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lanaroff · 2 years

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Unwanted- Part 2

Paring: Wanda Maximoff x Reader

Summary: Y/N is an enhanced SHIELD agent who is forced to work with the Avengers. What happens when they discover that she’s not alone?

A/N: I feel that the writing in this one was a little rush. Hope you like it.- Lana

*not my gif*

The new day came with small raindrops, and you started to wake up. Every single morning, there was this small moment of peace in your mind. Where you didn't remember that you were hosting an alien, or that you were completely terrified about everything. However, the sound of an alarm bouncing back and forth between the walls of your room, brought you back to reality. As you sat down on your bed and stretched your body, you remembered the events of the previous night. You didn't feel like you owned Wanda an apology, on the contrary, to you the redhead should have never been there on the first place.

The mornings in the compound usually were calm and quiet. Each of the team members had their own routine to make themselves busy. Wanda normally was the person who would take over breakfast, since she loved making sure that everyone had eaten before starting the day. Natasha, on the other hand would train with Steve or Sam as she liked to keep herself fit. And Tony would finish some crazy project on the lab alongside Bruce. Everyone had their own thing to do in the mornings, which made you feel a little bit better about having to live with others. You didn't have to worry about small talks on the kitchen or explaining Venom's weird diet. As the morning came to an end, Tony called everyone to the meeting room.

"Gather children, we have a new mission." He explained as he made his way to the main screen.

"Good morning to you too" Sam joked making her way to the closest chair.

You studied every single move that each member made. You didn't trust them yet. You had no idea how they worked, so you just stood there by the window, occasionally moving your eyes from the floor to look at the screen.

"We got a hint that a member of hydra plans an attack on a warehouse. Same old thing, go kick some asses and save the day." Tony continued.

"What's his name?" Bucky asked. You weren't paying a lot of attention. Since to you the details weren't important, at the end of the day, your only mission was to kill every single hydra agent, like you once promised yourself.

"Br-Brock Rumblow." Tony replied while reading the name on the file. "What kind of name is that?" However, that name caught your attention. To you Rumblow was a traitor, a pariah that need to be exterminated. You didn't care If he had important information that could be valuable. You were going to kill him, no matter what.

Once the meeting finished and everyone went to their respective room to get ready for the mission, the team flew over a small town and prepared themselves to start the mission. You were assigned to team up with Steve, since it was your first mission, and Wanda who was Steve's usual partner.

"And remember, this place is expected to be surrounded with hydra agents. Be careful." Steve exclaimed while adjusting his parachute. Soon after, you placed yourself next to Steve and the tree of you jumped out of the quinjet.

The trio landed outside the warehouse and hide themselves, waiting for Natasha and Bucky to land at the other side of the building. Once you got the signal from Natasha, you made your way in. As soon as you sat foot inside the building, a large group of armed man approached you. Prepared to kill whomever tried to stop their plan.

"Let's see what you've got Y/N." Steve exclaimed looking at you who was cracking your fingers to sign that you were prepared to fight.

In that moment you let Venom out, and your body was slowly covered by the creature's. Wanda, who was carefully looking at the transition, was shocked to see how the alien emerged from inside you.

"We are ready." Said the voice of the creature inside of your body. However, your voice was deeper, since it was Venom who was in control now.

Venom immediately started running and bouncing its body through the walls, and it aggressively landed right in front of the armed group of hydra man. Any human would be terrified when encountering such creature, and that group definitely was. Without second guessing, the group stared firing their guns, however, none of the bullets was able to harm the creature, leaving the agents speechless. Venom's anger and eager to kill grew with every shot that touched its body. In seconds, the alien had ripped some of the agent's head and thrown others to the wall, making them die instantly. With the path now cleared Venom submerged to your body, leaving you in front of a pile of corpse.

"Why do you always have to make a mess?" You asked rhetorically to the creature while fixing your shirt.

"That was..." Wanda started saying. However, she was cut before she could finish her sentence.

"...violent" Steve finished.

You stood there waiting for Steve to lead the way. You weren't keen on playing under somebody's orders, but you respected Steve's leadership and waited on him.

The three of you continued fighting enemy agents along your way to the south side of the building. You weren't sure about Rumblow's location, but you knew that he was there preparing an attack which needed to be stop. Right after Steve finished punching some of the agents remaining, Sam spoke.

"Guys we have a problem" He said while flying around the building. "More men are coming"

And indeed they were. Out of nowhere the room where Wanda, Steve and you were was now full of hydra agents.

"I see Rumblow, he's heading to the top of the building" Sam told the team through coms. The moment you heard the hydra agent's position you ran as fast as you could leaving Wanda and Steve fighting alone.

"Y/N! Where are you going? Come back!" You heard Steve calling you, but you were determined to complete the job. "Wanda go with her, don't let her do anything stupid."

"But..." She hesitantly answered but she was cut by Steve again.

"You go, I finish here." And Wanda left the room, leaving Steve fight a group of armed men.

You ran as fast as you could. You were not going to let the enemy escape, not under your watch. Despite the current mission given to you, your truly mission was to kill every hydra man and woman, even if you died doing so. Finally, you made your way to the top of the building, where you were able to see your target.

"Rumblow!" You shouted to catch the agent's attention. "Long time no see."

The moment the agent heard your voice he stopped and turn his face around to see you. Even thought you and him were meters apart, he noticed your clear anger.

"What a surprised. I must admit that I did not expect to see you here today." He said as he slowly started to walk backwards to the helicopter that was parked nearby.

"You know, I was going to let Venom eat you, but I guess I'm going to kill you myself." You said and started to run on the direction of the agent.

Before you could reach the man, your attention was caught by Wanda, who was running towards you. However, with your eyes focused on the girl, Rumblow took out his gun and shot the red head's leg before starting to run again.

"Say 'Hi' to your mother for me." He shouted stepping in the vehicle. And before you could see, the helicopter was already taking off.

Unfortunately, both you and Wanda failed to notice that the top of the building was covered with explosive devices, and both of you were now trapped. The moment that the helicopter left the rooftop, Rumblow pressed the button and the first bombs stared to explode.

Right after the first one, the other bombs started to explode , and you had to make a decision. You could use Venom's strength to jump and grab the helicopter preventing Rumblow to escape. Or you could save Wanda. Sure, the most heroic thing was to save the girl that was bleeding out in the ground. But at the end of the day you were no hero, you didn't consider yourself worth of such title. However, you knew that you couldn't let the girl die. It would jeopardize your only chance to take hydra down.

"Guys we need to leave NOW!" You heard Sam saying through coms.

"No! Wanda and Y/N are still on the rooftop" Steve replied.

"I'll get Wanda. You guys leave!" You aggressively exclaimed as you ran towards Wanda. You hated that situation, having to be a part of a team, but you hated yourself more for not being able to finish your job. Why did you have to care about others? But before you could second guess you decision you changed to Venom, grabbed the witch by her hip, and pull her into your arms.

"What are you doing?" She weakly asked.

"Saving your god damn life." You answered while running from the explosion to the edge of the roof.

And before one of you could say anything, you were both being sent away by the expansive wave of the remanning bombs. While on the air, Venom grabbed Wanda in a way it could protected her when hitting the ground. And it did.

Once on the floor, you groaned as you felt the pain of the landing. You stood up and went to check on Wanda, who was unconscious and injured on the floor. To your luck, you both had laded far away from the quinjet, and going back wasn't an option, since the area was now full of armed man and both of you coms were broken. So instead, you grabbed Wanda and made your way to the nearest building.

After walking for half an hour with an unconscious body, you found an abandoned house where you could rest. You weren't tired but you knew that the girl in your arms needed medical attention or she would bleed to death. You gently placed Wanda on the floor, to kicked the door open. Once the the object was no longer on your way, you grabbed the girl and walked inside the house.

Half and hour had passed. The small rain had now turned into a big storm, and you had placed Wanda next to the fire place so she would be warm. With Wanda still unconscious you started to cut the red head's trousers so you could have a better look at the leg. You placed a bucket with water next to her and grabbed and piece of clothing to clean the wound. However your actions cause the girl to wake up.

"What happened" She weakly asked with a confused look on her face.

"You were shot." You answered without taking your eyes of Wanda's leg.

"Where are we?" Wanda asked again. However, you didn't reply. You grabbed a pair of scissors that you found so you could use as tweezers and put your hand on Wanda's leg so it wouldn't move.

"Stay still. This is going to hurt" You warned the girl and introduced the pair of scissors inside the wound.

Wanda let a groan of pain escape her lips as she felt the metallic object touched her leg. You quickly removed the remaining bullet and cover the wound with the piece of clothing that you already had.

"Thank you." Wanda said as she compose herself.

"Try not to move. As soon as the storm stops I'll get you to the compound." You replied.

The room fell a deep silence. You were too focused on creating a plan on your head where both of you would return safe. And Wanda didn't dare to say anything. To her you weren't a friendly person with whom she could have a conversation. Since you made it clear with your attitude that you hated having to be stuck with her.

Both of you were caught inside a house with one and other, and you could do nothing about it.

#wanda maximoff x female reader #wanda maximoff fanfic #wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff fluff #wanda maximoff imagine #wanda marvel

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anarchoherbalism · 4 months

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Some things that drive me up the goddamn wall:

Western medicine is not that old. CHARITABLY its like, 400ish years old, but all the most popular ways of defining western medicine (e.g. based on the modern scientific study) really only apply to information-generating and medicine-distribution practices that started in the late 1800s and were codified in THE TWENTIES. Sure, no ideas come out of nowhere and modern western medicine absolutely has a lineage and if you want you could make a good argument for tracing that lineage back to say, Galen. (Side note: american Doctors love to claim Galen when it makes them sound Storied and Dramatic but foist him off on us stupid herbalists as soon as anything controversial by modern standards comes up). But what's a lot more important to think about is that prior to the past hundred years or so, the diversity of actively-practiced, available medical traditions that existed in "the west" was so much greater than it is today, and if you go back another hundred or more years it's bigger and bigger. For most of human history in most parts of the world medicine has been a great, fluid cultural field (like cuisine! or religion! in fact these three subjects overlap quite a bit!!) that becomes forcibly homogenized and codified as part of nation-building. That has happened and is still happening here in the west as empire seeks to homogenize culture, through, yknow, genocide; and minority medical philosophies are deligitimized, criminalized, and culturally persecuted. Indigenous and folk traditions survive in small bubbles of people desperately trying to keep them alive.

Following from #1, the majority of people on the "left" to postleft & whatever recognize, at least nominally, that this is Bad. However, what most white people seem to be doing with the idea that Cultural Extermination Is Bad is grant some kind of nebulous exception status to their nebulous idea of "Indigenous medicine" while otherwise paying lip service to the western medical progress narrative: What "we" do now is so much better than what "we" "used to" do. First of all, "we" here is an incoherent concept unless you want to buy into the idea that dominant western culture (or civilization more broadly) is an inevitable evolution that all cultures will come to, which is uhm. Social darwinism. Second of all, "used to" is just a straight up lie in most cases unless it's very narrowly referring to any number of practices that were codified in like, 1930 by the still-budding medical establishment and have since been discarded by the extant medical establishment. Diverse, Indigenous & folk medical traditions are still fucking around and alive and being used, adapted and added to. Some are holding on by a thread and plenty are very closed practices now out of defensiveness, while others struggle to be known more widely because of medical licensure laws that claim to be about "safety" but were always about stamping out minority medical traditions. What a lot of motherfuckers miss is that when the western medical establishment tells the story about how everything is so much better now and we know the right way to be, they are telling the same story I told under heading one. The nonviolent story of progress that "we" just "discovered" "new ideas" is conveniently shuffling around the genocide and criminalization that are STILL actively trying to stamp out the """"old"""" ideas.

Does all of this mean that we should just willy nilly accept/use/treat as valid every single thought anyone has ever had about medicine? Fuck no! People have bad ideas sometimes! Medical traditions are LIVING traditions for good reasons. It just means that I wish people would sit down and THINK for a second before making a claim about non-western or historical medical traditions, ask themselves "is my only source for this claim the current western medical establishment?", and if "yes", spend any amount of time trying to find an alternate perspective. If you can't find any source that isn't affiliated with genocide and forced cultural assimilation on the practice you want to talk shit about, ask yourself "why isn't there a proponent of this practice around to defend it?" and like, go from there.

I truly do not care what medical philosophy any given individual person feels most comfortable using for themselves. Your reasons for preferring western medicine might very well be rooted in shit i disagree with/find abhorrent, I might think you could be happier (or more likely to survive climate collapse) if you were at all open to any strategy other than the one that's entirely dependent on empire and extraction, but I am frankly too tired and too busy to be remotely invested in what people I don't know are doing with their bodies. What frustrates me is how little critical thinking is being done when it comes to medicine, how comfortable everyone seems to be with incoherent cognitive dissonance when it comes to criticizing specific instances of oppression/nationalism/racism/etc in western medicine but still buy the overall narrative in a way that renders those critiques superficial, and how successful the project of western medical nationalism has been at claiming a monopoly on the story.

#theory #these thoughts are part of a big essay about disability and “alternative medicine” but that's probably going to rot in my drafts and i felt #like these parts are important. so.

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generouslyandrogynousdragon · 4 months

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[Image ID in alt text]

The people reblogging the post this is from really need to understand what exactly this post is saying. Because while some may share it with good intentions, trying to help support the people of Palestine, this part of the post is calling for genocide.

"Erase the Israeli occupation" which parts? That's answered in the next bit: "decolonise the entire land". Bit tricky to decolonise a land from the ethnic group indigenous to it, tbh. And yes, Jews are indigenous to the Levant, whether you call it Israel or Palestine or the Middle-East or whatever other names people come up with these days.

The foundations of Judaism sprang from the transition of the Canaanites to a monotheistic religion. (As far as I can discern from my own personal research, and if this is incorrect then please reach out, I would rather be corrected than spread even more misinformation into the pot.)

Please note, I am not naming the deity which this group worshipped as I am aware that Jewish people typically prefer such names to be unwritten - there are resources which can explain this further, and the Wikipedia page I mention at the end of the next paragraph gives details of this.

But the key thing to note here is that the people who first settled the land were the Canaanites. There was then a period in which Ancient Egypt controlled the land, before it returned to the control of the Jewish people. (Source: Wikipedia, specifically the Jerusalem page, sub-section: History of Jerusalem. I'm not sure I like the word control in this paragraph, but I can't figure out a better word to use in its place.)

And even if you put aside the entire issue of indigineity, where are the people of Israel going to go? Where are you going to send them? You can't just say "Go back where you came from", because 1) there are Israelis who were born in Israel, and 2) nearly every single Israeli citizen that wasn't born in Israel, i.e. refugees, came to Israel because they were threatened with death in the countries they previously lived in!

So are those people just supposed to smile and eat a bullet? Or maybe you'll send them somewhere else? Okay, where? Because no matter what piece of land you send them to, some country is going to have to give up that piece of land first. And then you haven't solved anything, you've just shoved it into a different corner of the room and pretended it's all fine.

You cannot solve this by saying Israel should just go away. I don't know how to solve it, I can only hope that there is a peaceful solution for Israelis and Palestinians alike, and soon. But both groups of people live there. Neither group can just be moved somewhere else - the countries surrounding the Levant have acted to exterminate Jewish people, thus creating the refugees I mentioned previously, and refused to take in Palestinian refugees, and nowhere else is going to take either group in - and neither group should be moved, frankly. Forced relocation is wrong no matter who it happens to.

So that only leaves the total extermination of one group if you truly will never accept a two-state solution. If a two-state solution is truly unacceptable to you, then either you are arguing for the genocide of Palestinians, or the genocide of Israelis. Because both groups live on that land, and neither group is going to just magically disappear.

Palestinian and Israeli left-wing activists alike are all saying to us that a two-state solution is the best - some even go further and say "only" - chance for peace in the Levant. So the rest of us should amplify their voices, and put pressure on our own politicians to help make that happen.

#tw antisemitism #tw genocide mention #again: if I got that bit about the origins of judaism wrong #then I'm more than happy for corrections on it #I'm aware that my own interpretation of the information I found may be biased #whether by the author or by internal bias I'm unaware of #long post #world politics #israel #palestine #also I'm aware that the triple brackets is an antisemitic dogwhistle #I try to only use single brackets #but I do use them fairly regularly #because 1) it's a good way of listing a source without breaking the flow of writing #and 2) I have ADHD and everything I say comes with extra exposition as a coping mechanism to stop people from misunderstanding me

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feudalismoffire · 6 months

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Through the days, Launairk thought and reflected about his choices so far in his life. He had plenty of time of course, the winter would not go away so soon, but rather than hibernate, his mind was too active, and so was he hungry, without some food to warm him through the storm.

He often looked to the side, to his white dragoness companion, who slept so peacefully in the last few days. He frequently would think about her, wondering what is in her head, if she was really capable of any thought and why, or rather how was she at such peace with herself. Such thing he never ever experienced, since he thought of the evil in his actions as a wyrmling.

Some times she turned in the ground, spinning into the walls, hitting something as in a nightmarish fight. She scratches the walls and ground, causing an infuriating noise, but he refrained from acting in any way, preferring to keep to himself.

‘Does my nightmare never ends? This storm won’t stop? The whole winter?! No. No. If Azulthragas is calm, this means its not that long, we will get out of here, I haven’t eaten in… Months. I would do anything for some roasted flesh… No! I can’t just eat anyone I find… Think about other things… Uh… Sleep! I haven’t managed to sleep in days…’

Suddenly, Azulthragas woke up with a roar, her pupils so thin and distressed, she turned to Launairk and released her ice breath at him. He surprised in the middle of his thoughts managed to dodge it swiftly, then turned from the wall to see she was jumping into him in a rage.

“Azulthragas! No!” Launairk roared and easily overpowered her jump and pinned her into the ground, hoping she would calm down, but she just didn’t. She tried desperately to struggle but soon was getting tired.

“Calm down! Its just a nightmare!” Launairk yelled as her movements begun to calm down.

She looked around, as if trying to find other enemies, and then into a long sigh she returned to normal. Launairk released her and both stood before each other, with Azulthragas looking to the side in shame.

“What happened?” Launairk decided to start, calmly asking the still slightly distressed white dragon.

“You… Allied with giants… Surrounded me and were… Killing me.” Azulthragas snarled.

“Me allied with giants? Well, that’s definitely something.” Launairk laughed light-heartedly.

“IT WAS A CHANCE!” Azulthragas roared, loudly, ‘You and your bipedal loving behavior…’

“I don’t love them. We respect each other.” Launairk muttered, “Respect, which you have no concept of, huh?”

“Besides… I need no giant allies to defeat you” He laughed.

Azulthragas’ face grew closed and sulking. “You earn my respect through a fight, nothing else. You still don’t get it. Those giants are the mortal enemies of my kind… Of everyone in this damn dale, a pest to be exterminated!”

Azulthragas explained as if somehow Launairk would ally himself with the giants, she somewhat genuinely believed this was a possibility, much to his confusion.

“Why you insist I would ally with giants?” Launairk indulged the thought.

“You showed mercy to them! Those giants, if they reached their camps, they would come in numbers here.” Azulthragas growled, “You chose to save that mother and child, they would not seek your death… They would all come for me, they have little reason to do else.”

“She was lost in the storm!” Launairk snarled, “She had no idea where you even where… And you think they would return here and immediately find you?”

“They would search every single snowflake of this land! I know it, I already saw it happen!” Azulthragas angrily said, but shifted her tone slightly. “Giants invade our lairs for fun, to fight us. You can’t possible understand living far south, we are a blessing on this land plagued by giants!”

“A blessing by attacking and massacring and slaughtering just as you say they do?” Launairk was not convinced, but she changed her tone further.

“Ugh. My mother once told me… Dragons are truly superior beings to giants, who struggle to try to reach our power. The bipedals are LUCKY we are here.” Azulthragas muttered, her voice becoming louder each time, “Yeah, we eat and kill a few bipedals here and there, after all, its all meat, but giants… They exploit the land and eat the small bipedals like livestock.”

“Wait. Wait. You are telling me you don’t do that? Seriously?” Launairk said, in disbelief.

“I don’t answer for my kin. I can think for myself. I know some bipedal livestock is better than a few scrunky bipedals.” Azulthragas said, confidently.

“So… You respect or not the bipedals?” Launairk commented.

“ARGH. Listen…”

“Once I was a young white dragon, my mother was Arveiaturace-”

“Wait. Wait, you are daughter of Arveiaturace?!”

“Shut up. Yes, I am. You will realize this means little very soon.”

“She was my mother, but she is a different white dragon, certainly from my father either. Me and my siblings were… Barely cared for, Arveiaturace allowed our presence in her lair, this was the furthest of the caretaking we received, or so most of us.

I curiously watched my mom, she enjoyed a good conversation, but well, there is not much kobolds and other servants can talk about, they aren’t the brightest of minds. So, I sought to be something else, I learned how to read on my own, how to speak, while my siblings barely reached even close, most would barely talk nowadays still.

I wanted… Something more than survival, I wanted my own empire, my subjects, my libraries, for that, I was ridiculed in mocking growls and roars at me. Well, in a few years, after pure sheer will of mine, I become interesting for my mother. She taught me some powerful white draconic magic… No, not ice storms… Not yet at least, I can only muster a gust of wind, I would love to say this storm right now is my work.

Well, while me and my mother talked and enjoyed each other, this naturally had to end. As the fateful day she would consider us too dangerous and we were forced to leave the lair. I still believe she saw me leave with a smile, one of her own had become just a little like her… Well, this is my fantasy. If we ever met again, she would kill me without mercy, especially me, I would be most likely the one to face her and have the ability and thought to win.

Now on my own, I did the usual stuff, made my lair, eat the animals around, raided a few villages. I had no servants, at least none which I remember, which likely means I ate them too...”

“Wait, you eat even kobolds? By Tiamat, is there anything sacred to you?!”

“Yes. Its not my fault I do not recognize them as servants, but as mere food too… Well, I… Look, I remember I had servants, I was working on it, you know, but soon giant raids in my lair would end whatever kobolds I had on my side.

I was forced to… Move around, going from lair to lair until there was barely anywhere left to hide. Those giants were becoming too daring. I know it was a lost cause, our last matron mother died, she was the last symbol of unity among white dragons, without her, we might as well just… Die off.

No. I was angry and filled with vile. I would kill every giant I could possible find. Regardless of intentions, I have no mercy for those creatures.

One day, I was flying around in the sky, through the mountains when I saw a small group of bipedals, traveling through below. I decided, rather quickly, that it would be a nice midday snack, so I flew downwards to them.

I saw one of them carried a long pointy stick, the largest one among them. But other than that, it was a defenseless group.

I landed right in front of them, causing the large bipedal to point the stick at me. This of course was a challenge to me, so I acted accordingly, powering my breath against them. In the process however, I watched each of them, hopelessly bellow me, I loved the feeling of weaker creatures cowering in fear of me, but something was not feeling right…

They were afraid, but strangely chill with my presence, as if a blessing to them. Even the man carrying a stick was oddly hesitant to fight me, rather slowly going back towards the rest of the group.

I looked further and saw a large group of giants approaching.

My jaw fell open, without any breath coming out. I felt a weird chill down in my body, as if fear consumed me. Something no white dragon would ever admit however, I looked down again, the small bipedals were terrified of both of us, but they seemed to be more scared of the giants coming, they probably were fleeing from them all along.

I felt… I felt empathy for those small creatures, so defenseless. My mind thought what the giants would do to them, I can’t imagine it would be any different of what I was about to do. So… I remembered how my mother was used to save sailors from ships through the sea, demanding her fair share, of course, but saving lives nonetheless. I think that if anything, denying them food would be a small victory against the giants.

So I not so gently took all the small ones and gone upwards flying away, as a few sticks started to rain from the sky, coming from the giants. The small creatures cried and screamed, it was annoying, but I knew a nearby village that would welcome them, I think, they like cooperation and welcome others, right?

I flew for a while, trying to not give any hint for the giants of were I was going to leave them by, that would be a disaster, right? I soon arrived at the village, causing confusion, many inhabitants fled in terror and what not, but I had very little with them, just dropped by the creatures in the snow and flew away.”

Launairk listened very attentive as Azulthragas finished her story, he was rather confused and pleased but was interested in learning about her anyways.

“So… You care about bipedals, well, care might be a strong word, you tolerate them whenever you feel bad for them? Well, that is a plot twist of this whole narrative, the fact that you could realize the difference between foe and food, innocent and evil, well, its remarkable, I have to say.” Launairk said, as he slowly clapped his talons on each other.

“Yes. I care. Now I don’t go out there slaughtering bipedals, not like before. Those who respect me receive my mercy and mutual respect. I seek to destroy the towns, not the villages.” Azulthragas respond back, angrily.

“I see it now.” Launairk mutters.

“This is why I respect you.” Azulthragas smiles faintly. “Yes, you seek to develop them, I seek to keep them primitive. But we are both shunned by our races, we have similar ideals.”

Launairk looks down, surprised to her the respect, which he couldn’t consider he had the same respect back to her, thinking she was a lesser by her actions, not words.

“I appreciate your respect, and now learning more about you, I respect you back.” Launairk commented.

Azulthragas faint smile turns into a full smile.

“Thank you.” She said.

“I believe we can cooperate if we trust each other, but most importantly, we respect each other.” Launairk commented, “But now… Will this storm last the whole winter?!”

“Ah, no no… Just a week extra… Soon we will leave, don’t worry...” Launairk dies inside.

#digitalart #dnd #dndart #dragon #dragonart #human #oc #scalie #whitedragon #dragonartwork #dragonoc #dndoc #dnddragon #art #simplegeneraldraws #launairk #azulthragas #dungeonsanddragons #dnddungeonsanddragons

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flintox · 2 years

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Souvenir. (Pt3)

Spes stared up at the giant. Had he just imagined that? He had to. in the weeks the giants had spent systematically erasing their cities from existence they hadn't spent even a single second even trying to communicate with them or even responding to their own attempts to get their attention.

Above him the giant scanned the are with his eyes. Once more his lips moved. "I-i didn't lose connection did I?"

It was real! How the hell was it real?! Spes stood frozen in place, shaking like a leaf. Around the city section he could hear people screaming and the sounds of panic as the giant leaned in closer, casting them in his shadow.

"Hello?"

The lynx quickly raised the radio back to his lips. "I-i'm here!"

"Oh!" The giants lips curled into a smile. "Good! Are you alright in there? I tried to be as careful as i could when picking you up."

Careful? How was uprooting what remained of their city in any way careful? "W-why are you doing thi- why are you attacking us?" Spes asked, trying his best to keep his voice steady.

"I'm not attacking you. I'm trying to keep you safe."

He bit down on his jaw. "Safe?! You've destroyed countless cities and killed hundreds of millions of people!"

Surprisingly the giant seemed a bit taken aback. Their lips opened and closed several times as if confused as to how he would respond. "I-i know. We have a good reason-"

"A good reason?!" Spes balked, anger overtaking his fear. "There isn't any reason you can tell me that justifies killing so many of us!"

"I-i-Please listen- I'm saving yo-"

An angry, bitter growl sounded from the lynx. "Dont give me that shit! You're invaders hellbent on exterminating us! And what--did you grab us to be pets? I'd rather die than be pet to some monster!"

Above him the giants face shifted oddly, his lower lip seemed to be shaking. His rage subsided enough to allow the lynx to realize that antagonizing his captor was likely not the best course of action. He'd made a mistake, one that might cost the lives of everyone in the city section.

Before he could say anything else, the radio signal was lost and the giant looked away. Spes couldn't help but rush out of the buildings to alert the people that they might be about to share the fate of the rest of their city.

He tried to stammer some response, realizing anything he could say would mean nothing. What did an apology mean from someone who has erased a dozen of your cities? These people had every reason to hate him. "I-"

A knock on his door made the mouse jump. Before he could even stand up, the door slid upwards and a figure stepped inside. "Sorry, couldn't wait for you to call." The dark furred squirrel said with a smile. His cocky smirk lessened as he looked into Eleos's face. "Is something wrong."

"Erebus!" Eleos quickly wiped his face and stood up. "I-im fine." He lied. "It's just-it's been a long day. Sorry, i totally forgot i was gonna call you."

The squirrel wasted no time walking up to Eleos. "No, there's something wrong." He placed a hand on the squirrels shoulder. "It's alright, you can tell me."

He swallowed back a sob. "I-i was just reading some news from the front lines." Eleos lied.

The color washed from Erebus's face, though he didn't show any other sign that the news affected him. "Ah. I should have guessed." Erebus swallowed. "It's hard not to let that get to you." The squirrel forced a smile. "Dont worry, as soon as we're set up here on this planet we'll be able to secure proper resupply routes."

Eleos wanted to nod. Not only was he lying to someone he truly cared about, but he'd done so in a way that now had him thinking of something if not equally, then far worse.

"Let's not linger on that." Erebus gave him another quick pat. "Let's focus on the good things, like how i finally have a weekend off that lines up perfectly with a certain round eared cutie-"

He blushed. "I-i gue-" The squirrel suddenly pulled him in close for a hug, holding him firmly.

"-And i'm gonna use every single hour to remind him what an absolute cutie he is." Erebus continued, planting a kiss on the mouse's forehead. "Tonight we cuddle, tomorrow i'll treat you to the finest rations and then we-"

"First- i gotta shower." Eleos said, giving his boyfriend a pat on the back to prompt him to release him. "Seriously, i'm filthy."

"Is it weird if i say i'm into it?" Erebus smirked.

Eleos laughed. "Very." He wiggled out of the squirrels grip and walked over to his bathroom. "I'll be quick."

"You better!" The squirrel chuckled. "I'll wait here and try to find a way to live a few minutes without you!"

He laughed again. "I'm sure you'll manage." The mouse chuckled as he closed the door to the bathroom. He'd offer the squirrel to join him, in fact the idea was something he'd always liked to try with Erebus, but his shower barely fit him alone which was saying much since there wasn't much to fit. Eleos stripped and stepped into the shower, while he'd like to linger in the warm water for hours, far more comfort awaited him in the squirrels arms.

Erebus paced around the room, spotting the piles of clothing in the corner. He always loved hearing more about his boyfriends exploits outside the colony. Being a member of the security detail he didn't exactly get many chances to step outside the colony ground, which was a real shame since this was the first planet he'd been on beside his home-planet. There was a whole world out there to explore and he wasn't going to be the one to do it. That's where Eleos came in.

They'd med when Erebus had approached the shy little mousy to ask him about the outside. It wasn't until the second hour of listening to the nerd rant on about their lack of equipment that he realized he was quickly enamored with the guy. He was cute, clever and was perhaps the only one in the colony shorter than himself. Not only could he finally feel like the big tough military man for once, but he could do it with the single cutest field researcher they had. Truly everything he dreamed of when he signed up for the Astral Army.

As he wandered around the small quarters, an object caught his eye. A small lunchbox sized case resting on the mouse's desk. Erebus immediately recognized it as a field sample box and he quickly moved over to it, eager to see anything from outside the colony. Was Eleos even allowed to have this?

The strange grey clump looked odd. it took him a moment to realize what he was looking at. These had to be the buildings of the tiny natives. His eyes lit up and his tail swished behind him excitedly. By the time he arrived the area had mostly been cleared of them and he didn't get a chance to see them.

Erebus leaned in closer, trying to see if he could see them better, failing to do so. He'd heard they were small, but not so small he couldnt see them.

It was strange to think that those tiny grey blocks were actually buildings.

The squirrel reached a hand towards the glass cover and tapped it a few times to see if he could get some sort of reaction.

While he hadn't seen any of their cities, he'd certainly felt their influence. During their first week on the planet some natives had apparently managed to get into their electronic wiring and triggered a fire alarm. He was still somewhat salty for having been woken up in the middle of the night by blaring alarms and fire suppressant systems. "Little bastards." He muttered.

He couldn't help but wonder what it was like. It was hard to imagine how entire cities of these things could exist. The official stance of the Astral Army was that they were considered enemy combatants, he'd been briefed that they had a few weapons that could be a threat but it was rare that individual cities had access to them. Erebus chuckled, trying to imagine how going to war with something this small would work.

An idea crossed his mind. He picked up the container carefully and moved it to the floor to get a better idea of what it would look like in the wild. Erebus rose to his full height and stared down with a smirk. If he didn't know what it was he might have assumed it was some form of grey mushroom or something. "Heh~"

He raised his foot over the container and held it there. Had Eleos done this? He'd heard that Field researchers had been relegated to clearing areas of these things and heard from others that it was usually done via ruining their settlements to drive them off. The squirrel lowered his foot slightly and rested it on the dome. No wonder they had the nerds doing this if it was this easy.

"What are you doing!?"

Erebus looked up to see Eleos standing in the doorway of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. Before he could say anything the mouse launched himself across the floor, tearing the container out from under his foot and holding it close to his chest. "Woah-"

The mouse scrambled to his feet and moved past him, carefully placing the container back on his desk and leaning over it, examining intensely.

He stepped up to Eleos. "S-sorry, i was just playing with it-"

"They're not toys!" The mouse hissed at him.

Despite his conditioning, Erebus found himself flinching a bit. He'd never even heard Eleos raise his voice, let alone be angry. "I-i'm sorry. I didn't mean to-" His voice trailed off when he saw the mouse wasn't listening, instead he was completely focused on the container, looking at it like a mother would an injured child. "Eleos. What is this. Why do you have that?"

Eleos glanced over his shoulder. "I-i can explain."

The city had been in a panic as soon as the other giant appeared. His tapping of the dome had sent painful shock waves through the city sections, though that paled in comparison to seeing the underside of the giants sole.

As the dome creaked and groaned under the weight of the foot and Spes thought their strange twist of fate was simply going to result in the same grim doom as the rest of the city, they were snatched out from the cold clutches of death.

By the time Spes could even realize what was happening, they were back where they were with the previous giants, Eleos, face looming over them. For the first time since the invaders arrived, the lynx could see what he recognized as fear on their face.

He lingered by his window, even as Eleos moved away. Spes stared at the two giants as they moved over to the bed, the larger one with the fluffy tail stared intently whole Eleos spoke, nodding occasionally. For a moment they seemed to argue, the round eared one seemed to tear up a bit. Spes braced himself as the fluffy tailed one stood up, only to see he pace around the room. Occasionally one of them would glance back at them, and every time they did Spes feared they would do something.

2 hours passed before the fatigue in Spes's legs had him sit back down. The two giants seemed to finish their conversation and joined each other in the bed.

Around the city section people were also calming down enough to try to sleep as the lynx tried to process what he'd just seen. After staring at the sleeping titans for a moment, Spes opted to try to sleep as well.

When he woke up Erebus was gone. Eleos sat up, not feeling rested at all. Last night had been a trial. He'd expressed to his boyfriend how he felt about their colonizing of the planet despite how necessary it was. He hadn't expected him to take it lightly, being in the military proper.

Erebus had tried to argue the necessity and hadn't taken it well when he'd argued despite that. They'd left things on a sour note. He'd have to talk to him later. For now he had more pressing matters.

Eleos got to his feet and walked over to his desk. He stared down at the container, spotting the small lights between the streets. His mouth was dry, and hurt slightly from having talked so much long into the night, swallowing didn't help.

With a shaking hand he reached for the comms again and held it to his mouth. "A-are you there?"

Total silence. Eleos tried to swallow again. He was shaking.

"...yes."

His tail twitched. "I-i'm sure you wont believe me, but i promise i'll do everything in my power to keep you safe." He said, his voice was a bit raspy and it shook with every word. "And i swear to you, i'm going to find a way to stop the construction of this colony."

There was another moment of silence. Eleos braced himself, expecting to hear more about the horrors he and his people had inflicted, hearing the tiny person on the other end call him everything horrible under the sun. He deserved far worse.

"...i believe you."

#macro/micro #macrophilia #giant #giant/tiny #tiny #macro #micros #sizetumblr #size kink #sizefetish #mouse #lynx #squirrel #paws #story #short story

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vayikraboy · 1 year

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Pest Control Tips For Anyone And Everyone

Once pests infiltrate your home, getting rid of them isn't easy. You may end up spending a lot of money and time trying to rid yourself of them. Use these tips to prevent pests from coming into your home and causing a mess.

Do fruit flies continue to invade your space after you thought you had taken care of the situation? The weak link might be your drains. For some days, tape plastic wrap over your drain and find out whether fruit flies start appearing. If they do, pour some boiling water down your drain and give it a good scrub. That should help you avoid breeding fruit flies.

You cannot afford to waste any time once you find out your home is infested. Put your valuable belongings in safe places and call an exterminator as soon as possible. If the exterminator you called cannot come to your home within the next couple of days, keep looking for another available professional.

Make a routine habit of checking the surfaces and areas surrounding your doors and windows. If they are not tight enough, then moisture and rain might seep in through, getting into the frames. This kind of moist wood is adored by termites and draws them in for a meal.

You should regularly inspect the plumbing of your home and make sure you do not leave any traces of water, for instance under the pots you use for your plants or on your kitchen counter. Humidity can lead to a fungus infestation and leaks will provide pest with the water needed to survive.

Make sure that every single night, you do the dishes in a dishwater or at least wash the food off of the dishes in the sink. The last thing that you will want to do is leave food in the sink, which can be a breeding ground for insects to come in your home.

For some people, battling bedbugs has become a full-time job. It is very difficult to get rid of them, but it is not impossible. Use all of the advice given to you above if you want to get rid of those pesky bedbugs and feel perfectly comfortable living in your home.

Read more here Wasp Vespula germanica Control

#insects #rodents #pest control

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nightcoremoon · 2 years

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I’m not hurt or sad because of things people say to me.

I am furious that you don’t love people as much as I do.

I do the barest fucking minimum of civility and respect and you can’t even do that. it takes 0 effort to do what I do and you don’t even do that. you go out of your way to do the opposite. if you spent half as much effort being a hateful fucking bitch on supporting your fellow man and woman and everyone in between nonbinary intersex or otherwise, maybe we would have healthier stronger and better communities online. I’d have a better time online if you weren’t such a toxic insufferable fucking prick. you step on my happiness by being a dickhead. you are lazy, discompassionate, and I’d go so far as to say that you are actively evil. IT WOULDN’T EVEN TAKE THAT MUCH WORK TO NOT BE A BIGOTED ASSHOLE. it’s so fucking easy to just open your mind to ideas not drilled into your head by society if you ever had one single thing you ever had to struggle through and weren’t privileged enough to be handed circumstances that help you through hard times every single time something inconvenient ever happened to you.

instead you spend your free time, which those of us who actually have to work at surviving from day to day, being a dark cloud raining on peoples parades because you don’t have to work for your happiness. you support a system that exterminates those who are different but because you don’t happen to be that exact demographic at this exact point in history, you’re okay with it. you’re a mason but the soapbox nazi hasn’t called to kill all of the masons yet, so you’re subservient. you’re complacent. you whine and cry and bitch and moan for your rights but when it’s anyone else you don’t give a single shit. you’re susan b anthony saying votes for white women.

you’re a bad person.

you should perform a shotgun lobotomy for the good of our society. you should make some toast in the bathtub. you should paint the sidewalk beneath a skyscraper with your blood. you should make a cocktail of codeine and whiskey. you should go hug a hungry wild grizzly bear. you should bathe in milk and honey and then swim in a colony of fire ants. you should go to brazil. ending your selfish horrid blighted existence is an improvement to millions of lives. I do not feel bad for hurting you in such a way, being so bluntly honest, because all of the things that I’m being mean to you for are things you’ve chosen.

you chose through your actions to be the person I wish death upon. when jewish holocaust survivors wanted to see justice carried out by executing nazi officials after the nuremberg trials, it did not make them bloodthirsty murderers. when escaped slaves joined the union army to fight the confederates during the civil war, it did not mean they were violent monsters. when ukrainians use makeshift explosions to fight back against the russian aggressors, it does not make them evil. when queers piss on ronald reagan’s grave because we can’t punch him in the face now that the motherfucker is dead, we are not subhuman filth. if a palestinian father gets his revenge on an israeli who killed his daughter, he is well within his rights to kill that guy. if a woman stabs her would-be rapist with the very knife he used to threaten her with, she is not culpable for the crime. you are lucky that I’m not next to you with a crowbar or baseball bat, and all I’m doing here is typing out strings of letters that you’ve discerned into a meaning that hurts your feefees. I am well within my rights, justified to say these things to you. and nobody can make me feel bad for saying this. I am not nearly as bad a person for this as you are for your actions.

I hope that if your life does not end relatively soon, that it is as full of as much suffering and misery as you deserve. I hope that the regrets will crush you on your deathbed. I wish every single plague the world can deliver upon you. I hope your restless conscience refuses to offer you even a moment of peace, as you struggle to find meaning in that empty shell you call a life. if you don’t change into a good person I hope that your life ends before you hurt a single other being.

either that or you can stop being a bigoted cunt. pick 1.

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anonymous-dentist · 2 years

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Test Run #3 for the vigilante au! We round these three one-shots off with our boy Sapnap, and a hint of a potential plot.

I’m actually having trouble deciding whether Sapnap or Quackity gets the primary pov in this fic, so if you have a preference, send me an ask letting me know, please?

(As with the other two, this is unedited and stream of thought.)

So there’s this bakery downtown that sells baked goods of every sort. Cookies, muffins, edibles, cakes, pies, name it, they’ve got it. The food’s borderline inedible, but that’s hardly Sapnap’s fault. He just works there.

Well.

Technically he isn’t exactly paid, but Sapnap works there. He’s set to inherit it, actually, which is absolutely terrifying to think about for multiple different reasons, the least of which not being the fact the weird red mold in the basement that makes Sapnap break into hives so badly that he has to go to the hospital. Like, man. Fuck that shit.

Sapnap shivers as the nurse pulls her hands away and as her healing ability’s warmth leaves his body. She nods at Bad entering the room, then she takes her leave to track down the paperwork Sapnap needs to sign to go home.

Bad gives Sapnap an apologetic look and sits down on an uncomfortable-looking plastic chair.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he even sounds like he means it this time.

“If you’re really sorry, then call a fucking mold exterminator or whatever to get rid of that shit before it kills me,” Sapnap snaps. He doesn’t regret it, not even as Bad’s face falls further into hurt and worry.

Three times in one month is- it’s not good! It’s not good. There are several reasons why Sapnap moved out as soon as he could, and the shitty weird mold is but only one of them.

“Language,” Bad half-heartedly chides. His shoulders sag, and maybe Sapnap feels a little bad. A little. “And it’s- I’ve been looking, alright? The best person I could find is Sam, and I’m not sure if I trust him with something as… delicate as this.”

Fair, especially considering Sam’s unique ability to make anything explode with but a single touch. (It has no relation to his actual ability of machine possession or whatever it is he’s calling it these days, but that man is just. So unlucky.) It would be a damn shame if Badlands got blown up trying to get rid of some mold.

But? But. But.

“I’ll see if Dream can find anyone,” Sapnap says, and Bad’s shoulders sag even further.

If there’s one thing that Bad hates doing more than basic housework, it’s asking his son’s friends for help. Something something kids these days should be able to relax more, which is nice and all, but Dream is 22. He isn’t a kid.

“I’ll ask Sam,” Bad sullenly says. “Maybe he’ll have a better idea of who we should be looking for.”

Right, “we”, because Sapnap’s name was added to the bakery’s paperwork properly just recently. Badlands Bakery, owned by the Halo family going back almost sixty years. It would be nice if seeing his name in big black bold letters didn’t sting as much as it did. One day when Bad finally kicks it, Sapnap will be the one living above the bakery, and he’ll be the one passing down the family’s secret muffin recipe to any kids that he and Karl might adopt in the future, and he’ll be the one having to take care of potentially-toxic mold in the basement. At least he knows that it might be toxic; Bad seems to be in some sort of stupid denial about that, which is annoying, to say the least.

But it’s fine. It’s fine! Skeppy has more than enough money in the bank to take care of any further hospital bills that Sapnap might rack up because, surprise surprise, it’s expensive to go to the emergency room three times in the span of a month for icky mold hives.

“Whatever,” Sapnap huffs.

He turns his gaze from his father to the clock on the wall, and that’s the end of that.

The problem with being a guy with no special ability in a city full of people with special abilities is that it’s really fucking hard to be a superhero. No respectable hero agency will even so much as look at you if you don’t have at least some kind of superpower. But apparently being ripped as hell isn’t an ability, and neither is having a better sense of justice than half the heroes currently employed across the city.

Growing up, Sapnap wanted nothing more than to be like the heroes he saw on tv. He sat up all night on his fifth birthday waiting to see what ability he would manifest. Would it be like his dad’s, all fire and brimstone? Or would it be like his deceased mother’s, some kind of targeted empathy ray? But then the clock turned midnight, and nothing happened.

And nothing would happen.

It’s perfectly normal to be born without an ability. That’s what Bad told him then as he cried in his father’s arms, and it’s what Bad tells him now as he looks down at Excel spreadsheets he doesn’t understand. And it is perfectly normal, technically. It’s like being born ginger, only being born ginger doesn’t immediately blacklist you from your dream job. And Sapnap knows that if it wasn’t for that, he wouldn’t care. His life is just fine. He has a stable job, technically, and a business basically his for the taking as soon as his dad passes on. He has the world’s most wonderful boyfriend, and he has a ring box in his sock drawer just waiting for the right time to be pulled out.

But also? Sapnap wants to break someone’s bones, like, all of the time. It’s what happens after basically being forced into working customer service since he was a kid. It’s only natural that he wants to get off work and blow off some steam by beating the everloving shit out of some jackass robbing a 7/11.

And so Sapnap finds himself beating the everloving shit out of some jackass robbing a 7/11 at three in the morning, knuckles bruised and bleeding and smile straining the limits of his bandana’s coverage. If he gets any more pumped, there’s a good chance that his bandana will fall right off, and that wouldn’t be good. At all.

“Bro, what the fuck?” the idiot cowering before him groans, curled up into themself and covered head-to-toe in their own blood. “I wasn’t even doing anything!”

Sapnap looks from the criminal to the woman on the sidewalk watching them duke it out with a hole in her chest from a gunshot wound she had sustained before his arrival. Normally, he wouldn’t even bother with someone robbing a 7/11. It’s a tough economy; people gotta do what they gotta do to survive. But shooting people? Nah, that’s just plain wrong.

“You literally shot a woman,” Sapnap incredulously says. His dollar-store voice changer makes his voice ten times more gravelly and ten times more hard to understand, but it also makes him, like, ten times more cool and ten times more intimidating. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

The criminal stops quivering long enough to consider before shrugging and giving up their attempts to escape.

“Fair enough,” they say.

Right. Well. That’s good enough.

Sapnap had sent a tip to his favorite local hero before swooping in, so he just ties the fucker up with some rope and sits down on the cub next to the shot woman. He awkwardly folds his hands in his lap, silent.

“Thank you,” the woman says, just as awkward.

She must have some kind of healing ability, because she doesn’t really seem at all bothered by the literal hole in her chest.

Sapnap ducks his head bashfully. “It’s nothing, really. Thank the guy coming to arrest them.”

And then, right on cue as if he was psychic, the guy coming to arrest them swoops in from the clouds, cloak fluttering behind him. He whistles through his teeth, face completely hidden behind his mask, obviously impressed by Sapnap’s ability to completely wreck a motherfucker.

“Damn, okay, good job, Mars,” Dream says. Yeah, he’s impressed.

He crouches by the criminal, who obviously recognizes S City’s number one up-and-coming hero. They cringe back in fear, eyes wide and glimmering in the smoggy moonlight. Sapnap can practically see Dream’s smirk as he grabs the criminal’s face and moves it so they’re looking directly at the beady black eye holes of his mask.

“Oh, shit,” the woman softly says.

Sapnap often feels much the same way when he sees his friend in the field. Dream is just. He’s just.

Sapnap stands and stretches, hiding a wince as something in his shoulder pulls. Maybe he’ll just head home for the night after this. He’s had a long night, and he kind of super desperately wants Karl to hold him right now.

He walks up behind Dream and crosses his arms, hip cocked just so. He’s intimidating. Karl always tells him that he looks intimidating like this. He looks tough. Badass. Macho as hell.

“You were slow tonight,” he comments. “Getting rusty, Hush?”

Dream’s shoulders tense with stifled laugher. “Sure, sure. You know, you might’ve gone a little too easy on this guy. Did you lose your touch?”

The criminal whimpers, fully whimpers. Sapnap actually feels a little bad for them. Not a lot, just a little. This is what happens when you try and kill someone: you get your ass whooped by the two toughest bitches in town.

Sapnap cracks his knuckles with a purposefully-exaggerated yawn. “It’s been a long night, man. Why don’t we just take care of the problem and call it good?”

“What, are you suggesting that a hero and a vigilante work together to bring a criminal to justice?” Dream asks, standing and turning to face Sapnap in one swift motion. Silhouetted by the moon, Dream cuts a striking, imposing figure, towering above Sapnap with every identifying feature of his hidden beneath his costume. “That sounds ridiculous, even to me.”

Sapnap shrugs. They do this every time they collab. It’s for show. And, man, Sapnap is such a good actor.

He looks the injured woman directly in the eye and says, “Yeah, it is ridiculous. It’s a good thing that nobody is going to hear about it.”

The woman’s eyes widen, and she nods her head vigorously.

Content, Dream turns back to the criminal, who looks about ready to piss their pants.

He pulls a knife from his bandoleer and flips it once in the air before catching it by the tip. God, he’s cool.

Sapnap doesn’t have any weapons, but he does have his fists. More importantly, he has a pair of steel-toed boots that Bad gave him for Christmas last year that have seen more ribcages than any respectable boots should ever see.

He drives his foot right into the jackass’ ribs and lets Dream get to work.

#vigilante au i guess #vigilante au test run!#a.d.'s fics i suppose.#a.d.'s fics i suppose #i meant to do this last week but got distracted #anyway that's it!#i'll start the main fic when i decide on a pov and a plot-plot #i have many ideas bouncing around

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benevolentbirdgal · 3 years

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Purim: a Jewish holiday and wild ride from start to finish

So let me tell you about the absolute soap opera that is the Jewish holiday of Purim. The scene is set in ancient (appx. 4th century B.C.E.) Persia during the first Jewish Diaspora, in the city of Shushan (typically identified in secular sources as Susa, a now-abandoned ancient city in what is now Iran). I’m telling you, as a work of literature (even beyond theological implications for Jewish people), this book has everything: love, drama, royalty, intrigue, ego, plots, irony, mystery, and a strong female lead.

[some non-slur swearing below]

Ahasuerus, party-loving king of Persia executed or exiled (translations argue) his wife Vashti, and had to find a new queen. Why did he do this, you ask? Well, it really starts with an 180-day party across his kingdom for all his subjects to celebrate the third year of his reign. After that absolute rager, party-bro KA has another one immediately after for a week, this time just for the capital city of Shushan. Vashti was having a woman’s party in her quarters, presumably living her best life, when party-bro sends his top seven yes-men to deliver a message to Vashti. This sleaze-ball wants her to appear at his party in front of everyone, wearing her crown, with the clear implication being only her crown. Vashti more or less tells him to pound sand (I mean, not the literal translation, but that’s the sentiment).

KA’s advisors convince him that this is not only an offense against the king but also against all the men in the country (ah, the joys of ancient patriarchy and toxic af masculinity). KA writes a degree that women must respect their husbands so he has an official reason to get rid of Vashti. Vashti is soon thereafter out of the picture and the king is short a queen. Whether she was a Wise Lady With A Point Who Got Screwed Over or a Vicious Jew-Hating Adulteress Who Had It Coming has been a matter of furious debate for over two millennia (the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud vociferously disagree on her). In any case, KA regrets it pretty quick and wants a new queen.

At the behest of his advisors (you know, since their last advice worked out soooooo well), KA had a big contest/forcible gathering of young women from around his kingdom and a Jewish woman, Hadassah, was the winner. Hadassah was an orphan raised by her cousin Mordechai in the city of Shushan. Hadassah is more commonly known as Esther, because she changed her name to hide her identity as a Jew (at the behest of Mordechai). In any case, KA decided he liked Esther best and she became queen (it’s specifically mentioned both that he loved her most and that the palace staff liked her because she was nice to them-it’s unclear how much of an influence the latter was).

Concurrently, a wicked man named Haman was the top advisor to the king and the king would basically rubber-stamp whatever Haman wanted. Haman was a raging Jew-hater-this will be relevant later.

Some time into Esther’s reign as queen, Mordechai, who has taken to hanging around the gates of the palace to keep in touch with Esther, overhears a plot by two guards, Bigthan and Teresh, to kill the king. Mordechai alerts his cousin, and she tells the king. It’s recorded in the book of deeds and life keeps moving.

Some time later, Haman decides (after a promotion to head lackey) that he wants all to bow to him as he passes. Mordechai refused to bow to Haman every single day (citing that as a Jew he bowed to no man), and that did not sit well with Haman. So despite being prime minister and presumably having more important things to do, “genocide the Jews” made it to the top of to-do list. He didn’t like them before, and Mordechai refusing to treat him like a special snowflake was something he took really, really personally (totally can’t think of any modern politicians like that, nope). He told KA, who frankly doesn’t seem to ask enough questions, that there was a people disrespecting the king and his laws throughout the land, and could he pretty-please exterminate them. As a bonus, Haman would “donate” 10,000 silver kikar to the royal treasury (modern conversion vary, but all agree this an absurd amount on money).

KA handed him the royal seal to do so. Haman was feeling lucky I guess so he decided the best course of action was to draw lots to pick the day for the massacre. [Purim is lots in Hebrew, so that’s where the name of the holiday came from]. The message went out to all the provinces that on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, that they citizens and leaders should murder all of the Jews, young and old, man, woman, and child, rich and poor and take their possessions as spoils.

As this wasn’t exactly a state secret, the Jews knew and were quite distressed. The planned slaughter was like a year out, but what the actual fuck were they supposed to do? If you lived in Persia at that point that, the empire was functionally your entire world, unless you were fabulously/ridiculously wealthy and well-connected. Having several months notice the other locals and your rules were going to slaughter you and take your stuff isn’t particularly useful when there’s really nowhere to go.

In Shushan, Mordechai (who, although not explicitly in text, is in oral/Talmudic tradition a leader of the Jewish community) goes into mourning. He dresses in sackcloth and ashes, he weeps, and he fasts at the gates of the palace, as Jews throughout shushan and the kingdom are doing. Esther hears of her cousin’s mourning behavior and tries to send along nice clothes through a messenger, which he refuses. It is then that she learns of the decree. Mordechai (through the messenger) implores her to go ask the king if the Jews not getting murdered could be a thing. Esther explains that she could be killed for approaching the king unsummoned. Mordechai stresses the severity of the situation. Esther agrees to ask the king and tells Mordechai to have the Shushan Jewish community fast day and night (as opposed to just day as prior) for three days, and she and her handmaidens will fast too (no word on what the handmaidens thought of this).

On the third day, Esther bravely approached the king, asked him if she could request something. He said anything, up to half his kingdom (which implies to me that homedude, for all his flaws, was actually into her). Esther invited him to a party, where he and Haman would be the only guests. At the party she asks if she can another request. KA is open to it and she invites him to another party the next night. Party-bro king is obviously down and Haman is tickled to death at this second invitation.

He goes home to brag to his wife, Zeresh, about the invite and also to bitch about how angsty he is Mordechai is still alive (this angst reignited by passing him on the way home). Zeresh suggests he have fifty-foot gallows built to make Mordechai an example on, with the king’s permission, ASAP. Haman orders the building of the gallows, feeling secure in the knowledge that his bestie the king will execute Mordechai on them.

Back at the castle KA can’t sleep. He demands a bedtime story from the his records, because those will presumably put him to sleep. The story that gets read, ~coincidentally~, is of Mordechai saving KA’s life. Haman had sidled on up to the castle to speak to the king about killing Mordechai, and the king called him in. KA asks Haman, if he were to honor someone, what should he do? Haman is thinking “this is obvi about me” and tells the king that the honoree should be donned in royal clothing, and ride through the streets on a fancy horse with people someone shouting how great he is. KA is like great, love it, perf, go do that for Mordechai. Haman is not a happy camper but does the thing. After that, he goes home and tells Zeresh about it, who warns him that this is a very bad sign.

Finally, that night is the night of Esther’s second soiree. Haman and KA attend. The latter offers to Esther anything she wants, up to half of his kingdom. Esther asks that her life, and the life of her people be spared. KA is like “whomst” and Esther revealed it was Haman. At this point Ahasuerus.exe stops working and he takes a walk to the gardens. He comes back to see Haman begging Esther for his life, and KA thinks Haman is assaulting her. Haman was seized by nearby guards.

One of the chamberlains is then like, hey, KA, coincidentally there’s these super high gallows Haman just had built. Why not take care of the problem that way? (The fact that the random nearby chamberlain was like yup, that dude, hang ‘em in the morning, probably says a lot about how Haman treated most people around him, even more than forcing all to bow to him). KA orders it be done.

Not that Haman was around to be sad about it, but what happened next would have massively pissed him off, as his old job then went to Mordechai. Esther then implored of the king that the degree to allow the massacre of the Jews be reversed. The king couldn’t Cntrl+Z the order to murder-all-the-Jews, but he could issue an order that they could fight back. The proclamation was sent throughout the land, and the Jews were able to prepare. Since the royal decree had been amended, the governments (princes, governors, satraps) largely reformulated their plans accordingly, but plenty of Jew-haters still wanted to use the opportunity. The ability to self-defend meant that the communities weren’t massacred. In most of the kingdom, the Jews were now safe. Outside of Shushan, the fourteenth of Adar became a feast day.

Shushan was still not safe though. Antisemites were still out and mad (and apparently had not learned from the previous day), so Esther asked the Jews of Shushan to be allowed to defend themselves once more. Her wish was granted, and the Shushan Jews were able to defend themselves once more (so Purim is celebrated a day later in walled cities).

The story ends with the decision to write it down, and although there some debate on authorship, it is traditionally attributed to Esther herself cowriting with Mordechai.

Nowhere in the book is God mentioned. Nowhere is there divine intervention (at least not explicitly). Just Jews sticking up for themselves, being brave in the face of mortal peril, and a metric fucktown of chutzpah.

#jumblr #purim #purim story #jewish soap opera for real though #purim 2021 #purim 5781 #what is purim #purim explained #jewblr

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boombboi · 3 years

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FUKUCHI AND THE GOVERNMENT: AN ANALYSIS

Cw: mention of politics

I realized something big while i was washing dishes right after i caught up with the BSD manga so here it is

Technically, the government made Fukuchi the man he is now, a terrorist mastermind whose goal is world domination, namely to destroy all governments.

Before all this, he was a soldier. A puppet of the government in war. He went to battle countless times until he realized that he was just being used by the government.

Because the nation is commanding its soldiers to go to battle, that's why there is war.

Fukuchi believed that if he exterminate every nation, basically to destroy every command center, war will cease to exist since there won't be anyone commanding the soldiers/people

Fukuchi's hatred for the government is extraordinary. He referred to politicians as "angels" -- angels that needed to suffer. Because they hold power over the people by sending them to war without a tinge of responsibility, while all they do is bask in their riches and pleasure themselves.

"A nation's greed," he says. A nation's greed breeds war.

In the real world, war breaks out because a country wants one thing or another (mostly resources amd all those stuffs).

Now, here's the thing. This has been happening in the real world for millenias and it's not going to stop anytime soon. War is as old as history, and it's going to outlive every single human that's living right now.

Fukuchi is the epitome of revolutionary terrorism. He is every single human in the real world who knows the sins of the government can't be.

He understood, all too well, that the peace the government is advocating for is nothing but a farce. A farce to the common people and to manipulate the soldiers in the battlefield to continue fighting for the sake of this "peace".

All the while the government, the politicians, sit in content, in their extravagant mansions, enjoying themselves. They will only take real action when their riches and pleasures are threatened.

Now the funny thing is the government loves to act as a victim. When someone like Fukuchi appears and tries to destroy the system they built for themselves, they manipulate the soldiers and the common people yet again.

In other words, they're like this

"You will go fight in the war so that we can have peace, while i sit here in the palace commanding you and eating delicious grub with my pals. You'll most probably die or get PTSD but that doesn't matter bc we will have peace once this is all over and you'll be honored by the people"

then that soldier starts to realize that they're doing the government's dirty work and plots to go against it, then the government will be all like-

To the terrorists: "How dare you threaten MY peace?! This is outrageous! After everything i made you do to protect my power and riches, this is how you repay me?!"

To the people: "My people! This man here is threatening the peace that we all so worked hard for. We You have to stop them before our country falls into chaos and my power over you, my extravagant mansion, and all my money is taken away from me"

Who will win will always depend on a lot of factors.

And whether I'm talking about the BSD government or the irl government, honestly I am not so sure myself. It's a little bit of both ig. There has never been a single government that was all good, not that i know of, not in fiction nor in reality. Like people, they will always have their dark sides.

Anyway, I've been seeing a lot of "It's all Fukuchi's fault" memes circulating on the internet and while I dont like and definitely dont support the old man, it's more reasonable to say that it's all the government's fault.

After all, they made him the man he is now. The government made him a terrorist.

All Fukuchi is doing is fighting for his own ideology. He's fighting for what he believes in and whether his beliefs are good or bad, it all depends on the individual's morals.

In conclusion:

Soldiers are puppets of the government.

The government loves to play the victim when driven into the corner.

Fukuchi is one of those misunderstood villains

World peace is impossible irl and wars will probably never end

Whenever there's peace, there is always war

...

somehow when writing this, the line between fiction and reality became blurry and it felt like im standing in a very gray area that for some reason, i shouldnt be allowed to enter

THAT BEING SAID, i wheezed when i realized that the government loves to play the victim. All these corrupt politicians, they all love to play the victim. How disgusting of them

EVERYTHING IS MESSED UP AND I CANT WAIT TO SEE HOW THEY'LL DEFEAT FUKUCHI and all those who got turned into vampires I hope they are all okay, esp Aku, Hirotsu-san, Tachihara, Gin, Jouno, and Higuchi

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #bungo stray dogs #bsd manga #bungo stray dogs manga #bsd spoilers #fukuchi ouchi #bsd fukuchi #bsd analysis #cw mention of politics #bungo stray dogs analysis

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romanogersgirl · 3 years

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Romanogers Masterlist

Multi-chapter and one shot stories I’ve written on Steve and Nat are found here.

Multi-Chapter:

Hold On To the Nights - Wattpad - Fanfiction.Net - AO3 - Tumblr

Summary: The last thing Natasha Romanoff wanted was to lead a monotonous life carved by her controlling father. For once she wanted to do something meaningful with her life. Crossing paths with single father Steve Rogers may have been exactly what she needed. Romanogers. Alternate Universe.

Status: Incomplete

Remember - Wattpad - Fanfiction.Net - AO3 - Tumblr

Summary: Natasha Romanoff fought her way out of her past life. Forgetting who she is, she had no idea why she was sent here or why she woke up in 1942 Brooklyn, New York. Romanogers. Historical. Fix-it fic. Multi-chapter.

Status: Incomplete

One shots:

Purgatory - Wattpad - Fanfiction.Net - AO3 - Tumblr (Coming soon!)

Summary: Immediately following the population extermination from Thanos, Steve Rogers felt trapped in his own mind by choice and he hated every second of it. Not knowing if there was any hope left, he could feel his faith begin to melt away. Natasha Romanoff watched as the Captain sunk into himself and felt pulled to keep his sanity and the remainder of the human race alive. Romanogers. Extended scene from the trailer. One shot.

Status: Incomplete

Sanctuary - Wattpad - Fanfiction.Net - AO3 - Tumblr (Coming soon!)

Summary: Natasha is on the run, living off the grid in the countryside of Oslo, Norway in the middle of nowhere, until someone from her past comes to pay her visit. Set in the Black Widow movie canon. Romanogers. Alternate Universe. One shot.

Status: Incomplete

Hands to Heaven - Wattpad - Fanfiction.Net - AO3 - Tumblr (Coming soon!)

Summary: Steve Rogers breezed into the closest pub bar one night. He just couldn’t stand the Christmas party he was dragged into. All it took was one look at the girl behind the bar to change his mood, not just for the night, but forever. Romanogers. Alternate Universe. All Human. One shot. Based on Breathe - Hands to Heaven.

Status: Incomplete

#romanogers #fanfiction #masterlist #love #romance #stevenat #mcu #natasha romanoff #steve rogers #captain america #romanogers fanfic

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liptonsbabe · 3 years

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The light is coming [B.W]

Bill Weasley x Lexington! reader

Chapter 1

Summary: The power of the Dark Lord shakes the entire magical community to its foundations, no one is safe as Lord Voldemort is so strong and the boy who lived becomes weaker; The magnanimous Order of the Phoenix is in dire need to gather all its members and even to recruit wizards beyond the borders of the community.

Albus Dumbledore knows that amidst the reign of darkness, the light will return to restore all that it took and bring with it extraordinary powers, even if it leaves an aftermath that cannot be erased. The Order of the Phoenix will need all the help it can get, including the help of the mythical (Y/N) Lexington.

Harry Potter's parents were not the only ones killed by the hands of Lord Voldemort.

Word count: 1.8K

Warnings: none

A/N:Hi! A new Bill’s fanfic for you all. This story is finished so if you like this part let me know so and i’ll update as soon as i can! Again, reader’s last name is Lexington but is just for the plot of this story

English not my mother language so please don’t kill me. Enjoy!

Chapter 1: The Order Of The Phoenix

Charlie and Bill Weasley had returned from their jobs abroad with the only purpose of duly serving the Order of the Phoenix commanded by Albus Dumbledore. For Bill it hadn’t been a sacrifice to return home, things in Egypt were not going at all well and he only asked for his transfer to an English office to work and at the same time help the Order. It wasn’t the same for his brother Charlie, cause he had to leave all his errands in Romania along with all his beautiful dragons.The journey to Grimmauld Place had been complicated cause, despite not missing anything from the countries they were returning from (with the exception of Charlie's dragons) they could quickly get used to the quiet, anti-Voldemort pace of life that the English magical community was vitiated by.

Both brothers were welcomed by their mother Molly Weasley, with tears in her eyes she hugged them as tightly as she could inviting them into the farthest room possible. Bill remembered Grimmauld Place very vaguely, the only time he set a foot inside the house was when Dumbledore asked him to help him clear the rooms and turn them into curse free spaces where they could quietly discuss classified Order business.

No matter how many times they cleaned that place, the old house of Black would always remain with that grayish appearance and the musty smell of worn wood. Sirius didn't seem to have any intention of renovating its fallen parts - of which there were quite a few - but seemed to enjoy watching the house fall apart. Be that as it may, Bill thought that any place was a good place to plan the crazy moves Albus Dumbledore had in his head.

The room was filled with people Bill had met before through letters his mother sent him informing him of the Order's progress, Dumbledore thought the best way to gain the upper hand against Voldemort's dark army was to recruit wizards who were willing to give their lives to protect the magical community. Surprisingly more people arrived than Bill could have imagined in addition to all those wizards and witches who had already been part of the association for years.

Taking a seat by the door, Bill and Charlie recognized the silhouette of Nymphadora Tonks. Not that it was very difficult to recognize her as her short, straight, bubblegum pink hair stood out among all the others. The metamorphmagus managed to acknowledge the newcomers sending them a warm smile before gluing her gaze on the door.

Charlie elbowed his brother's shoulder

“Dumbledore and his crazy schemes making us come here just for the Order business....”

“It was necessary," Bill cut him off, looking at him out of the corner of his eye, "Do you even know what's going on with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, don't you?” Charlie shook his head “it’s a real mess and you'd know it if you didn't spend so much time with your dragons.

“Don't bring them into this”

“They're some of them now?”

“Yeah, we got a shipment of Peruvian Vipertooths in this month and oh, brother, they're beautiful!”

“Wait” Bill frowned ”Those things doesn’t eat people?

“well yes, but that's only part of their diet, they also feed on goats and cows. We keep them in a cage near the forest because that species was supposedly exterminated after being considered dangerous to wizards and muggles alike, but I think they're beautiful”

Charlie's eyes sparkled and Bill couldn't help thinking that he was the odd one among his siblings. His admiration for dragons frightened him even though he found it adorable at times.

“You know, I'm not surprised you're still single. Knowing you as i do, you'll end up marrying one of those dragons or in the worst case, eaten by one”

Charlie didn't like his older brother's comment.

“What about you? As far as I know, you're not dating someone either”

Charlie's sudden criticism made him clear his throat and settle better in his seat. When they looked over at Tonks, they noticed that she was still staring at the door. Charlie hurried him to answer his comment.

“I met someone” His brother's blue eyes widened, amazed “I mean, we met in Egypt, she was traveling and we only went out a couple of times, nothing important.

“That's what you always say, William” Charlie looked at him mischievously ”No one seems to be good enough for you, huh? Or are you still thinking about someone since our childhood?”

Bill knew what his brother was trying to do and immediately shook his head. He had had this adolescent love for a girl who had left to France without anyone knowing the reasons why. Bill was totally hooked on her, yet the disappointment of her being thousands of miles away from him had broken his heart in a way he couldn't explain. Charlie knew about it, because he was the only one of his siblings who was old enough to understand; still, that didn't take away from the fact that he made fun of her misfortune a couple of times.

“Shut it”

Albus Dumbledore brought an end to everyone's conversations after standing up and clapping his hands a couple of times to get their attention. With a sincere smile, Dumbledore dimmed the lights in the room to reveal dozens of candles levitating all over the place. Bill fell silent and looked at the man

“I know that most of you here had to pause your activities just to attend this extraordinary meeting of the Order of the Phoenix, and for that I want to thank you," Dumbledore smiled at them, "We are fully aware of what is happening in the magical community thanks to the terrible presence of Lord Voldemort," Dumbledore ignored the shrieks of amazement from the audience “That leaves me with the advantage of not having to explain what is obvious to you, so the important thing about this assembly is to make it clear that, despite the magnificent increase in our membership over the past few days, we are still in the minority against the Dark Lord's ranks”

The murmurs grew louder and louder, causing Dumbledore to ask for everyone's calm.

“This doesn’t mean that your help is in vain, what I am trying to say is that we need more wizards and witches to join the Order”

“Where will we get more people?”Asked a witch wearing a yellowish hood on her head, "People are afraid, they're not going to join the Order just like that”

“We'll try to convince them," Dumbledore said calmly. "Of course, all of those who want to join will have to undergo proper training.

“So you're asking for more Aurors?”Minerva McGonagall asked. Professor Dumbledore smiled broadly

“Indeed”

The hubbub in the room intensified for a couple of minutes before Albus Dumbledore called for silence. Bill agreed with everyone that this was sheer madness. It was practically impossible for aurors to enter something as sensitive as the Order of the Phoenix - with the exception of Tonks and Mad-Eye Moody, Bill thought those two were insane - without them reporting every movement of Order members to the Ministry. Yes, the aurors were the best trained people for this kind of work, however, they were the hardest to convince

“Why don't we just make Harry a part of the team?”Asked Sirius from the middle of the room. Molly Weasley let out a shriek of indignation.

“What are you talking about? Harry's just a boy!”

“Molly, please, the boy knows more about this situation than any of us put together!”

“Even so, it's still dangerous for him”

“It is for everyone. I don't see what difference it makes if Harry is in on it, that way he'd have more support from the Order and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named would stay away from him”

-If it is true what Sirius says," Dumbledore interjected, "It's no less true that Harry can't be a member of the Order yet. Not until he fixes the problem he has with the ministry after he used magic in front of a Muggle trying to ward off the Dementors that are getting closer and closer to non-wizards. Right now Harry should be being moved to this place to stay at least until the new school year begins.

“And in the meantime what are we going to do?” Severus Snape asked. Bill raised his eyebrows, noticing how Nymphadora Tonks raised her hand to give her opinion.

“I hope this isn't too hasty, but I've been sending some letters to Beauxbatons College in France in search of a response from the Aurors. It is well known that none of them have been willing to give us their help, but this afternoon I received a letter from one person who is willing to help us in any way she can," Tonks looked at everyone before continuing, "I know that one person doessn’t represent a great addition to our ranks, but I am absolutely certain that she is our best option”

Bill's eyes flicked from Nymphadora to Dumbledore repeatedly. He had that strange feeling that Dumbledore knew who she was referring even though she hadn't said the name yet. Dumbledore nodded a couple of times asking Tonks to continue. She cleared her throat

“She should be here soon”

“We’ll wait patiently”

Dumbledore's nod wasn't necessary cause seconds later the door flung wide open letting in the light from the main corridor. Bill glanced at the newcomer noting your expensive French clothes and your perfectly coiffed hair in a ponytail. His breath quickened as he took a close look at your face and recognized those features he remembered from when he was a teenager. A quick glance at Charlie was enough to confirm that what he saw was not an illusion.

The whole room rose to their feet, and as you entered the room raising your hands to the sky, the room was filled with a bright light that caused everyone to take cover before it blinded them permanently. Bill caught a glimpse of Tonks' pleased giggle before you reached Dumbledore giving him a handshake as a greeting while keeping the light alive with your opposite hand.

Your wand was in your jacket pocket and from your hands an endless fountain of light gushed forth, bringing peace to the members of the order.

The mythical (Y/N) Lexington didn’t needed a wand to have magic.

#bill weasley #bill weasley imagines #bill weasley x reader #domhn #domhnall gleeson imagine #domhnall gleeson x reader #harry potter imagine #harry potter cast #charlie weasley #fred weasley imagines #order of the phoenix

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anakinisvaderisanakin · 3 years

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Evil Unmasked Part 4 AU (aka Vader visits Padmé’s tomb)

Darth Vader was, in a word, exhausted.

Truth be told, whatever slim patience he had had for the machinations of Palpatine’s propaganda machine and the role it had carved out for him was all but gone. He could no longer recall how many interviews he had been forced to play along with, how many holo captures he had had taken of his visage for Imperial distribution. He had figured Palpatine would use his compliance as a tool to promote the Empire as the righteous governmental installment, and himself as the rightful Emperor. Still, it was becoming both grating, and infuriating. Vader was relieved that the media circus had, for now, been foiled and was beginning to die down. He had lost count of how many times he had been pinned down to denounce the Jedi order and explain why he had turned against them, as well as why he had changed his name.

Eight months post the fall of the Republic, and the calamity of the aftermath had begun to settle into the new normalcy. Vader was no longer hounded by hoards of reporters, no longer approached solely to speak out for promotional purposes. This was his first break from the obligations of either hunting down and eliminating stray Jedi, or speaking out on Palpatine’s behalf to praise his leadership. As soon as the opportunity arose, he asked for (demanded) his first day off. Palpatine had given him a quizzical, mildly displeased look but allowed it with a disinterested hand wave. The location he’d chosen for his travel had been decided long in advance, constantly pushed to the back of his mind but never truly forgotten. Vader hadn’t been anywhere near the sector for years; the planet’s sunny skies, vast green fields of grass and tranquil environment seemingly welcoming him with open arms. The nature and its beautiful trappings knew nothing of his past, nothing of the dark deeds he had committed - nor of the fact that he had stolen one of its most favourite daughters away.

Naboo was a beautiful place, with its lush scenery and its vast crystal clear lakes. Even with the sombre intentions behind Vader’s visit in mind, he found it a refreshing and peaceful break from the insanity life had become. The serene, bedazzled home world of Emperor Palpatine was nothing short of a paradise. But it was also the home world of Vader’s beloved, lost Padmé.

That Palpatine could be the native son of such a stunning planet was irony in its highest form. Padmé was much more suited for the inviting greenery, and the richly bedazzled background most citizens of Naboo had enjoyed. The gungans, shut out from society and equality before the Separatist attack, seemed so far removed from the background Padmé and Palpatine were of. Padmé had been born a Naberrie - that in itself a prestige; elected Queen at fourteen, and then continuing to become the senator and ambassador of her birth planet. The planet’s inhabitants had adored her. They adored her valor, her beauty, and her compassion. Her childhood made such a stark contrast to Vader’s own. Padmé had been raised in harmony; with her own autonomy, with responsibilities, yes - but with the power to make lasting changes. With her inherited money and her stunning appearance, her heritage and her wit - Padmé had had all the trappings sufficient of making a just, good woman.

Vader had come from nothing, with no legacy, no father, and no autonomy. He had lived impoverished as a child slave barely scraping by, fearing either death by starvation or illness, or by extermination. Watto, as his master and owner, had threatened him into submission by reminding him of the chip in his neck; reminding him of that fact that would he revolt - both he and his mother were doomed. Padmé never had to fear for her parents’, or her sister’s lives. Not even when she was with child, was the terror of her dying in childbirth that occupied Vader’s mind every hour of every day, of any concern to her. She did not fear death, but then she had never been faced death as Vader had. Perhaps, if she too had been raised on a desert planet, no more than an item to be exploited, with only her mother as a guide and confidant would she have understood his plight. Maybe if she, too, had lost her parents and failed in her valiant effort to save them, would she have understood his fear of watching her fade away. In the end, as yet another cruel twist of fate; Vader himself had brought about her demise. In the end, all he had was himself - and perhaps, that was for the better.

The tomb of senator Padmé Amidala was a vast monument in and of itself, but at the same time surprisingly sparse on decor. Padmé had never been a woman of simplicity when it came to appearance or presentation, but her final resting place was almost humble. Solid stone encased her now, protecting her withering bones from the harsh light of day. Now, as night reigned supreme and the stars peppering the skies provided the only light; Vader thought it a bleak and gloomy sight. He would have envisioned something more grandiose. The style was simple; cream coloured alabaster pillars supported a raised, arched roof. Vader traversed down a winding path or marble stairs, resolute in his resolve despite the unwanted guilt that was constantly nagging at the back of his mind and wearing him down. It made his skin crawl, and he stopped when he came face to face with the single ornament guarding his wife’s grave. Beneath the arched ceiling, a monument had been erected in her honour. Large, lifelike and meticulously detailed; it too was cut from sandstone and alabaster. It was a magnificent statue, portraying Padmé as she had appeared in life during her years as Queen and regent of Naboo. Its face seemed to peer down at Vader, as if to condemn him for trespassing. As if to demean him for daring to disturb her eternal peace.

Ignoring the judgmental stare he could not shake, Vader hurriedly brushed past the statue. With one wave of his hand, he let the Force gently guide the heavy stone door blocking the entrance to the mausoleum portion of the monument aside. Inky darkness pooled inside the small crypt, the starlight barely spilling past the threshold. A cold breeze seemed to emerge from within, both as a plea asking him to leave; and a lull, begging him to enter. Vader shut his eyes for a moment, allowing bith the crisp chill of the night and the stuffy air from within the tomb to wash over him. The breeze ran through his hair, and for a second, he recalled the gentle touch of his wife’s slender fingers combing through the unruly curls. He remembered her soft skin, her plush lips. Opening his eyes, he knew what he must do. He held no fear of the dead, and he was convinced that Padmé’s ghost would not be enraged by his visit.

But neither would she be pleased. Vader imagined she may weep if she could see him now.

Not surprisingly, Vader had found himself unable to attend Padmé's funeral wake. He had watched the holo screen broadcast of the procession in real time, as it was distributed to the public grieving an icon lost. The ceremony itself had been lavish; Queen Apailana dressed in the regal mourning attire. Emperor Palpatine had made it more than clear that there was no way for Vader to be present without drawing unwanted attention by his pre-Empire affiliation with Padmé as - what the public thought to be - a very close friend. Indeed, his absence may have been even odder but in hindsight Vader couldn’t have changed his lot had he tried to. And he had tried, to no avail. At the same time, it hadn’t stung as much to give into his master's wishes - knowing it was his fault Padmé would breathe no more. He had killed her. Part of him thought then, as did he now, that he hadn’t deserved showing his face in such a sacred rite. She was so far above him, and he was so far beneath her.

She was an Angel, and he was her murderer.

Entering the crypt with trepidation and reverence, Vader paused in the doorway. He had to duck to fit through the narrow entrance; the additional height of his new cybernetic legs was still cumbersome, and he hadn’t quite gotten used to the equally freshly fashioned prosthetic arms either with their larger hands and longer forearms. It was just a matter of time, really, but Vader felt it to be an unwelcome hindrance. He had been promised unlimited power by his master, instead he had been maimed and left for dead by Kenobi - and he alone bore the blame for Padmé’s demise. Padmé, whose remains were just within his reach. Padmé, whose spirit must surely despise him now. As he traversed with a solemn unease farther into the cavern; Vader became aware of two things.

First was the stone coffin holding his beloved’s lifeless body. Its lid was adorned by yet another skilfully crafted sculpture; this time a likeness of Padmé’s visage as she had been presented during her funeral wake. Her hair had been loose and wavy as she was paraded through the streets, decorated only with tiny, brittle flowers. Clad in a flowing blue gown, hands clasped over her swollen belly; face so lifelike she had seemed to be merely asleep. As Vader had made himself watch the painful holoscreening - witnessing his beloved one last time from afar - he had entertained the notion that if he’d only been present, he could have kissed her cold lips and she would have woken up. So many fairytales spoke of true love’s kiss, and of it raising a seemingly dead lover from their eternal slumber. Vader’s last kiss shared with his wife had proved to be the kiss of death. This blatant mimicry of Padmé’s visage - a far cry of her beauty - had been expected.

What Vader had not expected was the glass showcase propped by the coffin's side. Upon an indigo satin pillow rested Padmé’s japor snippet. Slightly faded with wear and tear, wooden and as intricately hand carved as the day he had given it to her. It had been granted its own separate display, and Vader scoffed at the notion that any of Padmé’s many handmaidens or realtives would have understood but a sliver of its importance to her - and, subsequently, to him. Still, it had been singled out as a token, and it had been clear even to those not in the know that the simple jewelry had been cherished by its owner.

Swallowing hard, Vader slowly approached the small cased necklace. Even in the dull darkness, his iridescent golden eyes helped him focus on the tiny trinket. A mixture of shame and bitterness welled up inside as his gaze took in every painstakingly crafted detail, and for just a moment - his serious expression softened. Gone were the harsh lines, gone was the composed and well rehearsed authority he had adapted since his shift. For that brief moment, Vader’s chest felt tight and a strangled, choked breath escaped his parted lips.

Anger was quick to overthrow the suffocating sadness. Pursing his lips, Vader forced himself to turn away. Instead, his eyes fell again upon Padmé’s stone grave. He didn’t deserve to be here, he didn’t deserve this attempt at paying her respect with meaningless, silent apologies. He had put her in that coffin, he had snuffed out her light. As if moving of their own volition, he found his legs were carrying him closer to the cold marble against his will. One gloved hand reached out to hesitantly touch the surface, but all Vader's cybernetic fingertips could detect was hard edges. Nothing concrete, no nuance. Vader was bereft of something as simple as the smooth, cool kiss of masterly crafted sandstone. The soft curves and gentle lines came off as no more intricate than the billions of grains that made up the sands of Tatooine.

Clenching his jaw shut, Vader's hand curled into a tight fist. It shook as he squeezed it shut; Padmé’s desperate, pleading hazel eyes flashing before his inner vision. She’d been so frail, so distraught, so horrified. She had never betrayed him, he had betrayed her. This was all his fault.

Padmé was dead because of him. Only him.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Vader wished for nothing but to be offered the chance to retrace his step and right his wrongs. He wished to relive the moment in which he had lashed out, if only to forgive her and believe her words. If only to take her in his arms, to heed her warnings and run far away. Just him, her, and their child. Together. The child that had perished alongside his mother, never allowed to get to know her tender soul.

An unyielding, intense burn spread like a wildfire up the bridge of Vader's nose, and bled into his cheeks. A stinging prickle settled behind his eyes, and despite his stubborn attempt at remaining calm and detached, dismissing his pain - scalding tears welled up to pool at the corners of his eyes. In one fell swoop, they disregarded his wishes and rolled in heavy globs down his pale cheeks. Vader allowed his anger and his despair to mingle with his guilt. In an act of rare surrender, he let his walls crumble to dust and acknowledged that he had made a terrible mistake. He had allowed Palpatine to twist his mind, to entice him with empty promises. But it was he who had believed those lies; he had been the one to choke his own wife in blind rage.

Covering his face with his free hand, Vader did his best to restrain his grief in a feeble attempt at maintaining dignity. Biting back sobs, he wept silently - shedding the final pieces of his past with each tear. A burden that was his alone to carry, but its weight slightly lighter to bear despite the dull ache it left behind.

When he eventually vacated the tomb; daylight had begun to spill over the fields and hills, its orange glow warming the dew lining every straw of grass and creating a thin veil of mist. The air was sweet, its scent a jumble of flowers. No trace of his secret visit did Vader leave behind, but something inside of him had changed irreparably. Something had been left behind, laid to rest alongside the lost Queen.

If he could destroy the one thing he had loved more than life itself, what mattered any other life on his conscience. If his Angel was dead, Vader was already cursed. Whoever stood in his way was but a stepping stone on his way towarda greatness.

Every citizen in the Galaxy was but an animal - and he would slaughter them as animals, if need be.

*****

I wanted to write something sad, and I figured since this iteration of Vader is quite different to the canon one - this would be yet another way for him to shed his past, and to become even more of a propaganda and political tool. Also, I felt like writing something sad and angsty and I seldom write about Padmé, so consider this a little treat for those of you who - much like I - enjoy sadness and pain.

Ao3 link below:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32029582/chapters/79632736

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nooneandeveryone · 3 years

Text

The Collector from Asa's POV

Don't really have a title for this thing yet.

BUT ANYWAY, here is the chunk I've written already. I decided to name his attack dog Ranger, btw.

Warnings: not much yet, typical gore mention

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He had planned everything perfectly. It was easy to slip in among the workmen and lay the groundwork. No one ever bothers to ask an exterminator why he needs to tear open a wall. They welcomed his inspection of their basement.

Once he started, he would have as long as he wanted. After all, the family was supposed to be out of town, no one would check to see if they actually were. No one seemed to particularly care for them anyway. They bought good-will.

He set Ranger up as a guard. He was well trained but still required being chained when they worked. Otherwise, Ranger would pursue any escapees instead of remaining at the house. He learned that the hard way. He found him fifteen miles away with the remains of the last one. That skill was extremely useful at home; it kept his collection from bolting. Less useful when hunting live specimens.

It was so easy. They were so predictable. Like flies. And just as easy to catch.

He secured the man and the woman. He’ll get back to them soon. They had two children unaccounted for and he had some final traps to install.

He methodically went through the home. Laying the traps he couldn’t place during the day. As with most jobs, he used what they had on hand against them. Some traps he brought but the majority were fashioned from what he found on the property. Like the knives on the chandelier and many of the trip-wire traps. The bear traps, however, he brought with him. Simple to set up and they would kill or capture anyone who ran blindly into them.

The missing children didn’t bother him much. He knew their ages and names and habits. The eldest most likely slipped out before he arrived. The youngest would still be hiding in the house. She was at the age where hiding was a prized skill. He already secured the doors and windows. And if somehow, she was able to get outside, Ranger would alert him or kill her.

And if she was still in the house, the screams of her parents would draw her out. He started with the father. He had put up most of the fight to begin with. Honestly, he felt justified cutting open his face. Such glorious screams. Pure pain and fear.

Yet, it was not enough to bring the girl from hiding.

Finally, he heard Ranger’s alert barking outside. She was small, she must have found a gap. He rushed outside, he locked the door behind him but neglected the additional deadbolts.

And he found… nothing?

Ranger obediently came straight to him. Something alerted him. His ears were up and he was pacing. He knelt down to inspect the dog’s muzzle. Perhaps he bit whoever or whatever alarmed him.

There were black fibers between his teeth. No blood, but he did take hold of something. He gave the dog several reassuring pats. He did exactly what he wanted him to. “Good boy,” he told him before getting back to his feet.

His attention shifted to the ground. He followed the shallow paw prints, retracing Ranger’s steps. Scrapes in the dirt marked where he lunged at something. Further scrapes on the ground indicated it was a person. An adult.

Interesting.

He bent down to further inspect the markings, running his fingers to the edge of a partial foot-print. The eldest daughter perhaps? It wasn’t even midnight.

There was no way to tell who made those prints. It could be an opportunist. He was not the only one who knew the family would be away.

Whatever the cause, his actions would remain the same.

He returned to the home; making doubly sure he locked every single deadbolt. He stood and listened. While he heard nothing out of place, it still felt off. He’d do a quick sweep of the rooms. If someone was there, it would flush them out.

He thought he heard breathing when he reached the top of the stairs. The child?

He found no one and nothing out of place but it still didn’t feel right. He would set a couple additional traps, just in case.

If there was anyone here, he thought, releasing one of the parents would draw them out. He chose the father, letting him limp and crawl away.

Calmly, he waited long enough to make it appear as if the man escaped on his own. Let them feel hope.

As he climbed the stairs, he heard the father speaking. “It’s you. You did this.”

Very interesting.

And mere seconds later one of his larger traps tripped. He was very disappointed to only find it was the father. The idiot.

That accomplished nothing.

The father managed to wiggle away again, when he was dragging him back to the basement. He could scramble after him. Or, he could let the idiot spring another trap. Which he did.

Truly useless. This one did not deserve to live.

He secured the father to a chair in the basement. Taking a moment to break both his feet, that should keep him from causing any more trouble. While he would love to continue, his suspicions were too high.

There was someone else in the house.

He needed to be sure it wasn’t anyone unplanned for.

While again, he saw no one, there was subtle evidence that someone had been there. Someone who was quite good at staying unseen. He might have even missed them himself, if not for the doors.

Closet doors left slightly ajar. They were not like that when he stowed the trunk in the adjoining closet. Someone could still be hiding there.

Carefully, he used his knife as a mirror, drawing it through the gap. The reflection showed no one. But something was different. He nudged open the door with his foot.

An out of place tool bag.

A peek inside revealed the tools of a thief. Not too dissimilar from those he brought with him. He noticed the latex gloves and woolen mask shoved into the corner of the bag. This thief actually bothered to plan ahead. Ah, and the mask was ripped. They met Ranger.

He held the mask up to his own, sniffing. No smell of blood but a distinct reek of cigarette smoke.

A thief could be any number of the workmen from that morning. It would explain their elusiveness. They knew the layout as well as he did. He took a moment to think back, he saw a number of workers smoking that morning. At least, seven of them he could recall. One of them? But which one?

He got a familiar tingle of excitement. It was finally becoming interesting.

Perhaps someone challenging enough to keep.

A sudden scream.

He rushed back downstairs. Faintly hoping he’d find either the thief or the missing child.

No, the woman worked her gag free. The dumb bitch got his hopes up. Wait…

A faint amount of blood on her gag. It wasn’t from her, was it? He’d find out soon enough. He had both pliers and tin snips to help get his message across. If it was her own blood, he’d cut out her tongue for getting his hopes up again.

He used the pliers to force her tongue out. As she struggled, he noticed a faint smudge on her cheek. He had already positioned the tin snips at the base of her tongue. There was no sign of blood in or around her mouth. Other than that smudge and the staples.

Someone pulled her gag free. Someone talked to her. Someone told her to scream. She could keep her tongue. It wasn’t her fault.

He gingerly replaced the gag. He patted and shushed her. He wasn’t mad at her anymore.

If someone talked to her, they had to go past the father. He could tell him who and die cleanly. Or he would awl out his insides.

#jo does fanfic #the collector (2009)#asa emory #the collector 2009 #the collector #i used to RP the collector #it was fun and I'll do it again #and that's a threat

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