#something about the humanity within the machine

[eldritch-spouse]

Seeing you new xenomorph OC reminded me of an old idea I had so long ago that I have never shared and I thought I've forgotten.

It was about a new rare species where there could be males and females unlike the original species where they were all females or asexual (i didn't check, correct me if I'm wrong) and looked like the drones except they have a simpler "crown" on their heads like the xenos queens. Like they are more like "princes" or "princesses".

The main differences are that they need another species to reproduce and the mature one can leave peacefully their hive to find their own mates and start their own. They prefer intelligent species as their mates (like humans! wink wonk).

Once they find their life mate (cuz they are monogamous too) they enter their "courting phase" where they are extra aggressive against everything specially those physically near their chosen mate. With their mate they try to show how attentive and capable to provide they are, like bringing trinkets similar to your belongings or something you seem to like (like that snack from that vending machine you seem to like, they swear they will learn how to get it from it like you do or rip it open and loot everything), other prey or some tough enemies like a yautja or a pile of marines.

Mostly, they would watch their mate from the shadows to learn their behavior and adopt it but sometimes they would approach and grope their body to learn about their anatomy and what make them tick. This last bit is important for the next phase, the "honeymoon".

Once they have learned enough and prepared a nice nesting spot, no matter if their mate is willing or not (although if they seem willing that would speed things up) they will knock them out and bring them to the nest. There they will seal the entry and start breeding their mate until "genetics decipher out". Once they are expecting they will start to grow in size until they are a xeno queen/king and being even more territorial. Don't expect them to stop trying for more offspring once they are kings/queens, the size difference won't deter them (maybe even encourage them). Btw, it's impossible for the offspring to be anything but xenos.

Also, I don't why I like to think if their mate dies for some reason or another they become depressed, like swans. They won't even be as aggressive as when they met their mate, maybe even passive to anything but not before getting revenge.

… Man, that was long. TL;DR: new species of monogamous xenos that need other species for reproduction and they are like xenos queen

I thought about something similar too years ago, but then I veered into a different scenario where a hive stricken by a virus that eliminated all females -Leaving none to become Queen- Had to adapt and pick another species' female to become their Queen. An old hive, with many a specimen from different hosts.

This is a grossly short summary of a rather complex idea that I'm freaky about, but naturally, you would be chosen. And part of the story I had concocted involved you coping with your new role, the new instincts and abilities you acquired, as well as managing to keep some of your creature comforts through it all (hilariously also watching xenomorphs of varied casts adapt to them). There was also a ridiculous amount of porn, because it wouldn't be my story otherwise. Since all males had to adapt to his new reproductive system, they would develop ruts and the hive would fall into chaos because hormones get in the way of their perfect routines. You come along and a selection process begins, wherein you must pick mates from all casts of xenomorphs present (they're all peacocking in efforts to get chosen) -To keep population levels stable- And those males will later enter your chambers to deposit the eggs within their painfully engorged ovipositors inside your adapted womb.

And who wouldn't want to mate with the Queen, right? Especially this new Queen, affectionate and soft and warm as she is...

I never played too much with the concept of a xenomorph King, but if I had to pick a specimen to base the concept off of, it'd be a tie between these three.

The "xenomorph King" figure, the "Chimera" from Aliens Rogue and the "Alpha" from Alien Bloodlines. I'm partial towards Alpha.

#unrelated⭐️ #xenomorphs were my teenage hyperfixation and I am feral over the upcoming movie like you wouldn't belive

[impossible-rat-babies]

me gripping the omega raids like a squeaky toy I can be normal about these raids I promise

#something about the humanity within the machine #the Hello World? part of the savage #I am the omega and I walk with the alpha. where one ends another begins #alpha in a sense of a program in its alpha stages—the first iteration #the start. the beginning despite the flaws #Alexander is so much of the divine within the machine #and omega feels so much like the humanity within yhe machine #god ffxiv like a lot of final fantasy does so well at mixing genres #the technology with the fantasy #sjdjdjdjd I Adore pandamonium but the themes in the omega raids really are so so good #savage and ultimates containing lore my beloved

[gabv1el]

Alas, poor Yorick.... oh, how did it go?

#listen Sisyphus calling V1 'child of man' stuck something within me ok it got me thinking #about how most machines are creatures of instinct and even the ones that are somewhat intelligent come nowhere close to the V models #and how regardless of its role in their demise V1 is probably one of the last creatures in which human culture lives on #it's sentient and self aware and can probably pick and choose what to keep in its memory #we know it likes music and we've seen its internal dialog quote Shakespeare and it thinks about philosophy #even though its a war machine its mind was made so lovingly COMPLETE and like...yeah.... it really is the last child of man #someday I'm gonna explore this in a deeper way I swear #ultrakill #v1 ultrakill

[hamletthedane]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

#shut up e #long post #Saturday thoughts #this has been in my drafts for a week haha #also this is the heart of why AI art feels so wrong #forget the discussion of copyright and theft etc - even if models were only trained on public domain they would still feel very wrong #because they’re not art. art is the labor of creation #even commercial art and art commissioned by the popes and kings of history: there is humanity in the labor of it #unrelated: I did not know living in the Bronx was now something to brag about. How the fuck do y’all New Yorkers afford this city???

[phantomrose96]

The conversation around AI is going to get away from us quickly because people lack the language to distinguish types of AI--and it's not their fault. Companies love to slap "AI" on anything they believe can pass for something "intelligent" a computer program is doing. And this muddies the waters when people want to talk about AI when the exact same word covers a wide umbrella and they themselves don't know how to qualify the distinctions within.

I'm a software engineer and not a data scientist, so I'm not exactly at the level of domain expert. But I work with data scientists, and I have at least rudimentary college-level knowledge of machine learning and linear algebra from my CS degree. So I want to give some quick guidance.

What is AI? And what is not AI?

So what's the difference between just a computer program, and an "AI" program? Computers can do a lot of smart things, and companies love the idea of calling anything that seems smart enough "AI", but industry-wise the question of "how smart" a program is has nothing to do with whether it is AI.

A regular, non-AI computer program is procedural, and rigidly defined. I could "program" traffic light behavior that essentially goes { if(light === green) { go(); } else { stop();} }. I've told it in simple and rigid terms what condition to check, and how to behave based on that check. (A better program would have a lot more to check for, like signs and road conditions and pedestrians in the street, and those things will still need to be spelled out.)

An AI traffic light behavior is generated by machine-learning, which simplistically is a huge cranking machine of linear algebra which you feed training data into and it "learns" from. By "learning" I mean it's developing a complex and opaque model of parameters to fit the training data (but not over-fit). In this case the training data probably includes thousands of videos of car behavior at traffic intersections. Through parameter tweaking and model adjustment, data scientists will turn this crank over and over adjusting it to create something which, in very opaque terms, has developed a model that will guess the right behavioral output for any future scenario.

A well-trained model would be fed a green light and know to go, and a red light and know to stop, and 'green but there's a kid in the road' and know to stop. A very very well-trained model can probably do this better than my program above, because it has the capacity to be more adaptive than my rigidly-defined thing if the rigidly-defined program is missing some considerations. But if the AI model makes a wrong choice, it is significantly harder to trace down why exactly it did that.

Because again, the reason it's making this decision may be very opaque. It's like engineering a very specific plinko machine which gets tweaked to be very good at taking a road input and giving the right output. But like if that plinko machine contained millions of pegs and none of them necessarily correlated to anything to do with the road. There's possibly no "if green, go, else stop" to look for. (Maybe there is, for traffic light specifically as that is intentionally very simplistic. But a model trained to recognize written numbers for example likely contains no parameters at all that you could map to ideas a human has like "look for a rigid line in the number". The parameters may be all, to humans, meaningless.)

So, that's basics. Here are some categories of things which get called AI:

"AI" which is just genuinely not AI

There's plenty of software that follows a normal, procedural program defined rigidly, with no linear algebra model training, that companies would love to brand as "AI" because it sounds cool.

Something like motion detection/tracking might be sold as artificially intelligent. But under the covers that can be done as simply as "if some range of pixels changes color by a certain amount, flag as motion"

2. AI which IS genuinely AI, but is not the kind of AI everyone is talking about right now

"AI", by which I mean machine learning using linear algebra, is very good at being fed a lot of training data, and then coming up with an ability to go and categorize real information.

The AI technology that looks at cells and determines whether they're cancer or not, that is using this technology. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is the technology that can take an image of hand-written text and transcribe it. Again, it's using linear algebra, so yes it's AI.

Many other such examples exist, and have been around for quite a good number of years. They share the genre of technology, which is machine learning models, but these are not the Large Language Model Generative AI that is all over the media. Criticizing these would be like criticizing airplanes when you're actually mad at military drones. It's the same "makes fly in the air" technology but their impact is very different.

3. The AI we ARE talking about. "Chat-gpt" type of Generative AI which uses LLMs ("Large Language Models")

If there was one word I wish people would know in all this, it's LLM (Large Language Model). This describes the KIND of machine learning model that Chat-GPT/midjourney/stablediffusion are fueled by. They're so extremely powerfully trained on human language that they can take an input of conversational language and create a predictive output that is human coherent. (I am less certain what additional technology fuels art-creation, specifically, but considering the AI art generation has risen hand-in-hand with the advent of powerful LLM, I'm at least confident in saying it is still corely LLM).

This technology isn't exactly brand new (predictive text has been using it, but more like the mostly innocent and much less successful older sibling of some celebrity, who no one really thinks about.) But the scale and power of LLM-based AI technology is what is new with Chat-GPT.

This is the generative AI, and even better, the large language model generative AI.

(Data scientists, feel free to add on or correct anything.)

#chrissy speaks

[ciphillan]

POV: he's gonna monologue about how much he dislikes you or smth

I think being tortured and killed and revived again and again by a sadistic omnipotent AI for 109 years would fix me.

[Reblogs >>> Likes] ⚠️PLEASE DO NOT REPOST⚠️

Insane ramblings under the cut:

If harlan ellison didn't want us to fuck the incel war machine he wouldn't have written lines like "he was God as Daddy the Deranged" and "the machine masturbated and we had to take it or die". What else did he mean by this

I have no time and I must draw. I read ihnmaims last year when I started post-grad and instantly got AM brainrot. I binged every single piece of ihnmaims media within the next few days. The Hate and radio monologues live rentfree in my brain

I'm also not sure if I wanted the person he's got under bondage to be Ted or a self-insert. Feel free to imagine it as yourselves, AM fuckers

Btw I'm surprised how BIG ihnmaims nation is on tumblr! There's been a boom recently so HIIIII PLEASE TALK TO ME ABOUT THE AI WITH THE INSATIABLE BLOODLUST AND THE HOT VOICE

This is very different from my usual stuff bc I hate drawing straight lines and mostly draw humans. But I just wanna contribute something to ihnmaims tumblr SO BAD I wanna puke, yall are so talented and creative!! I don't have a solid AM design, I can barely draw machines and cables so this is all you get! A weird claw hand, somewhat of a 'spine' along the cables behind his monitor, an eye in his logo to stare at you as he ties you up, questionable cable placement etc etc

..was anyone gonna tell me amazing digital circus is based on ihnmaims. is pomni their ted

Cough cough AIDAN from the Illuminae files by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff was my evil AI lover awakening

#ihnmaims #my art #ihnmaims fanart #allied mastercomputer #ihnmaims am #am #traditional drawing #sketchbook #objectum #i have no mouth and i must scream #artists on tumblr #cogito ergo sum #artblr #and dare I say it #eroticism of the machine

[txttletale]

NOT asking this as a gotcha, I'm 100% sincere, can you point to pieces of AI art that you feel are interesting uses of the medium? Because I'm not philosophically opposed to it, but at the same time I've never seen anything that wasn't naked bandwagon shilling by the same people who pushed NFTs

sure! i think a classic of the medium is secret horses

(i sadly don't know who made it, but i've seen it around and fallen in love). this is everything AI art should be, imo, taking advantage of the liminal dreamlike quality of the medium and using titling and framing to say something about the piece that wouldn't exist if it was presented on its own. secret horses...

my favourite band, everything everything, released an album last year that made use of AI generation, both for the album's art and for small portions of the lyrics (interestingly, they've refused to say which lyrics are AI written and which are human written, which adds another layer of intrigue to me -- the only lyric that they've confirmed is AI generated is the title of 'software greatman', which forms the haunting, powerful chorus of the song that gets deconstructed into electronic incoherence. other highlights include the album art, part burning skyscape, part incomprehensible machine. what is the machine? is it a camera? a monitor? a train? does it matter?

and finally from this album cycle i adore the hallucinogenic exuberance of their video for i want a love like this:

in terms of dedicated artists working primarily within the AI medium, i'm a huge fan of @reachartwork, a really innovative artist who keeps blowing me away with evocative and interesting pieces and pioneer in ethical and cooperative AI art techniques. i'm an especially big fan of their grotesque and uncomfortable 'tooth machine' series:

as well as their desolate, bleak, alien landscapes:

(hole in the sky / river lethe )

and their project, the @infiniteartmachine, a model that produces art based upon algorithmically generated prompots -- effectively a long-term art piece.

finally, i'm a very very big fan of @roborosewater-masters, a bot that makes AI-created magic the gathering cards. this might not parse as 'art' to some people, or be interesting to analyze as such, but to me, someone obsessed with games and game studies, i think that the mix of synctactically correct magic the gathering rules text and abrupt non sequitur makes for really striking and funny pieces that prompt me to think about what the limits of games and gaming are

these are just the artists and pieces i can name off the top of my head, but i hope that they're representative of what generative art has to offer when it's not being done by grifters chasing the lowest common denominator.

#ask #yiffmaster

[call-me-strega]

Dc x DP Prompt #8: Best Friend’s Brother

Preface: this prompt can be used with different characters but I’m writing it as Dead on Main bc that’s my favorite. Also the colleges I mention are real colleges from the DCU

~~~

Danny Fenton was 18 when he moved to Gotham for college.

It was the only place with a half decent engineering program that would take a kid with his record; drop in grades, unexplained absences, missing class, a disciplinary record, etc. Plus there was a decent saturation of both magic and ectoplasm in Gotham’s air. After he got accepted he decided to tell his parents he was Phantom. They reacted surprisingly well all things considered. They were horrified to learn they’d been hunting their son but it quickly turned into acceptance to listen to what he had to tell them. Now they turned their obsession from hunting ghosts to learning more about ghost more humanely. He also managed to get his former rouges to agree to call off any major shenanigans in favor of less destructive outlets. (He got Ember a TikTok and a YouTube channel, he set up a drag racing circuit in the realms for Johnny and Kitty, let Technus enter the internet as long as he stayed within Amity’s grid or help Ember manage her stuff, allowed Desiree grant wishes for Make a Wish Foundation kids so long as she didn’t horribly twist them, etc.)

Now with the town not at constant risk of danger and his parents agreeing to really handle any rouge ghosts, Danny could leave Amity with a clear conscience. His friends were also growing up and heading to their own colleges. Tucker was heading to Ivy University in New England, which rivaled MIT in terms technological prestige, and Sam decided on Vandermeer University in Pittsburg, which had a reputation for being a very liberal, anti-authority campus. Although their trio would be spread out, Danny found comfort in the fact that they’d all moved from the Midwest to the Northeast.

With promises to stay in touch a visit. Danny got set up in GCU’s dorms, ready to move into the next chapter of his life.

~

Danny Fenton was 20 when Tim Drake (age 19 but nearing 20) officially became one of his best friends.

They had been introduced to each other by their mutual friend Sebastian Ives for a new Warlocks and Warriors campaign. Their friendship extended beyond WnW when they ended up on the same Applied Physics and Mechanics class. It was cemented when they got pair up for a project in class and had to spend lots of time around each other.

Danny didn’t mind that Tim tended to be a bit flaky and Tim didn’t mind that Danny was possibly not 100% human. They didn’t ask each other too many questions about that stuff. They knew the other had something odd about him and that was fine with them. It was nice to have a causal friend they could be normal with, without being questioned about their more peculiar behaviors.

They officially became best friends when the built a Rube Goldberg machine with a working trebuchet within an hour of the three they had to complete it for their Applied Phys-Mech final. Danny introduced Tim to Sam, Tucker and Jazz. Tim introduced him to Steph, Tam, and Cass. They texted and hung out fairly often. They truly did consider each other one their best friends.

~

Danny Fenton is 22 when he meets Tim’s family.

Tim’s 21st birthday is coming up and he has plans with his family the day of and is going out with his friends, including a couple from out of town, that night. They want to take him out for his first drink and it’s fortunate timing since it’s the weekend so nobody has to worry about classes. Everyone who was going was already informed that Tim would be spending most of the day with his family before Steph and Cass would bring to the club everyone was meeting up at. Which is why it’s purely a coincidence when he runs into them at BatBurger during the lunch rush.

Danny had just picked up the part-time job to earn a little extra cash to pay for his hobbies. Tim new about it but didn’t know the exact location he worked. That’s why they were both presently surprised when they heard each others voices in the drive through. When they pulled up to window Danny saw his friend leaning over a tired looking black-haired man, trying to stick his head out of the drivers window to give Danny a maniacal grin.

He quickly introduced the other passengers of the car as his dad, Bruce, and three of his brothers Dick, Jason, and Duke. He mentioned he had a fourth brother, Damian, who was still at home. Danny couldn’t really see everyone all that well on account of they were inside a car but he happily greeted them as well. They laughed and Danny wished Tim a happy birthday saying he’d see him at his celebration later tonight before handing them their food. He could the rowdy boys ribbing their brother as the car drove away and Danny resumed his work.

That incident seemed to have opened a gate because now Tim felt more comfortable inviting him over when his brothers were still around the house. He occasionally talked about his family more and Danny returned the favor letting snippets of his own family spill a little more. Occasionally, he’d see Tim’s family outside of his interactions with Tim.

He’d run into Damian, and sometimes Bruce or Dick was with him, at the museum or in the park while the younger had been walking his dog and stopped to say hi a couple of times. He chatted with Dick a couple of times when they were both in line to get coffee at a cafe. He saw Duke on a college tour once and waved at him.

The family member he probably saw the most other that Tim (and by extension Cass) was actually Jason. He’d ended up ditching BatBurger to get some more practical experience at an apprenticeship at the auto shop Jason went to to get his motorcycle serviced. The two of them got along pretty well and would often make conversation when Jason was waiting on his bike to be ready or to get his bill.

At first is was small talk about little things like how he and Tim were doing in class or how their days were going but they soon grew to have genuine interests in each other. Jason let Danny talk about space and mechanics and even gave his own thoughts sometimes, once helping Danny realize he was over complicating the circuit board of the device he was building. In return Danny let Jason ramble to him about literature, even taking the initiative to read a book Jason mentioned so he could talk to him about it better. Their conversation tended to be on the briefer side but were always enjoyable to both parties.

Danny actually liked being around Jason a lot but didn’t really bring that fact up a lot around Tim as it didn’t seem necessary. Tim was pretty glad that Danny got along with his family but he preferred to keep them in separate places in his mind. Danny knew and respected that, only really mentioning that he’d seen them recently and that they’d told him to say hi on their behalf (or die in Damian’s case occasionally).

~

Tim Drake was 22 when he came to a horrific realization.

Well, perhaps horrific was a bit of an exaggeration. Tim wasn’t necessarily horrified by the revelation. In all honesty he didn’t know how to feel. He felt an odd mixture of protectiveness, possessiveness, confusion, and optimism(?).

You see, Tim and Danny had been hanging out in the campus center, studying and goofing off when he got a text from Jason saying he was coming to pick him up for family dinner at the manor since he was closest and Dick was busy picking up Duke and Damian from their after school clubs.

“What’s up?” Danny asked him curiously.

Tim set his phone on the table and started putting his stuff away. “My brother is coming to pick me up for family dinner so I gotta head out soon.”

“Ah well I should probably get going too. Tell Dick I said hi.”

“Actually, it’s Jason. Dick is picking up Duke and Damian,” he said shoving his textbook into his bag.

“Oh? That’s nice of him. Hey do you wanna just head out together?” Danny asked, fidgeting with his hoodie strings.

Tim noticed a slight strain in Danny’s voice at the mention of Jason but didn’t comment. He just nodded his head sure and walked outside with Danny. They got out to the street when Tim realized he’d left his phone in the library. He faced palmed and asked Danny if he could hold his stuff so it wouldn’t slow him down as he ran back to the campus center to get his phone. Danny agreed to and hold his stuff and wait for Jason while Tim went back.

After getting his phone Tim started heading back to where he left Danny when he saw that Jason had arrived that Jason had arrived and was talking to Danny. He was about to call out to them when he noticed several things in quick succession. Danny was fidgeting with his hoodie, something he tended to do when nervous. The tips of Danny’s ears were a light shade of pink (it isn’t cold out yet?). Danny looked deeply absorbed in his conversation with Jason in a way that reminded Tim of how he talked about space. And Jason seemed just as absorbed in the conversation as well.

The gears in Tim’s head went into overdrive and he realized ‘Ah- Danny has a crush on Jason’. His eyes widened as his head whipped around to examine Jason again. He saw a look of genuine fondness in his eyes. Thus Tim was confronted with the aforementioned horrific realization and complicated feelings. Tim didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or both.

‘My dumbass best friend has a crush on my brother. And worse(?), my idiot brother returns those feelings.’

#dc x dp #long post #dead on main #danny fenton #tim drake #jason todd #jason todd x danny fenton #danny and tim are bffs #Danny has a crush on his best friends older brother #he hasn’t realized this quite yet #Tim isn’t sure how to feel about this #Jason probably likes Danny too but also doesn’t realize it #Tim is the only one who is aware and suffering #he has to make a choice: #wingman his idiot friend and idiot brother #or hoard his friend to himself #Strega’s dc x dp prompt

[celestialprincesse]

Just going to leave this here and then sneak away! K bye! 🎀🩰

John Price is a man who runs on instinct. After years in the forces, he has to be. He's learned that the feeling in his gut is almost never wrong, and learning how to trust it is a skill. Right now though? He's wishing that his stomach would stop roiling. He's so anxious he feels like he might actually be sick. Kyle sits earnestly at his side, hunched over in the plastic hospital chair nursing a long gone flat vending machine Coke.

They've been tuning out your screams for a good three hours now.

Something within John breaks with every guttural cry that sounds from under the doorway. He's heard so many countless screams of agony from faceless people. They've been and gone in his head like a passing storm. Yours, he thinks, will stick for a lifetime.

Realistically, he knows that you're safe. Receiving the best care you possibly can, safe within the walls of the modern private hospital his insurance more than covers. He also can't help but remind himself just how complicated giving birth can be - and you're so delicate to him.

He's not actually sure when Kyle got here, having been running on autopilot since your contractions started yesterday. All the boys love you just as much as you do them, and when he'd messaged their shared group with a simple: > On way to hospital now. they'd been so shit scared.

Each one of them had opted to take up shifts staying beside their captain in the hospital, waiting earnestly for if they were at all needed. Johnny had picked up groceries, claiming that he' d best know what to get for a new mum, seeing as he's the only one besides Price who actually has sisters, and a niece of his own. None of them would ever admit that they also wanted to be the first to see little baby Price, and to check in on his wife who'm they'd grown to love so much, but there'd definitely been attempts on all three sides to work out when the baby would approximately pop, so that they could time their stint accordingly.

"Think she's okay in there?" John croaks, lifting his head from his palms, squinting at the fluorescent hall lights with a tired grunt.

Kyle swallows the sip of Coke in his mouth before responding. "She's a trooper. I think if anyone can handle having a baby, it's your missus."

Hours later, your small hospital room falls silent, and John is immediately up on his feet, back ramrod straight, everything alert. And then, a baby cries. It's a little hiccuping whinge at first, but then his baby seems to find their voice, wailing up a storm.

"You should go. See them." Kyle prompts quietly, noticing his captain's reverie as he just stands there staring at the closed door.

Nurses file out one by one, whilst he makes his way in, a dazed sort of look on his face as he sees the swaddles blanket you hold close to your chest, gurgling softly as tiny fat fists reach out to your nose.

The stillness in the room is like time stops entirely, only finally broken by a soft "Hey." as your husband makes his way quietly to your side.

"Hi." You breathe, a soft smile blossoming on your tired face, scooting along in the hospital bed so he can sit beside you.

The reverence on his face as he looks down towards the face of such a small creature is a look only talked about in fairytales. A look that tells you that your baby is the luckiest child in the world to have a dad like John.

"She's a girl." You laugh softly, noticing the look on John's face, the one that says he's holding his tongue.

"Oh, my baby girl." Tears spring to his cerulean eyes as he brushes a gentle finger down the soft slope of her tiny nose.

For a moment, the two - three - of you sit in total stillness, entirely enraptured by the tiny human you currently keep held so closely to your chest. Until there's a quiet, tentative knock on the door.

"Mrs Price? Can we come in?" Kyle's voice comes softly from the other side, but before you can even finish your "Yes" not just Kyle, but also Simon and Johnny are practically barrelling into the room, barely able to contain their intrigue as they lock eyes with the little blanket wrapped parcel they've been waiting nine months to meet.

The minute you invite them to look at the sleeping face of your daughter, they're practically tripping over themselves to see the much anticipated baby Price.

"Looks jus' like her mam." Johnny observes, whilst Simon just stares, and Kyle busies himself with taking a picture of you, John and your baby girl.

"Bought 'er a present, mrs Price." Simon admits a little sheepishly as he pulls a haphazardly wrapped parcel from his coat pocket. A stuffed ghost teddy only just the size of your fist. "To remind 'er that uncle ghost is always looking out for her."

You're practically crying at the thought behind his gift, carefully side-hugging the lieutenant with the arm that's not holding your daughter.

"We're all here for her. And for you. Always. One for one and that."

#cod mwii #cod mw2 #captain John price #John price #captain price #price #captain price x f!reader #captain price x y/n #captain price x reader #john price x reader #john price x y/n #john price x f!reader #price x reader #price x y/n #price x f!reader #call of duty #cod #cod modern warfare #tf 141 #modern warfare #call of duty modern warfare #john price cod #john price x you

[obae-me]

Human Things that Confuse the Non-Humans

I've seen a lot of headcanons on my feed recently that are all about demonic traits and things that seem to scare or facinate MC, but what about the opposite? So I was wondering what sort of typical human things might either unsettle the non-humans, confuse them, or enchant them in some way.

Most of these are based off of personal heasdcanons I already have, so it's very self indulgent.

If ya'll have any other ideas, feel free to share, I'd love to hear them.

Also not proof read cuz I'm writing this at like 5 am due to sleep issues.

------

Circadian Rythem. I've always wanted to bring up how I headcanon that the Devildom doesn't even follow a 24 hour schedule, since the 24 hour thing is entirely based around the sun, and since they don't have a sun, it makes sense that days would follow some other set rule (I always think that Devildom days are much much longer, hence why MC is caught so many times in canon just taking naps wherever even when Belphie is not around), but that's a headcanon for another time. Anyways, I think the fact that Humans almost need to follow a certain sleeping schedule would totally confuse the demons. Demons only really sleep to stay at their strongest, it's not as vital to them. And the fact that humans can die if they don't get the proper sleep? Totally freaks them out. If MC ever pulls an all-nighter, they all think they're one foot in the grave. Having Solomon and MC getting naturally sleepy more often than the non-humans do might seem pretty adorable at times though.

The fact that human hair does indeed shed. I don't personally think demon or angelic hair would, I feel like hair is something they can change at will within reason (There is a chat with Mammon about him getting his haircut, but he said he was going to change it, so I like to think he made it grow back instantly and cut it like normal again). So I like to think that MC or Solomon leaving strands of hair behind is shocking, because the non-humans only ever associated that trait with animals, but they also find it weirdly cute in a way. The demons and angels do try to ask to comb or brush Solomon's and/or MC's hair from time to time. They feel like they're helping.

Being able to roll (curl? Fold?) your tongue. I think it would be hilarious if despite the millions of other things demons and angels can do, none of them can roll their tongues. And then they get confused too when they discover that not every human can do it either, just certain ones. Solomon can do it and treats it like a party trick.

Allergies. I don't know if it's said in Canon anywhere that demons and angels can have allergies...I hope not because (as much as it sucks) it would make sense for it to just be a human thing. Just the concept entirely would have the non-human's heads spin. What do you mean certain things can just have your body essentially attack itself? And it's different for every human? It can be quite literally anything? (The non-humans would absolutely have a heart attack if they knew about mine)

Human mimicry. I think we as humans just have a natural instinct to mimic or repeat certain things. It's a lot more noticeable with internet culture and memes and references and things, but I think a very human thing to do is repeat or mock things we come into contact with. For example, if we hear an animal noise, we try to repeat it like we're talking to it. If we see something in a weird position, we might try to pose like it, etc. We try to relate to things, which is why personification is so prominent in everything we do. (Like how some of us tell wobbily objects to stay or loud machines to shut up) The non-humans think this is very cute. They don't really do that. The closest thing they might relate to is a current trend, but those pass by rather quickly. Mammon probably thinks we're almost like a bunch of crows.

Emotional control/suppression. Hear me out. It's well known in canon that the brothers blow up easily. They'll fight someone over miniscule things. Even Lucifer, who says he prides himself on his control, loses his temper quite often. And Mammon, while seemingly the best at controlling anger, is very open about all his other emotions. The only two demons that clearly have the best control overall are Barbatos and Diavolo who are the two most powerful demons in the Devildom. It probably takes so much energy and power to keep themselves in check. We hardly ever see that dark aura around them if at all in the game, which seems to give the two this unspoken common respect. As for angels, it was already mentioned once that the angels do have magical methods forcibly controlling emotions, and despite that, I'm sure it takes ages of training and practice to get to the level of "patient perfection" they're supposed to exhibit. Now, humans aren't perfect, and of course, there's a lot of nuance to this like mental illness I won't get into, but generally speaking, we quickly learn how to regulate our emotions or how to supress them for society's sake. At the very least, when we get angry we dont suddenly get surrounded by a dark shadow or shift into a different form. And I like to think this terrifies the non-humans to a degree. They don't know when humans are angry or upset until it's blatantly obvious. They already are off-put by Solomon because they never really know what he's up to. And what if it's not even because he's doing "weird" things, what if it's just because he seems to be so calm all the time and no one knows how to read him? None of them know how to read human body language. There's no aura to see, no puffed up wings, no glowing eyes, no whipping tails. Humans can just...stand there, sometimes with a blank expression, sometimes just staring. It can give even the stronger willed beings the creeps. Bonus points if MC is great at masking too. You mean humans can just...take extreme emotions and tuck them away for later? I'm sure that's an absolutely wild concept. Most of the non-humans are just not capable of that kind of control. Albeit its not always the healthiest option, but just the fact that humans have the willpower to just sometimes choose or force themselves not to feel at all is Barbatos level intimidating.

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me headcanons #obey me imagines

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

If you allow yandere, then Can I request a yandere! Catnap x Creator! reader?

Time are in the middle of hour of joy, and Reader are in playcare, catnap are chasing reader and reader are desperately running away from him. and reader is creator or the person who came up with the design of Catnap.

'God..why did this happen? Why did this have to happen?? God, please make this stop...tell me I'm dreaming..'

Sadly, this was no dream.

The screams, the bloodshed, the senseless slaughter..

All of it was very much real, and you were right in the middle of it all, currently hiding within Playcare. You didn't even know what was going on exactly or why.

Everywhere you looked, there was another dead body on the ground, in the grass, and splayed across the stairs...all of whom were either your coworkers, scientists you've never seen before, security personnel, or innocent visitors.

Many of them had similar wounds--claw marks from none other than Catnap himself, who you saw stalking around the premises, looking for survivors.

But why would he do something like this?

How was he even capable of such violence?

It was supposed to be a normal and simple day:

You clocked in, checked up on Catnap's well-being after he put the children to sleep, and then left to attend to other matters. It was a mundane routine, but you were always excited to get up and go to work because of him.

However, you were running a tad bit late today and feared you'd get an earful from your supervisor considering the company's strict tardiness rules.

But on your way to Playcare, the emergency sirens resounded all throughout the facility. You had no idea what was going on, although the distant screams made you utterly terrified and had you running straight to that area, praying you'll find shelter from whatever danger lurked nearby...

Instead you ran straight into the scene of a massacre.

All orchestrated by Catnap and several mini-Smiling Critters who got loose, attacking and devouring whatever poor human got caught in their sights.

You had to throw on your gas mask quickly to avoid inhaling the red smoke. There was very little lingering in the air still, but judging from the corpses who still wore them or had them torn from their heads, they must have been prepared for this massive containment breach.

Even so, none were spared.

Catnap was probably smart enough to know the purpose of those masks. And he put them all to sleep. Permanently.

Yet somehow he hasn't spotted you yet, and you hoped to every god above that he didn't.

This pained you especially as you were on the designer team for the Smiling Critters. You actually made the first drawing of Catnap and presented it to your boss, who approved it right away...but only after making a few minor major adjustments.

Who knew something so sweet and innocent would turn into something so deadly?

He was supposed to be nothing more than a cartoon character brought to life and a plush toy (that unfortunately got recalled). How the higher-ups managed to achieve that with him and the other critters without your team ever knowing...you had no idea, but you were thrilled by the results.

You adored Catnap, and he was well aware that you created the idea of him--almost worshipping you, in a sense, and being the only human he'd properly communicate with.

In turn, you've communicated with him healthily, treating him like a person instead of an experiment. He did mutter strange things sometimes and talked about freedom, but you never probed him on that nor reminded him that he was a prisoner here.

No matter how true it may be, no toy deserves to be told that.

Now that you were here, hiding from the very thing you had loved and created, you weren't sure if you were even looking at Catnap anymore.

It may look like him, but it's not him.

Catnap is not a killing machine.

Whatever those scientists did turned him into a monster. A creature they failed to keep in check.

And he snapped, slaughtering many of your acquaintances and innocent families interested in the adoption program.

He kept muttering about an "Hour of Joy", which you've heard him speak of in the past. But you've always assumed he was talking about an upcoming birthday party or event within the Playhouse the other Smiling Critters were planning..

Not a giant bloodbath that painted the floors and walls of Playcare red.

You ducked behind a trash canister as you watched Catnap creep towards a survivor, who was also wearing a gas mask and breathing hard. Seeing that their leg was torn off at the knee, you knew there was no hope of helping them.

The moment they were spotted, their fate was sealed.

They were his prey now.

You couldn't look away as he paused for a moment, before reaching forward with a quick swipe, tearing off their mask. His claws left big gash marks across their face as they wailed in pain, but it didn't last long as he quickly pounced and slashed their throat next--leaving them to choke on their own blood.

Seconds later, their body stilled, becoming just like the rest of those surrounding them.

You made the horrible mistake of exhaling a shaky breath, the mask amplifying the noise.

That's when Catnap whipped his head towards you, those white dots growing larger.

"YOU. COME HERE."

Realizing your cover's blown, you jumped up and knocked the trash canister over, hoping it'd distract him long enough for you to race inside Home Sweet Home. But the diversion barely did anything, as you heard the loud stomps of the purple beast practically on your heels.

He lunged at the door just as you turned and slammed it shut, locking it and trying to shove a chair beneath the knobs. There was loud knocking on the other side, but eventually it stopped.

As soon as it did, you rushed into one of the many bunkbed rooms, finding it strangely devoid of children, scientists, and caretakers.

What happened to them all?

Did they evacuate safely?

Did they know about this ahead of time?

You had no idea, and quite frankly..now wasn't the time to find out. Rather, it was time for you to think of a way out of this wretched place, but you feared it won't be easy.

You knew the orphanage's interior like the back of your hand--the problem were the little Smiling Critters that you could currently hear pitter-pattering down the halls.

He put them here on patrol.

If any of them saw you..surely they'd alert him.

On the brightside, there were no traces of red smoke to be found, so you briefly took the mask off to give yourself a breather. Sweat poured down your face, and your throat ran dry; you could practically feel your own heartbeat pounding within it as you tried to figure out your next move.

Maybe if you wait here long enough, he'll get bored and leave...

Or maybe he'll-

All of the sudden, a critter leapt out from underneath one of the covers and tried latching onto your head. You yelled out as it screeched right beside your ear, attempting to bite into it and get a taste of your flesh, but you managed to throw it down to the ground and keep it crushed under your shoe.

You grabbed a nearby metal rod from a destroyed bedframe, pointing the sharp end at its throat..

Only to realize it was a Catnap, who looked perfectly intact aside from a little dirt caking its plush body.

Both of you had a bit of a staring contest.

And in the end....you couldn't find it in you to kill it.

All you could do was stare down at the creature, tears in your eyes as you watched it wriggle and snarl, pawing at your foot. It was barely putting up a fight now, which made you realize it probably didn't want to attack you.

Rather..it seemed hungry.

But why would it be hungry for human flesh?

Was Catnap the same way? Was he hungry or just killing for sport?

More importantly...why was he killing at all and tormenting you like this?

Maybe he was angry about his toyline being recalled, or the unfair treatment he's gotten here by the scientists. Or perhaps he felt outcasted by the other Smiling Critters.

You didn't know if any of them were still around, but for all you knew they could be just like him.

Hungry, rampaging monsters.

The ringing phone snapped you back to reality, and you cautiously took your foot off the tiny Catnap. It got up and skittered away into a nearby hole in the rotting wall, apparently having lost its appetite.

You quickly answered the machine, praying it was somebody upstairs trying to get in contact with you. Maybe a survivor who knew how to get you out. Before you gave them a chance to speak, you went first, being so scared, frustrated, and overwhelmed by everything that's happened thus far.

You just wanted this nightmare to be over already.

"Thank god. What the hell is going on?! It's like a fucking slaughterhouse down here-"

"It's a celebration. The Hour of Joy, little mouse."

Your blood ran cold, realizing who that voice belonged to. 'The Toys...they know how to use these phones..?'

"C-Catnap?"

"[Y/n]..why did you run away?" He whispered hoarsely. "I didn't know it was you."

"Wha...b-because you were killing people!" Your voice grew shaky, confused as to why he sounded so calm. "And you would've killed me, too!!"

"No."

"...what?"

"You are special to me, little mouse. You breathed life into me. You must be kept safe, for you are pure..unlike these wretched souls." He murmured. "They would have taken you away from me. Forever. I do not want that."

"Y-You're..not making any sense, Catnap." You struggled to wrap your head around his words. "If someone told you I'm quitting or getting fired or transferring..they lied. Nobody's taking me away from you..is that what you're afraid of? Is that why you did all of this?"

"I did it..for the Prototype...and for you. He told me I could spare one soul when our Hour of Joy is up."

Your stomach sank, but before you could ask him more about this "prototype", he cut you off.

"Shhhhhhhh. No more talking. No more running. Sleep, little mouse."

By the time you realized red smoke was starting to fill up the room, it was already far too late as you began coughing. You dropped the phone and frantically searched for your gas mask.

No way in hell were you going to fall asleep now.

Especially not after what he told you.

You'd rather die with the rest of them.

Suddenly you heard a small crunching noise and looked down, seeing that you stepped on one of the lenses. 'Shit..it must've broke off during my scuffle with Mini-Catnap...'

You could feel your eyelids growing heavy, and you instead tried grabbing something to stuff beneath the door to stop more smoke from seeping in. No matter what, you HAD to stay awake, you told yourself.

And yet..

That stained worn mattress with the blanket you half-dragged off suddenly looked quite comfortable.

You collapsed onto it, feeling exhaustion overwhelm you immediately despite the rest of your body's attempts to fight it--knowing your fate was ultimately left in his hands should you fail.

But you were so, so tired..

You couldn't help closing your eyes. Just for a little while.

Right before losing consciousness, however, you noticed that the door was now open, and through the red fog appeared Catnap himself.

Except he didn't look like a monster made of skin and bones, instead being a little bipedal purple cat who seemingly jumped straight out of the cartoon show.

His fur wasn't tainted with a single spec of blood or dirt.

He was perfect.

Your perfect creation.

All he did was smile, and you fell asleep smiling back.

#clanask #anonymous #poppy playtime x reader #poppy playtime catnap #catnap #smiling critters #angst #yandere #tw yandere #tw death mention

[ghouljams]

The Android!Ghost au you’ve talked about is giving « the guy is actually more of a heavily modified human (probably against his will too) than a complete android » and I’m living for this kind of stuff. Please, let’s keep talking about it.

:3c Ghost in the Shell(1995)-core

You've always been more at home with androids than with regular people. They're not as loud, they don't ask prodding questions, you know exactly where you stand with them. They don't care that you'd rather be in your workshop than... wherever normal people go when they're bored. You work on one of the heavy mechs during your lunch break. The bot hands tools up to you while you sit on its shoulder, its huge fingers delicately holding your rivet gun as you try to avoid breaking out the welding machine. It's not looking good.

"It's really stuck on here XG-9," You tell the mech, listening to the click of its cameras as they adjust to the new information.

"I can wait until yearly maintenance, this issue is not impeding my primary motor functions."

You roll your eyes, bots always say that. You know well enough that just because something isn't hurting now, doesn't mean it won't hurt later. Or, impede function later. You have to correct yourself on that. The mech technically doesn't feel anything, its diagnostic picked up a blip and it asked you to fix it. You scratch your head with a sigh and grab the offered hand to swing down.

Ghost is standing there waiting for you when you land. You take a step back, just a hair too close to the android for your own comfort. He cocks his head to the side. You're struck again by how quiet he is. Not just in the silent manner he regards you, but the silence with which his body functions. Androids aren't loud, not unless they're malfunctioning, but you can hear them. It's, well, ghostly. You wonder if that's how he got the nickname.

"What's wrong with 9?" He asks, there's no concern in his voice, why would there be?

"One of his casings is tight, it's compressing a motor," You report, glancing up at the mech. It's busy setting your tools back into their casings, giant hands careful with your pieces.

"His?" Ghost questions, and you hear his cameras click, dialing in to observe you. It's not a secret on base that you have a tendency to personify even the trash-droids. You don't rise to the bait. Ghost turns his attention to the mech instead. "You good 9?"

"Functioning within parameters Lieutenant," The mech chirps. Ghost nods and looks back at you.

"He's fine."

You sigh and go to gather your tools, grab a bite of your sandwich. You assume the lieutenant needs something fixed or he wouldn't be here. Lieutenant. That's unusual. Not unheard of, but definitely rare. Rare enough you don't think you've ever met an android that has the honor of a rank. Not one still in commission at least. You stare at him over your bread, inspecting him for any twitch in her servos.

He's beautiful machinery. Everything about him moves and flows as naturally as flesh and blood should. You've been thinking about what to use for his musculature since you last worked on him. Looked like some sort of aluminum poly... kev-spring... God you don't know, you're grasping at straws. Irreplaceable that's what it is.

"What d'you need?" You ask between bites. Gotta be something, androids don't come looking for you for no reason. They're not curious, they don't wonder how you're doing. They certainly don't stop to watch you work. Curiosity is a human emotion.

"Back plates need to be realigned, you didn't put them back right." He tells you. You nearly choke on your sandwich, thumping your chest and coughing as he stares down at you.

"Excuse me?" You cough in disbelief. Never in all your years as a mechanic have you been accused of such a thing. You glower at Ghost and set your food down. You twirl your finger to have him turn around, he does without complaint, stripping his zip-up off as he does. You don't know why he needs a jacket, not like he gets cold, but you suppose it helps him blend in. Although if he wanted to blend in he could've opted for a more human face plate.

You push his tee up, fingers skimming his synthetic skin, checking the black plated spine for misaligned pieces. Everything feels in order. You grab one of your micro screwdrivers and tap the tiny flat-head against the seams of his spine, testing for gaps. You push his shirt up higher, lean closer to get a better view. This would really be easier if he was sitting- no, laying down. His chest expands and contracts with false breaths, your working theory is exhaust release, but under your hand it feels like life.

You press the button at the top of his spine, watch the plates disengage and pop up. Starting at the bottom you push each one, manually, back into place. There's a small click that lets you know the plate is engaged, and his T5 doesn't click.

You grumble to yourself, and grab your glasses from your tool set along with a pair of needle nose pliers. It's an easy fix, a little fiddly, but you manage to manually hook the latch into place. You make a mental note to order a spare part. The rest of his spine lays down easily, neat clicks that you monitor more closely now that you've had to fix one. When you reach the top you make sure to press the plate on either side of his spine firmly into place before locking up the whole thing. There's a soft hiss, and a release of steam between the panels when you engage the lock.

Ghost rolls his shoulders with a soft groan as you drop his shirt back into place. "Fuck that feels good," He sighs, his modulator sighs. You frown, replacing your tools. It shouldn't feel like anything.

"Yeah?" You ask, human curiosity getting the better of you.

"Like gettin' my back cracked," Ghost hums, he twists at his waist like he's stretching out his muscles. Beautiful machinery, that looks and acts like a beautiful man. You think you understand why he wouldn't want a human face, he'd attract too much attention.

"Glad I could help," You look away from him, back to your tools, "I'll order a new part, should fix the misalignment permanently." You'll keep this fix off the books for now. It's too strange- Ghost is too strange. He almost feels human, but he can't be you've seen his mechanics. He can't be.

#cod x reader #x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #simon ghost riley #ghost x reader #ghost mw2 #simon riley cod #simon riley #ghost call of duty #ghost cod #android!ghost #mechanic!reader #cyberpunk au #this is like sex to me #repairs on an android can actually be so personal

[cursedvida]

Clean Sky || Noa x Mae

Authors note: just a little oneshoot of this couple bc they inspired me so much. Not warnings, just Noa having a meltdown. English isn't my first language so i'm sorry in advance lol.

Humans were nothing more than echoes of a world that existed far from his own, outside the comfort of his village, and they had never sparked even the slightest curiosity in him. He knew they were wild, irrational beings, sometimes stealing ape's food if they weren't careful enough. Scavengers like any other animals, nothing out of the ordinary. Noa had never seen one in person, but he hadn't had any particular interest in doing so either.

Ironically, now he can't stop thinking about them.

Specifically, about her.

He often wonders what became of the human girl. Echo, Nova, Mae. As many names as faces, as many facets as secrets she holds. During the arduous mornings of work trying to rebuild the village, the young ape finds himself surprised more times than he'd like, thinking about how that skinny-legged, weak-armed human must be wandering alone in such a hostile world. Humans are quick and agile, but also fragile and delicate. During their time traveling together, Noa often felt that, if he wanted to, he could easily break her in two. If he had embraced her with the same fervor with which he pounced on Soona or Anaya, he probably would have broken her a bone. But then he reminds himself that it makes no sense to consider such a thing, because he would never have embraced a human, nor would he do so now.

Days pass and life in the village returns to normalcy, the routines that once brought him joy now become monotonous and bland, as if something inside him tells him that this is not where he should be. There is something within him, an inexplicable urge that pushes him to go beyond what he has always known. Perhaps it's because he hasn't completely shaken off the anxious anguish he felt watching his entire clan disappear, or it may be because of the infinite enormity of the world beyond the walls of his home he experienced during his travel. But at some moments, he realizes that maybe it's all because of the stars that, every night, remind him of the universe he saw through that human machine and that Mae seemed to long for as much as he did.

On clear nights, Noa can't help but wonder if the human is seeing the same sky as him, if the stars shining so brightly from his village are the same ones she can see. He never got to know much about her, and the little she wanted to reveal was probably lies, but there was something in her eyes the last time they met, a certain melancholic sparkle that has stuck inside him like a huge thorn he's unable to remove. He doesn't quite understand why the image of the girl's moist eyes comes to mind every time he closes his eyes on nights illuminated by the headlights of the universe, but every time he recalls her face, he feels a current that urges him to run away from there as fast as possible, leaving him utterly terrified.

He had never been interested in leaving his village or living away from his clan. His mother, his friends and the people he grew up with mean everything to him, and yet suddenly he remembers that human hands are terribly similar to his own, only much smaller, with fingers so delicate they almost resemble brittle branches. He had touched Mae's hand a couple of times, unintentionally, feeling skin devoid of calluses or roughness, smooth and soft skin that made him wonder how it could resemble him so much and yet be so terribly different.

#kingdom of the planet of the apes #planet of the apes #mae x noa #noa x mae #nomae #kingdom of the planet of the apes fanfiction #nomae fanfiction #oneshoot #kotpota noa #kotpota mae #kotpota fanfic #kotpota #pota #potafanfic #it's been a while since the last time i write something #not sure about this but i was in my work thinking about these two #sorry for the typos englis isn't my first language #just wanting to add something to the fanbase

[tarjapearce]

ok, sorry if this sound dumb but what if Miguel broke his arm on a mission or training or something and his kinky brain can't think of how to fight off his desire for the reader while his right hand is no longer useable? sorry words are hard. just thinking about obsessed simp Miguel and i can't even!

Need a Hand?

Miguel O'Hara x Reader

(no pun intended). NSFW, Masturbation, Voyeurism, Dirty talk, a little of sub! Miguel.

Bizarre.

There wasn't another word that described the situation before you, but a lot of different synonyms. Funny, preposterous, ridiculous.

Him, out of everyone, out of the high endurance and resilient people you've met, had broken his arm while fighting Kingpin.

Fisk had snapped his arm like a twig while trying to stop him from rebuilding the particle collisioner. Even though the big man was put behind bars on his world, Miguel had suffered the consequences of the criminal's misguided wrath.

Another lesson for the Boss, really. He might have encountered many variants and villains through the years, even gotten used to their fighting like a second nature, however he was often prone to forget that some of those variants were even more vicious than the others and that he was still human.

And this Kingpin was either narcotically enhanced or was having a bad bad day.

"Serves you right." You chided him while taking a look at his forearm, tucked in within a thick mesh of resin, allowing his skin to breath and heal properly without restricting his limb completely, something he had designed himself.

"You're not funny."

"And you're a sore loser. Anyways, I'll shall get going. This Spiderwoman needs to face the landlord for increasing my rent without telling. Stay out of trouble and rest, Miguel."

With a pat on his shoulder, a portal was open to your dimension. His eyes fixed on your disappearing form through it.

A deep exhale. His hands rubbed softly where you had touched him. Warmth still lingered for a second before disappearing.

"Heartbeat frequency and neural activity increased, should I arrange a visit to the medical bay?"

"No. Just... get the coffee machine brewing."

"Wouldn't that make it worse?"

"Lyla" He warned and Lyla rolled her holographic eyes

"Yeah, yeah. I'll get Jessica if a heart attack happens."

"That's not how caffeine works."

Lyla shrugged before disappearing out of his sight.

-----

Despite being light and doing it's work as it should, the cast was turning into a nuisance. Even the Spider doctor had told him to keep it easy. Spider people healed fast that was much true, but that didn't mean they had to be as reckless as he was being.

Holed up in his lab, trying to get a proper hold of his cock after his eyes had stumbled upon a rare and delicious gem. Footage of you removing the watch and taking a shower. Other of you getting out of your suit and laying naked on your bed as you scrolled through your phone to watch silly videos.

But the one that had put in him in the predicament he was now, replayed over and over, as if engraving it in his brain wasn't enough.

You in bed, naked, a frequent habit he supposed, dragging slow and lazy circles on your clit while watching a saved porn video.

Smooth flesh parted and toyed with, glistening by the neurological response to such imagery.

His hand stroked himself but it felt wrong and painful. His bone wasn't cooperating, and neither was he with the aftercare.

You'd probably be nagging him on how stupid he was being for being so careless and stupid. A lazy smile crept to his face. You were so annoying, pretty and clearly making a mess out of him. The pain remained in his arm but it mattered little as the strokes were heightening his senses.

But as soon as Miguel tried to increase the pace, the sharp discomfort anchored him back to reality.

"Puta madre" He growled and let his cock go, frustrated for being unable to jerk off properly. He tried with his left hand but it wasn't as coordinated and vicious like his right hand. His upper back muscles tensed before throwing a metallic jumble of things in the wall. Suit quickly trapped his cock again.

What was the use of having it free would be if he couldn't get off without feeling pain?

"Miggy Miggy, where are you?"

Shit

He punched the screen off before you ventured in his room. Just in time to not blow his cover.

"Heard something crash, what's not working properly this time?"

His eyes darted to his own hands, but yours were settled on him, red eyes followed your line of sight and it dawned on him. A little flush bloomed in your cheeks.

"Oh."

A smirk displayed on your lips. Certainly a reaction he wasn't expecting.

"Need a hand?" You giggled while he frowned at your own little joke.

"That's... That's not funny."

"I'm not mocking you, Miggy. " With every step closer you gave, he stepped two back, until his back collided with the TV he had just punched. Turning it on back to life.

The lewd moans of your video echoed behind him and your eyes widened.

"Is that..."

You gulped at the sounds. It was impossible to not recall such moans when you knew them by heart, your favorite video. Something you had fantasized a shit ton of times with Miguel, if you were honest. You pushed him out the way to see what had gotten him all worked up.

"W-Wait!"

Your eyes remained glued on the screen, watching how you played and touched yourself. Fingers spreading and toying your cunt.

"Where did you get this?" He had to snap his head your way to divert his attention from the video and pin it on you.

"You leave the... uh... channel open."

It wasn't a lie. Ever since a little mission your gizmo had been malfunctioning. And the recording had been one of them.

"Makes sense. Told you to fix it and you didn't listen."

He swallowed thickly, hoping you'd forget about it. But of course, that wasn't possible.

"Did you like it, though?"

That smirk of yours made his senses to flare up in danger. He shrugged and your brow quirked in disbelief.

"Your cock betrays you, O'Hara"

His eyes narrowed when you stepped closer, but again the chair behind him blocked his escape, he plopped on it while you sat on one of his muscular and meaty thighs. He had to improve the distribution of the place later.

"Let me help with that."

His breath hitched at your words. Eyes locked with his, visual contact sacred to him, as your hand slid down his firm torso, the suit vanishing as you reached down his groin.

Hefty cock sprung back to freedom, a pearly bead of his precum greeting you while you took a hold of his base.

"So big and pretty" You nodded. It sent shivers down your spine, the way he breathed. His generous lips parting to give you a low groan as your thumb smeared the cum on his tip.

"Yeah?" He rasped and you pumped deep.

His jaw clenched and his eyes drooped, lust blown. A fiery flush covered his cheeks. His legs instinctively spreaded more to you, giving you more access to him. We'll worked arms rested on the chair, clawing at the hardened material of it.

Your hand let him go for a moment, fingers collected a good amount of saliva, to then paint his cock with it, making the pumping motion swiftly and faster.

His mouth slacked open, his left hand coaxed your head closer, pressing your forehead against his.

His eyes never left you, just like your hand never abandoned his cock. In fact, your fist had trapped his tip and squeezed his tip, earning you a well deserved whimper.

"You like that, Miggy?"

He nodded in between breathless and deep pants. His groans increased their intensity as you moved your hands to his base. Index and thumb finger circled around him, tightening as much as they could without hurting him. A delicious hiss escaped his mouth followed by a shivering moan.

"Wished it was my pussy right now, don't you?" The pace you settled on him, had his hips slowly fucking into your hole shaped hand, your words only urging the already running rampant imagination.

"So tight and squeezing your cock, hmm?"

"Si" A hiccup as the chair trembled with your ministrations, "Ay por Dios, si"

Fingers focused on his tip again and his teeth ground together. His grip on your nape firmer, as if to prevent you from escaping

"Want to fill my pussy with your cum, Miggy?"

"E-Everyday" He croaked and you smiled above his lips, hot breath fanning over his mouth. Hands clenching and unclenching at the motions your hand provided him. His cum was a magnificent lube.

"My God, so so greedy" You cooed while smirking. You had him a babbling mess since your hand never waned, your voice was like a merciless guide, exposing his deepest desires with such ease it only added more gasoline to his scorching need.

His spine arched subtly, making his head throw back, chest heaved in erratic breaths, matching the thrumming of his heart and the unceasing waves of pleasure, set to drown him.

"Wanna ruin me, Miggy?"

"Yes." He hissed.

His body slowly melting into he chair. You could feel his thighs trembling.

"Are you close?"

His lips searched yours in a measly attempt to placate his babbling mouth, instead you took a hold of his jaw with your free hand, bringing his eyes to yours, and God, you groaned at the sight.

"Give it to me" You moaned. His brows knitting together in a deep yet pleasurable frown, mouth shaped in a messy 'a'.

"Así... Si..." He gulped a choking sob. He inched closer and closer to the fire, calling him to be consumed.

"Wanna cum?"

"No pares por favorno-" He slurred and tripped over his words as thick blobs and spurts of his cum spilled over your hand and wrist. His breath hitched to finally be released in a jagged groan while you gave him the last and deepest strokes.

"Dios..." He whimpered and held onto you, anchoring to something before his soul floated away from his body. The hot of his breath was captured between your lips, granting you a low growl as he rode his high.

Some of his cum had stained the floor. You stood and licked his cum off your fingers, relishing the tangy and salty taste.

"Let me know when you need help again, Miggy"

Before he could reach out again, you were already at the door, waving a little taunting goodbye. He'd definitely need help again.

#miguel o'hara #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara x you #atsv miguel #t writes✨ #miguel o'hara smut #spiderman 2099 smut #miguel o'hara fanfiction

[thegnomelord]

CH 1: With a Spark It Starts Just Like It Ended

CW: NSFW Blood, gore, cannon typical violence, M reader but can be read as GN, Mage reader, Monster 141 AU, reader is described as having thick fucked up arms.

AO3 3.7k words, more of an intro to what's to come lol.

Old man Abdul had lived a good life. A harsh one. But a good one.

He was amongst the first to grab a gun and raise the fight against the Russians, risking life and limb for the freedom of Urzikstan even as members of his pack bled and died to artillery fire and noxious gas. And he alone had survived to see his country set free of tyranny and chose to stay in the military long after his hair had greyed.

And how was he rewarded for his service?

With a 'promotion' to guard the basement of a conference hall. They even called it the 'Peace House' as if that made his position grander, though in his humble opinion the only peaceful thing happening within the halls above was the lack of physical violence.

"Hey, did you fall asleep on me old man?" Taim, a bright eyed and gap-toothed human private so young he could've been one of his grandsons, asks as he throws down five playing cards on the floor between them. Royal flush, again.

Old man Abdul's eyes are soft with a glare and he throws down his own cards, already knowing he'd lost. "Go fish." He huffs, leaning back into the chair they'd been able to squirrel away.

It was embarrassing to think that boredom could torture him more than the Russians did, but they were only a few hours into their shift and he was already thinking of biting a bullet. Chances were they'd stay down here long after the diplomats up top finished bickering about who knows what...

"Hey," Taim perks up, and from the few weeks he's known him, Abdul knows the glint in his brown eyes heralds something stupid. "How about whoever loses this round takes a shot from your leg?"

He is proven correct.

"How about I throw you into a minefield so we can match?" Old man Abdul responds, his tail wagging from side to side. His tail looks more at home on a rat than any werewolf, the fur there an accidental casualty of a Russian fire mage's spell that had taken his leg off. The prosthetic leg only fitting on his human body isn't nearly as insulting as the warding totem they'd given him to protect against lethal magic after his leg had gone flying.

Taim gulps and holds his hands up. "There's no need for that sir." He quickly adds, clearing his throat and reaching to the floor to pick up their cards and shuffle them.

Taim's warding totem slips out from beneath his jacket, but it's different from old man Abdul's. Not in appearance, with the same materials every mage will make theirs differently, but in feel. It feels different...wrong.

Eyes narrowing he reaches out and holds the piece of faintly glowing rock between his claws. Heat radiates into his fingers, the magic inside pulsing in a steady even thrum like a machine instead of beating like a heartbeat; like something not quite alive.

Abdul had been in combat long enough to know how good a warding totem is with how his body reacts to it.

The shit one he'd been given barely gets the remaining fur on his tail to bristle.

Taim's makes his skin want to melt off.

"Where did you get this?" Abdul asks, tail curling up as he lets go of the totem with disgust clear on his face. "That rock could probably protect you from L3 mage without cracking, maybe even L4." Call him paranoid, but a private getting a totem to protect him from mages rarer than unicorns doesn't make any sense.

"Oh, that-" The young man clears his throat, the totem laying flat against his chest like an insult to life. "Came from up top a few days ago, guess all those terror attacks spooked command and they want to keep us normal people safe." He realizes his words and quickly adds. "-not that I'm calling you not normal or anything sir, it's just that-"

"-You're squishier than me, yes, I know." Old man Abdul rolls his eyes, leaning back into his chair with a huff.

Taim gives a nervous little giggle, scratching at his curly dark hair. "No offence sir. It's just...you know."

"We all look out for our kinfolk first." Old man Abdul sighs, going to wave him off.

His pointy ear twitches and immediately he's jumping to his feet when his sensitive hearing picks up the sound of the elevator mechanism running. No one is supposed to come down at this time, and Abdul already has his rifle raised to point at the elevator doors by the time Taim is able to get to his own feet. The old werewolf doesn't even need to say anything for the young man to stand on opposite side of him, they work together well, both guns aimed at the person revealed by the opening elevator doors.

It's just the janitor.

Taim lets out a small breath and lowers his gun, relaxing as the janitor gives them a small greeting both of them have to strain their ears to hear as a face mask muffles their words.

"That was a bit embarrassing." Taim chuckles weakly, nodding his own greeting and taking a step back so the janitor can push the heavy cart past them. Abdul notes the janitor's hands are thick and large, the veins poking out beneath latex gloves. Murky water sloshes inside the mop bucket, the trash bag filled to the brim and budging.

It's just a janitor.

But like an annoying tick on his ass, something doesn't let old man Abdul relax.

There's a buzz in the back of his mind like the one he'd get when he was being watched, and when he catches sight of the janitor's eyes beneath the wide-brimmed cap that buzzing stops; Instead replaced with a flash sense of wrongness in his bones and the feeling of tar inside his heart and an indescribable scent — like stale beer and burnt grass and deep dark rot — it has his fingers moving to the trigger before the sight of magic melting through latex can make the short trip from his eyes to his brain—

Glowing lines spring into thin air to form magic circles before their eyes.

The warding totems shatter.

'Pop' goes a head.

Both bodies drop to the ground.

"Could have told me there was a dog." Your words scrape against your throat like shards of glass from the disuse, melted latex stretching into long strands as you take off the cleaner gloves and throw them away, your fingers steaming and glowing hot with mana before you hide them away in tactical gloves.

"I-" Taim tries to say but his voice fails him, eyes and mind still blinded by the harsh glare of magical fire.

"Save it." You cut him off, pulling open the lip of the trash bag to dig out your facemask helmet. It's both a full face helmet and a gasmask, scratched up from years of use but still able to protect your head while keeping you anonymous. A shame it can't filter out the stench of burnt flesh, but you've gotten used to it.

Taim's vision clears and the moment his eyes settle on the charred remains of Abdul's head— the hollowed out skull where concentrated flame had burned a hole straight through everything in it's path, the flesh and bone charred black —he's scrambling away as fast as his feet can push him, the shattered remains of your warding totem crumbling beneath his fingers. Bile rises in his throat and he coughs when he breaths in, but his stomach is thankfully empty so he ends up dry heaving.

"On your feet." Your words are hard to understand under your gasmask, but you don't need to raise your voice. The tone you use has him scrambling to his feet in seconds.

"I- I- yes sir!" Taim manages to stutter out, doesn't even have to fake his fear as he stands at attention. He watches you reach into the dirty water to pull out a Handheld Personal Computer and shake off the residual droplets to ensure it still works before putting it in your pocket.

"When is the next check in?" You ask, reaching further into the trash bag to grasp the handhold on the heavy gas canister hidden beneath office trash. You pull it out without much effort, setting it carefully on the ground so you can recheck that the release valve is intact.

"20 minutes sir." Taim responds and he doesn't need to know Arabic to know what's inside the canister when a grinning skull is printed on the metal.

You let out a low sound, and Taim tries not to peer too closely at you. Sometimes he wonders what face a person who burns people alive without a single second of hesitation could have, but then you look at him and he sees that unnatural glow of mana in your eyes behind the darkened lenses of the helmet and he's glad he's met with the emotionless visage of the mask rather than the one beneath it.

"You have 10 to get out before Hell opens up." You say, standing back up and picking up the canister without complaint. "Use the emergency tunnels, don't spook the VIPs."

Taim is human, not sensitive to magic like the monsters are, but even he can feel the latent mana in your veins that strengthens your body. Like maggots at the back of his skull. It makes a second round of bile rise to his throat. "Yes sir."

You pay close attention to him until he disappears down the corridor before going the opposite way. Alone, it is easier to calm the lingering heat in your veins until the eternal engine of mana in your chest fizzles down to embers like a sleeping beast. Can't have your mana mess with sensitive electronics, even if that does leave you exposed on the cams (as if there's anyone alive to watch them)

"Ifrit, status?" The small radio in your ear crackles.

"Moving to the target, encountered and neutralized a wolf." You answer, taking sharp turns as you follow a path you'd memorized beforehand. "No other monsters to report."

You were lucky to run into one down in the bowels of the conference hall instead of at the front gate. Otherwise your espionage mission would have turned into a frontal assault. Not that Khaled would have minded, you were getting paid to send a loud statement after all.

"Good." You don't need to see his face to know he's smirking, your employer wasn't a huge fan of subhumans. "Continue to the objective."

You respond in affirmative, coming to a heavy metal door, locked with a passcode and even a palm scanner; It's all a valiant effort to keep sensitive data safe, but it may as well be cardboard to you. You summon another circle, this time right on the door, biting your tongue. You're not good with 'subtle' but you haven't forgotten what Taurus or Sierra had taught you; first pushing a bit of loose ash magic between the large atoms making up the metal to disrupt the bonds, then a single pulse of fire ignites the volatile ash and has the entire bottom half crumbling into red hot shards.

Molten slag drips down to the floor when you duck down under the remaining half of the door to find yourself in the server room. Steam rises when the cold air meets your hot skin, but you hardly notice as you first head to the ventilation system at the back of the room. It's dark, but you don't bother turning on the lights, the subtle mana in your eyes enough to give you primitive night vision.

"Ifrit to Alpha-Actual, connecting the payload right now." You say, setting the canister down. The ventilation collects the air from the server room to push it through the entire building and then outside, so all you have to do is melt a hole through the exit pipe until it's big enough for the hose on the canister to fit snugly inside.

"And the files?" Khaled's voice sounds in your ear once you're finished.

"Going now." Standing back up you head to the central server. Taking out the HPC you hook it up to the mainframe, watching the screen until it shows 'connection secure'. "I'm connected."

"Copy that." Your eyes scan the cracked screen (which you broke less than a week after getting it), seeing the file transfer start before Khaled even finishes speaking and trying to read and memorize the names of dozens the files but they change too quickly. "File transfer ETA 5 minutes. Sit tight."

Giving confirmation you keep an eye on the doorway. Though you are positioned in such a way that you'd see the shadow of someone coming in before they see you, years of being behind enemy lines and acting as a friendly to your foes has taught you to be careful. Especially when you can't use more than a smidgeon of mana without frying the entire server system.

You are lucky that no-one comes, the remaining guards too busy guarding the diplomats above you to check what's beneath their noses. While waiting you access the public stream to watch the peace talks, setting the sound to the lowest possible setting so you can keep an eye on the diplomats in case you need a change of plan.

"Got the files, you're clear to finish." You're moving before Khaled can finish speaking, leaving the HPC to hang by the cord from the server. "Oh, and remember: Loud."

"You get what you pay for sir." Kneeling down next to the gas canister you check to ensure your gas mask is firmly on and breathing in deeply; It restricts your breathing and makes muscles work harder, but your body is so used to it that it feels like coming back home.

"Letting the gas out now." Even with the gas mask you still hold your breath when you open the valve, the gas hissing as it escapes the canister, the fan right next to you helping push it through the system. You know there's not enough gas to reach the diplomats on the top floor, it's part of the plan, so when the gas pitters out you cast another circle inside the pipe.

The servers around you flicker meekly and crackle with electricity when you use your mana fully; Something intense and suffocating burns behind your sternum for just a second before liquid mana is rushing down your veins into your hands and coming out through the magic circle as copious amounts of ash.

The rotating fan right next to you spews some of your ash right back at you, flooding the server room in magic that has long since accepted your body enough not to hurt you. But even your seasoned stomach feels tight when you breathe in the mixture of ash and toxic gas, the chemicals turning your magic a nasty shade of green, and you make a mental note to change the filter when you're done with the op otherwise the toxified sediment collecting in there will poison you for months.

You can hear the diplomats begin to cough over the livestream in the HPC, but it all feels so distant when you shift and feel cold dog tags press against your burning chest. They're light like a noose around your neck, yet the absence of weight mocks you in a way their owners no longer can.

There's a familiar sting in your bones when your mana reservoir begins dwindling, but it's easy to push through it until the engine in your chest goes into overdrive from the stress the magic puts on your body. You only stop when the burning mana in your veins starts burning small holes in the sleeves of the janitor jacket, revealing bits of your mage marked skin.

Stopping the flow of ash your hands find themselves in your pocket, taking out a lighter. It's one of those old zippo lighters, the exterior is rusted from years of action and numerous initials are scratched into the metal, but somehow it still functions; It's the strange thing about it— the more you use it, the longer it lasts. Stop, and it dies.

"It's a bit like you, firebug."

Absentmindedly you trace the scratched initials in the metal, trying to ignore the hollowness in your chest when the screams beyond the smokescreen of ash start sounding familiar.

"Going dark." You say to them, flicking it open.

One spark is all it takes.

. . .

With Makarov having gone underground like a wanker after his escape from the gulag, Price and Laswell had been stuck with their heads in mountains of paperwork searching for the bastard. Price had known he'd be in for a headache the moment he agreed to let the boys watch a live football game between England and Scotland, but he reasoned they'd all been working hard enough to earn even a small break.

At the very least it gave them all a moment of reprieve from the stress of a possible world war.

It didn't stop Soap from being a bloody muppet.

"Oh fockin' 'ell!" Soap roars and jumps to his feet, growling at the teli where a ref held a red card above her head. "That should've been a yellow! Fock, one more eye and the ref's a right cyclops." He waves obscenities at the teli as if the ref can see them, his tail hitting Gaz every time it wagged.

"Soap!" Gaz groans and stretches one black wing to smack the werewolf over the head with his long flight feathers to stop him blocking the screen.

Though Gaz's wings are hollow, the smack still hurts. "Ow, what's that for?" Soap groans, rubbing the back of his head.

"At least take your defeat with a wee bit of dignity." Gaz smirks, folding his wings.

"Bold assumption he has any." Ghost mutters next to Price, making him chuckle.

“Oh ho! I’ll get me dignity when the bloody ref gets off 'er knees an’ stops blowing the entire game.” Soap turns to playfully snap his teeth at Gaz. "And what's tha-"

The football match cuts out, replaced with a news segment.

"-Oh, what the fock?" Soap grows quiet when the newscaster begins speaking.

"We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you breaking news. As we speak, the conference hall in Al Mazra, where diplomats from over 40 countries had come to discuss peace and trade agreements with the newly reinstated Urzikstan government, burns in the flames of another terrorist attack."

The footage shifts to a drone filming a bird's eye view shot of violent flames spewing from every hole and window to engulf the entire three story building in consuming fire, heavy plumes of smoke rising into the sky like a maw of a hungering beast to spew a storm of ash and cinders down to the ground. The clouds of ash have a sick green undertone to them.

"Shit." Gaz sucks in a breath.

"Mokarov's done hiding." Ghost notes, leaning in to look closely at the screen with narrowed eyes.

"How the fock did we miss this?" Soap asks the question in their minds, turning to look at Price. "This popped up like bloody whack-a-mole."

At that same time Price's phone rings. The dragon quickly fishes it out of his pocket, seeing Laswell's name as the caller ID before he picks it up while the reporter drawls on.

"Price, are you-"

"Yeah, I'm watching the teli." He cuts her off, knowing what she's going to say. Distantly he can hear the same news report sounding on her end.

"Authorities warn citizens to vacate the immediate area as toxic gas has been detected in the air. Military forces are already enroute, but the prospects for the diplomats survival are nonexistent."

Price's draconic eyes focus on the screen when the footage shifts to that inside the conference hall. Two diplomats argue about something Price can't begin to try and untangle, his focus on one man near the back who begins coughing. More follow suit, and even over the screen Price can tell the signs of toxic gas inhalation by the way more diplomats begin wheezing and coughing wetly.

"This isn't the Russians." Kate says after Price has put her on speaker.

"How come? Looks like some terrorist shite Makarov would pull." Johnny says, his tail curled up and the tip wagging occasionally as he pays attention to the screen.

Seconds later plumes of blackish-green smog erupt from the vents above the diplomats, spewing out with such force it knocks the the camera and the man behind it down to the ground. Ash Magic, Price realizes when he sees smoldering cinders drift almost peacefully in the all consuming fog. Seconds later something causes a spark and the volatile ash magic explodes.

"Ash mage." Ghost grunts, "Just great."

"Makarov doesn't use mages." Price says, scratching his beard.

"No, but Al-Asad does." Kate's voice drifts through the silent room as they watch several APC's arrive on the scene, armored soldiers exiting. But without any monsters who can stomach the heat like Price and with the fog of ash so thick it could be cut with a knife, the best they can do is secure the perimeter. "The CIA intercepted his broadcast before it went public, this is just the start."

Gaz hops off the couch, crossing the small distance to tap one claw at the screen. "What is that?" He asks. Seemingly hearing him, the drone camera focuses on where the main entrance of the building had been.

A dark silhouette of a person can be seen in the flames, growing darker and more refined until finally a featureless helmet emerges from the flames, a deep glow emanating from behind the lenses. It's followed by a body, clothes burnt away in some parts but the flesh beneath unharmed. Price can tell immediately it's a mage by the state of the arms — even from far away it's easy to tell the mage marks, the skin turned rough and dark like cooled magma, veins brimming with volatile mana.

Before the soldiers can fire a single bullet you lift one hand up, the dark mage marks turning to bright like fresh lava when mana flows from your chest to your fingers. A magic circle etches itself into the ground in an instant, so large the surrounding buildings fall into it's perimeter.

And with a second motion of your hand everything erupts into an all consuming cloud of ash.

Laswell's voice rings out. "That's Khaled's new attack dog."

Price and Ghost share a look, both know what will happen long before some nervous soldier caught in the ash cloud pulls the trigger. The cloud of ash explodes the second a spark is created in a weapon's chamber, plunging everything into chaos.

Great, a new wanker to worry about.

Price sighs, brows furrowing. "That's trouble all right."

Tag list: @resident-cryptid @diejager @lovingtyrantkitten @lieutnt

Masterlist <- Chapter 1 (you are here) -> Chapter 2

You can imagine the helmet however you want, but it's in the style of the Devtac Ronin helmet.

#centerpieces of the hoard #cod mw2 #x reader #male reader #top male reader #captain john price #john soap mactavish #simon ghost riley #kyle gaz garrick #fanfiction #cod modern warfare #cod mwii #cod x male reader #cod x reader #monster 141 au #monster cod au #not betaed #next chapter coming soon

[cuubism]

HURT/COMFORT PROMPTS YOU SAY *pulls out giant scroll* okay what about (probably human) trans chronically ill dream dealing with a health crisis and hob is trying to support him through it? bonus points: maybe dream's parents are being shitheads so dream and hob have to get _married_ to make sure dream's wishes in hospital or wherever are respected?

(from meadow. i am not having feelings about anything in particular, Why would you Ask.)

@meadowziplines this was supposed to be angsty but it just ended up kind of wholesome tbh. that's the opposite of what usually happens to me

you've seen married for tax purposes before, now see married for next of kin legal rights

--

Hob knew he wanted to marry Dream within two weeks of their first date, but he tried to be reasonable about it. Dream was shy and guarded his hard-won independence closely, and Hob felt that just declaring his eternal love too quickly was a sure way to scare him off. So he didn't.

Now he's regretting it, because hell, it would have made this so much easier. That's not how he wants to think about marrying Dream, about it making being in a hospital easier, but here they are. And he is.

And it's why he's hiding around a corner as Dream's parents are "visiting"--more like being complete assholes--his hospital room. God, Hob hates them. This whole situation is the only reason he's even met them--Dream doesn't talk to them anymore, and for good reason, but the moment they caught wind of vulnerability they pounced on the chance to regain control.

Dream is an adult and can make his own decisions, but Mr. and Mrs. Cunt have proven very slippery and manipulative and have played the 'Hob's not family, we're family' card at every possible turn to get him kicked out of the room. Hob's gotten a couple of the nurses on his side on account of not being a complete asshole but he still doesn't like his chances duking it out in front of hospital administration over who gets to make Dream's medical decisions if he's incapacitated.

Dream's fought so hard to have control over his own life. Hob won't let him lose it.

Which is why he's currently hiding behind the vending machines until they leave, rather than going in there and telling them where to shove it.

He waits with bated breath until they're gone, then scrambles out, rushing down the hall with his paperwork and slipping into Dream's room. He feels like a criminal. Which is exactly why he's doing all this.

"Hob," Dream breathes, as Hob closes the door behind him. He looks exhausted. Terrible parents who insist on disrespecting you are not good for fragile health. "I thought you left."

Hob flashes him a grin, but feels how it wobbles. "Never. Just had to go get something."

He's so nervous about how Dream will react to this. It feels so likely to go wrong.

He sits in the chair by the bed so he's on Dream's level, takes his hand. "Listen, baby. This-- this really isn't how I wanted to do this. But I just-- I really don't want things to go wrong, you know? And if they do go wrong, I want us to be able to do something about it. I want to be in your corner."

His anxious rambling makes Dream's face start to fall. "Hob..."

Hob thrusts the paperwork at him. "Will you marry me?"

He had something so much more romantic in his head for the moment he finally asked Dream to marry him. He would have swept him off his feet and made him feel special. If only it could have been different.

Dream picks up the papers, seemingly in shock. "This is..."

"I did all the paperwork already, it just needs signatures," Hob tells him. "And I bribed one of the nurses to let us out for an hour to go to the registrar's office. If. If you want."

Dream keeps staring at the papers in silence. Hob doesn't want him to think this was just some act of desperation, even if it kind of was, at least timing-wise. God, this isn't what he wanted at all.

"I wanted to marry you anyway," he says, shifting nervously in his chair. "But now it's just-- I don't want you to be scared that something will go wrong with the surgery but I want you to know that someone will have your back and do what you want. Not--"

"--my terrible, terrible parents?" Dream finishes, lips finally quirking up in a half-smile.

"...Yeah." He swallows hard to calm himself. It's a lot, what he's asking, in a sense. All the legal rights it creates. But. "If you can trust me with this, then I'll protect you. I promise."

"You have already," Dream says. "As you did with the hospital admin. I think they hate you now." He seems quietly delighted about it.

Hob's always known he can be a bit annoying at times but this experience has taught him how truly annoying it is possible to be. When they got there, none of Dream's chart info was under the right name or gender, and nobody seemed particularly inclined to update it. At least not until Hob pestered them, and pestered them, and pestered them.

So yeah, they kind of hate him, but he got to be Dream's hero so it was all worth it in the end.

It's another reason he needs to get this legal shield in place now. Between Dream's slick parents and their money, and Hob who's being a continual nuisance, he thinks he knows who'll come out on top with the administration.

"...So?" he says. "Will you marry me?"

Dream starts tearing up, and Hob thinks, oh god, oh god, I've ruined it-- then Dream pulls him close and throws his arms around him. "Yes," he breathes. "I will. I-- I wanted to for so long."

That makes idiots of the both of them, then.

But Hob doesn't dwell on it for long. He hugs Dream back, then kisses him, pressing his face between his hands. Now that the stress of asking is over, the real feeling bubbles up inside him. Joy. Elation. He's marrying Dream.

"I love you," he says, and Dream smiles. "Now let's get out of here."

--

Their makeshift ceremony at the registrar's office is very emotional despite being completely spontaneous. It's just them, plus Death who Hob got to come along as their witness, and they don't yet have rings to exchange--but at the end of it, Dream is his husband.

Truthfully, Dream deserves better, he deserves a lavish romantic ceremony with flowers and fine clothes and desserts and anything he could possibly want. But... Hob is his husband now. He can give him better, later. And what a joy is that.

Dream is exhausted by the time Hob gets him back to his room, but seems happy nevertheless. He takes a nap while Hob goes to show a copy of the marriage license to hospital admin and gets them to update their records. The next time someone tries to kick him out of Dream's room it's fucking on.

And he doesn't have to wait long. He gets one peaceful day of being able to sit in Dream's room unimpeded, reading to him and just generally being able to enjoy his company without hiding behind the vending machines, before Dream's parents come back.

Dream tenses at the knock on the door, and Hob's never felt more powerful than when he stands up and says, "Don't worry, I'll tell them to leave."

"You needn't--" Dream starts, but Hob shakes his head.

"Oh, no, I'm looking forward to this."

He opens the door with a grin to find Dream's mother on the other side, and stands conveniently in the doorway, blocking her view of Dream. "Hey."

Hob can practically see her blood pressure rise at the sight of him. "You. I thought we had dealt with you."

"I'm hard to deal with," Hob says. "Sorry." He's not sorry.

She tries to push forward. "Out of my way."

Hob blocks her, and can't help a rather vicious smile. "Dream wants you to leave."

"You have no right to even be in here, never mind to tell me to leave," snaps Dream's mother.

Hob hands her a copy of the marriage certificate. He's got several. "On the contrary."

She stares at it, and is, for a moment, completely speechless.

"As Dream's husband," he says, and oh the words are delicious, "I'm telling you to leave. And I think you should do it before I call security on you." An echo of what she and Dream's father had said to him in the past.

Her jaw clenches and she shoves the paper back at him. "That they even let people like you marry in this country is an abomination. You are perverting the sanctity of marriage."

"That's my absolute favorite thing to do," Hob says, and shuts the door in her face.

"I think you enjoyed that far too much, Hob," Dream says as Hob turns back to him. Then he starts giggling. "Did you notice?"

"What?"

"Mother finally agreed that I am a man so she could be homophobic about it," Dream says, and dissolves into giggles once again. "She always said I needed to find a husband; I can't imagine why she isn't happy that I have."

"'Apologies, Mother,'" Hob says, doing his best imitation of Dream's posh accent as he sits down beside him again, "'I know you would have preferred that I marry a respectable young heir from the polo club but I'm afraid I'm shacking up with the guy running the local tavern. In lieu of a gift please just don't attend the wedding.'"

Dream laughs again, then says, "Will there be a proper wedding?"

"You want there to be?"

Hesitantly, Dream nods.

"Then there will be."

Dream smiles, and Hob takes his hand, squeezes it. "And think on what sort of ring you want," Hob says. "By the time you get out of surgery next week, I'll have it for you."

"I do love you," Dream sighs.

"Not regretting not marrying Lord Whoever from polo club?"

"There was no polo club," Dream says. "There was croquet, however--"

"Oh my God--"

"--however, you are the one I want to be married to."

Hob smiles. "Good." He kisses Dream's hand. "And you know, right? You know I wanted to marry you anyway? This was just a-- a timing thing."

"I know. But, I admit, I've found this all far more entertaining than I'd have thought." He smiles up at Hob. There's nothing better in the world than that clever smile. "You are a gallant husband."

If Hob can get Dream to keep looking at him like that, he thinks he'll be happy for the rest of his life.

"Promised to protect you, didn't I?" he says. "And so I will."

#hob said 'dream identifies as a man and you better respect it. as for me? i identify as a PROBLEM' #i think he should get to be super annoying as a treat #dreamling #my writing #ask #meadowziplines #hob's like ask me not about my dreams of being a knight in shining armor ok. don't even ask #cw homophobia