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holly-fixation · 2 years

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One Winged Feathers are EVERYWHERE

Sephiroth's wing appears before the events of Crisis Core and Degradation. Meaning this workaholic is confused, he is frustrated, he has MORE PROBLEMS, and so help him if he sees another feather…

Please Enjoy!

A lot of weird things happened to him throughout his life. He certainly wasn’t normal, his appearance, his strength, his natural abilities, his trained abilities. He was special, in some way. He always knew his was a special existence. He wasn’t raised the same as others, not even his closest friends. He didn't have time for pointless hobbies, and barely made any time anymore to read and relax. When was the last time he relaxed? Even after Wutai surrendered, there was far too much work to be done to waste his time at parties and celebrations with the people of this company, and his only friends were still dealing with the stragglers of the war.

Of course, even now, he didn't have a solid answer on when he last did something for him. Angeal had his new apprentice and always had a knack for teaching others, which was the only reason he seemed to be stationed nearby. Genesis went to multiple showings of Loveless with multiple different men and women, and various other activities with said men and women when he wasn’t filling out reports or on more straggler missions in Wutai. Gods help the people he forced to listen to his editorials on Loveless.

Sephiroth spent his time at his desk, going through multiple reports and assessments and assignments and anything requiring completion. What else was he supposed to do with the time to himself? There was always more work to be done. And he swore to himself that once he finished everything, and he literally meant everything, he would take a break. The higher-ups loved it, the speed and efficiency with which he returned necessary paperwork. It kept everything running smoothly.

But how long could he keep this up?

Well, his body decided that for him.

He shot up at the angry buzzing of his phone and immediately turned off his alarm. Even after so many years, the slightest sound shocked him out of bed. He couldn’t waste a moment of the day. He flopped down and groaned, his groggy brain still swimming to the surface of the waking world. He slowly slid his arm from under the pillow and tried to remove the remaining sheet from the previous night, except it was nowhere to be found. That was odd. And he slept on his stomach? His eyes fluttered heavily before he rubbed them and tried to get a grip on his surroundings. He only woke up on his stomach when he had nightmares. Not every time, but enough to notice a pattern.

It was zero-five-hundred. The closed curtains of his window only blocked the green glow of the mako reactors and the tiny shining lights of the city below, no morning sun to compete with. The mischievous weak beam between the incomplete connection of the cloth did very little to illuminate the room, even with his supernatural eyes. With one frustrated inhale, he forced himself to the side of the bed, placing his feet on the ground before he turned on the light.

What the hell…?

The room was littered in these large black feathers he never saw before. On the floor, on his sheets, on his nightstand, stuck on the curtains, sticking out of the lamp, cluttered by an air duct, a few floating along the stream of the vent, lining the doors of his closet, bathroom, and hallway. Did someone break in? Did some thing break in? Was this another prank by Genesis that Angeal couldn’t talk him out of? That idea quickly quieted as he caught a glimpse of something dark over his right shoulder and immediately turned his torso to follow it, but it moved, and stayed at the same angle. Then he slowly turned his head, his brows completely crossed in confusion at the sight before him.

It was a massive black wing. Its joint was at least half a foot above his head, and it nearly arched around him completely to the ground, every inch of it covered in feathers organized from smallest at the joint and largest at the end.

At first, he tried to take it off like a uniform accessory, convinced it was a prank and maybe some really good glue. But he felt the grab, exactly where it was along the limb. The same way he would feel a hand on his arm. He tried to tug, and felt the pull from within his shoulder, reaching down the back of multiple ribs.

…This can’t be happening. Was this really happening?

This didn’t make any sense. If this was something he always had, Hojo would’ve ripped it out of him. If this was something the bastard implanted before Sephiroth could remember, he would at least have some memory of being forced to use it. Was this a curse? Some weird magic at play? An attack? A second puberty? These were the explanations he came up with that didn’t lead him to his darkest thoughts… Was he always this… monster…?

No. This didn’t make him a monster, but he still couldn’t believe this. And he obviously shouldn’t be seen while this situation was happening. For now, he grabbed his phone and canceled his reservation at the training room that morning. He needed to deal with this. He pushed himself off the bed, the large flight feathers brushing the sheet softly as he took his first stride.

Pushing the bathroom door open and flicking the light without thinking, Sephiroth’s new limb smacked into something and he stumbled back in response. Glancing up, he saw the offending object. The doorway. Good to know how difficult this was going to be today. Hopefully only today. He placed his hands on the counter and stared into his new reflection. With the new angle, he clearly saw what he was plagued with. Despite all of his rapid thoughts, his darkest internal turmoil, it looked… nice. Almost. If he had two white wings instead of one black, would he be an angel? How many white wings did it take to be an angel?

He shook away the thought and glared into the offending mirror, his body tense with sharp thought and analysis. And the wing acted as the rest of him did, the end feathers curling and spreading like claws with only the joint tightening, tilted and threatening, all but puffing like a cornered animal. Noticing this, he forced himself to relax, or at very least his body to relax, releasing the tension in his glare and his grip. Thus the wing followed, delicately resting behind him with ebony feathers caressed and layered. Then he took a step back and quickly extended his arms in a basic stretch.

Bad idea. The wing expanded to its full length with the same speed and slammed into the doorway again. He felt the impact, and jerked back, although he didn’t feel any pain. When he tensed subconsciously in surprise, which forced the feathery limb back behind him, he saw the dent and deformity that the wing just jammed into the molding of the entrance, loose feathers crushed and implanted to the damage.

He added that to the list of things he’d be fixing when he got rid of this thing.

…or maybe got control of it. Whichever came first.

So it really was a part of him.

Sephiroth sighed. Of all the things he needed to do today, this was not on the agenda, neither was the maintenance that came with it. He realized this as an inch-long feather-down slowly floated in front of his face, its form soft and delicate rather than the sturdy feathers of the end of the wing. This would be a lot easier if the wing was not proportional to his body. He’d deal with a stupid tiny wing if he could hide it under his jacket, rather than this massive appendage that stuck out like a piece of dark chocolate in a bowl of rice.

Holding his head in his hands, he groaned, before glancing at the silver shower head. Maybe if it was washed, it wouldn’t shed so much. His room was already a mess, and he preferred containing them rather than plucking them out of his kitchen and living room. Though he couldn’t recall the last time he used either of them. ‘Peacetime’ did not mean less work for this soldier.

He turned on the water with a twist of a valve and removed his clothes as he waited for the water to heat. Thankfully, he only slept in pants and underwear, otherwise this wing may have torn a hole through whatever shirt was on his back. At least that explained why his sheet was nowhere to be found when he woke up this morning. He stepped into the shower, ducking under the sliding doorway to allow the wing safe passage. Though the water did not reach the tip of the wing, he decided to at least wash up, since he was already here, and worry about it in a minute. But as he washed his hair, he crossed his brows at the avian limb.

How did people clean wings? Or feathers in general? Would shampoo or conditioner work? Should he use bar soap instead? He used to have a veterinarian book on all types of avian creatures when he was very young, but most of the lessons faded from his mind over a decade ago. If he was lucky, maybe he’d still have it? Or he could just use the Shintranet, the obvious path of least resistance. For now, knowing nothing for the care of neither birds nor feathers, he only ruffled the pattern of his wing with his hands and soaked it under the water, trying to expose and remove as many of the weak willed plumes as possible. It seemed to be working, the feather down of the plums along the movable joint small enough to wash down the drain, while the large rigid feathers collected around the drain. Because of course they would collect on the drain instead of making his life any easier. Especially because his only option to rinse the entire wing required kneeling in the running water. He guessed it could be worse. It just felt odd, his knees on wet feathers and the tail of the limb brushing the puddles on the floor.

Finally, no more feathers seemed to fall out of the wing. He sighed in relief before turning off the water and grabbing his towel. He heard another thunk and felt another impact. The shower head. With a frustrated sigh, he dried himself off, and dabbed the wing dry to the best of his ability, before hanging up the cloth, and glaring at the spots of black fuzz attached to it. So the shower either barely worked, or these were just the last few stragglers. He hoped for the latter.

Now he could get back and clean his room. He'd deal with the drain later, right now his absolute bird's nest of a room was at the top of his apartment restoration list. Though it was short for now, he could only envision it growing with more and more inconveniences caused by this sudden appearance.

* * *

It’s zero-seven-thirty. He can’t lie to himself anymore. He can’t leave this apartment until he either gets control of or rid of this wing. He just finished cleaning the feathers in his room, his kitchen garbage completely full of the offending black quills. And even now, he’s finding new ones falling loosely from the wing. He hadn’t even touched his drain yet. Gods, he did not want to do this, but this sudden limb gave him no choice.

He took out his tablet from his nightstand, and opened up his email app. His bright sky-blue eyes glared at his own reflection on the screen, the dark bags and pale skin of exhaustion increasingly visible. The shower did nothing to assuage the frustrating development of increased exhaustion.

Now he sat there on his bed and stared at the new email box he had yet to write in, the only filled out section being who the composition would be sent to. If he played his cards wrong, R&D would be at his door in fifteen minutes. If he ignored them, he had no doubt Hojo would materialize in his apartment like a damned ghost without the slightest inkling of respect for his personal space. So sickness was absolutely the incorrect description of what was happening to him. Whatever his excuse, mentioning any kind of physical ailment was out of the question.

So what about mental? Hojo sure as hell did not care about his psychological health. What was the name of those days people used to leave for long periods of time? Leave? No, leave was a military request for this kind of break. Vacation? Vacation days. Nope, that wasn’t exactly the term he was thinking of but it was close enough to the desired goal. It wasn’t an extended duration away from work, it was only a little. As he wrote the email requesting the day off, it finally hit him. Angeal always told him to take a 'mental health day', and Lazard was always on board with the idea, even if he himself was completely against the idea of taking an unscheduled day to himself, leaving his work behind and possibly delaying someone else’s as a result. But now, desperate times called for desperate measures. He sent the email and laid back on the covers, hoping for relief and staring at the pure white ceiling in silent thought. Then, surprisingly, he heard a bloop from the tablet. With a silent groan, he sat back up and looked at the message.

Sephiroth,

You were logged into your work account until 0130 for the past week. Are you insane? Of course you can have a mental health day. In fact, take 3. You’re a week ahead of your expected workload and if I see you log in from any device, I will kick you out on my end. Understood, soldier?

Get some rest,

Director Lazard

Damn it. He only needed a day to get this under control. Hopefully. He couldn’t touch his work without his account or, at the very most, his desk. But right now, he needed to focus on getting control of this magically appearing limb. He glanced back at it in frustration before looking ahead to the door, and spotting one, single, delicate feather descend with all the grace in the world, gliding back and forth like a pendulum until it landed on the bed of the room he just cleaned.

He never wanted to set anything on fire more than these infuriating feathers even if it meant burning this entire building in the flames of the Phoenix right now.

He left the room and ducked under the doorway to prevent another impact as he made his way to his small kitchen. He knew he needed to eat at some point today and took a protein shake out of the fridge. At very least, it lessened the danger of cooking on the stove and having this new limb fry. He honestly wouldn’t mind the wing, without the feathers, if he could control it.

After finishing his quick meal, he went to his living room and proceeded to move all of the furniture to the walls. He pushed the couch against the window, flipped the cushioned chair over to fit against the couch in an upside-down L shape, turned the coffee table on its side and placed it against the wall. The only thing he couldn't move was the fan above him. So he moved his kitchen table and chairs against the windows as well to give himself as much space as possible. Finally, he grabbed the Masamune off its mount on the wall. Now he only needed to use the space.

He needed control of his wing.

* * *

Four hours later, he determined the connection between the avian limb and his emotions. Though he was nearly a master of concealing the outward responses to his feelings, this wing clearly did not care. In frustration, it curled its joint forward and end feathers extended behind him like a shield over his arm. However, that extension was prone to hitting literally anything on a table behind him. When he grew to silent anger, it grew, extended like a cornered beast, intimidating its enemy. His second determination, and quite honestly the only good thing about this limb, was its instinctual and perfect adaptation to battle. Going through his old training regimen, running the basics of swordplay defenses and offenses, the wing had an unnatural ability of incredible adaptation. It adjusted his center of gravity for better balance with more complicated maneuvers, it curled around him in protection of an oncoming attack, it seemed to extend and contract in perfect harmony with his movements, and amazingly it avoided every obstacle around it.

Only in battle. Everything else he tested was all but a nightmare. He made multiple new dents in the ceiling and one in the wall. By the grace of the gods, he missed the fan and the light bulbs it held. Not to mention the ever growing pile of black feathers along the walls and carpet. The dents had to come first. They would be a decent break from the diminishing returns of his makeshift training area.

He found the spackle in the very back of his cleaning cabinet under the kitchen sink and got to work, spreading the rough filler into every dent in the walls, ceiling, and even some of the doorways caused by this new limb, including the dents he caused as he was going around filling them. He figured, since he finally took the tools out, he should fill the nail holes in his room as well, which used to hold various awards for his efforts on the battlefield, but he honestly wanted it plane again, feeling as though the honors were a relic of the past already. Like everything, he flattened the compound to perfection, with the fewest accidental scrapes he could manage. This also meant it took time. Diligent, dedicated, detailed time.

When he finally filled the last hole in his living room, he sighed in what should have been relief, but felt like exhaustion. What time was it? It had to be somewhere around early afternoon. He tried to glance at the clock, but he couldn’t read it from his current angle, working to take a step forward when his vision was slowly blocked with…black feathers, and quickly full darkness as the fluffy limb entrapped him completely. He didn’t even know it was large enough to do that, bend this far in front of him and let alone cross his body, twice, completely curling around him. Wasn’t it supposed to stay behind him? He found nearly his entire body covered with the delicate pressure of the peaceful feathers into a blanket like wrapping.

It felt so…so nice.

And comforting, and warm, and soft, and safe. The wing soothed him like a siren’s song, holding him deep in its embrace, tightening with the gentleness of a weighted blanket. He felt another exhale leave his lips as his lashes began falling closed, his mouth remaining parted as his body following suit by relaxing on its own. His shoulders fell, a small slouch as his posture gave in to the kind feeling, every muscle in his body relaxing. He wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to stay like this. He was so wrong, this was by far the best trait of this wing. It felt so serene, so tranquil. His entire being began loosening entirely, instinctually. Even his knees felt amazingly weak, nearly buckling and dropping his body to finally succumb to this beautiful sleepiness.

…sleepiness?

Only when the putty knife of the spackle slipped out of his completely slacken hand did he realize what was happening. This newly born limb was trying to put him to sleep, like a child, pacifying him with the rest he refused to indulge at such an early time of day. How rude. Usually such a phrase would be reserved for his red headed friend, but that was honestly how he felt about this limb’s insistence. He still had things to do. Hell, he’d make something to do if it made this wing wasted day have some efficient purpose. He understood rest was important, to an extent, even if he did not practice as such. He heard enough of it from his raven haired friend, who honestly acted with such overwhelming responsibility in every situation.

First, he forced his hands to respond by clenching his fingers, breaking the spell with each curve of a digit. He could do this, he told himself as he fought his eyes open and trudged through the welcoming cloudiness that amplified in his mind. Nothing would tell him when to rest. Forcing his stance to tighten, he tensed every part of his body, trying to get it to copy and move behind him as it did in the mirror. No luck, however. It remained completely still, suddenly strong against his will. Then he moved his arms and began pushing the black limb, trying to pry it open to at least let light return to his eyes. But it only adjusted in response, tightening slightly as it brushed even more of his body with its accursed, alleviating plumes.

Oh, this was a battle he wasn’t going to win, wasn’t it?

He felt his eyes roll back from the tempting tranquility, his lids fluttering, his hands and arms threatening to rest at his sides. He shook his head to rid himself of the sensation, and tried again, tried to fight this stupid situation. But it was like pushing against his own arm, or leg, battling the only person on this planet that could overpower him.

Himself. Apparently. Overpowering himself was another damn problem of this wing. He shoved again, but this time his hands slipped, gliding down the inside feathers that blocked his vision with the last of his control, refusing to resurface. Was this damn thing casting a sleep spell on him? Could this limb even do that? That wouldn’t work anyway. His resistance to Sealing magic was far too high. Yet he had to admit he wasn’t going to win this. At very least, his body didn’t have the power to resist much longer. With the last of his will, he slowly lowered his tired body, aiming for the couch but only getting a thunk and soft impact to the unfeeling limb in return. The chair, he realized as he laid on what could only be the floor, yet he could only feel the wing, blocked him from landing on the cushions.

Though, now completely at the mercy of the wing, he couldn’t deny how it drained his stubbornness. He was so…so tired. He could not repel the comfort given by this new limb, even though he logically knew he was laying on the floor. It adjusted him again, this time giving him a place to rest his head like a pillow. The feathers and embrace submerged him in the most comfort he ever felt in his life. The finest mattress with silken sheets of fifty-thousand threads and a blanket of feather down from the mythical golden chocobo were powerless among this single ebony wing.

Perfect… he thought as his sky blue eyes finally gave way to the welcoming darkness of rest, sleep flooding his mind and body as his dam of resistance finally broke. Somewhere in the very back of his mind did he realize his body had literally chosen this necessary rest for him, as he failed to fend off the ever present embrace of the warm wing. Maybe if he indulged its request, it would go back to where it came from. But that final thought was nothing more than a breathy whisper as he fell to the whims of the demanding wing.

…

It was peaceful, the small movement of his body accompanied by a soft exhale as he stirred. He subconsciously tried to adjust the covers, to pull what he thought was a blanket tighter around him, but he couldn’t find the edge of the fabric, his hand wrapping around an individual lock of… hair? No… a plume of feathers. It all hit him at once, the memory of the wing and the problems it caused behind his closed eyes. Though he had to accept, this was the best rest he’d gotten in a very long time. Before he even dared move again, he felt the wing unwrap, slowly revealing the cold air of his apartment, yet his body remained on the feathers. His eyes opened sluggishly, but after a few blinks to clear his vision, he felt lighter, so much lighter, despite the dark room around him, only illuminated by the mako green glow of the city’s reactors from the ceiling to floor windows.

What time was it?

He turned from the wing, that spread across the floor as a mat, to his back. Thankfully, since the wing didn’t respond to any pain, he only felt the flight discomfort of the joint pressing into his back and shoulder. He pushed himself up and brushed off the small feathers that remained, though not nearly as much as he expected from being wrapped in it. Now finally on his feet again, he looked at the clock on the microwave.

Zero-four-thirty. 4:30am.

He slept. For at least. Sixteen hours.

Oh he bit down the groan that threatened to come forth, lucky a headache didn’t immediately follow, but the wing flared in his silent anger. That’s it. He wasted an entire day. He was supposed to have more control over this limb by now but all he knew was its usefulness in battle, it reacted to every one of his emotions, it’s too strong to his own detriment, wrapping it around him is the perfect position for sleep, and it sheds way too much.

No more nonsense. He needed control. He needed it gone. He’d spend the entirety of his remaining days off if he must. If he felt diminishing returns, he would clean the feathers until his mind was clear again. He was well rested, thanks to it, and now it was time he returned the favor.

* * *

Knock knock knock.

He jumped to battle stance at the sound as he glared at his front door. Who the hell was that? Did Lazard rat him out to R&D? If he saw a single lab coat, he’d take his chances out one of his windows.

“Sephiroth?” the voice of his raven haired friend demanded from behind the door, breaking him out of his desperate train of thoughts. “Sephiroth, what happened? Are you alright?”

How the hell did he find out? How did he know to come here?! They were supposed to have work! They didn’t even have the same days off! He was panicking, his breathing already increased in speed. He absolutely could not let them inside. He dashed to the door, moving with the silence of a cat, forcing his wing to curl over his shoulder and press against the entrance as a barricade.

“Lazard told us you were 'staying in and getting some rest',” his redheaded friend mocked in the Director’s tone and pattern of speaking. So that’s how. They asked Lazard directly. “We know that’s a lie. What happened?”

Crap. They were onto him. How was he supposed to respond? He couldn’t explain the wing. He didn’t understand it himself. Gods, he knew he was bad at this, but his only option was to play dumb. He forced his tone back to its normal lack of emotion, and tried to drown the panic in his veins, the wing spreading along the door like a shield. “Nothing. I heeded Angeal's advice and took a day to myself. Why-”

“That’s bullshit,” Genesis countered, and he tensed in response. “When have you ever taken Angeal's advice?”

“Hey,” Angeal warned the redhead. Good, their attention was off of himself, he could think of a better excuse with the time. “He takes my advice. Just not about taking a break.”

Not as much time as he hoped, so he doubled down. “Well,” this technically didn’t need to be a lie, “you always warned me if I did not take a break, my body would take one for me.”

He heard both of their breaths hitch.

“Sephiroth, open the door right now,” Genesis spat in one breath, taking a step back from the door in preparation. A battle stance.

Well, that did not alleviate their concern in the slightest.

“What the-?” He heard slight shuffling and something light drag under the entrance- oh gods not another-

“...where did that feather come from?” Angeal nearly mumbled.

But Genesis was now more concerned and locked on target. “Sephiroth, open the door or I will break it down.” He was serious. He was so serious, Sephiroth saw the red glow of fire magic under the doorway.

“Genesis, do not burn my door down.”

“Open it,” He challenged immediately.

“Genesis,” Sephiroth called in a softer tone. “I am fine, and I’m perfectly healthy-”

“You wouldn’t take two days off unless you were physically dying.”

Fair point. Again, he found himself telling a half truth, “I slept sixteen hours yesterday.” That fact still embarrassed him, the slightest sliver of guilt slipped through his tone. “So I stopped ignoring my body, and took another day.”

A skeptical silence passed between them.

“Even if we did believe that,” Angeal started, accusation dripping from his tone, “What’s with the feathers under your door?”

Oh gods, was there more than one?! “I…” He tried to find an excuse, stumbling through his mind for any possible explanation and the only thing that sprung forth fast enough was- “I got a black chocobo chick…?”

…

Sephiroth winced at the pause and felt his traitorous tongue continue, “As an 'emotional support animal'...?”

Silence.

He wanted to face palm. That was the worst excuse he’d ever had. Even Angeal’s juvenile apprentice had better lies than that. He wanted them to call him out, to berate him for his lies. But they didn’t. They made him sit there in his own thoughts, a much worse fate than their words. There was no choice but to surrender his act, for the sake of himself, his friends, and his door. “Alright…” no more 'bullshit', as Genesis put it. “I’m opening the door. Slowly.” He already felt the tension in their conversation lessen, and his wing turned down in surrender. “Do not say anything until I close the door behind you. Understood?”

“Yes,” Genesis practically spat, releasing the ball of flames, which dimmed the light below the door.

“Of course. Whatever you need,” Angeal spoke kindly.

He took a deep breath and tried to curl the wing behind the door, crouching behind it in order to do so. He didn’t want to do this, but he needed all his walls intact right now. He needed to hide. He needed to disappear until he handled this. Slowly, the handle of the door turned.

To the other Firsts, it was like a ghost opened the door, Sephiroth nowhere to be seen but his apartment an absolute disaster. All of his furniture was shoved to the walls, there were holes and dents in the ceiling, black feathers were absolutely everywhere. Maybe he did buy a chocobo chick. Still, they obeyed his wish and said nothing as they entered, except for Genesis’s slight mumble that was absolutely 'what in the hell…?'

Then Sephiroth closed the door, and at the sound of the click and slam, locked both of their eyes on him. His snake-like eyes refused to meet theirs, refused to see their reactions as he stared at the ground, his bangs blocking their gazes. He didn’t know what they were thinking. He didn’t want to know what they were doing. He hated this. He hated his fear and vulnerability. He felt stupid. He felt fragile. He felt like glass.

Then there was more burning silence as their eyes burned holes into him. He tensed, raising his shoulders ever so slightly in fear and loss of control, but the wing again betrayed his true emotions and wrapped around his body like a shield. It wasn’t the same as his sleep. He could still see his friends, if they even still had that title for him, and his face and shoulders were still exposed. He didn't want to move. He wanted to crawl into a hole until this entire situation left him.

Then footsteps clacked against the floor, but he still refused to look toward them. Only when he felt a hand on the wing did his cowering finally lessen, and he instinctively looked up at the person like an injured puppy.

And Genesis met his gaze, his soft expression unreadable as it moved between his friend and trailing the edge of the new black limb. Then he locked eyes with the other First and spoke calmly, “Did it hurt…?”

It surprised him. Of everything he expected to hear from them, that wasn’t on his list. But there was something hidden in that sentence, maybe not intentional at first but absolutely there. He forced the slightest suspicious squint at the older man, whose mouth twitched with a hidden smirk. Oh gods what was he thinking?

“...When you fell from Heaven?” Genesis couldn’t even make it through the fake question without a mischievous grin claiming his face, his eyes squinting with a genuine smile. He stared at his friend in challenge, extremely curious as to how he would respond.

Then it was silent again as they processed his words, Angeal mumbling in the softest, annoyed tone, “Oh my gods…”

And Sephiroth, to everyone’s surprise, closed his eyes, turned away to hide under his bangs, and laughed. Laughed hard. The real, infectious laugh that spread like a plague through the apartment. How Genesis, of all people, knew how to completely shatter the tension in the room was completely beyond them. Sephiroth held his sides; he was laughing so hard, and that only made it worse for the rest of them. Angeal had his head in his palm in disappointment but he was also contributing to the noise whether he liked it or not. Genesis was all but howling with laughter, covering his mouth with his hand. He couldn’t resist. It was too perfect a set up. They stayed like that until the spell finally wore off, their collective sighs claiming the room, and the wing released Sephiroth and rested comfortably at his back.

For Sephiroth, that stupid joke of a pickup line was all he needed to hear to know they didn’t reject him for this. They wouldn’t leave. They wouldn’t attack. He was human. He was still like them.

“Seriously, though,” Genesis finally regained his self control and a caring expression claimed his face, to the best of his ability through his previous joy. “Did it hurt? Does it hurt? Because last I checked, this,” He gripped some of the flight feathers of the wing, “was not here last I checked.”

Sephiroth wiped his eyes, (Holy crap, did he cry laugh?) from the outburst and answered honestly, “No. It doesn’t hurt at all.”

“When did it…” Angeal gestured vaguely at the limb, respectfully, but considering the situation it was more than enough, “...grow?”

Sephiroth explained everything he could and answered every one of their questions. The wing just appeared in the middle of the night. It didn’t feel any pain. It responded to his emotions. It made him sleep for sixteen hours. It put multiple holes in his walls. And it was the reason he had his chair perpendicular to the window, the couch parallel to the window and against the chair, and the resulting rectangle was overflowing with feathers of all sizes.

“Question!” Genesis cut him off, gaining both of their attention. “How the hell are there no feathers in your hair?!” He wasn’t angry, but the genuine and frustrated surprise glowed in his tone.

Sephiroth blinked at him dumbly, unable to draw a single memory with that specific phenomenon, because he honestly had No. Fucking. Idea.

Thanks for reading!

Part 2>>

Author's note: I hope this makes up for being busy for all of Aeriseph week. Behold: comedic Sephiroth content. I don't ship any of these three together and I don't in this work either, but the MOMENT I thought of that STUPID PICK UP LINE, I could not resist. This was supposed to be a OneShot, but this work got very long for me, and I thought it was a good place to stop. So, this will be a TWO-Shot. See you for the next one!

#ff7 #Over 6000 words of stressed out Sepiroth #final fantasy vii #sephiroth #ffvii #final fantasy 7 #ff7 angeal #angeal hewley #genesis rhapsodos #professor hojo #One Winged Problems is finally here guys!#Next up is Tainted Child #that one is SO close to the end!#shoot forgot to say this is based on Altocat's stories/headcannons!#she's great! check her out!

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allwave · 1 year

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State of the UC Union

Unified Communication and Collaboration (UC&C) is a combination of various communication methods and collaboration tools such as virtual whiteboards, real-time audio and video conferencing and enhanced call control capabilities to improve efficiency in the workplace. It provides a collection of easy-to-use solutions that can be implemented in various organizations to ensure that the end user receives a nearly real-time collaboration experience that works efficiently, smoothly and securely.

Video collaboration has been evolved from hardware-based codecs of traditional Polycom and Cisco Systems to more software driven solution of Microsoft Teams, Zooms, Google Meets, WebEx, post the pandemic. A lot of the solutions have now been replaced with simpler easier to deploy solutions for small meeting rooms, mid-size meeting rooms as well as larger boardrooms, meeting rooms, training rooms and large venue spaces such as Auditoriums and event spaces. However, the challenges of designing, executing and implementing the technologies and the user experience still remain. The intend of this whitepaper is to ensuring the reader to make the right decision based on today’s available technology. Video conferencing has become an increasingly important aspect of today’s world, as many organizations are transitioning to hybrid working environments. It has greatly aided in connecting people over a phone call where people can experience real-time video conferencing features while being located in different remote locations which would not be possible with Video conferencing platforms.

Types of Video Conferencing:

Telepresence Video Conferencing System

Integrated Video Conferencing System

Desktop Video Conferencing System

Video Collaboration Platforms:

Zooms

Microsoft Teams

Google Meets

Cisco

WebEX

What are Native and Non- Native Solutions. Why is it important in a Video Collaboration system?

Video conferencing is a live audio-visual connection between two or more remote parties over the internet that simulates a face-to-face meeting in real-time. In the business world, desktop video conferencing is a core component of Unified communications platforms that also include calling and messaging capabilities. Standalone on-premises and cloud-based video conferencing platforms are also available from numerous vendors who support desktop and room-based Video conferencing solutions with the ability to embed them into business applications, such as Telehealth, customer service and distance learning, etc.

The Primary difference between a Native and a Non-Native system is the user experience. Post Work from home and Back to office systems imply that the end users wants a user interface (IPAD, OEM’s touch panel, etc..) to have the same familiar look and feel that they are dialing/ joining directly from their laptop. Native user experiences also allow for a seamless connection to users within the enterprises in terms of a active directory integration as well. These native integrations have to be certified by the certified solution provides (Microsoft Team, Zooms, etc…) as a part of being through the ecosystem.

Though more expensive, native systems offer a more seamless experience to the management. Non-Native systems can be simply a Video collaboration bar in a room with a PC behind the display, essentially the PC is a desktop/ user laptop that allow content sharing as well as dialing/joining into the enterprise (As the main UC Engine). Non-native applications are easy to deploy, lower cost to maintenance as well.

Differences between Native and Non-Native Solutions

Hard Codec Running Native UC Platform Modes UC hardware often runs in “Native Mode,” meaning that the built-in Windows/Mac or Android computer is running a single UC Platform application such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom. The system is “locked in” to that platform. This is a great option if your business is already using a soft client version on employees’ laptops, as you essentially just extend this experience to the meeting room. Employees can then make a Zoom call from their laptops, or a Zoom call from a conference room’s dedicated “Native” platform. They are already familiar with the UI and so the transition to a hardware version feels seamless.

Soft codec Running Native UC Platform Modes

Soft codec systems are more commonly known as cloud or web-based video conferencing software. They’re “soft” as they don’t need codec hardware to work, and “codec” refers to devices or programs that compress and decompress data. It just needs a USB peripheral device such as USB camera, USB microphone and thin client PC in which all the software platforms can be loaded and they can initiate the call using wireless keyboard and mouse.

Unified Communication & Collaboration Tools for Native Interface

Zoom Rooms Zoom Rooms, the Modern Hybrid workspaces for Teams, brings HD video collaboration into any space – in the office, the classroom, or at home – and allows in[1]person and remote participants to interact in real-time. Zoom Rooms are the conference room experience you’ve always wanted, making it simple to start a meeting, book a room, and share content. Bring high-quality video, audio, and web conferencing to any sized room or workspace. Advanced features like Zoom Kiosks (virtual receptionist), voice commands & room controls on your mobile device. Enabling the hybrid workforce with features like Smart Gallery and Workspace Reservation. Google, Office 365 & Exchange calendar integrations support room booking, room status, upcoming meetings list, and more.

Workspace Reservation

Wireless sharing with proximity detection

Scheduling Displays

Digital Signage

Smart collaboration tools to keep projects moving Work from anywhere

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is an enterprise-ready unified communications (UC) platform. Teams connects people everywhere, on Windows MAC and other operating systems including mobile devices, as part of their everyday productivity experience. Microsoft Teams provides a consistent, single client experience for presence, instant messaging, voice, video and a great meeting experience. Microsoft Teams goes beyond communication. Easily find, share and edit files in real-time using apps like Word, PowerPoint and Excel inside Teams.

Chat: Share your opinion and your personality, send gifs, stickers and emojis in a group chat or in one-to-one messages.

Meet: Microsoft Teams offers real-time video conferencing. Host online meetings from 1:1, teams and live events up to 10,000 people.

Call: Make and receive calls with internal and external groups using Microsoft Teams Calling, Phone System, Calling Plan, or Direct Routing.

Collaborate: Store, share and edit files in real-time using apps like Word, PowerPoint and Excel in Microsoft Teams.

Digital whiteboard camera technology Kaptivo

Collaborate with remote team members with secure whiteboard/Interactive Display live sharing and video conference integrations.

Connect via Video Conference or Web Browser

Share Livestream of Whiteboard

Secure Whiteboard Image Capture

Save Snapshots and Track Changes

Kaptivo Cast

The Kaptivo Cast HDMI converter pairs with your Kaptivo to livestream vibrant, unobstructed whiteboard images to any HDMI capable input including traditional video codecs, displays, projectors, or lecture capture systems.

With the Kaptivo Cast, Kaptivo seamlessly integrates into meeting systems from all leading providers.

Quantum Leap Lite

The Leap Lite for Conference Room with Mounting Bracket is a step forward in conference cameras.

It features the camera and a display bracket mount that enables mounting your camera to the top or bottom of most display screens and monitors.

The lens of the leap lite with a 110-degree field of view that is suitable for most meeting or conference rooms.

No drivers are required to work on Linux, Windows, Android etc., the leap lite is also compatible with virtually all collaborative software platforms. And it connects your computer via USB, which makes it a simple plug[1]and-play video conference solution.

Quantum 4k PTZ camera with Condor Microphone

The advantages of Quantum camera is they provide stable product quality, 4k PTZ Camera from Value HD is the most cost-effective solution to provide effective communication.

With video in 4K Ultra HD and 82 degrees wide-angle lens, you can enjoy a superior resolution for all of your video conferences.

The 12X Optical Zoom is smooth and rapid and it delivers close-ups with superior resolution. With its patented 4K ISP solution, the lens of this PTZ camera can be controlled from a remote location. The software (Skype for business, Microsoft teams etc.) will be loaded in the thin client PC.

Display to be used to show Far end and Near end participants. During this mode Phoenix beamforming microphone with hemispheric pickup pattern in the room will get activated for audio pick up and reinforcement of far end audio shall be done via ceiling speakers.

The Phoenix Microphone is created with the vision of a clutter free conference table, the Condor sits above or below your monitor and with a pick-up range of up to 30 ft almost any conference room can use the Condor.

Conclusion

Enterprises today face a range of options, and we feel the top five takeaways are as follows:

Understand your vision for the Unified Collaboration rollout for your enterprise well in advance. (Spend time planning.)

Do trial runs with different manufacturers and end users to understand what works and what doesn’t across a range of budgets.

Deploy in small batches.

Understand the long-term value of the system as well as the compatibility with other systems that may come along the way that we may feel are going to be more software-driven.

Collect and analyze data around usage patterns using room schedulers, sensors on clouds, and analytics platforms to assist in improving the user experience as well as assisting with remote asset management and remote deployments.

To know more you can always contact Allwave AV on [email protected] or call us on 9372374450.

To view the complete document for State of the UC Union click here.

#unified communications #auditorium #audio-video #boardroom #audiovisual #microsoft

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circa-specturgia · 2 years

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Happy WBW!

How does the government system in your WIP work? What type is it (is it a monarchy, or theocracy, or democracy, etc), how are laws passed, how are new leaders/rulers chosen, how does the justice system operate, etc etc?

Ohhh, I can answer this! ✨ Thanks for the ask @cherrybombfangirlwrites!!!

I finally finished writing up a long post on Specturgy and got back from a vacation so I can get into answering asks again! I don’t have as much of this as would be to answer all those questions but here’s some of the ideas I had so far! I definitely need to think about the military structure too and who has what power but haven’t gotten around to that yet…

The Ahætieman Governemnt

First, some history…

Because my setting has several nations, I’ll go with the nation from which most of the characters come from, and where the first part of the story happens: Ahætiem.

Ahætiem (pronounced a-hai-tee-em) is a nation lying on the continent of the same name for the most part, with a few territories outside of it due to its history.

Originally composed of five nations:

A province governed by Æris in the west of the continent, a Vestarian and Eh’sheyvan land in the east,one of the capitals of a Jihn trade empire on the mainland in the south, a Væla kingdom spanning the north of the nation along with the bay and the waters encompassed in it, and finally a Casiac kingdom in the inner lands of the continent.

Ahætiem was the result of the fallout of a war.

A pact was formed between all five nations, to bond together and to share their resources to be able to combat the threat of the enemy. Vælan fleets sent to the southern oceans, Vestarian and Eh’sheyvan warriors tasked with training the recruits and leading battle, Casian strategists and leaders organizing it all… With the casualties and losses heavy, though not nearly as heavy as if they had not joined forces, the second part of the pact came into play:

The terms of the pact stated full sharing of resources to help the other nations regardless of which was hit hardest or weakest, roads and connections were built up, and partnership bloomed, with the borders of these nations being far more open as the trade facilitated travel to the far sides of the continent. Additionally, sending in help in the form of skilled workers and former soldiers helping in physical reconstruction, as well as many bright minds meeting to plan the rebuilding resulted in great mixing of ideas, of paths of thought, and blending of culture and traditions between the peoples!

A few hundred years later, Ahætiem is a global superpower, a nation with a wide and varied population, housing some of the worlds brightest minds, greatest cities, best universities and most advanced technology.

The Government

Ahætiem has two main government bodies though I’d imagine I’d add a third and possibly fourth, so while the first two I’ve settled on, the others might be ones I think up on the spot!

First, the Council of Blood. An antiquated name, but one kept out of tradition and in respect for the history of it and to honor those ten who first took its seats.

The Council of Blood dates back to the first weeks of the war. A moment when the Casian king called a meeting with the leaders of the other nations, and called for the writing of the pact, and the forming of the council, which in that moment was decided to be a council amongst the leaders in order to organize their war efforts smoothly.

Because the Jihn empire had several councils of its own, the Væla kingdom worked on the principle of a diarchy, and the Vestarii and Eh’sheyva had several leaders as well, it was decided that that the council would have ten seats, two from each nation, these ten belonging to those who were the leaders of their own nations, and their blood, as they passed it on to their children. The meaning of Blood also meant the moment of the forging of this council; war.

Thus, the Council of Blood is a body who’s seats are inherited from the parent to the child, much like a crown.

The leader of the council was, and is to this day, the descendant of the ruling monarch of the Casian kingdom, now known simply as the King of Ahætiem. This position is one bestowed on honor of the old Casian king, who brought all the nations together and lead the council through the darkest hours. The king does not have any extended power, and the title is simply one denoting the lineage, and the position on the council as the seat which leads the process of decision making, guiding the other 9 in the conversations on the necessary topics.

Second, the Council of Names. Those who are chosen by the people, who’s names are spoken to speak for the masses.

The Council of Names is a second council, consisting of a larger number of seats, representing the regions of Ahætiem and its people. It is a newer organ, only two centuries old or so, with its seats rotated frequently with elections being held. It deals with matters which are brought up by the people, and are their representatives in the matters of the nation. The Council of Blood deals with matters regarding international politics, trade, and grand design projects and the like, while the Council of names takes care of those things related to the people, and meet with the Council of Blood ones every period to discuss the proposals and decisions that have been put forward.

Other organs of power could include a court of judges which operate with the two Councils and also facilitate conversation between them, military power, who holds it and how it works, and matters of criminal justice and maybe religion?

Hope this answered your question to at least a bit of a satisfying degree! ✨

Taglist! ✨ @bloodlessheirbyjacques @muddshadow @magefaery @writingonesdreams @athenswrites Let me know if you want to be added/removed!

#circa specturgia #wip.circa specturgia #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writing #writing community #writing thoughts #writing inspiration #wtwcommunity #other writers!#fantasy history

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hkr-infotech · 1 year

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The Complete Guide to Starting a Consulting Business

What is the common perception around consultants?

They are people with busy schedules, high-profile customers, and beneficial salaries.

Have you ever wondered why firms are willing to pay these specialists for tasks they can handle themselves?

Consultants bring their years of experience to ensure these simple tasks contribute to the growth of a brand.

They have dedicated their careers to presenting years of revel in a selected region to businesses and entrepreneurs.

If you are an individual who believes in guiding people through your niche understanding honed with years of schooling, experience, and ability development, a profession in consulting may be for you.

We have compiled this guide to dig deeper into the profitable and enjoyable role of consulting — and a way to begin and market your consulting enterprise.

What is consulting?

Consulting is the method of offering professional advice, opinion, and/or strategies for a rate.

Consultants - whether an individual or organizations - are experts or specialists in their field.

They have expertise that compels firms, departments, and people inclined to pay for them.

Consulting is more than giving good recommendations, though.

It is about hassle prognosis, information collection, remarks, strategy-constructing, and implementation.

Consultants and consulting companies are famous for their problem-solving attitude and fresh perspective to pressing enterprise trouble or venture.

At times, business owners and leaders need a new set of eyes to analyze the situation without bias and give a solution that helps them succeed.

In short, consultants and consulting firms focus on helping their clients win a market position.

Doing so requires a whole lot of work.

That's why the field of consulting is so rewarding.

Consultants vs. Contractors

Consultants, contractors, and freelancers.

These three words are often used interchangeably.

So, where would you stand if you were to offer your consulting service?

Contractors (inclusive of freelancers) are self-hired workers. Companies bring on board to get certain services.

Consultants - as described above - generally provide an assessment and professional recommendation.

They may be self-employed or hired by a consulting corporation.

However, if, as a representative, you receive a request to offer a provider or deliverable, you can be employed right into a contractor-kind position.

For example, say you are employed to evaluate an income team’s performance.

Upon preliminary evaluation, you propose a new income strategy and education plan.

After that, if they ask you to attract up and deliver this written strategy and education plan, you are taken into consideration for a contractor (further to a consultant).

Consultants exist in nearly every subject.

Here are the distinct styles of consulting wherein you can specialize.

Consulting refers to a lot of specialists in surely endless industries.

In this segment, we will unpack the most sought-after types of consulting.

Any applicable niche possibilities that fall beneath them, and what your profession in those respective trades can also be.

1. Management Consulting

It is the most common consultancy for business forms.

It consists of many distinct niche consulting careers beneath its umbrella. Firms like McKinsey, Bain & Company, and Deloitte work in management consulting.

It’s a $250 billion enterprise — at the least, where it stands as of 2021.

You would work with commercial enterprise leaders as a management consultant to help their agencies run smoothly.

You will assess processes and present advice to enhance or put in force new ones.

Not all management specialists are the same — a few observe a generalist approach and determine every employer as a whole, and a few focus on greater particular departments or fields.

2. Strategy Consulting

It is a vital subset of control consulting.

The work of a strategy consultant is to review key business techniques and offer recommendations to improve them or develop new ones.

Strategy specialists advise on high-stage, strategic commercial enterprise selections while keeping vision, sources, and investments in mind.

3. Operations Consulting

While strategy consultants focus on the Why, operations consulting addresses the How.

These specialists deal with operational methods such as procurement, outsourcing, and supply chain control.

They often offer corporations more than supply recommendations.

They provide implementation and deployment services to assist clients - so that they can put their new processes into action.

4. Financial Strategy Consultants

Financial consultants or advisors guide firms to make informed monetary decisions to improve their returns.

This part of management consulting works in company finance, financial restructuring, threat control, or even real estate.

These specialists must meet a set of requirements to get a license and offer economic recommendations.

5. HR (Human Resource) Consulting

They aim to help companies hire and retain the best-fit personnel.

HR specialists train teams, establish a suitable work culture, and define roles, responsibilities, and rewards.

They also ensure firms adhere to all ethical and legal personnel practices.

6. IT (Information Technology) Consulting

IT specialists introduce firms to systems integration, software program improvement and control, and organization structure technologies.

They help firms determine what software to spend money on and how to use it to meet desires, clear up challenges, and implement vital changes.

This consulting department is a specially specialized and beneficial enterprise - almost double the management consulting industry — $460 billion.

7. Business Consulting

Business consultancy is a group of professionals who work with firms on various things - from monetary advising to training to layoffs.

(You’ll see that this category overlaps with others in this list.)

Business consultants work with small to mid-size businesses (SMBs) - rather than management consulting, where they would work with business enterprise-stage corporations — to objectively investigate challenges and offer solutions.

8. Sales Consulting

Sales consultants help firms improve and boost the fuel that keeps them moving forward - Sales!

These specialists guide firms to decide on a CRM and use it effectively, improve business and brand functions to boost sales and work towards providing a good pre and post-sales experience to their customers.

They help firms know customers and make a sales cycle to get leads, nurture them, convert them, and retain them.

9. Marketing Consulting

Marketing Consulting/ Consultants analyze a company's promotional efforts and offer direction and strategy to help enhance their endeavors and bring in revenue.

These specialists begin by knowing the firm's customers better.

They then help them decide on a marketing type (Content marketing, PR, or Social Media Marketing) and channels (for Social Media Marketing, the firm could have a presence on LinkedIn if it's a B2B).

They guide firms to convert their marketing efforts into real profits.

10. Financial Consulting

This field of consulting overlaps with the financial strategy consulting we shared above.

The difference is that financial consulting also consists of independent financial specialists that deal with people, households, and entrepreneurs.

As a financial consultant, you can help firms decide on everyday prices and investments and handle taxes, insurance, and monetary legalities.

11. Career Consulting

Individuals and companies use Career Consulting to prepare themselves and their employees to grow in their jobs.

Career Consultants help clients with talent development, resume construction, job programs, and interviews and keep them updated on the market.

Career Consulting might be just for you if you have a heritage in HR or recruiting.

12. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Consulting

While an HR consultant help firms get the right talent on board, they can't help you overcome the implicit and specific bias in a corporation.

That's where DEI consultants come into play.

They guide companies to help make an inclusive team, to become a firm that believes in a social cause and works to fulfill it, and to help employees lead a better life at work.

They are the most sought-after professionals in the market, and enterprises of every size need them.

If you have a history in HR, psychology, sociology, or nonprofit control, you can discover that with some training, DEI consulting may be the best path for you.

13. Public Relations Consulting

PR consultants help firms use media to maintain a positive image of the brand, announce initiatives, and communicate with their audience.

These specialists also work with companies to avoid crises, spot crises and manage them to protect their brands from any harm.

14. Brand Consulting

Brand Consultants help firms build their brands from the ground up.

They first study the market to find a gap and spot a customer segment that will benefit if the gap is addressed.

These specialists then analyze the consumers and competitors and position your brand in the market.

They help firms bring the brand into every aspect of the business - product, price, placement, and promotion so that it leaves a strong impression on the consumers' minds.

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toobananadinosaur · 2 years

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DAO Development Services defines a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) as an organization represented by rules and encoded as a transparent computer program. It is controlled by the members of the organization and cannot be influenced by a central government. Since the rules are built into the code, no managers are needed, removing any bureaucratic or hierarchical obstacles.

This approach reflects the thought process of the current generation and answers the question: “How can we exchange value in a trusted environment, with like-minded people from all over the world?”

Bitcoin is arguably the first fully functional DAO. This is because it has preprogrammed rules, operates autonomously, and coordinates through a distributed consensus protocol. . In the past year, we have seen an explosion of DAOs across the crypto ecosystem, including dozens of DAOs aimed at stopping.

Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) vs. Classic Organization — Chart Example

DAO versus traditional organization

DAOs, by contrast, only require a set of rules to operate under, funding such as tokens that the organization can issue to reward (or remunerate) certain activities of its members, and also provide voting rights to set operating rules. .

Once a DAO is operational, all decisions about where and how funds are spent are made by consensus. This requires a secure structure that allows each investor to set up the organization.

Compared to traditional companies, DAOs have a democratized organization. DAOs do not have CEOs or executives. All members of a DAO follow the rules built into the code of smart contracts. DAO operations are fully transparent and global, while traditional business operations are not always global, only the organization knows what is going on. All members of a DAO must vote to make any changes.

What does this mean for traditional organizations?

To keep things running smoothly, traditional organizations often adopt a hierarchical structure. Until now, not even the current evolution towards agile business structures and projects has been able to change this. In this top-down pyramid structure, the roles of each member or employee are clearly defined, which is often an effective way of delegating responsibilities to a large workforce. At the same time, this model also allows the ideas of a small group of people to spread to the majority.

DAO Development Company A DAO is certainly a novel business model that allows a group to build an equal organization, share ideas or raise funds. This structure has the potential to disrupt business models and industries. However, the current DAO structures are not (yet) capable of fulfilling all the functions in each type of company or organization. Transforming a multinational corporation like Volkswagen or IBM to a DAO model will be difficult.

However, DAOs give us the opportunity to rethink certain corporate structures and get an idea of where companies are headed in the coming decades.

Efficiency has already become the mantra of many companies. In the next three years, intelligent workflows and seamless human-machine interactions will likely be as standard as corporate balance sheets, with most employees using data to streamline nearly every aspect of their work. The transformation to a data-driven enterprise is currently one of the most important strategic tasks for many boards of directors.

This process will continue to evolve in the coming decades. Only demographic change and the scarcity of human resources in Western countries will continue to drive automation in organizations.

Which tasks, projects or even entire units can be fully automated accordingly?

What do you say for and against replacing more and more handlers with machine code?

Automatically pay employees or outside service personnel for certain activities?

What smart contracts would have to be established for this and what rule logic would they contain?

Which areas cannot be mapped by rule logic?

All these issues open new perspectives to rethink business structures.

In the future, we can expect various innovations and new developments of the DAO concept. I am curious to see which traditional companies will dare to experiment with it first. In any case, it is already worth thinking about today — and who knows, maybe it will also give rise to the decisive idea to innovate your own business model.

#DAO Development Services #DAO Development Company #DAO Platform Development

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exploring-the-inner · 2 years

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Gratitude, Guilt and Grit

Lord and savior,

Recent weeks have been pretty positive and for that, I’m so grateful! I’ve gone from 5 scheduled hours per day to 7. And thanks to Qasim’s unfortunate departure, Bryan has come on board full throttle with a pocket full of measures to make things run much more smoothly. Rather than stretching myself thin doing scheduling, chasing fill, QA, training and more… Loretta and I have help in the form of a lovely young lady named Jackie. I’m still staying late every now and then (without pay) and this really upsets my husband. But I don’t foresee the unpaid overtime being nearly as wild as it once was.

I feel quite guilty as I haven’t been as tuned into you, God. Bible study, praise and worship and our little moments like this have been few and far between. Please forgive me. I think about you all day long and love you more than my mind can comprehend. I apologize for spending my time elsewhere instead of with you. I must admit, work still drains me so much mentally I even feel physically tired after work. The weekends should be when I find time to really spend with you, but this past weekend I put family time and mental rest over you and that was not ok. I’m so sorry.

As for the third and final “G” / grit - I pray that you continue to help me prove myself as a more than capable part of my work team and not as its weakest link. I pray that Loretta isn’t bad mouthing me to Bryan or Steph. I pray that I’m not making mistake after mistake. I pray that my overall speed and precision make noticeable improvements.

I’m down on myself today because I was slow to submit one of today’s inspection forms and overlooked a crucial bedding issue on that form. The funny thing is, I nailed making sure I had the right info for the bed but got yanked by Loretta and overlooked adding the info to the form. I was in the middle doing its QA when she flew back into Zoom seeming super irritated, drilled me about a number of things in efforts to catch up (and perhaps to ever so passively imply that I was dropping the ball?) I purposely projected an upbeat, unaffected demeanor but it really did throw me. Next, Steph asked me about my Monday hours. It was a serious decision I had to make and I gave that some time and ran it by Oscar. Next, I called the partner about an issue with the Wifi box and before I knew it, Bryan was asking why the form had not been submitted and why it was taking so long. After having to publically explain myself about that, I didn’t feel right for the rest of the shift but continued to work like nothing was wrong. Then came the bedding issue was brought to my attention by the client. Wasn’t a huge thing at all, but the whole time I was praying that Bryan didn’t notice since bedding is one of the core things we cannot get wrong with the inspection. Perhaps to some, I may appear to be overreacting, but overall, I need you, Lord. Qasim knew I was great at my job. Bryan, Jackie, even Loretta. They haven’t spent enough time with me to know that I’m one of thee best that my company has to offer.

I shared with Oscar today, for no particular reason: “I am thee only black person on my POD.” Does that have any real meaning? Not truly. Besides, I’m a conservative after all so I’m definatley not one to cry racism and play the black card. But I’m my heart I know that I must work harder and be better than the rest of my colleagues to be recognized as completely capable. My mistakes MAY be weighted with heavier implications simply due to my being a minority. If I were the only white in an all black office for a black organization the same would be true. My mistakes might be more noticable and people might say, “That while girl is a problem.” I pray that will never be the case for me here. I want my superiors to have complete confidence in me. Without that, without YOU, I wouldn’t be able to help my husband pay our bills. I pray for intelligence and for near superhuman attention to detail. I pray for the ability to flawlessly and quickly execute every task that hits my eyeballs. Please let Bryan like me. Please help me to achieve a sterlingly spotless reputation. Help me to quit having to EDIT my errors out. Help me do well despite Roman and my other family duties. I know I’m going on and on but Jesus. I need you so much. *Gasp*

I heard you:

“If you need me so much, you should seek me so much, you should study me so much and absorb me so much and I will take care of the rest." I love you so much Lord God!!

Amen.

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lady-literature · 3 years

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Found Family

holy shit did this one get way out of hand. Don’t expect them all to be this long because hot damn this is a monster compared to literally everything else but it just wouldn’t stop

(should I have expected this? probably. we all know how I am about found family.)

anyway enjoy 4.5k words ig

based on this post | @maribatmarch-2k21 | find more here

***

When Marinette had been chosen to intern with Monsieur Wayne’s PA, she hadn’t been expecting anything special. Sure, the Waynes were an odd breed and generally considered strange, but Marinette hadn’t actually expected to have much contact with them—if any at all.

She was here to earn credit for her business degree.

Instead, she has… well. She thinks she’s been somehow inducted into the Wayne family, mostly on accident and kind of as a joke.

That is, until it very much wasn’t.

***

Her first mistake, she supposes, was being too good at her job.

Marinette is an old hand at keeping track of multiple moving parts and riding herd on stubborn people who’d otherwise be too distracted or goofing off. (She was the Court’s leader for more than just being the latest in a long line of Ladybugs, after all.)

After the first two days shadowing Selina—“please, darling. Ms Kyle is so formal”—and learning the broad strokes of the job, Marinette felt confident enough to dig her nails in and get to work. Selina spent most of her time dedicated to international tasks and arranging Monsieur Waynes’ private affairs—all of which was highly classified and not discussed with Marinette—so she turned her attention to inter-company affairs.

Her first order of business was personally meeting with as many people in managerial positions as she could get. Not a requirement for the job per se, but these were people she’d have to interact with often and Maman had always stressed the importance of building connections in the workplace.

“People,” she would say, “are far more willing to do what you want them to when you’ve endeared yourself to them.”

So Marinette takes that advice and spends her breaks and lunches charming employees and giving baked goods to security guards and learning the names of the cleaning crew. She doesn’t speak to the department heads, because Selina handles their correspondences, but everyone else is free game as far as she’s concerned.

She becomes a well-recognized face astoundingly quickly.

***

Marinette probably should’ve seen the rumors coming.

It’s common practice in not only the Wayne family, but in most business conglomerates, for the children to quickly rise through the ranks of their company—if not just handed a high position right off the bat.

It took barely a month before the eldest was all but running Human Resources, and the second was placed as Head of Security practically out of nowhere. Monsieur Drake is the youngest (and most terrifyingly calculated) CEO to ever hold Wayne Enterprises, even if he does share the title with his father.

The other three are still too young or have yet to express an interest in the company, but people say it’s only a matter of time.

The track record speaks for itself, even if Marinette wishes it didn’t.

As a girl who’d come mostly out of nowhere and found herself with far more divisive sway in the company than she had any right to, it’s no wonder everyone thinks she’s some sort of secret Wayne finally coming out of hiding.

Marinette had nearly choked on her coffee when Selina dropped the bomb of that particular tidbit of company gossip.

“Most think you’ve been unofficially adopted,” Selina tells her, looking far too amused for Marinette’s liking. “Seeing as you’re too old for official avenues now.”

Marinette looks up warily from the schedule she’s rearranging. Selina had all but shoved the thing at her a month ago when she started suggesting more efficient ways of managing the CEOs’ valuable time.

“Only most? Does that mean the rest have common sense?”

Selina’s grin widens even further, if that’s possible, and Marinette regrets her question even before the older woman starts speaking.

“Oh, of course not!” she laughs delightedly. “The rest are hoping to hear news of wedding bells. It’s high time someone swept a Wayne off the market, don’t you think?”

***

“So you’re the new little sister I keep hearing about.”

Marinette stares up through narrowed eyes at the brightly smiling Dick Grayson. In her stomach, there are already the beginnings of resignation starting to form.

“It’s nice to finally meet you!”

This man is going to bring her nothing but trouble. She can tell.

***

Dick takes a liking to her. And she, against her better judgment, finds herself doing the same to him.

It’s a little hard not to, if she’s being honest. He’s bright and bubbly and brings her bagels during his morning break without her ever having asked.

It takes practically no time at all before Marinette considers him a friend, relaxing when he’s near and laughing openly at his ridiculous jokes. Despite being the head of HR, he’s not great at the whole ‘professional’ thing and often employees will walk by to find him draped across a chair or balancing precariously on the edge of her desk while she tries and fails to get some work done while he’s around.

It really doesn't help all of the ‘Marinette is a Wayne’ rumors running around. Especially when Dick starts pointedly calling her every variation of ‘little sister’ that he can think of just to annoy her (and, she knows, because he thinks the entire situation hilarious).

***

Three weeks after befriending Dick, Selina all but shoves her into Monsieur Drake’s office and, in no uncertain words, says, “He’s your problem now.”

Marinette blinks at what she can describe as nothing other than a disaster area and just… sighs.

Tim blinks back at her.

The motion is somehow both completely blank and filled with an uncomfortable amount of knowing at the same time. There is also, she notices, a frankly ludicrous amount of concealer caked beneath his eyes and more coffee cups scattered on every flat surface than Marinette has ever seen in her life.

She knows his schedule like the back of her hand seeing as she spends hours of her day pouring over it to make sure everything runs smoothly. He has no prior engagements for the next three hours.

“You’re not going to take a nap just because I ask, are you?”

He snorts. “Absolutely not.”

She nods, having expected the answer; her phone was already at her ear before he even finished speaking. “Hey, Dick!” she greets, sounding brighter than she feels at the moment, and watches as Tim stiffens in front of her. “Yeah, no. I was just wondering if you’re busy right now.” She pauses. “Oh, good! Can you come up to Tim’s office for me? Yeah, I need you to knock him out so I can fix his dumpster fire of an office.”

Tim has since started waving his hands frantically at her, panic setting in behind his eyes.

Marinette stares at him, unmoved. “Thanks, Dick! You’re the best!”

The silence after she hangs up is deafening.

“I don’t know if I should be impressed by the ease you’re manipulating me or pissed off that you’re doing it in the first place.”

She hums thoughtfully. “Does your decision have any bearing on my future employment?”

His eyes squint. “…No.”

Marinette shrugs, mind already whirling with what she’ll need to get done first and calculating how long she’ll likely have to get it done. “Then I think you should skip right over both of those and land on resignation as quickly as possible, Monsieur, because you’re going to have to get used to it regardless.”

It’s silent for a long moment, and she worries for just a second that she’s severely crossed some sort of line. Then Tim bursts out laughing instead of, you know, firing her like he probably should have.

“Oh, yeah. You’re going to fit right in here.”

Marinette doesn’t ask where the ‘here’ is. She’s pretty sure she already knows.

***

It takes ten days for Marinette to wrangle Tim’s life into something resembling order. His office is clean and organized to his liking. She’s developed a system of filing so that all paperwork goes through her and is quickly sorted into ‘can be handled by Marinette’, ‘forge his signature and tell him about it later’, and ‘actually important enough to have Tim read through’.

His schedule is the most efficient it’s ever been and Marinette is quickly honing the skill of getting him properly dressed and out of his office in under thirty minutes. (Dick is, thankfully, a great teacher and has little to no qualms about giving her the key to all his little brother’s weaknesses.)

Selina stares at her when Marinette all but drags Tim from his office, a folder tucked neatly under his arm and the sugary monstrosity of a caffeinated beverage she’s bribed him with in her own, with a whole ten minutes to spare before his meeting with the Board.

“My dear,” she says solemnly, “you are positively magic.”

She doesn’t even look up from where she’s simultaneously wrangling Tim’s hair into submission and laying his tie down flat. “You have no idea.”

***

She knows Tim is capable of professionality. She’s seen the cool facade he pulls up in front of the Board members and the kind but impersonal smile he uses on the employees of Wayne Enterprises. (He is not the Ice Prince of the Wayne family, but Marinette believes he should have some equally ruthless sounding title.) He is aloof and sharp and every inch the businessman people praise him to be.

She’s seen it. And yet…

“Monsieur. Why are all the Lexcorp contracts I gave you done in crayon?”

Tim doesn’t stop messing with his Rubix cube or even look up at her when he says, “Cause deadbeat fathers don’t deserve the respect of a pen.”

Marinette is very tired. She does not have time for this. “What are you talking about?”

“Lex is a bitchass absentee dad and I live to inconvenience him.”

“What about inconveniencing me?” she all but whines. “I can’t hand him these!”

That does make Tim look up at her, eyes wide with false innocence and mouth pouting up at her. “But sister dearest, I’m your little brother. It’s my job to inconvenience you.”

Growling in frustration is probably an inappropriate reaction to the situation.

But, Marinette thinks, so is the fact that both of the Waynes she associates with regularly seem hellbent on convincing the world that she too, is a Wayne, so.

(Is this how Alya felt dealing with the twins? Cause if so, Marinette takes back every joke she ever made—little siblings are a bitch.)

***

She meets Damian without warning.

Honestly, she never really expected to meet him at all but, well.

She finds him in Monsieur Wayne’s office, sitting at his father’s desk and doing something that she thinks is vaguely illegal, but she’s not about to tell her Boss a dozen times over how to parent his children.

Damian is a near-perfect copy of his father with darker skin and calculating green eyes. There’s also a more potent aura of danger around the child than there is around his father, like Damian hasn’t yet learned how to hide behind his public persona as his father had.

Or, Marinette looks at the teen thoughtfully, perhaps he just chooses not to.

“Monsieur Wayne,” she greets. Children like to be treated like adults, she knows, and Marinette doesn’t think this one is any different. “Selina hadn’t told me you’d be in the office today.”

“I don’t run my schedule by her,” he says flatly. A response she expected considering Dick’s stories.

“Of course not,” she agrees.

He finally deigns to look up at her and something flits across his expression, too fast for her to pick up on it. “Are those for Father? Bring them here, I’ll deal with them in his absence.”

Marinette raises her eyebrow. “I’m not sure that’s wise Monsieur.”

Damian scowls and sticks his hand out. “I’m perfectly capable of forging Father’s signature. Give them here.”

She does not move and, instead, lets her lips quirk up into the smile she’s been fighting since she stepped in here.

“I don’t doubt it,” she tells him, and she doesn't. Forgery seems exactly like the kind of skill a child who broke into the CEO’s office of a multi-billion dollar company would have. “But you’ll find that all forging of signatures has been finished for the day and that these,” she shakes the sheaf of papers lightly, “actually require your father’s attention.”

He snorts disbelievingly and it says a lot about Marinette’s life up until now that the blatant display of disrespect doesn’t piss her off but instead reminds her of Chloé and of the fact that she still needs to reschedule their spa day. It's been too long since they spent time together in person.

“Well,” she pauses and eyes the papers thoughtfully. “‘Requires’ in the sense that its information needed to trounce the Board when they start spouting off greedy bullshit about cutting corners on our humanitarian efforts. I’m not sure how much of it is actually useful for anything besides that.” She shrugs. “But homework is homework, yes?”

That gets her a thoughtful once-over. His hand lowers and he then turns back to whatever he’s messing with on his father’s computers.

“Very well,” he concedes. “Father will be back in approximately thirteen minutes. You can leave the papers and I’ll inform him of their… importance.” He smirks, but it’s more like he’s letting her in on a joke than anything else.

Marinette smiles back as she sets the folder on the desk, feeling, oddly, like she’s passed some sort of test.

***

The day after, both Dick and Tim are waiting for her with what looks like an entire bakery laid out in her workspace.

“Uh,” she says eloquently, setting her purse down on her chair because there’s not a single open space on her desk not filled with some kind of pastry. “What’s all this?”

She looks up to find neither Dick nor Tim has stopped staring at her since she walked in. “We heard you met Damian yesterday,” Dick starts warily, like he’s scared of her reaction.

The response does not abate her confusion.

“Yes, I did,” she says slowly. “That does not explain all… this.” She waves a hand, trying to encompass them as well as the state her desk is in.

The two brothers share a look.

“It’s a bribe,” Tim tells her simply and Marinette is taken aback for all of a second before her eyes suddenly narrow.

Dick cuts in hastily before she can say anything. “It’s more of an apology, really. For Damian’s behavior.”

But Marinette is confused and frustrated and just a bit offended by the apparent not-bribe at this point. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, but it only does so much.

“Damain’s behavior was fine,” she tells them with measured neutrality. “You two, on the other hand, are being weird and it’s freaking me out.” She crosses her arms expectantly. “Seriously, what’s going on?”

Appearing from out of nowhere, Selina drapes herself along Marinette’s shoulders and snags a raspberry scone. “I do believe,” she says as if sharing a secret, “That they are trying to keep you from quitting, kitten.”

Marinette wrinkles her nose. “Why would I quit? I like this job.”

She also likes the Waynes (in general, if not right then) and she likes Selina. The woman was a good mentor who didn’t shy away from the dirtier parts of the job and taught Marinette all she knew. (Even the bits, she noticed, that had little to nothing to do with being a personal assistant and were more likely to be found in the repertoire of a thief.

But, Marinette is in possession of her own sticky fingers and knows how to not ask questions, so. You know—curiosity killed the cat and all.)

She doesn’t voice any of that, but Selina, at least, knows it anyway. Marinette isn’t quiet about her gratitude after all.

“First meetings with the youngest Wayne don’t often go well,” Selina tells her. “In fact, I think he has a habit of making the interns cry.”

Dick makes some kind of offended noise. “Hey! He hasn’t done that since he was twelve!”

Tim elbows him in the ribs and Marinette makes a vaguely skeptical face at all three of them before deciding it wasn’t worth it. She has actual work to get done today and pastries to get rid of before she can even start.

She pats affectionately at Selina’s hand before grabbing as many boxes as she can hold. “Come on you two,” she says to the brothers. “You’re going to help me hand these out to the rest of the company.”

Dick immediately starts doing as told but Tim hesitates, humming thoughtfully. “You know that’s not going to help your whole ‘I’m not actually a Wayne’ thing, right?”

She glares at him. It doesn’t stop Tim from grinning like the utterly unrepentant little shit he is.

***

Things are quiet after the Damian Incident for a whole two weeks. It’s the longest lull Marinette has had since she first started and became somehow involved with the Waynes.

It ends because Dick finds out about the crush Marinette has been nursing on the Head of Security for three months now.

The Head of Security who is Jason Todd: second eldest Wayne sibling and Dick’s brother.

He takes it better than expected.

(Almost, she thinks later, a little too well.)

***

Despite her friendship with Dick and Tim—or perhaps because of it?—Jason had never seemed very interested in her. At first, Marinette had shrugged and counted it as a win; there was one Wayne, at least, who neither found her situation funny nor used it to poke fun at her.

They were on friendly terms, she supposed. Security has always been one of her more regular stops in the building, so she’d spoken to him often enough. He liked complaining that she spoiled his team rotten with all her treats.

But she also noticed that he likes her cherry danishes, so.

And then she noticed how crooked his grin was when he smiled. And how he seemed to have an arsenal of nicknames for everyone he knew. And the small collection of classic romance novels filled with sticky notes he tries and fails to hide in his desk. And, and, and.

It was around the time she began unconsciously memorizing his schedule based on when he was and was not there for her pastry deliveries, that she realized she may have made a misstep somewhere.

Jason was stubborn and passionate and flipped between overly proper and crass light a damn light switch. He was also, as stated, very much not interested in her.

Not that she would’ve pursued him anyway. He was a coworker as well as her friends’ brother.

Now if only one of said brothers could understand that.

“You should ask him out,” Dick suggests not for the first time and Marinette sighs, also not for the first time.

She loves Dick—she truly does—but he has been an aggravating level of unhelpful since he found out about Marinette’s latest romantic disaster.

“I’m definitely not doing that.”

Dick groans, like she’s being the unreasonable one. “Why are you being so stubborn about this?”

“Because I don’t like embarrassing myself?” she asks rhetorically. “Not everyone can have a fairy tale romance like you and Wally.”

He throws his coffee stirrer at her. “We are not a fairy tale.”

She shoots him a flat look. She’s heard Dick talk about Wally and Tim’s told her all the stories and she was there when he and Wally finally got their shit together. Dick was unbearable for an entire week with his gooey, lovestruck new lease on life.

“You two are the definition of fairy tale. You two make fairy tales look like trashy romance novels.”

He opens his mouth to argue the point before forcibly cutting himself off. “No. Stop distracting me. We’re not talking about that; we’re talking about you and Jason.”

“There is no ‘me and Jason’,” she reminds him through her clenched teeth.

“Not yet,” he says optimistically. Like it’s a fact, like he knows something she doesn’t.

He makes her want to slam her face into a wall. Truly, he does.

***

Dick stops running his HR papers up to her office. Instead, he’s somehow convinced Jason to play errand boy for him even though he literally never looks happy about it. What used to be a flimsy excuse for Dick to slack off for a few minutes and gossip with her has now turned into awkward silence as Jason drops off the papers and leaves without even a ‘hello’.

During their shared breaks, Dick takes to orchestrating ‘chance encounters’ between her and Jason, all but shoving them into each other (and even actually shoving that one time). She catches Jason shooting dark looks at Dick every time he does it, and if she’d been holding any iota of hope at this point, it’s been smashed to dust. Jason obviously knows of his brother’s meddling and isn’t happy about it.

But Dick just can’t take the hint.

Every failed plan of his makes him steadily worse about it all—more frantic and frustrated and like he wants to strangle her for her stubbornness. (The last feeling being more than mutual.)

Dick’s meddling starts to make her and Jason’s previously friendly, if distant, relationship awkward and embarrassing. With every pointed comment, she gets closer to just punching Dick in the face. Or, maybe, she’ll just tell Wally who really ate all the chocolate strawberry macaroons she made; it’d certainly be more devastating.

***

It all comes to head on a Thursday, after most employees have left for the day.

They run into each other in a breakroom, and she watches as Jason suddenly goes stiff, eyes flicking over her shoulder to no doubt scan for Dick. That single action makes her expression sour and she slams her empty mug down with more force than was necessary.

For Kwamis sake, he looks like a cornered animal. An image not helped by the way he jumps a foot in the air and stares at her like he’s worried she’ll suddenly lunge at him.

“Can we agree this is ridiculous?” she says abruptly. “I don’t know what Dick is trying to accomplish with his wingman schtick, but we both know it’s not going to work. Can we just… agree that he’s an idiot?”

A complicated look crosses Jason’s face before he snorts wryly. “Yeah, we can agree on that. Dickie-boy has always been a few sandwiches short a picnic.”

“I know things have been awkward between us lately, and I’m sorry about that, but I hope we can keep being friends?” she says hopefully.

“What in the world do you have to be sorry about?” he asks before she can start catastrophizing about the bewildered expression he makes at her words. “It’s not your fault.”

The smile she shoots him is rueful and she shakes her hand in an ‘ehh’ type gesture. “Kinda is. And I understand if the-” she makes a vague gesture between them that she hopes properly conveys ‘my giant, stupid crush on you’, “you know, is too much for you. Just say the word I’ll try and keep out of your way.”

She’s trying to be comforting or understanding or something like that, but all her words seem to do is make him upset. “Absolutely not,” he insists. “Sunshine, you are not going to change your routine just to make me feel better.”

Marinette crosses her arms, frowning up at him. “Why shouldn’t I? If I’m making you uncomfortable-”

He makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “Uncomfort- Marinette. ” She jolts a bit at the use of her name. She doesn’t think he’s used it since her second week at W.E. “I’m not sure who made you think otherwise—and if it was Dick just tell me cause I’ll kick his ass —but barring the fact that I still enjoy your friendship regardless of any… feelings-” Marinette concentrates very hard on not showing emotion when he says that, “-it’s not your responsibility to deal with it.”

Okay, but… that makes no sense. Of course her feelings were her responsibility, that’s the whole point of them being hers.

“If it’s not mine, then whose responsibility is it then?” she asks, wondering where the hell his train of thought is running.

“Mine, obviously.”

She gives him a look, complete with narrowed eyes and thinly veiled judgment. “What? Is this some kind of gentleman’s martyr complex? Is that what’s happening right now?”

Jason huffs a laugh, but there’s no humor in the sound. “If me taking responsibility for my own damn feelings is a martyr complex then sure,” he snarks, not unkindly. More like he’s trying to protect himself by retreating behind a sour attitude.

Her mouth is halfway around a retort when his words catch up to her brain and she freezes.

“Your feelings?” she repeats. “Your feelings for… me?”

His voice is carefully neutral when he says, “Those would be the ones.”

Her mouth opens and closes and opens again. “You like me? Seriously?”

His face spasms at the question, starting at anger before he properly looks at her and the surprised expression on her face. He pales.

“You didn’t know?”

“No!” she squeaks, something she hasn’t done since she was fifteen. “Well Dick said but I didn’t believe him!”

And fuck, she thinks. This means Dick knew the whole damn time, didn’t he? Oh, she is so going to kill him the second she gets the chance.

Jason runs a hand down his face, covering his mouth as he gathers his bearings. Suddenly, his eyes shoot back open and land on her. “Wait. If you didn't know, then what the hell were you talking about just now?”

She blushes to the tips of her ears and buries her face in her hands so she doesn’t have to look at him. It was easy when she thought he’d figured it out himself. It’s harder now that she has to tell him. “I- I was talking about my crush on you.”

He’s quiet for so long that she gets antsy and peeks out from behind her fingers to see his expression. He’s still looking at her, but now there’s a wide, crooked smile on his face. The expression softens something in her chest and she lowers her hands.

“Really?” he asks, leaning closer.

Marinette nods, feeling a small smile spread across her lips.

He jolts forward, hands reaching for her before suddenly stopping just shy of touching. She startles a bit at the motion but doesn’t move away.

Jason licks his lips, smile smaller but no less bright. “I- can I?”

She blinks. “Can you what?”

“Kiss you.”

The blush returns full force, but with it also comes a smile, giddy and bright. She nods and no sooner than she does, is he swooping down to pull her into a toe-curling kiss. His hands cup her face with a tenderness that makes her smile, makes her giddy, and it’s not long before they’re both smiling too wide to actually kiss and are forced to break apart.

His hands fall to her back, practically engulfing her, and his chin drops onto her head. It’s warm and cozy and she thinks she could so very easily get used to this.

Later, they’re going to have to deal with Dick and Tim and Selina and the teasing they’ll no doubt have to endure—not to mention how much worse the rumors are going to get—but right now? Right now Marinette pulls Jason back down for another kiss and very pointedly doesn’t think about it.

#maribatmarch2021 #maribat #mlb x dc #jasonette #my typewriter #platonic dickinette #platonic timari

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rxttenfish · 2 years

Text

Merfolk Anatomy: Part 1, Head

So, I have... a lot of ideas on how merfolk anatomy works. Unfortunately, it’s a bit hard to get across all of the various moving parts in artwork, especially if they’re covered up in clothes, or the giant earfins, or just the pose doesn’t comply with me.

For my own help, and for the help of anyone I commission in the future, I’m going to be making a few of these posts detailing what’s going on under the hood, and to hopefully make my process more clear for people in the future! There should be a few of these (I have a lot of thoughts on merfolk anatomy), so hopefully I should be adding onto this post in the future!

Disclaimer: Here, I’ll mostly be referencing Miranda and her anatomy. Miranda is an abyssal merfolk. There are several different species of merfolk, so the proportions might change with different characters and different species. Doing one merfolk species is more feasible right now than attempting all of them.

Profile:

Abyssals have a “blocky” head shape. They’re exceptionally strong biters, so not only does the extra muscle round out their features, but their bones are also thickened and strengthened to prevent them from breaking their own faces when they bite.

Head is long, like all merfolk. Approximately halfway between the tip and the end of the skull is where the eye is located, and between the eye and the tip is where the salt organ ends. Placed directly above the salt organ are the first pair of nostrils, in a short “crest”. There is a small eyebrow ridge, but skull profile transitions smoothly from the top of the head to the tip. Skull extends well past the bottom jaw to fit a large brain.

Third eye is located between the two other eyes, and appears as little more than a slightly off-color scale.

The upper and lower jaws are roughly equal in dimensions, with large, triangular teeth in a single row. The upper jaw can appear larger, due to the overhang of the lips, which entirely cover all teeth and obscure the size of their bottom jaw. Like all merfolk, their lips dip upwards at the very center, to produce a “:3″ shape. Lips are flexible, and cheeks are best compared to dog cheeks, able to be pulled forward or back, but are more open than human cheeks.

The jaw does not and cannot open all the way back to the joint. The gape of the jaw is larger than that in humans.

The ear is located on top of the joint that controls the jaw. This is where the earfins connect to the skull. Gills are directly under lower jaw, and open directly into the throat. Abyssal merfolk have three pairs of gills.

Large neck muscles connect to the back of the skull. The spine connects to the back of the skull - not straight down, like in humans. To have the skull and the spine at a right angle to each other would be painful in the short term and injurious in the long term. Anything further is impossible without injury. Ideally, the skull should be flush and straight against the spine.

Neck should be just as large as the skull, with a smooth transition between them.

(Note: I haven’t fully decided on what merfolk vertebrae look like yet, so consider this a placeholder.)

Eyes:

Pupils are slit in Abyssals, and can adjust their size. Bright light (such as daylight) or being upset will make the pupils shrink. Low light or interest will cause the pupils to dilate and lose their slit shape, able to nearly cover the entirety of the visible eye.

Merfolk have no visible whites to their eyes. Miranda’s iris is blue.

Tapetum lucidum reflects in electric blue when light is shone on the eyes. They cannot provide light of their own, and can only reflect back what is already present.

Nictitating membrane/third eyelid moves in from the inner corner of the eye to the outer corner. It is semi-translucent, and up close the eye itself can still be seen, although covered in a blue-grey film. From afar, details vanish.

Salt organ begins at the inner corner of the eye and extends outwards. Flesh of the salt organ is the same greyish-purple as the gums/tongue/mouth.

Eyelids are pink, and become a yellow-cream where the skin is thinnest, such as around the eye itself.

Merfolk have poor eyesight, and can see in darkness much better than they can perceive color.

Ear Fins:

Ear Fins are a structure composed of the “stem” or “shaft”, the “frills” or “feathering”, and the “fluff” or base. The structure is repeated three times on either side of the head, leaving a total of six “shafts”

Shafts are composed of cartilage, muscle, skin, flesh, and some scales. They are the hardiest part of the fin, and the least sensitive. Most of the control in moving and adjusting the size and shape of fins are directed by the shafts, which have large masses of fine muscle at their bases. They can swivel, tilt forward, tilt backwards, flatten down, flare outwards, flick, flutter, and relax against the neck.

From each shaft is where the feathering connects. Contrary to the name, all frills are long, thin extensions of delicate skin, full of nerve endings and able to extract oxygen from the water. Each frill connects back to the shaft, and have microscopic “barbs” on their surface. These barbs not only increase surface area to extract more oxygen, but they also hold each frill together, producing a single consistent shape for each fin. They do not always connect properly at the edges, so the edges of the fin will appear “fluffy”.

Because all frills are delicate skin, merfolk can feel through their fins, as well as breathe and somewhat smell through them. They are soft in texture, but due to how sensitive and delicate they are, merfolk will refrain from touching the fins of anyone they aren’t close to.

The fins are actually the exact same structure as the external gills in axolotls, with the feathering migrated entirely to the bottom, increased in number, and reinforced and modified from there.

The base of the fins and the back of the cheeks are covered in “fluff”. Structurally, fluff is the same thing as feathering, but not connecting to the shaft. Fluff is smaller and shorter than the frills too, smoothing out the transition between fins and face, but they are even more delicate because of this. Fluff obscures the base of the fins from the front. Only from the back can the connection of all shafts to a singular point, just above the jaw’s joint, be seen.

Each fin forms a single “swooping” diamond shape.

Merfolk’s internal gills are structurally the same as their earfins. The shaft forms a single, interior gill arch for each gill, keeping its shape and allowing merfolk to open and close their gills. The feathering becomes gill rakers, and are exceptionally prominent on abyssals, where they poke out of the gill covers.

#monster prom #art #digital art #redesign #redesign universe #miranda vanderbilt #Monster Prom Reanimated #Monster Prom: Reanimated #worldbuilding #anatomy #all the care guide says is 'biomass'

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hoaqins-funk-house · 3 years

Text

Springtrap

Yandere

Male Reader

Part 1

Sitting in the black swivel chair, you spin once or twice before coming to a stop, grimacing at the feeling of sticky floors beneath your shoes. This place is brand new, how the hell are the floors sticky?

Actually, on that note, how is everything so covered in dust?

Sighing, your mindless fidgeting comes to a stop as the phone, just as dinky as the walls around you, begins to ring. You pick it up but put it back on the table, eyes drifting to the laptop and swing-out tablet. When you flip the former open, you note the four buttons, each relating to something you would have to reset when it comes time to. The latter has cameras that are scattered around, including a separate tab for vents. There’s an option to block off vents, which sends a chill up your spine as you glance to the big ass one at your side.

You decide to block that one off for now.

Humming, you familiarize yourself with the layout of the place, deciding to ignore the shadows that crept through your vision.

Your unenthused eyes scan and take in everything. The replicas (you had seen the originals, and they were permanently stained with both the smell and color of pizza sauce and lawsuits) that were in and around the office, as well as the little bobbleheads that sat on your desk of the animatronics, which were, for some reason, human? You boop the one who you assume to be Freddy, hearing the familiar squeak.

A small smile comes to your lips.

It was at this time that you realized you had completely ignored the man on the phone, but you couldn't really bring yourself to care.

The little drawings that were put up were authentic; not just anyone could recreate what a child's mind spits out and decides to draw.

That Freddy looks a bit fucked up.

The posters were cutely designed, and after getting the gist of what everything was and how everything works, you were on your phone the rest of the night.

When six strikes, you casually leave, giving the building a quick once over as you leave the doors, locking them behind you.

If every night is going to be like that, this is going to get boring.

He’s stuck.

This suit traps him like a rabid dog, eager to stay gripped onto his neck.

Still, things would be changing soon.

He can feel it.

He can feel it as a fresh breeze, the first in many years, hits his nostrils, sending a wave of euphoria through his system. The bloodied musk that hung in the dank room was not a pleasant one.

He can feel it as his body accepts this new host, more and more, until soon, quite soon, he will become one with his vessel.

Just as the animatronics before him did.

He ponders.

Why was he being freed from this prison of his own design?

Is he being taken somewhere?

…

Will there be a night guard to terrorize?

A grin takes to his broken lips as he ignores the pain and blood that comes from them. Oh, a night guard! Truly, that will be a sight!

He can't wait.

For now, however, he must play dead.

My, that voice that shouts with excitement from behind him…

It sounds so familiar.

"Bring the truck around!" He calls. "I found one, a real one! It's got the rips, the weird colors, and what I am going to assume is pizza sauce! Ohohoh man, I hit the jackpot with this one! Fazbear's Fright needed something, and here it is!"

His congratulatory tone made the man within the suit want to throw up. Finding him was nothing to be happy about; he is despicable, incapable of redemption, and an awful being.

And you know what?

That's just the way he likes it.

So to have someone happy to find him, especially for their own purposes?

He won't let it stand.

Yeah, if this place has a nightguard, he'll kill them without mercy before burning the entire thing to the ground.

Might as well make it fun for himself.

As light peeks through, clearly originating from a flashlight, he feels his pupils shrink, resisting the urge to let out a groan as his weak eyes ache from their decades of being in the dark.

"Whoahoh! This one looks gnarly!" The same man as before speaks, probably referencing the organs and tendons that were showing. "C'mon, let's get it up!"

His grin only grows as two people lift him onto a dolly, beginning the move.

Goodbye, saferoom.

And hello, Fazbear's Fright.

Humming, you walk into the building, skimming over the decorations once more before noticing something.

The papers that had fallen onto the ground from before, they had dirt on them. Not surprising on its own, but when they were in the shape of tire tracks?

You decide to follow them, using your memory of the cameras to guide you through the building, which was already rather linear anyway.

Entering the last area, you could see a rather dilapidated animatronic suit, with organs visible and its fur matted with blood. Real blood. The old Springbonnie suit was nearly green from how old and dirty it was.

Your eyebrows raise. "Is that guy just stupid or did he knowingly bring in a suit that has a dead body in it?"

Honestly, you didn't care. "Eh, whatever. It'll probably start moving when I start my shift… I've heard those rumors about the other locations." You turn, stretching, unaware of the eyes that followed you or the head that turned your way.

Damn, does he want to kill this one?

Well, he can think it over more soon. After the merge.

He grins again, feeling his uneven, gouged skin begin to flare with pain.

You exit the room fully, making your way back to the office with all the urgency of an ADHD-riddled person doing laundry.

Which is to say… not much.

You fall into the chair, cursing as the thin mesh cushion does nothing to protect your tailbone from the metal frame of the chair. The phone rings not a moment later, you picking it up and laying it on the table again, eager to ignore it just as you had done before. You stretch again, arms raising above your head as you begin to flip through cameras, finding the rabbit in the same spot it was in before.

You yawn.

Hopefully it starts moving soon, or else the entire reason you took this job would be unfulfilled.

You were bored, and you remembered this place from the times you had gone with your younger brother, who was now in his early twenties. You, however, were 28 years of age, with nothing better to do than 'investigate' the Fazbear's Fright that opened up. Still, if that rabbit has a corpse in it, it should make things more fun.

As you lazily flip through your cameras, you set it down and look to the side, seeing a rather dirty looking man with an eyepatch and fox ears. To his confusion, before he could lunge at you, you reach out and swipe a hand through his chest. You continue to swipe forwards and backwards, the incorporeal man stuck standing there until you leaned back.

"So, you're a ghost."

His mouth opens as if to retort, but he just gives up and leaps at you, you not even looking at him anymore. He closes his mouth halfway through the jump, and with an unsatisfied sigh, he disappears.

You continue flipping through the cameras, checking in on the rabbit a couple of times before shoving the tablet out of the way, opening the laptop to have it ready and sitting back in your chair.

You glance towards a shifting figure in front of the window, the hat and bear ears telling of who it is. He limps along, eventually falling beneath your view before seemingly phasing through the wall and leaping at you. You stare passively as he does so, him not completing the jump to instead stand in front of you, confused.

For shits and giggles, you wave your hand through his chest once or twice.

"Why… aren't you… scared?" He croaks, voice ruined from years of no use.

"Oh, was I supposed to be scared?" You genuinely ask. "Uh, sorry. If you do it again I promise I'll hyperventilate."

"Don't try to… lessen your survival chances…"

"Okay. My bad."

He sighs, and after annoyedly rubbing his face, he disappears.

You flip out your cameras once more, finding the screen obscured by static and a small error in the center. Lazily, you reset cams.

When your screen clears, you check the rabbit. He looks… strange. Like his body is evolving in front of your eyes.

To be honest, you don't give enough of a shit to watch a potentially world-changing discovery if it looks that gross. You aren't paid enough to, anyway.

At this pay grade, you even coming into the damn building is volunteer work.

You check your phone for the time, seeing a cool time of one in the morning.

"Aside from that science experiment gone wrong happening in the back room, it's still really damn boring."

However, it's still not boring enough to watch that transformation or whatever. That corpse (well, at this point, you kinda doubt it's dead) can do whatever the hell he wants with that suit. It's his body, not your business.

After another fifteen minutes of staring at a wall, you check the cameras to the sound of loud clicks and pops, now seeing a heavily scarred man with 1.5 rabbit ears in place of the suit. He takes one step out from his original spot, body heaving forward before he lifts himself up, looking up at the camera with a grin.

"Huh. That's new." You say, watching him jolt forward, continuing to take steps before relearning how to walk smoothly.

It only takes him a moment to rocket off.

"I doubt that's good." You mumble, beginning to flip through the cameras to follow him before playing a sound in the room behind him, making him pause. He turns, walking back with a confused expression.

Continuing to flip through cameras, you watch as the man, who you'll dub Rabbit Guy, wanders, seemingly having lost his focus. Hearing a sound to your left, you pay no heed to whoever it is, instead waggling your hand in what you would assume to be their torso.

"You're strange…" They say.

"Uh-huh. If you'd excuse me, I am currently working on keeping Rabbit Guy the hell away from me." Your voice is monotonous but sincere; you aren't trying to be sarcastic or mean, just trying to tell them the facts.

Glancing to the side, you see that it was a child, so you were waving your hand in his collar. "Oh, my bad. Does that… make you guys uncomfortable?" You ask, retracting your hand.

"No, we can't feel it."

"Huh." You blandly respond, playing the sounds to lead Rabbit Guy back to where he started, before resetting sounds as you weren't able to play them anymore.

It seems like Rabbit Guy is getting progressively more and more annoyed at being led back, if his attempts to move fast enough to avoid the sounds or block out his ears meant anything.

His body was responding to the sounds, not him.

It was then that he disappeared, so you check vents, finding him in one that led directly to the room beside your office.

You block it off, much to his annoyance, before yawning and sitting back as any thumps you hear from inside the vents come to a stop.

You find him standing in the room where he had entered the vent, irritated as he glares at the camera. Preemptively, you reset all, thankfully right as cams and sound go out.

Sighing, you lazily check through cameras, brows slightly furrowing as you look for him. He was completely gone, not in vents or in rooms. It really is unfortunate how many blind spots and shadowed areas there are.

When you hear the thumping of the vents, you search through them, only finding a stupid knick-knack laying on its side halfway in your sight.

Looking to your side, you peek into the vent, leaning down to see if anything was there. Your gaze meets Rabbit Guy's.

"Shit." You say, quickly switching cams over to this one and holding down the seal button.

Your eyes shift back to him, finding him way too close for comfort. As you lift your finger to let the gate close on the vent, the man (who was crouch walking) catches it, forcing it back up. You hear something grind that definitely shouldn't be grinding, and you have a feeling that that vent cover just might be broken.

Getting out of the vent, he stands over you, waiting for some sort of plea or… literally any response at all.

"So, you, uh… come here often?" You ask, leaving him genuinely at a loss.

"Wh- was that a pickup line?" His rough, baritone voice catches you slightly off-guard.

You weren't expecting something that was pretty much a zombie to have such a good voice, or a slight british accent for that matter. "Was it? Shit, more people've flirted with me than I thought."

"Really? That's all you can come up with before your death? I'd hate for those to be your final words." He lightly teases, leaning against the wall with a mean grin.

You look up at the ceiling with a vague smile, his eyes widening momentarily. "To be honest, of any place to die, I'd much rather have it be in a place where I know I'll reach the front pages than in some random alley."

His grin falls into a frown as he watches you turn to him, the smile still on your face. It feels strange.

He feels strange.

Why does a random night guard make him feel so…

So… comfortable?

You were calm, collected, not making any sudden moves or even attempting to exit the chair. Theoretically, the perfect prey, but not a satisfying kill.

If he even wants to kill you, that is.

“What’s your name?” He asks, watching as you spin to face him in your chair. You would be taller if you stood, but he would still have a few inches on you.

“Y/N. You?”

“I’m… William. Or, rather, I was, when I was well and truly human.”

“And now?” You ask.

“I don’t exactly have a name.”

“Can I still call you William, then? Well, if I live long enough to do so?” You ask, eyes moving up to meet his. Looking up at him like that… He wishes the hot feeling in the pit of his stomach would go away.

“...Fine.”

“I mean… are you going to kill me?” You ask, face not shifting as he glares down at you.

“I won’t kill you on the first night, you need to give me more entertainment.” At least, that’s what he told himself.

“Oh, so we’re both here for the same reason.” You blankly say, his face contorting from a glare to confusion once more.

“You’re here… for entertainment?” He slowly asks, answered by your nod.

“I’m certainly not here for the pay. This place gives like half of minimum wage but I can’t complain about it because the other part is supposed to come from tips. Somehow.”

“How do you even live?”

“Well, right now I’m on an paid leave due to some unfortunate deaths in my family. To be honest, I never really cared for any of them, but hey. I’ll take any chance for a break I can. Then I got bored.”

He huffs out a laugh. “So you went to another job on your break?”

“Listen, getting a month off leaves a man with little to do when capitalism has left me with no hobbies. Besides, this gives me a great excuse to continue avoiding people.”

His lips curl into an amused grin as he leans forward, lowering his head to be eye level with yours. "Well, you won't be avoiding me." He practically purrs, you averting your eyes at the tone he uses.

Why would he say it like that?!

His golden eyes follow you as you close the laptop's screen, enjoying your reaction. You…

He'll keep you around.

You're entertaining and friendly. Open, and… warm.

He wonders.

You're human, and fully alive. He's a revived corpse who merged with his vessel. You probably are very warm compared to him.

When he comes back to his senses, he notices you slowly raising out of your seat, hand outstretched towards him.

Well, might as well take the chance.

He grabs your wrist, looking down at you unimpressed. You quietly huff, falling back into your chair and forcing him to move away from the wall in order to not dislocate your wrist.

Well, his hypothesis is correct. You are very warm.

He feels the tightening in his gut, not wanting to let go but knowing that he will have to.

You, however, don't actually care either way. You begin your attempt again, this time with your left hand. Slowly raising out of your seat, you actually manage to stand fully up before he notices again, grabbing your other wrist.

"What are you even trying to do?" He asks, a light sneer on his lips.

"Well... uh, I was trying to… boop your nose? If you're bonded with one of the original suits, then I figured either you or Fredbear would have the sound effect."

He lets out a few short laughs, his sneer replaced with the same amused grin as before.

"I'm afraid neither of us have the sound effect. That only came about with the second and third generations of animatronics."

You hum, interested.

His eyes quickly scan over you, taking in your form. This position, practically holding you hostage… Needless to say, he didn't dislike it.

Still, he releases you as he catches you glancing at what he assumes to be a phone. Things have advanced quite far since he was trapped.

You turn it on quickly, checking the time. “Well, we have around an hour and a half before my shift ends, so…” Pausing, you check the time again. An hour and a half?

He steps closer, you glancing back up at him before leaning back as he leans forward, looming over you. “Tomorrow, you best make this more fun for me. I’ll greet you, but then I’ll head to the back. Try and stop me from getting in.”

“Uh, sure. Are you still planning on making the punishment for loss, uh, death?”

His eyes narrow in coordination with a widening grin. “That’s for me to know. You either figure it out, or you don’t. It all depends how well you play.” His gruff voice slightly echoes in the mostly empty building, you nodding in response.

“Oh, cool. Can I tell my brother about you?” You ask suddenly, him quirking a brow as he stares down at you, easily at least half a foot taller than you. He was always tall, but now that he’s in this new form, he grew to be somewhere from 6’6 to 6’8. You sit down once more, exacerbating the height difference.

“Feel free to. Just know that if he ever comes around here, he won’t be alive for very long.”

“I doubt he will. He’s always preferred Foxy the most because he has taste, but-”

“Taste? For liking that liability-strewn fox? You like him as well?”

“To be honest, I never really liked any of them more than the other. I was in my emo phase when I went to see them, so it was practically illegal for me to like anything. But Foxy had sharp teeth and a wicked lookin’ hook, so… I guess I did.”

He hums, clearly slightly annoyed.

“Are you jealous that I liked the fox more than the rabbit that isn’t even the same generation as you?”

“I really should kill you.” His irritated expression shows the truth to your statement.

“It’s okay, I’m willing to call Springbonnie my favorite.”

Now, William was confused. Your tone… you weren’t joking. You were being genuine about something as stupid as this? What is with you?

“You’re very confusing. I think you joke, and then I listen to your tone and you’re genuine. But still, I wouldn’t mind if you did so.”

“It’s not nearly as confusing as how time passes in this place. It’s been like ten minutes since I met you but the clock says like three or four hours have passed.”

“What? Really?” His brows furrow as he steps closer, finding another excuse to close the distance between you both as he leans over the chair, seeing you pointing to the screen. “How strange…”

“Yeah. It doesn’t seem like tomorrow’s hunt will last for six hours, then. Thankfully.” You sigh.

“What, do you not want to feel like my prey for six hours straight?” He grins, leaning over further until his arm rests on your shoulder.

You shiver. “Why do you have to say it like that?”

“Because it makes you react, obviously. It’s entertaining to watch you squirm from something as simple as... the tone of my voice.” Of course, in order to prove his point, he does exactly what he did before, lowering his voice a few pitches and upping the growliness of it.

In covering your eyes, you also cover your cheeks, which have gained a slight flush. “William, I am begging you. Please, please, please, stop talking like that.”

And, naturally progressing, he was left somewhat stunned by the sound of your pleading tone. There’s just something about it, especially as you say his name, that makes him want to…

...makes him want to chase, and capture, and possess forever.

You as his prized prey, and him as the hunter.

“I’ll use it when necessary.” He vaguely answers, watching your head droop.

“I’ll take what I can get.” You concede breathily.

He chuckles, hearing the chime of a bell, signifying 6 in the morning. "Well, I suppose I'll see you tomorrow, then. Don't keep me waiting."

"Asshole. I won't." You turn your head away from him, hiding the flush on your face, and stand up, stretching. "See ya, William."

He hums, eyes tracing your form as you stretch. It was a nice view, watching the button up shirt crease around your back as you stretch, clearly hinting at the muscle beneath. His eyes did drift lower once or twice, and that's how he figures out that damn, you have a really nice ass!

You begin to walk out, and he follows you with his eyes, watching you turn past the replica Freddy husk and unlock the door, exiting into the fresh morning. His eyelids droop, gaze slipping up as his lips curl into a wide grin.

“Y/N… I won’t kill you. Especially not when I’m presented with such an ample opportunity to make this into something so entertaining.”

Well…

Is that the only reason?

Of course, he knows it isn’t.

His grin falls, leaving him coldly leering at the aged panels above him before his sight shifts back to the room around him. As he exits the office, he glances at the stained and shaded glass of the door, not allowing much, if any, light in. He turns away, heading back to where he was originally.

As he walks, he lets his form shift, feeling his body grow to his previous monster rabbit self, the creaks of his metal joints loud in the silent building.

He ignores any shadows that creep in the edges of his vision, the specters traversing without sound.

“This is going to be… boring.” His voice, far rougher than before, comes out unfeeling and croaky. As he returns to his previous position, slouching over once more, he decides to use his old tactic to pass time; inflicting enough pain on himself to fall unconscious. It doesn’t matter if his dreams are infested with darkness, nor how much he suffers in them.

It was better than the boredom of sitting in one position with an unchanging environment.

He begins forcing his muscles to flex and strain within the suit and pull against the beams they have welded to, making him grit his teeth before the searing pain fades away, along with his vision.

Goodnight, Y/N.

“Yo.” You greet your brother, the man tiredly yawning as he ruffles his hair.

“Heya, Y/N. What’re you up so early for?”

“Well, I got bored and got a night shift job at this dinky little horror attraction opening up next week. I decided to tell you about what happened there before I head off to sleep.”

“You got bored during a break from your job so you… got another job?”

“Y’know, William said the same thing.” You say, your brother narrowing his eyes at you.

“A coworker?” He asks.

“Eh, not quite… he is the reason I stayed up to talk to you, though.”

He hums, walking around the couch you were splayed on with your shirt half unbuttoned.

“So, to begin my tale, you remember Freddy’s? The pizzeria with the animatronics?” You question.

“Yeah?”

“Well the horror place I went to is based off of that; it’s filled with replicas and a few actual things from the pizzerias of the past, but something came in tonight that was… different.”

“Which was?”

“An animatronic. One of the originals, Springbonnie. Granted, the suit was ripped to shit and covered in enough dirt to be green, but it was authentic. It even has the dead body! Well - not so dead body, but still visible.”

“Did you call the cops?” He asks, worried.

“Hell no! I’m not paid enough to give a shit about what could-or-could-not-be a dead body. Either way, he transformed into a human, which was rather odd, but-”

“Just to be clear, this rabbit had a dead body inside and transformed into a human, and you don’t question it?”

“No. Continuing on, he got into my office and then we talked for a bit, I learned that his name is William, time passed really weirdly, and then we struck a deal where I have to keep him out of my office or I'll maybe die.”

“You’re still going back there?! And ‘maybe die?!’”

“Yeah, he said the knowledge about whether or not I die from losing the hunt was ‘for him to know.’ I didn’t question it further.”

“You know, Y/N, sometimes it feels like I’m the older sibling. You’re fucking stupid.”

“I’m well aware.”

He leans over the couch, glaring down at you. “Then wisen up and quit that damn job.”

“I’m good. William is good company.”

“He threatened to kill you!”

“And? He hasn’t. Yet.”

“You infuriate me, gayboy.” He says, stepping away from the couch.

“Cool. I’ll sleep here for now, when you get back from work I’ll definitely be up.”

“Whatever.” He waves his hand at you, ignoring the middle finger pointing his direction from behind the couch’s back.

---

Part 2

also a lot of the stuff i write from now on may be male reader inserts lol

heres my springtrap design

here's the updated design lol

#springtrap #springtrap x reader #william afton #william afton x reader #afton #fnaf #fnaf x reader #fnaf 3 #yandere #yandere fnaf #yandere springtrap #five nights at freddy's #yandere x reader #x reader #male reader #male insert #reader insert #fnaf springtrap #gay

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elliotoille · 4 years

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Do you have any advice for understanding hands better? I’ve been practicing them for years but feel like compared to other aspects of anatomy it’s the one thing I haven’t seen much improvement in. I draw both from life and images and draw nearly everyday but nothing I’m doing seems to help

I personally get by mostly from remembering poses that I’ve already practiced a ton, like I figure out how to draw it once and am able to file that away in my brain and use it again later, and tweak bits of the pose or the level of simplification to suit what I’m drawing.

I’ve paid special attention to drawing hands for like.... most of my life so I have a LOT of poses I’m easy comfy with now, but when I need to figure out something complicated or new, I can usually work it out by breaking a hand down into shapes, remembering a few key points/”rules” from what I’ve learned about hands in order to help me break it down in a way that makes sense. And if that’s not enough either, then I take photo refs.

^^^ here is a pose I use a ton. I have a quick way of drawing it from various angles. the first time I had to draw a pose like this, I had to think and figure it out, but in drawing it a bunch of times and having to use various angles like this, I’ve eventually come up with a quick, reliable way to draw it from a few of the most common angles that fits the style I like to draw in. I’m blessed with a good memory for observations, so when I see a beautifully posed hand, I can usually really quickly analyze what I like about that pose and why, and that helps me absorb it so I can recreate my saved impression later. But I know not everyone thinks the same way. it might benefit you to quickly scribble down a study in a sketchbook when you see a pose you find beautiful and want to learn from for later.

^^^ here are some poses I had to stop and spend time figuring out, calling up the “rules” for how hands are built to kind of logic-out how they should look from angles I’m less familiar with. results can be mixed, but... if I end up with something expressive that fits the style of the rest of the drawing, I’m usually really forgiving of fudged anatomy or slightly wonky proportions. as long as the thumb is on the right side and there aren’t too many fingers, that’s a great start lol.

^^^ and here are ones I had to take reference-selfies for. I try to use this as a last resort because 1) it’s a lot of trouble 2) interrupts my drawing and 3) if I’m not careful I stick too close to the reference, and the drawing ends up with the hand looking referenced and the rest of the pose not, which is jarring to me. not to mention I have tiny manlet wrists that without fail, look horrific and emaciated in photos, and the lens distortion makes my fingers look scary too... ugh, photo reference has definite flaws. I actually don’t like the look of drawings for which I can Really Tell the artist drew from photo reference, because most often that means they’re taking the ref too much at face value and incorporating ugly lens distortions into their drawing. so I have to think extra hard not only about interpreting the ref, but also might have to make multiple passes just to get the hand to look normal, AND match the style of the rest of the drawing.

Anyway, here are some of the ““rules””” I mentioned earlier that I fall back on to help me figure out more complicated poses:

1. probably seen this before, but basic proportions. the palm is usually half the total height of the hand. obviously you can mess with this purposefully.

2. I think of joints as like, ball joints or hinges. I find that easier than trying to remember bones & muscles. here’s a drawing of the wrist as a hinge. note that when you’re thinking of it this way, it’s a shortcut, but a shortcut is only good if you use it with precision. notice the pin for the wrist hinge is not just halfway, it’s closer to the top of the hand. being precise about that is what allows this shortcut to work. the heel of the palm juts out, while the top of the hand transitions into the wrist quite smoothly.

3. simplified planes. planes are important yo. in super simple terms: top is flat, bottom is round. this works on the fingers too, actually. the tops are bony and tendony, and the bottom is where the fat is, so it’s rounder and soft

thinking of the hand as abstract shapes REALLY helps simplify the task of drawing hands, and is just as helpful even if you are drawing from reference. I can say “the palm is a box” and obviously the palm is not really as simple as a box, but if I think of the palm, wrist, and each finger joint as various shapes of box, then all of a sudden, psychologically, my task is SO much easier. I’m not drawing a Hand, which is hard, I’m drawing boxes, which is easy.

4. that prominent knob some people have on their wrist? that’s on the pinky side.

1. the knuckles aren’t really a flat row on top. the hand is like a cup right, so your palm can hold water and things. so we can think of the hand as a box to make figuring out the pose easier, but when it comes down to it, you’ll want to make it more of a curve. this curve is why you can see multiple fingers in a side view

2. when curled up, the fingers nestle together. the fingernails also turn slightly toward the center. even if I’m simplifying the hands significantly, I usually still draw the fingernails because they are SO useful for communicating the pose of the hand effectively.

3. lots of people suggest to think of the hand as a mitten, grouping the pinky/ring/middle fingers and singling out the index finger. this works great, the index finger is more independent from the other three. on the flip side, those three are really stuck together; if you’re drawing the pinky curled up all the way, then you better not draw the ring finger sticking straight up, cause that would HURT. anyway, singling out the index finger leads to more interesting poses in my experience.

1. this is another illustration of top = flat and bottom = curved. this is a really easy way to organize your line quality. straight lines and sharper angles where there is bone, and soft gentle lines where there is muscle and fat. your drawing as a whole will read very clearly if you find some guidelines like that to stick to, as it means all your lines are intentional and thoughtful.

2. this one’s about overlaps. when forms overlap, it makes a crease, and when you draw that crease you’re communicating which form is in front of the other. in the second drawing I reversed all the creases, and it looks.... messed up. think about how pieces connect.

so when you’re trying to make up a pose without using specific reference, I think it’s good to think about the.... flow of energy through the pose. honestly, I know it’s really abstract, but if I have an ability to make interesting poses that communicate weight and movement, the things that make people say your character feels ALIVE, like they really EXIST in a space... it’s because I started to think of poses this way. imagining streams of energy bouncing through the body, flowing down the limbs and out through the fingers. this is why hands are so important to me, cause they’re where the kinetic energy of the pose ultimately ends up. I talk about it when drawing the torso and arms and legs, but an interesting drawing has a bounce back and forth between opposites: for every curve, an opposing straight line, alternating back and forth down the entire body. if you’re sensitive to the energy of the pose, then even very simple poses will be interesting to look at.

anyway, with regards to hands, I imagine the energy getting sort of cinched in as it passes through the wrist, and then emanating out through the fingertips. I hope my drawing at least SORT of communicates this imagery. it makes sense because that’s BASically how the bones in the hand are anyway. and then the right side of the image above is just demonstrating some highly simplified gestures. see how the fingers fan out and curl in, rarely parallel to eachother. when you’re figuring out the pose, using a line to stand in for the row of knuckles is super valuable.

aaand finally, here’s two hands where I intentionally neglected correct anatomy and proportion because I felt it worked better for the style of the whole drawing. Left side: since this is a really simple and cartoonish style, I was thinking back to kids’ and shoujo manga I have read where the style was very solid and distinctive, but definitely NOT overly concerned with correct anatomy, or even really drawing hands, uh, “well” at all. to me, that sort of approach has a Look that I like to invoke sometimes, since for years I felt like I learned a bunch of anatomy and proportion and drawing from life actually in detriment to the liveliness and appealness of my drawings. this hand is mushy and makes very little sense, but it turned out as intended. Right side: sometimes I like to pretend fingers only have 2 bones in them, cause i am a Queen and i do what i want

and there you go. I hope that helped, like, at all? Look at real hands and photos of hands and hands in motion, but also look at drawn hands as well. find what you like, and work towards expressing that yourself. and remember the hand is part of the whole drawing. not only in the art style like I’d been talking about, but because the angle and placement of the hand is reflected in the angles of the arm, which in turn reflects on the angles of the shoulder, which affects the whole torso, etc etc etc. and the techniques you can use to understand and draw the rest of the body, works on hands too. as you improve everything else, your hands will improve as well.

DISCLAIMER: I whipped up these diagrams quickly, they’re not meant to be good drawings or accurate refs, just diagrams to illustrate my thought process lol

#god im long winded as usual #Anonymous

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ohbungeegum · 3 years

Text

Oneshot- Derek Hale

Derek Hale x reader fluff

This is extremely fluffy, I nearly puked sorry :)

(A little bit oc like but who cares :)

You and Derek have a nice Day together.

The bright morning light shone through the huge windows in the loft, waking you up softly.

You felt light breathing on your head making you you flutter your eyes oben to see you were cuddled into Dereks naked chest as he had his arms wrapped around you securely. You were clothed in Dereks T-Shirt and a pair of underwear which Derek was wearing too, speaking of lower part of the body, your legs were completely entangled in his, your leg between his and his leg draped around yours.

You enjoyed his soft breathing on your hair making little strands blow away.

You felt your nose was icy cold due to it being winter so you nuzzled more into his chest and warmed you up more, which must have woken him up a bit.

You felt him kiss the top of your head.

,,Good Morning.“

he said with a sexy morning voice.

,,Morning.“ you tried to say but it came out as a ‚mmnng‘ as your lips were muffled with his chest.

,,You’re cold“

,,mhm“

He wrapped his arms around you tightly and rolled you so you were on top of him with him lying on his back, he spread his legs so you’d be comfortable between them, which you totally were.

He pulled the blanket more up so it covered your shoulders, nearly reaching your nose as it only covered half of his chest.

You layed there for at least half an hour with him playing with your hair until your tummy decided to be hungry and ruining the beautiful position, he chuckled:

,,hungry?“

,,no“ You said not wanting to move.

He huffed in amusement, gave you a kiss on the head and sat up with you on his lap, your head on his neck. He then wrapped your legs around his waist and stood up, his hands hold your butt so you don’t Fall, which he loved. You wrapped your arms around his neck and hung your head under his chin, still tired af.

He tried getting you to sit on the stool in the kitchen but you just held on tighter, so he gave up, making you both a sandwich while your still clinging on him like a monkey.

As soon as he was done you jumped off and swooped the plate away, he smiled and joined you on the couch watching Rick&Morty on your new flatscreen TV. The last two months were spent with you decorating the Loft to look more comfortable, Derek loved it and helped you out, even the pack went out of their way to help.

Anyway, you were sat there with a sandwich, Derek knew you were still cold so he took the fluffy blanket and wrapped you both in it.

Once you both were done Derek got some strawberries and ate them with you, then he layed down with his head on your lap, head faced upwards so he could see you grinning down at him ,,what?” He asked smiling at your dopey grin, ,,oh, just that bit of strawberry on your mouth.” You said. He tried licking it away but you couldn’t stop laughing ,,now you really look like a dog.”

He rolled his eyes and went to wipe it off with his hand but you stopped him, gripped his hand, bent down and licked away the bit of strawberry on the upper lip, you went to go back up but Derek cought you in a soft and gentle kiss, resting his now released hands on either side of your face as he caressed your cheek up to to the back of your ear.

Derek broke the kiss for air, you kissed the tip of his nose like he did with you earlier and leans back on your lap.

Derek was never really cuddly with other people around, he kinda has this badass reputation going on but never when he’s with you, he would always make sure your okay, and never leave without a kiss and a ‚i love you‘, which you absolutely adored.

There was comfortable silence of you two watching TV, enjoying each other’s company.

Derek broke the silence: ,,What do you wanna do today?“.

You turned the volume of the TV down so you could hear him better.

,,Hm, let me think about it.“

You thought while caressing Dereks hair, it was very soft, but a still a certain roughness in it.

,,What about a date?” Derek asked as he turned to look at you.

,,Ouh we haven’t had one of those in a while!“ you said excitedly.

He smiled, got up and said:,, 8 o’clock here, wear something warm and comfortable, I’ll organize the rest.” Then he walked off to who knows where.

You were happy to be spending more time with him.

You stood up and started preparing for things not knowing what to bring.

[ 9 hours later]

(In that time you went shopping with Lydia and got some dinner with her, she’s kinda your bestie to go)

You sat on the couch, grey wool jumper, black jeans and a black coat, waiting for your Prince Charming.

Finally a knock was heard from the loft door. You opened it to see Derek in also a gray hoodie and black jeans.

He smiled as he saw you ,,You manage to look perfect In anything” he said as he intertwined his hand In yours, starting to lead you down the loft. You blushed, kissed his cheek ,,well good thing we’re matching, I guess we both were going for perfect.” You said smoothly, he chuckled and led you to his beautiful camaro.

As Derek drove through the streets he intertwined his right hand with your left hand, keeping them on the gear and one hand on the wheel. The radio played a familiar tune as you slightly bounced your leg to the song.

The car ride was silent, not bad silence but peaceful silence.

You were now in a parking lot in the woods. The moonlight shone perfectly around the trees and leaves.

Derek got out of the car and went to open your door before you could. He smirked while you rolled your eyes and laughed ,,always the gentleman.“

,,always“ he replied with a smile while taking your hand once again in his, leading you to the trunk of the car.

,,Is this the scene where the loving maniacal boyfriend kills the girlfriend in cold blood and drags her body in a hole he digged? That would explain why you were preparing for so long.” You gasped loudly for dramatic flaire.

,,The boyfriend might, if he’s tempted enough by his equally loving maniacal girlfriend.“ he sassed back, quirking an eyebrow, tilting his head and looking deep into your eyes. It was a look he often did, kind of his trademark look.

You both chuckled as he resumed taking the stuff out of the trunk.

You couldn’t really guess what you both were going to do because he his the stuff in two black duffel bags, you took one duffel bag and he took the other, he didn’t bother to argue because he knew you would rather stubbornly take the bag than give both to him since he’s more than capable of taking them.

After a little walk in the woods he led you to a clearing right by a lake.

It was beautiful, there was plenty of room to sit on, the Moon reflecting elegantly against the water.

While you were gushing about the prettiness of this place you didn’t seem to notice your boyfriend building up a little tent, there even was a picnic blanket on the floor, a basket and some lights around it.

When Derek was finished building up the tent you walked up to him and threw yourself on him in a big hug throwing him in the blanket with you, he laughed and kissed your cheek.

,,This is the best Derek! Like WOW! I love you so much.” You said while peppering kisses all over his face.

,,Aw I love you so much too, you big softie.” He said with a big smirk.

,,oh shut up I was trying to be nice so fuck off, you did great.” You said getting off and sitting next to him. He laughed ,,There she is.“ .

He brought out the basket and got some bread sticks out, some wine and some fruit. We started talking and eating throughout the night.

He suddenly stood up and held his hand out. You reluctantly took it as you didn’t know what his devious mind was up to.

,,Take your clothes off”

You raised your eyebrows, not understanding what he was up to. He got out a pair of swimming trunks for him and put them on. Normally you’d be uncomfortable undressing in front of a boyfriend because you were insecure, honestly though, who isn’t? Derek knew that and always reassured you that you were the most beautiful woman on earth, that’s why Derek isn’t just any boyfriend, you felt very comfortable in your own skin around him.

,,So you knew we would go swimming but decided against packing my swimsuit?” You asked, eyebrows still raised.

,,Well I thought it would be nicer in underwear?” He said smirking.

,,For whom?”

He chuckled and walked over to you, kissing you.

He pulled your sweater up while you kissed and undid your jeans. You pulled back, stepping out of your jeans.

He led you to the water, picked you up and threw you into the icy cold water.

You gasped as you resurfaced, seeing Derek laughing as you were flailing your arms around. You tried pulling him in but it didn’t work, you splashed him a couple of times. This continued a few times, you trying to get out but that resulted in you being tossed into the water again, again and again. Soon You began to shiver, so he went in the water and held you close. You rested your head on his neck as he did the same, playing with you hair.

You sat there for a bit before you started to shiver again. He held you tight and walked out of the water with you still on him. He layed out two towels as sat you both on them. He even brought a heater!? There was a power supply in the ground, bc this place was made for camping, it was shut down but the power weirdly still works, I suspect Derek bought the property. He said he used to come here for peace and quiet, when he needed to get away. We layed on the towels and wrapped in lots of blankets, stargazing, talking, joking and remeniscing o about the past.

,,You know I love you?“ he said suddenly getting serious and staring into my eyes as he held both my hands.

,,Of course! I love you too.” You smiled and stared back into his eyes.

,,No, you don’t know how much I love you.

Every day I wake up in the morning and see your beautiful face. Every time I see you I just want to hold you and never let go. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you so I try to be with you every day. I want to protect you forever, I never want to imagine letting go of you, never!

So I’m asking you this [Y/N] [L/N], will you marry me?”

He asked as he pulled out a little box, a beautiful ring with a diamond and the Hale Triskelion on It. To say it was gorgeous was an understatement.

You had tears in your eyes. Frantically nodding and breathing out multiple ,Yes’s before you kissed him passionately.

He was had the biggest smile while you kissed, his hands on you waist as you were now between his legs.

The night went on about you both talking about the future, making plans and what not. Derek wanted kids, a lot he said, you didn’t expect that since you never really saw him as a kids person but you can definitely see why, his own little pack.

You wanted to get married with all your closest friends, even Peter should be there.

You wanted to spend the rest of your life with this man. YOUR man.

When you both realized the excitement and the thought of being husband and wife settled in you could feel the temperature of you shared blanket space increase.

You decided to go to the tent since thing were getting a little steamy.

Oh what a wonderful night.

A/N: If you want me to make a continuation of it just tell me :)

2,113 words

#derek hale imagine #derek hale smut #hot guy #teen wolf #peter hale #gif #tyler hoechlin #werewolf #werewolves #human reader #x reader #fluff #derek hale fluff

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teacupfulofstarshine · 3 years

Text

LOVELY, DARK, AND DEEP CHAPTER 10

PLEASE HEED THE CONTENT WARNINGS!!! this chapter features Evil Scientist Lady and her Fucked Up WorldView a LOT, and there are also some Major Plot Events that involve Violence. i will put a summary in the end notes if you decide at any point that this particular chapter is too much - that's super valid! i will also mention here that no main characters are going to die in this story and no one dies in this chapter either.

huge huge thanks to @flamingfawkes for beta’ing!

CW: extreme disregard for human life, mentioned human and animal cruelty, toxic workplace environment, violence (both imagined and actual, mildly graphic), gun mention, minor blood, death threats, extremely unethical character, unethical science, stalking

chapter 1 // chapter 2 // chapter 3 // chapter 4 // chapter 5 // chapter 6 // chapter 7 // chapter 8 // chapter 9 // read it on ao3!

“This is the same result we’ve gotten the last twenty times -”

“I don’t care, Steven, run it again!”

Steven sighs, punching at the keyboard to run the statistical analysis sequence again. “This is ridiculous! I’ve run this sequence so many times it feels like my eyes are going to bleed. Why can’t we just turn in the results we have and -”

“Because she’ll behead us,” James snaps, “and then she’ll destroy our reputations and our families and they’ll get no severance. I have three young children at home, Steven, I need this money.” Steven softens a little, fingers running smoothly over the keys as he combs the data again. Next to him, James has a computer screen full of frame-by-frame stills of what little data they recovered from the probe before it was destroyed; Penny across the room is surrounded by ancient texts a mile high and at least three laptops.

“Why is she so interested in this, anyway?”

“It’s beyond me. Since when do we question the whims of what we’re told to do?”

Steven squints at the screen, pushing his chair back and rubbing at his eyes. “If I have to stare at these numbers for one more second, my brain is going to explode. I feel like my eyeballs are going to melt out of my skull. I wanna scream.”

James pulls up another image, staring at the blurry image of the merman before him. Steven pushes away from his own screen and squints at James’s. The merman in the photo looks young, not much older than his kid brother, but they don’t know anything about the lifespan of these creatures. He looks confused, squinting at the camera. As James flicks through the stills, the merman transitions from confused to angry to enraged, and then he attacks.

“He’s not happy about the camera.”

“Would you be happy about someone spying on you and your family?” James says, switching to the next still.

“I wouldn’t be happy if I thought someone was doing anything we do in this lab to me or my family.” James elbows Steven, but luckily no one else seems to have heard.

“This lab isn’t the most ethical place I’ve ever worked, but it pays the bills,” James mutters. “And we’re not even in the experimentation lab. We just do data analysis. We’re removed from the situation.”

Are we? Steven wonders. He sees James reach out and touch the framed picture of his daughters, and keeps his mouth shut. He turns back to his computer, watching the little spinning color wheel of his mouse as the program calculates the same numbers again and again. The results come up identical to the previous ones, and Steven clicks “Run Program” again wordlessly.

They work in silence for a while, the three of them, broken only by James’s muttering and the occasional thud of one of Penny’s books and the clicks of keyboards and mice. If they weren’t so reliant on technology, Steven thinks, there would be an enormous corkboard spanning three of the four walls, covered in pushpins and handwriting and red string connecting images. He debates actually building one, if only to increase the levity in the room, but decides against it.

He’s seen people punished or fired or who-knows-what-else for far less, after all.

Instead, after his program tells him for the twenty-third time that his results are the same (and didn’t someone say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?), Steven scrubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms and opens the data entry window. Maybe the problem with the results has to do with the entry of the data; did he input something wrong? It’s possible . . .

Here he goes again, he supposes. He stands up, stretches, and leans back to crack some vertebrae. “I’m gonna grab a coffee, take a short screen break, and go back to the beginning. Maybe there’s something in the input that I missed. You want anything?”

James groans, thunking his head against the desk. “I want something with enough caffeine to kill three elephants, please.” Steven nods, looking over at Penny. She shakes her head, and he heads for the shitty coffee machine a few doors down.

Several floors below, a young woman pulls her lab goggles up to rest on top of her head with her perfectly-pinned protocol-compliant bun. “The latest round of tests is completely done, ma’am. I think you’ll find the efficacy . . . striking.”

She takes the clipboard, glossy perfectly-painted nails pinching the sheets of thin paper and flicking between them. “I’m afraid I don’t do so well with the scientific side of things - Kathleen, was it? Explain this to me, would you?”

“Certainly, ma’am. As you know, the kill time for the most effective neurotoxin currently available, tetrodotoxin, varies from thirty minutes to four hours. Average time for symptoms to manifest is seventeen minutes, and from there the symptoms progress through tingling of the lips and tongue, headache, vomiting, muscle weakness, ataxia, et cetera. Death occurs as a result of respiratory or heart failure, and the poison is nearly undetectable if you do not specifically test for it.”

“The untraceability is a plus, but that is far too wide a range of times, and too slow a time even at its fastest.”

“Of course, ma’am, but as far as naturally-occurring marine poisons go - actually, as far as naturally-occurring poisons go, full stop - it is the most effective. Until now, that is.”

“Oh? What are your findings?”

“Which trials would you like to start with, ma’am?”

“The human trials, Kathleen. The only ones that matter. I hardly intend to go around killing mice and hoping that no one traces their deaths to a novel neurotoxin.” She laughs airily, and Kathleen nods along.

“Certainly, ma’am. The most recent data points indicate an average efficacy time of thirteen minutes for our compound neurotoxin, with a full range between nine and seventeen minutes passing before subject death. Subjects began to show symptoms around five minutes, give or take twenty-five seconds.”

“And those symptoms were?”

Kathleen flips through the document. “Seizures, vital organ failure, blindness, painful muscle spasms, suffocation from the inside out.”

She hums, tapping a manicured finger against the report. “Well, Kathleen, that is certainly impressive, especially for a preliminary human subject trial. These results . . . I must say, they are not nearly as disappointing as I anticipated when I came down here.”

“Ma’am?”

“How long have you worked for this company, Kathleen?”

“Almost five years, ma’am, but I’ve always been an assistant. This is my first time as lead researcher and biochemist on a project, ever since you . . . laid off the previous lead researcher.”

“Kathleen, let me be frank. These results are not what I hoped for. The efficacy time and symptom onset times are both far too long for my liking, and the range of efficacy time is too broad. By all accounts, I should consider this a failure.” Kathleen swallows, but remains poised. “However, you’ve managed to shave off a considerable amount of time from the tetrodotoxin readings. The range of symptom onset time is an acceptable breadth, and your results are far beyond anything your predecessor ever accomplished for me. This is truly impressive, all things considered.”

“Thank you, ma’am. How should I proceed?”

“I want the efficacy doubled - tripled - I want it upped by anywhere between four and five hundred percent. I want the pain increased, too. Feel free to increase your requests for test subjects, but get me the results I want. You said the original tetrodotoxin was untraceable?”

“That’s correct, ma’am.”

“Can you keep that feature intact?”

“As of right now, it is intact, ma’am. I will endeavor to keep it so in future experiments.”

“That’s what I like to hear. Welcome to your new position as head of this research division. Don’t let me down.” She holds out a slender hand, and Kathleen takes it, trying not to seem too eager.

“I won’t, ma’am.”

“How soon can you start this experiment up again?”

“The cleaners should be finished by tomorrow morning, ma’am, and I can tweak chemical formulas until then.”

“Excellent.” Her watch beeps, and she lifts it, pursing her bright lips as she examines the message she’s just received. “If you’ll excuse me, I have another matter to attend to. Someone will drop off your master access key for Lab Three within the hour.”

She steps into the elevator and lifts her watch up to her face, swiping through the messages from her secretary. One finger reaches out to press the button for the digital analysis labs floor, and the other taps away at her watch.

When she steps off the elevator, her secretary is waiting. “Ma’am.”

“What do they have for me?”

“Unclear. They said it was something they wanted to report directly to you and you alone, but it seems to be something big.”

“Hopefully it’s a big step in the right direction, or they’ll be taking a big step out of a job.” She relishes in the way the employees she passes all unfailingly flinch and then snap to perfect attention when they hear the sharp echo of her heels against the floor. She lifts her head and walks faster, striking the tiles with her heels like a gavel, sharp and precise against a judge’s desk.

The computer labs are disorganized when she enters, but there is a string of promising-looking numbers on the main display monitor. There is a woman surrounded by books and a man pulling up photos on his computer, and there is a third man standing in front of her like a toy soldier. She focuses on that one.

“I hear you have news for me? Make it swift, and make it good.”

He swallows, hard, and her eyes idly trace the line of his throat. If he disappoints her, perhaps she will drive her heel through it, to make an example of him. That would be far too messy; perhaps his dominant hand will do.

“I have narrowed down the location of the missing net, ma’am. I believe it to have washed up somewhere around these general GPS coordinates.” He fiddles with a remote in his hand, and the image on the screen changes. It shows an aerial satellite view of a secluded strip of beach, framed by rocky cliffs with larger rocks studded out into the open water. “It should have washed up somewhere in this one-point-three-seven-mile strip of beach. The whole area is property of one Doctor Thomas Sanders.”

She snarls. “That man. He won’t let us on that beach willingly until hell freezes over.”

The other man, the one scanning through photo stills and video footage, jumps up, knocking his chair backwards. “I found something!”

She turns towards him, and his excitement freezes and sputters into something much more controlled and terrified. “Show me.” He clicks something and pulls up video footage from one of their surveillance drones, zooming in on a particular patch of ocean along the stretch of Sanders’ beach. Her eyes widen when she sees what he’d noticed - a hump of red-and-white tail arcing above the waves before a pattern of ripples streaks off towards the cliff. He pauses the footage, rewinds it, uses a laser pointer to show an opening concealed in the cliff face.

“There’s some kind of grotto in there, hidden by the cliff. It’s on Sanders’ property, he has to know it’s there. And it looks like the merman from the destroyed drone knows it’s there too. Which means -”

“That must be where he’s keeping them.” Something burns in her chest, brilliant and terrifying and all-encapsulating, like wildfire. “We’ve found them, at long last.”

“What would you have me do?” her secretary asks. “I can arrange for a recovery squad at your earliest possible convenience, ma’am.”

“Assemble the squad, but do not have them move out. They will wait for my orders. When they go, you are to go with them.” Her secretary nods, once, sharp and sure. “Dispatch a crew to Lab One and clear it out. I want it prepped for containment, vivisection, chemical tests - the works. Get at least three tanks set up and one strap-down human table.”

“A human table, ma’am?”

“Yes. We have to deal with Sanders once and for all to ensure that he does not ruin any future experiments.”

“Will we be taking him as well?”

She hums thoughtfully. “No. Pull up the file we have on his known associate?”

A few swift clicks and flicks and a photo appears on the large screen: a young man with brown-and-purple hair, sleeves rolled up, carefully lowering a perfectly viable specimen into the ocean and letting it go, like some kind of fool. “His doctoral student, ma’am. The longest one he’s ever kept - this one has been with him a few years.”

“Excellent. When you raid the lab, take him.”

“Should we kill Sanders?”

“No. Rough him up a little, but leave him alive. Taking his protégé and leaving him alone, helpless to rescue him, will be the highest form of torture for such an insufferable person. The agony will eat him alive until his dying day.”

Her secretary nods, taking the notes down dutifully. The other employees look vaguely horrified, but she pays them no mind. No sacrifice is too great to be made in the name of progress, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a weakling who will never get anywhere in life.

She refuses to be one of those weaklings.

*~*~*~*~*

Logan wakes up confused.

He’s warm, warmer than he thinks he’s ever been in his whole life. When he stirs, he moves farther than he meant to - he must not be underwater. That’s enough to send a jolt of concern through his sleep-addled brain. Why isn’t he underwater? Why was he sleeping if he was above the surface? There’s no way his dad is here, and Roman hates surfacing, where are they? Where is he? But he’s so comfortable . . .

Someone shifts beside him, an arm draping across his waist, and Logan forces his eyes open. He shifts his lower half, confused when two things move instead of one, and there are layers upon layers of thin, flat, soft things wrapping around him. What is happening?

Slowly, slowly, his mind clears, and he remembers the events of last night. He grew legs - he was a human, once, before he was mer - he couldn’t sleep underwater with Dad and Roman - Virgil was teaching him to walk - Virgil put “clothes” on him - Virgil was embarrassed that he didn’t have those “clothes” on him - Virgil took him out of the lab to sleep - Virgil agreed to cuddle him since his pod couldn’t -

Logan feels the strange burning in his face again as he shifts. He can’t see well in this new human form, but when things are close enough to his face they’re relatively clear. And Virgil, still sleeping, is close enough that Logan can smell him - he smells like salt water mixed with something sharp and something sweet and something else that Logan can’t quite identify but finds addicting nonetheless. Sunlight streams in and pools around Virgil’s face, illuminating the tangled mess of hair spread around him and flopping into his face, the small puddle of water leaking out from his open mouth onto the soft thing he’s resting his head on, the way his chest moves slowly with every breath. His arm is wrapped around Logan, pulling him close. Logan thinks he might explode if he focuses on this any more, so he rolls from his side to his back as carefully as he can, not wanting to wake Virgil. Virgil tightens his arm around Logan and mutters something indecipherable in his sleep, but he doesn’t wake.

Rather than focusing on his very confusing feelings for the very pretty man next to him, Logan focuses on what he can see of the room around him. He makes a list in his mind of things that he plans to ask Virgil about later today, including:

1: There are many draws attached to the small, smooth cliffs surrounding them. How do they stay there?

2: There are lots of “clothes” scattered all around the floor, and there were several on the bed, too. Is that normal for humans?

3: Last night, Virgil did something that made the room light up with trapped sunlight! How did he do that?

4: How did Virgil get ice to stay in those big frozen sheets in such a warm place to let the sunlight in?

5: How did Virgil make ice into that weird shape that he filled with water and drank last night?

6: How did Virgil get the water to come into this place?

7: Do all humans have a specific area set aside for sleeping? Logan and his pod usually just sleep wherever they can, but Virgil seems to have this soft slab set aside with all of these soft things to be comfortable and sleep in every night. Is this a Human Thing or strictly a Virgil Thing?

Logan looks out through the sheet of ice that protects Virgil’s area from the outside and gasps. He can’t see well, but there’s a glittering expanse of blue that shifts and moves and oh, is that the ocean?

He’s spent his whole life (well, his whole remembered life, anyways) in the ocean, and he’s seen some truly wondrous things. He travels around the world with his pod, he knows the ocean is big, but seeing it spread out like this is . . . awe-inspiring. Logan has never seen the ocean like this, and now that he has he doesn’t think he can ever not see it like this again. It’s like a perfect sheet of sea-glass, rippling and unbroken but dynamic in a way that he never really gets a sense of when he’s beneath it.

He knows that there are waves, of course. There are smaller swells out on the open ocean, and larger ones when the Second Goddess dips her fingers down from the Upper Ocean and swirls the storms to a thundering burst. There are waves along the shoreline, ones that he frolics in with Roman and batter him against the shoreline. There are waves created when he or his pod members surface. But watching the movement of the ocean from up here is . . .

Even with his imperfect vision, he is completely at a loss for words as he stares at the ocean.

Eventually, Virgil stirs next to him, and Logan turns away from the ocean to stare at him. Virgil is close to him, arms wrapped tightly around him, face pressed against him. Logan’s eyesight is not great, but Virgil is close enough that he can pick out little details of his face. There are brown face scales scattered all over him, but they seem to cluster on his nose and his cheeks. Logan has wanted to touch them for a substantial amount of time, and he can’t stop himself from gently settling the tips of his fingers over Virgil’s cheek.

His face doesn’t feel like Logan was expecting. The scales don’t give texture to his face the way that Logan’s do; the skin is smooth and flat. There are little bumps all over, but the brown scales aren’t raised off the skin like Logan expected. He lets his fingers trail along Virgil’s face. His bone structure seems to be exceedingly similar to Logan’s, at least in regards to his head. Logan’s finger rests gently on the curve of bone under Virgil’s eye, and Virgil exhales warm breath onto his palm.

Logan wonders what it would be like to have this for longer than just his recovery period. He wonders what it would be like to wake up next to Virgil all the time, to get to run his hands over Virgil’s face and arms and chest and examine the differences between their anatomy. He wonders what it would be like to learn to walk without falling over, and he feels a sharp, unexpected twinge in his chest as he realizes that getting better at walking means no more closeness to Virgil.

His chest feels strange, like there’s a school of small fish swarming around and tickling his insides and making him feel all foamy, like the froth churned up by a windswept sea. He feels like he does when he’s underwater - free, weightless, mobile, limited by nothing except his own imagination. He feels unstoppable.

Virgil makes a sudden, sharp inhale, blinking his eyes open slowly. Logan thinks that, perhaps, he might not appreciate being studied unknowingly - he hadn’t appreciated Virgil doing it, before he understood what was happening, when all he knew was the loss of his pod aching like a scraped-out seashell. As Virgil wakes up, Logan shifts, turning his gaze to the rest of the room.

Virgil makes a sleepy grumbling noise, opening one eye. Logan chances another quick glance at him, and when his eye slides open Logan is struck by its beauty. He doesn’t get much of a chance to admire it, however, before Virgil is jolting backwards like Logan’s struck him with lightning. Logan is confused, reaching out and gently touching his shoulder. “Virgil?”

“Wassat?! Wait . . . L’gan?”

“It is me,” Logan says softly. “Are - are you upset with me?”

Virgil yawns, jaw dropping to his chest, revealing a flash of teeth and a soft pink tongue. (Logan wants to lick it. Why does Logan want to lick it? Why is Logan thinking about Virgil’s tongue licking his tongue - why is Logan thinking about Virgil - what in the Seven Oceans is happening to him.) “Wh - no, no, ‘m okay, I just - woke up, forgot I had you with me, got confused about another person in my bed.” Before Logan can start to feel bad, Virgil adds, “S’okay if it’s you, though,” and the foamy, floaty feeling is back.

“Did you sleep well?”

Virgil laughs, low and rumbling, and Logan can feel it in his fingers where he touches Virgil’s skin. “I never sleep well.” He sits up, and the fabric of his pajamas shifts to let Logan see stretches of soft, supple skin that he usually doesn’t. Logan wants to touch it. He very determinedly keeps his hand on Virgil’s shoulder. “Gotta admit, though, last night was . . . better than usual.”

This appears to be the point where Virgil first notices their position - pressed together, arm slung over Logan, basically cuddling the way that Logan normally would with his pod. (No tangle with his pod has ever felt this . . . electric, this charged, this important to Logan before.) His face flares a brilliant red, and he shifts like he wants to move away but -

“I’m sorry,” Virgil says. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“No!” Logan blurts out. Virgil blinks at him a little, and maybe he was a little overly enthusiastic, but - “I sleep in a tangle with Dad and Roman all the time. I have extreme difficulty sleeping without contact with someone else. It . . . helped me greatly.”

“Oh,” Virgil says, face turning redder still, smiling shyly. “That - makes me feel better. Thanks, Lo.”

Logan smiles, and Virgil smiles too, reaching up to gently move a piece of hair away from his face. Logan thinks that, as far as deaths go, his chest exploding (which seems to be getting more and more likely every fifteen seconds he spends in Virgil’s presence, only accelerated by all this skin-on-skin contact they’re having right now) seems to be the most pleasurable.

Virgil opens his mouth to say something, but whatever it was is interrupted by a Ping! noise from across the room. “What is that?” Logan asks. Virgil, sadly, untangles himself from Logan and the blankets, sliding out of bed and heading over to one of the other structures in the room (what did he call it last night? Dex?) and picking up a flat glowing rectangle.

“Is everything alright?”

“What? Yeah, yeah, I - Thomas sent me a text, it’s a little weird.”

“What is a text?”

“It’s a kind of human messaging system, it allows us to communicate when we’re far away from each other.”

“Like a pod call?” “Kind of? I’ll explain more later, I promise, I just - I gotta go down to the lab real quick.”

“I’ll come with -”

“No!” Virgil snaps. Logan flinches, and Virgil softens, crossing the room and gently touching his shoulder. “Hey, no, Logan, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I just - this message, there’s something off. I think something might be wrong, and I don’t want to put you in any unnecessary danger. Just - wait here, okay? Wait in my room, where it’s safe. It’s probably nothing, he’s probably fine, but on the off chance that he’s not, I want you to stay hidden safely up here.”

Logan isn’t sure why this makes his face heat up slightly, but it does. “Okay. I accept your apology, and I . . . trust you.”

Virgil smiles, soft and heartwarming, and Logan is beginning to give more credence to his “chest explosion is fine, actually” theory. “Wait for me here, okay? I’ll be right back. I promise.”

He leaves, shutting the door firmly behind him, and the foamy feeling in Logan’s chest dissipates a little. He can’t quite put his finger on it, but there’s something . . . off. If Logan didn’t know better, he’d think that he was sensing a predator approaching.

But that can’t be right, he isn’t underwater. His danger senses are likely just overreacting to his disappointment at Virgil’s absence.

. . . Right?

*~*~*~*~*

Thomas is beginning to regret letting Roman and Patton (specifically, Roman) out of the large tank before finishing his first coffee of the morning.

“I want some!” Roman complains.

“Do you even know what it is?” Thomas says. Roman pouts sulkily at him.

“. . . No,” he mutters, rolling his eyes. Thomas gives him the deadpan, no-nonsense, I-am-your-direct-superior-take-the-damn-samples-Virgil stare that he has perfected over the past few years. Roman wilts a little more, and Thomas feels slightly bad.

“It’s called coffee,” he says. “It’s a hot drink that lots of people have in the morning. Some people drink it plain, and some people add things to it to change the way it tastes. It helps me wake up more and get focused to start my day, and sometimes I drink it late at night to help keep me awake.”

Roman looks less like a kicked puppy and more like Logan, eyes wide and curious. “I want some!”

Thomas, taking a sip of his own two-seconds-of-cream-five-cubes-of-sugar coffee, nearly spits it out. He looks at Roman, eyes the very sharp, very detachable, very toxic spines covering his body, and says, “No.”

Roman’s demeanor changes entirely, switching from “curious toddler” to “toddler about to throw a temper tantrum” in a heartbeat. “Why not?!”

“Because when people drink coffee without being used to it, sometimes it makes them a little crazy.”

“I’m not crazy!”

“Do I need to recount to you how many times you’ve threatened me and my assistant since we met you?” Thomas says, raising an eyebrow. “I’m not giving you coffee until I know I can trust you not to stab me with your poisonous spines that cover your entire body and can be fired at people.”

Roman pouts more, dropping under the water and letting out a gratingly harmonious string of mer that Thomas is pretty sure translates to Roman bitching about the coffee situation to his dad. Based on the pattern of Patton’s response, he’s pretty sure Patton is laughing at Roman.

More sulky chalkboard-violin music, and then Roman resurfaces grumpily. “Dad agrees with you and says no consuming strange human foods.”

“Did he laugh at you?”

Roman squints suspiciously at him. “You can’t speak our language.”

“Yeah, but I know what it sounds like when a dad laughs at his kid.” Roman, continuing to pout, sinks back into the tank, presumably to sulk some more. Thomas takes another very long sip of coffee that is definitely too hot for his mouth and turns back to his desk.

Virgil should definitely be awake and in the lab at this point. The samples he’s supposed to be analyzing are sitting in their little tubes, each neatly labelled with locations and dates and times and what, specifically, Virgil is supposed to be looking for. Thomas considers going upstairs and waking up Virgil, who’s almost never been late for work in this way, but he decides against it. Virgil is upstairs with Logan, and Thomas knows that there’s something building between them. He’s not sure how advisable that something is, but he trusts Virgil to make his own decisions.

Besides, he could probably use some practice. His water sample analysis skills are pretty rusty, he’s had Virgil doing them for years. “Virgil, you owe me big time for what I’m doing for you.” He carefully shifts the samples over to his own desk, slides his earbuds in, picks up a pipette, and gets to work analyzing the bacterial and algal concentrations for any abnormalities.

Thomas accomplishes about forty-five minutes’ worth of work before Roman interrupts him by flicking water at him and soaking the back of his neck. “Hey!”

“I tried your name, but your little ear bug things were keeping you from hearing me,” Roman says smugly. Thomas, not for the first time, considers retreating to the closet and throwing beakers until he feels better.

“Can I help you?”

“Dad wants to go hunting and bring back breakfast, but we can’t leave without you.”

“Are you not going hunting?”

“I’m going to stay here and observe you,” Roman says.

Thomas blinks. “Do I . . . need observing?”

“How do I know you won’t sell us out to your little human friends the second you get a chance? If I’m here, I can stop you. Plus, what if you do something to Logan while we’re not here to protect him? No, no, I’m staying right where I am and you can’t make me leave.” His spines ripple; Thomas steps closer to a whiteboard in case he needs to duck.

“I’m not going to do that, and I don’t want you to stab me.”

“Still! I’m staying here! Also, Dad’s bigger than me, and he’s a better hunter cause he’s faster and he’s been hunting longer.

“Does he need something to help him carry all those fish?” Thomas asks. Roman opens his mouth like he’s going to say something snarky, pauses, and stops.

“I . . . usually we just eat what we catch when we catch it. We make a pile of prey and take turns guarding it while the other two hunt. Then we make a sacrifice to the Seven Mother Goddesses and eat what’s left.”

After some debate, Thomas is able to fashion a sling of sorts from some waterproof tarps and leftover anchor rope to tie around Patton’s body. “You can put the fish in this pouch and carry them back here. Will you be able to navigate your way back to the grotto?”

“He will,” Roman says. “Dad knows more about the ocean than any human possibly could.” Another discordant song from the tank, chastising, and Roman huffs. “Dad wants me to reassure you that he’ll be fine.”

Patton settles into the mobile tank easily, and Thomas gets him down to the grotto leading towards the sea. “When you come back, let out one of your pod calls and Virgil or I will come and collect you and your catch. Take as much time as you need, okay?”

Patton reaches up and gently pats Thomas’s arm with one large, damp hand, and Thomas takes that to mean an agreement. “Alright, off you go.” There’s a whoosh and a rush of water as it flows from the tank into the grotto in a clean arc, carrying Patton with it. Thomas waits for a moment, letting Patton disappear into the open ocean, before returning to the laboratory.

Roman, for the most part, ignores Thomas. He asks the occasional question, which Thomas tries to answer in a way that he’ll understand, and leans over the edge of his touch tank, eyes guarded. Every time Thomas sneaks a glance, when he thinks Roman isn’t looking, his expression is wide-eyed and wondrous, like Logan’s usually are, but the moment he realizes Thomas is watching him his entire face closes up like a clamshell.

Thomas wonders what it’ll take to get Roman to trust him, trust Virgil, trust any human. Granted, he doesn’t know Roman’s history with humans, but he and Patton are both fairly scarred, and Thomas might not know the whole story but he’d bet a not-insignificant amount of his monthly income that the giant starburst scar taking up the majority of Patton’s chest isn’t the result of a clash with a marine creature.

He works quietly, fielding the occasional question, keeping one ear on the grotto tunnel for Patton’s return. He’s not sure how long he expected Patton to be gone, but he hears movement in the grotto tunnel far sooner than he’d expected.

“Thomas, what’s -”

“Shhhh,” Thomas says. He stands up, pushing away from his desk, but before he can say anything else, there’s a flood of movement coming from the tunnel. Bodies pour into the lab, swift and strong and carrying weapons that they immediately train on Thomas and Roman.

“What is this?” Roman snaps, bristling. He sounds betrayed, like he thinks Thomas is behind this. Thomas picks up a heavy glass beaker, fully prepared to shatter it upside someone’s skull if necessary, but something heavy and hard strikes the back of his skull and he feels his knees crumple. Roman cries out, and Thomas struggles to push himself up. A hand fists itself in his hair and yanks him upright, sharply. Thomas exhales sharply through his teeth, but before he can start struggling, something cool and round rests against the back of his neck, shutting him up and shutting his brain down.

Roman is puffed up like a hedgehog, apparently fully prepared to defend Thomas despite his strong and inherent mistrust. Before he can begin to attack, Thomas hears the click-click-click of shoes on the hard stone floor. Whoever’s holding his head yanks him back again, and he is forced to watch as a woman walks into his laboratory.

(It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke - a sick, horrible, twisted joke.)

She has black heels, black tights, a black pencil skirt, a black blazer, and a blood-red blouse. Her hair is scraped back into a tight bun, pulled so taut it must hurt, and is held in place with a pitch black stick. She carries a - clipboard? tablet? Unclear - held against her chest, and there’s a sleek silver weapon in her right hand.

“The one from the video?” she asks.

“Affirmative, ma’am,” says the person holding Thomas’s head. The woman nods, lifting her weapon, and fires at Roman. Thomas tries to scream a warning, earning himself another painful yank from his captor, but the projectile lodges itself in Roman’s shoulder anyway.

It isn’t a bullet, but something that looks like a small syringe. Roman swats it out of his shoulder, swaying a little, but it doesn’t stop him from swiping at the - mercenary, they must be - who tries to grab him with his elbow spines. The woman frowns, lifts the weapon - some kind of tranquilizer gun? - and fires again.

Roman screams, inhuman and animal, and tears the newest dart from his arm, throwing himself out of his tank and clinging to the nearest mercenary. His teeth tear into the man’s shoulder, spines piercing through his camouflage clothing and flooding him with neurotoxin. The man collapses against the concrete, alive but unconscious, and Roman snarls at the next man as though daring him to approach. He sways, weakened but awake, and bares his teeth.

“Of course,” the woman says, tapping something on her tablet. “His naturally produced neurotoxin must be providing him with some level of natural resistance. Unexpected, but not a limitation.”

It takes three more tranquilizer darts before Roman finally slumps down into his tank, unconscious. The mercenaries look hesitant to approach him, but the woman reaches for her tablet and they scramble to action at once.

“No - no, stop, let him go, he’s not an animal for you to cart off to your lab -” Thomas starts. The man holding him knees him sharply in the back and he cries out, coughing.

They wrap Roman in thick leather bands, roughly shoving his spines flat and binding them against his skin so that he can’t attack them again. The woman nods, once, short and sharp, and they drag Roman away, letting his head bang mercilessly on the ground. Thomas catches a glimpse of a logo - emblazoned on the back of the jackets, on the back of the woman’s tablet, on the side of her tranquilizer gun - and commits it to memory. He’s going to need it, if he gets out of here alive.

“- your phone,” the woman says, and oh, when did she get in front of him.

“My what?”

His mouth runs dry as she places the tranquilizer gun under his chin, barrel pressing against his throat, and tips his chin up. “I said, give me your phone.”

Thomas blinks. “My - the desk. It’s on the desk.”

She sets her tablet down, picks up his phone, and shoves it in his face. “Open it.”

“I - wh -”

“Unlock your phone, Dr. Sanders. Must I repeat myself a third time?” She rolls her eyes. “Doctorates are wasted on people like you.”

Thomas numbly punches in his passcode, and she swipes through to his messages app, frowning before turning the screen towards his face to reveal a message thread with Virgil. “Is this your assistant?”

Thomas glares at her, he’s not going to give her what she wants, he’s not going to just give her Virgil but then the - gun, it must be a gun, what else would they be holding against his neck like this - pushes into him harder, and it’s probably bruising, and he can’t get himself killed here because then he definitely won’t be able to take care of Virgil and -

“Yes,” Thomas says, hating himself for giving in so easily. “What do you -”

She turns away from him, nails clicking against his phone screen as she sends a text message - to Virgil, presumably, and that makes his heart sink like a stone - before dropping it on the floor and stepping on it to shatter it. “I have a message for you.”

“A - what?”

“Did they really hit you that hard, or were you this stupid before we came here?” she says coldly, picking up the tablet again and tapping at the screen. Thomas groans as the man yanks him to his feet, shoving him onto his chair and pulling a roll of duct tape out of one of his multiple pants pockets. He tapes Thomas’s wrists and ankles to the chair, keeping his weapon trained on Thomas’s temple at all times, before pressing it roughly against his head and gripping his hair again.

The woman sets the tablet on his lab table, and the screen flickers to life, and then there’s a woman in front of a dark black backdrop, smiling at him like a cat who’s caught a canary. “Thomas Sanders. How long I’ve waited for this day.”

Thomas recognizes her. He knows he recognizes her. She used to be his classmate, before . . .

His head hurts, so badly that he can barely keep his eyes open, and the memory slips away. “You . . . why are you doing this?”

“Why? Because I am a real scientist, unlike you. You refuse to do what is necessary, what must be done for the progression of the species. The sacrifice of some worthless animals is necessary for humanity to reach its zenith. You would really hinder the entire human race for the preservation of lower life forms?”

“Wh - I -”

“You think that ‘preserving the ecosystem’ and ‘keeping animals alive’ makes you a good scientist, but it makes you weak. You are weak, Thomas Sanders, and if the world was left in the hands of people like you, the human race as we know it would die out in a few centuries. Fortunately, there are people like me, who understand what must be done.”

“Caring about other people and things - it doesn’t - it doesn’t make you weak,” Thomas says, chest heaving, and the woman just laughs.

“One of many logical fallacies to which you subscribe, Thomas. They really gave you a doctorate? Of course caring makes you weak. All emotions make you weak. They corrupt your data and make your experiments worthless. You must be ruthless. You must be willing to do whatever it takes to pursue your goals and achieve the height of success. But no.” She rolls her eyes, face hardening, twirling a pen in her fingers. “You insist on ethics and principles and letting emotions cloud your judgement, and that makes you a failure as a scientist. It makes you weak. Your attachments will be your downfall.”

Thomas’s eyes slide shut, head pounding, and the man behind him yanks at his hair so sharply that he knows some has been ripped out. He forces his eyes open in time to see a smile slide across the woman’s face like a knife, teeth gleaming white as sun-bleached bone.

“You won’t - get away with this,” Thomas manages. He grinds his teeth together and curls his hands into fists, digging his nails into his palms to keep himself awake. “If you leave me alive -” Thomas, stop talking, why are you reminding her that she has the option to fucking kill you “- I will not rest until I find you. I’ll - you can’t -”

“You’ll what, Thomas? If you call the police, you’ll expose those creatures you’re so intent on protecting to the world. Are you really willing to take that chance?” Before Thomas can even begin formulating a response, she steamrolls him. “It doesn’t matter. Even if you were, I’m going to take some . . . insurance, shall we say.”

“Why not just kill me?” Thomas spits. Excellent idea, Doc, poke the murderous lady with a stick like a god damn hornet’s nest, the tiny Virgil in his brain hisses. Her smile, somehow, only widens, and that’s . . . that can’t be good, can it? Smiles are supposed to be good! They’re supposed to make you happy, but all Thomas feels is creeping dread and pain, so much pain, and -

Yeah. He’s . . . pretty sure he has a concussion.

“Because if I kill you, you get to take the easy way out. Your suffering will end. But unlike you, I don’t put limits on my science. I know how to cause you the maximum amount of pain.”

Thomas eyes the toxin gun, but the on-screen woman just laughs. “Not yet, Thomas. We need something from you, first.”

“You already took Roman,” Thomas says. “What more can you possibly take from me?”

“You named it? You’re even weaker than I thought.”

“He told me his name, he’s not an it, he’s not a thing for you to play with and - and I -”

There’s a strange sinking feeling in Thomas’s chest as the woman onscreen laughs. “I knew you were emotional, Thomas, but I can’t believe this! It looks like I’ll have more hanging over your head than you thought.”

“You -”

“Say, Tommy-boy, have you heard from your precious little assistant recently?”

Thomas’s entire body flushes ice-cold and then white-hot, immediately struggling against his duct tape bindings despite the man tearing at his hair and shoving the gun into his neck and snapping at him to shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up before I do something we’re both gonna regret -

“Don’t you touch him!” Thomas snaps. “If you hurt him, I swear to God -”

“You’re not in a position to be making demands, and if you don’t calm down, I’ll paint your boring little lab bright red.” Thomas freezes, holding his entire body tensed like electricity is running through his blood.

There are footsteps on the stairs. “Doc? I got your text, what’s -”

“Virgil, run!” Thomas chokes. Virgil comes around the corner, holding his phone, staring at the screen in confusion. He looks up, eyes widening in horror as he takes in the scene.

“You know what to do,” the woman onscreen says. The other woman lifts her tranquilizer gun, and Thomas is sure that he’s screaming, his mouth is open and sound is coming out but his blood is rushing through his ears and his heart is pounding like waves against a boat in rough sea and he can’t - he can’t -

Virgil turns to run, but the tranquilizer dart hits in him the back of the neck and he collapses like a sack of bricks. The woman lowers her gun and jerks her head at the two remaining conscious, unoccupied mercenaries, who step forward and grab Virgil.

“Let him go!” Thomas screams, and his throat feels raw and his chest feels raw and his wrists are rubbed raw and his soul feels hollow and raw, like he’s been scraped out with a jagged piece of metal and only an empty shell remains. Virgil’s head lolls against his chest as they drag him down the grotto tunnel, and Thomas struggles and screams and stares after them until Virgil is out of sight.

His face is damp, and his eyes are burning, and he isn’t sure if it’s blood from his head wound or tears or some strange, morbid mixture of both.

“The greatest torture of which I can conceive,” the woman onscreen says, and it takes him a moment to realize that oh, she’s talking to me, “is to leave you alive, knowing that your precious little protégé is with me, and that there is nothing you can do about it.” She leans forward, and any trace of a smile is gone. “If you try to come after me, I will kill him. If you call the authorities, I will kill him. I already found you, Thomas. Don’t think I’m not watching. If I catch so much as a whiff of you planning something, his blood will be on your hands. Do you understand me?”

Thomas, numb and shocked, can’t even respond. “Knock him out and bring the specimens back to me,” the woman onscreen says.

“Yes, ma’am.”

He doesn’t even feel the tranquilizer dart hit his neck, but he welcomes the sweeping darkness.

(Summary: Evil Scientist Lady has been spying on Thomas and she finds the entrance to the grotto where our mer friends have been hiding. She sends her assistant and several armed thugs to invade the lab, they drug Roman with tranquilizers and kidnap him. Thomas gets knocked around a lot and is mocked for being an ethical scientist and caring about people by Evil Scientist Lady and she gloats at him through Evil Facetime before kidnapping Virgil in the same way they did Roman, knocking Thomas unconscious, and leaving him tied to his lab chair. During this whole scene, Patton is out in the open ocean hunting and Logan is safely hidden in Virgil's room.)

#starshinewrites #lovely dark and deep #romantic analogical #sanders sides #platonic TLAMP

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therealjammy · 3 years

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The Lady of Half-Death

Hi, hello, posting this here for the Tumblr crowd, in case you don’t feel like venturing to Ao3.

This work’s alternate title: “Lucky One”

Content Warnings: Very NSFW, a brief but graphic depiction of violence. (This work is meant for 18+ only!)

It’s also told in first person POV, the Forbidden Perspective, so sorry if that’s not your jam.... Thank you for reading xx

November, 1937

On a bitter November day, early in the morning, I was roused by the tinkling of the bell hanging beside my bed. Being Mother Miranda’s most competent servant, I was long used to a summons during the small hours of the dark. She was night’s creature, bent over her studies and her subjects until a bitter sun lit the sky, almost unaware of time’s passage, while her servants kept in perfect time with every striking hour. I splashed sleep from my features with bitterly cold water from the basin on my dresser and wrapped myself in my warmest robe. I lit a candelabra, savoring its small warmth as I donned my silver mask. It had frightened me at first, how the servants wore these metal things elongated into an elegantly startling bird’s beak, but when serving the Lady of Ravens, one had to know to whom they pledged their loyalty, both inside and outside the house’s grounds. Though the metal was light, it still made one’s head ache after only a few minutes of wear, and was a constant irritation after many hours. But like a pain that was more a nuisance than anything, it was easily set aside.

I walked quickly through dark hallways and creaking staircases, passing through rooms whose furniture was covered in sheets and rooms whose contents were not. Each was quiet as the long-dead.

The doors to the laboratory opened on soundless hinges. Inside, there was only a spotlight on the latest occupied table and the stoic figure of Mother Miranda leaning over it, her hands coated in deep crimson, her subject unmoving. Her face was drawn into a deep, displeasured frown.

“What may I bring you, ma’am?” I asked carefully.

“Tea, Trudy,” replied Mother Miranda. By the ancient tiredness in her voice, I knew the kind I ought to fetch.

Staying true to her grief, Mother Miranda had a fondness for black tea, steeped for five minutes to be strong, made stronger with a dollop of Sanguis Virginis, a sweet but robust red wine made by Lady Dimitrescu. She kept the largest bottle for herself, but sent a smaller one to Mother Miranda every winter. The bottle was red and adorned with golden flowers crawling up its sides.

By the time I brought the fresh tea to her, Mother Miranda’s hands were washed of blood, and the subject on the table was covered with a white sheet, slowly turning scarlet. I set the teacup and candelabra beside her and gave a professional distance.

“The nature of science,” Mother Miranda said, picking up the teacup, “is to fail again and again.” She held it delicately. There was rage underneath that delicacy. “Every vessel thus far has been unfit, even if it’s accepted the Cadou, and with each unfit one I feel as if I am losing her more.”

“You might feel like Tantalus, ma’am,” I said after a pause, “with your goals evading your grasp, but I rather think you must be like Orpheus.”

“Attempt until death,” she murmured. “Yes, child, I believe you’re right.” A long sip of tea. Underneath her golden mask, her pink lips turned a deep red. She set the cup gently in its saucer and rose from her chair, black robes shuffling quietly. “Come. Let us begin anew.”

I lifted the mutilated subject from the table, wrapping the sheet about her carefully, and carried her fresh limpness to the courtyard with the others. Her cooling blood seeped from the sheet and onto my robes, and it dripped onto the bricks and my feet, leaving a sticky trail. It was cloying, but it was a sweet perfume compared to the rich decay that wafted from the courtyard’s cold soil. In the dark, I saw there was already a space made for her. I lay her carefully in it. A good sacrifice deserved gentleness once the deed was done, after all. In that sense, I was more merciful than Mother Miranda. Once a body was no longer of use, she would carry it out herself and toss them hastily aside, for only one body mattered above the rest.

“In life and in death,” I said over the grave, “we give glory to Mother Miranda.”

I sprinkled a handful of dirt over the covered girl and left her to the bitter, near-winter air.

Inside again, I scrubbed the table twice with soapy water and dried it thoroughly. I lit more candles, placing them around the table’s edges, away from the notes that Mother Miranda spread across the surface. While she organized them, I brewed another pot of tea, bringing it and the gifted bottle of Sanguis Virginis with me. When I had poured my own cup, Mother Miranda gestured to the wine. Pour that in, too. I obeyed without question. Grey eyes watched me drink, unchanging even when I made no face at the taste of wine and blood mixing with strong black tea. I’d learned long ago that reactions caused reactions. I remained impassive, though my stomach still curdled and rebelled at the taste of the sinful wine. To the others—Mother Miranda and Lady Dimitrescu— the wine was a sweet and prized possession. If ever it was sold, it would be incredibly expensive.

I brought a chair and perched myself next to Mother Miranda. It was always a thrill to be at her side, to study her volumes of notes and drawings and glimpse the way her mind worked. But more than that, I cherished the nights like this, when it was only the two of us. I enjoyed her company. I desired more of it, because I desired her. At times I believed she knew this, but then she would dismiss me so easily, brush by without a care, and I’d question if she knew at all.

Attraction, I reminded myself, was a science, too, and like an experiment gone horribly wrong, it was best if one didn’t share the results.

I cleared my throat and straightened in my chair. “We should begin where this one failed,” I said. “Pinpoint a reason, compare it to the rest.”

We pored over notes for hours, comparing observations, Mother Miranda writing furiously in her looping scrawl underneath a page titled Quinn. The candles burned low, and the sky lightened outside the laboratory’s several windows, revealing a cold, white-filled dawn.

“The conclusion is painfully obvious,” Mother Miranda sighed at last, pushing her nearly empty teacup aside. It’d turned cold hours ago. “I must find a truly unique vessel. The village is rotting with diluted blood and therefore cannot be used again. Three of the Lords—those children!—were ones I found outside. Diluted in other ways, perhaps, but strong enough.”

“Yet you declared them all unfit,” I remarked.

“Because they were too much,” Mother Miranda said stiffly, “and the rest have been too little. They served their miserable purpose and now I must find yet another clean slate! And to think I’d chosen so carefully…” A hand curled into a fist, clenched improperly due to taloned fingertips.

“Send me to the field, Mother Miranda,” I said. “I will search for you.” But it was the wrong thing to say, for her other hand darted quickly out and knocked her teacup and saucer from the table. They shattered on the floor, black-red tea pooling around their remains.

“Do not be dim, child; it cannot be done by you. It must be me.” She paused for a long moment, coming back to herself with a single, sharp shake of her head. “Please,” Mother Miranda said around a breath, “forgive my outburst.” She moved smoothly to the shattered teacup just as I did. We knelt out of time but reached for the same piece, her gold-plated fingers brushing my bare ones, sending a brief, hot shock through my being that ended in my chest.

“You need never ask my forgiveness, Mother Miranda,” I said, slowly withdrawing my hand and reaching for a different piece. “A woman in grief doesn’t know her own actions.” And it was her grief, I thought then, that made my heart ache for her. That made everyone’s hearts ache for her. Mother lost a child, they’d say. No greater tragedy exists. We must be kind.

“Grief is some people’s undoing,” Mother Miranda said. She had stopped picking up shards of teacup, a few pieces cradled in a hand. Her gaze was on the puddle of bloody, wine-soaked tea. “It festers like a splinter left in too long, or a piece of metal unable to be dislodged, and it consumes, until its host perishes with it. I’ve known it for many stretches, but rather than give myself to despair, I have chosen determination; for the parasite cannot fully live while its host fights it. So fight I must.”

Her face was a pale reflection on the tea’s surface.

II.

The next morning, a snowy one, Mother Miranda went for a walk. In her absence, her rule passed to me, and then to the Head Housemaid Vera, a stout older woman who kept the other servants in strict line. I was, however, only consulted for advice or for orders. Other than that, I was blessedly alone, a spectre haunting the laboratory while I organized Mother Miranda’s notes and gave into my own musings, letting my mind take up the cluttered space. Many things ran through it: thoughts of my former life, of the people I’d once seen and never would again, and if I followed that line, I knew exactly how I’d come to be here. Sitting alone in a tepid laboratory, surrounded by paper, rotting with attraction.

It’d been there from the beginning, for there was always attraction to a leader, and many reasons behind it. People were attracted to safety and to comfort, to promises and protection, but highest of all, a deity that preached all the above. People backed off their words more often than they gave in to them, but a deity never would; their word was given and kept. It was learned, it was ingrained, and so like everyone else, I held that same attraction. I gazed upon the same likenesses of Mother Miranda and prayed for protection, for strength. I prayed to one day work for her—the highest blessing of all!—and that prayer was answered. She came to my door in all her godly glory and the paintings held no candle to her real beauty.

The attraction molted once I’d begun to work for her properly. She was aloof and cruel and methodical, but there was talent and beauty, too, and soon enough I began to realize there was a person underneath the deity. And it was the person whom I thought of, now, wondering where her walk was taking her, who she was talking to, what she was thinking. I imagined her underneath a cold white sky, ashy flakes of snow sticking to her black robes and veil, the harsh, mountainous landscape reflecting her own desolation back at her.

I thought, as I filed the last of the notes away, that I would make her return easier. Oftentimes her walks changed her mood; one never knew the sort she’d bear when she walked through the doors. It could be the silent sort of rage, during which she’d seal the doors of her laboratory shut and refuse to emerge for days, or the one where she’d return with a deadly ice in her eyes and drag the nearest servant by the wrist to her chambers. Sometimes they’d be alive and shuffle from the room with their clothes barely on; other times there was an unfortunate mess to clear away.

During my luncheon, I called Vera to me and ordered the most frequented rooms be given a thorough cleaning, excluding the laboratory and Mother Miranda’s bathroom.

“And her dinner?” asked Vera, once she’d given the orders to four maids. “Something comforting, I assume, as the latest loss is still ripe in the courtyard.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “A shepherd’s pie with marmite in the gravy, and the bottle of Sanguis Virginis.”

“Very good, Miss Bevan.” Vera bowed her head and left.

I went over the bathroom myself, being careful to put every object in its proper place. I drew a bath, the water unbearably hot, but by the time Mother Miranda returned, it would be perfect.

I loitered for a long while in the bathroom’s silence, sat on the chessboard floor, gazing out the window to the snow-covered hills, the occasional drip, drip of the tub’s taps serenading me into a trance, filled with visions of blonde hair and grey-blue eyes and impeccable hands.

I wasn’t the first to think of her in this light. Far from it. Worship came in many forms, after all, and many people fell to this one. Except mine was to the woman I knew, not to the idol emblazoned on a shrine dangling from a peeling wall.

Unable to think of nothing but the bathroom’s suddenly stifling heat and the absent Mother Miranda, I left, unaware of where I was going until I collapsed on the chair I’d occupied earlier, everything about me aching for someone who saw me only as a servant in high regard—but a servant nonetheless. The fact, I thought, unbuttoning my uniform enough to feel cool air caress my chest, made me desire her all the more.

I propped a shoed foot on the seat’s corner to give myself better access and began my pleasure gently, my head falling against the back of the chair once the rhythm was established, my free hand indecisive on where it wanted to stay—a breast, the chair’s edge, the table; at least until my mind offered me a vision of Mother Miranda ordering me, from between my thighs, to keep it planted firmly on the chair’s edge. There it stayed while my other moved, and behind my closed eyes I saw a skilled tongue working me up, teasing, licking slowly as if to claim ownership to even that part of me; I saw intense eyes meeting my own, telling me to give myself over; in my mind I whispered my glory to her. I twitched erratically, my movements almost clumsy; a few moments more and I’d be tumbling into the blissful void—or would have, had I not heard the door open and the familiar, near-silent movement of the woman living in my head.

The silence that beat between us lasted only a moment and yet it felt like centuries. Mother Miranda’s eyes narrowed to deadly slits, and before I could manage to stumble out an explanation, she strode to me in five heavy steps.

“You dare defile this space with your musings?” Mother Miranda hissed, her grip on my wrist vicelike. “Do you not know how ill I find this gesture? How ill it makes me to think you care naught for the meaning of this room?” Claws slashed at my cheek, the first sting of it only surprise at first; it burned when I realized she’d cut flesh. I felt blood welling, but I could not bring a hand up to staunch its flow. Nor could I staunch the fresh wave of heat that pooled in my core at Mother Miranda’s fury. Cold eyes darted from my still-wet hand to my face. Mother Miranda scoffed, roughly releasing my wrist. “Attraction is a damned wicked creature,” she said. “It morphs perspective and thought. It makes one act rashly, makes one believe they’re subtle. You think I’ve not seen your lingering gazes, child? How you bask in my company the way you would underneath the sun? How you are afraid of my rage but it arouses you all the same?” She chuckled lightly, dragging gold-tipped fingers over my cheek, the metal blessedly cool against my heated skin. Having spent so much time in close quarters with this woman, I was no longer terrified by the talons. Their scraping made the coil in my belly curl tighter, and if she were to slip bare fingers against me, she would find me all too ready for her. I met her eyes with a steely look of my own, hoping she wouldn’t see shame, but Mother Miranda was wise in ways I couldn’t fathom. She saw through people as if they were cheesecloth.

She hummed, fingers roving lower, tracing my pulse hammering in my throat. “Is there any shame about you, Trudy? I should think so, as you are not my equal.” Moving lower still, to the buttons I hadn’t undone, hovering like she wished to tear them—and perhaps she did, for her hand gave a small twitch. “I am higher than you will ever be, yet you stand here, gazing at me so defiantly, trembling with your want of me… Do you think it will make you rise to my level?”

Her words were fog clouding the forests of my brain. I could think of nothing but how I wanted to serve her, to fall to my knees and pledge fealty, even if it was sworn with her hand guiding my mouth between her thighs. I said, “No, Mother Miranda.”

“No, indeed. But,” a taloned thumb slid over my lower lip, “it’ll bring me pleasure to see you try.”

When she kissed me, it was with a slowness that one could believe was care, but I sensed the possession. I opened my mouth to it, leaned into it, every nerve alight at the thrill of kissing someone I had once dreamed of serving under. Her hands drew me close to her, splaying across my back, bunching up my uniform, and her kisses became rougher, filled with need. I met every one with a need of my own, my shaking fingers undoing the rest of the buttons down my front. The movement caught Mother Miranda’s eye; she pulled back, her gaze intense, the color high in her cheeks, watching intently as the top half of my uniform parted and revealed bare skin. She reached out, two fingers gliding smoothly over my collarbones, my sternum, tracing the swell of a breast; gooseflesh rose in the touches’ wake, and my breathing trembled.

“You are practically untouched,” Mother Miranda said quietly. There was, to her, no greater sin than a specimen that remained unstudied and uncatalogued.

“Only practically, Mother Miranda,” I returned.

She leaned down, burying her face against my bloodied neck. Lips pressed softly, tongue lapping slowly— tasting me. “Have you not known love?” she said. “Or devotion?”

“Fleetingly.” There was the blacksmith, Cristian, in whose strong arms I felt safe. There was Tatiana, who made me feel at peace even after our desperate acts. But with this life, they were fleeting. To serve one of the Lords or Mother Miranda herself, it was until death. “The only devotion I know,” I continued, my voice growing thinner the lower her mouth travelled, “is to you.”

Mother Miranda hummed against my chest. “You worshipped well, then, Trudy,” she said, rising, taking my chin between two fingers and tilting my face up to hers, “but what of now? How shall you prove your worth to me?”

I grasped her unoccupied hand and pressed it against my breast, holding it there. I wanted her to feel it, to feel my heart underneath it, to know she could reach in and take it because I offered it to her. “Take what you will,” I said.

What was left of her resolve crumbled. Mother Miranda swept me into her arms with a low growl, lifting me as easily as she would a child and setting me hastily onto the table we’d cleaned the night before. Impatient fingers worked the rest of my clothes away. She tossed them aside and pressed me into the cold wood, impossibly dark eyes drinking me in, lingering on my neck, my breasts, my thighs. Places I hoped she would kiss. Places she did, in that order, her mouth untamed, leaving harsh love-marks behind. Throughout that act, she didn’t once touch me; I was strung so tightly that even one finger tracing me would’ve been my undoing. It was a sort of torturous study, I realized, clamping my tongue between my teeth when it nearly made me beg for release; she was seeing me as a case, testing my own resolve. How long could she make me wait before I begged forgiveness? Time ceased to exist. I could not tell how long she made me hang.

When she finally did touch me, I was relieved. Instead of a sigh, a long whimper escaped my mouth. Mother Miranda groaned in response, her fingers twitching and pausing against me, surprised at the slick want they found. Her second touch was heavier, more confident. My hands couldn’t help but cling to the back of her neck, which was covered by a thick cotton veil. I realized I’d touched her without her consent, but when I made to pull away, her free hand came to rest over both of mine, and together we slid the veil from her head.

Blonde hair, a darker gold in the dim light of the laboratory, fanned around her face, gracing my bare forearms, soft as silk. Without the veil, it was tantamount to seeing her naked.

“Cling to me,” Mother Miranda breathed.

It was as much permission as I was going to receive.

I buried my hands in her hair and leaned up to kiss her. I accepted her tongue when it slipped between my teeth. I opened for her when, at last, she slid fingers inside me.

And when she truly took me, she devoured me, sprinkling evidence of her use across any expanse of skin she could reach, uncaring if teeth dug in too much, if my back was rubbed raw from the wooden table, if her golden talons left angry scratches. I clung harshly to her during my crisis, my cries only winding her further, for when I was barely limp, she withdrew entirely and carried me to her own chamber. Deposited on her bed, I watched through bliss-filled eyes as she undressed.

Black robes pooled at her feet. In the blue-white moonlight, she was harshly ethereal. Everything about her seemed to glow, including her eyes. And sprouting from her back were five pairs of midnight wings. I wanted to catalogue it as a dream, a delusion caused by a mind still recovering from an intense crisis, but the wings, like Mother Miranda’s arms and legs, were very much a part of her.

“Look while you can,” she said. “Commit it to memory, for true revelations are rarely given so freely.”

She stood for study, allowing me to take in every inch. My eyes lingered where hers had lingered on me.

“Do you reject me, Trudy?” she questioned softly.

“No, Mother Miranda,” I replied. I offered her my hand. “I’d fall to my knees in prayer if I were not otherwise occupied.”

She accepted my hand and leaned over me on her bed, naked and otherworldly, and in my long, exquisite worship of her, I met death eye to eye and thought there would never be another equal.

#resident evil #resident evil village #fanfic #mother miranda #mother miranda x oc #mother miranda x reader

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