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#I wanted them to have a moment with no hazmat suit
deadsetobsessions · 1 month
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What’s in a cape, but the hopes and dreams of the one who bears it?
What’s in a cape, but shelter and warmth for those that receive its protection?
What’s in a hero suit, but a person that’s determined to die in it?
——
Long before Danny Phantom died in his hazmat suit, Bruce Wayne donned his cowl to dive between Gotham and the bullets with faces engraved on them. His cape began to signify fear, for those that harmed Gotham knowingly. But for the rest, it became a sign of protection, of promised vengeance against the crime committed.
And for a select few, the cape was a shelter during cold and rainy patrols. For Tim Drake, the third Robin, it was a warmth he’d never experience past those moments.
When Danny Fenton became Danny Phantom, he’d had wanted to have a cape like the crusader.
Danny wasn’t sure if he wanted to shelter or be sheltered.
But eventually, as things escalated and Danny found himself with less time for normal, personal things, that wish shuddered to an ember. After all, Danny had learned that he doesn’t get the luxury of protection. Not anymore. Which meant he had to be the one doing the protecting. A thousand miles away, as Danny came to terms with it on a clear Amity night, Robin was huddled beneath Batman’s cape to shelter from the pelting rain that came often with Gotham’s gloom.
When Danny got pulled along, invisible and attached to Robin’s side as the vigilante got thrown into a prison, he witnessed Robin talk to his evil older Batman self.
He’s visible again before he knew it, startling the two versions of Robins. Ice slammed into the Robin that became Batman as memories rung through Danny’s head. Where Robin was, stood himself. Where the Evil Robin Batman laid on the floor, covered in glowing ice, was Dan.
Danny died, and became a hero. He just had the unfortunate luck to live to see himself become the villain.
He would never allow Robin to go through it alone, not when Danny had his family and friends to fall back on. Robin, in this cage, ripped away from his team and in the midst of an argument with Batman, was painfully so.
“I’m Phantom.” Danny introduced himself. “Looked like you were in a bit of a spot. I’m sorry for butting in, if you wanted to take care of him yourself.”
“Robin.” Robin was wary. That’s okay. “How are you here?”
“That one’s on you, actually.” Danny glanced around. “Let’s get out of here before edgy future you wakes up. The ice won’t melt, and it’ll be hard to break, but I honestly don’t want to stick around for him to wake up.”
“Can you move him?” Robin eyed their cell contemplatively.
“Sure.”
——
“That seemed personal, earlier.”
Danny nodded. “Yeah. Had the displeasure of meeting an alternate evil version of myself that lost everyone I loved. Kind of hit a sore spot there.”
“…right.”
“No worries, you’re good. My friends and family promised to stay away from explosive sauce.”
“That’s good. So… where do you live?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know, weather boy?” Danny somersaulted in space next to Robin’s jerryrigged space ship. “Anyways, we’re friends now, so I’ll make sure you don’t live to see yourself become a villain.”
“See, that sounded like a threat.”
“It’s not! I don’t kill! And besides, if you were dead, you’d probably be a ghost, and you’d kick my ass for killing you!”
“Are you implying you’re dead?”
“Not an implication. I’m dead. Kind of. Half. I’m still breathing even if I kind of don’t need to. So, where are your friends?”
Danny will be damned before he let his new friends die in their suits, even if they make the job incredibly hard for him. After all, there’s only room for one dead hero on the team, and that’s him.
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minty364 · 24 days
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DPXDC Prompt #142 Part 1
It had been a few days since his birthday, his parents forgot again but that was how things went in his family. At least his sister, Jazz knew how to throw something together quickly so he at least got to spend it with her and his friends. Speaking of his friends, they were hanging out in the park together. They had gotten close over the summer. Trips to the Nasty Burger, followed by trips to the mall and then late night sleepovers were the normal weekend pattern for the trio especially the later in the summer it got.
They’d talk about all sorts of things while swinging or chilling around the slide. Currently their conversation had drifted towards which superpower would you like if you had the meta gene. Strangely the whole town seemed to be meta free. Not that anyone in the town hated metas just that no one possessed the gene. 
“I think I’d like to be able to control Technology with my mind.” Tucker said, pointing toward his forehead in emphasis, “ I’d never have to set poor Lucy down again!!” He hugged his current PDA tightly. 
Sam and Danny shared a look while Sam rolled her eyes. “I think I’d like to control plants like Poison Ivy. I wonder if she’d be up for a goth side-kick” Sam said, punching the air in front of her with her fist. “What about you Danny?”
Danny took a few minutes to mull over the question before answering, “I think I’d like to fly. Even if I don’t get into the college I want I’d be able to fly up there anyways.”
“Pfft, bring me back a piece of a meteorite when you do,” Sam chuckled. They all knew their dreams of getting powers would never come true. Not without the meta-gene anyways.
“Sure,” Danny shrugged, “Oh, by the way since my parents are out of town I’m going to check out the portal to see if I can get it running for them. Want to see it?”
“Dude, that’s sick! Unfortunately my parent’s cousin is flying in tomorrow and I’ll need to help prep stuff” Tucker said sadly. 
“I don’t know about that Danny, your parents are great but I don’t know if I trust this portal” Sam said, raising an eyebrow at him.
“I wouldn’t worry it’s not likely to actually work or anything,” Danny shrugged. 
Soon the trio had to get back to their respective homes. Well Sam and Tucker did. Danny’s parents were out of town at some convention. 
They had left Danny and Jazz home alone and they gave instructions for Danny and Jazz to take turns cleaning the lab and making sure the portal didn’t suddenly turn on while they were gone. They had tried before heading out for their trip but unfortunately nothing happened when they turned it on. 
Danny wanted to check it out for them when he was done cleaning. He also figured if he could help his parents with their science it would be easier for him to get into the college he wanted to achieve his dreams. 
He quickly finished cleaning, and then put on his hazmat suit. Sam had once made fun of the Jack Fenton sticker placed on the front and fortunately it was easy enough for Danny to remove. Then he took a calming breath and stood in front of the portal. As it stood at the moment, it was a dark hole in the wall that seemed to suck all the light out of the room. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he suddenly got the urge to run out, maybe he could come back with Sam and Tucker? Unfortunately he knew his parents were back tomorrow so if he wanted to help he needed to do it now.
Stealing his nerves he took a step forward and then another. Into the tunnel he went. It was then he realized he made an error when he found something caught on his foot. He flailed as he tried to catch himself and his hand pushed some kind of button on the wall.
A flash of white light and he felt an eternity of agony. It felt unbearably hot as Danny could feel himself being melted and then put back together. Soon he lost consciousness as everything went dark.
He wasn’t sure how long he was out but he definitely wasn’t at home anymore. He seemed to be in the hospital, the usual medical supplies seemed to be all around as well as a few things he couldn’t identify. He didn’t seem to be attached to any monitoring equipment which seemed a little off but the fact he weirdly didn’t seem to have any burn marks on him. He was sure the portal should have killed him and the fact that he was somehow completely unscathed made him a little worried. Maybe he did die?
His thoughts were interrupted as someone walked into the room. They had messy blond hair, blue eyes, and wore a trench coat. He looked relieved when he saw Danny was awake.
“Took you long enough, kid you were out for a whole week!” The newcomer exclaimed. 
A week. 
The thought swirled around in Danny’s head. That meant his Family thought he was missing. Sam and Tucker knew he was missing. That also meant he missed the first week of school. That probably wouldn’t look well on an application. 
He could tell his thoughts were spiraling a little but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t even know what exactly caused him to be out for that long. 
He thought about what could’ve happened to end him up in a hospital and then the thought occurred to him. 
The portal. 
“What about my parents' portal?” Danny asked the guy.
Next:
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politemenacephd · 2 months
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Arachnophilia: (Part Nineteen)
Drider!Miguel O'Hara x Reader (+18)
Chapter Masterlist 🕷️
Content: Plot time! Some fluffy conversation, Action, Some spider peril, aphrodisiac influence.
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Word count: 4100 Notes: Ok so I've had extra time off w being ill to re-cooperate and I've actually got chapters 20 and 21 done so hopefully those will be up sooner! Thanks for waiting <3
‘You ready?’
You were milling about the HQ entrance with Mig at your side, preparing for your first mission together. You’d got into your hazmat suit just fine but Mig was struggling with his. They usually came with attached leg parts and he didn’t exactly have legs to fit into one, so his had been hastily made to order.
‘Argh—I hate this, clothing, thing—how did I ever wear this every day?’
You snorted at Mig’s quiet grumbles as you helped pull the thick plastic material over his stocky belly.
‘I’ve brought up the possibility of making an exception for you, with the- clothing, thing, but they’re being weird about it’ you mumbled.
‘I don’t- want you to go through any trouble for me’ Mig said. His voice kept catching as he squirmed. You noted how tight his suit was compared to yours, how it clung to his enormous shoulders like latex. Clearly whoever had made it hadn’t paid close enough attention to how big Mig was.
‘What was it you used to say to me? Oh no, arañita, I like doing things for you—that’s me. That’s also me. I like doing things for you, it’s why I am—’ you paused to give his suit one final tug. ‘In a relationship with you!’
Mig totally ignored that his suit was on, instead doing a little wiggle with his abdomen to the word ‘relationship’. Hearing it made him so happy.
‘Mm. Yes, well- okay.’ He bent down and reached out his hand, baying you to give him yours. You did, and he gingerly kissed your fingers before squeezing them between his claws. ‘I suppose I don’t mind you doing a little for me. If it makes you happy.’
‘You’re so silly’ you chided gently. For just a moment, you got to stand and look up into his big red eyes without worrying about anything or anyone else around you. His eyes creased as he smiled.
‘Mi arañita’ he whispered.
 It was simple, short, sweet. To you, it was an affirmation. To him, it was a confession of love he just wasn’t strong enough to make overtly quite yet. You bumped foreheads, since the suits stopped you being able to kiss, before withdrawing from each other.
‘May I, make a confession to you, arañita?’
‘Yeah, of course. Go ahead.’
‘I… I am certainly, excited, to see a new universe again. I used to dream about this when I was human, and while I gave up on my dreams when I changed it has been… exhilarating, to feel like a scientist again. I just…’ Mig paused and gently rubbed his jaw. ‘I’m, nervous.’
‘About what?’
‘About… You’ he said, his voice dipping. ‘About, putting you in danger.’
‘Oh Miggy- I’ve been a spider a lot longer than you have!’ you insisted.
‘Yes. And on your first mission, you met me. Because you—got hurt’ he said bluntly. Your teasing smile turned to an awkward frown.
‘Oh… Ohh. Right. Yeah. Well… Look at it this way.’ You turned and gestured to yourself, lightly tapping your chest as you stared up at him. ‘I completed my first mission specifically because I had your help. So, now you’re here with me, it’ll be even better! And I promise, I won’t get headstrong and try to go around you. I will accept your help.’
Mig still looked perturbed but he seemed comforted at the memory of helping you. ‘Yes… Yes, you are, correct.’
‘As always.’
‘Mm. Very humorous. Regardless, you are right. I helped you then, and, I can help now. I appreciate you understanding my concern, arañita. I also, as a show of good faith, will not stand in the way of you doing this mission. I trust you.’
You beamed up at him, and he beamed back.
‘I’m just rather surprised we got put on it at all. I was quite prepared for my, other half to get in the way’ Mig mused as he shook himself off. Immediately your face fell.
‘Ah... yeah. Me too. Me too’ you said quietly.
You’d been surprised Miguel had even okayed the idea of you both going out. He’d been so weird about Mig joining at all, and then out of nowhere he was giving you both a mission right after Mig passed? When you joined it took months to get any mission at all. Deep down, this whole thing had you a little on edge.
You were trying to keep your feelings to yourself, though, since you didn’t want to upset or worry Mig. He was settling in so well and you’d hate to cause him discomfort for no reason. You liked seeing him happy. You liked seeing him thrive.
‘Mi arañita?’
You blinked and glanced upward, only to find Mig staring at you. You must have gotten lost in your thoughts.
‘Ah- hey, what’s up now pretty boy?’ you asked, forcing a smile. His lips didn’t return the same softness. Instead, his face remained serious.
‘You’re worried. Yes? About my counterpart, and how quickly this mission was given to us. You’re worried that he has some ulterior motive. You’re worried he might be, setting us up, rather than stepping back.’
You sighed. God damn it. While you appreciated how in-tune you were, it also made hiding anything a little awkward. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I—was.’
‘I... Yes. I, feel the same, though I do want to believe he’s actually gotten better’ Mig murmured sadly.
‘I’d like to believe it, but I’m also not stupid’ you snorted. The two of you briefly went quiet as a gaggle of spiders webbed past you down the lobby, before slowly drifting closer again.
‘We- are, very similar, you know’ Mig explained. ‘I told you, once, how our paths only diverged in life when we changed. He became, him, and I became… this. But before that we were… so, so similar. Almost identical.’
‘That change was a long time ago, though, right? Like, so long that you forgot what clothes feel like.'
Mig chuckled at your light teasing, but his brows remained tightly knotted. ‘Mm. Yes. But, it doesn’t change that we are, in many ways, the same person. He used that very fact to convince me that I’m a monster, to convince me to hide.’
You pursed your lips at the reminder.
‘So… If I don’t believe he can change, then, it… means he was right about me, too' he said. His voice was deeply sombre. 
‘Mig, that isn’t—I mean that isn’t entirely fair’ you said with an unsure shrug. ‘Like… Look, Miguel is a different person to you. I can see the argument that you were given the same, basic components at the start, right? But you're so different now. He's a.... dick, and you're... you! You're YOU! My Mig! The, most, perfect thing!' 
Mig chuckled again, looking almost shy at your praise. ‘Just- humour me, please. It is for my own benefit, not just for his. I have to believe I am not doomed to be a bad person, and, I want to believe he isn’t either’ Mig insisted.
You weren’t convinced, sadly, but you did relent. You held up your hands and smiled as you slapped them down on his furry abdomen. ‘Okay. I mean I’d like for him to get better too, believe me, God it would save me SO much hassle!’
Mig purred, and at last a smile broke out onto his face. His cheeks lifted as he chuckled. ‘Yes. Me too. He—’
‘You ready to go?!’
You and Mig turned in unison as Jess called from the other side of the lobby. She was waving one arm over her head with the other cupped her mouth to make the sound carry. You could see that she was standing beside an open portal. 
‘Shit… alright, time to go’ you said. You straightened out your suit and straightened his too, a motion he tried to return until you shooed him off.
‘No, no—I don’t need petting down, shh—I love you too. Right. You ready, Mig?’
He fixed his posture and nervously raised his claws. ‘Ah… yes. Yes. I am- ready to do, heroic activities. Yes’ he blurted in a fully monotone voice.
You buried your face in your palm. ‘Oh my god I love you so much you’re such a god damn dork—OKAY, lets go!’  
You tried to strike a pose like you were trained to do but almost immediately tripped, so instead you went straight into climbing Mig’s back so he could take the lead. It was easy to look majestic while riding your enormous spider partner.
You clung tight to his fur as he scurried forward, and dragged you both through the open portal into this new and unknown world.
On the other side you thankfully landed safely, with Miguel angling his paws to slow the impact. As you eyes adjusted you realized quickly that you were on the top of some enormous building, and so you hopped down from Mig’s back to see the view.
This world was strange, far stranger than either Miguel’s or Mig’s or your's. Before you was the full, shining vista of New York, but this one had been entirely drowned in enormous neon plants. You could see flower heads in the distance that looks like normal flower heads up close, implying that they must be the size of a house in their own right, blooming and fluttering on the side of a high rise building that'd broken in half and was now leaning on another. 
The sky above was also strange; it was red, darker on top and lighter as it drifted down towards the horizon, ending in a dull and foreboding pink beyond what the eye could see.
There was no sound. No cars, no people. Just the rustling of leaves in the wind.
You breathed in through your suit mask and turned to Mig. He was fixated on the red sky, his hand held out in front of his face.
‘You okay?’ you called up.
Mig nodded. ‘Yes… You- do you see these, particles, too?’ he asked. You followed his eyes and squinted at the air in front of your face. He was right. There were tiny, pink dots floating in the air, like dust particles, just barely viewable. You waved your hand and watched them bounce and dance as your fingers disrupted them.
‘Huh. Oh, weird. Yeah they um- they mentioned the pollen, it has... Like an overwhelming effect on anything with hormones. Aphrodisiac. Makes you lose it. It's why this worlds deserted now.’
‘Yes. I- believe we should leave here as soon as possible’ Mig said slowly. You didn’t argue.
You turned and leapt back up onto his back, digging your hands into his fur. You held on tight as he turned and descended the building via the stairway.
On a monitor in a dark and distant room, Miguel watched the blurry little figure of you and Mig strolled through the abandoned city. His eyes narrowed. ‘Go on’ he said, almost purring. ‘Go ahead. Fail, and then let me watch you get dragged out by your necks in a pathetic heap.’
The building was entirely empty, which made the sounds you heard all the more unnerving. You realized pretty quickly that the oversized plants filling the area would occasionally move, slithering across cracked windows and floors like great, fleshy, neon green snakes. The floors would creak like footsteps when no one was there, and occasionally you’d hear a low groaning as if the building itself was alive.
Mig began to walk slower so he could step over the vines. They hadn’t done anything violent, but, he’d rather be safe.
As you emerged out into the city from the ground the size of it became far more imposing. Seeing those giant flower buds from the top made them seem almost normal, but from the floor the shadow of that gaping botanical maw filling the sky made you feel utterly miniscule.
You drew your watch to your mouth and whispered into it. ‘Lyla- Lyla, have you got a hold on the guy who escaped?’
‘Yeeeppp.’
The little AI flashed up beside your head as Mig cautiously began to walk down the empty street. ‘You hopped in close. He’s been still for a while.’
‘Do you think he’s hurt?' 
‘Nah, I mean- maybe. But I doubt it’ Lyla said with a yawn.
‘Why do you doubt it?’ Mig asked. She flickered over to glance him up and down as he walked.
‘My god you’re big, it always surprises me- uhhh I said I DOUBT it because he was wearing his suit when he jumped in which should keep him safe from the pollen.’
‘Okay. What are we dealing with then? A vulture, a symbiote, a prowler?’
‘Prowler. He’ll be wearing his suit but I think we removed his weapons when we brought him in, so, should be easy.’
‘Huh… I wonder if Miguel gave us an easy one deliberately’ you pondered to yourself. It seemed unlikely, but, maybe it was intentional? Maybe he was changing. ‘Okay, uh- thanks Lyla, we’ll call if we need anything else.’
You shut your watch and gently tapped for Mig’s attention. You didn’t speak, but you silently gestured for where he needed to go. He nodded and crept towards the building Lyla had pointed at.
As you approached the bottom floor it was empty, with broken windows allowing easy access to the inner rooms. It was unnervingly dark inside. The sun was too high overheard to reach inside, leaving nothing but a faint red glow broaching the edge of the dirty, vines covered concrete before it descended into shadow.
You tapped your watch to create a small beam of light. You carefully scanned the room from side to side, your eyes squinting to see through the gloom.
It was quiet. Too quiet. You could hear water dripping somewhere but couldn’t find the source. As Mig went to enter the dark he rustled his abdomen, signalling for you to jump. You hopped to the floor and in unison you both ducked. Together, you began to do a wide circle of the space.
‘Hello?’ you called, your voice echoing. You faintly saw Mig rustle with discomfort at you speaking, so you gestured for him to continue instead.
‘Sir! We’re from the society’ Mig cried. ‘I know that you were- reluctant, to come with us, but you were at far more risk here.’
You were about halfway in now. You were descending into the thick of the vines.
‘This universe is abandoned. There is no way home without us. If you come quietly, we can—’
Midway through speaking the vines were suddenly cut right above your head, and in a flurry of chaotic movement and sound you were thrown across the room.
‘SHIT—HEY!’
The unseen opposition dived forward and pinned your newly downed body to the floor, choking it out against one of the vines. You squirmed and kicked but you’d been taken off guard too fast.
‘GIVE ME THE WATCH!’
A deep voice echoed from behind the attackers mask. Shit, you thought, this must be the guy.
‘GIVE ME THE—’
Just as he’d tackled you the Prowler variant was tackled by Mig. In a blur of red and black fur your partner barrelled across the room and hooked the smaller man by the nape, and with nothing more than the strength of his neck he threw him up into the ceiling and then back down to the floor.
A low moan filled the air as you scrambled to stand.
‘Oh…. Fuck.’ You coughed and spluttered as Mig prowled towards the downed man. His venom was glowing where it’d leaked down his jaw, its viscosity appearing neon green in the dark. He had his claws raised.
Back in Nueva, Miguel continued to watch. He had his arms folded, his body stiff and unmoving, his eyes unblinking.
He was waiting for it.
‘Fuck… urgh, okay, um—you got the light cage, babe?’ you asked. You were wheezing hard from being pinned, and while Mig should have focused on containing the man on the floor he couldn’t help but be drawn to you.
‘Mi arañita? Are you okay?’
As Mig turned you raised your hand. You were about to say yes, you were fine. You were about to comfort him and remind him of what you had to do.
You didn’t get the chance, though.
The Prowler collected himself too quickly, and in a blind panic he leapt up and released the claws on his suit. He dove at Mig, the most obvious threat, hoping to get in a stab from behind, but luckily his claws weren’t strong enough to pierce.
He latched onto Mig’s back and he instantly began rustling and bucking, his size allowing him to quickly detach the attacker. You hastily threw a web out to pin him down to the floor again.
‘SHIT- Shit, baby, did he get you?! Did he—’
You froze. Mig had turned in an attempt to feel the back of his suit, and now he was facing the opposite direction to you. He was showing you his back. He was showing you, clear as day, the enormous cut marks in the plastic hide.
Slowly, Mig stopped. His arms fell to his sides, and he rolled his head to stare at you over his shoulder. His eyes were glowing the most unnatural pink.
‘Mig?’ you stammered.
He grunted, hard, and suddenly seemed to go down. His legs began to shake as his hands flew to his head. ‘MM—MM—’
You felt your whole body go cold. You knew what the air in this universe did. You quickly rushed to try and grapple him, hoping to either pin him with your webs or patch up the suit, anything your frazzled mind could think of, but Mig was quickly losing control.
‘MIG! Mig, hey! Stay down—let me help—’
‘AH—’ His body rustled violently as he panted. It burned. It was the most unbearable heat he’d ever felt, seeping through his veins like literal fire. His started drooling venom into the inside of the suit, coating the seethrough plastic on the front. ‘RRH—’
On the other side of the multi-universe, Miguel snorted. He didn’t smile, nor did he show any kind of outward joy. He just snorted.
What a shame that Lyla hadn’t been told about that prowler’s suit still had its claws intact when it was taken in. Claws that, while not deadly, were capable of still ripping an important piece of fabric. A suit, perhaps.  
Now you’d let the man escape into a dangerous universe. You’d have to crawl back with your out of control boyfriend. He went to turn when a cry drew his attention back to the screen.
Mig, in his panic, had pushed you back across the room.
‘DON’T—DON’T COME NEAR ME’ he cried, ‘I CAN’T- HURT YOU—ARGH!’
Miguel frowned.
You were carefully shifting yourself up from the debris. You weren’t hurt, it hadn’t been a hard push, but just like the Prowler he hadn’t accounted for his own claws. They were painfully extended, viciously sharp on every end, and in just lightly pushing you with the last of his strength he’d ripped three big holes in your own suit.
You felt your heart thundering.
In a whimpering panic you tried to block the holes with your hand but it was too late. All too soon you felt the pollen in your nose, your brain, your blood, your body heating into overdrive. You were doubled over as if in physical pain as the urge curdled inside you.
‘MM—’
Miguel stared at the screen, his eye twitching just a little. No, wait, he’d planned for one person to be able to call for back up. He’d planned this out perfectly, hadn’t he? Why was this happening?
‘Argh… Mig…’
You mewled pathetically as you crawled across the floor. You were throbbing everywhere, lightheaded from the blood flowing where it wasn’t supposed to, your insides clenching and pulsing and squeezing around nothing to a point that left you breathless.
Mig was no better. He was digging his claws directly into the concrete in an attempt to stay sane, to stay alert, but it wasn’t working. He drooled pools of spit and venom onto the floor as he ripped his suit aside completely. He had to bite. He had to pin. He had to unload. He could think of nothing rational in that moment. ‘AH—AH---’
In the panic your target had also cut himself free from the web. Still suited, still sober, he watched you writhe with narrowed eyes. He approached, curious, and delivered one kick to your exposed gut. You went down hard but didn’t have the strength to get back up off the floor.
‘YOU-- ARGH!’
Mig dove at the man and nearly clawed him to pieces, but the impact of the sweet, thick, dizzying scent was making it hard to see or focus. He swung blindly, teeth snapping, as Prowler backed away.
On the floor you whimpered, unable to move an inch from the multi-faceted pain. 
‘Wait, wait, no—’  
As he watched Miguel felt his confidence beginning to slip. You’d call for backup, right? You would. Yo had to. 
He thought about rushing in, but, if he did that, you’d know he’d been watching. Wouldn’t that look suspicious? Plus, it would ruin his plan.
His plan… What, exactly, was that plan anyway, some little niggling part of his brain asked?
‘FUCK!’
Your cry drew Miguel back to the screen.
You were writhing on the floor as you struggled to breathe. You and Mig couldn’t even reach each other. He was now consumed by the primal, lustful urge to protect his mate, to fight an opponent, which was keeping him in the thralls of trying to spear your assailant on his claws.
No one had time to pull either of you out, and that Prowler was still hellbent on killing you both to protect himself.
‘No, no, no—’
The blurry image of your body on the floor began to distort. Miguel slammed the monitor but it just continued to fade.
He began to pant hard. He hadn’t wanted this. Not this. He just wanted Mig to fail his first mission, he never wanted anyone to get hurt. He’d just wanted an excuse to remove him. He didn’t want this. He didn’t. He’d planned it perfectly. This was supposed to work. It HAD to work. He was doing the right thing. He was smart, he was capable, he was rational—
Right?
The more he thought about it, the more his stomach turned. Wait, but, he’d released that symbiote, hadn’t he? He’d jumped in the way, yes, but it could have caused Mig real harm. It could have caused you real harm.
‘Oh no’ he whispered. ‘No, no, no…’
One final, horrible thought filled his head: What was wrong with him?
‘Every day I have to fight to be good.’
His words to Peter rang in his head as he paced back and forth. How had he forgotten that? The simple reason, that he really hated his variant? Because he was broken. They were both broken. Both of them.
He swung back to the screen. He had to go, right? He had to go, he had to go and extract you and Mig.
All that anger, that resentment that he’d made righteous, it was fighting the one part of him that he clung to. The part that wanted to save you, no matter the cost. The part that was still good.
He told himself that this self-sacrificial nature, that was him. The REAL him. That was who he was beneath the dirt and the dust and the bitterness. But, no. As he stared at you clutching the floor, struggling to breathe, he knew it wasn’t.
It was all him.
‘Shit.’
Without wasting a second, without even grabbing a suit, Miguel pulled up a portal to that universe and dove in headfirst.
The pollen hit him like a physical punch to the gut. He felt it coiling around every hormone in his touch-starved body, pushing his brain into override. As he hit the road right before the store you were in he had to curl in on himself just to regain the ability to breath.
‘MM—Argh, fuck—come on—you’ve dealt with this before!’ he seethed.
With fangs dripping he clawed his way into the building. To his utmost relief he saw you almost instantly, still curled up on the floor.
‘COME ON!’ he barked. Miguel grabbed you under the arm and began to drag, though it was slow progress. He kept having to pause and bite his own hands in order to temper the unnatural urges filling his brain.
You were utterly useless at this point. Your body was limp in his grip, moaning and whimpering and shaking. ‘Mig.... My Mig—’
‘He’s… fuck—MIGUEL!’ He turned and screamed into the dark as the plants whipped and writhed.
Mig burst through the wall with a violent crack, his paws skidding on the ground. The person you’d been chasing was frantically scrambling to avoid his open seething maw and swinging claws, like a rabbit fleeing a wolf. With the last of his strength Miguel threw a light cage at the panicking Prowler before depoying a web at Mig’s legs, helping to at least stun him into stopping.
‘Ah… Okay, HERE! OVERE HERE! EXTRACTION!’ Miguel cried.
Mig jerked his head up so fast it snapped. He saw him holding your limp body and immediately his eyes dilated into slits. He hissed, spraying venom across the tiles.
‘I’M GETTING YOU OUT OF HERE!’
Miguel pulled up a portal and threw you into it before returning to grab the downed Prowler. He used it like a toy, lurning Mig up. The enormous man broke the webs around his legs with terrifying ease, and once back on his spider legs he stormed towards him.
Miguel led him straight through the portal at his back.
With a soft, otherworldly thwap, the portal disappeared. The world of plants was plunged into silence once more, and whatever chaos ensued, would ensue in Miguel’s office, back where it had all started.
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flamingpudding · 9 months
Text
DPxDC Family Week June 21 (Day 4)
Prompt: Friends | Surprise
A/N: I hope this is not a hit and miss on the prompts but this came out when I thought about Danny and his friends. Also... I really wanted to get the Joker souped :D
AO3 Link: DPxDC Family Week Contributions
Bruce found himself with a rather particular problem as he faced the newest addition to the Wayne Family in the bat cave. Daniel James Fenton-Wayne, stood before him sandwiched between his more than obvious to best friends. The boy wasn't looking up but staring at the ground, shoulders hunched and drawn into himself, hair ash white, dressed in a hazmat suit and glowing green eyes that reminded him too much of his second eldest certain issue. His two friends on the other hand were standing protectively next to him clearly openly glaring at him well at Batman but that wasn't important.
He was pretty sure that Danny was supposed to be at the Manor the entire time getting used to his new room with the addition of his two friends that had accompanied him to Gotham to help him getting settled. Not come flying at the joker out of a vertical Lazarus Pit with his friends in tow. Behind him he knew that at least one of his other sons were fretting. They had yet to tell Danny about the family secret and this development was definitely a surprise to everyone as the three teenagers before him had mentioned that they know his identity at least.
A little earlier that day.
"Come on Danny let's explore the Manor a little. There is bound to be something hidden. Every big shot has their secret."
"Think we will find proof that Batman and Bruce Wayne have a thing for each other?"
"Sam! No!" The halfa groaned into the pillow of his oversized bed, Sam sitting at the edge while Tucker was curiously going along the walls, knocking against it every couple of meters to see if there was something hidden.
"Well what do you want us to do? The lab blew up and you got adopted by a rich guy, while Jazz got spared but she can't take you in at the moment."
"Yeah man, we are lucky it wasn't Vlad but I am not sure if Wayne is better given his public image."
"You know that could be a front right?" Danny muttered his chin resting on the pillow as he stared at his friends.
"Like Vald, he acts like a nice Mayor but is a total fruitloop."
"So you're saying Bruce's image is like that and he is in reality completely different?" Sam concluded crossing her arms as she mulled over that thought. "So the secret is he bangs Batman?"
"SAM!"
"Aha! Secret wiring!" Tucker cut in before, removing a piece of the wall to get to a wire, his PDA in hand and checking if he could connect the wire to it.
Danny's eye twitched. He loves his friends he really does but their conspiracies were not something he could get behind on right now. "Tuck you probably got the power cable of the lights there. Drop it."
"That, my friend, is a cable to a heat sensor."
"So what? Floor heating, we established already that Amity was way's behind in technology."
"Danny, if there is one thing I know about being rich, it's that nothing is as simple as it seems in old manors. Bruce Wayne is suspicious and we should-"
"No."
"But-"
"No."
"Danny-"
"No."
"Look what we have here, camera wiring! Let's see what video feats I can get into…"
"No-Wait what?!"
"Told you that man is suspicious."
Danny glared at Sam's smug face while Tucker was completely engrossed in getting into the Manors network system. In the end he let out a sigh and let him get dragged along by his friends' antics with a fond smile. Ancients couldn't they just live with him here too? They wouldn't need to go back to Amity right? Better maybe he could just go back with them, but he knew he couldn't.
There was no longer a home to return to.
"Danny, hey Danny."
Blinking out of his thoughts he found both his friends by his room door urging him to come along. In a fluid motion he jumped off the bed and followed them. Tucker was the one leading them, having apparently gotten into the video feat and was now trying to find something specifically. Whatever his best friend had found, it had him convinced that there was a secret cave below the manor.
"I found a blind spot!" He suddenly declared making them stop by a corner of the hallway.
"Your turn, Danny. Phase us through the floor." Sam more told him than asked, eyes gleaming with mischievousness. With a sigh, followed by a head shake and a fond smile, he placed a hand on each shoulder. Taking them with him through the floor, still not believing his friends.
Only for them to really end up in a cave, a bat themed cave. They were standing in the goddamn bat cave!
Both Sam and Tucker started cheering about how they were right and how it was so badass to have a cave like that under your home and also that Bruce had to be Batman now. Completely forgetting that Danny used to have a lab below his previous home.
"Okay I give it to you guys. You were right but wha-" A breath of cold air left his lips and Danny whipped his head around. How had he not noticed a pool of corrupted ectoplasm? Ancients now that he was so close to it he could feel the stinking icky feeling power it radiated. Fuck did he end up trading a destroyed portal to the Ghost Zone for ectoplasmic waste dump of said realm?
"Guys!" Before he could say anything more a fucking hand, that was very familiar to him, reached out of the green pool of yuck and Danny of course being the closest got grabbed by it. His friends, ever so loyal, heard his yell grab him by the arms to pull him back only to get dragged with him through it.
"DANNY!"
-------
The Joker was on the loose again and Batman was in pursuit. Nightwing, Red Hood and Red Robin were attempting to cut off the escape route while Robin was with him.
Signal, Orphan and Spoiler were taking out some goons before they could join up with the rest of them.
The situation was getting dangerous. Whatever that mad man had planned it involved something that looked like a Lazarus Pit but it was in a Vertical position.
It was definitely grading on Red Hood's nerves.
They needed to do something and that fast. He couldn't let that mad man run loose any longer.
If everyone was additionally a little bitter and aggressive with the Joker because the rouge was preventing the entire family from spending time with their newest addition then that was not his problem to deal with.
-------
"FLY FASTER DANNY!"
"I AM TRYING TOO"
"HOW DID WALKER MANAGE TO DRAG US INTO THE GHOST ZONE! THERE WAS NO PORTAL!"
"WE GOT DRAGGED THROUGH A LEAKING GARBAGE DISPOSAL!"
"EW!"
Dodging the beams as best as he could while holding on to his friends Danny, in his ghost form, did everything he could to lose Walker while also trying but currently failing at not getting lost in the GZ. Maneuvering this place like this was definitely not easy. He recognised a way to Far Frozen but he couldn't take his friends there like this, so he took another sharp turn. Maybe if they could come across someone like Wulf, they could find an easy way to get back to earth.
"WATCH OUT!"
Making another turn he barely avoided a floating rumble as well as another blast from behind them.
"Guys we need a way out!" He all but screamed in desperation holding onto his two friends for dear life. All they did was explore the manor to find Bruce's secrets, they hadn't signed up for getting dragged into the Ghost Zone let alone get stuck without a clear way back.
"Over there is a natural portal!" Tucker suddenly pointed out and Danny took another sharp turn rounding more floating rock.
"Nu-hu! I am not taking my chances with that! What if we end up in Acients Egypt or Medieval Europe?"
"It's a natural portal, not a clockwork portal." Danny argued back, taking another turn. The portal was getting smaller.
"Sam! Come once we are out we can figure out the rest like always!"
"Okay, fine!" With a U-turn like stunt Danny course corrected and with an iron grip on his friends, rushing towards the natural portal that was closing.
Luckily they made it through before it could close on them, successfully losing Walker on the other side. But with the speed they had been going as well as the sudden return of normal gravity to his friends the three were not able to stop in time and once through the portal they ended up slamming into the body of someone, knocking them to the ground with them.
-------
The Lazarus pit thing was closing but right before it closed three teenagers flew right through it tackling the Joker to the ground.
"Are those teenagers?!"
"More importantly, aren't those Danny's friends?!"
One of his children screamed into the coms. This was not good at all. How did Danny's friends even end up here, what about Danny? If his friends were here, where was he?
Just as he was going to give the signal to move in to remove the three teenagers, the white haired one slowly got up and looked at who he had landed on and screamed bloody murder, alerting the other two teenagers.
"FREAKSHOW!"
"Danny!"
"Thermos!"
"TUCKER, YOU HAD THAT ENTIRE TIME?!"
"Not now, soup the clown!"
Stunned, the bat clan watched how the three teenagers stumbled off the Joker and pointed a thermos at the dazed clown. A light beam later and the clown disappeared from sight. The three teenagers slumped down leaning against each other.
"That's it, we are never going exploring in a billionaire's manor ever again." The white haired teen grumbled tiredly leaning against his two friends.
"Danny, you know we will do that again anyway." The boy countered, who Bruce recognised as Tucker. "Also you need serious therapy with that clown problem of yours."
"You can't scream 'Freakshow' everytime you see one." Looking at the girl between the three once again he recognised Sam. These were definitely his newest son's friends. And considering they called the white haired between them Danny, it could only mean that he was said, newest family addition.
-------
Back to the current situation…
Danny's two friends were still glaring at him.
"What are you planning to do with Danny now?"
"Nothing."
"Bull, we know you don't like Metas!"
It was good that Danny had such protective friends but Bruce was definitely out of his depths in this situation. He suppressed a sigh and held up a hand to placidate them for the moment. It already had been difficult enough to get the three back to the bat cave. When the three had realized their audience, Danny had looked ready to run while his friends and become very visibly protective. Overhearing the two friends whispering that a billionaire could never be trusted after all. It left him no choice but to drag them to the cave and get a somewhat unbelievable but apparently real, considering he saw the Joker get 'souped', statement from the three.
They had figured out his identity, Danny was a Meta with 'ghost' powers and apparently the Joker had died and gotten dipped into a Lazarus Pit often enough to be 'souped' in a specially made thermos.
"Since when?"
"Since when what?" Sam, apparently a very stubborn young girl, huffed back her arms crossed and holding herself like she was ready to throw a punch if needed.
"Since we know your Bruce? Dude, you left as alone in the Manor. We were bound to find some secrets." The boy, Tucker added now more relaxed and focusing on something on his PDA, Bruce wanted to confiscate just to make sure the teenager wasn't giving out his secret but was refraining from doing so.
Nightwing snickered behind him and he refused to look over his shoulder to glare at his oldest instead he let out a heavy sigh.
"Daniel James Fentom-Wayne." He felt a little bad at how the white haired boy flinched. "You and your friends got dragged by a ghost through the Lazarus Pit-" He ignored the boy muttering something about a garbage disposal leak. "-into what you called the 'Ghost Zone' also known as the Infinit Realms."
The three nodded, two still glaring at him. "The three of you then got stranded and hunted by the same ghost in the ghost zone. Only to finally escape through a natural portal to slam into the Joker."
Again they nodded. "You then proceeded to 'soup' him." He eyed the thermos Danny was still holding and had not yet handed over to him. "And it worked because he died as well as got thrown often enough into a Pit to count as 'ghost'."
"Well actually it's part ecto-entity -ow- Sam!"
"Ghost, yes he means ghost." The girl had just elbowed his son while the other boy took over talking. He could hear Sam hissing something along the lines of 'you don't do the talking we do'.
Bruce cleared his throat. "So the Joker is in this thermos now." It was a statement rather than a question. His second oldest whistled and he chose to ignore that.
"We can let him out, but I kinda want to give him over to Walk-ow-"
"He can be let out anytime." Once again one of his son's friends elbowed him while the other answered in his stead. They were very trying to protect something here and for now Bruce would let them.
"Since when were you a Meta, Danny?" He let out a sigh as he decided to change the topic. Clearly Danny's friends were stopping him from sharing certain information. He would have to try again later.
"Since-" Once again Danny was stopped from talking by his friends but this time he was giving them a light glare and whined. A second later two rings of light appeared around his middle and he changed back to the boy he knew.
"Magical girl transformation." One of his other kids snickered and once again Bruce choose to ignore.
"Since his accident." Tucker answered and as if reading his mind the boy continued. "Also the start of Danny's hero stick. Feel free to look up Phantom but I doubt you will get much without having ecto-infused equipment."
"If you plan on hurting Danny, Batman or not we will find a way to destroy you." Sam added glaring at him.
"Want me to lend you my tire bar?" This time he did look over his shoulder staring disapprovingly at his second oldest.
Turning back to the teenagers, he let out a suffering sigh, mentally noting down that he will have to look up what they mentioned later as well as probably contact Constantine. The three apparently took that as the sign that his questioning was over and started to talk among themselves again.
"So Danny, how does it feel knowing Batman is your new Dad?"
"Tucker."
"At least we know now that he doesn't bang billionaires. So Superman?"
"SAM!"
"Superman."
"TUCK!"
Bruce's eye twitched as he cleared his throat, gaining their attention again.
"Daniel, you're grounded." And after a moment of consideration in regards to the information he got from them and the conclusion he could draw from that. "You are also benched from any form of vigilante work you do until we had a talk about that."
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ivestas · 1 year
Note
so you know the gus boxcutter scene right? can I request some hurt/comfort of what happens after that? like maybe we help clean the blood off gus's face??
bloodied promise
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Summary: Gustavo’s face was splattered with blood, so you clean it off. 
Word count: 0.4k
Warnings: Blood, spoilers for season 4 ep 1 of breaking bad
Note: i didnt do any hurt/comfort cuz i didnt know how to implement it in this scenario :( but thank you for requesting! also, i love the gus requests, keep them coming, but i also do other characters, guys!! check the pinned post for the characters i accept :D 
“Fuck, Gustavo, why’d you do that?” 
It was a rhetorical question really, you were no fool—Gustavo hates liabilities, which is ironic considering Walter White is a walking, talking liability—but still, the brutality of it all, the goddamn spectacle of it, you can’t help but wonder if it was something else. 
Silent warning? A show of anger? Something deeper? 
But Gustavo didn’t answer, opting to ignore you and take off the bloodied hazmat suit in that silence. 
You glance at the open door.
Walter and Jesse were gone, alongside Mike. 
You were alone with him. 
Good, finally. 
Grabbing the kleenex box that was on top of one of the shelves, you snagged several sheets of tissue and waited for him to toss away the suit. 
Still silent, he turned to you. 
He lifted his chin, angling it to the side, staring at you. 
“Wish you were a little more careful, or, I don’t know, de-weeding the source of the problem,” you carefully lifted the tissues, carefully dabbing away the bigger beads of blood that decorated his face. “But do what you want. But, if push comes to shove, and I know he’s to do something to you, I’ll—” 
“Don’t worry,” he cut in with words that held no emotion—almost listless in its nature. “I already have plans arranged. All I need you to do is to watch quietly from a distance.” 
Quietly. Distance. 
Those two words cannot be applied to you, and somehow, you knew he was aware of that—some part of you just fucking knew he recognized what he asked was an impossible request from you, but… you’re always cutting past the impossible, right?
Carelessly tossing the tissues to the ground—an action that made you immediately assure Gustavo that it will be cleaned up—you grabbed another set of tissues and were rougher, dragging it across the smaller lines of blood that lined his strangely warm skin. 
You were absorbed in the action, cleaning his face with inexplicable care, one that made you realize later was strangely… intimate? 
“Okay,” you breathed, taking a step back, now acutely aware of how close you were—closer than you’ve ever been. “I’m done. We’re done. Your face is clean, Gus.” He didn’t say anything. You looked up at him now. “Gus?” 
He was staring at you, and for a moment, you thought something was wrong—did you miss a spot? Is there blood behind his ear, somehow—? 
He grabbed a tissue and with a silent tenderness wiped at your cheek. 
There was blood on it?
“You were too close,” he said quietly. “You’re always too close.” 
“I’m sorry.” You didn’t mean it. 
And again, strangely, you felt like he knew. 
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aprocessionofthoughts · 6 months
Text
In the lab
ectoberhaunt2023 day 4- zombie TW-body horror, medical stuff, Danny dies but not exactly how he does in the show summary- Danny's parents are there for the accident, and they'll do anything to make sure their son survives.
ao3 masterlist
What were they going to do? What could they do? This wasn’t supposed to happen. They weren’t supposed to… They never meant to…
What were they going to do? Something must be done. Their baby couldn’t be… Their son was…  They wouldn’t stand for this. Something had to be done. 
****
The Fenton parents stood over the operating table. They had their hazmat suits on and masks over their mouths.  They were going to do this properly.
Medical tools cycled through their hands with practiced ease.
They clenched their jaws as they poured ectoplasm into where there had been human tissue. 
They applied ecto-salve and wrapped bandages around blackened skin.
They worked tirelessly on combining ecto with tech so they could replace any missing…parts.
They would fix their son.
He would not be dead.
****
Why had Danny stepped into that portal?
And why, oh why, hadn’t they added more safety precautions to prevent accidents?
But he would be okay now. The body lying on the table looked whole. It looked like he was merely sleeping. The ectoplasm had restarted his heart, even if it was a bit slower. 
Sure, there would be some side-effects.
But he was their son.
They would do anything for their children.
Anything.
Even if that meant their son was now a zombie (because ghosts didn’t have heartbeats).
But what should they tell him? What should they tell Jazz who had been away helping at a summer camp?
Should they say anything?
Maybe it would be best not to. At least for now.
***
When Danny woke up everything ached.
He started to get up when he realized he wasn’t in his bed.
Before he could panic his mom was there.
“It’s okay, Danny. You had an accident. But you’re okay now.”
Danny looked around, he was in the lab. “I don’t remember an accident. Why aren’t I in the hospital?”
His mom’s expression tensed for just a moment before she took his hand reassuringly.
“The portal gave you a shock and when it turned on it left you ecto-contaminated so we kept you at home to reduce the contamination.”
“Oh. Okay.” he was still confused. He knew they had been working on the portal for a long time but had thought it wouldn’t lead to anything. “So, it works?”
His mom’s face lit up. “Yes! We installed some blast doors so no ghosts get through, but it works!”
“That’s great, mom.” he smiled. 
***
Everything was okay for a while. 
Until…
****
“Mom? Dad?” came Danny’s voice from the living room. “Something's wrong!” he shouted.
Maddie rushed from the kitchen.
Dany was staring at his hand.
His seemingly rotting hand.
He looked over at her with wide, scared eyes.
Maddie took a deep breath and forced a small smile. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s probably just the ecto-contamination. Why don’t we go down to the lab to check it out?”
She gets him down to the lab and gives him anesthesia to put him to sleep, then she calls Jack.
They both take a moment to observe. Danny’s hand seems to be rotting. 
Without saying anything they turn and collect more fresh ectoplasm.
They’ll fix this.
They’ll heal their son and everything will be okay again.
***
It keeps happening.
*** When Danny wakes up from the latest process and his eyes glow green, they suggest homeschooling.
This is a benefit because they can help get his grades up and monitor his body’s progress.
They encourage Danny to keep to his room. He wouldn’t want to contaminate his sister, would he?
It hurts them to keep Jazz away, but it’s only another month before she goes to college and then they can focus their attention on fixing Danny.
***
He keeps changing, his organic parts rotting away faster and faster and any tech they try to add now, dissolves.
They start incorporating ecto into his diet. It slows the rotting, but not by much.
****
Danny doesn’t look at all like he used to and he’s started developing strange powers.
That’s okay. He’s still their son. He’s just a zombie. As long as he’s not a ghost, everythings okay.
They'll keep helping him and hiding him from the world until they can figure out a way to make him look normal.
But it’ll be okay.
He was their son.
They would do anything for their son.
Anything.
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Text
Off Limits
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TW: Dark(ish) John B, smut, language.
SUMMARY: John B isn’t letting another minute go by until he puts you in your place, even if you ARE JJ’s sister…
WORD COUNT: 1900
*Requested*
Off Limits
You were absolutely not going to call your brother. Although he was only three minutes older than you, he would hold this over your head with absolutely every opportunity that presented itself. Everything from a stubborn pickle jar lid to the fact he could deconstruct your car's engine and put it back together in record time, would be used against you. Which was why you called John B instead. Not that he would have been your first choice, however, as he was always awkwardly distant from you. Where he was easygoing with Kiara, he was short and indirect with you, almost as if you were a bother, even giving you the name 'little poguie’' just to make you feel THAT much more of an exclusion. But to keep from spending another second on Figure Eight as you were driving back from working some event and in desperate need to be as far away from Kooklandia, you had no other option. Pope was nose deep in some assignment, Kie was working, and JJ was off somewhere either high or coming down from one, as you refused to call him anyway, leaving you to rely on him... 
The second the headlights found you on the curb, you could already feel his hostility. Picking up your satchel from the ground beside you, you didn't even try to meet his gaze as you moved towards your car. 
"Did you leave your vanity light on again? If you can't remember to do things like that, maybe you should just carpool with someone responsible enough to remember-" He berated with a sigh of annoyance while he arranged for the jumper cables towards your car. 
"Can you just jump me, John B?" His eyes found you from over the exposed intestines of your car’s lifted hood before falling back to the mechanics. Successfully placing the positives and negatives where they belonged, all you had to do now was wait. But it was a painfully agonizing wait from the quiet and a lack of comfort between you. 
"What the hell are you wearing?" He finally asked as his eyes cast to you in immediate judgment to the crop top and jean shorts most girls on The Cut chose as their daily ensemble. 
"I didn't have anything else in my bag and I had to get out of that uniform-" 
"J would kill me if I let anyone see you like this-" 
"Please! The airheads he brings back to the Chateau...I'm wearing a hazmat suit compared to them..." He hid his smirk before shaking his head. 
"He's gonna kill us both-" 
"You offering me your shirt, John B?" You teasingly batted your lashes. 
"Hardly." He narrowed his gaze. 
"Why do you even care?" 
"I don't , just annoying is all..." 
"Annoying?" 
"Yep. Like a little smudge on a pair of glasses or a rock in your shoe kind of annoying..." 
"That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me." He allowed his eyes to roll before noticing a set of Kooks paying close attention to the attitude making up your stance. A hand to your hip and a rise of your brow was enough for them to gawk at you and shift their cargo shorts with their new growth as he let out a sigh. 
"I have a shirt in the Twinkie...I think it's Kie's..." You nodded, finding any excuse to distance yourself from him, bending over the side of the van, before rising to find him behind you. 
"John B, what are you-" 
"You really want to know why I care?" 
"Enlighten me..." You turned to face him, sarcasm dripping from your lips, "God knows I won't be able to eat or sleep until I know why John Booker Routledge cares about my clothes-" You cocked a brow and crossed your arms as if squaring him off. 
"Because all I can think about is how you look out of them. And if I'm being completely honest...touching what's underneath-" You found sincerity for a moment before chuckling. Your banter was always born more from sarcasm and insults, but this was almost believable. 
"You got me...I almost-" Suddenly you were taken in by the loops of your shorts and pushed against the open door of the antique Volkswagen, his body pushing you against the cold metal. 
"Always tormenting me walking around in shit like this...about time I did something about it-" 
"John B-" 
"My little poguie...always so naive..." You sharpened your gaze as be scoffed once tracing over your breast, finding your nipple to harden with just the tease of a touch. 
"Not even wearing a bra...knowing you were gonna see me..." 
"Stop it..." 
"I don't think you really want me to...You just want to tell yourself you don't want this...because you know..." He led his lips along your jaw until they stilled at your ear. "Once I do, you'll be obsessed..." 
"You think too much-" His hand was suddenly in your shorts, having come to a rest over your clothed clit as he made vertical lines between those covered folds. 
"Try to deny THIS?" 
"It's not because of you..." You shot back as he pulled his fingers to his lips, closing his eyes to savor your taste. 
"No? Because it's kinda funny that you're not talking as much now...Is that all it took?" 
"You son of a-" He took hold of your jaw, producing a deep but slow French kiss that left you tormented between right and wrong. It was contradicting between your head and your heart as he brought you harder against him. 
"John B-" He directed your hand to his cock, strained in an erection beneath his pants, as his lips parted from yours to smirk. 
"Not from you...But you're gonna take care of it...for walking around dressed like this-for the LAST time without me doing something about it-" 
"JJ would kill you if he found out you touched me-" 
"Who's gonna tell him? Hmm?" He pushed his knee between your legs to apply the gentle tease of friction as your fingers grasped at his shoulders. 
"Are you gonna tell him how you let me finger you or made you come on his favorite seat? Or maybe how you took me from behind, begging me never to stop fucking you as I held your hair like a rein? Pounding into you-" 
"John B-" 
"Enough fucking talking..." He narrowed his eyes, lifting you into the back of the Twinkie and closing the door behind him. You were left on your elbows for the time it would take for him to entomb you within the vehicle, able to assess this moment for just a fraction of time before he was suddenly over you. 
"Who knows...maybe J will actually thank me for putting you in your place. Maybe making your throat too raw to talk and you too sore to walk-might get a medal from the County..." 
"John B-" His hand was in your hair, pulling you the distance to tease his lips. 
"It's time someone makes you responsible for acting like a brat!" He turned you onto your stomach, lifting your hips to be level with his own, before unveiling your panties to him. Snapping the fabric, he scoffed behind you as you turned to face him, your eyes finding his with your bottom lip taken prisoner between your teeth. 
"Please..." 
"You want me to be gentle for ya, poguie?" His hand wrapped in your hair as he used his second hand to undress himself. 
"You want me to make love to you?" You hesitated, the longing you'd hidden beneath that sarcasm and distance having revealed itself as the smokescreen it was as you craved him entirely. 
"Yes..." His fingers remained in your hair before his other hand pulled your panties to your knees. 
"I've had to keep my distance because he asked. It was the one rule he had...and I obeyed...I was distant. But you just kept fucking pushing me...and now..." He cocked his jaw. 
"I'm getting what I deserve and you're gonna fucking take it-" He was inside of you, the grip on your hair pulling you back to what would have been a clear bow forward. His motions were quick but fast, as he grunted and groaned behind you. 
"You sound so desperate, poguie..." He teased as you'd completely relented to him. If not for the way his cock felt embedded within you, than for the dominance he had that made you melt into submission. 
"Yes..." 
"You like being told you're desperate? Needy?" You nodded, a swift hand to your ass having made you jump with a gasp before you were pulled against him, his knees guiding you to the backseat as he lifted one of your legs upwards to deepen himself within you. 
"Then tell me you need my cock, sweetheart...I wanna hear you beg for it..." 
"Please-" 
"Sorry?" 
"JESUS! PLEASE JOHN B!" You belted as he smirked. 
"Desperate for me, huh?" 
"Yes!" You repeated before he moaned behind you, sloppy thrusts dictating his close release as you smiled into your hand, before feeling him turn you to face him, taking you into a straddle over him. His cock returned to you as slow motions were made of his guidance. 
"I've had to put up with the smart little mouth one day too long. So now...I think I've earned hearing you come...Don't you think?" You nodded. 
"Please John B..." His hand came to the back of your neck as he smirked. 
"Yeah? You wanna come for me? All over my cock?" 
You nodded as he sat back on his palms. 
"Then work for it, poguie..." You took control of the pace, riding him completely as he basked in the motions made beneath him. 
"Oh fuck!" You cried out as he chuckled before ultimately pulling you back into a stilled position. 
"My turn...this time...you don't stop until you make me come-" He guided you in lecherous motions in a murderous speed before you both climbed to that high. Names in pleas of desperation, skin to skin as the only echo in the break of those whimpers, and the rocking motion of the van leaving any who passed to deduce the desperate couple succumbing to their hormones and near two decades of tension. 
"John B!" 
"Come with me! I want to watch you come..." He ordered as you nodded, your mouth drawn slack and your eyes screwed shut to the rush as he was quick to following, burying himself into your chest, where he held you for a moment in disbelief. 
"JJ doesn't find out about it this-" 
"Why the hell would I tell him?" 
"Might be hard to explain the hair and the marks...the fact you smell like sex..." 
"Maybe I'll just say I hooked up with Rafe or Topper-" He brought you against him. 
"Don't even joke about that. Even if we don't tell him about this...you're still mine now, poguie...Got the cum on my cock to prove it…"
Taglist: @hopebaker @iovdrew @penny4yourthoughts @magnificantmermaid @pickingviolets @lovedetlost @trikigirl271 @maybankslover @slut4starkey @slvtherinseeker @obxiskewl @obxxrxfes @bluesongbird @slut-era @ailee-celeste @rafesbae
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clumsiestgiantess · 6 months
Text
Day 8: Puzzle
These are the true events that happened to an other-worldian named Wes. He was abducted during the invasion of giants donning hazmat suits. The full version of this sneak peek I posted a while ago.
It’s been almost a month since I announced this so if anyone here is still interested, read away! (@ndrogyny, @not-a-space-alien, @bittykimmy13, @itrenchcoati, @smolghostbot, @kindii, @agh-agh-agh, @hellbreakher, @littlescaryinternetguy, @endersyneart, @pablozqui, @waitisthatgt, @patrocolus3, @truegears, @jakersdaboss, @prettykittyfox, @yeerkkiller96)
(tw this stuff is torturous horror fuel; a lot of people will be punished/die unfairly)(these ‘giant’ people are the antagonists of the story for good reason)
Life had always been so monotonous that I desperately wanted something, anything to change.  I didn’t mean like this.  It had happened so suddenly I couldn’t even properly react.  Gigantic beings clothed in sterile yellow-white hazmat suits and large filtration masks stepped out through a deep abysmal tear in the sky.  How is anyone supposed to react to that? 
They were taller than any building or tree as far as the eye could see — emotionless giants that trampled right over streets and houses as if they weren’t there.  The invaders tore off roofs, bashed out walls of buildings, and shredded open cars.  People were snatched hundreds of feet in the air, writhing and screaming.  Cages awaited them in the hands of other gigantic beings.  
I only regained my senses after something nearly missed falling on top of me from above.  It landed with a heavy thud behind me, nearly startling me into a fetal position.  I flinched away and whirled around to find a body; shattered bones tore through their skin, having been ripped open by the impact of the fall.  It wasn’t even a gorey mess — barely any blood either.  The body had simply been impaled by none other than its own bones, head bashed flat against the well-kept lawn.  I turned and ran as another limp form collided with a telephone pole, jerking and coiling around involuntarily at the incredible surge of electricity coursing through it.  I’d dodged the strike of the pole, but the electric snap it made alerted one of the giants in hazmat suits.  I ran for a nearby car as fast as my legs could carry me, scrambling beneath it with the thunderous sound of impossible footsteps right behind me. 
My labored breaths echoed around the underside of the car as I looked madly around all sides of me.  The thick-soled boot disappeared.  They’d lost sight of me.  I took a shuddering breath of relief, keeping watch for anything else.  Only a moment passed before I watched a pair of legs my own size dash toward my hiding place.  A kid about half my age got down on his knees and reached beneath the car.  “Please!  Let me hide here wit-  AAAAAHHHHHHHH!”  I threw my hands over my ears as he screamed.  Fingers as thick around as his body curled into him, dragging him up and out of sight.  The shadow of his kicking legs slid down the street and over the roofs of nearby houses as he was lifted, the rest of his body engulfed in the shaded blob of a gigantic fist.  I watched the shadow for as long as I could until it was too distorted by the distance to properly see much of anything else.  All the while, the kid’s pleas grew fainter and fainter until they disappeared entirely.
There was a brief moment of deafening silence before a loud thud startled me.  Long black rubber coils slid beneath the car, creating an awful metallic groaning sound as the entire vehicle was torn off the ground and into the air before being launched across the street.  Those coils were actually large fingers, now reaching for me.  I could barely get up before I was pressed against the flesh-warm rubber of the thing’s gloved hand.
The beginnings of a shriek escaped my lungs before it was squeezed out of me by fingertips digging into my back and chest, pinching me with crushing pressure.  Briefly, I tried to wriggle and claw my way out, fight or flight instinct kicking in and immediately choosing the latter.  Then I looked down.  A dizzying drop was laid out before me.  No wonder there were bodies falling from the sky; people were so desperate to escape the giants’ crushing grip that they were throwing themselves out into open air, and a long, deadly fall to the ground.  
Breathing as shallowly as I could, I managed to make it to my destination without falling unconscious from the pressure on my lungs.  Briefly, I made out a plastic cage with a wire mesh door — just like the kinds used for shelter animals.  The cage was opened for a split second and I was thrown roughly inside, landing against something hard and warm.  Whatever- whoever I landed on groaned painfully and I quickly tried to get off them.  It wasn’t easy.  The cage swayed as the giant moved somewhere else to get another victim, sending me and the person beneath me colliding with the side of the carrier.  A sob wrenched out of them as I finally scrambled back.  A woman who couldn’t have been more than a few years older than me stared up at me from the floor.  Her chest heaved and her eyes moistened with tears.  She whined as we were again jostled around, gripping her leg as her eyes squeezed tightly shut.  I glanced down at it and gagged.  Her whole right leg was twisted nearly backwards.
My shock was interrupted by the terrified screams of new people falling into the cage.  I backed up against the wall and tried to take in the place.  Between the humid, rancid air and the various sounds of people giving up on life, it was a grim picture.  Dull slitted lighting gave the whole thing a hazy waking-nightmare-like feeling.  Beams of light occasionally landed on awful scenes that made my skin crawl.  There was everything from people scream-crying to people vomiting or wailing in pain to people who just sat in wide-eyed silence, staring at nothing.
The next time the cage door was opened, I noticed in utter horror that some people were waiting by the opening, throwing themselves out intentionally just to ensure their death over capture.  A dying shriek reverberated through the air as an unlucky person got stuck between the metal bars as they fell closed.  Only half of them landed back in the cage, spraying everyone in close proximity with blood and gore.  Their severed legs writhed for a second before spasming and falling limply to the ground.  
My eyes were torn away from the awful scene by a familiar sob that came from beside me.  I turned slowly, still in shock, finding the woman with the mangled leg staring at the bleeding piece of body in distraught and terror.  Her whole body shook violently, and the wet glint of tears slid down her cheeks.  I slid a hand down and reached for hers, trying to comfort her.  She flinched away from me, eyes darting back to mine.  Recognizing what I had intended to do, she dragged herself closer, wrapping her arms around me and clinging to my side like a scared child.  I didn’t blame her.  I hadn’t expected it, and shied away from her touch at first.  However, the ride was long and she refused to let go for anything.  With all the nightmarish events happening around me, I soon found myself returning her frightened grip.
The cage was so jam packed within only about a half hour that people were trampling and climbing over one another because there wasn’t enough room for everyone to stand.  Bones and limbs were torn up or broken left and right as they were stepped or fallen on.  Most of it couldn’t be helped.  The cage swung along to the giant hazmat suit creature’s gait with no particular care for any of us passengers inside.  The stench of such close quarters made everything all the more unbearable.  Thank god I managed to get a spot against the wall and the thin breathing slits.
The woman at my side clung almost desperately to me then, trying to sidle her hurt leg between us so it wouldn’t be torn up further.  “What happened?” I asked her, gesturing at her leg.  It was the first thing I actually said to her.  She seemed slightly shocked that I’d spoken, and glanced down at it before forcing her gaze somewhere else.  “I- I was trying to hide under a stairway.  One of those g- giant things grabbed me by my leg, but I held on to the railing.  When I wouldn’t let go, they-”  She took a shuddering breath, “They yanked and twisted it until I let go.”  I sucked in a shocked breath of air.  “I- I’m Tanya.”  “Wes,” I replied.
We sat together in a small huddle as things continued getting worse around us.  What did the giant hazmat creatures want with all of us?  Why did they want so many people?  Where did they even come from?
Unfortunately, we found out where they came from soon enough.  With the cage full, the giant that held us stepped back through the tear in the sky.  The transition made my hair stand on end.  For the brief moment we passed through, everything became deathly cold, and I felt like I was being choked.  It was like a whole other world opened up on the other side.  I wasn’t close enough to the cage door to see anything outside, but the temperature dropped like we’d stepped into an air conditioned building, and echoes of unnaturally loud voices and footsteps bounced off walls.  Along with the sounds of normal activity, there was an awful cacophony of begging, screaming, and crying, warped into one raucous sound by the sheer size of the large room.
The cage was roughly placed on a rolling belt of sorts, sliding down into some unknown space.  Moments later, everyone was thrown partway into the air by the momentum of our cage hitting another in front of it.  Soon enough, a similar chain reaction happened as another cage hit ours from behind.  People started talking again, even yelling to those in other containers, searching for someone they knew.  The spiking panic never quite went away though we were now left alone on the conveyor belt; it couldn’t.  There were still the awful tortured noises, and with every move the belt made to pull us further, the closer the sounds became.  
Theories were thrown around as to what would happen to us come the end of the line.  Some thought we would be cast into a furnace and burned for energy, others thought we would be dissected alive.  Neither idea made much sense — the beings would take everything, not just us, if they were feeding a flame-powered engine, and if they were dissecting us alive.. surely they wouldn’t need thousands of test subjects, would they?  Despite neither guess being very logical, people were too scared to doubt anything.  Along with theorists, there were others banding together at the entrance, trying to scale their way up to the lock and pick it open.
For the entire tenuous time we waited, Tanya and I had our own quiet conversation, which was mostly me trying to disprove the deadlier theories, and her nursing her twisted leg.  However, after what might’ve been hours, the cage in front of us was hauled away.  A brief glimpse of a large glass holding cell flashed in front of us before a cover slammed down over the belt tunnel, stopping our cage from rolling any further.  Anxiety prickled through the crowd as more screaming and begging came from the voices we’d heard in front of us.  Everyone got quiet after that.
At last, the screaming briefly stopped, but that was worse.  The cries had always halted just before another cage was taken.  We were next.  Everything was suddenly hauled into the air, cage door thrown open.  All of us went tumbling into the basin we’d caught a glimpse of earlier.  Tanya fell on me that time, but neither of us cared much at that point.  We just wanted to know where we were.  Some people were unlucky enough to land at a very wrong angle.  Of them, there were a lot of broken bones and dislocated limbs, but a very unlucky — or maybe lucky — few had landed upside down, snapping their necks or spines in the process — dying pretty much instantaneously.  One of them was miraculously still alive, though.  They wheezed out choked tears before a gloved hand descended from above.  This glove wasn’t a thick rubber hazmat glove, but rather a thin steril blue one.  
All of us watched stunned as the person was lifted up by the gigantic appendage.  Frankly, I wasn’t even fazed by the near-dead person; I was fazed by the gloved being.  No one had been able to see them before.  They were covered head to toe in hazmat gear.  This one wore nothing but a doctor’s mask and surgical gloves, as well as a crisp white shirt with a small logo in the right corner that I couldn’t read.  Besides the being’s impossible size, it looked exactly like a person.  She looked like a person.  
The giant woman examined the wheezing, writhing person in her hand with a near deadpan expression.  With one swift move, she pressed their spine between her fingers and squeezed, effectively snapping the person in two.  Gasps and whimpers rose up around me as we all watched her casually toss the body into something below the tabletop where we sat, then dust off her hands like she’d taken care of a piece of trash rather than a dying human being.  Afterwards, her gaze landed on us.
She replaced her gloves with a fresh pair, then reached into the container.  Everyone scattered, trying desperately to avoid the hand that had just killed so easily.  Some poor soul was swept away, and they became the new spectacle for the rest of us to watch.  The man was strapped to a swiveling platform tray and brought beneath a large magnifying glass, lit up and attached to the side of the table.  She examined him, tested his reflexes, drew blood with an incredibly thin needle — it was like being seen by a gigantic doctor.  His blood samples were stuck into a machine for a minute while the giant continued to inspect his health.  Finally, as the blood samples returned, he found the courage to speak.  
“P- Please!  What do you want with us?”  The giant glanced up at him briefly, then finished reading the test results.  Without looking up, she replied.  “I want to make sure you’re in good condition.”  Confused silence.  “You are, by the way.  In good condition.”  Jotting something down on her clipboard, she looked up at the man strapped to the tray in front of her.  He squirmed slightly under her gaze.  “Why?”  She shrugged, “Pays well.”  Her massive gloved hands reached for him and he struggled as she undid his restraints and placed him in a different container.  It was smaller than ours and made of metal.  The side was labeled ‘passing containment’; there was another bin beside it, but the label was blocked by medical equipment.  “Alright,” the woman said with a sigh, “Who’s next?”
Everyone still evaded her grasp to the best of their ability, but someone was caught in the end.  They were strapped down and examined in the same way.  Her willingness to speak with us sent up a lot of questions from the group, but the giant ignored all of them.  The only one she did answer was the question of the person on the lifted tray in front of her.  “What will happen to us after this?”  Quietly, she drew their blood and stuck it in the machine again.  “I don’t know; that’s not my job.  I just make sure you’re healthy when you come in.”  “What if we aren’t?” someone called from somewhere to my left.  She glanced at our container.  “You go into that bin.”  A long finger pointed out the second metal container.  “Again, I don’t know where you go after that.” 
The machine dinged, signifying the blood sample’s results were back.  The woman turned to check on it, then huffed and checked again.  At last, she turned back to her ‘patient’.  “Do you know you have lung cancer?” she asked them.  The guy sputtered, looking around as if he expected the question to be part of some cruel joke.  “Wh- What?  No I don’t!”  “Says here you do.”  He shook his head angrily.  “Well, it’s wrong.”  The giant shrugged, reading from the machine.  “I’ll run the test again if you like.”  After another few minutes, the results remained unchanged.  “Well, into the unhealthy bucket for you.”  “What?!  What does that mean?!  What’s gonna happen to me?!?”  He panicked, trying to squirm out of her grip.  “I told you, I don’t know.”
Every person was subjected to the same basic checkup, and were tallied down on whatever papers the giant had on her clipboard.  All of us had to take a turn.  All of us were afraid she'd find something wrong.  Tanya shook me gently, “What happens when she gets to me?”  There were a few people with broken bones or dislocated shoulders that had gone through the giant’s evaluation.  She’d slid their tray into a black box-looking device and sat them in there for ten minutes or so.  Some people took more time than others, usually the ones with more severe injuries took the longest.  When they came out, their bones were perfectly rearranged and rebuilt.  Others with more serious problems — illnesses and missing limbs — were thrown into the dreaded other bin.  Funny; I doubt many of those without certain limbs had that issue before they were abducted.  “They’ll probably just stick you in the healing machine,” I told Tanya quietly, “You’ll be alright.”
I let her go first.  I wanted to be able to see what happened to her; if anything happened to her.  The giant went to strap her to the tray like usual, but hesitated as she noticed her twisted limb.  Her eyes narrowed, scrutinizing Tanya’s leg as she held it between two fingers.  I held my breath the entire time, eventually letting it out in a relieved huff as the giant finally strapped her to the tray.  She hadn’t immediately put her in the reject bin, or whatever it was.  However, instead of reaching for the syringe to take blood, or the tweezers to move limbs, or even the small dull hammer to check reflexes, the woman reached into a drawer beneath those tools, hand retreating with a sharpened scalpel.  My stomach dropped and Tanya struggled in her bindings.  “Wh- Wait!  What is that for?!”  The giant bent over her, “I need a better look at your leg,” she mumbled, not exactly to her.  
With expert movements, she cut a long thin slit down the length of the twisted pant leg.  “Wait.. what are you-”  Swapping the scalpel for tweezers, the giant pulled her leg out of her clothing, holding it up to the magnifying glass pinched between the metal prongs.  Tanya cried in pain, and I had to turn away.  Her leg looked so much worse without clothing to hide it.  No wonder she hadn’t stood up since I met her.  Not only was it twisted backwards, it was jammed up through her side, bone nearly impaling skin.  The awful image of the person who first fell from the sky flashed through my mind.  
“Yeah I.. don't think this’ll work,” the giant mused, “You’d probably die of shock if I stuck you in the Patching and Reworking device.  I’ll just stick you in the unhealthy bin.”  I spun back around just as Tanya started begging.  “No!  No, please!  I- I’ll do it!  I’ll try it!  If I die, I die!  Just don’t-”  Her voice cut off in a pained sob as she was taken from the tray and lifted into the air.  “Just let her try it!” I chimed in as she was lowered into the bin.  The giant turned to me with a surprised expression, but it quickly faded into a pitying one as she reached for me.  
“Sorry, little guy.  If any of you come to me alive, I have to keep you that way.  I can’t do it if it might kill her.”  She explained it to me as if I were a little kid, her voice lilting and patronizing.  “You snapped that first person’s spine!  The hell are you talking about?!”  She froze for a split second, eyes briefly darting to the bin beneath the counter.  I could see it now that I was high enough in the air, and I immediately regretted it.  There were way too many corpses in there.  Like, really too many — more than the population of the whole town.  How many places have they been to?  How many people are here?!
I couldn’t even speak as I was strapped down and checked over.  I was given the all clear fairly quickly, but I wasn’t worried about myself.  Struggling in the giant’s hand, I tried to peer into the ‘unhealthy’ bin as I was whisked overhead.  There were a few people lying on the floor, so I couldn’t even find Tanya before my vision was cut off by the metal walls of the bin.  The last of the people in our group were checked; a few were reunited on this side, happy just to be together, others looked like they wished they’d jumped out of the cage while they had the chance.  
With everyone done, the woman pressed a buzzer on the wall and finished up her work, dumping all the collective dead bodies that had complied during our trip into the bin beneath the table with the rest.  Soon, we were taken out of the room by another giant.  All anyone could see was the underside of our carrier’s head as they walked.  Some people tried to ask what was going on, but we were all ignored.  Our bin was deposited in yet another room.  We couldn’t see anything beyond the ceiling high above, but we could hear the voices of other people like us.  There was constant yelling, but that was nothing new.  All I and anyone could do was wait for our turn to find out what was happening.  My thoughts were preoccupied, though.  The only thing I could think about was what might happen to Tanya and everyone else in the other bin.  They weren’t being killed, right?  I had to hold out hope that they were being brought somewhere that could treat them with another strange miracle machine, and not anything else.  Please don’t let it be anything else.
Not that I really had the privilege to worry about someone besides myself.  The assembly line reached our bin.  Ten at a time, people were scooped up and shoved into shelving that lined the wall.  I ran away from the oncoming hand like everyone else, but where could we even run to?  What was the point of delaying the inevitable?  
I was shoved haphazardly into one of the shelves, which turned out to be a normal-sized room, decorated with nothing but a few rows of cots and two vertical empty tubes that stuck through both the floor and the ceiling.  One small section with a sink and a toilet was blocked off by a curtain.  All the walls were an empty, clean white except for one.  The wall on the opposite side of the opening was made of glass so we could be viewed by whoever was passing by.  It made my adrenaline spike for no reason other than the uncanniness of it all.  A few others — nine others to be exact — were locked in with me.  The final white wall fell closed on us with a dull click.
We all stared around at eachother — took it all in.  There were three women, one of which sank to her knees and started bawling.  The other two just glanced around uneasily.  Three other guys beside myself stood around as well, two of them helped the crying woman onto a cot.  The others were just kids.  One of them was glued to the side of a man that hadn’t moved, and the last kid stood alone in the furthest corner.  She might be closer to adulthood, but there was something about her features that made her seem younger.  
It was about four days until our room opened up again, but I learned quite a lot in those first few hours alone.  The younger kid was only nine years old, and the man he refused to let go of was his father.  They were Jim and Darian.  I thought the mother might have gotten separated from them during the day we were abducted, but she’d actually separated from them long before then.  
The woman who’d cried throughout the whole first day had been taken from her wife and two kids, and she was fully convinced they were in the room next door.  After calming down from crying, she began to call through the walls.  Everyone kept trying to quiet her — the walls were soundproofed — but nothing could stop her from trying.  She was Lucille.  
The oldest person, the other man who’d tried to help Lucille up, had complained the most about her whining, and quickly began to resent her.  He resented everything, though.  That was Mr. Ferguson.  
The two other women were about my age, as well as the other guy.  We formed a sort of apocalypse committee where we hatched plans to escape.  Well, Brendon, Sylvi, and I came up with escape plans.  Emma, the eldest of us, shot them down.  We let it slide though, because she was basically the mom of the group.  She was practical, and reasoned with everyone, even Mr. Ferguson, without losing her temper.  No one knew why or how, but it was nice to have someone who wasn’t freaking out.  The older teen I never got the name of.  She hasn’t spoken a word since she was put in here.
Our first night, we claimed beds and Emma assured us that we would be alright here.  They’d checked our health and gave us a place to stay, which was a pretty clear sign they wanted us alive and well.  For what, no one knew, but at the very least we weren’t strapped down or kept in those awful cages.  Brendon determined that the best thing was being able to understand our captors.  His first plan of many was to try and guilt-trip one of the giants into letting us go, but everyone thought that was an awful idea.  None of them seemed very apathetic to our situation.  
While we argued over what we could do, the pipes rattled in the wall.  Our conversation came to an abrupt halt as water sloshed into a basin that jutted away from the tube.  Moments later round pellets scattered down the second tube, falling into a similar basin.  Everyone glanced around uneasily.  The food smelled unappetizing at best, and the way we were fed was so eerily similar to a small animal or pet that it made my hair stand on end.  Now that the idea was in my head, the entire room looked like a cage in a pet store, minus the cots and bathroom amenities.
Just as all of us began getting used to the new routine, things changed for the worse.  Again.  Mid-morning, shortly after the next round of water and pellets made their way through the tubing, the back wall was pulled away.  All of us raced to the opposite end of the room, pressed up against the glass.  A gloved hand reached in for us.  I was pressed tightly between the others, all of us desperate to get back.  
Despite our warnings against it, Brendon slid to the front to speak.  “When can we go home?” he asked, “We’re thankful you’ve given us a place to stay here, but we don’t want to stay!  Whatever you want with us — will you take us back afterwards?”  The human sneered, hand retreating from the room.  A moment later their head ducked into view to look at him.
“Sure, we’ll release you once we’re done with you.”  Before anyone could react, the giant’s hand reached in and dragged Brendon out into the same type of bin we’d been carried there in.  The rest of us were gathered up shortly after.  I don’t know what I expected to happen to me, but it certainly wasn’t what did happen.  I was stuck in a small room even for my own size, and given a ridiculously long exam.  Yep.  A paper bubble sheet and booklet exam where the booklet of problems was as thick as a novel and the answer sheet spanned several pages.  I started taking it when I was told to by some giant outside the room, but after a while, I got up and wandered around.  There was a metal box in one corner that I hadn’t investigated.  Turns out, it was a fridge with concessions.  A suspicious amount of concessions.
Hours in, I’d taken about a quarter of the test out of boredom, when at last I heard another voice.  It was a giant walking by.  “Wait!  Hello?” I called, hoping they’d stop, “When is test time up?  When do we finish?”  I didn’t plan on taking the entire exam, which consisted of math, grammar, science, mechanics, illusions and puzzles, almost anything you could think of to solve.  It was way too much for something I could care less about.  “Your time is up when you finish,” came the giant’s response.  “I..  Do you really expect me to finish all of this?  This’ll take days!”  I heard an annoyed huff.  “Then you better speed it up, then.  I’m not allowed to let you out until you’re done.”  Just to spite them, I filled in all my remaining multiple choice answers as C, and any free response ones with whatever shit I could think of to write the giant overseers.  It still took me a while just to do that and chuck all of it into the bin that slid out of the wall once I answered everything.
I was met with an extremely unamused look when I was let out.  The giant above me lifted me up between two fingers, frowning at me.  “Really?  You didn’t even try.  That’s going to mess up your results.”  I tried to say something back, but I could barely breathe, and all I could do was wheeze.  “Oh!  You can’t..  Here.”  Their hand opened, letting me fall into a palm the size of a small car.  “Th- Thanks,” I said weakly.  “I would've tried a bit harder if you’d let me have a fucking break.”  The giant shrugged, bouncing me up and down with the large movement.  “You could take as many breaks as you wanted; you just had to stay in the box.”  
He ended up putting me back in my new room.  It wasn’t that much of an improvement.  No one else was even there.  I guess none of them had figured out that they could just bullshit every answer to get out early.  Remembering Brendon’s idea, I tried one last brief conversation.  This was a giant I hadn’t met before — one that had the decency to stop crushing me to death, which was still awful, but it was better than the others.  It couldn’t hurt to try.  
“Hey!” I yelled before the wall was closed, “When do we get let out of this room?”  When will you be done giving us stupid tests?  Why are you even-”  The giant’s face darkened, and I quieted anxiously.  “W- What?”  My voice echoed almost fearfully in the empty space.  “Nothing,” he responded with a quick shake of his head, “I just...  Don’t count on going back to your world anytime soon.”  With that, he shut the door.
“Wait!  WHAT’S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?!”  It was no use shouting now.  The soundproofed walls would’ve kept him from hearing anything.  I sulked in silence until someone came back.  Sylvi was tossed back in a hurry almost four hours later; she’d been fighting through the two-handed grasp the giant had on her, caught inside the tightly enclosed space between their palms.  She spat a few curses before the wall was sealed off.  A shuddering breath escaped her lungs as she knelt on the floor where she’d been tossed, and I was scared that she’d start crying.  She snapped out of it the moment she spotted me.  “How did you get back so early?” Sylvi asked, quickly rubbing her face while she was turned away from me.  I explained to her how I decided to finish the test; she had a good laugh at that.  
The next to come back was the youngest kid’s father.  He paced back and forth the entire time until his son came back.  He was the last one because he’d actually been trying his hardest.  It took him a day or two to actually finish everything.  Again, Brendon, Sylvi, and I all argued over why they’d given us that test.  Even Mr. Ferguson offered his opinion.  The consensus was: we had no fucking clue.  Abducting probably hundreds of thousands of people just to test them didn’t make sense.  That night we all managed to get some decent sleep with everyone returned back.  It’s a good thing we did.  The following day we were all taken out again.
One by one, we were all stuffed away into a large container with others in the same row.  I flinched as someone started sobbing behind me.  Lucille rushed over to a woman huddling two kids close to herself and threw her arms around all three of them.  The other woman — her wife, presumably — pulled her beneath her chin, kissing the top of her head.  My heart wrenched in my chest knowing they’d be separated again.  Memories of Tanya hugging me close threatened to make my eyes water, but I shook away the pain.  She’s being healed up.. somewhere else.
Our group’s destination was a gigantic room about the size of a stadium, yet it was still dwarfed by the giant-sized room it sat in.  We were all dumped in and sealed up inside.  I tried searching for anyone I knew from before all this, but there were way too many people to pick out any familiar faces.  A few billboard screens flickered to life around the room minutes after we were left alone.  Welcome to your first assessment! a voice cheerfully greeted us from the speakers, In this trial, your goal is simple: leave the room before time runs out!  
First an exam, now an escape room?  Along with a way out, there will be numerous surprise chests scattered throughout the room, which reset every time they’re opened!  You can win all sorts of cool prizes!  Examples of them flashed across the screen, showing more comfortable amenities, private rooms, better meals, medication, and so on.  What caught my attention was the prize of choosing a roommate.  Sure, I could pick someone I knew, but if Tanya was somewhere worse off, I could at least get her to my uncanny, but otherwise tolerable place of living.
But watch out! the automated voice warned, Some of the boxes can spring punishments instead of prizes, so choose wisely!  An animated stick person opened a chest onscreen during the warning.  Moments later the cartoon effect of being zapped with electricity made their skeleton flash briefly across the screen.  
The introduction video seemed so innocent it almost didn’t seem real, like this was all something pretend.  But don’t worry; none of the punishments are lethal, so try your best!  Despite the obvious dangers, I swore to myself that I’d try it at least once, just to see.  Remember, get out before time runs out, and good luck!  With that, the entire stadium rumbled to life. 
Giants herded everyone into different hallways that had opened up around the stadium.  People started yelling, getting separated from others they found in the crowd.  I was corralled down a hall where I knew no one, but it didn’t matter much to me.  We’d be put back in our weird rooms at the end of it all, anyways.  
When we finally stepped out, the automated voice said: Trial Start!  And the whole place lit up.  Smooth grey walls shot up from the ground in random patterns, creating a labyrinth of hallways and cutoffs.  I stared in horror as people rushed past me, driven by the timer flashing above our heads.  Everything had clicked in my mind.  This isn’t an escape room, it’s a maze — a maze of incentives and punishments for comparatively small living things to navigate for the gigantic scientists watching everything just outside.  No wonder we’d been tested.  No wonder we were kept in uncanny pet store rooms with little fucking food and water dispensers.  We’re lab rats.  All of us.  And no one’s going home.
My existential crisis would have to wait, though.  I’m on a time limit.  I wandered the plastic halls searching for the exit before remembering the potential prizes.  I didn’t want to give the scientists the satisfaction of learning some sort of lesson, but at the same time, the prizes were hard to pass up.  The next time I came to a dead end in the maze, there was a small box at the end of it.  I hesitantly stepped up to the podium where it sat and threw the lid open as fast as I could, bracing myself for something to happen.  Nothing.  Looking down, there was a small slip of paper inside.  GOOD FOR ONE MODIFIED COT it read.  Damn.  Not the one I was looking for, but I’d definitely take it over electrocution or whatever else had been rigged.  
When I came across the next box, I was nearly shoved to the ground by someone wanting to get to it first.  I watched from against the wall as they flipped open the lid and reached inside.  This was followed by the noise of a mechanical lock. “Shit!  Not again!”  The person who shoved me strained to move away from the box, but their arm was locked into it by a metal clamp.  A punishment in action.  I’d heard people yelling about them, but I hadn’t seen one actually happen.  It didn’t seem all that bad.  
On my search for a different box, I came across the exit.  There were a good deal of people already outside, but I wanted to try one more box, so I turned and headed back into the maze.  I opened the next box expectantly, only to be blasted in the face with a bucketload of freezing water.  Damn the psychology of this maze bullshit.  I’m going back to the exit.  What direction was that again?  
I glanced up at the timer; five minutes left.  Surely I could find it by then.  As I raced back through halls I might’ve been down before, I caught sight of a group of three panicked people.  Two of them were desperately trying to get the other’s arm out of one of those traps.  If it didn’t unlock soon, they’d have to leave them there and make a run for the exit.  That’s if they knew where the exit was.
Thankfully, I managed to find it with a little more than a minute to spare.  I didn’t know what would happen if I was in there past the time limit, but I didn’t want to find out.  The second the timer ended, a wall slid up from the floor of the maze and blocked the opening.  Those of us who’d gotten out were congratulated by the automated voice and herded into another bin before being lifted away.  Through the hazy plastic, I could catch what the punishment was for not making it out.  
The whole maze had shifted.  Walls had gone up everywhere so the interior of the box was filled.  For a brief and terrifying moment, I thought they’d filled the box completely, crushing anyone still left inside.  Then I noticed little pockets of space.  They couldn’t have been bigger than six by six foot squares.  Anyone who didn’t make it out was forced to sit in a little claustrophobic box within the maze.  Who knows when they’d be released.
I was lifted out of the container a while later and scanned by some sort of machine before being placed back in the room.  I’ve never been more relieved and repulsed by a place in my life.  The others were all put back too.  Well, almost all the others.  Mr. Ferguson hadn’t made it back.  Each person shared some sort of story about what they saw except Lucile, who sat on her bed in teary-eyed silence.  Emma’s story was the worst.  She saw someone — still sopping wet from a water-based punishment like mine — get an electrocution punishment back to back.  They’d spasmed and hit the floor unconscious.  She’d rushed over to help them, but had to leave them behind.  
“They were still breathing, thank god.  But I couldn’t do much else for them.  Hopefully they woke up before time ran out,” Emma said with a shudder.  “We.. we’re being experimented on, aren’t we?” Sylvi asked, glancing around at everyone, “This is far from over.”  “We’re just lab rats,” I added solemnly.
Everyone was in a pretty gloomy mood after that, but right before dinner, the wall behind us opened up again.  A jolt of anxious fear spiked through me.  I thought we were being dragged off to another test.  “Any of you want to cash in a ticket?” the giant asked.  I forgot about that.  Digging into my pocket, I pulled out mine and hesitantly raised my hand.  “Alright, give it to me.”  Their outstretched hand slid into the room and everyone backed off.  From as far away as I could, I passed them my slip of paper.  The giant stuck it into some kind of reader, then nodded.  He reached for something below what I could see, and brought up a whole bed.  “Which one is yours?” he asked, nodding to the cots.  I pointed it out and he replaced it.  
“Anyone else?”  Jim lifted his hand hesitantly.  “I- I have a lone room, but I..  Can I bring my son with me?”  The giant narrowed his eyes in thought.  “Hmmm…. You won it, so I guess you can decide.”  Jim nodded happily, “In that case, you can take my ticket, and I’ll bring my son.”  He handed off the ticket and both he and the little guy were taken to a different room.  None of us ever saw them again, and frankly, I don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing.
Mr. Ferguson finally returned as the rest of us were going to bed.  Brendon dared to ask him what had happened, and he mumbled under his breath something about having to repeat an entirely different maze before he was allowed to leave.  He only spoke one other time to ask where Jim and Darian were before silently going to sleep.  Speaking of, that night was the first night I’d slept longer than an hour at a time.  My new bed was no joke.  It felt like a normal mattress from the beds back home.  It probably is.  They probably stole it.
The next day was apparently a rest day.  Brendon, Sylvi, and I tried again to come up with a plan of escape.  Even Emma got involved.  She was beginning to doubt her own idea that the giants wanted us safe.  They wanted us alive so we could be experienced with.  “What if we just refuse?” I asked the group, “I did that for the test and all the punishment I got was a stern talking to.”  “Or they could pour boiling water on you,” Sylvi interrupted me, “or fucking blind you.  That’s how they punished me in the maze.”  I groaned, “But that was when you were playing their game!  What if we decide to just sit out?”  “Somehow, I don’t think they’ll let us do that anymore,” Emma said solemnly.
“I’ll try it.”  Everyone turned to the person who’d spoken.  It was the teen who previously hadn’t uttered a word.  She slowly glanced between each of us like she was confused why we were all staring at her.  “I’ll refuse to do the next test.  I don’t really care what the giants will do to me, anyways.”  We all glanced worriedly at eachother.  “A- Are you sure you want to try that?” Emma asked, “They.. can do a lot worse than what they’ve been doing if they wanted to.”  She nodded, and it was settled.
The following day we were all dragged off again.  Another maze awaited us, only this one was filled with visual puzzles.  Another automated video explained the different systematic sections of the game, but I could hardly concentrate.  Again I searched the waiting room for someone I knew.  There were less of us today.  I recognized two people from my town, but I didn’t know them well enough to bother going up to them.  When the gates opened, I stayed towards the beginning for a second, watching the teen.  She stood unmoving at the entrance.  A giant told her to go in, but she shook her head; I watched her speak to the giant, then yell at them.  Their fist slammed into the ground beside her and I flinched.  Miraculously, she remained still.  
In one swift movement, the giant picked her up by her arm and dragged her inside it himself.  I dashed behind a corner to watch how things played out.  Despite being literally manhandled, she still refused to move from wherever the giant put her.  The only way she’d complete the puzzles would be if the giant did them for her, and that would defeat the purpose of our little experiment.  “Do the damn puzzles you little bitch!” the giant growled angrily, “Or I’ll put you in an experiment that you can’t refuse to participate in!”  A forced experiment?  They have those?  Briefly I zoned out, thinking through what that might look like, when I heard a loud yelp.  The angered giant had snatched up the girl rather forcefully, taking her away to some other place.
I tried to complete the test as fast as possible, hoping to see what happened to her, but the puzzles became too complex to speed through them.  The first part of the maze was a mirror maze, similar to the ones in funhouses.  That would end, and I’d be given another one.  About five mazes in, I realized they all had the same layout, and rushed through.  My sixth attempt, some scientist must’ve realized I’d solved the puzzle because the next room was completely different.  Similar little mindfucks were presented to me throughout the day.  I was starving by the time I made it out.  When I was placed back in my room, there were food pellets waiting for me.  It was the first time I enjoyed eating them, though their taste was still horrific.
All of the others were returned one by one.  And finally, lastly, the teen who’d refused.  I still don’t know her name; I don’t think she’s given it.  Everyone was anxious to hear what happened to her, especially since she was sopping wet — a sign of a few of the punishments.  All of us crowded around her as she relayed her story.
“It-  They put me somewhere different,” she told us, “I refused to do any of the maze so they put me into one where I.. I didn’t have a choice.”  She choked on her last sentence, taking a shaky breath.  “I.. I killed someone.”  Her whisper sent chills down my spine.  I could feel the hair on my arms prickle against my clothing.  “It wasn’t my fault!” she exclaimed suddenly, “They-  The test, it- it made me!  I-I couldn’t save them!  I tried!  I really tried!”  “What are you talking about?” Mr. Ferguson asked.  “What.. What do you mean you killed somebody?” Brendon asked quietly.  “They.. It’s..  There’s this deep empty basin,” she exclaimed.  “The giants tell you that you have to climb out, which is easy enough; there are footholds in the side of one of the walls.  Then they…”  She took another breath and Emma sat down beside her, offering some comfort.
“They put another person in there with you, right as they announce that the trial is starting.  The other person.. they were covered in chains and weights.  They could barely move.  They were angry and confused, and I tried to explain what was happening, but then the water started coming in.”  She was silent for a bit.  “They were weighed down.”  Her voice grew quiet again.  “They started drowning.  I- I tried to help them up the wall, but they were too heavy.  Th-They begged me to help them, b-but I couldn’t lift them!  They- I-  I had to let them go!  Don’t you understand?!  I would’ve drowned too if I didn’t drop them!”  The girl broke off and started wailing.  Emma hugged her close with a darkened, faraway look.  The rest of us stared around at eachother in horror.  There were worse punishments.  A lot worse.
Throughout the week we were tested over and over again, except for that teen.  Every single day she was put in a basin with another person chained up.  Every single day she had to watch someone die in front of her, knowing she couldn’t save them.  One day, she didn’t come back.  No one wanted to ask why, but Lucille did.  “Oh,” the woman who’d come to get us responded, a bit shocked she’d been spoken to.  “The one in the Basin Trials?  She died — drowned trying to save someone she couldn’t.  It was an anomaly case.  Usually she gives up on the victim eventually, but that time she didn’t.”  She shrugged, “Our hypothesis is that she might’ve known them, but we can’t be sure.”
I don’t know how long it’s been since everything started; time seems.. I don’t know.. blurry?  It’s not definite anymore.  Now time is based on whenever food and water get delivered, and when the day’s trial happens.  Sometimes it’ll be just you alone in a room — tested physically, mentally, or both.  Other times you have to work with or even against others.  I don’t know what I did to attract attention to myself.  I think it’s because I keep solving the logic puzzles too quickly, either that or it’s because I helped someone with theirs.  Whatever the reason, suddenly I was brought to a completely different test.  Alone.
The ever-present automated voice told me what to do while I stood in an empty room.  It was uncanny.  I hadn’t had time alone since.. I don’t know.  The screen in front of me showed the rules to the game, which was basically Tetris.  I had to stack and clear rows of differently-shaped blocks without letting them hit the top.  If I did, I would be punished.  I’m familiar with the punishments by now, not that I’m used to them.  They’re still awful.  
When the room opened up, a slim glass box sat in front of me, as tall and long as a gymnasium, but only thin enough to fit two people shoulder to shoulder.  The pieces would fall in from the slot at the top, and I had to control where they fell in the box with a joystick and button console in front of the giant glass box.
I stood at the controls, expecting the voice to announce the game’s start, but it was still silent.  Suddenly, a back door opened, and three people were shoved inside.  They all stood at the bottom, where I had to stack blocks.  “Wh- What?!” I gasped, looking around for a giant supervisor — there was usually at least one.  That time, there weren’t any.  “I…  Why are there people?”  The automated message again stated how to win.  “I know how to win!  B-But there are people down there!  What do you want me to do, kill them?!”  The only response I got was: Trial Start!
A large block about four feet tall slid down from the ceiling, and everyone inside panicked.  They couldn’t see me on the other side, but they knew someone was controlling things on the outside.  That first run was too confusing; I just piled all the blocks in one long line at the opposite end of the glass box from the people inside.  One of them was significantly slower at moving than the others — I had to be wary of her.  The game ended rather quickly as I stacked a pile up to the ceiling.  The moment I did, electrical currents ran through the floor, briefly burning me from the inside out.  I spasmed, falling onto the controller in front of me.  Gasping for air, I glanced up at the people trapped between the glass.  Did they know what was happening to me out here?
I stumbled over, reaching for the glass.  My heart jolted in my chest as I got a good look and the designated victims for the first time.  The slower one.. it was Tanya.  I wasn’t sure at first; I hobbled over to the glass beside her, putting a shaking hand against it.  It really is her.  Her leg had healed all wrong, and she couldn’t even bend it.  “Tanya!” I yelled for her, but she didn’t react.  You’ve started a losing streak! the automated voice stated cheerfully.  The more times you lose, the harsher your punishment will become!  Let’s start another round!  “I- I don’t want to do this anymore!” I shouted at the machine, “This isn’t right!  I…  Why do you want me to kill them?!  This isn’t an experiment; this is torture!”  Trial Start!
Again, I stacked the blocks in a single line up to the top.  I didn’t know what else to do.  Obviously, I wasn’t going to hurt the people trapped in there, but there weren’t many alternatives.  For my next punishment, they’d upped the voltage.  A shriek exploded from my lungs as waves of electricity tore through my skin, leaving parts of me burnt.  I lay on the ground, wheezing for ragged breaths.  If I keep this up, I’ll die.  If I don’t keep it up, they die.  What if..  What if I just try building around them?  I can still complete rows above them, I just have to get the right pieces to suspend the rest of the blocks.
The next time the machine said Trial Start I put my plan to work.  The designated victims couldn’t hear or see me, so I had to herd them with blocks to somewhere safe.  It was hard, but I managed to build a small space for the three of them to huddle in while I filled up the rest of the board.  I began scoring points.  Enough of those and I can secure a win, breaking my nasty streak of losses.  However, my plan began failing after only a few minutes.  The tight space I’d left was surrounded in layers of Tetris-like pieces, sealing off air from getting in.  Around ten minutes after enacting my plan, the victims began banging on the glass walls of their accidental prison, shouting that they couldn’t breathe.
In a panic, I let the pieces stack up and ended the game.  I hadn’t won, but at least everything would clear away.  All three people collapsed thankfully to the floor as their airtight box vanished.  Relief briefly calmed my heart before I was thrown to the ground by another large shock.  It hurt so badly I myself couldn’t breathe, and when it finally ended, I cried out in fear and staggered upward.  I couldn’t see.  Everything was dark and swirling like my eyes were closed, but I knew they weren’t.  A minute or two of cursing and crying, my vision finally cleared.  A smile involuntarily spread across my face, relieved that my vision had returned.  Trial Start!
I wanted to violently bash whoever was controlling this game with a fucking baseball bat.  Desperately, I tried to form another plan, trying to build a staircase out of blocks so the people inside wouldn’t be stuck at the bottom, but keeping up an even staircase was hard to do without accidentally stacking pieces a bit too high.  Even then, it was pointless.  Tanya couldn’t get up the makeshift stairs in time thanks to her damaged leg.  The others did try to help her, but only after they’d gotten themselves out of the way first.  I was only a few pieces away from losing again.  Fearing for my own life, I quickly spammed the buttons on the controller.  Rows cleared.  Blood trickled down them.
I won the game with enough points, but the game wouldn’t end.  Looks like there’s still a hazard left on your game board!  Your game will continue until it’s cleared!  Tanya was still on the board.  She was the only one I spared.
She lay on a flatter part of the stacked blocks, hands over her head like she expected to be crushed at any moment.  I tried to avoid her as long as I could.  The game just kept going.  Twenty minutes in, and she just sat there staring at the glass, confusedly watching piece after piece fall around her, but never on her.  All that effort, only to hit the top and lose.  “Wait!  Wait, please!  I won!  I got almost double the points you wanted me to!  You didn’t say I had to kill everyone to end the-”  My open mouth frothed out saliva as I was electrocuted again.  I spasmed and shook and foamed at the mouth like I’d gone insane, then passed out.
Blindingly bright light gleamed directly into my eyes when I woke up, making my head throb.  A moment later, it was blocked out by someone sitting above me.  “T- Tanya?  Did.. I save you?”  She sobbed, gently lifting my torso up so she could hug me.  “Oh god, it was you out there.  I.. I wondered why the controller kept trying to keep me alive.”  I tried to speak, but only coughed.  Tanya lowered me back down.  “Where are we?” I asked faintly.  Trial Start!
Adrenaline spiked through my veins, getting me up in an instant.  There were glass walls all around me, two of them much further away than the others, like the inside of an ant farm.  A shadow passed briefly overhead before sliding somewhere else.  “What…?”  My stomach dropped as a larger-than-life Tetris block thudded to the ground behind me.  Oh.
I glanced back at Tanya and she gave me a heartbroken expression.  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.  “I…  I think we’re going to die.”  Tears welled in my eyes and I brought her close.  Another shadow fell over us and I dodged it, dragging Tanya along with me.  I tried climbing the side of some blocks like stairs, but she couldn’t do it.  Tears slid down her cheeks and she shook her head.  “No.  No, I’m not letting this happen!” I yelled frustratedly.  Rushing back down the block, I hoisted her into my arms, and climbed up the side of it carrying her.  Her eyes widened — tears stopping briefly as she stared up at me in shock.  We managed to bide our time for a bit longer that way, but eventually my arms gave out beneath her and we landed in a painful heap.
“Wes,” she addressed me in a defeated whisper.  “Thank you, but you have to leave me.”  “N-No, I-”  “Please!  If.. If there’s a chance you can make it out of here…”  “No, no, no, there’s no point!  Get out and do what?!  Come back here tomorrow to crush more people to death to earn points in some sick fucking game?!  I just-”  My voice cracked as a shadow slid over us.  “I want to stay with you.”  
I was pulled forward suddenly, lips suddenly locked with mine.  Tanya’s breath was hot on my face as she kissed me with a passion that could only be brought out in someone’s last moments.  Darkness gradually surrounded us as the lights above were blocked by a descending object.  I returned Tanya’s affection, sliding her up until she was pressed against me.  My eyes squeezed shut as the last of the light died out.  I focused on the two of us — bodies close, breath synched, mouths locked on eachother.  Then it was over.
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half-deadmagicperson · 9 months
Text
Blame Part 2
Behold a random self indulgent sequel to my DannyMay Day 25!
Art by the amazing @duchi-nesten
This was made partially cause of Pham shenanigans, but also cause of @duchi-nesten giving me GrayGhost brain rot and also for agreeing to draw any smooches we write sooooo
Words: 737
Pairings: Danny Fenton-Phantom/ Valerie Gray
Warnings: none unless you don't like kissing
"Why do they always blame me?"
   The words through Val for a loop. Here was the normally goofy, charismatic, and sometimes annoying ghost boy sobbing. She never knew how much the bad press or the Fentons' words got to him. 
   His ghostly sobs echoed into the night, but to Valerie at that moment they sounded almost human. Phantom's face was tinted green and raw from his tears. He must've been crying for a while then.
   At that moment the Huntress sighed and sat herself down next to him. Hesitantly, she pulled him into a hug. Even through her suit, he felt cold to the touch.
   "Are you okay?" She asked simply. Her words only caused Phantom to choke up more. He struggled to try to bring words to his mouth before finally slowing his breath.
   "I'm a monster, Val," the words came out as barely a whisper. If this were a few months ago, Valerie would have wholeheartedly agreed. But now, here she was sitting on a roof comforting her former enemy.
   "Phantom, you aren't a monster-"
   "But I am. It's my fault Amity's in this mess!" He cried.
   "It's not your fault that most of the ghosts have been evil. That's their fault. They chose to be evil."
   "It's my fault there's property damage! People got hurt, Val. I might not be evil, but I'm responsible. Plus the Fentons would say different."
   "It's not your fault they're here. It's not like you have control over the portal!" Valerie countered. Phantom's expression sobered.
   "But it is my fault. I turned the portal on." 
   Valerie looked at him in mild shock. What did he mean by that? There wasn't a way to turn the portal on from the GZ right? Phantom turned his gaze back to the ground and pulled away.
   "It was before freshman year. My- er the Fentons had just finished the portal. I took my friends to show them the lab, and Sam wanted a picture. We were stupid. Stupid teenagers left unsupervised. I put my HAZMAT on while Sam grabbed her camera."
    Valerie stared at him. No he couldn't be. Similar hair style. Similar face. No, that's impossible.
   "I went inside. I tripped over a stupid wire. I died. Turns out the 'on' button is on the inside."
   A gasp escaped the Huntress. Phantom died in the portal. Danny had a lab accident before the beginning of freshman year. Phantom's cousin Dani was a halfa. Why couldn't Danny be? Millions of thoughts and words flowed through her head, the main one being.
   "I could've hurt you!" Valerie's eyes started to grow wet, "I could've killed you so many times."
   Phantom, no, Danny looked at her in confusion. Val's tears turned into a fit of laughter.
   "What's so funny?"
   "It's..just…so ironic!"
   "What's ironic?" The clueless boy responded.
   "That I've been shooting at you for like a year and been crushing on you at the same time," her laughter consumed her while Danny processed what she just said.
   "You…liked me?"
    "Um, yeah? I mean we did date for a bit!"
    "Ummm I think you're confusing me for that Danny Fenton kid. Also didn't you break up with him?"
    "Yeah I did, to protect him from you!" Valerie's smile grew brighter.
    "So you still like m-Fenton?"
    "Of course I still like you!"
    "Um, that's good to hear. I think FENTON really likes you as well. But, uh, I think you're wrong about me being him. Cause why would the son of ghost hunters be a ghost. Haha…"
   "Ya know I've had a lot of opinions about you Ghost Boy, most of which have been incorrect," she places a hand on his cheek, wiping his tear away, "but I think for once, I've got the right one."
    Valerie leaned in closer to Danny. His toxic green eyes gazed into her hazel ones as he moved to meet her. Their lips joined in a union of a year of longing. A cool feeling spread through Valerie, tears streaming down her cheeks. A bright light flashed and the cold turned into heat. Once their breath ran out, the pair temporarily split. Valerie gazed down into the beautiful blue eyes of one Danny Fenton. Yeah, this was right.
   The two spent the rest of their patrol time snuggling on the roof and taking in the view.
"Ya know it's kinda funny how you broke up with me to protect me from me!"
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bluerosefox · 2 years
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Rather Not
So this idea came to me as I writing the part 2 for that DC/DP Ra’s Summoning the Ghost King/Twin Damian and Danny idea (still working on it, like 70% done with it) and my brain wondered off onto those ideas of ghosts not liking being asked how they died.
And then it came up with this and I wanna get it out before it takes over my mind.
Danny/Phantom is a rather chill ghost when it comes to humans/mortals
Even when they ask “How’d you die?”
He waves it off (with an nervous laugh) and tells puns instead or avoids it. BUT he did say the first time people asked not to ask a ghost that question, its very rude.
However he said it in such a teenager way no one really takes it too seriously (you know in a nonchalant way but is actually meant to be in  “please don’t ask ghosts this, its rude and I’m serious”)  
Some people think he doesn’t know or he died embarrassing and doesn't want to admit it
However cause Danny doesn’t get mad or defensive about it, people keep asking. (Bonus points if they also asked Dani who just shrugs and says she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know asking a ghost how they died is basically taboo/ highly insensitive because she was CLONED a Halfa not MADE naturally)  
Eventually it all bubbles and spills from the constant asking
Maybe Danny was already dealing with a stressful day, from school to his parents to the random ghosts attacks, just everything has been bad and Danny isn’t in the best of moods.
So when some people come over to ask again, all smiles cause they think its a funny thing between Phantom and them, they aren’t ready.
The moment the words “No really Phantom, how’d you die?” the room suddenly feels like its below 0.
Its so cold ice is forming, the air is cold to the point living people can see their breathes and a chill and shiver run down everyone’s spine.
Then they notice Phantom.
Danny hadn’t turned around yet but they tell his body is stiff, hands clutched, his shoulders are tense and his hair is wisping even more than normal. Then he slowly turns and even a bone chilling shiver runs down everyone's spine whose watching.
His eyes are glowing, even more so than normal. They are neon and yet they call see the rage in them and because he’s floating just a tiny bit above, he’s looking down at them.
He’s hard frowning, and his eyes are narrow like he’s a second away from yelling at them. But he doesn’t.
Instead he speaks, calmly but everyone hear the hard yet haunting almost static tone in his voice. He wants to yell, scream, bellow his rage but instead he’s like the calm waves before a storm, their only warning, their last warning.
“I know I haven’t said much about this but I want you all to listen to me and listen well because I refuse to repeat myself on this. I told you all not to ask a ghost this question and yet you still tried with me.”
“I get it, I’m not like other ghosts who’d fly off the handle if you try asking them this but I have TOLD you not to ask and I am two seconds away from doing the same. Its not funny, its insensitive and nearly taboo to ask this question to a ghost. Even other ghosts don’t ask ghosts how they die, and most of time you get afterlife long enemies if you do while knowing this rule.”
“We ghosts are no longer bond by flesh, but we do remember pain. We ghost are basically echoing memories of emotions because of our core’s, our souls that are no longer in a body. We still feel pain even as ghosts, and when you ask a ghost how we die its like we relive that pain all over our bodies over and over. We HATE being reminded how we died.”
“So NEVER ask me how I died again... Because I’d rather not remember dying from full body electrocution.”   
And just to drive the warning home, Danny allowed his body to show the Lichtenberg scars he kept hidden (head-canon, ghosts can show or hide their death marks at will, Danny always unknowing/subconsciously hid his until Clockwork mentioned it and showed him)
Due to his hazmat suit they can’t see all of it but the marks that crawl up nearly his entire neck and up his face only stopping below his eyes, his eyes still glowing with pure held back rage makes everyone flinch. 
Once satisfied with the silence around him, Danny takes a breath and floats out of the room, the ice and cold fade along with him, he needed to calm down before he starts icing people.
No one asks him that question again.
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chiliiscereal · 2 years
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What I want for ROTTMNT season 3
———-
. The same structure of episodes
I liked when they were 14 minutes long, with 2 parts to each episode. I liked that each episode was different. It was enjoyable! Nickelodeon should keep it that way (except for finales of course)
. April and Donnie
Their whole dynamic (platonic or romantic) is so well written and it makes me laugh every time. I want more moments with them! I want shenanigans, hazmat suits, failed experiments, the works!
. Christmas episode or beach episode
I just want them all to be happy tbh. Low stakes, very sweet episode. Maybe see Donnie’s fear of beachballs. Maybe one of the turtles (probs Raph) was scared of Santa as a kid or maybe he goes through a whole episode trying to figure out what to get everyone. It would be so enjoyable.
And of course the boys would get new swimsuit outfits. And for the Christmas episode they’d spend the whole time in matching Christmas pajamas.
. Why Todd is considered a villain
He was considered “as bad as they come” by the gargoyles, and I have a feeling it wasn’t just a comedic mistake. Todd also has his own forge and survived a KRAANG APOCALYPSE! How?? Surely there’s secretly another side to him.
. How the turtles met April
Seriously, we never learned how they met her. I just want a sweet turtle tot episode where we see how their dynamics are formed and Aprils parents thinking they’re imaginary friends. I want sneaking around, splinter not realizing they’re friends with a human, popsicles, baked treats, and lots of trouble. ALL OF IT!!
. More Señor Hueso
I just love how he interacts with Leo. Maybe we get to meet his son who is supposedly going to be out through “bone college” because of all the pizza they buy. I bet he and Mikey would get along.
. Them fangirling over the fact that Lou Jitsu is their dad
I feel like they accepted it too easily, you know? I want questions, I want to know what happened to Splinters mom, and I want Hamato Clan lore!! I would also like to see how splinter adjusted to raising the boys and coming to terms with being a rat. It had to be hard. Maybe even find out what happened to the rest of the Hamato clan!
. The evil dentist
I just know we were gonna get an episode where he tries to go after Raph’s tooth. It was hinted at near the end of his episode. Raph maybe hides it from his brothers and tries to handle it on his own but they eventually figure it out and help him and he learns he doesn’t have to do it all on his own.
. No Venus and Jenika
I’m sorry but Nickelodeon needs to explore other dynamics and find a way to make their introduction feel natural if they’re actually going to do it. I’m sorry and I know it’s unpopular but I think we’d all hate it if they did it wrong. If they’re introduced it needs to be the right way and after Nickelodeon stops ignoring the existing family.
.MORE CASSANDRA MORE CASSANDRA
I just think she’s cool 😎
Also her and Raph would be good sparring buddies I believe. Also she should get anger management with Dr. Delicate touch
. ALL THE MISSING EPISODES WE WERE DENIED AND BARON DRAXUM AGAIN (being a lunch lady)
^ it speaks for itself :3
I’d also think it would be funny if he made friends with a little kid and he accidentally landed himself a job as a babysitter and he takes it cause he needs more money. He finally let’s go of the yokai vs. humans shenanigans
AND WE NEED THE EPISODE WITH MIKEY BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TURTLE TOTS
. Also I’d love an episode where someone (either jerk blond girl or Dale) accidentally gets a picture of the turtles without realizing and they have to try to get the phone and delete it
. April denying that she wants a prom date and the boys all try to find her one. Then when they don’t find anyone and they can tell April is disappointed they all show up for her in human disguises
. The day April gets accepted to that college and the turtles have to cope with the fact that they now won’t see her every day
. More witches
. An episode on Karai and how Shredder came to be through her side of the story
And last but not least:
An actual season 3!!!
Nickelodeon, wake up and see how amazing this show is!!
(If you guys have any other ideas or things you want to see please let me know because funsies)
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sarah-sandwich · 1 year
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for the tag game Put in the work 👀
Former nasa au my beloved <333
When I first thought this up, I thought Harley working at NASA would be the main setting of the story, but then I was like hE ShOuLD bE a sINgLe FaThER like this detail wouldn't disrupt the entire structure I had planned lmao
The first half goes back and forth between past (having his daughter, Hazel, working at NASA, meeting Spider-Man via twitter, etc.) and present (moving to NYC after getting laid off, trying to connect with teenage Hazel, and meeting Peter). Then the timeline syncs up and it's all in the present. Which worked out surprisingly well! I was worried about how to get in everything about Hazel and NASA without having to write another mammoth 100k+ story 😅
I'm SO CLOSE to finishing this. Most of the ending is already written, I just need to connect the scenes and clean them up. There are like... MAYBE 2 and a half scenes that still need to be written. MAYBE. It's mostly transitions.
Unfortunately my dumb brain is like,,,, close enough! Let's call it a day gentlemen.
Anyway, have an excerpt!
Ten Years Old
Frozen on the couch, Harley watches the television in horror as Spider-Man prances all over the launchpad and the rocket Harley spent the past several years painstakingly designing, constructing, and testing. He worked his ass off just to get his designs on the board.
His ideas. His rocket.
“I’ll kill him.”
“Don’t worry, daddy. Spidey’s gonna lock him up.”
Hazel is standing on the cushion beside him hopping from foot to foot, enraptured by the chase. He should make her leave the room in case something traumatizing happens, but he can’t look away, he can barely breathe as years of rigorous work teeter on the edge of destruction.
Spider-Man shoots a web onto one of the solid rocket boosters and Harley grits his teeth as he swings around and plants a foot in the face of some dude on a hoverboard wearing an obnoxious orange hazmat suit.
He looks like an Among Us character. Completely ridiculous. Not a threat. Certainly not worth risking his rocket.
“No, baby,” he says calmly, “I’m going to kill Spider-Man.”
“Dad!” Hazel whacks his shoulder. “He’s the good guy!”
“He’s going to ruin everything.”
Harley doesn’t care why a New York vigilante is in Florida. He doesn’t care what the bad guy’s beef is or what he was going to do. If Spider-Man ruins his shot at space, he’s dead.
Long years of sacrificing his time to study, work, and attend class, the extra hours he put in every night after putting Hazel to bed to ensure he’d be good enough to be put on the rocket crew as a fresh-faced college graduate, the stress born from teetering on the edge of poverty—if anything happens to that rocket, it’s all up in smoke. Time he’ll never get back. All that effort, wasted.
The moment Spider-Man swung onto the launchpad chasing hoverboard guy, the big wigs in charge called off the launch. Now it’s a matter of waiting to see if his rocket will survive the encounter. If his rocket survives unscathed, they can reschedule, but if it gets so much as dinged, NASA is going to want to do a full inspection to make sure it’s still in perfect condition, and if it falls…
Well, if it falls Harley is going to have to do something extremely unpleasant to New York’s favorite web spinner.
The camera zooms out as Spider-Man springs away from something hoverboard guy threw. The something, a tiny black dot, smacks into the fin of Harley’s rocket. Then it detonates in a ball of fire and a burst of thick black smoke.
Hazel screams. The rocket tips. His heart stalls in his chest.
Then he’s on his feet, hands in his hair, and Hazel is yelling and jumping up and down on the couch, yanking on his arm as the rocket tips and tips and falls…
…and Spider-Man catches it.
There is a moment, a suspension in time, where Spider-Man holds an 8.5 million pound rocket over his head. A moment where Harley’s heart and lungs cease and everything goes still. He loses awareness of Hazel’s nails clawing into his arm and her voice, shrill and vibrant, in his ear.
For a moment, there is only Spider-Man, the dark smoke billowing around his calves, and the rocket held over his head. Two RS-25 engines rest on the ground and the rest of the build towers over him, tiny as a bug below it, and he holds it.
Then the launch vehicle stage adapter breaks loose and the entire top half of the rocket cracks off and hits the ground with enough force to shake the camera. It cracks like an egg.
Harley buries his face in his hands and sinks into the couch with a miserable moan. The TV drones on while a small hand rubs comforting circles on his back, but he can’t watch anymore.
“He got him, daddy,” Hazel says less than a minute after Harley’s rocket shattered without ever getting the chance to fly. “Spidey caught the bad guy.”
Yippee.
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oldworldwidgets · 4 months
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i have been THINKING about miss ginny lately especially since the new 76 update dropped, so heres a lil doodle my friend did of her!!! + her if she was a worm on a string, of course, and some in-game screenshots.
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i am also using this as an opportunity to dump some lore under the cut :3 its a lot of words so prepare urself
ginny lore be upon ye:
Her full name is Virginia May Adler, but you can just call her Ginny. She's a 25ish (who's counting?) Appalachia native. Though she grew up in the Toxic Valley after she and her dad left the Vault, she now resides at her cozy camp in The Mire. She uses big guns, is covered in scars from all her forays into garbage dumps, and loves stuffed animals and Nuka-Cola Quantum more than most things.
Ginny is very bubbly and smiley. Human embodiment of :D. She’s the type of person that smiles at other people the very moment she sees them, just out of instinct. Seriously, she’s smiled at more Blood Eagles than she can count, and not because she can’t count very high. She can (INT 15 mf). Don’t worry – despite his hatred for the Eagles, Beckett still thinks it’s sweet.
Yeah, yeah, she’s dating her bartender. He moved right into her heart when he moved into her camp. He’s for sure very awkward about what he wants (her) and skirts the subject every time she brings it up, but she knows good and well by the way he settled himself into her camp (and the sweet things he says to her cat Krypto when he thinks she isn’t around) that he’s in this for the long haul. Plus, once they finally mow down the top-ranking Blood Eagles and save his brother from his otherwise-certain demise, he finally allows himself to open up to and fall for her.
She and Aries from Blue Ridge Caravan Company are inseparable. They met in Big Bend Tunnel. She and Beckett were hunting Blood Eagles, he was protecting his shipment from them. His dark, existential humor caught her attention immediately and, on the spot, he enlisted her into Blue Ridge.
She’s a scavver by trade, and a damn good one too. She picks up and stashes everything she sees, then determines its value only after she makes it home. She’s always excited and eager to buy, sell, and trade with anyone who asks, especially now that she's with Blue Ridge.
Since Beckett works the bar even when she’s away, he always catches word of the best weapons caches, armor drops, and any other rumors of note that might interest her. Only after a firm but loving warning and a promise that she’ll return to him before the street lights come on will he give her what she’s looking for. Oh, and the information too. WINK.
She’s also craaffttyyyyyy. She can make anything you could possibly need and more, just as long as she has some duct tape, a few loose screws, and a cartoon cloud of smoke.
She is terrified of heights. She also used to be terrified of animals, especially the ones with paws and claws as opposed to the ones with pincers, stingers, or poison glands. This changed after her dad came home with Krypto, her cat. She hated the thing at first, but when she lost her dad... Krypto was all she had left of him. Now, they can't live without each other.
She frankly does not care about radiation damage, diseases, mutations, etc at all. It’s inevitable in the life of a scavver. She’s probably had tetanus more times than she can count, but it’s never been a match for a disease cure or some brahmin milk. Plus, she kinda thinks it’s cool.
She used to be a natural blonde, but all the exposure to all the [gestures widely] in the wasteland (primarily radiation, but no one’s ever seen her in a gas mask or a hazmat suit – even in the ash heap region. The best she can do is pull her neck bandana over her nose when Beckett gives her his best sad eyes) eventually broke down all the melanin in her hair, leaving it white. Aside from all the junk that somehow always finds its way back in there, of course.
Beckett is the ONLY one that’s allowed to call her Gin and she only allows it because he’s a bartender. He also loooooves screaming “WEST VIRGIIIIINNNNNNNNIIAAAAA” to the tune of country roads (obviously) when he needs her attention and they’re not in the same vicinity, hence him sometimes calling her West Virginia.
After her long scavving or traveling days, Ginny likes to sit in Beckett’s lap on their front porch while he takes her hair down out of the updo of the day and picks out all the sticks and leaves. If a leaf falls from the tree above them, even if he has every opportunity to catch it before it lands in her almost-clean hair and ruins his hard work, he won’t. He'll do anything to keep her there just a little longer.
OKAY THANKS FOR READING LOVE U BYE
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Dream SMP Recap (September 9/2022) - The Sam Bucket Finale
Bad and Sam decide to put an end to the mystery once and for all and take a journey down to the halls behind the Egg Room.
Who is Sam Bucket?
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VOD LINKS:
BadBoyHalo
Awesamdude
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[Archive of Previous Recaps]
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- Moments after the previous Sam Bucket stream’s ending, Bad and Sam are outside Bad’s mansion. They need to find out what’s happening, but there’s power in numbers. Sam suggests they find other people to go with them
- Bad’s got an idea. He can go talk to Foolish. They decide to meet back up in front of Puffy’s house
---
Later, after weeks have passed, Sam and Bad meet back up after the sun goes down. Bad didn’t manage to get Foolish to come with them. Sam didn’t get anyone either.
- They start to doubt themselves. Maybe they should just go by themselves
- Bad is hesitant about going down by the Egg. Sam gives him a special hazmat suit to keep safe with. As they go to the Egg, they discuss whether to try and kill him or just to run
They get to the Egg Room gate.
It’s open.
- As they slowly walk down the stairs, Bad remembers that Foolish did mention something about going to look at the Egg, offhandedly. Bad thought he was joking
- Bad is shocked to see that the Egg has disappeared. Sam and Bad freak out
- Sam runs off and Bad examines where the Egg used to be. Did Foolish actually get rid of it like he said?
- Bad turns around to see Sam Bucket staring at him
- Bad backs into the halls behind the room attempting to get away. He stumbles across the hidden passageway that Sam had discovered
- He walks through the passageways, pursued by Sam Bucket. Sam Bucket backs him into the ritual room. Bad manages to slip away and runs through the halls, past the house
And there, before the red light in the wall.
Where before there was empty space...
Is the Egg.
- Bad scrambles away into the house, hiding in a corner. In a chest he finds all of the journal entries and reads through them. Bad realizes that Sam Bucket found the Egg...but then how did Bad find it?
- Sam Bucket appears in the house. Bad finds a trapdoor in the corner and climbs down to escape. Beneath the house, Bad finds a room with more journals. These are full of gibberish, except for one
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Journal Entry R429
I’ve done it I’ve gotten rid of all of the eggs rivals up until now. I feel...wrong about it somehow, but can it be wrong to do what the egg wants? It can’t right? Certainly doing what the egg needs IS the right thing isn’t it...
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In the next chests, Bad finds more intact entries
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Journal Entry S503
We’re so close now, the egg almost has what it wants. And then I’ll get what I want. I just need to recruit a few others to help me. It’s easier now since most of the ones who were getting in the way are gone...
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Journal Entry X780
One last thing to build. I need to get everything ready and set the stage for the final performance. Once I’ve done this the egg promised me.
We’ll be reunited again...
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- There’s a picture on the wall of a dog named Francis, and another journal open below
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Dearest Francis...
Not a day goes by I do not miss you. I cannot wait to see you again... when the egg brings you back to me...
You’re a good boy Francis...
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Journal Entry D679
How could I be so blind, my friends, the ones I care about. How could I betray them... the egg, the egg is a liar I must resist somehow.
I must. I must. But francis...
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Journal Entry I613
I can’t let this go through as planned. No matter what it can’t be worth this. All my friends...
Francis I’m sorry I can’t...
I need to find a way to free myself of the eggs influence...
I can only resist it for a few minutes a day now. There must be a way I have to find one before...
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Jounral Entry K073
I did it. I found a way to resist but I’m not sure how long it will last. I can’t believe how big of a fool I was.
I wanted to believe it so bad, I wanted to believe the egg could bring you back to me but it can’t.
The egg is nothing but a liar and a monster and it cannot be allowed to get what it wants.
If any of my friends ever finds this, know that I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry for what I was going to do...
Iron, iron is one of its weaknesses. But it doesn’t work forever, even now I can feel the egg trying to claw its way back into my mind. I’m going to bury the egg again. I’ll bury it so deep that hopefully no one will ever find it again...
Maybe that will make up for a small part of what I’ve done. I need to hurry though, this flimsy bucket on my head won’t last forever. Forgive me Francis, all I ever wanted was to see you one more time...
- Sam Bucket
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- Bad figures it out. The Egg promised to bring Francis back. Iron was the Egg’s weakness, that’s why Sam Bucket always wore a bucket over his head
- Sam Bucket appears in the chamber. Bad talks to him. He’s realized now that the buckets were his way of warning them. He was collecting the buckets to protect them
- With his collection of iron blocks, Sam Bucket and Bad go to block off the Egg with iron
- They block off the first and step into the Egg Room to reach the second exit
- As they seal the second entrance, Sam Bucket closes himself off, placing the iron between him and the exit. He throws his bucket to Bad and seals the barrier, locking him away from Bad
- Heartbroken, Bad leaves the tunnels, thinking he’s lost a friend
- When he gets to the top, though, behind him is standing a familiar face
Sam Bucket: “Sam Bucket!”
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Down in the new Egg Chamber, past the barriers of iron...
There’s an obsidian portal.
It lights up.
The portal is open.
---
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moonfurthetemmie · 2 months
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Untitled.MP4
Previous | Next | First (with warnings)
Part 3
June 10, 20XX
Mercury is the only one in the office. He seems calm, but anxious.
"Jasper is out getting samples for me, so I'll try to update the record quickly. The stranger-"
A sudden banging from off camera causes Mercury to jump, and turn. He grabs something from under the table. The banging continues, with voices that sound like they're coming from the other side of a door, but Mercury doesn't move. Eventually the noises stop, and after a few minutes Mercury turns back to the camera.
"Fuck, they've been doing that all day-" His voice is quieter than before. "Okay. The stranger is gone. We haven't seen hide or hair of them. None of the others have said a word about them; not that we've tried asking. They all try to attack us and get us out of the hazmat suits, to 'join them', if they see us. Also, we've discovered some vectors of transmission, as well as...symptoms? Yeah, fuck it, I'll call them symptoms, this is definitely a fungal infection."
Mercury pulls out a smartphone.
"Firstly, transmissions. The main vector seems to be air. These mushrooms give off a number of spores that will attach to and grow on just about anything. So far no one's been infected this way, but looking at the state of the manor, I'm sure it'd only be a matter of time without our hazmat suits."
He holds up the phone, waiting for the camera to focus. It's a picture of a hallway, covered in reddish-orange film. Large mushrooms sprout from the darkest corners, and mold creeps along the floors and walls. Along the walls are square-shaped areas of mold, spaced regularly apart, that seem to be letting through a smidge of light. Presumably, these used to be windows.
"We think blood is also a likely vector, as well as skin contact," Mercury says, lowering the phone. "Before Paraiba was infected, she said Silver and Koroit went in a room alone together; and that was before Koroit start growing mushrooms. Paraiba wasn't sure what had happened, but she said Silver also came back with bite marks on their shoulders that were bleeding. Silver apparently said that Koroit had similar marks that weren't from them. Fungal STD! Isn't that fun."
Mercury shudders again. "And as mentioned previously, Koroit had some interest in Zircon prior to all of this starting. Most of us were pretty sure they'd had--" Mercury does a few fake coughs. "--Intimate relations. It wouldn't surprise me if that's how Zircon got infected. All of that, plus the fact that the stranger had gotten Koroit alone for a while prior to her acting weird, it's likely that the stranger is the one who infected Koroit."
Mercury leans back in his chair, arms folded. "But if that's the case, and blood is a transmission vector, why hadn't Obsidian shown any symptoms? The stranger got to him well before they did Koroit, and it didn't take long at all for Koroit to start growing mushrooms on her. Obsidian was fine, though. I'm almost tempted to find him and ask."
He is silent for a moment, then shakes his head.
"Eh, whatever. He can rot. He deserves it."
Mercury picks up the phone again.
"Now, symptoms. The symptoms of an initial infection appear to be white, itching patches on skin, lack of coordination, and confusion. After that the coordination improves, the white patches spread and begin to grow fruiting bodies, and what seems to be an all-consuming desire to spread their sickness. Which is even scarier when one of the transmission vectors is blood, and you already live with someone who’s known to force himself on people.
“Honestly, I'm praying to whatever gods are out there that Obsidian actually is immune, because if he suddenly decides he wants to spread this nasty shit, my office is not going to be safe no matter how much we reinforce the door."
Mercury sighs and sets the phone down, tapping his finger on the desk. "Let's see...I don't think there's much else to report on. We've made progress with an airlock, but neither Jasper nor myself are engineers, so we can only hope it's enough. But I can rig up a shower thing to decontaminate our suits when we come in. I've already created a solution that can kill the fungus--which, mind you, is incredibly toxic to all things and is in no way to be used as a cure or treatment--so all I need to do is make a little shower thing. I might have it drain out into the hallway; the fungus and mold isn't quite as bad right out there just yet, so it shouldn't make too awful a sludge. Right? Right."
The video ends.
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doctor-amazing · 9 months
Text
Mycology
I'm getting a bit twitchy. It's night, or morning, or whatever you'd like to call it. I'd figure out what to call it, myself, except for the fact that my phone's long dead and I can't seem to keep my sense of direction about me.
It's no help that the moon's not out, or the clouds are thick, or maybe I'm just seeing things again.
I think I breathed some of it in back there. That'd explain it. That'd explain a lot, actually.
It was fun, at first— the spelunking, that is. It's one of those things that always sounds intimidating, and awful, but with the right company, anything's a great time. I had my best friend with me, and we'd parked a loooong way down the road from a famous cave that'd been cordoned off.
Supposedly, there were some sort of bioluminescent fungi that lived in the caverns, and they were being studied for some fancy glow-in-the-dark dye.
I need to sit down for a moment. Catch my breath. Telling this story is exhausting, yet I haven't said a word.
The fungi did glow well enough, in any case. We'd passed through the scientific base camp at the mouth— mostly abandoned, since apparently the company was waiting for a grant to finish their work, and that was our opportunity to get into the cave before security came back when there was more to guard.
The only signs of the occupation were two empty tents left standing, and a rack just inside the cave with a few full-body hazmat suits.
It's getting a little hard to move through the forest, now. Half of it's the wood getting thicker, but the other seems to be some sort of fatigue I can feel deep in my lungs. I'm having to huff a few raspy, staccato breaths for every one I'd have to take normally. I'd be more worried about it, but it's been a few hours of walking, so maybe it's just the dust kicking up.
The cave itself wasn't terribly hard to navigate by the light from our phones, and there weren't any crazy drops of tight turns, as luck would have it. We saw rope left haphazardly strewn around some junctions, where perhaps they had seen fit to map elsewhere, but had given up nonetheless.
Eventually, there was a sort of blue glow ahead— at my own insistence, my friend and I both snapped off our flashlights, and we let our eyes adjust to the light of the plant life ahead. Actually, can you even call a mushroom alive?
Turns out, it's not just the dust. I was right about breathing it in, after all. Do you want to know how I know I'm right?
I can feel it.
It's pulsating in my veins. Throbbing. Reaching. Waiting.
It's not patient, and it knows that it's already won the game that was afoot. The one I had no idea I was playing.
The reward for it is a sickening crack that reverberates throughout my body, and after a moment of excruciating pain, one of my arms goes entirely limp. My scream breaks the silence of the woods, but after the moment has passed, I realize my arm is completely numb except for some sort of lingering pinpricks and soreness.
A phantom pain, of sorts.
For a second, it looked like my friend had kicked up a helluva dust cloud from the stone floor, but then the coughing began.
My eyes watered, and I couldn't stop from blinking over and over and over again in a futile effort to get whatever the hell was in the air out of them. I stumbled, ran, and got a few nicks and scratches from whichever walls I got snagged on.
Eventually, enough distance had passed, and with one foot in front of another, I made it near the entrance, in one of the side passages. I looked around, called my friend's name, and then noticed something was off— a flashlight beam pointed at the ceiling, from the bottom of a drop.
I wanted to fucking vomit on the spot.
My eardrums feel like they're splitting apart, but the woods are as silent as ever. I can hear it— them, thrumming inside of me.
It's running through my bones, tearing through my flesh, making a home in my marrow and crevices.
I've scratched my arm to bloody ribbons. I can't tell if the itch is in my fingernails, or the mess it's made.
I figure I must be losing it on several fronts. The thrum of the thing inside of me is unbearable, and it makes me want to rip my ears off and grind the stumps of cartilage on my cranium into paste.
The... rot.
It's screaming at me.
The message, I still can't discern.
There's a pressure somewhere on my back, near my shoulder. It's hard to pinpoint where, but it's getting worse. Almost painful.
I'm still heading through the woods, but my prospects aren't good— I haven't seen the trail in hours, and it's not getting any lighter.
Looking over the cliff, my friend's body was splayed out like a ragdoll at the very bottom. I'd never seen that much blood in my entire life, and the stone piercing his skull glittered crimson in the light of his phone.
I stepped back.
Then took another step.
Then another.
I couldn't stop running, rushing past piles of rope, rushing past the hazmat racks, rushing past the tents, and into the brush beyond.
There wasn't an ounce of sense to my flight, and I lost track of the path immediately in the state I was in. At some point, I tripped, yelling in surprise, and slammed my outstretched hand into a stone on the forest's floor. My phone came up spiderwebbed with cracks.
Somehow, the humming has lightened up. Or maybe I'm adjusting, or maybe I'm beginning to understand it a little. There's a rhythm to it, as horrific as the wailing is, but it permeates my body, and I'm absorbing it with every second.
Exposure therapy.
I have something extra, now, to make up for this swollen, useless mess of an arm. Just above the shoulder blade, there's... something. It's new. Alien. I can't express what it's like to have something like that where it shouldn't be.
I can't tell if I'm horrified or pleased.
My other arm seems to have a mind of its own, too. A few times, it's swung at nothing, and the feeling is beginning to fade in a way that's entirely unlike the first. It's... slow, and patchy. Sometimes I can feel it, and sometimes I can't.
If I don't focus on keeping it still, it gets numb and starts to work on it's own accord. Like having your eyes pulled somewhere else every second.
I stop, breathless, and vomit something dark and red onto the forest floor. Something chunky. My breaths come ragged, and I come to the slow realization I don't know where I am.
My mind is everywhere, but I manage to keep my head up and keep moving. Any direction is better than here, so I'll start walking.
I'm twitching a lot, now. It's hard to see, but maybe it's just dark. It hurts, but it says it'll stop soon. It says we're close, that it can see the lights. Lights. Home. Food. I can hardly move by myself. The new growth is unfamiliar, so it helps me move sometimes. It says that it'd be better if I just let it lead for a little while, so I can sleep. Rest. It says that when I wake up again, it'll have found some food. That sounds nice.
I'm very hungry, after all.
I think I'll let it handle the rest.
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