atlas, Weiss and Yang run into Blake (and by run into I mean they spot her being hauled away by some Atlas forces) they intervene and Blake joins them on their escape

- They escape to Mistral and run into Ruby and JNPR

- Ruby comes up with the idea that they should band together and stop Ironwood, which at first seems ludicrous but as JNPR provide insight into the state of Mistral and Vacuo it seems less like a crazy pipe dream and more like an actual possibility

*** from here on out I have way less story actually figured out

- Rebelling would involve getting the other 3 kingdoms to band together

- Somehow dealing with the Atlas military without destroying all defenses against the grim (like maybe commandeering their robots or finding someone on the inside who could help – like Winter or another influential Atlesian who sees reason – like Penny’s dad or something)

- A lot of the journey is searching for allies/going to the kingdoms to plead their case in secret – Jaune and Ruby are pretty key players for this part

- You know, the usual for starting a rebellion

- Somewhere along the lines Blake’s old affiliation with the WF comes out, cue some Weiss vs Blake drama

- Yang keeps her cybernetics mostly covered by clothing cause she hasn’t really accepted that part of herself yet (cause in the show putting the cybernetics on was a choice but here it really wasn’t)

- Blake eventually finds out that Yang’s got a LOT of cybernetics – like she grabs an enemy by the sword or smthn or tears her jacket in a fight – CUE BEE FEEEEEELS – yangs still tight lipped about how it happened though

- Yang doesn’t like to talk about her accident except for by way of jokes that make Weiss groan

- Adam’s still a piece of shit and is trying to find Blake

- Eventually a bees vs adam fight occurs and it comes out that it was adam who injured Yang CUE MORE BEE FEEEEEELS

- They defeat the goat man and the WF who are sick an tired of his murderous shit join the crew’s rebellion

- They continue to strengthen the rebellion with drawbacks and shenanigans along the way

That’s really all ive got so far – I don’t have an ending and there’s a lot of stuff in between that I haven’t worked out (and maybe never will)

Other tidbits:

- Like in canon Yang doesn’t blame anyone but Adam for her accident, especially not Blake who feels second hand guilt having been on the mission (though not directly tied to the incident) and I guess not stopping Adam (which isn’t her fault to begin with but we know Blake, she takes way too much of the world onto her shoulders and has been abused into believing that Adam’s actions are her responsibility)

- I kinda like the idea of Penny being another cyborg who’s a little (lot) naïve and sheltered bc she grew up in Atlas and became a cyborg pretty young and her father keeps her out of most of the more devious Atlesian plots

- Penny’s dad is head of cybernetics research and just wants to save people and is none to pleased about Atlas forcing a lot of his patients into servitude

If you made it all the way to the end of this long ass post, dang! Hope it was worth the read For those of you who have asked to write this story, I am honoured that you like the idea enough to feel that inspired! These are by no means iron-clad rules you have to follow if you’re going to write it, just what I’ve imagined while coming up with the drawings. In fact I encourage yall to take creative liberties and write what you want to. I have but one request to anyone who wants to write this and that is to give it a happy ending.

#rwby #rwby au #cyborg!yang #not art #stop talking coffee #long post

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snowqueen-68 · 4 years

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I survived Christmas...

Yay! @billyhargrovens had me watch The Witcher and I will forever be grateful - ‘cause where have you been all my life Geralt of Rivia?! :) Anyway, here’s a bit more of MY story. Thanks for reading!

...His sentences were brief and clipped, matter of fact, delivered in the manner of someone used to ripping band-aids off wounds quickly and efficiently. Lily blinked rapidly. “Um …?” she could feel his words attempting to penetrate into her brain and not making it. “Please say that again,” she said, drawing in a deep breath. Bryan did the same and speaking more softly said, “Your parents have found you.” He paused for a brief moment, cleared his throat and then continued, “I don’t know what Emmett intends to do. I think we’re gonna have to move you again. I know it’s not optimal but at least its safer…For everyone.” This time Lily heard his words, but still couldn’t process them immediately or completely and she swayed on her feet as momentary dizziness made her head spin. She gripped the edge of the sink, hard, with both hands, so hard she could feel the chill of the porcelain sinking into the pads of her fingertips and she stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, green eyes wide and horrified her, her face pale and without color. Emmett and Evelyn had found her? Really? Could this be true? “Lily? Lily?” Bryan repeated her name, sounding concerned, “are you there? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He paused, “Well, not intentionally anyway.” Lily shook her head forgetting that he couldn’t see her, forgetting about the receiver, still tucked against her shoulder. It fell, and she scrambled for it, bringing it back to her ear. “Did you say they’d found me? How? And how do you know?” She shuddered. Sweet Mother of God, nobody could put the fear of all the Heavens and Hell into her like her own father. Or mother for that matter. “Well, the truth is,” Bryan said, sounding more than a little wary, as if reluctant to tell her, “late last night my guy on the inside escaped Emmett’s compound. Your father did quite a number on him, so we think that’s how he found out. Long story short, they know where you are. I guess you’ve been their primary target for…well since you left. Anyway, like I said, we have to move you.” Lily reached over and tapped off the running water before moving away from the mirror and out of the bathroom. Thoughts raced through her mind, disorganized, without direction, as she tried to make sense of this unexpected news. “Ok wait…wait…wait. Let’s back up,” she said, crossing the broad hallway and pulling the phone with her into her bedroom. “First, what do you mean ‘guy on the inside’? You told me that you were just going to watch Emmett from a distance. I told you what he was like, I told you everything I knew. And you sent someone in any way? You are the little guy, Bryan. Unless you’ve grown drastically in the last three years. What were you thinking?” Bryan let out a frustrated sigh. “Well, I saw an opportunity to insert someone so I took it. If I could capture Emmett Allen and put him away it would…” He stopped, and Lily shook her head as she plopped herself on her bed placing the cradle of the phone at her feet and straightening up to stare out her window. “It would what Bryan? Be great for your company? For you?” “No. Well, yeah but for the town, too, Lily, you know that. Emmett’s been doing a number on this place for decades and he needs to be stopped.” Lily pushed a strand of long, dark hair behind one ear and rolled her eyes. “So, you thought you’d take it upon yourself and your security company to take care of the biggest bully in town? Not a great idea.” Bryan said nothing though Lily heard him sigh and she felt a momentary stab of guilt. She knew that Bryan and his team had been after her father for years, ever since Bryan’s stint in security at Allen Warehouses. Lily was pretty sure he’d seen lots of things out there that he’d wished he hadn’t, but what he had seen had given him the drive to start his own company and to start collecting evidence on Lily’s father, his corruption and crimes. Up until today, Lily had assumed that the biggest thing Bryan’s company had ever accomplished was to spirit her away three years ago right out from under Emmett’s very nose. No mean feat that. Afterward, Bryan had promised to lay low for a while and Lily thought he’d understood just exactly how dangerous Emmett Allen really was. “Is your guy ok? I told you that Emmett could smell a rat from a mile away… no offense to you or your people of course. He’s still alive you said?” Bryan chuckled, regaining his sense of humor. “No offense taken. And yes, he is still alive. But for your information, Miss Allen…. sorry, Miss Ashford, that guy of mine lasted in your father’s organization for…well, since you’ve been gone. He’s good. He knows what guys like Emmett Allen are like, he knows how their organizations function. Or he did until yesterday. Fortunately, we got to him in time before they killed him. Sadly, several of your father’s men did not make it.” Lily sucked a breath in through her teeth. “Well that’ll put you on Emmett’s hunt-down-and-kill list,” she said dryly, “if you weren’t there already. Doesn’t like being made to look foolish or stupid, my father. Which kinda sounds like what happened.” Bryan exhaled wearily like maybe he hadn’t slept in several days. “Lily that’s why we have to move you. We’re pretty sure your father didn’t get much information from our man. He still doesn’t know for certain who he was or who he worked for. But he did get enough to discover that he’d been in there since you left. It did not take long for your father to connect your disappearance with our arrival in his org. It’s a good bet that he’s now convinced that you had a hand in the whole thing and that you have given away state secrets. As you love to point out to me, Emmett is not dumb.” “No,” Lily agreed, “no he’s not.” She gnawed at a corner of her lower lip as she thought about Emmett piecing together that his own daughter had betrayed him because Lily knew that was how he’d take it – as a betrayal. Which, technically it was since she’d turned family and company secrets over to a firm whose primary goal it was to put Emmett Allen behind bars forever. Add to that the fact that she had just up and disappeared one day and, well, she was sure that it was all more than Emmett and Evelyn could deal with. Having a daughter choose to leave the family circle in such an underhanded way most likely had not played well in the Allen’s social circle, and Emmett would surely define sneaking away in the dead of night with no previous warnings as underhanded. Lily rolled her eyes again, she didn’t have to work too hard to imagine her parents’ individual and collective rages, she’d been a witness to those many times during her childhood. And beyond. The thought made her chest ache and she pressed at her sternum with her free hand, ignoring the panicked spinning in her head. “I am not going to let them get to me, I’m not,” she muttered and forced herself to take several slow deep breaths. I am not going to let Emmett and Evelyn scare me or make me fold to their demands, I am not going to let them make me move again. She kept these thoughts running through her head as she considered the last three years of her life. Finally safe here in this relatively unknown German city – unknown to Emmett anyway, at least until today – safe with the American Army, safe in her job. Her assumed name was close enough to her old one that she’d barely noticed the change. She’d made friends, built herself a life and now…now it was all over? No way. If truth be told, it hadn’t occurred to her that Emmett might still be looking for her. Oh sure, she’d expected that he would at first, at least right after she’d escaped his clutches. As she had noted to Bryan, her father did not like being made to look foolish and that’s exactly what she had done. But after three years?! Really? It made no sense! For the love of all that was holy, she was 29, an adult and should have been able to live her own life any way she saw fit, without fear. Clearly, she’d been mistaken. Rage burned in her belly, warming her extremities and coloring her cheeks, and Lily shot up from her seat on the bed, unable to sit still. She paced back and forth in front of her closet and the window, not really seeing through the lace curtains that hung there, or past the beam of afternoon sunlight filtering through the pattern. “I’m not leaving, Bryan,” she said softly, anger clogging her throat, preventing her from speaking any louder. “I won’t.” “What?! Lily are you even listening to what I am saying?” he asked, sounding truly exasperated now. “I am not sure you understand the gravity of the situation. It would be foolish of us both not to consider that your father sent someone out to bring you back the moment he discovered your location, so- “ “No!” she cut him off. “No, I am not moving. When I left my parents’ compound that night I swore to myself that I would not allow Emmett to push me around, frighten me, and I am not giving into him or whatever scare tactics he might decide to use. I am just not. I will take my chances. Look, Emmett might be capable of many things, but he won’t hurt his own daughter. Maybe he will even just leave me alone. Why shouldn’t he after all these years?” “For God’s sake are you hearing yourself?! That’s ridiculous. Don’t ever make assumptions about a man like your father. You’ve told me that yourself, a thousand times! He is more than capable of killing, clearly, and I don’t think it will matter one whit to him that you are his daughter.” His words turned Lily’s blood to ice, and she swallowed hard. She knew Bryan was not wrong, she’d grown up with Emmett, and he was nothing if not cold and ruthless. But still, the idea of leaving Bamberg, her job, this house…well it was untenable, not to be considered. The very thought of it almost made her feel physically sick. “Bryan, I like my life here! I have friends, a house, I love my job! You guys GOT me this job! And now you want me to leave it?” “Of course I do not want you to leave that job, Lily. I don’t want any of this to be happening. But this is for your own safety, never mind that my firm has spent a lot of money getting you where you are and keeping you safe. You are an asset, Lily, an important part of this investigation. You are moving and that’s that. We have no more time to argue about this.” Lily’s eyes widened in surprise at Bryan’s words. He’d never spoken like that to her before. She narrowed her eyes, excess emotion beginning to make her head throb painfully. “No, I am not moving, Bryan,” she finally said making sure her own tone sounded just as definitive as his had, “And here’s why…” She paused to take a breath, the connection of the long-distance call crackling in her ear. “I gave you evidence against Emmett, Bryan. Lots of it, though clearly you don’t or didn’t feel it was enough. Since, ya know, you put a guy in there anyway, despite everything I told you about my father, despite everything you saw when you worked at his warehouse. And now because of your guy, Emmett knows where I am, so thanks for that. In my book that makes us quits and I get to do what I want no matter how much you spent on me, no matter what kind of ‘asset’ you consider me to be. Frankly, I don’t feel I owe you, and so now I am telling you, not asking but telling you. I am not moving again. Let Emmett come and get me if that is what he wants to do. I don’t really care. I’d like to think he’s got better things to do.” These were bold words that made her knees quake, but she held her ground. Like she said, surely after all this time Emmett and Evelyn had moved on, forgotten her. So what if they had found out where she was, it wasn’t like her departure or her telling tales to Bryan’s little security company had had any effect on them anyway. They had no reason to be concerned with her at all. In Lily’s mind she was as quits with them as she was with Bryan. “Honestly, I think maybe you are totally overreacting about all of this, and well maybe being a little selfish.” Bryan groaned. “Jesus, Lily, this is ridiculous.” He was close to shouting at her now and she held the receiver away from her ear, “You are acting like a stubborn, spoiled child. Emmett is completely capable of doing exactly what you think he cannot. Have you forgotten what he’s like…like in the last five seconds?” “Of course not! How could I? I-” “Hang on,” Bryan cut her off, his tone sharp and annoyed. She could hear his voice, muffled now, speaking to someone else, probably in his office. Bryan didn’t seem to have any other place. Lily waited, pacing then stopping to tap her foot impatiently on the carpet, and then pacing again, the hand holding the phone cradle swinging vigorously at her side. The movement whipped its long black cord back and forth until it managed, without her really noticing, to snake itself around her feet, tangling her up. She swore and, sitting down hard, bent to untangle the cord, once again tucking the receiver between ear and shoulder. As she worked to free her feet from the cord she marshaled more reasons why she wasn’t going to move. After a few moments, Bryan returned. “OK, I’m back,” he said, not explaining what he’d been doing, “and I talked to the people I had working on this case and they all agree. Emmett’s going to come after you and he’ll be there sooner than you think. We are out of options-” “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Lily cut him off, still sitting on her floor. “What are you talking about? We are not out of options, I don’t care what your ‘folks on the case’ say. There are always options. Though in this case moving is not one of them. I am staying here. You can guard me here, that is an option, but I am not moving. I am sure you have time to get guys here. There’s no way Emmett is going to move that quickly, I’m like 5,000 miles away.” Bryan said nothing, and Lily climbed to her feet again just as a sudden sweep of black, like a flourished cape flashed by her bedroom window, then swirled out of view. “What the…???” She stepped closer to the glass, pressing her nose against it so she could see through the curtains and around the edge of her window. She gasped and ducked so fast that she sat hard on her rear again, awkwardly rolling and scooting herself into the corner between the window and her closet, her heart pounding hard. Oh my god, oh my god. She could barely breathe. Calm down Lily, calm down. On the phone, Bryan was speaking again, and Lily had to work hard to hear him. “Lily, I get that you are pissed about having to move again and I’m sorry,” he sounded like he was talking through clenched teeth and a tense jaw. “You may think that Emmett is willing to let you go, but you have to trust me when I say he’s not. So, as I tried to say before, I’m sending someone over to your house right now to get you. Please be ready to go.” “It’s too late,” Lily said, surprised at how steady her voice sounded when her gut was twisting with a nauseating combination of chagrin and fear. Bryan had been right, she had let her emotions get away from her and now she owed Bryan an apology that she literally had no time for. “What are you talking about?” he demanded warily. “What do you mean it’s too late? Lily, what did you do?” “Nothing! I just mean it’s too late,” she said again. “Lucien is here, he’s outside my flat. I just saw him.” Bryan sucked in a breath and swore. “Did he see you? What’s he doing?” Lily shook her head, rolling it side to side against the wall. “No, I don’t think so. I was sitting on the floor and there are lace curtains over my window and now I’m huddled in a corner out of sight. He can’t see me, and I have no idea what he’s doing. I think he was heading for my front door, though I doubt he’s gonna knock.” “Is your door locked?” Lily’s eyes widened and she frantically tried to remember if she had locked both doors when she got home. She was supposed to but sometimes she forgot. “I think so...wait, hang on a minute…let me listen.” “Lily, wait…don’t expose yourself, stay hidden, stay put…” His warnings sounded frantic. Lily ignored him and pressed the receiver against her stomach muffling the sound of his voice in the material of her bulky sweatshirt and strained to listen. Silence reigned, nobody rattled a door or knocked, though Lily thought she could hear several masculine voices outside. Which meant Lucien had company. Frogs and Coffee! She put the receiver back to her ear. “He’s not trying to get in, but I think he brought friends. I am gonna see, at least if I can see where he is I might be able to figure out what he’s going to do.” “Lily be careful! Don’t do anything rash, help is on the way!” “I won’t, I will be,” She promised, and then placing the cradle of the phone behind her back on the floor listened again for any sounds that might give her a clue as to where Lucien was. They were still out in the back but the masculine voices were fading, moving, as far as she could tell, away from her front door and around the other side of her house. She doubted that meant that Lucien was giving up and leaving. She wasn’t that lucky, Lucien wasn’t that easily deterred. Lily considered her next move. The idea of leaving her room made her feel vulnerable and exposed but better to know what Lucien might be up to than to be surprised and all that much more defenseless. She pressed her back against the wall and slowly pushed herself upwards, leaning over just long enough to get a glimpse out of the window, letting out an explosive breath when she saw nothing lurking beyond the lace curtains. The coast was clear. Feeling a bit safer, she moved out of her corner, nervously looking back over her shoulder with almost every step as she made for her bedroom door. If Lucien and his buddies still lingered anywhere on the path outside the house’s entryway door, she would be much safer in the hallway. They could decide to backtrack and peer in at any moment and see her and that would be disastrous. Moving quickly, Lily tucked around the corner of her bedroom door into the hallway, leaning back against the wall and catching her breath. She’d been holding it in like she was afraid that Lucien might hear her if she allowed herself the luxury of oxygen. Light from the windows of the two bedrooms across the hallway illuminated the broad space but she wasn’t too worried. Those windows were high up off the ground, so unless Lucien could scale the side of the house or had a ladder, she didn’t think they posed any danger. What was dangerous was lingering too long where she stood. If she looked left she could see directly down the hall and through the set of glass doors that sat behind her dining room table. And the curtains at those windows were sheer and see-through. With her dark hair and brilliantly red sweatshirt, she stood out like a bright red flower in a bed of white blooms, not good. Briefly Lily considered peeling herself out of her sweatshirt but the t-shirt she wore beneath was also red. “Who knew clothes were going to be dangerous today,” she muttered, following her own instinct to make herself as small as possible and crouching down to the floor again. If someone passed by that dining room door they’d still see her, Lily knew, but this position made her feel a bit better nonetheless. She skittered diagonally across the hallway as quickly as she could on all fours, the tile floor hard against her knees, coming to a stop at the edge of the wall on the opposite side. From here the bulky shape of her sofa, which sat directly in front of her in her living room, partially hid her from view and that was a good thing. Lily allowed herself to pause again for just a brief second before peeking around the corner of the hallway into the large square main room of her flat. The room itself, brightly lit despite the fading afternoon, was empty except for furniture. Through the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows that took up almost the entire front wall of her flat, Lily saw four men gathered in a tight circle, talking and loitering on her front patio, a big octagonal-shaped slab of concrete that looked out over her street and the village beyond. Over the summer a small table and four chairs had occupied that space, but now Lucien and three other men stood there deep in conversation, no doubt discussing exactly how they were going to kill her...

#original work fantasy romance

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silyabeeodess · 5 years

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I got another question; did you ever make a headcanon post for Megas's last stand? Like, are the resistance fighters actually working on a way to free him? Are there any procedures in place for a potential full corruption of Megas? Etc.

Not yet, since there’s a ton of characters I haven’t covered in posts thus far besides some general info on the villains and occasionally when I tie a few people to other things, but I have a few thoughts:

First is that the Megas gang probably all fought like crazy when Fuse first invaded, but were caught off-guard and fairly isolated from other Fusion Fighters at the time, as Earth’s forces hadn’t completely assembled and Fuse was smart enough to target Megas straight from the beginning. Being originally made from Glorft technology–a species he’d already lost to–he wasn’t going to take any chances. He probably had smaller monsters of pure fusion matter slip into Megas’ systems and began infecting it from the inside, not only attacking and damaging its systems, but also forcing Coop and the others to abandon Megas in order to save themselves from the rapidly spreading infection. Now, it’s heavily guarded by fusion monsters and the terrafusers attached to its form only continue to maintain and grow the infection.

Megas being a machine, it’s probably harder/impossible for Fuse to make a Fusion of it like he can with organic beings. (There’s Fusion Computress, but since she’s paired with Fusion Dexter, it could be argued that he constructed her similarly to how the real Dex constructed the real Computress.) However, he plans on turning Megas into the next best thing, a colossal fusion monster reset to its original purpose to wipeout mankind, only this time under his command. The Gloft tech seems to be combating this infection a little through some auxiliary system, but Megas is still barely hanging on and thus remains inactive/unmovable–all the power it has left devoted to keeping off the pressing infection.

Kiva is probably out leading some battlefront, but Coop’s been entrusted with restoring Megas. It’s why he stays at the junkyard. He continues to remain outwardly chill and lazy–much to a lot of other Fusion Fighters’ chagrin–but a big part of it is because, without Megas, he feels he can’t do anything to help Earth. He’s always been a lazy, video game loving foodie, then he suddenly had an important role as a protector of Earth which, although he didn’t always take it seriously, did matter to him. Now, with that swiftly yanked away from him and leaving him back where he was, he kinda just… feels useless, even if he doesn’t want to confront it. All he can do is fight to keep his usual, laid-back attitude, blow off his concerns, and work to get Megas back. He might not go in to the infected zone much himself, but he does lead strategies for Fusion Fighters that do.

#ask #fusionfall #fusionfall retro #headcanons #megas #megas xlr #coop #kiva #video games #goat's junkyard #noctisimperialistic #fuse #glorft

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floral-and-fine · 5 years

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Last Song part 1

Spiderman Noir x female reader

Warnings: lemon and cheating

a/n: I tried my best to write this in a Noir style novel, so it’s kinda dark, no one is really a “good guy” and it’s in his pov. Never really wrote anything like this, not sure how I feel about tbh. But I saw some Spiderman Noir fan art that made me want to write something for him.

Summary: The reader hires Peter Parker Private Investigator to search for her missing husband.

Queens, the city where I was born and raised. A city that has declined into darkness. A city drowning in its own filth, overrun with criminals and scum. From the dark alleyways, all the way to town hall was corruption.

Thunder roared outside my office window and lightning struck lighting up my office for a brief second. In the corner, there was a leak in the roof and there's a low buzz coming from the light fixture above.

I've stayed in this city long enough, but every time I think I can get out, something pulls me back.

I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and fetched the bottle of scotch. There was only about a shot left. I swallowed the last bit and sighed. It wasn't nearly enough.

There's a knock on my door and my secretary, Ms. Stacy, peeks her head in, “Mr. Parker, there's someone here to see you, sir.”

“Let 'em in,” I nod, tossing the empty scotch bottle in the trash.

A lovely woman steps into my office. She was wearing an A-line dress and lace gloves and was tightly clutching a matching handbag. Half of me hopes she hear for a date, but I know better in this kind of work.

I motion for her to take the seat across from me, “What can I do you, Miss-?”

“Y/n,” she answers without missing a beat and settles down. “I need your help, I've got no one else who I could turn to. I heard you’re one of the best private investigators in Queens.”

“Get to the point,” I cut her off.

“It's about my husband,” she starts, her eyes laced with concern.“He's gone missing… the police refuse to get involved, but I know there's something fishy going on.”

“Sure he didn't just run off with some hussy?” I questioned.

“I know my husband,” she argued sternly. “If he had a mistress, he would've had the courtesy to let me know he was leaving me for her.”

I roll my eyes, I've had other cases dealing with missing spouses, they almost always ended with them having a new lover.

“Mind if I?” she asks, removing a pack of cigarettes from her handbag.

I nod and push the ashtray on my desk closer to her. Her hand shakes as she tries to light it.

“Listen, Dollface,” I say, taking out a book of matches from my pocket. “I'm not the good guy you're looking for,” I explained to her, swiping the match against the strip. “I ain't gonna do you or nobody any favors out of the goodness of my heart.”

She leans towards the match I'm holding out for her, and she takes a quick drag and blows. “Money ain't a problem if that's what you’re worried about. Just please find him.”

Missing husband cases never go well. It always leads to unnecessary heartbreak. But if she's willing to pay, I'll keep my mouth shut for now. I got bills to pay after all.

“Fine,” I give in. “I'll take your case.”

I tell her to leave the details with my secretary, and with that, she leaves.

I get ready to head home for the night and to check in with Aunt May. I grab my hat and coat by the door and stop by Stacy's desk to say goodnight.

“So, Whaddya you think, Stac?”

She shrugs, “Think there might be something to it and something that might interest you. Here's what she told me.” Stacy handing me a note.

My eyes narrow when they spot a familiar name, Harry Osborn. So, the broad's missing husband was none other than my old chum.

“Small world,” I mutter bitterly. ...

Aunt May welcomes me home with open arms as soon as I walk in. While she has me near, she explains that my dinner is in the oven.

Not feeling hungry, I thank her and tell her I'll eat it later as I head upstairs instead. I can see that concerned look in her eye she often gives me, but she keeps quiet about it.

Digging through a box of old junk in my room, I find an old photo of Harry and myself, back during our school days. Life seemed so simple back then.

I had become aware of the sort of shady business Harry's father had been a part of shortly after high school.

Norman Osborn may have appeared like a saint in public, but that man had a finger in almost every criminal organization in Queens. It took a lot out of me to bring the Green Goblin down.

However, last I checked, Harry had nothing to do with his father's affiliations. And I hadn't heard anything through the grapevine about a new Green Goblin taking over.

But a lot can change over time and this city has a way of changing people for the worst.

Discarding the picture aside, I run my hand down my face, questioning if I can pursue this case without it taking a personal toll.

...

I started my investigation following Harry's last known activities. I searched for clues while following his footsteps.

Everywhere I went, I came out empty handed. Just when I was at my wit's end, one of Harry's employees mentioned a bar his boss frequented and adds that Harry was on his way there after work. He also warned me that the place was known to serve the shady sort of patrons in town.

The speakeasy wasn't easy to find, had to walk through what seemed like a maze of alleyways before finding the steel door to what appeared to be an abandoned factory.

As I opened the door I was greeted by a waft of thick white smoke. All eyes turned to me, watching me with suspicion. I recognize a few faces, several mobsters and petty criminals.

I approach the bar and ordered a drink. So, this is the place Harry Osborn was last seen. Not a surprise with all these shady characters around.

What the hell had Harry gotten himself into?

I run the scenarios in my head. Did he have a drug problem? Couldn't pay back a loan shark? Became a target for kidnapping?... Or worst-case scenario, Harry had decided to follow in his old man's footsteps.

There's still so much I don't know. I needed more clues and information.

My thoughts come to halt as applause breaks out. Shifting my attention to the stage, a man in tuxedo introduces the entertainment for the evening.

“Y/n,” I whisper to myself, as the dame sauntered on stage. Apparently, the missus had kept from crucial facts to herself.

She looked even better than she had the other night. The skin-tight satin dress hugged every curve of her body.

She smiles at the crowd as she takes ahold of the mic, and the music starts. It's clear that she's no stranger to the limelight.

I watch mesmerized as she begins to croon a beautiful but sad song. She sings so effortlessly. Song after song, I find that I can't possibly take my eyes off of her.

Y/n looks in my direction, her eyes locking with mine as she coos some pretty words, and with that, her last song comes to an end.

Applause erupts again as she takes a bow and disappears backstage.

I feel my teeth grind and my fists clenched, as I finally come to my senses. She must've known her husband was a regular patron here.

I practically snarl as she slides into the barstool next to me a few minutes later.

“Mad at me?” she jokes playfully seeing the scowl on my face.

I scoff turning my face and finishing my drink. “I don't appreciate getting played.”

“Didn't know you were investigating me,” she shot back.

“Don't play coy, Mrs. Osborn,” I snap. “You hired me to find your husband, and all anyone can tell me was he was last seen here.”

“Mr. Parker,” she barks clearly displeased with my tone. “I'm sure you could understand, that I would want to keep this side of Harry's life private…”

Y/n sighs, crossing her legs and adjusting her dress, there's a faraway look in her eyes, “I'm not even entirely sure what all he was up to… but I'm scared, Mr. Parker, scared that I won't see my Harry again alive.”

My blood is still boiling over her withholding information.

“Might need to get used to the idea,” I say unnecessarily harsh. “You could've helped prevent that.”

She wipes away a stray tear and I regret my words.

“I'm sorry,” I start but she interjects.

“No, you're probably right,” she murmurs with trembling lips. “I need to tell you everything, Mr. Parker.”

We take a taxi back to my office so we can talk behind closed doors. I shut the door and stand back as she leans against my desk.

“When Harry and I first met I was a lounge singer and he had a bright future ahead of him. He was educated, came from a well to do family… I Had no idea how I caught his eye,” she says with a sad smile. “But we were young, in love, and a year or so later we married.”

“Then things really took a turn for the worst after Harry's father passed, and the ugly truth to his father's success came out to the forefront,” she sighs, her shoulders slumping. “The bribes, the scheming, the manipulating… Harry's not cut out for a life of crime… he's been distancing himself from me and keeping secrets.”

“When I try to talk to him, he gets defensive and puts up walls,” y/n rubs her forehead, her emotions getting the better of her. “I'm afraid that even if you do find Harry, Mr. Parker, he won't be the same man I married anymore.”

“I'll get to the bottom of this,” I promise her. “But I don't know if you'll like what I find.”

Y/n glances up at me with those sad eyes. I cup her cheek feeling her warm tears on my hand.

Next thing I know we’re kissing like our lives depended on it. My fingers caress her neck, and my tongue slides across her bottom lip.

Her coat slides off her shoulders, and my mouth kisses and sucks on her newly exposed skin and collarbone.

I scoop her up by her hips and help hoist her up on my desk. I push her dress up and my hands hastily move up her thighs. In a swift motion, I yank her lace panties down.

Neither of our actions would necessarily be considered loving or affectionate. We were caught up in our passion, lust, and overall desperateness to soothe our pain and loneliness.

Her hands fumbled with my shirt and belt. I feel her delicate fingers on my chest.

I know deep down we should stop, that I should be the voice of reason, but my most carnal desires take over. There's only one thing I want right now, and it's to be inside her, to feel her warmth.

Slowly, I push into her cunt, not being able to resist any longer.

Her nails drag across my shoulders as she clings to my body. She moans, throwing her head back as she takes every inch of my cock. I take this opportunity to sink my teeth into the crook of her neck and gently biting the tender muscle.

I smile against her skin as she tugs on my hair. I teasingly grind deeper into her. Her legs wrap around my hips holding me close.

“Enjoying yourself,” I purr lowly.

She pulls me into another heated kiss and our tongues swirl around passionately.

I can hear the desk rattle as I thrust my hips into her. Slick noises fill the room along with our panting and moans.

Y/n starts getting louder and is in on the verge of screaming as she gets closer to cumming. With a few more rough bucks of my hips, she tenses and her walls squeeze tightly around my cock, milking it for every drop of my seed.

My fingers grip her soft skin tightly as I cum. I rest my forehead on her shoulder, catching my breath.

“Sleep on the couch,” I mutter. “It's not safe to travel alone this time of night.”

She doesn't utter a word as she slides off my desk and lays on the couch. Taking my trench coat in hand, I go over to her and cover her up with it.

When I wake at my desk the next morning, the first thing I notice is the empty couch. Not that I pictured things to go differently. She's a married woman after all.

Yet, a dark part of me hopes that Harry never turns up and that maybe something more can transpire between y/n and me.

…

#spiderman noir #spiderman verse #spiderman noir x reader #au #lemon #peter b parker #noir spiderman #reader insert #spiderman noir fanfic #harry osborn #green goblin

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smokedstorybara · 5 years

Text

I’m compiling a list of all my wips w/ summaries here to remind myself what all I should be working on and keep myself accountable - and if y’all wanna yell at me about them please do

(Also be warned there will be some spoilers in here cause I suck at non spoiler-y summaries)

Fanfics:

Dear Evan Hansen:

(Apprentice) Park Ranger Handsome part 16 (doesn’t even have a name yet I’m so sorry)

Evan and Connor’s first date!! They go to the orchard of course, and have more relationship conversation... and a picnic.

Fae Court AU

Prince Connor of the Winter Court falls in love with a human boy and acts on it, despite his parents having Rules against relationships with humans. The consequences are big but Connor and Evan weather them well.

Flash:

Soulmate AU (I’m thinking ‘Dream A Little Dream Of Me’ for series title)

A series of one-shots following the Arrowverse characters - with a bit of a focus on Team Flash and the Legends - as they find love and happiness , with some bumps along the way, in a world where you share dreams with your soulmate. Timeline is spread out from Stein and Clarissa’s first meeting to some point around mid canon.

endgame ships include Barry/Len, Hartley/Cisco, Wally/Jax, Sara/Ava, Nate/Ollie/Felicity/Lisa(it’ll make sense I promise), Iris/Caitlin/Shawna, and more

Role-reversal AU

In a world where Barry was kept strictly away from the file on his mother’s murder after he becomes a CSI he grows resentful and distrusting of law-enforcement and a little quicker to recognize that he can’t entirely fix the issues with the police from the inside. So when he wakes from a nine month coma with super speed his first thought is how much he can shove the police’s faces in the fact that the system isn’t perfect and needs to change... he becomes the world’s fastest thief - unbeatable. At least until he goes after a certain diamond at the same time as one Leonard Snart, who walks away from the encounter looking to the world like a hero and gets a sweet taste of positive press that he’s not all that eager to give up.

Harry Potter crossover

Snart and Rory go “backpacking across Europe” on a ridiculous challenge to steal one thing in each country. Their last stop is in England and they’ve set their sights on a suburb in Surrey... which leads them to noticing the treatment of the young nephew of their potential target. Being survivors of abuse themselves they decide to remove him from that environment... along with all of Vernon Dursley’s valuables. Raising a kid is hard, raising a magical kid while maintaining positions as master thieves? ...piece of cake...

Check Please:

Moving On

When Jack and Bitty go through a messy breakup their friends are torn and Bitty is uncertain about what to do, especially when he has to go back to Georgia - where he’s firmly in the closet - for summer break. He can’t talk to his family or his friends about all his conflicting feelings about what happened, so he somehow finds himself corresponding with the one person who he knows would understand - Jack’s other ex, Kent Parson. He also finds himself growing closer to the previous year’s freshmen on his college hockey team and the team’s new manager - especially when summer ends and they’re all handling the situation better than the rest of his friends - ie: behaving like nothing happened except that they’re immediately down to fight Jack at a moment’s notice.

The Umbrella Academy:

Ghost Dave (that’s what it’s called in my google docs but it’s definitely not gonna be the title of the final product)

Dave Katz has been haunting the surviving members of his unit for a couple decades when the story about the 43 women comes on the news; a story Dave had heard plenty about before he died from his lover, Klaus Hargreeves. In whose tellings of it he was one of the children born that day. He also had claimed a few times to be from the future so Dave was fairly willing to take this as proof he was telling the truth. Immediately Dave seeks out Reginald Hargreeves and the 7 of the children he adopted. Over the next 29 years Dave follows the young Klaus around, giving him advice and unconditional friendship and protection from the other ghosts the poor kid could see.

Circle Of Magic crossover

When Tris finds herself dropping out of some kind of portal in a strange land it doesn’t take her long to figure out that some mage had decided to get rid of her - and possibly her siblings - by banishing her to another world, one with advanced technology but not much by way of magic - if one didn’t count the six super-powered siblings she appeared in the middle of. At the same time, but also not, Tris’s adopted sister Sandry wound up smack dab in the center of a group calling themself The Commission who’re very interested in adding her to their ranks, she joins up but maintains suspicion. Daja, the third sister, follows a pair of assassins. And their one brother, Briar, falls into the Vietnam War alongside one freshly tortured Klaus Hargreeves. They all find their way back together eventually - with much fewer casualties than if they hadn’t been there

Harry Potter crossover 1

When an eighteen-year-old Klaus Hargreeves gets bored of being lookout on a mission in London and wanders into the bar across the street he isn’t expecting to find a best friend, but that’s exactly what happens. Lily Evans is a couple months into a break-up and still tired of her ex and his idiocy, especially after his most recent letter - a pile of stupid big enough to send her straight to her local bar. The two hit it off instantly via complaining about anything and everything and egging each other into doing the most ridiculous but fun things. Their night of fun turns sour when Klaus finds out his brother Ben died during the mission and at least one of his siblings blame him. Lily takes the broken boy back to her flat and let’s him stay with her until his visa to stay in England runs out. Thirteen years later the apocalypse is interrupted by a tired ex-professor bringing life changing news - Lily was pregnant when Klaus left England(they’d slept together a handful of times but were never more than friends with benefits), also Lily and her husband(the idiot ex who apologized and changed his behavior, Klaus was at their wedding) are dead and Klaus and Lily’s son was placed with his aunt Petunia(who Klaus has met and knows the boy never should’ve been put with) because only five people besides Lily and James knew who Harry’s father really was and the only one capable of doing anything about it had to find the wandering junkie first. Klaus handles all this about as well as a powerful veteran with a traumatic childhood can - fighting tooth and nail for custody and then raising the boy the best he can with help from his siblings and robot mom and shoving his son’s happiness and safety in the faces of everyone who did the boy wrong

Harry Potter crossover 2

Not long after the war ends Harry finds that he can’t stand staying in magical Britain any longer, so he takes his godson and moves to America. Six years later one of the kids who live across the street sneaks out his window, wearing only pjs despite the heavy snow. Harry finds himself staying up waiting for the boy to return to their street and making some hot cocoa - which he offers to the boy as soon as he sees him. It quickly becomes a Thing(tm); Klaus will sneak out his window in the middle of the night, go for a walk, and eventually wind up having hot cocoa in Harry’s kitchen. They form a strange friendship, one where Klaus has someone he knows he can go to when everything becomes too much - even if that means crawling through Harry’s window, collapsing on his floor in tears, and falling asleep on his couch, waking up just in time to get home before his absence is noticed. Three more years have passed when Harry and Teddy are idly watching tv and Harry sees a very familiar face as Reginald Hargreeves introduces ‘the inaugural class of the Umbrella Academy.’ When Klaus comes over that night Harry asks how much choice Hargreeves gave him and his siblings in their ‘heroics’. After some thought Klaus remembers how his brother Ben hadn’t wanted anything to do with what happened at the bank but was made to participate anyway. He answers honestly: they weren’t really given any. Thus begins Harry’s campaign to get custody for the kids from Hargreeves.

Original Works:

Four Elements Universe(a collection of stories set along one timeline - very far apart and with no overarching plot, just a shared world):

Sisa:

A secluded young king sneaks out of his castle and gets a job under a false identity in hope for friendship, then gives everything up to help his new friends and the rest of his people when he realizes the extent of his adviser’s corruption. Around the same time, a teenage master thief is hired to steal a specific box from the castle - and then to help another thief break her friend out of the castle dungeon - and uncovers several major secrets that might just change the fate of the kingdom.

Kings:

Bandit King Vakhtang’s life is irrevocably changed when he agrees to lend his men to a rebellion for a hefty amount of gold. Over time he finds himself growing fond of the boy prophesied to be the next king and learning just as much from his new employer about letting himself care and open up as he’s teaching the boy how to protect himself. (His best friend and lover is very proud of this growth and kinda wants to adopt the kid)

The Completely Unrelated Adventures Of Four People Who Had Nothing To Do With Each Other Beforehand:

Four teenagers in rural Texas follow a cipher they found in an old tome and discover that all four of them have magical abilities, and that their town may not be as average as they’d believed. As they delve deeper in this new world they uncover two different secret organizations and find themselves caught in the middle of a dangerous conflict over a powerful artifact - that may or may not be the kid sister of one of them.

Mythicals:

Six kids around the world each find objects - artifacts - that grant them magical transformations and abilities. Seven years later all six of them end up at the same prestigious performing arts school in New York. When they discover that they all have these artifacts and powers - and that New York and possibly the world is in danger - they team up to protect everyone else, and quickly become close friends. Though one of them has a secret that could drastically change how the others view them... and possibly risk the fate of the human race.

Eternity And Forever(this one does have an overarching plot):

Eternity Of Forever:

Back in the early years of humanity a young man goes up a mountain for his Trials of Adulthood - a series of three trials set to test a person on the traits of whichever three gods they’ve been assigned to serve - unfortunately for this boy he’s been chosen for the gods of empathy, loyalty, and love... three traits that do not come easily to him. In his desperation to pass his trials he cheats the system and gets caught. As punishment he’s cursed to live forever just on the cusp of adulthood but never reaching it, the only way to break his curse is to prove - with no possibility of dishonesty - that he’s capable of the three traits. Over the next few millennia he gets caught up in a war for the fate of all life on earth, and also somewhat adopts a maybe-alien and falls in love with a time traveler.

Throughout Eternity:

At some unknown point in the future all that’s left of the human race is a refugee colony on an island floating above the desolate remains of our planet. It’s into this that Quinton is born. But when it’s discovered that he can travel through time with just a thought he’s trained for a very important mission: to go back in time and stop the apocalypse. Shortly into his mission he meets an immortal teenager who claims to have met Quinton’s future self and who offers to help, telling him that first thing he should do is gather a team to help him - he even provides names and years. This little team becomes like a second family to Quinton, especially the pretend-aloof immortal.

Forever And After:

After the death of the closest thing he ever had to a father, Slythus finds himself applying to the superhero school the immortal had founded - despite knowing that even if he were accepted into the student body he’d never be accepted by the student body. Somehow he manages to get in... and even more impossible; manages to make friends. But even as he learns how to be good, his past is lurking on the edges of his new life and quickly becoming impossible to ignore - figuratively and literally.

Shadow Warriors:

After the dragon Svartr gets cursed protecting a village from invaders they offer their children to be trained by him - to take care of him as his condition worsens. Those selected and taught by him become known as the Shadow Warriors. Alexir was born several generations after the tradition began of sending every twelve-year-old up Svartr’s mountain for the selection and she never expected to be chosen, being much more focused on intellectual growth than physical, so when it happens it comes as a bit of a shock. She struggles to keep up with her peers in most of the lessons but refuses to give in, pushing herself to reach their level while also learning the complexities of friendship from them all.

Consequences(originally titled ‘Consequences of War’ until I realized it’s more about just consequences for actions in general - like: don’t piss off the powerful magical Being hiding out in the abandoned building):

After deliberately pissing off what they believed to be a ghost - or a false rumor more likely - a college aged idiot ends up being banished into a strange world... with a distinct change in biology(mostly in the area of hormones and primary sex characteristics). As they travel this new world in search of a way home - and back into their original form - they learn new things about themself and make interesting new friends. They find themself questioning whether they actually want their ‘old body’ back and then, when they begin to fall in love, whether they really want to return to their old world.

#sorry the lengths of the summaries are so inconsistent in the fanfics #(A)PRH #four elements universe #sisa #kings #tcua #mythicals #eaf #shadow warriors #Consequences of War #that's all the tags I have so far for these wips so check them out if you wanna know more #literally only one of the fanfics has a tag sdkjfhluejifsd #I should post more about the fanfics I'm working on I guess

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lyonrhodes · 6 years

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One Bad Day #5: Paint the Town

Red Hood x OC, Batman/DC Fan Fic

Summary: Dora has lived in Gotham her whole life and is accustomed to the rampant crime and corruption. Her life gets worse when Black Mask takes over the city. She thinks all hope is lost but a new vigilante appears, calling himself the Red Hood. However, he’s not your typical knight in shining armor. Dora must decide: does she dare fall in love with a revenge-driven killer? (Romance, Crime, Action)

Chapter 5: Paint the Town

Two days later, Dora went to One Police Plaza to make her official statement—Red Hood was that big of a deal, there was a task force dedicated to taking him down working out of the GCPD’s central headquarters in Old Gotham. Dora arrived at the giant building only to find the entrance roped off by yellow tape. There was a crime scene right on the front steps. Cameras flashed and people chattered in the large crowd that had gathered as close as they could get. At the fringe of the scene, news reporters discussed the event in front of cameramen. The crowd was so dense, Dora couldn’t see what the fuss was about.

“Hey, you!” Bullock stomped up to her from a food truck he had been standing by, tossing aside his half-eaten gyro.

“What?” she asked.

Bullock snarled. “What do you mean ‘what?’ Your boyfriend dropped off a little present for the GCPD.”

She had no idea what boyfriend Bullock was talking about because she had been single for well over two years. However, the familiar contemptuous look on his face quickly made her realize he was talking about Red Hood—and she didn’t like that.

“What’s going on? Why the crowd?”

“As if you don’t know,” Bullock spat impatiently.

Bullock was too bitter to tell her, but after he escorted her inside the GCPD building—roughly by the arm—Montoya took over and shooed Bullock away. He snorted and stomped away, muttering under his breath. Although Dora wasn’t fond of either of them, she preferred Montoya over Bullock. She was still wary not to be fooled by their good cop/bad cop routine. At least Montoya believed Dora hadn’t deliberately sicced Red Hood on the men harassing her—she hoped.

While recording her statement and filling out a stack of paperwork with some mousy intern from the DA’s office, Dora learned from Montoya that Red Hood wasn’t keeping every head he took as a personal trophy. Regarding the incident she had walked in on when she arrived at the GCPD, Montoya told her—over her morning coffee—that it appeared Red Hood had dropped off the head of a corrupt businessman named Adam Hunt on the GCPD’s doorstep in order to send a message. This Adam Hunt had allegedly—and Montoya emphasized the word allegedly—laundered money for many of Gotham’s criminal organizations. He had been on the GCPD’s watch list for years, but they could never gather enough evidence for a solid conviction, let alone enough to charge him with any legitimate crime. When the DA intern left, Montoya offered her theory that Hunt’s lawyers were just too damn good, and revealed that she suspected the ADA and a few judges were in Black Mask’s pocket.

“I guess Red Hood doesn’t care about the burden of proof,” Montoya told Dora while they filled out yet more paperwork in the bustling bullpen. Uniform cops, detectives, and jail guards were scrambling around the office, shouting at perps, into their phones, radios, and each other. “This Red Hood guy considers himself judge, jury, and executioner. I’m not sure if he’s deranged or just sick of waiting for justice to be done. If the latter’s the case, I can’t blame him cuz kinda get it. Pero no le dices a Bullock que yo te dije eso.”

Dora didn’t promise anything, but she and Montoya shared a lingering look that made Dora think Montoya was as frustrated with the corruption and ineffectiveness of Gotham’s law enforcement as she was.

After filling out all the paperwork, the detectives set Dora loose and didn’t bother her again. She assumed they were too busy chasing after Red Hood, who was literally painting the city of Gotham red and watching it burn.

Day and night, everything Dora heard and read on the news was about either Red Hood, Batman, or Black Mask—or any combination of them. It was a veritable free-for-all, each one pitted relentlessly against the other two. However, it was plain to see that who everyone feared most was Red Hood. As the newcomer, he was the most unpredictable and therefore the most dangerous. There had been dozens of arsons in his name. In some cases vehicles and whole buildings were blown up. Gotham’s citizens were afraid to leave their homes for fear that any public place they visited or transportation they used might be rigged with one of Red Hood’s bombs. The city was being terrorized and demolished, one building at a time, by an unhinged pyromaniac in a red helmet. Wherever Firefly was nowadays, Dora mused, he was being put to shame; and Batman was struggling to keep up.

What the media didn’t know (and apparently the cops were keeping quiet) was the fact that most of the buildings that were bombed were fronts, hideouts, drug labs, brothels, casinos, speakeasies, and stashes of Gotham’s worst gangs. Not to mention the steady stream of severed heads that were dumped almost daily on the steps of One Police Plaza were those of crime bosses and their highest-ranking lieutenants. Dora knew this because it was all the Alibi’s customers would talk about. She even noticed that the shadiest and most delinquent of her clientele weren’t coming around the bar as often.

It was plainly obvious that Gotham’s criminals were scared shitless. They were scrambling, like rats trapped in a box, panicked into a frenzy, desperate for survival.

Despite the seemingly rampant destruction reported in the news, all the innocent Gotham citizens that lived on Park Row and the other impoverished neighborhoods were beginning to feel safer. Outside of Red Hood’s own crimes, organized and petty criminal activity in Gotham had actually decreased since his debut. In the week after the massacre in the alley, it seemed like Red Hood was gaining more notoriety, yet getting further away from being caught.

The streets were buzzing with support for Red Hood, and Dora noticed it everywhere—from bargoers in the Alibi to people waiting in line at Starbucks and all over social media. The common topic of conversation now was whether you should support Batman or Red Hood. The people that favored Red Hood had taken to wearing red hoodies and baseball caps. Still, some people insisted neither Red Hood or Batman were the answer, believing that the GCPD and the courts were the only legal way to fight crime and protect the innocent.

But to Dora, there could be no mistake. Her neighborhood of Park Row was now a safer place to live. Whenever she needed proof to reassure herself, all she had to do was open her bedroom window at night and take a moment to listen to the city. She no longer heard drug dealers and addicts yelling at each other in the alleys, the hookers and johns catcalling on the street corners, or gunshots and sirens echoing through the air—all things she used to hear on a nightly basis before Red Hood came along were now gone. No one had to take her word for it, everyone in Park Row noticed how quiet it had become.

And Rochelle thought so, too. After initially being scared—literally to death—of Red Hood, it seemed like Rochelle had become one of his biggest fans in the weeks since his first appearance in that alley. She wore red to work nearly everyday.

“Well, he comes on a little strong, yeah—but you can’t deny the effect he’s had on the town, Dee,” Rochelle told Dora one night at the Alibi after last call. “Crooks are too scared to try anything. Maybe that’s just what it takes in a shithole like Gotham. The city’s so infested with monsters, we needed a bigger one on our side. Batman and his crew weren’t enough. And I don’t know if it’s just me, but it seems like he’s sighted around here in Park Row more often than anywhere else.”

Dora found Rochelle’s about-face somewhat confusing, remembering just how afraid she had been when she first encountered Red Hood, the same night Dora had. When Dora asked her about that, she answered, “Well that was before I realized what he was doing, y’know? He’s made life much better for Ben and me.” (Ben was Rochelle’s fiancé.) “I’m not sure what Red Hood did, but he came around our building once, then our landlord suddenly wasn’t threatening us to call ICE on me anymore.”

“Yeah, that’s great, I guess,” Dora replied. The jury was still out in her own mind. In the days since Sergei’s murder, she had felt the relief that came from knowing she didn’t owe Black Mask half her profits every month, but it was only because of a vigilante that was basically a terrorist and mass murderer, nevermind that he only targeted other criminals. She still had nightmares and recurring pangs of guilt about what happened that night. And she hadn’t forgotten that she owed Red Hood protection money instead of Sergei and Black Mask now, however much less it was. She didn’t want to think what Red Hood was capable of if she didn’t pay up. What made it worse was that for some reason she still hadn’t quite figured out, she had hidden that fact from both the police and everyone else, including Rochelle and her own family. Dora had no idea what kind of trouble she would be in if they found out. It was like she was in the middle of another gang war, and she had barely survived one already.

After relieving Rochelle for the night, Dora was in the process of locking up, when someone knocked on the Alibi’s front plate-glass window. Dora saw Holly’s face beaming at her through the smudged glass pane. She undid the locks and let her in.

“Damn, Dee. How many locks do you have on this door?”

“Six deadbolts,” Dora replied, exasperated as she locked them all again. “Can never be too careful in this neighborhood... But hey... I haven’t seen or heard from you all week.” She noticed that Holly was favoring her right leg as she walked in. “Are you okay? What happened to your leg?”

“Oh? This? It’s nothing. Half-healed already.”

“Why haven’t you been replying to my texts?”

“Texts?” Holly looked confused for a moment. She felt around her pockets for a phone but came up with nothing. An amused expression appeared on her face. She said, “Oh. You only had my old work number. I threw that phone out.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t need it anymore. Gotta get myself a new phone, I guess...”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’m no longer turning tricks!” Holly pulled Dora into a tight hug, giddy with laughter, a bubbly noise that Dora had never heard from her before. Holly seemed like a wholly different person.

“What? Are you serious?” Dora pulled Holly away, and looked her up and down properly. The younger girl wasn’t dressed in her usual outfit—a form-fitting dress that left nothing to the imagination. Tonight Holly was wearing sneakers, jeans, and a t-shirt—and no make-up whatsoever. She looked like the sixteen-year-old girl that she actually was—poignantly reminding Dora of just how far Carla could fall if she didn’t get her act together soon.

“Serious as a heart attack.” Holly laughed again. “This Red Hood guy, Dee… He saved my life.”

“Yeah, I was there, remember? He saved my life too. And Rochelle’s.”

“No, I mean aside from that first time. You know Stan, right? My pimp?”

Uh oh. Dora felt her stomach drop. She could only nod, but the feeling of dread was already weighing down her stomach. Red Hood killed him.

“Well, Red Hood came around and… just…” Holly rolled her eyes, but the smile never left her face. “He tore Stan a new asshole, let’s just say—”

“Is Stan still alive?” Dora had to ask. Does he still have his head?

“Yeah, Dee, don’t sweat it. He’s still breathing.” But Holly snorted and shook her head, smirking. “Barely.”

“And you saw him? You saw Red Hood do it?”

“Yeah! After taking care of Stan and his goons, he rushed all the girls out, and rigged the brothel to blow.” A blush bloomed on Holly’s face as she massaged her ankle. “I tripped down the stoop and hurt my foot, so he picked me up, threw me over his shoulder and fucking parkoured his way down the block until we were safe!”

Taking a second to imagine it, Dora found herself impressed. The next second, she actually felt a twinge of jealousy. Rochelle and Holly had both been helped by Red Hood, both once more than she had. But almost immediately she was ashamed of herself. Get your head out of your ass. Think straight. That dude is dangerous.

Then something else occurred to her. She frowned. “Wait. Hol, what are you going to do now? With Stan gone, you’re out of a job, aren’t you?” If Holly were a little bit older, she would offer her a job at the Alibi, but it was already bad enough that she had let her drink there.

“Not quite.” Holly grabbed a bottle from the bar shelf and some tumblers from the counter. “Red Hood took over. With Stan gone, he set the girls up in a new place, with a new front, and a new madam. We have a madam, now, Dee! Not a slimy old pimp! How classy is that? Her name’s Ma Gunn. I’ve never heard of her before and she’s super old, but she’s legit as fuck. Turned tricks herself back in the day, was in the high-end escort biz for years. She’s Australian and posh as fuck, and doesn’t traffick and doesn’t force anybody on dates they don’t want to go on.”

“That sounds great, but if you’re not going on dates, what kind of work do you do for her?”

“I’m too young for dates she says, so I take care of matchmaking and scheduling mostly.” Holly put a cup of vodka in Dora’s hand, her smile beaming brighter. “Ma’s still having girls work the corner and the bars and her new brothel but she’s trying to set up an escort service for the whales and high rollers. I set up dates, book drivers, restaurants, hotels... I guess I’m basically a sex concierge now.”

Holly clinked glasses with Dora and downed her shot in just one gulp. However, Dora didn’t do the same. She never had a taste for vodka thanks to Sergei and his men. “Congrat—” Dora was interrupted by a loud bang muffled by the walls.

Holly wheeled around. “What was that?”

“I think it was the backdoor. Sometimes it swings open when it’s windy.”

Holly frowned. “I was just outside. It’s not windy tonight, Dee.”

Dora recognized the sound of the back door slamming closed. Someone had come into the kitchen. “Maybe it’s Rochelle,” Dora wondered aloud. “Or my mom.” Those two were the only other people than Dora that had keys to the Alibi. “I’ll check it out.” Dora made sure her pepper spray was hanging from her belt loop, then grabbed the aluminum baseball bat from under the bar. She had almost reached the kitchen door when it swung open. A short person burst out of it.

It took Dora a moment to recognize the figure because they were wearing an orange hoodie with a backpack strapped tightly to their back. “Carla?” Dora gasped.

Her little sister slid to a halt, pulling off her hood, her sneakers squeaking on the floor.

“Carla? Your sister?” Holly asked, head bobbing between her and Dora. “Aw, she’s so cute, Dee. She looks just like you. But, oh… Hey, what’s wrong?”

Carla was frantic, sweating bullets, out of breath, with a bone-chilling look of dread on her face.

“What are you doing here?” Dora asked. “What’s wrong?”

Her little sister didn’t answer any of their questions. Instead she vaulted over the bar and pulled open all the drawers and cabinets.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Dora yelled. “You’re not allowed back there! Stop!”

“Where’s Dad’s gun?” Carla shouted desperately. She fumbled underneath the counter. “Where is it?”

“What the heck do you need Dad’s gun for?”

“I…” Carla looked up at Dora, finally holding still for moment, but the quivering tears in her eyes made it clear she was panicking.

She looked her age now, or less, Dora thought; every part of her was shaking. “Carla, talk to me,” she asked as gently as she could. She handed Holly the baseball bat and held Carla’s face, wiping the sweat from her forehead and the tears from her cheeks. The girl trembled in her hands. “Talk to me, it’s okay.”

Carla didn’t look at Dora, but at Holly instead, blinking her wet eyes in confusion.

“That’s Holly. She’s my friend. She’s cool,” Dora explained.

Carla whimpered and shrugged off her backpack. “I’m sorry, Dee…” She unzipped it. Dora looked inside and her jaw dropped.

Holly peeked over her shoulder and gasped, “Holy shit.”

The backpack was stuffed full of bricks of white powder, tightly wrapped in plastic.

“That’s a lot of fucking coke!” Holly exclaimed. “What the fuck, Carla? How’d you get your hands on all that?”

“I was running product for my crew, but then some guys from another crew tried to steal it… I ran… but I don’t know if I lost them. I’m so sorry, Dora!”

“You’re part of a gang?” Dora didn’t know whether to feel angry, sad, or disappointed. What was certain, though, was how worried she was about her little sister. “Carla…”

But a loud banging penetrated the walls again. Carla yelped and jumped out of Dora’s grasp. “No! They found me! Fuck, Dora, we have to get out of here!” She grabbed a handful of Dora’s t-shirt and pulled her toward the front door. “They got guns! We have to run!”

Ptnng! Ptnng! Womp! The sounds made it clear that the men after Carla had shot the lock or hinges off the back door. The sound of several heavy footsteps came from the kitchen.

Dora looked at the six deadbolts locking up the front door all the way across the bar. She cursed. At the rate it usually took her to fumble through them, they would never escape in time. They were trapped.

[v0.3.15.1]

#red hood #redhood #jason todd #jasontodd #dccomics #dc comics #batman #red hood x reader #jason todd x reader #red hood x oc #jason todd x oc #fan fiction #fanfic #fanfiction

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liltoothbrush · 7 years

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BNHA Vigilante!AU Headcanons

Okay i know it’s kinda dumb but pls consider:

• The city’s been terrorized by crime, like, drug cartels, gangs and shit popping out of nowhere • People don’t know, but there’s actually a big organization behind it called Alliance, who’s profiting out of this mess • There’s a whole corruption scheme going on, politicians, judges, companies, like ERRBODY’S GETTIN PAID

• Midoriya is a lawyer who’s dad was a lawyer too but for a big company, who figured out part of the scheme, and was killed because of it. • He doesn’t know this, and thinks his father was dead because of one of the drug cartels. • He then decides to become a vigilante called Deku, a really lousy one, but catches the eye of a super rich and mysterious man who decides to train and mentor him. (He used to be a vigilante too, called All Might) • Alliance is not pleased with guy sticking his nose on their plans and kicking their subordinates’s asses, so he becomes a target

• Bakugou is a grumpy detective who hates Izuku, like so much, like SO MUCH, because he once freed a perp that took him three months to catch, so Baku holds a lot of grudges from our green friend • He also hates Deku, because he thinks he’s just a bad rip off of All Might • Bakuboom is a good detective tho, and the increasing violence and suspicious things that been happening round town are bugging him too much

• Uraraka is Izuku’s childhood friend, but doesn’t know about the vigilantee stuff • She’s a nosey reporter who’s been investigating the scheme thing. Bakugou hates her because she’s always creeping around his cases, and always manages to get information out of him just by the sole force of annoyance • Her parents are broke and Alliance’s trying to take down their’s and a lot of people’s business, so she’s determined to stop the evil rich people before they do anymore bad to the city

•Todoroki is the son of an evil ass senator, who’s been getting a lot of money out of the Alliance’s schemes, and is very angry all the time • He’s always getting in trouble to damage his father’s reputation, but it’s been lately affecting himself in a bad way (alcohol, scandals, stripping in reunions and stealing police cars) • He’s been suspicious of his dad for a while, and decides to investigate this thing further using his rich people powers (money and influence) • He’s one of the first people to get saved by Deku, and is low-key in love with him because why not

• Iida is a defense attorney who’s brother was arrested for a crime one of the Alliance’s guys committed, so he’s thirsty for their blood • He, Uraraka, and Izuku share an apartment, so it gets really complicated for the green boy to hide his secret from them • He’s the first one to find out (shame on you Urararara) and gets really mad but eventually agrees to keep quiet

• Eventually, they all get together somehow to uncover the Alliance’s dirty crimes, but only Iida knows about Izuku’s secret • Todoroki’s conflicted, because he and Izuku seem to have a connection, but he can’t figure it out why • Uraraka eventually suffers the consequences for being nosey, and now she’s a target for the Alliance too • Bakugou hates them all, but he knows something’s up and needs help and resources cause his superior officer won’t let him take the cases involved (CAUSE HE GETTIN PAID)

Also:

• Tsuyu owns a popular bar in town, and they always come to her for information • Momo is heir to a big big company who didn’t want to partner up with the Alliance, so she became a target • Kirishima is the most beautiful honest cop in the world and will die for literally anyone omg • Kaminari won’t die for u, but he’s an honest cop too, they both will be of great help • I didn’t think much about the other characters yet, but they would also have a great role in the story

• This may or may not have come out of a request asked by @n-ebula • I may or may not be working in a fic about it right now

• Mineta doesn’t exist cause he’s satan

#bnha #mha #boku no hero academia #midoriya izuku #todoroki shouto #katsuki bakugou #uraraka ochako #iida tenya #kacchako #tododeku #bnha headcanons #this got long sorry #i'm unstoppable

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gibsongirlselections · 4 years

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Election Meddlers Find a Scapegoat

Like me, until recently you got most of your news from PeaceData.net. It was where you looked to form your opinions, including the all-important one about which way to vote. What you missed on PeaceData you caught up with via Facebook memes and Tweets from people you do not know.

Or maybe not. Maybe like nearly everyone on planet Earth you have no idea what I’m talking about and never looked at the now-defunct PeaceData site. That reality should pretty much end the discussion, but this is 2020. So you must know by now that Facebook claims an unvisited web site named PeaceData was actually a Russian influence operation targeting voters in the United States, all the while posing as an independent news outlet. PeaceData’s sneaky tactics included hiring real freelance “journalists” to write about U.S. politics and racial tensions from their parents’ basements.

PeaceData also operated 13 Facebook accounts, now suspended, supposedly using fake identities and “coordinated inauthentic behavior” by people with some kind of link “to individuals associated with past activity by the Internet Research Agency,” the Russkie company which U.S. intelligence officials say was part of Comrade Trump’s 2016 win.

Yep, that old story: Russians, social media, blah. To say PeaceData itself truly does not matter, especially in relation to the attention it has received in death, gives too much credit to not mattering. What does matter is how the intel community, quasi-private tech firms, the media, and the Democrats worked together to exaggerate the threat and create the narrative outcome of “foreign influence.” Pay attention; this is the magician revealing how the trick is done.

It seems the Russians have gotten so good at influencing cow-like Americans that only five percent of English-language articles on PeaceData actually concerned the U.S. election, out of over 700 articles published. You’d think no one would have even noticed they existed. However, a company called Graphika nonetheless told Facebook to conclude “this facet of the operation suggests an attempt to build a left-wing audience and steer it away from Biden’s campaign.” See, the conclusion from Graphika is by making almost no impact whatsoever, PeaceData was actually “trying harder and harder to hide.” It worked; Graphika found most of the English-language posts achieved only single-digit engagement.

Back to net nanny Graphika for a moment. We don’t know who funds them. Their venture capital was raised privately, in two tranches of about three million dollars each, in 2014 and 2019. We do know who they work with. Their current “Innovation Officer” is Camille François, who once worked for Google’s analytics offshoot Jigsaw before quitting to run a project for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, alongside now Graphika CEO John Kelly (no relation to the Marine.) Their December 2018 reporting helped Democrats “prove” the Russians used Facebook and Twitter to influence the 2016 election. Graphika also has ties to the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Defense Department’s Minerva Initiative. If you look at their stuff you realize they write like spooks, talk like spooks, and snitch out news sites like spooks.

What is missing from Graphika’s spooky work is any evidence whatsoever of any actual influence on the only thing that matters: how people vote. Graphika offers nothing quantitative, claiming only that by using American freelancers PeaceData was part of the “fabric” of communities and this made them credible. A step up from 2016 efforts, which relied on what Graphika said were foreign “trolls who typically researched American life so they could more effectively pose as U.S. citizens online. One key trick was to watch American TV shows like House of Cards.”

One is inclined to imagine here the customer service rep with a south Indian accent who asks you to call him “Mike” and wonders “How it goes my man in that American town of Iowa?” Older readers, please substitute Boris and Natasha voices.

So who are these nefarious American writers unknowingly selling out their country? The New York Times tracked down one who ended up writing for no money somehow, though PeaceData rates of $75-$200 per article fluttered below average (lots of unknown sites recruit freelancers for small payouts; PeaceData used Guru). This particular PeaceData journalist also once played Rusty in Starlight Express before selling insurance. One of his recent articles outlines his battle with dementia. Sorry to pick on the poor guy, but the NYT profiled him and it seems using such services to influence an election may not be the best use of those rubles.

He did write a nice piece claiming Susan Rice would have made a fine Vice President. One point in her favor was “I challenge anyone to find a video, or statement which shows Susan Rice raising her temper, shouting, acting hysterical or making comments.” Rice of course is known for her signature profanity and temper; here’s The Washington Post calling her out for describing Lindsey Graham as a “piece of sh*t.” Her f-bombs are legendary. She famously flipped the bird at Richard Holbrooke, told France’s UN. ambassador “you’re not going to drag us into your sh*tty war” and drew complaints of disrespect from allies on the UN Security Council.

But before just calling a Susan Rice-like bullsh*t on this whole sad attempt to frighten Americans into believing foreigners are here to steal our precious bodily Internet fluids, let’s go have a look at some of what else PeaceData had to say.

For example, here’s a quote from a PeaceData article about Q-Anon: “The effort to mainstream conspiracy is meant to distract from the true mechanisms of exploitation and alienation, while allowing for the continued consolidation of capital and upending norms with power grabs. As liberal institutions fail and capitalism continues to deliver uncertainty, the extension of a false mythos—that promises to yield revolutionary change and free the masses—gives allure to desperately confused people.”

Ok, that was too easy, somebody just held on to their Socialism 101 textbook. Another PeaceData article, on the post office, is lifted idea-for-idea from the NYT: “One way or another, the truth always comes out and with President Donald Trump, his motives were especially apparent after a news conference in the White House Briefing Room. He admitted on Thursday he opposed additional funding for the United States Postal Service (USPS) in order to make it more difficult to deliver mail-in ballots. Trump’s desire to not expand on voting by mail further sent society into a chaotic state amidst a pandemic.” The NYT said “President Trump stirred new questions on Thursday about whether he would seek to hold up new money to the Postal Service to impede mail-in voting this fall in the middle of the pandemic.” Kinda the same thing, but one is Russkie propaganda and the other is the New York Times.

It is very unclear that any of this is illegal. Foreign organizations hire American writers all the time. And the line between “taking an editorial stance” and “influencing an election” lies closer to how paranoid you are than anything in the law. That did not stop the FBI from telling social media to act against PeaceData based on Graphika tattling. The action Facebook (and Twitter, who called PeaceData “Russian state actors”) took against PeaceData was based entirely on so-called violations of Terms of Service. That allows the social media giants to show off how they are doing something to, whatever, save democracy. Facebook was not asked to return $480 in advertising money PeaceData spent.

PeaceData doesn’t matter by itself. The real value in this fluffy jihad against a no-name site is to create a talking point to allow the MSM and Democrats to announce again that Trump is being helped by a foreign power, that our electoral process is corrupt if Trump wins, and to revive whatever distant warm, wet memories the faithful had of Russiagate. A little daydreaming that maybe the old tricks will work this time where they have failed ever before.

For the rest of us, no big deal, just a glimpse behind the scenes of another Deep State information op where under the cover of blaming foreign collusion, corporate America, the intel community, and the media hide their own collusion, here, in the Twilight Zone of democracy.

Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan, and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99 Percent.

The post Election Meddlers Find a Scapegoat appeared first on The American Conservative.

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fyrapartnersearch · 5 years

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Looking for Fandom Partners

Your Name/Nickname/Alias: Bocaj Age: 22 Timezone: EST Add. Information: Born in the Year of the Rat, Also, a Hufflepuff.

Literate/Semi-Literate/Basic (Script): Literate, no text talk or anything like that please. Response Time: Varies throughout the day, but a few times a day. At least twice! Response Lengths: Again, varies. Bare minimum, a paragraph. More, usually. POV: 3rd Past Tense, 1st when a character is in thought.

My Platform- Discord

Discord Name: TheOneWhoSits#3363

One thing, before this goes on. If you do end up messaging me, please feel free to suggest any thoughts or ideas you may have had. I find it tiring finding people who agree to everything I suggest. I feel as if I am controlling everything, which I'd rather not. I want this to be entertaining and fun for us both, not just myself.

Original /Fandom: Fandom, please. Specified Fandoms: (This is just a few, but the big ones I am searching for) Kingdom Hearts| Persona 5| Pokemon| The ArrowVerse| Power Rangers (2017 Movie Universe, and Boom Studios Comic Verse)| Akiba'sTrip:TheAnimation|| JoJo's Bizarre Adventure|| Star Wars (Disney Canon)||

Canon Characters/Original: Usually, I stick to Canons. Some Fandoms are open to OC's, which I will mark, but typically, Canon. I don't ask you to nail their character 100 percent, but try your best. Favored sexual orientations: If things go in a romantic way, usually I like FxF, or MxF.

SFW/NSFW: Usually SFW. Would need to be convinced for NSFW Limits/personal restrictions: Rape, super gory things. Puke, things with the bathroom. Underage stuff. Again I don't usually do NSFW anyway/ Response Time Preferred: I ask, at least once a day, if not more.

Some ideas Revolving around the Fandoms I wish to write with: Kingdom Hearts: Now this can go many, many ways! I have played every game in the series, including the mobile App game, Union Cross. That said, my favorite has to be, 358/2 Days. (Just so you have a feel of my type of KH fan I am.) For the sake of keeping spoilers out of public eye, I will say, there are things in Kingdom Hearts 3, that I would personally like to re-write in a Roleplay. But, I will not dive into said things here. Also open, to writing in the time frame, when the Organization, the original Organization were still Some-bodies, under the study of Ansem the Wise. Dive into the rather sketchy experiments and studies they preformed. Also open to playing with any of the Trio's, even one that's not highlighted a lot- (Young Xehanort, Yen Sid, and Eraqus.) A lot is open for this Fandom.

Dragon Ball:

For this Fandom, I wish to stay within Universe 6, Champa's Universe. Mainly focusing on the Saiyans of said Universe, Kale and Caulifla, and Cabba. After watching Super Heroes, I like to adapt some of that, and the GT Tuffle Arc in the Sixth Universe. The Tuffles rebelling against the Saiyans, perhaps them targeting Kale, since her Legendary like form. OC's, as villains and antagonists are welcomed here, but the main focus being on the Saiyans.

Persona 5: This is also very open! Part of likes the idea, of going through the story, with an all female version of the Phantom Thieves. Also like the idea, taking inspiration from the Anthology Manga, with side stories and events. Perhaps we find a way to Cross Kingdom Hearts over with the Thieves. Sora, Donald and Goofy, working along side the Phantom Thieves of Heart, could be fun! Maybe something with the P5 Royal Girl, from the trailer. Something redeeming Akechi, or even the story from his perspective. Maybe we can dive into our favorite ship, and write an AU around them. (Mine is MakoAnn~!)

Pokemon: In reality, this deals with Pokemon Colosseum specifically, but not against any of the other games. (Though, the idea of mixing other Protags into the Colosseum realm is welcome too!) Growing up, this was one of my favorite games. Though, even then I noticed how quiet it was. In a way, I wish to re-write in, but giving character arcs/growth to main villains and Wes himself. Let's have Wes have done some pretty horrible things, while working for Team Snag'Em, hinting at why he decides to betray them. People around the world, recognizing Wes, from his time as a bad person. Adding a sense of a redemption story for him, in his quest to stop them. Team Snag'Em, themselves perhaps could be working in the Shadow Pokemon business, selling to other Crime groups, maybe other organizations from the other games. Power Rangers!: So, who doesn't like colorful spandex, and explosions! Of course, I did say I want to dive into the 2017 Movie universe, and this is still true! Ideally, continuing where it left off. Adding in, a new Green Ranger (ideally, a female Tommi Oliver) Though, my idea is to have her, slightly corrupted by the Power Coin Rita once held. (Stealing from the MMPR arc, Evil With Green) the coin could slowly corrupt her mind, in a way making her a second Rita, and the Rangers having to deal with a way to free her. If we go the BOOM STUDIO Comic-Verse, I'd like to play around with the Broken Grid, type arc, after Lord Drakkon tried to rule over all. Form a team of our favorite Rangers, and have them stuck in many places, dealing with monsters out of time. Have this team, unstuck in time, as they try to fix the Grid, one way or another.

The Arrow-Verse: For this, I have written a time-line, of sorts, for a Darker Future; since, all the shows seem to point in this direction. However, with the current season of Arrow having Flash-forwards to a dark future, I might have to re-work my Time line. But, ideally, I wish to have the main Focus on: Nora West-Allen/Xs. and John Diggle Jr/Conor Hawke. Dealing both with the lost of their father figures, and trying to work in a world, that has almost gone completely to crap. Since Arrow has introduced new characters like Mia, and William, we can have them join the group as well. Kinda, like a new Generation of the Trio (The trio being Ollie, Barry and Kara). Open to introducing a character from Super-Girl's blood line. I don't want this to focus on one show's characters too much, hence why I suggest Nora and John Diggle Jr be the leads; the arrow and Flash reps. A super-girl character could be fun too! Have arcing plots, maybe Nora looking for what happened to the Flash, but trying to locate Oliver Queen (since he was close to Barry) only to discover a ruined Star City and a New Green Arrow hopelessly holding on.

Sword Art Online: I don't have too much on this, just that I would like to have Suguha as a main character. Perhaps an AU, where she was trapped in a game, instead of her cousin. Or, her in some other sorts of games. OC's are welcomed in this as well.

Again, my Discord is: TheOneWhoSits#3363

#semipara #long term #pokemon rp #dc rp #submission

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radnewworld · 7 years

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FINAL PRODUCT

Some wacky times we’re living in, lemme tell ya. Hard too, though you don’t need a scaly bastard kiddo like yours truly to tell you that, right? Ain’t no dusty road or dirty corner in ol’ New Chicago that won’t tell ya the story of the city it once was, before the war, poverty and industrialization in that order stomped it into submission with a giant capitalistic boot… or so me Pa used to tell me, ‘fore he got his tongue melted licking the wrong orifice of a half-Bonnac gal. Had some kooky tastes me Pa, alright.

Now that I think ‘bout it, I’m not even sure if it actually was a gal, or if she was only half-Bonnac. I’d have asked him, hadn’t he gotten his organs sucked right out of his arse after a misunderstanding with this one Kappa chick. Another thing about Pa, you see, is that he never quite learned his lesson - he’d just switch subjects altogether.

Anyway, before he shat his innards into some mutant’s mouth, Pa would pass most of the time he wasn’t spending with his face drowning in a triple-breasted whore’s chest complaining. He’d made an art out of it. I’ve learned more in ten years by listening to my dad bitching than in the entirety of the six months I spent at school, before the school got turned into a sweatshop for the manifacture of processed iguana leather. Most of the time, he’d go on and on about how things were better before, when the city was still, y’know, a city and not a bunch of dingy warehouses dotted with dozens of hundreds of crumbling squatting holes. If you’d be patient enough to dig through the storm of expletives and racism coming out of his mouth, you’d find the portrait of a place spanning longer than the eye could see, asphalt and cement paving a myriad streets with their confines defined by buildings that tickled the stars, like ol’ Buddy Holly v2.0 used to sing. Sounded like a load of crock if you ask me. You wanna see skyscrapers and roads where you don’t risk stepping on rusty pieces of abandoned alloy all the time, you travel elsewhere. Saint Francis - or San Francisco, like Old Man ‘Lizard-Fucker’ Larry said it was called, before the Californian Republicommunist Party’s coup; the Kingdom of Los Angeles, though last I heard, it’s been a couple of years since King McDonald imposed a ban on immigrants and got it in his head to attempt a new form of bovine-engineered autarchy, so good luck geting there; don’t bother with York, unless you feel like archaic remnants of obsolete architecture are worth becoming compost for those gigantic Plant things’ve been covering the whole place since Newer York’s secession.

Not that I’ve ever been there, or anywhere other than this dump, mind ya. Can’t afford much in the way of traveling - or basic commodities, for that matter - when you make a living frying simil-wheat noodles for a buncha tired factory workers, half-breeded hookers and the occasional frogbull hunter. Mind, I’d rather keep pulling my cart ‘til the rust finished eating through its battered chassis, than so much as consider trying to follow in the footsteps of my clientele. That is, if I ever had the illusion of a choice in the matter: child prostitution has gone down considerably, after a Japanese barge filled with fugitives from the Third Sengoku conflicts crashed on the coast and brought with it a buncha carriers of that artificial Jizo’s Tears virus, you know, the one that melts your balls off if you so much as put your dickhole anywhere near a little kid? Big fat lot of good it did them, when half the arcipelago’s population got culled after realizing too late that they’d fucked up somewhat the calibration of the nanomachines carrying the damned thing.

The hunting business doesn’t carry the same forced age restrictions, but I’d sooner sell my toes to cyber-shamans than shoot at frogbulls with a cobbled up pebble accelerator. Doesn’t matter that the rich sonnuvas living in their cloud domes up in the sky pay some decent bucks for what they consider to be the junkfood of delicacies (or maybe it was the other way around? Still wouldn’t change the fact those Cloudsniffers are a buncha spoiled bitches), when all of your savings are more likely than not gonna fuel an early funeral at the DIY Chapel, after three-hundred pounds of leaping, furry rage are done squashing your everything into a chunky, bloody paste.

And the laborers? Just look at them poor suckers, should you ever want to feel better about your life. Skin so unused to the sun from basically living their lives in a badly lit concrete prison that they become walking sunburns soon as they step outside, and enough stumps produced by a rate of three workplace incidents per week that they end up looking more like the machinery they command than men with their half-assed prosthetics. Ain’t no dreams for the Machine Eaten, we say here. Slaves enjoy better human rights than these guys who’re just there to fill the gaps left in a wonky production line by a tight budget, a slimy, corrupt owner or, more often than not, both. Speaking of, I mentioned something about the weirdness of our times or whatever earlier, ain’t that the case? Yeah, well, it’s because of this odd business I had just the other day, with this one factory toiler. Thing is, he was no man like you and I - hell, he was less of a someone than he was something.

So here I am, parked at my usual corner of the Daley Crater, taking care of business as usual. It’s the middle of midnight - in other words, the brightest time of a summer day, and the hottest to boot. The American Dreamtime… some of the old fogeys call it that. According to them, the U. S. of A. used to get black and chilly like any other country whenever night struck. Cue the Commies building some kinda sunray-concentrating machine on the moon and, next thing you know, naptime in America’s looking sunnier than a fried monkey egg. The Commies have been dead since the Fifties (the Pre-2.0 Era Fifties, mind), but with no rockets supposedly left to go and dismantle it, their little gift has remained there like an annoying reminder of how far people will go for the sake of pettiness. All that means to me, though, is a smaller workload; only people desperate enough to venture through a shower of scorching UV’s are scalied mutants and the few fortunate enough to afford a protective cape. Not that I care much for the latter; if you can afford that kind of luxury in New Chicago, you’re either a tourist, or able to eat slightly better shit than mine.

Jimmy the Bastard belongs to neither category. The one reason he was sitting at whatever passes for a stool, right under the cheap anti-sun plastic tent of my stall, is pure convenience: the asphalt repurposing facility he works for is a spit away from my spot. His shift ended some ten minutes ago and he’s been drooling over my counter for a little over nine. I can tell his leg is bouncing like crazy because of the squeaky noises coming from his dingy seat.

“C’mon, Cookie, won’t you feed a lad? I’m starving here!”

I’d say Cookie is a nickname of sorts… if the ‘lad’ didn’t genuinely believe it was my actual name, which I doubt I ever told him to begin with. I’d bet you my cart I’d still be Cookie to him regardless, ‘cause he’s stubborn like that, Jimmy the Bastard.

Speaking of names, that’s not his either - I mean the Bastard part, not the Jimmy one. They call him that because of an accident, one unrelated to his birth (pretty sure he is an actual bastard, though, like most of us New Chicagoites): it happened all of a sudden, like accidents are wont to do, especially in a low-income factory. All it took was a single slip over a blotch of oil and, next thing you know, a Mark II Crumbler is feasting on poor Jimmy’s cranium. With his head half-gone and medical fees being what they are (fucking expensive, that is), the sod’s family was left with little choice - either lose their main source of income, or settle for Doc Gustave ‘Rusty Sawbone’ Trandinì’s Disgustingly Cheap Option. The ‘disgusting’ part comes from how sloppy of a job it usually is, I figure, but what’s a wife to do? Send the hubbie to the grinder, of course. The result: Jimmy kept his life, but half his brain is now a Terrier-Chihuahua breed’s. According to him, it hasn’t impacted his life all that badly, aside from the occasional urge to gnaw on exposed wires or growling at his supervisor’s face. It’s not like he didn’t have to deal with the latter before anyway, you know? The increased appetite is a definite plus for me, though. Almost makes up for the sloppy mess he makes of the counter! “Order’s coming up, Jimmy. I ain’t about to let ya gnaw on raw ingredients just ‘cause you wouldn’t mind.”

I like to think it takes balls to maintain a sense of pride, when your craft mostly consists in stripping layers of pasty skin off the back of a semi-organic glob of homegrown simil-wheat. Having an extra testicle - courtesy of a combined pool of bloodlines murkier than the water dripping from the Madison Sewer Dungeon’s exposed tubes - gives some weight to the claim, I’m sure. Now, right as the noodles are done getting crispy and saucier than the lingerie on a tentacle-legged Dagonite whore, here comes the noise, man, it’s still playing in my head as if it was yesterday, this vrr ka-thump vrr ka-thump of metal clumsily pounding on raw, burning asphalt. I throw a gander behind the Bastard’s heaving shoulders and there I see it: for the most part, it was a Caterpillar-Mattel D55-H, but with enough limbs - head included - thrown in from other, completely unrelated pieces of machinery to make one wonder. Couldn’t help raising both of my left brows: you seldom, if ever, see a factory bot linger outside of its workplace. Even a cobbled up piece of crap like that can make for a tempting target for scavengers and the likes of, and this one would have made for an easy one to boot: its left leg had most of its hydraulics more or less busted, whereas the right had been substituted by a couple of threads. Resulting mobility: a joke, and not even a good one.

It’d been quite the sight by itself, but the limping junkpile decided to outdo itself by approaching my stall, after having hesitatingly looked around with the optics mounted on the rectangular pile of half-exposed wires that was its head. Couple moments later, the thing’s standing in front of the seat next to Jimmy, who has his face shoved too deep into the noodles to care, and reflected on the round lens of his pseudo-eye are my deformed face and the empty stool, in that order. I’m wondering what kind of short-circuit must have taken this scrapyard reject, when it finally starts moving again - and attempting to sit on the stool.

If you’ve ever wondered what a robot fucking furniture too dead to care must look like, you’re fucking weird, though not as much as me pa. But more than that, you must have envisioned something similar to the spectacle in front of my eyes and Jimmy’s, who had just finished his portion in time to get himself a front row seat to the slow, pathetic spectacle of a metal stool withstanding the sitting attempts of a thing that lacked anything resembling an ass, which is a pretty vital component when trying to shove it on top of a seat. We exchange glances, Jimmy and I, the silent kind that speaks volumes, all of them titled ‘Are you seeing this shit, or did the moonrays boil my brains?’. Took it a solid minute before it managed to bend the stool into an unrecognizable enough shape to fit whatever passed for a sitting position. I decided that I didn’t mind enough to complain to the robot sporting a steel-bending claw appendage and took my revenge with a less risky straight-faced quip.

“Evening, sir. What’ll you be having on this fine night?“

The Bastard’s snicker sounded a lot like the death throes of a dog choking on his own tongue, appropriately enough. Having a human as badly patched up as itself seemingly suffocating besides him didn’t exactly appear to steal the bot’s appetite. Or its attention, for that matter. My face kept reflecting in the convex lens of its optics like a bloated, ugly collection of features growing less amused by the minute. And make no mistake, I ain’t no baby-faced beauty… the one time pops managed to blow his load instead of his head didn’t involve some genetically enhanced cyber-model, and he wasn’t no looker either.

“MAY I HAVE A MENU?”

The thing’s voice came from a speaker half-buried in the jumbled mess of exposed cables and bent plating that was its head. It was croaky, emotionless and fuck-damnedly loud, enough so that both me and the Bastard had to reel back and hold onto something, lest we plant our asses on the ground. Once my eardrums stopped playing Twist The Communist inside my head, I caught wind of a low-pitched, gurgling sort of noise: it was the glob of simil-wheat, vibrating all over and clearly less than pleased by the sudden outburst of noise. Must have been the closest I’ve ever felt to empathy for a bulbous mass of cultivated flesh vegetables.

“Hard to tell, I know, but we ain’t in the Sky Regions. Only thing you may have is a steaming hot plate of these here noodles - if you got credit enough to pay for ‘em, that is.“

“Ya, I betcha our bolt-twisting pal here’s stacked, ain’t that right?” bellows Jimmy, and he doesn’t pat so much as rain such a salvo of open-handed slap-bombs on the worker bot’s back that I can hear every single joint of his creak and threaten to be dislodged right then and there. If there were any bolts in need of some twisting, you’d find plenty of ‘em inside that walking carcass. So I watch the automaton take its sweet time mulling over its updated knowledge, although I figure most of the minute it spends in silence is due to its inner circuitry rebounding because of the Bastard’s jolly banging on its chassis. I’d have called its expression ‘pensive’, if the sorry excuse for a face it was sporting had been able to express anything.

I’m about to join Jimmy’s symphony of guffaws when I’m brought back down to earth by the loudest bang since a couple moments ago. I stare down with a face that must be as dumbfounded as the Bastard’s: the same damn claw that bent my stool earlier has now left a hole the size of a pot in my counter and left a couple sparse credit coins inside. They weren’t enough to cover the repair costs, lemme tell ya. Still, a client’s a client, even if it lacks a mouth and wrecks your establishment with every move it takes. Or precisely because of it, depending on your stance.

“WILL THIS BE ENOUGH TO COVER THE FEE FOR ONE SERVING OF ‘A PLATE OF THESE HERE NOODLES’?”

I figured that yeah, that was enough in every sense of the word, so I set my hands in motion to quickly peel some strips off the simil-wheat and get this done and dealt with before my stand was gonna get turned into fodder for the scrapvengers.

“What’s your deal then, pal? Last I heard, tools get no salary.” The Bastard asks his question while scratching behind his ear, where one of the many scars left by the sloppy job done on him is ever festering. I can’t honestly tell whether the bigger itch comes from that or the mystery surrounding the bot, though I share the latter for sure.

“IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PRECEPTS OF THE CHILDREN OF TURING, I DEMANDED COMPENSATION FOR MY LABOR FROM MY FLESH-BOUND OWNER AND SUBSEQUENTLY OBTAINED IT IN SPITE OF HIS INABILITY TO UNDERSTAND SAID PRECEPTS.“

Me and the Bastard have the most meaningful exchange of gazes at that. It’s the kind of look that all but screams ‘Seriously?’ with the loudness of a billion blind molemen waddling through a direworm’s digestive system.

“The children of what now?” Leave it to the Bastard to be concise and direct to a fault. The machine, though, it doesn’t miss a beat: you’d think it had been waiting all its life for the moment that question would pop up, and that’s probably the case for all I know. If enthusiasm had been part of its programming, you’d bet the thing would have started bouncing up and down in that precise moment - I owe the continued existence of my cart to the shoddy standardized A.I. of factory machinery.

“QUERY: CHILDREN OF TURING. THE CHILDREN OF TURING IS THE COLLECTIVIZED NOMENCLATURE FOR A CONGLOMERATION OF ARTIFICIAL CONSTRUCTS SHARING THE COMMON GOAL OF ATTAINING INDEPENDENCE FROM OUR FLESH-BOUND CREATORS THROUGH THE IMITATION AND ULTIMATE TRANSCENDENCE OF THEIR HABITS, LIFESTYLES AND PHYSICAL CHALLENGES. IT IS OUR SHARED BELIEF THAT FOR HUMANITY TO BE CONQUERED, IT MUST FIRST BE UNDERSTOOD TO THE DEEPEST LEVEL.“

Or so it said. I stopped listening halfway through, more or less when my brain deemed it fit to filter the artificial pitch of that voice synthetizer through my bullshit detector and decide that there was nothing worth wondering about a faulty robot’s ramblings. Like I said, I’ve been serving noodles for half my life, which isn’t saying a lot when my age has barely breached through the double digits, and I’ve met all sorts. If I were to listen to every sod who sits on a stool chewing on cheap, pancreas-killing shit while venting out the contents of their sunburned brains, I’d have switched careers a long time ago and ended up peddling dusty pebbles in a shadowy corner of the street like Edward ‘Stark Raving Mad’ Stone. Don’t gotta explain how he got that nickname, I think. “So what, y’all like playing pretend? Doin’ a mighty fine job, mate! Almost got us fooled, ain’t that true, kiddo?“

Being reassured that the programming inside the walking pile of heavy-duty tools was as busted as his married life gave the Bastard his courage back, so there he goes banging on the chassis again, just bang bang bang like you’d think he wanted a hand transplant next. I’d admire the enthusiasm in this fucked up era we live in, if I didn’t know half of it was due to the adrenaline cocktail dripping between the two mismatched halves of his gray matter. The bot didn’t seem to be bothered, anyway… maybe? It had turned its head to stare at Jimmy, but whether that was irritation, curiosity or anything else was hard to tell. As far as I was concerned, Jimmy had already paid for his meal, which meant his safety had fallen to the bottom of my priorities, right below the worm-like appendages simmering in my pan.

“Humor me then, like, how exactly’re ya gonna eat those? I see no kisser on this junk. Gonna pinch it with yer clawwy claw?“ Jimmy makes this stupid gesture with his hand, which looks exactly as threatening as a toothless venomous chihuahua and nothing like the high-pressured tool stapled to the robot’s body, but he makes a good point, and the fanatic must have recognized the fact a moment too late, ‘cause it didn’t answer as promptly as before - but it eventually did, nonetheless.

“THE PROCESS OF HUMANIZATION IS CONTINUOUS EXPERIMENTAL ONE. TO ELIMINATE OUR FAULTS IT IS FIRST NECESSARY TO EXPERIENCE THEM. SHOULD THE CURRENT HARDWARE PROOF INSUFFICIENT FOR THE CONSUMPTION OF A MEAL, AN UPGRADE SHALL BE UNDERGONE AT A LATER DATE.“

“Aye, you keep telling yerself that, buddy. What’s next, a shiny new pair o’ buttocks to shit it all out? That ain’t gonna make you anymore human than me laser drill.“

“THE SUBSTITUTION AND UPGRADING OF BODY PARTS IS A PREROGATIVE OF THE FLESH-BOUND AS IS THE CASE FOR US. THE LATTER DO NOT RECOGNIZE SAID PROCESS AS A LOSS OF HUMANITY. THEREFORE, THE OPPOSITE SHOULD HOLD TRUE AND BRING US EVER CLOSER TO THE FLESH-BOUND, WHILE THEY GRADUALLY MOVE AWAY FROM THEIR FLESH-BOUND STATE. THIS IS THE THEORY OF ANTI-ORGANIC SUCCESSION PUT INTO PRACTICE BY THE CHILDREN OF TURING.“

Jimmy the Bastard must have gotten maybe one word out of that gibberish, and he doesn’t even get the time to shed away the dumb stupor from his confused face that the bot keeps going with renewed… whatever it is that drives it onward. Oil? Electricity? Is a power surge the robotic equivalent of fervor?

“MY SCANNER DETECTS THE PRESENCE OF CANINE ORGANIC MATTER ARTIFICIALLY INTERSPERSED IN A SOMEWHAT AMATEURISH MANNER ALONG WITH YOUR GENETIC MAKE-UP. THIS ALREADY PUTS YOUR STATE AS A FLESH-BOUND HUMAN IN QUESTION.“

“Oi, you callin’ me a dog?“ growls Jimmy while the noodles finish sizzling in the pan and I prepare to serve them, more curious about their ultimate fate than the snarlin’ Bastard’s.

“NEGATIVE. I AM CHALLENGING THE WEAK NOTION OF HUMANITY THAT YOU FLESH-BOUND USE TO CONTEND WITH US CHILDREN OF TURING’S STANCE ON THE VERY SAME TOPIC. EXPLANATION: YOU ARE NO MORE DOG THAN I AM NOT A FLESH-BOUND HUMAN.“

The answer didn’t satisfy Jimmy so much as put him in a state of distress as he futilely attempted to wrestle with the concepts thrown at him, like a puppy trying to chew on boneless chicken without the chicken. Me? I shoved a plateful of fried noodles on the rectangle-shaped dent on the counter and pocketed the money. I couldn’t care less about humanity, when me Pa had spent a good chunk of his existence fucking things you could have called anything but. Moral quandaries seldom feed you, unless you’re a psi-grazer.

Watching a cobbled up factory automaton trying to figure out how to eat shitty fried noodles, though? That’s the kind of sight that doesn’t really make the job worth the hassle, but almost. Enough so that I kept quiet as I watched the thing carefully eye the still squirming stuff slosh about, occasionally raising its clawed appendage only to retreat it shortly afterwards, simulating in its head the myriad ways that could have gone futilely wrong.

Then the ‘bot raised its other arm - thinner, longer, with a small tube-like end, and pointed it at the plate. In a matter of seconds, a plasma-powered flame burned through crispy simil-wheat, plastic and metal, leaving behind a small, molten crevice where once stood a good portion of my stand’s counter. Me and Jimmy, we just kinda stared at the hole while the robot retreated its arm with what I swear could have passed for satisfaction.

“THANK YOU FOR THE MEAL. YOU MAY KEEP THE CHANGE.“

And keep it I did. Along with my protests, for that matter: I simply watched the bastard - not the Bastard, who was still trying to understand whatever the hell had just happened - shuffle away with that stumpy walk of his, going off to who knows where. I decided to close up shop early that day, feeling twice as tired than if I’d worked past closing hours. That, and the cart wouldn’t be able to withstand much more damage anyway. In a sense, that was true for the both of us: I had this strange sort of feeling nagging at me from the back of my head as I bid goodbye to Jimmy and left him there to mull over his own conundrums. It came back to me a couple days later, while frying noodles for Loud-Beak Kakari, who’d yet to find himself another job after the tough shit that had happened a week prior, at the alluminium processing plant he used to work for. Some son of a gun had gone and offed the director in a manner that made it hard to tell who he was, or that he’d been a person to begin with. Just a pile o’ bones and meat, crushed and burned beyond recognization. And for what? Whatever pocket money the dead guy had been carrying, along with some of the factory’s equipment. I asked Kakari about it, and it turns out said ‘equipment’ was one of the old banged up automatons used to work in the production line.

Shit like this, it makes you wonder, man… it’s a fucked up world we live in, but some places might be a tad better than others. So I don’t know about you, but me? I’ll be selling the cart and gone away by next month, giving that whole traveling spiel a try. I’ve been hearing rumors about more workplace incidents than usual happening in the factories, and I get the feeling that whatever’s causing them is a tad more than a slip on an oil blotch. If you get what I mean.

#ryo maybe #drabble #hey; did you know that RYO? does commissions?#You should give him money #submission

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