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comradekatara · 2 months

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What if Aang and Gyatso ran away together, allowing them to avoid the genocide but still confront Azulon twenty years later after Aang has mastered every element and win the war? 80 years later what would the world look like, and (in this unlikely AU scenario where all the rest of the main cast is still born) how would Sokka, Katara, Toph, Zuko, Azula, etc be different?

I mean it wouldn’t take aang 20 years to master every element he’s literally a prodigy. he mastered all four elements by the time he was 13. but yeah. if gyatso had found him in time. oh man. the inherent tragedy of poor timing, magnified by one hundred years. it’s unclear exactly how long after aang getting frozen sozin’s comet arrived (it was within the same year, but certainly not on the same day, as natla suggests), but it was probably sometime between a few weeks and a few months later. so I don’t think aang would’ve been able to prevent the initial attacks on the four temples, but obviously there would’ve been survivors who weren’t at the temples at the time, since yknow. they’re nomadic (natla also has them conveniently gather for “the great comet festival” as a way to explain why they were all killed at once but like. they weren’t. that’s not how genocide works). and so if aang and gyatso were together, away from the southern air temple, during the attack, that would definitely spur aang to fulfill his responsibilities as the avatar. he’d still feel the same crushing guilt, the ignorance of not heeding the threats of war, the responsibility on his shoulders of repairing his culture and ending an imperialist regime before it’s too late. but obviously, to a far less extreme extent, and with gyatso there to guide him, instead of temporally displaced and utterly dispossessed and bereft of his mentor, with no air nomads (besides appa) left. there would still be air nomads immediately after sozin’s comet, who were eventually captured and executed (or forced to hide and assimilate, hey ty lee’s family) over a century of imperialist conquest and violence. but if aang never time traveled, he would have still defeated sozin at the age of 13 and ended the war under a massive time pressure. roku would still be on his ass trying to get him to correct his mistakes, and aang would still feel the crushing burden of being just one kid tasked with saving the world from disaster.

so based on aang’s lifespan as indicated in lok, the next avatar would be an adult from the southern water tribe by the time the rest of the gaang are kids. and maybe the avatar is kya (im not gonna do the exact math here, because who cares). and kya is tasked with maintaining balance in a world where there are fewer air nomads than there should be, but due to aang’s influence, there are far more than there otherwise would be, as he spent the rest of his life ensuring that the world was a safe place to live in and keeping the rulers of the fire nation in check. and the world has never really forgiven the fire nation for what they did to the air nomads, but the extent of their imperialism was never fully realized because aang stopped sozin before he could oppress and attack more populations. so kya is constantly working with various nations and peoples to maintain balance, but she’s basically just a diplomat because aang did most of the work of putting out fires and now she’s just facilitating and ensuring that the peace he established continues. so she has time to like. start a family. and sokka has a complex about being the nonbending son of the literal avatar (and hakoda’s like “try being the nonbending partner of the literal avatar” but it doesn’t really make him feel better because that’s so obviously not the same) because obviously he can develop a complex about anything (still a much better complex to have than his actual deal, tho, so we’re counting this one as a win) and katara has a complex about having to be the best waterbender ever because her mother is the avatar. and their home life is kind of unstable because their mother doesn’t have a lot of time for them, but she’s still a very loving parent and eventually she takes them on trips with her and they love being able to see the world and help their mother with her diplomatic duties (katara is very justice-oriented, sokka relishes in getting to help kya with the more administrative and bureaucratic side of politics). so it’s better.

katara and sokka meet toph on one of their diplomacy fieldtrips, since the beifong family is incredibly powerful in the earth kingdom, and as much as they try to hide toph’s existence from the world, it’s kind of hard to ignore a whole twelve year old girl in a fancy hanfu just running around your mansion. sokka and toph immediately get along, and she takes him to the earth rumble where he becomes obsessed with the entire spectacle of it. katara finds toph kind of obnoxious, and is glad for them to finally leave gaoling. then of course toph stows away with them, and sokka has to somehow keep that a secret from both katara and kya until the beifongs come aknocking like “did you by any chance KIDNAP OUR DAUGHTER?!?” and toph’s like “NO. I KIDNAPPED MYSELF.” and katara is just so fucking fed up with the whole thing someone please return this tiny aristocrat back to her mansion dear GOD. but ultimately toph is just so cute that she gets her way and kya agrees to show her the world before then returning her to her family (at which point toph assures sokka that she will simply run away again). toph is just so happy to have relative freedom that she doesn’t even mind that katara is [checks notes] bullying her for being blind. and so she kind of just tags along on their travels throughout the earth kingdom. but then, once they go back home, she realizes that there is simply no way that is agreeing to live in the south pole, so she and sokka reach a compromise and she moves in with suki on kyoshi island, who sokka goes to visit all the time.

oh yeah. he obviously knows suki. their introduction is far more formal, what with them actively knowing the avatar will be visiting them in advance, and he doesn’t antagonize her (he also doesn’t need to learn any grand lesson about patriarchy since gender roles were not being reified by colonialism in this world. fwiw) but he still asks her to teach him what she knows (even though he did receive formal training from hakoda as a child, not for any life-threatening purposes, just because it’s a part of their culture) because he’s obsessed with learning every single thing he can about the world. suki finds it really cute that this nepobaby is so humble, and they have a fun time getting to know each other without the threat of war looming over their heads. yue similarly gets to know sokka on a diplomatic trip to the northern water tribe and there’s immediate chemistry and they’re infatuated. but obviously she’s also engaged, which is an issue. since there’s no siege, both hahn and yue survive and eventually get married, which is as tragic for yue as it sounds. eventually yue gets so sick of hahn that the next time she sees sokka she’s just like fuck it and just straight up enters her infidelity era (which is fully morally justified btw). sokka knows that if anyone ever found out that the princess of the northern water tribe was having an affair with the avatar’s son, it would cause an international scandal, so he’s incredibly careful not to do anything that might expose them. and it’s very bittersweet, but it is what it is.

haru and jet’s respective villages were never occupied so they both grow up in pretty normal households. haru is still kind and brave, and jet is still obnoxious (sorry), and katara is still infatuated with both of them, but jet never like. tries to kill sokka or flood a village, and she never helps haru liberate a prison camp, so they kind of just have normal teenage relationships that last for a brief while and then end naturally. of course sokka still cannot stand jet, but it’s purely vibes based so he just chooses to ignore him while katara sews him the ugliest hat you have ever seen in your life. and eventually haru and katara will reconnect when they’re slightly older and get into a more serious relationship. because they’re cute together. also they meet aunt wu and the events of “the fortuneteller” just play out exactly as they do in the episode. idk why but that’s important to me.

as for azula and zuko, they both grew up hearing from their father that “the fire nation was robbed of its glory and humiliated by the avatar, and that one day it is their destiny to take back their honor and finally realize sozin’s vision, restoring their glorious bloodline to the true throne once and for all.” and ursa’s always like “oh well you know your father has fanciful notions because he was descended from the firelords, but that’s a totally outmoded system of government, and ever since avatar aang instated a republic, the quality of life for all of our citizens has improved tenfold. that’s just evidence-based data talking.” so zuko believes ursa, because she’s nicer to him, and azula believes ozai, because he has his claws in her. kya knows that ozai and the rest of the old royal bloodline still pose a threat to the stability of the fire nation and the world at large, so she is always attending to that family just to ensure that they’re not doing anything insane. and sometimes she takes her kids along with her. and well. for one thing, a better-adjusted sokka hanging out with azula (still being abused, albeit to a lesser extent) is kind of just amazing to me. she explains why the fire nation is ontologically superior and that’s why they’re being nerfed by his stupid lib mom and he’s just like “you’re so smart so how are you so stupid.” he’s deeply enthralled by her cognitive dissonance and just her whole deal in general.

meanwhile katara is infatuated with zuko, and ursa, who immediately adores katara because she’s such a cute and friendly girl, is kind of quietly encouraging him to date her, because the waterbending prodigy daughter of the avatar is really an ideal match for her son. and zuko really likes katara too. they get along really well, and they agree on a lot, are both really passionate about similar things, and go on fun little adventures together, and help each other with their bending, and make each other laugh. but every time katara tries to kiss him he interrupts her by being like “does your brother think im cool?” and katara’s just like “what.” until eventually even she realizes that the idea of actually dating this boy is simply impossible. and for a while she’s crushed that the guy she likes is obsessed with her stupid loser brother (can you imagine anything worse. truly. i cannot) but eventually she comes around because she’s always wanted a gay best friend who she can carry around in her pocket. and then she makes him go shopping with her and paint her nails and go to plays and at first he’s like “this feels kind of offensive” but eventually he realizes that even though she IS stereotyping him he actually DOES really like all those things so he’s just like FINE. I GUESS. katara meanwhile is trying to oh so subtly figure out whether or not sokka even knows that zuko exists and sokka is just like “oh yeah he seems nice enough. his sister though. well she fascinates me.” and katara is like “what the fuck nooooo” but then sokka keeps talking and she realizes he’s discussing her like an abnormal psych case study or something he would dissect in a lab and she’s like “oh. okay. thank god he’s not into her. he’s just some kind of freak.”

katara crowns herself queen of the gays and vows to zuko: “i am going to get my brother to fall in love with you if it’s the last thing i do.” but all of katara’s attempts to make zuko attractive to sokka backfire because she’s exclusively making him do things that she finds attractive and sokka simply has the exact opposite taste. he goes to katara like “i don’t know why i never noticed it before, but zuko’s vibes are kind of rancid. he even kind of reminds me of that guy jet who sucked so bad.” and katara’s like FUCCKCKKKKCK. eventually katara is out of options so zuko’s just like “fine i guess i can’t sink any lower..” so he just knocks on sokka’s door and when sokka opens it he just gets on his knees and clasps his hands together and goes “pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease just one chance PLEASE” and sokka is just like “ummmmmmmmm???? lmfao???? okay….” and goes on a very awkward date with zuko where all he does is just answer every single one of zuko’s somewhat invasive questions about his life in the most detached, impersonal way possible and then at 9pm on the dot sokka yawns and is like “wow im so beat…. this is my bedtime so. goodnight” and zuko is just like scribbling down in his little diary “sokka goes to bed at 9pm on the dot every night because he is regimented and responsible…” sokka gets home and katara’s like, eyes all sparkly “how did it goooo???” and sokka’s just like “man. i don’t know how i didn’t see it sooner. i thought azula was a freak, but zuko is just as much of a freak, if not more so! i definitely need to go out with him again. he’s such a fascinating test subject.” and katara is just like “fuck my life why is he like this.” and then goes to zuko and is like “yeah!!! sokka said he had sooooo much fun!! he really wants to see you again!!” and zuko just lights up like “REALLY??!!?” and katara just doesn’t have the heart to tell him the reason.

anyway. katara and sokka travel the globe. katara establishes some water tribe healing centers in other parts of the world, works as a liaison between the air nomads and the southern water tribe, gets back together with haru, goes on countless adventures, and builds a beautiful life for herself. sokka starts attending ba sing se university because he’s sick of people assuming that his diplomacy skills are purely due to nepotism. so he decides to major in polysci so that he can point to his degree as a qualification. but pretty quickly he realizes that polysci is a stupid field of study and everyone in his classes (including the professors) are completely incompetent and have no actual field experience. so he starts taking different classes, shopping around to figure out what it is he really wants to study. turns out that a lot of different subjects interest him, and maybe being a diplomat isn’t his only possible career. he spends a good decade in academia, just contributing research to all kinds of different fields. then he gets sick of academia and goes into engineering. he starts working with an inventor in the earth kingdom (the mechanist) and basically revolutionizes technology. then he’s like “im sick of inventing cars and computers and smartphones and falafel” (his most important invention) so he goes back to his physics research. but then he gets kind of sick of how insufferably arrogant physicists are so he’s like “maybe it’s time to revisit my favorite case studies” and goes back to the fire nation. katara tags along purely for damage control.

sokka, katara, zuko, and azula are all having dinner together. azula was eventually able to extricate herself from ozai’s abuse and moved to a more rural part of the country to heal. she got really into spiritualism and started working with air nomads taking care of sky bison. zuko moved to a different city in the southern fire nation where he became a herpetologist who primarily works with dragons, and also got really involved in theater. by the time sokka and katara revisit them they are both really happy and thriving. sokka has even read some of zuko’s plays, and has to admit that they’re quite good. which is disappointing, because he was hoping to use them as case studies in his research. at some point during their dinner, zuko’s like “i can’t believe we used to date. i must’ve been so annoying back then, i don’t know how you even put up with me.” and azula’s like “hang on. no. you weren’t dating sokka. i was dating sokka.” and they both stare at each other and then turn to look at sokka for like five minutes of total silence. katara gets so fed up with this that she just bursts out, “NEITHER OF YOU WERE DATING SOKKA. HE WAS USING YOU AS DATA FOR HIS ABNORMAL PSYCH PET PROJECT.” another five minutes of silence. and then azula is just like “oh that actually makes perfect sense. in hindsight that really explains a lot.” and zuko’s like “but kataraaaaa why wouldn’t you TELL meeeee” and katara’s like “well i didn’t want to hurt your feelings and destroy your ego forever. but now that you like. ride dragons for a living i figure that you’ll be fine.” and zuko’s like “yep. haha. im fine! totally fine.” he wasn’t at all living under the illusion that sokka was returning to him after all these years because they were going to reunite and get married and ride his favorite dragon into the sunset forever. his ego definitely isn’t destroyed by this fact at all. he’s sooo good don’t even worry about it. sokka’s just like “well anyway, im very glad that you both seem to be doing a lot better now. that’s really great news. big mazel to you both. okay bye.”

anyway. as for kya, she lives a long and happy life, and is so proud of both her children. she dies at a very old age, completely content. the next avatar is of earth kingdom heritage, of course. and it’s mako :)

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inbabylontheywept · 10 months

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"I think we underestimated the human population by eight or nine orders of magnitude."

The war room was reeling. The human population had been estimated in the mere hundred billion range. They should barely have had enough of an economy to field two light cruisers, least of all the goddamn armada that was ravaging the inner worlds. After the alpha strike, the human flotilla should’ve been completely crippled. Instead the number of ships they were fielding kept growing.

Tan-Hauser was the first target struck by a human attack, and they reported seventeen craft before they lost comms. Attican was hit just three days after that, but their reports already showed numbers above ninety. Any doubts that the fleet was growing were eliminated when Outpost Batan reported 1,217 FTL pings two days before the loss of Kira.

The number reported was so big it was written off as a sensor malfunction. Twenty-five billion souls lost, all because nobody in the war room could face reality.

They were going to face it now. The Kirarian in front of them was the primary sensor engineer for the Batan outpost, a specialist with more expertise in analyzing space lanes than warships. He’d been up for at least the last two days, poring over the sensor data, and only now was ready to begin to share his findings.

From the pain in his multifaceted eyes, it was clear he was still reeling from the loss of his homeworld.

Seeing that he had the room’s attention, he began to speak. The translation units each member of the war council had implanted experienced a moment of lag as they struggled to convert the almost musical tonal humming of the Kirarian tongue to more common galactic speech.

"The simplest data that can be analyzed from an FTL ping is the distance that the ship traveled before dropping to sublight. The contracted space in front of the craft traps small particles, even light itself for a short period, compressing its wavelength and then releasing it when the field disengages."

The war room nodded along. The explanation was mildly technical, but anyone that had traveled on an FTL shuttle before knew the hazards of exiting FTL directly in front of your home destination. Blasting your home station with a wave of alpha, beta, and ultraviolet rays was hardly a warm welcome.

The engineer continued.

“The… issue with this is that we’re used to the majority of the ping being in the UV spectrum. We aren’t entirely sure what the spectrum of the signals we got from the ships were because Batan station can only detect up into the low gamma range, but that’s still what the majority of the human’s FTL pings were detected in. That’s at least ten billion times the frequency that we’re used to. Since the frequency of the burst can be roughly modeled by multiplying the mean radiation per unit distance by the length of the path, that implies one of two things: That the human ships are either traveling through areas with ten billion times the standard background flux, or that they are traveling extragalactic distances.”

The engineer paused for a few seconds at that statement. The pain of loss still shone in his gemstone eyes, but something more immediate was beginning to take center stage: Fear.

“Because the craft is essentially throwing… well, normally it would be the next three or four days worth of cosmic background radiation at you. In our case it’s more like several decades. But because it’s just giving you an advance on your normal cosmic background radiation, you can track the void in the next several days' worth of background noise to determine the ship's approach vector. The 1,217 crafts that arrived weren’t coming from the same spot. There were actually hundreds of converging vectors, but more importantly…”

He trailed off, a small 3D model of the local space appearing in the center of the holo table. A spiked ball of vectors protruded from the galactic disk, each piercing cleanly through his former homeworld.

His voice cracked a little, the hum turning into a hiss. The translator tech paused a moment too, struggling to convey the subtle emotional cues into the message.

“They’re all coming off the galactic disk. That doesn’t just mean that we’re surrounded, that doesn’t just mean that we’re outnumbered… It means that each attack that we’ve seen up to this point is from an entirely separate group. What we’ve been mistaking for fleets, I believe, are simply the beginning trickles of their exploratory forces. Each of the sites that they’ve targeted hasn’t been of significant strategic importance; they’ve just been sites with unusually strong output signals. I think they’re just using our transmission stations as makeshift beacons for their FTL jumps." He took a deep breath to steady himself before providing his final thought. "I think we underestimated the size of the human population by eight or nine orders of magnitude.”

There was a heavy silence in the war room as that last sentence was processed. The engineer was already out the door before he heard the panic begin to set in.

Part of him felt a little guilty. It would’ve probably been kinder for them to go out not knowing what was about to hit them. Still, it wasn’t often you could force people with this much power to realize that they’d just lost everything.

There was a bitter satisfaction in that.

#hfy #humanity fuck yeah #humans are space orcs #science fiction #we are the swarm #scifi #writing #writblr #we are the cosmic horror #The goal was to imply that we have colonized hundreds of other galaxies

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hero-israel · 6 months

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How can you claim that Zionism was morally right, when what it was was European Jews coming to Palestine by the thousands and buying land, and when the Arabs realised what they were trying to do, i.e. steal land by making it sound reasonable to the British they should have the right to self determination, they rightfully tried to put a stop to it? If a lot of people come into a populated area and then ask for it to be given to them, since they’re so many, does it make it right for the people who were already there? And yeah, it’s true there was some Jewish presence there already but it wasn’t that much and it wasn’t them who started the Zionist movement. So how can you claim this was right?

You just said they were buying the land, and they were, so anyone thinking they were stealing it is already revealing major problems with racism, xenophobia, and conspiratorial thinking.

And by all means, let's talk about "immigrants" versus "people who were already there." From the 1850s to 1920s, the Ottoman Empire faced waves of refugee crises (the Crimean War, the Balkan Wars, the Russo-Turkish War, the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the beginning of World War 1) and decided to resettle OVER FIVE MILLION Muslim refugees all throughout its Mediterranean and Levant provinces. They sent hundreds of thousands of ex-Balkan and ex-Russian Muslims into southern Syria and what is now Jordan. These refugees founded the four largest cities in Jordan, including its capital Amman; of course, Jordan had been part of historic Palestine and the Palestine Mandate, and from the very first day they were able to govern themselves they passed laws banning any Jewish citizenship or inhabitation.

Am I supposed to see that as anything other than the most base, ladder-pulling racism? Do you really expect me to care that ex-Russian Muslims arriving in Jaffa in 1890 wanted to keep the ex-Polish Jews out in 1920? Between the Ottoman refugee resettlement and the large numbers of Arabs immigrating to benefit from new economic opportunities in a rapidly developing Palestine, the United Nations would later come to classify people as "refugees of the 1948 war" if they had been permanent inhabitants of Palestine any time before 1946. So many newcomers that just living there for two years made you a wizened, old-timer local, with a perfectly natural right to say nobody else can come in.

Where exactly are you starting history and whose immigration are you seeing as rightful, as just? In 1832, Egypt invaded Ottoman Palestine and established from nothing the new settler town of Abu Kabir; in 1948, Zionist militias depopulated it. Were the Arab settlers of Abu Kabir "indigenous" for the 116 years they were there? Because the major waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine started about 140 years ago....

There is no such thing as a legitimate history of the Levant that sees it as normal and morally / politically neutral for millions of Muslims to be resettled by various Muslim empires, but abnormal and dangerous for Jews to move in under their own initiative - usually out of desperation to save their lives - with no sponsoring empire at all.

Beyond that, if you took a few minutes to think of what your argument implies about the "Great Migration" of African-Americans to northern states in the early 20th century, or refugees crossing the Mexican border, and how white people responded to both, I think you would be less willing to make it, even anonymously.

#israel #palestine #zionism #ottoman empire #immigration #jumblr

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lets-try-some-writing · 3 months

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Heya! Hope you're doing well <3

So I have a world building question that I've been curious about for a while now, and I hope you're interested in answering; what would Cybertronian literature be like? Would they have fictional stories, or would it mostly be history texts and such?

If they did have fictional stories, I doubt they would have many, if any, romance books since they're obviously not a romantic species like humans. Would superhero stories with outliers be a thing? (Can't remember if outliers are viewed as bad or not). Would fantasy stories with like, Predacons be popular or would they be frowned upon with some mechs because of their history with them? (Looking at you, Kup and Autoway)

Hm, I wonder if stories with organic aliens would be a hit or not...

Considering how well Cybertron was doing before the war, I'd imagine their fiction stories weren't at the level and/or had the amount that are on Earth. Or would it have nothing to do with the state of Cybertron and more with that it was scoffed at?

My brain is just going wild with all the ways that this could turn out, but what I really, really want to know if they have fanfiction. Wait, would Orion write fanfiction??!! Dammit, Orion fangirling over a character has taken root in my brain

That wraps that whirlwind of an ask. Don't forget to not overwork yourself and stay hydrated! ❤️

Lore time?!?! Fantastic. So sorry its been *counts fingers* three to four months??? The writing vibe has been very picky as of late. Doing my best over here to answer asks from months back o(￣┰￣*)ゞ

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Literature on Cybertron is a curious thing. Culture varies wildly from city to city, but due to governmental influence everywhere, a large portion of the consumable literature on the datanet follows a certain structure. Information is highly controlled, and thus, only literature that supports or otherwise agrees with the government is allowed to exist on any public platform. Things that do not conform with the regulations put down are deleted immediately. Thus the literature that is deemed "safe" is often bland, preachy, or straight up propaganda. While Cybertron's population may have tolerated the Council due to a lack of fighting capability at the time, they also weren't fools. Not a spark enjoyed the aft kissing works produced by those who couldn't be bothered to be original.

Thus the underbelly of literature came into being, a hidden series of trade networks and secret websites created to keep the quality writing safe from the Council. Most of the hidden works consisted of data from all over the planet, the things that the Council kept hidden. Police reports, body cam videos, documents, records, trade reports, incident reports, historical documents struck from the records, information on mecha who "vanished", and so much more. Everything one could ever want information was was down there in the dark parts of the datanet. Such things always came with a price attached.

If one wanted data, it needed to be paid for. Shanix was too easy to track, and so instead information was traded. Data for data, knowledge for knowledge. It was in the darker parts of the datanet that the Archives collected much of their... more confidential information. Alpha Trion never tolerated the loss of critical information and there were whole groups under his control dedicated to collecting what he wanted from those who possessed the knowledge. There were entire wars online when it came to data, some that even resulted in doxing and death. The world was dangerous, and with the Council hunting for any and all information, literature was a prized resource reserved for those with the ability to trade for it. Orion and Soundwave both were very well oriented with the trading performed on the datanet. They were well known under their online tags and both maintained very active information broking circles up until the war began. Even then, both managed to keep weaseling data out of their sources up until Cybertron went dark.

Then of course there was the less professional corners of the darker parts of the datanet. Works of fiction were by no means unusual, but they were only produced by mecha with certain... tastes. Most were not lacking in imagination, but rather the ability to make their visions legible. The ability to properly produce a work of fiction was, more often than not, difficult for the average mech to do. Most works of fiction came from the middle castes or the upper lower castes. Higher caste bots were not allowed to write anything serious for fear of backlash, and the lower castes simply did not have the time more often than not. As such, only the highly biased middle castes had any ability to produce fiction at all.

Sci-fi did not exist as a genre, for quite obvious reasons. More often than not, what fiction came into being tended to fall into several categories which matched the desires of the middle castes. Courtly drama was a world renown and beloved genre. Every mech ran into a work in the genre at least once, and the themes usually revolved around the main character either climbing the social ladder to get into the higher castes or somehow evading their hold to achieve something. It was wish fulfillment at its finest, but the middle castes adored the genre as it satisfied the desires they had. Ratchet wrote one surprisingly well performing novel about climbing the ladder to become CMO. It was based off his own experiences, and while not exactly popular, medics everywhere all universally knew of his novel, although not a spark knew he wrote it.

The second biggest genre was rather specific, and it happened to be the caste change genre. Every bot wished they were something else for the most part. As such, there was a plethora of documents that focused around a mech from one caste either moving up or down the chain and having to adapt to the new way of life. The cultural differences around Cybertron played their part in the caste change genre as mecha from all over the planet learned from and wrote their novels. Many serious misconceptions came from the novels of that type, but it tended to create a sense of tolerance amongst the population more often than not. Even still, there were more than a few crimes committed due to rather ridiculous misunderstandings regarding local culture from individuals who only learned from novels. While not common knowledge, Starscream wrote an incredibly well received novel with completely made up cultural norms for Vos that were so widely accepted that grounders everywhere got arrested en mass until the government stepped in. Starscream has yet to stop finding it amusing.

The third most popular genre was the only one the lower castes could feasibly relate to, and it happened to be about police and murder mystery. The stories had no set formula, unlike the prior two popular genres. However they almost always involved the main character eliminating some scum of the Earth, uncovering a deep dark secret, or putting an end to a horrific criminal underworld. It was pure wish fulfillment from middle caste mecha who knew just enough to want to change things, but didn't have the guts to actually go out and take a stand. Jazz wrote his fair share of novels relating to the subject, one of which became so popular that he ended up changing his identity twice and faked his death once in order to escape any connection to it. He didn't learn until vorns later that his novel, which was based on a real mystery, had actually solved a well covered Council kept secret.

Lastly there was the religiously oriented works of fiction. The genre itself was incredibly niche due to the differing beliefs and delicate nature of faith on Cybertron. But the few who wrote for the subject were masters of their craft. Usually they were artist renditions of old tales, retellings of myth and legend, or even fictional takes on the lives of old Primes. Highly heretical in nature, very few stepped into the genre of Primacy related anything. The Council was always on the lookout for such novels, and thus those who wrote them were far more likely to vanish under mysterious circumstances. What novels were written often didn't last long. The only three novels that made it out alive amidst the harsh censoring happened to be a set of novels written by Orion Pax in collaboration with Senator Shockwave and a novel done by none other than D-16 himself. The three novels all showed urban legends and tales from all three castes and were beloved globally, even if every physical copy was destroyed on sight.

Orion, and later Optimus Prime largely forgot about his written work. Unbeknownst to him, Megatron has kept a copy of his work and the two other novels. He has no clue Optimus and Shockwave wrote them, but he adores them and have lovingly gone into English teacher mode more times than one could count to find the deeper meaning behind everything. Humanity's love for 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Dante's Inferno is the level of adoration Megatron holds for the three novels on his shelf.

There were other stories of course. Fantasy novels set far into Cybertron's distant past made purely off imagination and globally mocked by those who lived long enough to see the early days of Cybertron. A genre akin to Romance that focused on companionship and starcrossed designs put in place by Primus. Strange tales made by those on Colony worlds going into depth on organics and their cultures. Heroic stories focusing around Primus's chosen and champions of the people. Underdog tales with Outliers coming out of hiding or breaking their bonds to be free and express themselves as they saw fit...

The stories were diverse, but all were hidden. Every mech read them, but none spoke of them aloud. Literature was the quiet universal culture of Cybertron prior to the war.

#transformers #maccadam #cybertronian worldbuilding #cybertronian culture #pre war cybertron #megatron #ratchet #jazz #optimus prime #orion pax #soundwave #shockwave #worldbuilding #this was fun to write #took forever to get to because I thought it would be hard #guess not

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weemssapphic · 1 year

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in my head (series)

Chapter Four: The Not-Date Date

Larissa Weems x f!reader

previous chapter | next chapter | series page

words: ~4.5k, ao3 link

chapter-specific warnings: indirect mentions of anxiety and insecurities

chapter summary: The day starts with a little hiccup, however Larissa and our dear reader are determined to move forward with their little date - that totally isn't a date, thank you very much.

“Larissa?” You tried to sound confident but your voice shook as your eyes roved over her form.

The young woman stood slowly, turning to face you. A blink of an eye later it was your Larissa standing before you again, face white as a sheet.

You blinked.

“How did you…” you could feel your heartbeat in each of your limbs as a lightbulb went off in your head. “You’re a shapeshifter.”

Larissa’s cheeks turned pink and she crossed her arms defensively across her chest.

“I am.” She held her chin high, her face stony, though you could see the trepidation in her eyes.

You took a slow, careful step towards her, as if trying not to spook her. “Was that… The woman… Was that you? I mean, you a couple years back you?”

“It was.” Her replies were curt, her tone guarded. You knew you weren’t supposed to see what Larissa had done - that her shifting was something private for her, and that you had walked in on some sort of intimate moment. You could practically see her walls coming up in real time, walls that you’d thought - you’d hoped - you’d torn down long ago, when you’d started getting closer.

“Larissa,” you pleaded, taking another step towards her. She didn’t move, though from the way her fingers twitched and her right foot shuffled ever so slightly, you could tell she wanted nothing more than to run. “Talk to me. I’m sorry that I walked in unannounced, I just thought… I just thought you were getting ready. I know I wasn’t meant to see that but please, don’t shut me out.”

The apprehension shining through the cracks in her carefully guarded mask overwhelmed you, and you wished nothing more in that moment than to get in her head, to see what she was thinking, what sort of internal war was going on beneath the surface. But you knew you couldn’t - you wouldn’t risk your closest friendship over a moment of indiscretion, you couldn’t break her trust like that. You seemed to be on thin ice already as it was.

Finally, Larissa closed her eyes, letting out a deep breath and dropping her arms to her sides before sinking down onto the stool in front of her vanity.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, fighting the lump in her throat. “I would appreciate it if you would keep the knowledge of my shapeshifting to yourself. There is a reason I don’t tell people.”

You nodded furiously, closing the remainder of the gap between the two of you and kneeling in front of her. “I promise I won’t tell a soul. I just don’t understand why you keep it a secret?”

Larissa laughed bitterly. “I would hardly want the entire school, let alone the entire population of Jericho, thinking I’m trying to actively deceive them. Shapeshifters are not often welcomed, darling. At worst, people see us as manipulative and deceitful - after all, how can you be sure this is even the real me? At best, people seem to think they can bend us to their will. I would rather not have to deal with the implications.”

“I understand.” Of course you did. Manipulative and deceitful were words often used to describe you, able to see into people’s minds and glean the most private of information, able to use this information against others on a whim. It was nothing you hadn’t heard before, and it made sense that Larissa, in the position she was in, would choose not to divulge this information with anyone.

Still, though, it stung a bit that she hadn’t even felt safe enough to tell you, had even become defensive when you’d found out.

“You could’ve told me, you know. I guess I get why you didn’t. But I would’ve understood, you know? I’ve spent my whole life fighting against people’s prejudices against people like me - people who supposedly have the ability to manipulate others for fun. I would never think to judge you.” Your voice was gentle, a bit sad, and Larissa’s gaze softened slightly as she looked down at you.

“I…” Larissa seemed to be struggling to find the right words. “I didn’t consider that. I simply didn’t want to lose your trust over something so trivial.”

You couldn’t stop your heart from swelling at the thought of Larissa being afraid to lose you. “It’s not trivial, it’s a huge part of who you are. You could never lose my trust over something like that. Please know that.” Your hand landed on her thigh and you began to rub calming circles over the fabric of her dress.

Larissa swallowed visibly, nodding and choking out a quiet “thank you”.

“Can I ask you something?” Larissa tensed, but nodded again, and you bit your lip, afraid of her reaction. “Why did you shift, just now I mean?”

Larissa’s eyes darted between yours. If you would’ve decided to read her mind, you would’ve seen her inner struggle between lying to you and feeling guilty about it, or telling you the truth and feeling a deep, burning shame for her own perceived shortcomings. What she settled for was a half-truth.

“I’ve been feeling a bit… old lately. Older. As if my career is finally catching up to me. This semester has been… trying, and I feel as though you can tell.” Good enough. You didn’t need to know it was your perception of her, your own validation she had been craving most when she’d shifted.

“Do you want to know what I think, Larissa?” Your heart was cracking at her confession, but you tried not to let it show. She avoided your gaze, but cocked her head nonetheless. “I think,” you took her chin between your fingers, forcing her to look at you. “That you are the most beautiful woman I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. The lines on your face don’t detract from that beauty. In fact, they make you even more stunning.”

It was true - you loved the little crinkles next to her eyes when she smiled, the laugh lines that showed how often she had something to smile about. You adored the crease between her brow when she was deep in thought, the lines on her forehead when she would raise an eyebrow at you.

Larissa’s cheeks were pink and a small smile was slowly taking shape on her face. She let out a shaky sigh. “Thank you. I hope I haven’t made us late…”

You took her smile as a minor victory and grinned back, gently squeezing her thigh. “Not at all - if you still want to go? We could always-”

Larissa cut you off. “Yes, I still want to go. I’ve been looking forward to it. I just need a moment to collect myself.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll wait in your office.” You stood, leaving Larissa alone at her vanity and settling on the edge of her office desk to wait for her.

She stepped out into the office a few minutes later, locking the door to her quarters behind her. She looked regal as usual, now wearing a matching coat over her dress and sporting black heels. The smile on her face gave nothing of your prior conversation away.

You led her to your car and soon you were on the road.

“Do I finally get to know where we’re going?” Larissa seemed to finally be relaxing. You, however, were fighting the unexplained butterflies that were fluttering about in your tummy at the reality of the situation - Larissa Weems, in your car, for the very first time. How silly, to be so affected by something so mundane.

“We’re going to Burlington,” you quipped, grinning widely as you heard Larissa huff next to you.

“That much is obvious, darling. What will we be doing there?” You didn’t have to look at her to know that her eyebrows were raised, that her lips were turned down into a disapproving frown as a result of your obstinance.

“We’re going to a spa to get massages.” You glanced to your right to gauge her reaction. She looked surprised for a moment, before her face broke out into a pleased smile.

“You certainly know how to woo a woman,” Larissa teased, and you felt your heart skip a beat. She’s just being cheeky, you reminded yourself. She doesn’t mean it like that. Your cheeks began to heat up and you forced out a chuckle.

“I guess.” You tightened your grip on the steering wheel, forcing your eyes to stay on the road ahead of you rather than drifting over to the woman occupying the passenger seat. “The ladies are just lining up for me, huh?”

Larissa remained silent and you couldn’t help yourself - stealing a glance in her direction, you could see she was turned away from you, gazing out the window with a frown on her face.

Great, now you’ve done it. You have to stop pushing her.

Your mind began to race, searching for another subject, anything to distract Larissa from your idiocy. You cleared your throat. “Can I ask you something about the shifting? You don’t have to answer of course…”

“Hmm?” Larissa hummed, as if pulled out of a trance. “Oh. Yes, ask away.”

“Is this, um… Is this your ‘natural’ form?”

There was a beat of silence in which you wondered whether you had, again, pushed too far, but just as you were about to backtrack, Larissa spoke.

“Yes, it is.” There was another brief silence, but then Larissa chuckled lightly. “My days of experimenting with my appearance are long gone.”

“Can you change anything about yourself?” You were curious, you’d never known a shapeshifter personally, as it was a more rare and easily hidden ability, and you’d never had a reason to do much personal research on the subject.

“I can change my physical appearance, yes, though I am limited to human forms. It’s easier if I have a clear picture in my mind, if it’s someone I’ve seen before, though I can also change certain features and body parts at will.”

“Wow… I’m ashamed to say I don’t know much about shapeshifting… You might be the first shapeshifter I’ve met.”

“It’s a rather rare ability, I’m afraid.”

There was so much more you wanted to ask, but the drive to Burlington was quite short and you found yourself pulling into the parking lot of the spa. Your questions would have to wait.

Larissa trailed behind you, allowing you to lead the way to the reception counter. The spa was just as nice in person as it had been in the pictures on Google. Marble floors, plenty of lush green plants, and a small fountain off to the side of the reception area gave the place a serene atmosphere.

“What can I do for you?” The receptionist smiled brightly.

“Y/N Y/L/N, I have an appointment at 2:30?”

The receptionist, whose name tag read ‘Maria’, turned to her computer screen, scrolling idly until she found what she was looking for. “Ah yes, the couples massage.” You could feel Larissa’s eyes boring into the back of your head, and you tried to ignore it as you nodded your confirmation to Maria.

“Perfect. If you two could just fill out these forms, our waiting room is over to your right. Once those are filled out we can lead you back to your private room.” Maria slid two clipboards across the counter. You took them, thanking her, and headed towards the waiting room she’d mentioned; a large, open space with plush couches.

“A couples massage?” Larissa raised an eyebrow at you as you sat down, handing her one of the clipboards.

“They’re not just for couples,” you argued, not quite able to meet her eye. “Plus what fun is it if we don’t even get to spend time together.”

Larissa appraised you for just a second longer before letting out a low hum and dropping her eyes to her clipboard, filling out the intake form. Once both forms were filled out, you dropped them off with Maria. Two massage therapists showed up moments later, ushering you and Larissa down several hallways into a private room with two massage tables at the center. The room smelled faintly of a mixture of essential oils and there was soft, ambient music playing. You could already feel some tension leaving your body.

“So as you booked the full body massage, you can undress and put on the disposable underwear you’ll find on the massage tables,” one of the massage therapists stated. “Just go ahead and get comfortable and we’ll be back in a few minutes. If you’d like, you can pick out an essential oil blend to use for the massage.”

The two women left the room and you and Larissa were left facing each other.

“So…” Larissa trailed off, fingers fiddling with the sleeves of her coat.

“Nothing we haven’t seen before,” you joked, thinking this might not have been the best idea you’d ever had as you shrugged off your jacket. Clearly, you had not considered all of the ramifications of booking a full-body couples massage with the woman you were trying desperately not to have a crush on. Larissa chuckled nervously as she slipped out of her own coat.

Before you could lose your nerve, you undressed, finding the disposable underwear the massage therapist had mentioned and slipping them on. Larissa followed suit and you averted your eyes, taking a particular interest in studying the minimalist decor of the room to avoid gawking at her.

Of course you’d seen her naked plenty of times, hell you’d had your face buried in her cunt multiple times a week for the past month or so, but something about seeing her like this, in such an innocent situation, brought a strange flush to your cheeks. It felt more intimate than anything you’d ever done, and it sure as hell didn’t feel the same as when you’d gotten a similar massage with your friend from back home.

Larissa had turned her back to you as she pored over the little card listing the various essential oils and their properties. You padded over to her, peering around her shoulder to take a look at the card and trying to ignore the way your bare skin tingled where it brushed against hers.

Once you’d made your choices, the two of you settled onto the massage tables and you wiggled your hips to get comfortable.

“I hope I didn’t overstep - booking this, I mean.” You couldn’t help but voice your concerns to the blonde, who looked over at you, head resting on her folded arms.

“What makes you think you overstepped?” Her face was unreadable, her gaze piercing as she searched your face.

“Uh… I don’t. I think. I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable or anything.” You bit the inside of your cheek as you waited for Larissa to say something, anything. Her gaze softened.

“You could never make me uncomfortable, darling,” she murmured, her lips curling up into a small smile. “In fact, I appreciate you doing this for me.”

You returned her smile, opening your mouth to say something just as the door to the room opened and your massage therapists returned, asking about your preferences for essential oils. Larissa opted for a ylang ylang blend, while you opted for sandalwood.

You could feel yourself relaxing as warm hands began to rub the oil into the tense muscles around your shoulders. You hadn’t realized how badly you’d needed it, but after a stressful beginning to the semester, perhaps a massage wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

A soft moan from your left caused your entire body to tense up again, heat filling your belly. You could feel yourself growing hot as an ache began to build in your core, and you were finding it hard not to rut your hips against the massage table. Nevermind. Terrible idea.

You turned your head to look at Larissa. You had never seen the principal look so relaxed before. Her eyes were shut, her lips parted slightly to allow light, barely audible sighs to escape her. As one particular, very breathy sigh fell from her lips, you couldn’t help but buck your hips into the table a bit.

“Someone’s a little tense,” your massage therapist commented, working deeper into the muscles at the base of your spine. You squeaked out in surprise and Larissa’s eyes fluttered open, meeting your gaze as you flushed a deep red. She smirked before shutting her eyes again, allowing a groan to pass her lips as her own massage therapist dug into a knot near her shoulder.

This woman was going to be the death of you. Focus, you thought. You can do this. Surely the whole thing must be over soon, for how long you’ve already been laying here. With Larissa’s eyes closed, you allowed your own eyes to drink her in, free of inhibitions.

Your gaze traveled along her elongated neck, down the curve of her spine, to the dip just above her ass which was, tragically, covered by a towel. You mapped out the freckles dotting her shoulders, allowed yourself to get lost in the sensual way that her eyelids fluttered as she reacted to the massage.

Another gentle moan had your eyes snapping to Larissa’s lips, those soft, plump lips… Heat pooled between your legs and you could feel yourself growing wet. Get yourself together, before you ruin the massage table. You were almost certain she knew what she was doing to you, and you would make her regret it later.

You had never been more grateful for anything than when the massage came to an end and you were allowed to dress again - more specifically, when Larissa was allowed to dress again.

As you stood in front of the reception counter, swiping your card to pay for the massages, Larissa allowed her chin to rest idly on your head, her hand coming to rest on your waist.

Maria smiled at the two of you. “I hope you enjoyed our services today. I must say, it’s refreshing to see a same-sex couple here, we don’t get too many for our couples massages.”

“Oh we’re not-” you began, but Larissa cut you off.

“Thank you,” she replied, her grip on your waist tightening.

~~~

Your brain was short-circuiting all the way back to your car, and it was a wonder you managed to fish your keys out of your purse without dropping them at the rate that your hands were shaking.

“Larissa?” You breathed out as the two of you had settled into your seats.

“Yes?” She leaned back in her seat, a serene expression on her face.

“Nevermind.” You shook your head, trying to gain enough mental clarity to turn on the engine and begin your drive back to Nevermore.

“Someone’s a little tense,” Larissa quoted, and you could hear the smirk in her voice without looking at her.

“Don’t be an ass,” you retorted, trying to hide the way your cheeks burned by putting the car in reverse and making a show of checking your mirrors.

“Relax,” Larissa giggled, placing a hand on your thigh. It was meant as a comforting gesture, but it only made you feel more nervous. “Thank you for taking me here, Y/N. I really enjoyed myself.”

“Me too,” you murmured, a smile slowly spreading across your face. “I’m almost sad it’s over,” you joked.

Except you weren’t joking, not really - you wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the weekend with the blonde, but you were worried you’d overdo it, that she’d tire of your presence.

Larissa broke the silence that had engulfed the both of you. “Are you hungry? We could pick up something to eat and share the evening in my quarters.”

“I would like that.”

~~~

You ended up agreeing on sushi and picking some up in Burlington, before driving back to Nevermore and making your way to Larissa’s office.

When Larissa walked towards the door to her quarters, you shot her a confused glance.

“I don't want to be in my office this weekend,” Larissa supplied. “Unless it would make you uncomfortable…?” You quickly shook your head and followed her into her quarters, settling on the couch in her small sitting room.

The two of you dug into your sushi and you once again had to ignore the heat spreading in your core at the small moans of delight Larissa was letting out as she tried the different sushi rolls you’d ordered.

“Will you stop making those noises?” you snapped as Larissa let out a particularly lewd moan.

“Or what?” She quirked an eyebrow as she brought her chopsticks up to her mouth, wrapping her lips around the piece of sushi.

“I’m going to have to shut you up.”

Larissa’s next moan was your final straw. You surged forward, claiming her lips in a bruising kiss and causing her to gasp.

Larissa parted her lips for you and you wasted no time in licking into her mouth, your hands fisting needily at the fabric of her dress as you moved to straddle her. She leaned back against the couch cushions, pulling you on top of her and deepening the kiss, drawing a hungry groan from your chest.

You felt hot all over, the desire that had been clouding your mind since the beginning of your couples massage taking over your entire body as you pressed yourself flush against the blonde, slipping a hand between the two of you and hiking up her dress so you could brush your fingers against her core, feeling her wetness through her panties.

Larissa tensed beneath you, her hands dropping from your hips, her lips stilling against yours. Something was off. You removed your hand from her sex, using it instead to prop yourself up as you pulled away from the kiss, hovering over her. Her eyes were shining with unshed tears.

“What’s wrong?” Nothing like this had ever happened before, and you felt yourself begin to panic, running through the evening in your head and trying to think of anything that could’ve been different from your usual interactions.

She shook her head, turning her head to the side and gazing into the void as her cheeks went pink.

“Hey, talk to me, what happened?” You wanted to reach out, to cup her cheek, to hold her, but you didn’t want to make things worse so you sat up, trying to put some distance between the two of you in the hopes it would help her calm down.

“It’s silly,” she whispered, still refusing to meet your gaze.

“Nothing you could ever tell me is silly,” you said firmly.

Larissa struggled to find her voice as she grappled with her past, fears from past relationships and sexual encounters bubbling to the surface - fears that she’d almost forgotten about, situations that she’d buried (or so she thought) deep inside of her.

“In the past,” Larissa started, blinking a few times as if to will the tears back into her head. “I have had some… lovers, who knew of my shapeshifting.” Larissa’s voice was shaky, but she continued. “I have been asked to shift in… intimate moments before.”

You furrowed your brow, not quite following, until a thought dawned on you, though it seemed so absurd you could hardly believe it to be true. “Like what, turning into someone else? Like their fantasy or something?”

Larissa nodded, her teeth coming down on her bottom lip. “Or ex-girlfriends,” she added bitterly.

Anger bubbled hot in your veins. “I hope you told those jackasses off!” Your harsh tone caused Larissa to turn her head towards you, a mixture of anxiety and confusion marring her features. “If I could get my hands on them-”

Larissa let out a choked laugh and cut you off. “It’s in the past.”

“But it bothered you enough to stop kissing me,” you reasoned.

“You’re… the first person I’ve slept with who has known what I am in a long time,” she said quietly, so quietly you had to strain your ears to hear her.

“I would never ask that of you,” you said resolutely. “You are perfect the way you are, and there is no one - no other form or version of you or anyone else - that I would rather be sleeping with.”

Larissa’s eyes searched your own and she nodded hesitantly.

“Can I hold you?”

Larissa didn’t reply, rather, she reached her arms out, allowing you to fall into them. You hugged her back, fiercely and tightly, mind reeling at the thought of someone having this absolute goddess in their bed and wishing for her to be anyone but herself.

You remained locked in an embrace until Larissa began to squirm underneath you.

“Are you okay?” you murmured.

“I’m a bit too tall for the sofa,” she confessed and you laughed, glancing over your shoulder and taking in the awkward angle at which Larissa was holding her legs.

“I don’t want to let you go,” you pouted playfully, giving her a squeeze.

“Can we at least move this to the bed then?” Larissa teased, already pushing you off of her.

You agreed and allowed her to lead you to her bed, where you settled beside her and pulled her back into your arms. She slung an arm over your waist and rested her head on your chest.

“I’m sorry some people decided to be so cruel to you, Riss. You don’t deserve that.”

It wasn’t until Larissa’s head shot up that you realized what you had called her.

“Larissa. I’m sorry.” You worried again that you had crossed some sort of boundary, initiated some sort of unwelcome intimacy by your use of the nickname, but Larissa simply smiled brightly.

“I haven’t been called that in a long time.” There was so much wonder in her eyes that it took your breath away. “I like it.” She ducked her head, hiding her face in the crook of your neck.

You tightened your grip on her waist, smiling to yourself and relaxing against her as both of your breaths evened out.

You could feel your hold on the waking world slipping, your eyes threatening to fall shut, and you attempted to untangle your limbs from Larissa’s. She reacted by letting out a discontented sigh and pushing herself possessively against you.

“Stay?” she mumbled, voice thick with sleep.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, remember?” you whispered, pressing a kiss to her cheek and squeezing her gently before slipping off the bed. “Don’t forget to take the pins out of your hair, or you’ll wake up with a headache.”

Larissa hummed, pushing herself off the bed and following you as you gathered your shoes and your bag from the sitting room. She walked you to the door and, just before you could turn to leave, pulled you in for a tight hug.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“Anytime.”

#larissa weems x reader #larissa weems #larissa x reader #principal weems #principal weems x reader #in my head #in my head series

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seven-stars-in-his-palm · 4 months

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okay so a couple of days ago i saw this ask on @fellshish's blog about a need for a full 1941 discorporated aziraphale angst fic, realized i had an entire outline already in the hull, and... this happened:

a "what if crowley didn't miss in 1941" fic, including but not exclusive to the moment itself, the hours leading up to it, and the aftermath; a fanfiction (chapter 3/4)

summary:

It's Fell the Marvelous' awaited debut performance on the West End. He has his marksman, his turnips, and things appear to be going as planned—that is, until said marksman does the one thing he was supposed to avoid. Not missing. (or: the bullet catch goes wrong, and due to a tiny technicality, crowley's afraid aziraphale is gone for good. and crowley himself—for the first time in quite a while—is well and truly alone.)

warnings: full of blood, sweat, kissing while crying, blown up heads, prayers, nostalgic churches, polaroids, alcohol, and aziraphale being a discorporated bastard and bitching his way back to earth while a plot we should probably be focusing occurs as we ignore it entirely. and written extremely slowly. oxymoron but i couldnt get this out of my head fast enough and now you must endure it (should you choose to accept). i think i'm gonna be pretty proud of this though. excited!

(also thank @tforthetea for the inspiration because a conversation with them helped spark this the first time. all hail)

ao3 link for those who didn't check the title, and fic under the cut! :)

chapter 1: number thirteen

One of the things Crowley liked gloating about on occasion was that he was older than Death Itself.

He wasn’t technically wrong, per se. The humans think him mad, and the demons think him stupid, but he was still right. Human concepts, despite their hold on the population and overall importance, were non-existent before or even during the Beginning. The Four Horsemen and other ideas evolved right alongside the humans, so technically, Crowley was older than all of them. He rather liked having something to lord over War (in his head), during the few unfortunate meetings he would have with her. Famine was a non-issue, and Death could not touch him regardless of how much he didn’t like him. There were failsafes.

Now, however, actually being in the room that Aziraphale could potentially walk into and never come out of, Crowley would gladly take all of it back and pretend he never even thought about it at all.

The damned magician. Crowley never caught his name, but if he had, he would wrought him with the most annoyingly small curses that no one would ever believe to be true after today. Tonight wasn’t just about impressing the audience or even repaying that wine-filled debt, it was about them. Tonight, Crowley was to play the trusted stooge, and…shoot the angel. Point blank. In the face. And make it look real. And not discorporate him. And not get them fired. And—

There were a lot of things to consider, alright? To contrary belief, Crowley did, in fact, not think Death was silly or stupid. He’d also been there when It was born, you know. Crowley liked Abel. Watching It happen was, plainly, fucking terrifying. It brought up something new, and change was just as scary as Death. Ask anyone, and they’d tell you.

Crowley has been running that unfortunate meeting involuntarily through his head for the first ten or so minutes of waiting for the actual show to begin, while also listing out the terrible things he would do to the magician man had he ever held the opportunity again. He’d been sort of gunning (no pun intended) to stay backstage and avoid the riffraff, but been ushered out the dressing room the second he’d given his (admittingly harsh) two cents on the situation. Aziraphale said he wanted privacy before the big show, but Crowley knew he was just ticked. Aziraphale was an angel who thrived with a supportive devil over his shoulder.

So, Crowley is just milling around in the crowd as the Allied soldiers and their companions filter in. They come and go—a Lady even comes to check on him at point, mentioning odd vacant gazes and looking over shoulders paranoid-like, but he waves them off before they can pry. He really shouldn’t be so worried—even if Aziraphale…‘didn’t make it through the night’, he’d eventually be fine. As long as he discorporated a certain way, nothing too lethal—some deaths were harder to come back from others.

They’ve been discorporated before, of course. That was how Crowley knew this. Six millennia offered many opportunities for the event. But never, and it was never, at each other's hand. On paper, yeah, they killed each other on occasion, but truly…

Crowley shifts nervously, sending a glare at anyone who got a bit too close, but the brief discomforts aren’t enough to lift his spirits. There was one entity faffing about who refused to bugger off even with direct acknowledgements, though that might be because Crowley was imagining It. Or It really was here, and interested in the affairs of potential angel discorporation. Or a bomb was going to fall here and It was just beating the rush. The theories were far from endless.

Death appeared back there as soon as Crowley had been kicked out. He’s simply been dealing with it since then, and It probably wasn’t helping to lift his spirits. He shouldn’t be so antsy—both logic and mechanics deemed it so.

They’d be fine, Crowley repeats to himself near constantly, finding a proper seat in direct line of sight where Aziraphale will be standing. He readjusts his tie as the humans sit around him, creating a perfectly isolated bubble of red velvet seats. What did it matter that twelve humans died doing this before? They weren’t human. Death had no claim on them. It couldn’t take them even if It so desired.

Crowley scowls at the hooded figure standing near the entrance of the theater, cold scythe gleaming under the warm bulbs of the West End. Its just…standing there. Making no move to come closer, either. Odd.

Crowley sinks lower into his plush seat, as if trying to avoid Death’s gaze. But being one of two immovable objects on this Earth, It’s always on him. If Death had a goal, there would be no point in warding It away.

Seeing Death is a famous bad omen, and would send a chill down his spine had it been anywhere else. At this moment, however, Crowley is simply irritated. If It was looking for another soul in this theater, that was fine by him, let It take them, but It would not be ruining whatever this was. Humans were ever plentiful—there was only one angel deserving of Earth.

Before Crowley can decide whether or not he should be stupid and confront the omen in the room, the lights go dim. The crowd’s murmurs die down, and Crowley has no choice but to stay seated and watch the show. Aziraphale wouldn’t be coming on until the Ladies of Camelot had their first number, but Crowley could easily endure it. The gaze aimed straight at his head could be ignored.

World be damned if It took the angel’s enthusiasm. They’d be fine. Crowley just has to remember that.

-----

Things are, indeed, not going fine.

Crowley is meant to go up on stage any second now. Aziraphale has no inkwell in his gloved hand. No amount of snapping is removing said turnip from line of sight. He reads the pamphlet—then again, then again, then again, but there is no second option for apparently miracleless individuals.

Fucking. Hell.

Whatever false bravado Aziraphale is spewing is null and void compared to the should-be-non-existent nerves running through frantic hands and finding absolutely nothing useful. Crowley flips through the same two pages—give the stooge the bullet, poise, and shoot. The miracle would’ve ensure that the bullet would never leave the barrel. But now—now, well, he really regrets not considering a Plan B. Did they ever consider a Plan B? Apparently not.

Getting there is a blur. Aziraphale is essentially shoving the rifle into Crowley’s care, which is honestly becoming a worse idea by the second. He’s switching between the demon and the audience so quickly that Crowley can’t tell who he’s addressing. They’re deathly quiet, and Crowley would feel embarrassed if his heart that shouldn’t be there wasn’t pounding with too much blood in too little time. His mind is a soup. Muddled, feverish, and incredibly foul tasting. You wouldn’t want to drink it even if you were starving.

“I would ask you,” Aziraphale says loudly, cutting through the fog of utter mental mush, “to take this bullet, and load it into the rifle. Very carefully.”

Crowley nods belatedly, squeezing and turning parts of the gun to get the non-existent warmth running back through his fingers. He takes the bullet, and turns it round a few times while Aziraphale stares at him with excruciating anxiety. Is he stalling? Honestly, even Crowley wouldn’t be able to tell you.

“It's perfectly simple,” Aziraphale mutters softly, pushing the gun a bit closer. “Aim for my mouth, but shoot past my ear.”

Crowley can’t find himself to agree here. He’s staring at him, and that would usually get him to listen regardless of shades, but Death is boring into them like the harshest of theater critics. His skin is slick, almost clammy, threatening to let the gun slip and fire a stray bullet anywhere but its intended target. His back is sore, oddly enough. Irritating.

Crowley has questions, like he always does, but the time has long passed. What he wants to ask is ‘do I just squeeze that little bit there?’ pointing at (what looks like) to be the trigger—but then that would just make Crowley look incompetent, so he swallows it back and nodly lightly. He’s never fired a gun like Aziraphale seems to believe whole-heartedly, but he’s certainly watched it happen. He’s picked up enough of the motions to figure it out on his own.

That thought still doesn’t help when he’s being told to insert the bullet, though. Crowley fumbles through it, opening a mislaid hatch or two, but manages before Aziraphale could raise any alarms. He’s already stood back in position (when did that happen?) when Crowley raises the loaded rifle for all to see, proclaiming as such. He bites back the tremor threatening to appear—he wasn’t nervous. Excited, more like it. Excited to finally get an excuse to make a throw at the angel non-suspicious like.

That was all it was. Really.

Crowley turns the rifle one last time as Aziraphale spins more useless pageantry for the audience to woo at. They’re both grinning, but tightly and annoyingly false. It wasn’t the eyes that were the problem—what, do you think that demons ever got stage fright? Absurd!

It was just...well, there weren’t just humans in this audience. Crowley couldn’t forget the shadow looming at the end of the theater no matter how tight he grips the side of the weapon. But, just like Someone had laid out all that Time ago—Death could only perceive them.

It could not touch them.

It would not touch them.

It would not touch him, if he could help it.

The drums begin their incessant titter as Aziraphale finally turns to Crowley properly, blue cloak glimmering under the warm light of the stage before them. “A-are you ready, sir?”

Crowley would scoff at this if he could. Sir. Only humans ever addressed him that way; angels look down on him, demons sneer at him. Though he supposes this angel would be different—always throwing the curveballs, him.

“When you hear my signal,” the angel says, voice growing quieter, “shoot.”

Aziraphale removes his tophat, revealing preciously white curls. This pings something, the remaining traces of damned sense he’s got buried inside. Crowley isn’t sure what has possessed him—but he shakes his head. It’s all he can do. Don’t make me do it, he nearly warns out loud. Not if you know what’s good for you.

Aziraphale stills, but not before mouthing words that would be akin to an ashamed mumble if he were close enough. Trust me.

Trust me.

Satan, he got him there. That’s why Crowley was here, after all. Stooge. 100% Reliable Marksman.

Right.

Aziraphale isn’t nearly as good as Crowley at hiding his anxious gaze. “Ready?”

Oh, Heavens no. He never would be, but no better time than the present. Or something like that. He can’t recall where it came from.

“Aim…”

Crowley can’t ignore it anymore—he’s shaking. Extremely so, at that. It’s knocking around the air in his lungs very unkindly. It’s quite difficult to aim. His head is bobbing around in the scope.

Just about…

There it is.

Crowley waits—just like he’s done for the last…however long. A long time. His arms are starting to hurt, frankly. He rests his finger over the trigger to ease the trembling a tad.

And the magician remains silent.

Crowley ignores the sweat crawling down his neck. (Wasn’t it supposed to be freezing?) He waits some more—it’s not like one can forget where you are. Benefit of the doubt and such.

Nothing still. Nary a nod.

He’s been staring at him for a minute. The crowd hasn’t uttered a peep. Is Crowley just supposed to…do it? Did they talk about this? They must have. They talked about this. They talked about it, right? Yeah. Yeah, they must have—

"Fire!"

He startled him.

The reason why he listens is easy to explain. Aziraphale made Crowley flinch. A bit of a spook, really, not that bad of a fright. A sudden jolt—a tap on the shoulder, one that said ‘oh, look, you’ve got perfect aim already! Shoot!’

And he did.

What’s the first rule of approaching someone with a weapon again?

Right. Don’t fucking scare them.

The handle is warm. Slick, heavy, shaky. The scope aims with guilty target missing at the helm. A puff of smoke is spewing from the barrel. A thump, a sickening thump, deafening in the cricket silence of a post-trick world.

And Aziraphale…is on the floor.

(Where else would he be, really?)

There, obviously. On the floor. With a blown-up head. Bleeding like blessed Heaven. Bleeding like bloody Heaven, while Crowley has to take in the sight and smell the blessed thing.

It fits. They fit. Like a perfect crown on a decapitated head.

God, his head’s just gone, isn’t it?

A noise cuts through the thick silence like a stubbornly determined knife. Far away, above it all, there it rings. It’s muffled, soft, and almost awkward in the way it cuts through the air. A camera click. A reluctant, malicious camera click.

And that was just the perfect way to say it, no? He blew his brains out. Crowley blew his angel’s fucking brains out with a fucking gun that he’s never fucking held before.

Trust me.

Well. That, no doubt, was Aziraphale’s fault—it’d be a funny old world if angels and demons went around trusting one another.

-----

hgh. hope that was decent. chapter two coming as soon as it can because im invested now :))

#good omens #crowley #aziraphale #good omens fanfiction #good omens 1941 #cw blood #cw guns #cw death #maniac writing #in a west-end town

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wilderebellion · 11 months

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Calorum Lore Shared in the Dropout Discord

Thank you, Past!Brennan.

Some of them might re-contextualize a thing or two about TRW series. Typically in response to specific questions, but I focused solely on posting Brennan's responses.

Lore on The Ravening War (from April 20, 2020 1:02am ET)

In 1188, a conflict broke out because Count Jacques Tomaté, a Fructeran noble, was by birthright next in line for the throne of Greenhold!

Culture of the Meat Lands (Feb 21, 2020)

Brennan: Meatlanders have clan delineations based on bloodline and their worship/propitiation of The Great Beasts, which is a pagan, polytheistic faith! Warfare between various clans goes back centuries and centuries, a lot like the ancient Celts, so while some Meatlanders might feel kinship with other Meatlanders over outsiders, it's just as common for a given Meatlander to feel THE MOST animosity to a member of an enemy meat clan. So "The Meatlands" doesn't really have a national identity in the same way that, say, Ceresia does, and individuals there are much more likely to define their loyalty by family, clan and faith than by nationality.

(May 18, 2020 8:14pm ET)

The Meatlanders are like ancient Celts: The fact that they don't wear shirts lets southerners stereotype them as barbarians, but their culture is equally as beautiful, ancient and complex as any other land's. Carn is a metropolis full of architectural wonders, beautiful art, etc. Meatlanders rule!!! Labeling them barbarians, like in real life, is a tool artistocrats use to breed xenophobia and hatred into their homleands population, making them more malleable and compliant

The Rocks Sisters (May 1, 2020 11:46pm)

The four sisters were the four archetypal classes! Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue!

Magic Items (April 20, 2020 9:44pm ET)

Magical items aren't quite as prevalent in other nations as they are in Candia!

Amethar's Mom (April 20, 2020 1:21am ET)

Amethar's mother, before she was Queen Pamelia Rocks, was Pamelia Pomegrana, a Fructeran noble!

Magic and Miracle Workers (from April 20, 2020 1:04am, 1:06am, 1:15am)

Brennan: Just like in normal D&D, it takes SPECIFIC training or divinatory magic to tell if magic is arcane or divine, or where its power source originates from! People's reactions to magic are LARGELY based on uninformed prejudice, and aesthetic. This is how Lapin is mostly able to con people.

Even within the Bulbian Church, 99+% of its clergy CAN'T cast magic. Being a miracle worker is a REALLY big fucking deal, and almost always guarantees ROCKETING to the top of the church hierarchy

Liam's magic truly getting him in trouble depends on context! Obvious spellcasting would get him in a lot of trouble, but Candian's magic items usually get a pass from commonfolk because it would be viewed as "alchemy," which isn't seen as being heretical at all!

Leadership in Calorum (from May 6, 2020)

5:32pm ET

Brennan: Plumbeline is the Sovereign Ruler of Fructera, yes! Gustavo had to abdicate in order to become Concordant Emperor! Plumbeline's title is still Lady though, Fructera doesn't have a monarchy, it has a complex consortium of Noble Houses that rule through an orchestrated bloc of alliances, kind of an aristocratic bureaucracy!

5:40pm ET

Brennan: Dairy Islands ALSO a monarchy, just doesn't confer the title of King or Queen to its monarch (uses Prince or Princess), also Ceresia HAS been a monarchy at times, has vacillated between Republic and Imperatorship MANY times, with some dynasties of Imperators lasting a dozen generations or more!

Social Categories

Brennan: All the food nations have weird edge cases, so the delineations are DEFINITELY social and not biological/botanical. Pie people, a combination of grain, butter and fruit, are overwhelmingly Candian. In Calorum, these edge cases would be much like they are in our world, the result of historical wars of conquest, marriages, alliances, etc!

Genetic Complexity (from April 20, 2020 2:14pm ET)

Brennan: Popping in here like a goddamned troll to say that Calorans' DNA are powerfully influenced by more than just their parents genetics, but also by the geographical location of their conception, their gestation and even their childhood dwelling place up through puberty! I suspect that every question I answer only serves to raise further questions, for which I am deeply sorry!!

Other Monarchies in Calorum (May 6, 2020 5:40pm ET)

Queer Rights in Calorum (from May 18, 2020 8:23pm)

Brennan: Candia is the MOST permissive of all the nations in terms of most issues, but no nation in Calorum is openly homophobic. However, it's important to remember that archaic concepts like bloodlines, political marriage, heirs and primogentiure [sic], etc. still exist in this world, and are more emphasized and expected in nations outside of Candia, which puts a lot of pressure on the nobility from that end of the spectrum. In a weird way, that means peasants are a lot freer in terms of who and how they love and marry than aristocrats and especially royals, which there is also some interesting IRL research and precedent for!

Post-War Events (May 18, 2020 8:07pm ET)

I don't think any of these are spoilers, but Amethar and Caramelinda married shortly after the war ended. King Jadain died shortly after the war, after the establishment of the Concord!

Funeral Rites of Calorum's Faiths (May 18, 2020 8:04pm ET)

Bulbians practice burial and very formal funereal rites, and have a sharp delineation between body and spirit, so the body which is crass and material goes back into the ground, and the soul joins the Bulb. Meatlanders practice cremation, and have different beliefs based on religious affiliation, but most Great Beast faiths belief that an afterlife is EARNED through great deeds, otherwise you're reincarnated and get to try again!

#the ravening war #a crown of candy #brennan lee mulligan #acoc spoilers

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ohtobeleah · 1 year

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Enterprise // Jake Seresin

Chapter Three: Darlinghurst Danger

Summary: When you get an unexpected visitor from over the state line, Jake Seresin unintentionally starts a war he isn’t sure he knows how to end and keep you protected at the same time.

Warnings: Mentions of sexy acts. Mentions of drugs, Jake Seresin x F!reader. Villain Bradley Bradshaw. Gun violence, blood, injury sustained from gun violence. Gang related themes.

Word Count: 5.2k

Author Note: I was on a roll with editing this on my break yesterday so here’s chapter three. x Literally obsessed with how this is turning out. Also praying that this works again, another post from the desktop browser.

Masterlist | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three |

Silence. It was an eerie experience. In some circumstances, silence brought tranquillity and peace. It brought with it a sense of calm and the innermost ability to relax amongst the sound of nothing.

In others? It brought with it a storm so chronically destructive that a comeback was rendered near impossible. Ask any survivor of the nineteen seventy four Christmas Day cyclone that completely demolished eighty percent Darwin. In the days and weeks after tropical cyclone Tracy swallowed up Darwin as a whole—the majority of the traumatised population that once made Darwin, well, Darwin—left the city to start anew somewhere else.

When your father died it felt like a tropical cyclone had ripped through you. But in the silence that had been plaguing your mind in the week following, you knew you had to fight to survive. You couldn’t just start anew somewhere else. Not because you didn’t have the means, it was a far more pathetic excuse that kept you tethered to Fitzroy.

You didn’t know how to be anything else.

“So Widow.” Jake's hand came to rest gently on the upper part of your thigh over the silk of the ankle-length dress that he much perfected bunched up on the floor of his office. “What do I get out of this new business merger?” He hadn’t once looked at you since you left Drums Emporium. You sat in the passenger's seat quietly coming down from an adrenaline rush that felt almost like heroin rushing through your veins. Javy Machado had definitely rattled you, even if you fronted a different story to Jake–He’d done his job and done his job well. If that job had been to scare the shit out of you.

You’d thought about what it would mean to combine your business dealings with Jakes. If something wasn't controlled by your father or associated by business trade, it was owned by the Seresins or associated at best. A lot of the smaller family owned businesses around town paid your father for security and safety–hoping that if they gave over a percentage of their weekly profit the katipo would steer clear and more importantly keep the Adders at bay if they ever came slithering over from the North Side.

Contrary to popular belief you weren’t just a pretty face. You had your fathers business wit, reaching down to flick Jake's hand off your thigh as you straightened yourself up a little, you watched as the hand you’d just brushed off your thigh made its way back up to wrap around the steering wheel.

“Twenty percent of all profits made from any one of pops—“ It still didn’t feel right, calling the Katipo owned businesses your own. “I uh—“ You cleared your throat momentarily, correcting yourself. For a brief second Jake had looked at you with condolence filled eyes before he turned his attention back to the road ahead. He did feel for you, he’d been where you were right now, only he’d known all his life he’d step up and take the reins one day, lead an empire. You were kind of just thrown into it, no one expected a woman to take your fathers place. “I mean, twenty percent of all profits made by any of my operations.” You were quick to correct yourself, it was still early days in your new found position and coming to terms with all that was once your fathers was now left to you was going to take some time to fully adjust to.. “And I’ll take twenty percent of anything you and your men make outta Drums or any other club and pub you own on this side of town.” Jake's hand grew progressively tighter around the steering wheel as he shook his head, knuckles turning white with the applied pressure. He knew you were low balling him and he didn't appreciate that one bit.

“Y/n, if you think for a second I’ll settle for something as messily twenty fucking percent of your operations you’ve got another thing coming.” Jake liked you, despite the way you made his blood boil beyond belief. You were young and vibrant and willing to break rules and bring down walls just to make it in this world. He admired your willingness to walk into his office and ask for help—although he’d never say that. Asking for help was harder than anything he’d ever done before. And you chose to come to him, not anyone else. “I want fifty percent and free use of any of your men when need be.” Jake's eyes were darker than normal, seeing nothing but his opportunity to finally be in control of Fitzroy almost in the palm of his hands. Something he’d always dreamed about, gotten off to the thought of. Jake could feel himself becoming greedy, wanting everything, including but not limited to the South Side and well–you.

“Only if I get the same, Seresin.” You sassed back as you played with a single silver bullet you pulled from the gun you’d taken from Javy. Fiddling it between your fingers as you spoke, looking down at the bullet that seems too small to be able to end a life. “Fifty percent of Drums and surroundings pub revenue plus free use of any of your men in exchange for half my operations and all the men you can possibly need.” You smiled as you rattled off your final offer, turning your head to face Jake as he drove you home. Across to the South Side, the side of the city of Fitzroy Jake had no control of, but couldn’t wait to sink his teeth into.

The south of Fitzroy had a nickname. Sin City to be precise. Men and Women from all walks of life would flock there to indulge in their vices, and they rarely left disappointed. Whether it be sex or alcohol you now ruled over all, every drop of alcohol served was owned and run by the Katipo and every woman of the night gave a percentage to you in return for free medical care. And of course, drugs from classic green grass to white china white heroin were available on every street corner, if you knew where to look, and if you knew what doors to knock on. Despite who answered though all those doors were now owned by no other than the Queen of Fitzroy. You.

“Deal.” Jake agreed softly, releasing his tight grip he had on the steering wheel after rolling his neck. “Fifty fifty.” He could agree to that, that was something he could work with, that was worth his time. Not that you were ever not worth his time. “Lets shake on it?” Jake released his hand from the steering wheel all together to reach out to gently thumb at your chin. Turning your head to face him once again as his thumb teased at your lower lip.

“I’d rather just fuck—“ You batted your lashes, knowing your response would annoy Jake ‘The Hangman’ Seresin enough that he’d have to hold back whatever nasty thoughts he had about you in order to keep the control he knew he had in this little merger. “I'll bend you over my desk this time just so I don't have to look at your smug ass face.” You'd be lying if the laugh that escaped from the depths of Jake's soul didn’t make you giddy. He’d always been a dick, but a dick you could easily get along with if you pushed all the crud of gang law aside. Your Romeo to his Juliet. “But still, I’d rather just fuck.” Jake looked at you for a few seconds as he turned down the secluded street his GPS had told him to take. You'd moved recently–which turned out to be the best thing you could have ever done. Away from everyone, away from the world. Your father had spared no expense.

“Can’t fuck while I’m driving can I?” Jake groaned as he adjusted himself. “And how sure are you that I won’t just fuck you over in this deal huh?” A grin washed over your face as you happily allowed Jake's thumb to slip inside your mouth momentarily, your eyes glued on his mouth as he groaned softly at the feeling of your warm mouth wrapping around his digit.

“Because I’d fuck you over first.” You replied as you leaned in further over the centre console, Jake's thumb still on the cusp of your lower lip. “I need protection from people much bigger than you Seresin, you don’t scare me—“ It was indeed a lie. Jake knew that. He scared the shit out of you, he always had. But there had to have been a side of him that didnt for you to feel like you could reach out to him when you knew you were royally fucked.

Jake scared the shit out of everyone, including himself. But he also knew he was the last of your worries at the moment, Jake Seresin was incapable of hurting you just as much as he was incapable of giving you the life you deserved. The life he knew you wanted. The one he could remember your father talking about in heavy detail during meetings with his own father.

Looking at you, Jake saw a younger version of himself, reckless and willing. He wanted to indulge in his biggest vice, you. But he also knew that doing that would be the biggest mistake you could ever make if you truly wanted out one day.

“We��ll just have to see about that, now won’t we?”

***~***~***~***~***~***~***~

“Shit, Jake–” When you and Jake arrived at your newly renovated house, you took quick notice of the fact none of the outside lights were on. “You're just teasing at this pace.” Something akin to a whine escaped as you squirmed in the passenger seat. The lights you liked to leave on a timer were off—and judging by the time, two thirty in the goddamn morning, they should have been well and truly on. “Please–” Fighting off thoughts that something could be wrong, very wrong, you tried to keep focused on the way Jake's fingers were making you feel as he slowly circled two digits around your sensitive bundle of nerves. “Fuck–i cant!” It was to no use though. “Somethings not right.” You had a fear of the dark that could be easily forgotten about when you could keep the lights illuminating the garden that surrounded your property. The dark had never been something you struggled with until you shot your first person, ever since then the dark was a place where the lives of those you'd taken could still haunt you.

Through floor to ceiling windows in the cracks of the tapestry like curtains, you saw no lights reflecting on the water flowing steadily under the miniature bridge which separated your humble abode from the rest of the town. Fuck.

A flustered mess, you kicked your feet down from the tan leather car seat you sat on and fixed yourself quickly after Jake's hand had “accidentally” made its way between your legs to tease your cunt while he drove and tried to forget about the fact you were a decade younger.

“What’s wrong?” Jake asked, licking your arousal off his fingers as he drove the car over the bridge and into the gravel carport. Not sure what had startled you.

“Not sure yet, something just doesn’t seem right.” Reaching for Coyote's gun, you reloaded the clip before placing it in its rightful spot, your garter belt. “Fucking hell—“

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Jake's eyebrows raised as he parked the car, shutting off the headlights before reaching over to open the glove box. A small arsenal for handguns ranging in size and power all resting neatly on top of one another. “I haven’t heard anything about Bradshaw and his boys in a while? What if he heard the news about your dad?” Your heart sank—fuck.

“This is the exact reason I needed protection!” You hissed as you held a hair tie in between your teeth before you aggressively threw your hair up into a high ponytail. “It’s been less then a two fucking weeks and bastards are breaking in! Probably trying to knock me off before I get a chance to knock them down a few ranks.” Seething, you placed your heels back on, mumbling incoherent words to yourself although Jake smirked to himself when he caught the tail end of one of your rants. “Fucking Bradley Bradshaw, who names their kid that?”

“I’ll go through the back, keep your wits about yourself kid and don’t fucking do anything I wouldn’t alright?” Jake growled as he unlocked the safety on his own weapon of choice. His Glock 34. “You’re covered alright, you can trust me.” Jake reassured you before placing his gun in the inside pocket of his dress jacket, about to step out of the Porsche. You reached over to grip at his bicep, keeping him from leaving the safety of the car you both sat in.

Jake saw the fear in your eyes, he’d never seen you like this before, suddenly so open and vulnerable. It made you mortal like himself. Jake didn't know what to say when you were looking at him close to tears. This was why you'd come to him, wasn't it? What did you know that he didn't?

“What are you hiding?” Jake asked as softly as he could, not wanting to push you away to a point he couldn't reach you. When Jake's question was met with silence, he leaned in, taking your lips hostage with his own. Moving slowly as he reached out to tilt your chin up. It truly did come as a surprise all things considered. You’d never just kissed Jake Seresin before, not like this anyway. In his car, without having been bent over or used as a real life sex toy. “You can trust me, I've got you.” With his heart on his sleeve, Jake reminded you once more that he did in fact have your back. All it did was leave you confused. Why? Why would Jake kiss you like he did, he got nothing out of it. You had to push your own selfishness aside when the gravity of the situation dawned on you.

“If it’s Bradshaw, or just any of his men in general, I’m fucked Jake—“ You paused for a moment, you really hadn’t sealed any deals yet, only spoken of an agreement which in this town meant nothing, especially in this sort of business. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing Jake, I dont know how to do this, any of this–” You were panicking, freaking out because you were supposed to know what you were doing, you had to expect this kind of thing to happen, its why you went to Jake in the first place. But now that something was playing out in real time and not just as a figment of your imagination in a realm of possibility somewhere far far away, you didn't know what to do.

“Widow–” Jake gripped at your cheeks, squishing your cheeks together between his fingers and thumb. “Pull yourself together, collect your composure and shut the fuck up.”

Despite your existential worry, you nodded slightly before pulling away. You needed Jake to be tough with you–you didn't know how to compute anything else. Exiting the car, you walked with Jake towards the front door, both carrying. Your breathing hitched when you saw the door somewhat busted, broken and open.

“You only ever threaten to kill me, Bradshaw won’t even bother with a goddamn warning.” You weren't in the right attire for this, nor was Jake. It looked as if you were both about to go to a fancy dinner, when in actuality it was something far more morbid.

“That’s because I’m a gentleman, and have a soft spot for women who have over inflated egos.” Jake smirked as he changed his trajectory to head towards the side of the house. “Roosters just a maniac.”

Drawing your gun you took a deep breath in and a deep breath out before you entered your new home that was meant to be your fortress. You ever so graciously manoeuvred your way through the spacious living room, quickly noticing the body of your bodyguard Clyde Lawler laying bloodied on the floor amongst shattered glass and broken furniture.

“Son of a Bitch.” You whispered to yourself through gritted teeth as you crouched down beside the still and bloodied man, holding your fingers to his neck, finding no pulse when you pressed against the cool of his skin. “Fuck Clyde—“ If you werent pissed before you were certainly pissed now, Clyde had worked for your father for as long as you could remember. Barely two weeks with you and he’s dead. That had to have been a bad fucking omen if there ever was one.

“Alright fucker, where are you?” You continued further into your own house towards the kitchen, slowly but surely making sure to point your gun at anything that could have resembled a broad shouldered man.

It was however in the kitchen where you finally saw him standing there, waiting there for your arrival. With your gun quickly flying to aim between his eyes as he sat at the kitchen island smirking, cigarette lit between his fingers, the only thing of light in the house until you flicked the switch. Exposing Braldey Bradshaw for everything he was. A mad man with no remorse.

A man who you knew had played a vital role in your fathers death. You knew he was coming for you next.

“Nice to see you Widow, sorry to hear about dear old daddy.” It wasn't as condolence filled as Jake had said it before, Bradley mentioning your father just left an awfully bad taste in your mouth. “But I trust you’re taking to the title of Queen of Fitzroy quite well?” Bradley spoke with enough conviction in his tone that for a second you actually believed you wore a genuine crown. “Didn’t know he’d hand it down, thought Katipo would all but be forgotten once the king was six feet under.” Bradley flicked his ashes onto the ground before placing the cancer stick between his lips, inhaling the poison you wished would take him there on the stop. “You’re leaking kid, got men jumping ship and running for hiring ground as we speak, don't you?”

“What do you want from me Bradshaw, you're a long way from home?” Darlinghurst, at least an eight hour drive away on a good day. “I’m assuming your boys aren’t here to protect you from bullets I won't hesitate to pepper you with if you don’t get the fuck out of my house in five seconds.....” Bradley Bradshaw, king of Darlinghurst, a city much bigger than Fitzroy and in a whole other state. But as it goes, your fathers death meant Fitzroy was open for the taking, pop Jake ‘The Hangman’ Seresin off while you're at it and suddenly the city’s open season. A small fish in the grand scheme of things, but you knew Bradley had had his eye on Fitzroy ever since he’d come across your fathers path a few years ago.

You pulled the pin back before aiming your gun a little higher when you came to the realisation Bradley hadnt taken you seriously. Arms extended as far as they would go as you saw Jake's broad body ghosting through the backyard.

“I just came to talk sweetheart ain’t nothing to be afraid of, came to offer you a deal actually.” Bradley chuckled before putting the cigarette out on the kitchen island before he sighed heavily, standing from the stool he’d been parched on, taking a few wide strides your way. With every thud of his boot you flinched ever so slightly.

“Four—“ You spat shakingly. Still counting down the five seconds you’d given as a warning.

“Come work for me and my boys? I’m in need of a pretty little thing like yourself.” You didn’t know much about why people called Bradley Bradshaw, Rooster. It would be a question you’d have to remember to ask Jake later on, because right now you felt like you couldn’t breathe with Bradley standing so close and in your face. “You’ve got balls kid, I’ll give you credit for that, but with that pretty face that doesn’t matter.” His voice was low and gruff as Bradley walked even closer to you— closing whatever possible gap that had been left. “But you and I both know you won’t survive on your own sweetheart, won’t last two weeks amongst the big dogs.” As soon as Bradley had finished threatening you, a wild smirk appeared across his face—a tight arm came around your throat from behind. It had to have been one of Bradshaw's boys waiting patiently in the shadows for the opportune moment to strike. “And yeah, I did bring my boys.'' Bradley thoroughly enjoyed the way your eyes lit up like Christmas trees with shock and horror. “You're a fucking amature Widow, but you arent exactly none-leathal.”

You dropped your gun to the ground as your hands flew up the claw at the dark forearm that worked to choke you, growing tighter with every passing second, constricting your airways as you flailed. Gasping for air.

Bradley chuckled to himself, knowing this was exactly how things were going to go. Picking the gun you’d dropped up slowly from the ground, laughing before he pointed it towards an armed and ready to fire Jake Seresin. Bradley for the life of him hadnt quite put the pieces of the puzzle together, but he world–evenly, if given enough time.

“Drop the girl Bradshaw.” Jake calmly spoke as he held his gun up ready to fire. One hand still in the pocket of his slacks casually. “The fuck are you doing in Fitzroy?”

“Business, thought I’d come check out the market in Fitzroy, seeing as though little miss Widow here’s about to be the top dog, or have you already beat me to it Hangman?” Bradley questioned with a raised brow. “Bets are you have.” he had a cruel smirk, a sinister smile that made you shiver every time you heard it.

“Anything to keep the likes of you out of my city Bradshaw.” Jake spat, Rooster wore three identifiable scars on his face–courtesy of an altercation he once had with Jake. Ever since? Tensions between the pair had been far too high and all it was going to take for an all out war to begin would be one simple trigger. That trigger for Jake could very well be Braldey Bradshaw stepping into his territory just to fuck with him, or for Bradley it could very well be Jake Seresin trying to capitalise on the booming drug market amongst the current youth of today, outsourcing quality product from interstate. Darlinghurst to be specific. It hadnt taken long for Bradley to figure out who’d been buying out all his dealers. “

You couldn’t breathe as Roosters henchman choked you out, so much so your vision had begun to blur. Splattering as you gasped for air, any amount to keep you breathing. The noises akin to whimpers irritated the seemingly emotionless Darlinghurst Danger—Bradley groaned as he held the bridge of his nose between his index finger and his thumb, frustrated with the noises escaping you.

“Payback—shut her the fuck up will you?” He ordered Payback, or Reuban Fitch Jake would later bring you up to speed with, covered your mouth with his free hand, one arm now wrapped around your throat tighter than ever—the other over your mouth. “Fuck, finally I can hear myself think!”

“She’s a kid—“ Jake reminded Bradley as he turned to face him once again, Jake never lowered his weapon from the clear shot he had at Bradshaw. All it would take to end this would be one. single. shot. But Jake knew if he shot Bradley Bradshaw he’d start an all out war. “The South Side is a drop in the ocean to you Bradshaw—”

“I’ve always wondered, Seresin, Do the carpets match the drapes with this one or is it nothing but slick city?” Bradley asked, he knew something was up the minute he saw you pull up in the drive with none other than Jake Seresin himself. “I bet she must have put out big time for you to be playing guard dog? And yet here you stand? Calling her a kid?”

“I don’t give a shit what you do to her Bradshaw but if you kill her before I stake my claim on the South Side I’ll blow your fucking brain out.” Your heart stung. Damn, Jake really didn’t give a shit after all, not even a little bit. He was just doing this to make his mark, claim his piece of the south–at least fifty percent of it anyway. “I need her, so unless you wanna have a problem with me I highly suggest you have your guy here drop her.” Jake had meant what he said, he did need you–but not for the reason you currently thought. “Before I shoot you in the fucking neck.”

On the inside Jake was panicking, but on the outside he remained as collected as he always was. Jake was playing with fire, he knew he was walking a tightrope, trying to convince Bradley that doing business with you was useless because you were a none threat to both of them. But that was a lie Bradley could smell a mile away.

“Huh.” Bradley chuckled to himself before deciding he’d had enough of Jake's garage. “So I guess if you don’t give a shit about Widow, you wouldn’t really care if I just—“ Before Jake could register what Bradley was about to do, he was turning to fire a single round through your left shoulder as Reuban dropped your almost unconscious body to the ground. Jake froze like he’d been frozen in time—everything felt like it was playing out in slow motion around him as you hit the ground. No. no it wasn't supposed to go like this.

“YOU MOTHER FUCKER!” Jake shouted as the image of you falling to the ground in a heap before him blinded him. He fired a hail of bullets into the kitchen as Rooster ducked for cover— making his way through the house towards the front door. Payback knowing Jake would be focused on his boss opted from the same way Jake had gained access, the back door. But he knew it wasn't the last time he'd see him.

Bradley haphazardly looked over his shoulder as he fired back at Jake, an all out gun fight breaking up between the two of them. A war.

“Never took you for one to take orders from a woman Seresin, can’t wait to tell the others swarming around Fitzroy just how pussy whipped you truly are!” It was a threat that meant more than Jake could comprehend at the time. “But then again what’s a King without his Queen?” Bradley fired round around towards Jake who was now crouching behind the table, watching as you laid still on the tiles covered in thick blood. He had a choice, go after Bradshaw right this second and finish a war which had only just started….

Or help you.

“Fuck—” Jake hissed at himself as he gritted his teeth. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” His hand collided against the wall in a fist as he reached for his phone, dialling the only person he knew could help. The slam of the front door brought him out of his slight trace, the sudden ceasefire of guns stilled the house as Jake jutted his head out to take a quick look around. Bradley Bradshaw was gone.

What had Jake just started?

Rushing quickly to your side, Jake's eyes went wide at the amount of blood you had already lost. “Fuck—“ In that moment, Jake came to the realisation he actually cared a hell of a lot more about you than he cared to admit to even himself. Which all things considered was a hell of a lot.

“Jake, I swear if you let me die I’ll fucking kill you.” You groaned, coughing blood as you tried to fight off unconsciousness from the lack of blood. “I’ll—I’ll ki—“

“Hey, I got you.” Jake pushed your hair from your forehead as he crouched beside you. “Just stay awake alright? Can you do that for me, pretty girl?” Jake spoke as softly and as gently as you’d ever heard him, for a second you thought you’d already died. He’d never sounded so caring, so kind. Jake Seresin wasn't a kind man, but for you he'd be just about anything. A friend, a partner, a protector.

Jake gently applied pressure over your shoulder before placing the phone to his ear to listen to the dial tone. Calling the one person Jake knew could help.

“You’re gonna be alright Y/n, keep those beautiful eyes on me yeah? Don’t you go sleeping on me, we both know you're too fucking heavy to carry limp.” Teasing, Jake watched the corner of your bloodied lip turn upright, even if it was just for a split second he knew you were still there. The groan of utter agony you let out as he applied more pressure though broke his heart.

“Jesus Jake it’s 3am?” The husky voice came through the phone, forcing Jake to breathe out a sigh of relief because he knew he wasn't alone. “What could you possibly need right now?”

“Bob I need you man, it’s serious—“ Jake was breathing far too heavy into the phone for Robert Floyd to be remotely comfortable with, sitting up with a hiss in his bed, Bob turned to see how wife was still sleeping soundly beside him. He soon reached out to the bedside table that he’d sat his glasses on, placing them on the bridge of his nose. “Bring anything to fix a bullet wound to the south side, Y/n’s place.”

Bob frowned, taking his phone away from his ear for a second to read the caller ID once more. Yep. This was Jake Seresin calling, so why the fuck was he on the South Side of Fitzroy and why the hell was he with you of all people?

“What the hell? Are you good Jake? Why are you with Widow? What ar-“

“ROBERT! No time, just hurry!” Jake hung up before resting against the wall, sliding you onto his lap so he could keep pressure on your shoulder. “I’ve got you, pretty girl, gonna be alright, gonna be all okay and we’ll fix this together.” Jake, for the first time in his life, felt guilty, he had a clean shot he should have just taken it. Whispering as he stroked your head with the hand not stopping the bleeding.

“S-So much for fu-fuckin protection.” You shuttered before coughing slightly in Jake's warm embrace. Wondering just how much of what he;d said to you was true and what was just bullshit, knowing that Jake could be an utter liar when he needed to be in order to get what he wanted. You'd just fallen for his charm. Shame. On. You.

“Bob’s gonna fix you up darlin—you’ll be alright, can't get out of this that easily, you’ve got an entire Enterprise to run.” You didn’t answer, your shallow breathing almost unnoticeable as Jake leaned over you slightly to see if your eyes were still open, if you were still with him.

You weren’t.

“Widow? Open your fucking eyes!”

-------------------------------------------------

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niqhtlord01 · 1 year

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Humans are weird: This land is my land

( Please come see me on my new patreon and support me for early access to stories and personal story requests :D https://www.patreon.com/NiqhtLord Every bit helps) Conflict: Fenix Alliance/Human War. Alias: War of Broken Suns Summary: Border disputes between the Terran Republic and Fenix Alliance escalated into all-out war during the year of 3056.

Initial gains made by the Fenix Alliance were swift and projections of a total Terran collapse were predicted within sixteen months. However, what the Alliance had not expected was with the speed in which humanity could shift industry to a total war footing.

By the mark of the second year the Terran Republic had halted the steady advance of the Fenix Alliance and began launching a series of counter attack all along the front line. Having stretched their supplies lines to maintain their earlier gains the Alliance quickly found their forces too widely spread out and easily picked off one engagement at a time. Following the disastrous battle of the Seven Stars, the Fenix Alliance military teetered on total collapse after the loss of the majority of their senior leadership. To add further strain to the war effort the outlining colonies of the alliance had all fallen under Terran control and human fleets were poised to enter the core worlds of the alliance.

Faced with imminent invasion of prime manufacturing worlds and the most heavily populated planets in the entire alliance, the remaining government officials reached out to Terran leaders and offered their surrender.

It was hoped that with this act the war would see an end to the suffering of their people; how little they knew of humanity’s vengeance. ------------------------------------

“These terms are outrageous!”

Tarsu threw the stack of documents back across the table in disgust. The shower of paper forms landing in front of the seemingly uninterested human delegation as Tarsu’s fury vented.

“Why would you ever believe we would agree to these terms?!”

The meeting had started not more than five minutes ago when the human delegation entered the room and quietly handed Tarsu and his fellow delegates of the alliance a series of forms dictating their terms for peace.

If Tarsu’s outburst had shaken them at all they were skilled at hiding it for he saw upon each of their faces a cold stare of indifference. Worse, they saw him as nothing more than a child throwing a tantrum; which only sought to enflame his anger further.

“Please calm yourself,” Tarsu’s fellow delegate Marox said as he placed a calming hand on his shoulder, “this is no time for raised voices.”

“But-“ Tarsu began before he felt the hand on his shoulder tighten. No further words were needed between the two of them and so Tarsu sat back down while Marox addressed the humans.

“I apologize for my friend’s behavior,” he began sweetly, “these last few months has been most trying for all of us.”

The lead human negotiator, Lin Zhao if Tarsu remembered the alien’s introduction, nodded quietly.

“Of course; the savagery of war often brings out the worst of any people.” Lin remarked softly. He looked past Marox at Tarsu and the pair locked eyes for a moment. A moment that was all Tarsu needed to know that this human was lying through his teeth with every word.

“Which is all the more reason we should conclude such…uncivilized actions with the agreements put forward today so we may work together to build upon a brighter future between our two peoples.”

Taru opened his mouth to mock this human but Marox spoke first.

“As do we, but you must admit these opening terms are rather confusing.”

Marox picked up his own copy of the planned peace treaty and turned to the third page.

“Specifically,” he began as he pointed to a certain section of the document, “I believe there was some form of translator error as it says you wish us to hand over four colony systems to you.”

Lin said nothing as he opened his copy of the agreement and turned to the page Marox had mentioned. He read it quietly before closing it and looking back up at Marox.

“There was no translation error, the peace treaty is contingent on the handover of these territories as well as any preexisting or future claims to them to the Terran Republic until the end of time.”

Marox’s mouth hung open in disbelief as Lin scanned the delegates opposite him.

“If there are any further discrepancies you wish to speak of please feel free to mention them now and I can clarify any misund-“

“Shut it!” Tarsu shouted as he was once more on his feet.

“What thinks you can steal our lands and claim them as your own?” he demanded.

Lin shrugged dismissively. “We conquered them four months ago for starters.”

Tarsu and Marox were left speechless by the brazenness of this human but Lin continued.

“We also require you to remove all military installations along the border with these territories which will be transformed into a Demilitarized Zone where no military force of either of our respective peoples will enter.”

As if sensing some further outburst to come Lin opened his hands in a giving gesture. “Those systems will of course still reside under your authority and can be administrated however you wish so long as no military forces are present in the DMZ.”

“Oh can they?” Tarsu retorted angrily, “How very benevolent of you to allow us to govern our own territories.”

“If that is unacceptable we can retain those systems as well.” Lin said as he cocked his head to the side and stared Tarsu down.

There was no emotion behind those eyes now. No anger, no empathy, no compassion; only a cold calculating logic that left the Alliance delegates uneasy.

“Tarsu!” Marox whispered harshly under his breath, “Sit. Down. Now.”

Before Tarsu had even taken his seat again Marox shaking his head at Lin. “Your original offer is much more preferable.” He began, shooting Tarsu the quickest of glances for silence as he was about to retort once more. “I think we should resume the main discussion again so we forgo any further confusion as we discuss.”

“I am afraid there is already a grave misunderstanding between us.”

Lin’s words surprised the alliance delegation as now the human stood up and slowly slid their copy of the peace treaty back towards Tarsu.

“You are operating under the presumption that this is a negotiation where we barter back and forth, trade saber thrusts and parries, and eventually walk away with each of us feeling like we have accomplished something.”

“This is not the current situation you find yourself in.” Lin tapped the document pointedly as if to emphasize his words.

“This is not a negotiation, this is a dictation; you will agree to these terms or the war will continue.”

Silence greeted the conference room as neither party spoke. Each of the alliance delegates eyed themselves in nervous fear and realization. Tarsu imagined that some of them had expected humanity to be just as equally tired of war when these talks began and that the terms would not be as harsh, but Tarsu had known all along that when humanity had the upper hand they would use it to the full extent. It was Marox to break the silence after what felt like an eternity.

“Surely you must understand,” his voice spoke pleadingly, “that these terms are far from equal.”

To Tarsu’s surprise Lin nodded in agreement. “That is true,” he said calmly, “but we just do not care for your perspective.”

Marox slumped back into his chair defeated; his arms slumping as if the weight of the universe itself suddenly came crashing down on him.

Tarsu did not waiver however and asked Lin “And what is to become of our people in those systems you would snatch away from us like cravens in the night?”

Lin reclined back into his chair and clasped his fingers together. “They will of course be given the option to return to your sovereign territories and remain citizens of the Fenix Alliance; but after thirty days any who remain will become citizens of the Terran Republic and will fall under the laws and mandates of our governing bodies.”

“You are not content to steal our lands, so you must steal our citizens as well!?” one of the alliance delegates spoke up next to Tarsu.

Lin looked at the alien as if they were nothing more than an annoying insect buzzing around his head.

“They have thirty days to leave, in which time we will provide transportation for them to ease the burden of their relocation.”

Before any of the other alliance delegates could speak, Lin stood up along with the rest of the human delegation in tow. “There is nothing more to discuss for this treaty.” Lin said calmly as he pulled out a strange circular device from inside his clothing and looked down at it. “You have until this time tomorrow to discuss it with your leaders at which time we will demand an answer.”

With this the human delegation began filing out of the room to the shocked expressions of the Fenix Alliance delegation. Lin was last to reach the door but stopped inside the doorframe and turned back to the group.

“I would like to remind you, that should you reject these conditions the war will resume; and the next time we sit down to talk of peace our terms will be..” he paused while fixing a cold gaze on Tarsu, “more substantial, with what we demand for peace.”

With that ominous warning the human left the room and brought a final curtain to a needless war.

#HUMANS ARE WEIRD #humans are insane #humans are space orcs #humans are space oddities #scifi #story #writing #original writing #niqhtlord01

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workersolidarity · 1 month

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[ 📹 After Russian authorities tried to stop a white Renault sedan, the same vehicle the terrorists that attacked Crocus City Hall were seen escaping in, the vehicle refused to stop, after which Russian police opened fire on and overturned the vehicle. After pulling one of the suspects out of the sedan, tying the man up, he is interrogated, telling local authorities that he was offered half a million rubles to engage in the attack.]

🇷🇺 🚨

AS THE U.S. BLAMES ISIS FOR TERRORIST ATTACK AT CROCUS CITY HALL, RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES ARREST MERCENARIES TRYING TO ESCAPE TO UKRAINE

As the United States tries to pin the blame for the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall on the ISIS extremist group, Russian authorities arrested 11 men in relation to the event, including the four gunmen responsible for the carnage at the concert hall as they attempted to cross into Ukrainian territory.

Recently, the ISIS extremist group, which has a history of working on and off with the Intelligence agencies of the United States, and have been accused of acting as proxy for the U.S., claimed responsibility for the attack through its associated news agency Amaq on its Telegram channel.

However, in a recent address to the Russian people, newly reelected Russian President, Vladimir Putin, told the country's population that the attackers made arrangements with Ukrainian authorities to open a window for which the attackers would escape over the border into Ukraine.

According to Russian media, on the morning of March 23rd, a white Renault sedan, the same vehicle the suspects were seen escaping from the Crocus City Hall in, was seen heading towards Ukraine, about 100km (62mi) from the border.

The suspects refused to stop for local police, after which, police forces opened fire on the vehicle, overturning the sedan and wounding one of the suspects.

After pulling one of the suspects out of the vehicle, police tied the man up and attempted to interrogate him on camera.

The video, published online by local authorities, shows the suspect being interrogated on his knees, shaking and barely able to answer the authorities questions.

During the short interrogation, the suspect tells Russian authorities that he received the task of the terrorist attack after following a "preacher" on Telegram. At some point, the "preacher's assistant" assigned him the attack on Crocus, offering him half a million rubles to shoot up the concert hall, even paying half the sum before hand.

“I listened to the preacher... His assistant wrote to me... about a month ago,” the detainee said.

He goes on say to Russian authorities that after a conversation with the "preacher's assistant," he received the task of "killing people."

Russian news outlet Ria Novosti described the information extracted from the suspect as follows:

"After some time, he admits that through an Internet resource where he listened to sermons, recruiters contacted him and offered to commit mass murder for 500 thousand rubles. Half was transferred in advance to the card, the rest was promised after completing the task. They also provided weapons. Who exactly it was is still unknown. According to the terrorist, he flew to Russia from Turkey on March 4."

Meanwhile, another suspect said that he met a man named "Abdullah" on Telegram, after which he was offered a job.

"We went to Dmitrovskoe Highway and bought a car from the relatives of a new friend. We are probably talking about the same Renault vehicle," the suspect is quoted as saying.

The suspects have since been taken for questioning by the Investigative Committee.

According to the Russian intelligence services, known as the FSB, the suspects have contacts in Ukraine and intended to cross the border where the Ukrainian authorities had opened a window for the attackers to escape into the warring country.

The FSB says the attack was carefully planned, with a cache of weapons that were hidden for the attackers to use.

Russian authorities have since detained a total of 11 suspects, four of whom have been shot by Russian forces.

According to some Russian reports, at least some of the attackers were natives of Tajikistan, however the authorities have not confirmed this information and asked that journalists "refrain from disseminating unverified and unreliable information."

The death toll in the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack rose today to 137 people killed, while another 180 were injured in the attack.

#source1

#source2

#source3

#source4

#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

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genshingorlsrevengeance · 21 days

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OC Story: 916

Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2

Chapter 2 - Newcomers

Twelve years has passed since 916 joined the mercenaries known as "Wolf Company". An upcoming mission has the PMC tense, with the client being a complete unknown to them...

Genre: Scifi (Mecha) Content Warning: General descriptions of violence, swearing, long text jumpscare after you press Keep Reading lmao Word Count: 9.1k

A/N: Coming up with titles is hard, man. Nothing too in depth to say here this time until the end, which is where of course a more in depth author's note will be. Also if you want an "opening" song to this series like how shows/anime do it, "Dream In Drive" by the Oral Cigarettes is what I chose. Thanks for taking the time to read this if you do, feedback is always appreciated!

The year is 1177.

Thirty-four years have passed since the battlefield had been introduced to the bipedal warmachines known as Soldat D’acier. Though they did not stand above twelve meters, their appearance revolutionized how war was waged.

Entire armored divisions were reduced to scrap metal, and fortresses once thought impenetrable transformed to piles of rubble.

The entire continent of Anis rushed their militaries into an arms race to have their own versions of these steel behemoths.

In the name of expansion and rightful conquest, the country of Florence had declared war on Cumbria in 1155. The invasion saw countless deployments of Soldats on both sides, and death quickly followed in their wake. Cities once populated with thousands of people were reduced to a quarter in the first year alone.

Five long and bloody years later, a peace treaty was signed by both leaders, hoping to end their peoples' suffering.

The hardships endured during the conflict had led to resentment for both sides, their grudges never truly have disappeared.

Dyson Incorporated, an engineering company that focused on electronic appliances and Soldat development, sought continued profit from the conflict. They developed a new project to keep their cold war ongoing indefinitely under the guise of new Soldat-led private security companies.

Due to their connections within the government and their monopoly on technologies in the country, Dyson Incorporated sided with Florence. Their most successful project had led the company to their greatest profits achieved, and their downfall.

This project was called the “Enhanced Human Initiative”, led by Doctor Moreau in 1160.

Kidnapping orphaned children from the war, they began experimenting on them to create the perfect super soldier. Implanting them with mind controlling chips and heavily augmented with machinery to enhance their combat prowess.

The company disguised them as adults on the battlefield, working alongside the oblivious Florence Military. The normal sluggish and heavy movements of the standard Soldat were surpassed by the Enhanced Human pilots, their machines speeding past even the fastest tank with human-like grace.

However in 1164, the Enhanced Human known as 403 suddenly went berserk alongside every child of generation one, drawing suspicion towards the companies as to the pilot's true nature. Feeling tremendous guilt for what she had done to the children, Doctor Moreau leaked her research to the Florence Government, causing a massive investigation into the company.

Thanks to their contribution with the inner works and development of the country, they were able to hold investigators back for six months before the Military Police finally discovered their pilots’ sinister origins.

Twelve years after the raid, Dyson Incorporated had been disbanded, its leading members arrested, and their Enhanced Humans were thought to be extinct, the nightmarish project seemingly over for good.

In truth, only a single generation one Enhanced Human remained, and he had been accepted into a PMC known as “Wolf Company”. Ever since then, he had fought alongside his new family, quickly skyrocketing the PMC’s infamy into new heights, unsure of what his future held in store…

…

916 slowly opened his eyes, his surroundings slowly coming into view. The R1-N0’s cockpit hatch was still open, seeing the blue skies above him illuminate the chair and the Soldat’s controls. 916’s hands rested on his stomach before he began to stretch in the small space he had put himself in. He made a small hum of acknowledgement, having accidentally fallen asleep in here yet again.

He had his own room and it was not uncomfortable by any means, yet on some days he preferred to rest in the cockpit. Whether that was due to always piloting and performing maintenance in it or he just felt safer within the Soldat due to his past with Dyson, he could not say. Before he could fully begin to wake up, he heard metallic clanging grow ever closer before seeing a short red headed girl’s shadow emerge above the hatch.

“Figured you’d be napping here, Vi,” Chloe said, a smile growing on her face. “Boss has got our next job and wants us all in the meeting room!”

“Understood,” His calm voice replied, slowly getting up from the cockpit and grabbing onto Chloe’s extended hand, pulling him out with no effort. Although he stood almost a foot taller than her now, she could easily kill him with her strength alone. A fact she constantly reminds him of, proudly at that.

His ponytail slipped from his shoulder to the end of his neck, slightly adjusting the bangs out of his violet eyes as the wires coming out his t-shirt moved with his body. Chloe energetically slid down the R1-N0’s waist, clumsily landing on the metal platform as she eyed his Soldat.

“I feel like it’s been FOREVER since we finally got to be involved in a real job that wasn’t just ‘Stand here and watch these crates move into a ship for ten friggin' hours’.” Chloe grumbled as she tapped her foot impatiently.

“Chloe, those jobs have ended with us coming under fire. I am sure that qualifies as a real-”

“Bah, anything’s a real job to you! Come on, demolition, stealing, or even busting a few heads, that’s what really gets the blood pumping!”

916 exhaled through his nose, his shoulders slumping. His expression betrayed nothing of what he thought but Chloe already knew.

“Don’t give me that condescending attitude, you little shit!” Chloe pouted, her hands resting on her waist.

“I am not little.”

“I don’t care how much taller you grow than me, you’re still a little shit! Now get your scrawny ass down here before I kick it down!”

916’s face did not change as he gracefully leapt down onto the platform his R1-N0 laid on, turning back to look at it. The original corporate colors of the white and blue accents had long disappeared, instead being replaced by a dark brown with green accents marking the armor plates. The emblem of Wolf Company proudly lay on its shoulders. Other than the aesthetics, fundamentally his R1-N0 had not changed ever since the day he had escaped.

Even the Soldat’s armaments still contained the 60mm autocannon and heat dagger, much to everyone’s confusion. 916 recalled the conversation he had with David regarding his new colors and weapons.

…

“You sure you don’t wanna change anything else, Vi? The yellow horn I can kinda understand, makes it look snazzy, but forgoing any new equipment?”

“I can procure equipment on the field and utilize it there. More than likely it will be used as a close combat weapon, so it will at least not cost you anything to replace it.”

“...Eh, fair point. Better you break their stuff than mine. Y’know, Chloe and Hayes still don’t shut up about that whenever you’re outta the room.”

…

Deciding it would be better to not anger Chloe further with that reminder, 916 simply gestured for Chloe to lead the way, which she happily did so.

They walked away from the hangars as the other engineers greeted the two on their way out, performing maintenance on the rest of the company Soldats. Their numbers had not grown too much over the past decade, with some members either departing, falling in battle, or extended family taking their place. David allowed anyone into Wolf Company, so long as they were sure it was the right decision and after an extensive background check.

What had remained constant was that David, Chloe, Hayes, and 916 were the main combatants, and the other six Soldats were used more for defensive and utility purposes. The four’s combat capabilities had grown considerably since their first battle together, with each battle giving them more experience.

916’s data relying on makeshift and faulty equipment versus the reliability of his high end corporate funding gave him a new perspective on how to improvise in the heat of battle. He could not rely solely on his onboard learning computer forever. It was not only their skills that had evolved, but the technology of Soldats as well.

Newer Soldats were fielded every single day versus their aging machines. The Guardian Types had long since been replaced in the main Florence Military with more sleek and reliable versions. The only reason David kept theirs was to use them as construction tools. The main four Soldats of Wolf Company had been updated to keep up with the times and their ever improving reaction speeds.

While 916 performed all the upgrades himself thanks to the Dyson data implanted in his head, overall his Soldat was still the most unchanged of everyones. He was not sure that was entirely a good thing, given the nature of weapons are to be constantly upgraded and replaced.

Looking back to Chloe, it gave him the reminder that everyone also changed physically. His vivid memory recalled when he barely came up to Chloe’s stomach, and now he stood exactly thirty centimeters taller. Her face had aged but it still had her fiery and youthful energy, which was unsurprising given that she was thirty-five years old. Though amusingly, only Hayes and himself had really changed. Back then, Hayes’ blonde hair was far shorter, and now the length of it reached to his shoulders, complementing his fair skin and green eyes. David and Chloe hardly looked any different.

“Lost in thought again?” Chloe asked, giving 916 a smirk and crossing her arms.

“Hm. As much as things have changed over the years, we have remained relatively the same…"

“Yeah, you’re still as stoic as ever, Vi,” She teased, giving a slight bump to his arm.

916 exhaled through his nose again, his shoulder slightly jumping up as he did so, portraying his amusement. Working with a group like this was bound to make his emotions flare up again, and while it did so, it never showed on his face. No one had ever seen him smile, cry, or even laugh. However, it was apparent when he became annoyed when his brows furrowed ever so slightly and the tone of his voice dropped lower than usual.

Incidentally, it was Chloe and Hayes who managed to find that out after their constant recommendations of how to spend his first paycheck. Chloe recommended newer weapons while Hayes recommended going out to a ‘Strip Club’. 916 had thought it was a mechanical shop and agreed to it before David and Chloe vehemently put an end to that idea.

The database in his head had nothing on what a ‘Strip Club’ was as it only contained Dyson information, his missions and other miscellaneous info pertaining to combat. It could learn and store memories or information like a file for him to review, but he’d be required to learn it first. Which was a problem, given everyone’s reluctance to tell him what it was in the first place.

That memory began to make him think of the time spent with 403 and the other Generation One children. They got scared, showed sorrow and happiness, but more importantly, everyone visibly portrayed their emotions before the chips were implanted, including himself.

He wondered if the chip had scrambled with his brain’s function of his emotions, because even now he did not feel them that intensely. Not since the day he had broken free of Dyson. But he at least understood other people's emotions on a basic level, enough to let him play along with their antics.

“It has its benefits,” 916 verbally jabbed back after returning his mind back to the present.

“Yeah, in being boring as hell,” Chloe chuckled. That could have been seen as an insult, but he knew Chloe’s vulgar and unfiltered language. She was just messing around as usual.

Strolling through the metallic catwalks, 916 and Chloe heard the rushing waves of the ocean crash upon the sand. Wolf Company had established a base on a small abandoned island far off the coast of Cumbria. The trees on the island were left relatively untouched, both to camouflage the base from potential attackers, but also keep morale high by having something pleasant to look at. While 916 did think it looked somewhat nice, that was the extent of his thoughts.

He truly had no preference on where Wolf Company was located, as long as it was safe. This island fit his requirements. The command center they were headed into was more of a bunker than anything, surrounded by metal and electronic lights, but it was not nearly as high tech as Dyson’s command center. As the door slid open, they were greeted by a guard wearing a gray ballistic vest.

“Hey Vi, Chloe. Boss just went into the room.” The guard casually gestured with his head, his hands on the rifle but not in any way that would indicate he was on alert.

916 gave a nod of acknowledgement while Chloe was far more energetic in her wave back.

“Got it, thanks!” Chloe passed the guard and turned back to 916. “Least he can’t bitch to us about being late.”

“Hm. Assuming Hayes woke up in time.”

Walking through the corridor and turning right into another sliding door, they saw David, a group of engineers and soldiers, and Hayes all inside the room. David stood up front, an electronic board behind him as the others sat in simple steel chairs.

They were not comfortable by any means, but they were there more for function than anything else. David gave a nod of acknowledgement while the others simply waved. Hayes gestured a hello with his head as he motioned the two to sit next to him.

“Just in time. Sit your butts down and we can get on with this briefing. This ain’t gonna be a normal one.” David offhandedly waved towards the seats. He held a small tablet in his hand as the light from the board illuminated the entire room in a dark blue, portraying information about the upcoming job.

Chloe rushed to the chair, almost tripping over as she caught herself and began tapping her foot rhythmically. 916 calmly sat down and remained unnaturally still, his eyes on David as he fumbled with the buttons.

“Ah, here we go.”

The board projected a screen showing a company logo, which immediately caught everyone’s attention. It simply read “Phenom Industries.” What stood out the most was that the logo had no symbol or anything fancy decorating the name. In fact, no one in the room appeared to know who they were.

“See what I mean? Already things are lookin’ shady.” David crossed his arms, frowning at the company.

916’s eyes flashed several colors for a few brief seconds. Nothing in his data matched up. Pre-existing records made no mention, nor did any past mission have any sort of reference towards the company.

“Who’re these nobodies, Boss?” Hayes raised his hand, leaning back in his seat while his foot grounded him. “We’ve been hired by big names who could barely afford us, I doubt these guys have anything we want.”

“Did as much research as I was able, they apparently ship raw materials to Florence and Cumbria, but other than that? Nothing. No history with any other PMC, no corporate squabbling, nothing. It’s just…blank.”

The room’s silence was replaced by murmurs, the uncertainty of the company had everyone on edge.

“Eh? Then why the heck are we even accepting a job from them?” Chloe leaned forward in her seat as 916 put a hand on the back of it to make sure she didn’t fall, while still trying to examine the screen.

“That, Chloe, is why I’m bringing this up. Normally a company with an empty history like this means they’re a startup, you don’t hear me mention them because I usually throw their requests in the trash and get us another company.” David pressed on the tablet’s screen with his finger, changing the board and showing the client’s words. “This time, I’m making an exception.”

“We request the services of Wolf Company to protect the transportation of valuable minerals from a rival company PMC. In exchange, we will safeguard the location of Wolf Company’s island base, and any damages incurred on equipment will be wholly covered by Phenom Industries.”

The murmurs exploded into exclamations and questions, David did not bother to silence anyone until the noise died down naturally.

“This island does not appear on any map.” 916 commented, turning from the screen to David. “How do they know we’re here?”

“Exactly why this job’s our next one, kid. Whoever these guys are, they’ve got connections, and we’re gonna find out how.”

“This has got to be a trap…” Hayes put his chin into his palm, muttering. “They say they got no beef with anyone, yet a company is supposedly hiring a PMC against them? Not even mentioning the blackmail…”

“Tch, guess I should be more careful with my wish about an exciting job. Fuckin' monkey’s paw.” Chloe sighed, leaning back into her chair and making 916 let go.

916 managed to stifle his question on what a ‘monkey’s paw’ was and focused on more important matters.

“The Den should be prepared for an attack while we are away. I doubt that we are the only ones in danger for this job.”

“Agreed.” David stated, turning back to the rest of the room. “Everyone’s to remain on high alert until we send word back. Vi, Chloe, Hayes, and I will be going to the coordinates they provided and see the mission done. Once it is, we’re gonna make sure to get a nice long talk with those punks and how they know so much about our movements.”

“I’ll be moving to the Rhino and remain on standby, then.” 916 dismissed himself and hurried back to the hangar.

Everyone began to do the same as David nodded.

“Chloe, Hayes, join Vi and switch to callsigns once we get in the Soldats. We’ll assume that this company knows our usual frequencies, so we’ll switch to emergency comms only. Let’s get this over with, folks.”

As 916 approached his Soldat, he removed his shirt and the wires on his chest began to pulsate a faint blue. The segmented visor of the R1-N0 activated and remained still until he climbed up into the cockpit. Letting the mechanisms latch onto his spine, he took a deep breath as the systems merged into his brain, data rushing in.

After the hatch closed, 916 slowly stood up and shook the metallic ground underneath him, watching everyone else enter their Soldats. In the distance, he could hear the whirring engines of the transport ship rev up, ready to depart.

On his right monitor, small windows showing his allies blinked into existence, springing the previously black screen to life. Everyone had a pilot suit of their own as they adjusted to their cockpit. Hayes’ suit was a stylish white with red stripes, Chloe’s was dark red accented with light gray and a flaming fist over her heart, and David’s was his usual well-worn military fatigues with the symbol of Wolf Company.

In contrast, 916 only had his pants and shoes on while the wires began glowing a bright blue, his spine jutting outwards as the seat’s connection wrapped around it. 916 finally put on a tactical headset, allowing him to hear his squad.

“Juggernaut’s good to go. Ammo’s full and no damage reported.” David stated, his usual levity notably missing. 916 saw the pink monoeye activate as it looked around rapidly before its gaze rested upon the other Soldats who began to stand up.

“Mantis, ready to deploy. I’m ready to smash their fuckin’ heads!” Chloe smirked, excitedly putting her fist into her palm. Her slim bright red Soldat’s head shot straight upwards and looked rigidly left to right, true to the insect it was named after as its two eyes activated, pulsing a bright yellow.

“Phantom’s rarin’ to go, Boss.” Hayes nodded, pushing his blonde hair away from his face. His Soldat had been upgraded ever since 916 first saw it, being outfitted with more armor, but not enough to hamper his movement. The goggles on its head slid down, covering the visor and shone a bright orange.

“Rhino is fully operational, awaiting orders,” 916 blankly reported. His R1-N0 turned towards the Juggernaut, as did everyone else.

“Head to the transport ship, and park your asses in the hold. It’ll be a longer trip than usual before we reach the coordinates. We’re takin’ a route we normally don’t in case anyone's tracking our movements.”

David saw everyone nod on the right monitor and their Soldats began to move towards their transport. The ship itself was quite strange as far as transport ships went. The way it held the Soldats was essentially putting them in a giant cargo crate that opened on both sides, sitting underneath and carried by what looked like a giant helicopter.

It was an obvious target for anyone to shoot, but its main job was simply to transport the Soldats or personnel inside far away from the active combat zones. Given the nature of this job, it made David worry more about the safety of the pilots than usual.

The Juggernaut entered first and parked itself on the farthest right of the crate, powering down its engines as the Mantis stood directly to its left. The Phantom and Rhino stood behind them on the opposite side, watching the crate’s hatches slowly rise up from the ground and enclose them. The ship took off within a few minutes and began to fly over the ocean and towards the coordinates.

The squad left their visual comms open, everyone able to see David cross his arms as he began to explain the mission further.

“The AO isn’t too far off from the coast, so we’ll hoof it towards the area they want us to guard for about ten minutes.”

“The waters will be trapping us should we get attacked.” 916 commented.

“It will, but at the same time we shouldn’t have to worry about us getting shot in the back by the PMC. Unless Phenom does it first.”

“If that happens, Vi and I will fuck ‘em up and make those assholes regret it!” Chloe angrily slammed her fist into her seat.

“What’s the area look like? I might be able to hide myself somewhere high and make sure nothing gets the drop on everyone, Boss.” Hayes shrugged as he made his suggestion.

David pressed something offscreen before a map of the area they would be defending appeared in front of them. The facility appeared to be some sort of dock, with ships in the waters next to a massive warehouse-like facility. The area was enclosed by a valley heavily covered by trees, which disappeared the farther it went inland. Their coordinates to meet up with the company was right in front of the facility, which was almost completely empty, giving them no cover.

“This is a goddamn kill box!” Hayes slumped into his seat as he examined the screen further. “Now I’m really convinced this entire job is a setup!”

“Screw is right. Should the PMC decide to attack from the valleys, they would have the high ground,” 916 agreed, his tone slightly deepening.

“DO THEY THINK WE’RE MORONS?!” Chloe yelled into her mic, making everyone slightly recoil from the volume before Hayes motioned for her to quiet down on the screen. For the first time today, David let out a smirk as a chuckle gave away his plans.

“Looks like they do, Flare. I bet they’re expecting us to waltz right in and play to their tune thanks to the blackmail. But when has Wolf Company ever followed a plan to the letter? We do things our way only.”

Chloe and Hayes saw his expression before being calmed down and smiling alongside him. Their anxiety was now replaced with anticipation. 916 only nodded in response with a grunt of affirmation. Whoever was attempting to make a fool out of them was going to sorely regret it.

…

David sat inside his cockpit, the Juggernaut’s monoeye slowly shifting left to right as it stood on guard, directly in front of the facility’s entrance. Hayes, Chloe, and 916 were nowhere to be found, to the surprise of his client when he arrived. His arms were crossed and his finger was slowly tapping on his arm before noticing his communication monitor was blinking. A call from Phenom Industries.

“Boss here-”

“What in the hell are you doing?!” An angry man’s voice called out. The voice sounded old, but not any more than David’s.

“My job. What’s it look like?”

“By parking your Soldat directly in front of the facility?! Where are your other mercenaries?!-”

“If your company really did its homework on Wolf Company, then you already know we do some risky shit. Oh, and my two other buddies are around. Won’t disclose the location, seeing as we’re the only security. All the better to complete the job, I say.”

“You’re completely alone! If an enemy attack came in, we would-”

“-Get hit, and explode. Which is precisely why I’m here. They’d be an idiot to hit me and detonate all the sweet cargo ya’ll are packing. So they won’t fire without making themselves known.”

“Tch, we will discuss this when it comes to your pay!”

“Sure thing, big man. I’d like to discuss the blackmail while we’re at it, too…Hey, quit your bitching for a second. Need to take a call.”

“The nerve of-!”

The voice promptly went offline as he scoffed, switching to emergency communications.

“Screw?”

“See a buncha Soldats approaching. Couple hundred meters out. Think that’s our rival for today.”

“See the logo?”

“...The Lightning Griffins. Hoo boy, I bet they’re still pissed.”

David frowned at the mention of them. The Lightning Griffins were a PMC they had shamed three times now for the unfortunate crime of being on the opposite side. Just like everyone else, he mentioned it was nothing personal, and just like everyone else, they wanted revenge.

No doubt they probably set this up, but as far as he knew, they were just a regular, albeit on the technological lower-end, PMC. How did they manage to get the information on Wolf Company’s Base?

“Hmph, questions for later. Flare, Vi?”

“Loud and clear boss, getting into position!” Chloe energetically replied.

“Following the plan as ordered. Awaiting signal.” 916 blankly reported.

David smirked and turned his frequency back to Phenom.

“Speaking of attack, your buddies just got here. I’d haul ass if I were you.”

“What?!” The old voice shouted out in surprise. “Why did you not notify us earlier?!”

“You just were.” David shut off his communication as he looked at the workers hurriedly trying to get out of the way and towards the docking area. He just shrugged seeing them. “Poor bastards probably don’t even know they’re just here to make this look legit. Guess I should move so I don’t hurt ‘em.”

The Juggernaut slowly moved forward, readying its weapons for use and David turned to his right monitor, activating his speakers to hail the Griffins. Thanks to the formation of the valley, there was only one real entrance, one that David’s Soldat could see the entirety of as it was just an open field of dirt and rocks.

Right now, he was the only one visible standing in front of the facility as he saw about twenty lower end Soldats approach. They all were construction Soldats, little more than small rectangles with arms and legs and no doubt just rigged for the bare minimum threshold to fight.

They barely stood up to the chest of a normal Soldat, but even then, their laughable specs were still nothing to completely write off, for there’s a quality in quantity after all. And they were all armed with weapons that could damage a Soldat, a mixture of rifles, machine guns and explosives.

The one in front was their leader, inside an actual combat Soldat. It was a white bipedal humanoid machine that stood about the same height as a Guardian, but was far bulkier in all respects. All of the limbs, including its head, were heavily armored and the back carried a massive makeshift sword that could cleave the Juggernaut in half. Most distinct of all, was its damaged head, where a proud antenna once stood above a cracked green visor was now split in twain, accompanied by a black mark on its formerly pristine white shoulder.

“Damn it, kid! Why’d ya beat the hell outta him like that?”

“Because you ordered me to, Boss-”

“Bah, shut the hell up! That wasn’t meant to be answered!”

“Understood, shutting up.”

Chloe and Hayes snickered, while David glared at the monitor. None of the team were currently visible, but they could feel David’s death stare as the noise suddenly died off.

“Stay right where ya are, punks.” David announced to the Lightning Griffins, adjusting his controls in his hands.

“Wolf Company. I suppose it’s fitting that we’d find you here.” A younger and angrier voice replied.

“Heh, find us? We decided to find you first, figures it beats letting you waltz up to our home.”

“This little dock is the home to Wolf Company? Tch, that’s even more insulting!”

David frowned at their response. If they were the ones blackmailing, they’d know that this is just their employer. They were either playing dumb or…

“Are we both being played?” David muttered to himself. The Juggernaut’s Monoeye looked to the side, noticing that the dockworkers were still doing their jobs, albeit at a much more panicked state. It’d probably be best if he played along for now. “Now, I’ll repeat this for the fourth god damn time so it can go through that thick skull. This. Ain’t. Personal. Neither were any of the times before!”

“Oh, it isn’t personal? Then why did one of yours almost beat me to death with my own weapon, that feels pretty fucking personal!”

“...Alright, can’t even argue that one. Just turn back around, and we’ll forget we ever saw each other-”

“Sorry, that ain’t happening! We're promised a lot of money to take that cargo!”

“You even know what’s in it?”

“Do you?”

Truthfully, David had no idea what Phenom was doing. Hayes was in the trees, looking down on the facility with a sniper in case they actually tried to betray them in the heat of combat. He had assumed it was a fifty fifty chance that it was either an ambush getting set up or actual cargo getting sent out. But that was a detail that did not need to be shared to the Griffins.

“Besides,” The leader replied. “What matters is we finally put Wolf Company down once and for all! We already know your other buddies are hiding in the trees!”

David felt like he should be bothered they knew that, but he instead felt nothing. Even without the insider knowledge Wolf Company’s blackmailers had, you’d have to be absolutely stupid to not utilize the terrain around you in a battle. Especially in an open field like this.

Knowing their voices were being broadcasted aloud, David knew the other three were adjusting their plans.

“Pretty optimistic thinking considering we kicked your ass the past three times. If you wanna throw the first punch right now, it’s about to be a fourth.”

“Bring it, old man!”

The Griffin Soldat unsheathed its sword and pointed it straight at David.

“This time, nothing’s gonna stop you from-”

A shot rang out as a blast from the trees immediately blew apart one of the construction Soldat’s arms, catching everyone off guard, including David.

“What the hell?!” David shouted. The pink monoeye suddenly moved where the flash came from, and saw the Phantom in the trees, rifle aimed straight at the Griffins.

“Uh…A-Are we not fighting?” Hayes nervously asked.

David looked like he was about to say something, but in the end he just sighed.

“...Eh, fuck it.”

The Juggernaut’s cannons lowered and opened fire at the Griffins, all of them scattering in time before the explosions sent a cloud of dirt into the air. The leader skirted around the explosions and rushed forward, before quickly sliding to the right to avoid another of Hayes’ shots, a massive round sinking into the dirt and exploding. A small number of the construction soldats flew up to the left side Hayes was on, using the trees as cover as they began their slow advance towards him.

“Screw! Watch your ass up there!” David shouted, focusing on reversing the Juggernaut and trying to shoot down the others trying to move onto the other side of the valley.

“Don’t worry, Boss! I saw ‘em!”

Aiming the Juggernaut’s machine guns at the Griffin Leader, he unleashed a torrent of gunfire to drive him back. The leader’s Soldat boosted around the shots, but was hit by a few strays, faltering the advance. The lack of cover was both a blessing and a curse, as David suddenly felt his Soldat shake. The pink monoeye looked to its right flank and saw three of them moving behind, rifles firing at his treads.

“Flare!”

The Mantis leapt out from the trees, with many of the construction Soldats sent to attack Hayes came tumbling down the hill.

“YAHOOOOO!” Chloe screamed out, reloading her shotgun as she fired at David’s attackers. Each shot tore apart the bodies of the construction soldats, making them explode. Before they could turn to retaliate, the Mantis’s legs planted itself onto the floor and jumped dozens of meters into the air, all the while spraying its shots wildly.

Landing right behind David, she sheathed her shotgun and drew out a sword instead. Catching the construction Soldat’s attention, she continued to quickly hop away from the facility and David as they gave pursuit, leaving only him and the leader.

“Drawing my men away? Fine by me, I’ll take you down myself!”

The Juggernaut moved rigidly, but its expression was clear to the leader. It was shrugging nonchalantly, taunting him.

“Much better than you have tried, kiddo.”

The cannons lowered and immediately fired, creating more craters onto the floor as the Juggernaut rushed forward.

…

“The enemy sniper is around here somewhere!” One of the mercenaries called out, their machine guns facing out as they dashed around the trees at a relatively quick speed. They could not utilize their full boost since there was the risk of collision, but they had at least seven present to rush the sniper in case it fired at them.

“It came from near the coast, so we can-”

A shot soared through the trees as it went directly through the cockpit of one, making it explode and causing the entire squad to scatter.

“Shit, did anyone see where that came from?!”

“I think it was to our right-!”

A shot came from the left, going through the cockpit again, and a small explosion setting some of the trees on fire.

“I-I can’t pinpoint it!”

Sheathing the sniper, the Phantom instead drew out a combat knife as the goggles slid back up onto its head.

“Doubt they’re stupid enough to fall for the same tactic over and over.” Hayes commented to himself, preparing for close combat. A sniper was almost useless once the enemy knew his location, so now it was time to improvise.

He knew that his armor could hold up against their shots, but not if they were all concentrated and hitting him at the same time. Deciding to take a page out of Chloe’s book, he figured the best way out of this situation was to slice his way out.

Quickly sliding around the tree and rushing an unsuspecting Soldat, he stabbed through the chest and forced it onto the floor. Several machine gun rounds began hitting his side armor, making him quickly retreat. Feeling the Phantom shake violently from their retaliation, he drove through the trees ahead, with everyone skirting around the trees to pursue.

…

Chloe sliced another of the Soldats in half, it exploded into a mess of parts and limbs, allowing her to use the smoke as cover from the shots. From what she could count, there were about six that pursued her, and four that remained. She had to stick to her hit and run tactics. Everytime she came close to attack, the shots would chip away at her armor’s durability. It was only a matter of time before they managed to damage something vital.

“For a bunch of trash cans, these fuckers are pretty resilient…!” She grumbled.

“Flare, switch places, coming up on ya, now!”

“With pleasure, just get these goons off me!”

The Mantis’s head turned to the trees and leapt towards them, sword drawn as the Phantom emerged and slid down, aiming its sniper at the Soldats chasing Chloe. It fired twice, one exploding an arm while another pierced through the cockpit. Meanwhile, the Mantis landed right in front of four that flew out the trees, managing to slice one in half before the others scattered hastily.

“Guess we’re all out in the open now, huh?” Chloe laughed, the adrenaline kicking into overdrive in her body.

“Not everyone.” Hayes cooly replied, his left monitor catching movement in the trees on the right side of the valley, overlooking the facility. Some Soldats had managed to sneak through the fight. “Though, that’s about to change.”

…

“Sir, we see the dock. Attempting to seize!”

Static.

“...Sir, do you copy?”

The one leading the squad of five turned around to face them before suddenly raising its gun to open fire. A single shot pierced through its cockpit and caused it to explode. Everyone else spun around and dashed down the hill, a massive gray Soldat leaping out after them, with a single yellow horn and a segmented blue visor.

“This is Vi, entering combat.” 916 said, taking no particular pleasure in having caught them off guard. His eyebrow slightly shifted when he realized that the Griffin Soldats could not contact their allies. As far as he knew, he had not initiated any kind of jamming program. Yet his mind felt a slight buzzing sensation, a feeling only present if his systems were active. The feeling made him suspicious, but decided to focus on the more pressing matter.

The soldats began opening fire and the Rhino slid down the hill at an accelerated pace and made them aim toward the empty coast. Though he would have preferred to attack them from behind utilizing his speed, they would hit the facility, and void any chance of getting paid.

Rushing straight at them as their stabilizers struggled to keep them upright, he smashed straight into one of them before forcing them all to collide, shoving them all away from the facility. Using the claws on his Soldat, he stabbed through the cockpit before using the machine as a shield from any incoming fire, then tossing it at another causing them both to erupt into a small inferno.

“Two more.”

The Rhino unsheathed its 60mm autocannon and aimed it at the escaping Soldats-.

<Hm…~...J-...f-...> A cheerful woman’s voice called out. 916 stopped for a moment to register the noise. It sounded like it came from the comms. The voice was too high pitched to be Chloe’s which meant-

“Screw. Please disable your videos of the naked women during a mission.” 916 requested, feeling slightly annoyed.

“The fu-?! Tch, little busy right now, Vi! I’ve learned by now, I don’t make the same mistake twice!” Hayes replied quickly, and from the tone of his voice and the lack of a flustered reaction, he was telling the truth.

“Pfft! C-Come on, don’t distract me like that!” Chloe chuckled, her voice obviously contrasting the woman’s voice he heard.

“When the hell has he been the type to make a joke in the middle of a fight?!” David’s voice came next, sounding surprised. "Kid, what're you hearing?"

The Rhino turned to the Wolf Company pilots fighting, all of them were busy fighting off the Lightning Griffins. Focusing his attention on the escaping Soldats again, he was prepared to fire before they were quickly shot down, falling backwards towards him. 916’s expression suddenly darkened. The shot came from the front, but no one was paying attention to his skirmish.

<...-tar-…-aiti-…-> Another female voice spoke out, this time much deeper than the previous one.

<...-stood-...ging pres-....> A third female voice spoke, her tone softer than the other two.

The buzzing feeling in his head was beginning to intensify, his monitor now picking up three targets approaching from the entrance of the valley.

“Boss, incoming Soldats!” 916 said louder than his usual tone, beginning to hear the voices much clearer.

<...-engaging Wolf Company.> The third voice reported, in a tone not too dissimilar to 916’s.

The Juggernaut quickly backed off from the Griffin Leader, as an overhead shot soaring past them caught their attention. David didn’t have a chance to ask who they were, as a single shot pierced straight through the Griffin Leader’s armor plates and unceremoniously annihilated the cockpit, causing it to explode and catch everyone’s attention.

The Phantom and Mantis spun around to see three black Soldats quickly closing in on their location, all sliding across the ground with a trail of dust following them. Now everyone had stopped fighting and scattered, Griffin to the right and Wolf Company to the left of the valley.

The three black Soldats sped past the Griffin ones, seemingly not paying them any mind and instead gunning it for Wolf Company.

“Back the hell off!” Chloe shouted, the Mantis aiming its shotgun at them.

The middle Soldat snapped towards her and with one well placed shot blew up her weapon. Before anyone could react, one of the Soldats quickly closed the gap and leapt up, kicking the Mantis as it came crashing down. The Soldat danced around their gunfire as it activated its thrusters, skirting around the exploding debris. The Rhino, Juggernaut, and Phantom continued their attempt to pin it down as the three quickly scattered. The Juggernaut moved in front of the Mantis, noticing it wasn’t getting back up.

“Flare, respond!” David called out her name with a tinge of panic before 916 spoke up.

“No serious damage taken, I believe she is unconscious.” He said, closely examining the movements of the unknown Soldats. Their responsiveness to dodging attacks were far too fast and natural to be just ace pilots.

The remaining Griffin Soldats moved towards the facility while everyone was occupied before being mercilessly put down by the third Soldat using some kind of burst fire rifle. The unknown Soldats quickly backed off and stood together, all pointing their weapons but none actually firing at Wolf Company.

“The hell are they-?” Hayes did not get to finish his question as one of their Soldats stepped forward.

“Wolf Company. You are ordered to stand down.” The woman’s tone was relatively friendly, unsettling David and Hayes considering the circumstances.

“Who the fuck are you supposed to be?” David shouted out defiantly.

“We are The Pale Riders.”

916 searched his records for any mention of this PMC or to identify their Soldats, and again failed to find any information. The Soldats were pitch black, each with a different colored stripe across their shoulder armor. It looked eerily similar to a Guardian Soldat, but the armor plates were far bulkier than its supposed predecessor and the visor was a dark pink.

It looked about the same height as the R1-N0, but the weapons it had were far more advanced than his own and he could not tell where it stored its close combat weapons, if it had any at all. The one that had attacked Chloe had what appeared to be a cannon and a gatling gun mounted on its shoulder, but it was the only one with those weapons.

“You are in possession of a Dyson R1-N0. You are to exit the suit immediately for confiscation.” The same voice announced, the head turning to the Rhino.

“We will not harm your allies if you comply. Failure to do so will result in termination.”

916 tightly gripped the controls as he tried to have the systems in his head try to connect to the Pale Rider pilot. Generation One and Two pilots all had a chip in their brain to allow them to communicate directly, forgoing the need for external communication.

If they truly were Enhanced Humans then-

A connection. 916’s heart rate began to steadily increase.

<Ah, so you really are an Enhanced Human, how interesting!~> The same friendly voice replied, though her voice was far clearer, as if they were right next to each other.

<Identify yourself.> The deeper voice cut her off coldly, every one of their Soldats now facing 916’s direction.

<No,> The softer voice answered. <We are an independent group.>

<Identify yourself.> The deeper voice repeated.

<...My name is Vi.> He finally replied, stepping forward and away from the rest of Wolf Company.

<Hm.> The friendly voice idly hummed. <Guess you’re our guy.~>

<Beginning test.> The deeper voice stated, its weapon aiming at the Rhino.

The Rhino immediately leapt towards the three, autocannon firing as it slammed onto the ground they were standing on, all of them scattering.

“Boss, Screw. Escape with Flare. You cannot handle them.” 916 said, immediately rushing the closest one to him.

“What?! We can’t just leave-”

“Run, now.” He said, each of his shots missing despite the fact they were at point blank range. “They are like me.”

It took a moment for the two of them to realize what 916 meant.

“Aw shit.” David’s voice dropped upon the realization.

“Booking it!” Hayes shouted, the Phantom grabbing the Mantis.

The three of them began to escape, and to 916’s surprise, they were left alone instead of getting gunned down. Which meant they were only here for him. 916 made no comment as he quickly dodged incoming fire.

The Rhino swerved left and right as a barrage attempted to pin him down. The open field they were in provided no cover to hide in as his armor plates were getting hit, the durability wearing down each shot.

Despite the hits taken so far, he was still able to dodge a significant amount of their attacks. If these were Dyson Enhanced Humans, he’d be dead already.

All combat data was shared between Dyson pilots, and his tactics were well documented. While his fighting had changed significantly over the years, accessing that information beforehand would have already decided the fight.

He began to notice there were subtle differences as they dodged each other’s attacks. His Soldat had almost no issue responding instantly to what his brain commanded, giving it a human-like motion whenever he moved, while these Soldats were fast, they did not have the same fluid movements.

They still moved like machines.

However, their coordination was almost the same tactics the other children of Generation One and Two performed. Focusing on blitz and rush strategies, never giving the enemy a chance to rest.

“You’re pretty good!” The friendly voice complimented 916, dodging his autocannon shots by rapidly changing directions of her movement.

“It will not save you.” The deeper voice commented.

The suppressing fire coming from one of the Soldats kept him too busy to focus on retaliating, while another kept attacking his flank. Each shot that connected rattled his brain and the Rhino. Despite the opportunities, he noticed none of their shots had aimed for his cockpit.

“...I will die if this continues.” 916 blankly told himself.

If they were Enhanced Humans, that meant they had some kind of CE-Drive system as well. But he was running low on options and ammo. He quietly exhaled through his nose as the R1-N0 shook violently, finally being knocked down to its knees. 916 hit his head as he fell, a notification appearing on his eye that he was bleeding.

The firing quickly stopped afterwards. Sparking from the monitors caught onto his skin which burned it, but he quickly dulled the pain with his inhibitors. Ignoring the bleeding, he began to collect his thoughts.

“...As long as they can escape, we can fight another day.” 916’s face had hardly changed, but his heart rate began to spike as his mind began overflowing with data.

“CE-DRIVE, ACTIVATED.”

The R1-N0’s visor turned Scarlet as it quickly launched itself, slamming into the heavily armored Soldat. The visors of all three of them turned into a bright green and charged 916. Although they were moving at a faster pace, it was nowhere near as fast as him.

One of the Soldats pulled out a knife and attempted to stab his head before he punched the arm’s joints, severing it from its body and sliding around to its back, using his attacker as a shield. The two didn’t fire from the front and instead quickly shifted to his sides, hitting him with pinpoint accuracy, making 916 let go of their comrade and leap back.

Grabbing one of the construction Soldat’s limbs from the ground, 916 rocketed towards the right Soldat and slammed it against the chest, making it fly back from the sheer force of the blow. Quickly turning around, the one with a severed arm stabbed into his left shoulder, disabling the function of his left hand and making him drop the makeshift club.

The Rhino slammed its head into the visor of the Soldat, shattering it and disabling its main camera. He grabbed one of the Griffin’s rifles and aimed right at her cockpit. He was quickly intercepted by the remaining Soldat who crashed into him, both of them falling to the ground and unsheathing knives.

“Pale Riders, stand down.” A fourth unfamiliar female voice commanded.

Suddenly the battle came to a screeching halt. The black soldats had stopped moving completely. The two standing immediately sheathed their weapons while the one on top of him didn’t move. All their visors turned back to the dark pink color, and seemed to power down significantly.

916’s red eyes blinked in confusion, before the head of the Rhino looked up and saw a massive flying ship above them. It looked like a naval carrier with massive rotors jutting out from the sides keeping it afloat. It was colored pitch black with the symbol of the Pale Riders, at least what he assumed was their symbol from the distance he saw it.

Turning back to the Soldat on top of him, he saw that it finally began sheathing its own knife, 916’s eyes turned back to his normal violet color. The Rhino’s visor reverted as well, but it was still powered on in case this supposed cease fire would resume.

“Am I currently speaking to the Dyson Enhanced-Human Pilot?” The fourth voice asked on an open channel. The quality was somewhat less than desirable, but it was coming from the machine itself rather than a brain to brain connection. Which meant she wasn’t an Enhanced Human. Hopefully.

“You can call me Commander Ava. I am the leader of the Pale Riders, and I’d like to apologize for the deception and the damages. You and your friends are in no real danger.”

“...Deception?” 916 asked.

“Red. Explain it to him.”

The friendly voice from before rang in his head.

<Our hostility was merely meant to invoke feelings of real danger in order to test you. That being said, if you weren’t an Enhanced Human, we would have killed you and taken your Soldat.> The deeper voice tactlessly added.

“Earlier you had mentioned a test...This is logical.” 916 responded. If they had actually wanted Wolf Company dead, they would have done so without announcing themselves. They had several opportunities already.

“VI! VI! THE HELL’S GOING ON!?” David’s voice suddenly interrupted.

“I’m okay, Boss. Someone wants to speak to you.”

As Commander Ava began to explain herself, 916’s attention was brought back to the front camera, watching the cockpit open and reveal the pilot.

She was wearing a mostly black uniform with white stripes on her shoulder. Her long white hair fell behind her back, revealing blue eyes and a somewhat pale skin that stared into his own cockpit. She stepped down and waited for him to open his.

916’s spine disconnected from his seat and he stepped out, the blood slowly falling against the side of his head. His wires were still pulsating a faint blue, making sure the R1-N0 was still active.

His heavily augmented appearance did not seem to faze her. In fact, there were no visible augmentations she had herself. Considering her clothes were similar to Chloe and Hayes, it was safe to assume their spines did not connect to the Soldat either.

Which meant none of the Pale Riders were from Dyson after all.

“Your skills are admirable.” She calmly stated.

“Yours as well.” 916 nodded in response. "The Pale Riders are a formidable team."

Despite the fact she wasn’t as heavily augmented, she seemed to be as aloof as he was. Was that from becoming an Enhanced Human or-?

“Aw look at that, White’s made a new friend!” Red teased.

“We are not friends. We are simply allies.” White responded.

“Allies?” 916 asked.

“The Pale Riders and Wolf Company will be working together. It is the sole purpose of why we tested you, because we need your help.”

“...Boss?” 916 called out behind him, looking at the cockpit. He could hear David’s voice respond back.

“Yeah, just confirmed it with that stone-cold bitch of a lady. She says she’ll clear up any misunderstanding, but if she tries anything else, we’re shoving a boot up her ass!”

“...Understood." 916 replied. He did not understand why they needed his help, but he at least was thankful that none of his friends were seriously injured.

“It’s like we just duplicated White. Don’t you think so, Black?” Red chuckled, which was promptly cut off by the deeper voice.

“Shut up, already.” Black ordered.

White extended her hand as a friendly greeting, but her face subtly shifted to a more positive expression.

916 glanced past her, seeing the two other Soldats remain still, as the Juggernaut, Phantom, and Mantis slowly approached them.

He turned back to White, and shook her hand firmly.

“I will reintroduce myself. I am Vi.”

…

CHAPTER 2: END

Author's Note:

Thanks for reading, I think this chapter is a lot more engaging to read than the previous ones thanks to the banter and Wolf Company!

From everyone who's read the story so far among my group, that seems to be the general consensus, Chloe and Hayes especially.

It actually took me very little time to edit and write this Chapter since it came to me a lot more naturally.

As for the newest additions to the story: the Pale Riders!

...Yeah, I won't even lie to y'all, the Pale Riders are basically just Task Force DEFY. In fact, they're who directly inspired each character. You'll get to see their names mentioned in the next chapter, but:

So if you were reading this and going "Hang on, they sound familiar!" that's why. I apparently cannot make a character that isn't directly inspired by someone I like, but I guess that goes for a lot of OC's huh?

When it comes to the names, I sorta threw stuff at the wall. Morgan is named after Fire Emblem Awakening Morgan, Sofia and Ava were the first names I thought of, while Allison is a reference to a character of the same name from Red vs Blue (aka Agent Texas).

As for the "Soldats", I decided to start adding visual references of what their inspirations are to give anyone reading an image to attach names to.

Starting off with the Pale Riders:

(RGM-96X Jesta from Mobile Suit Gundam: Unicorn)

White(Softer Third Voice)/Red's(Friendlier First Voice) Soldat:

===

(RGM-96X Jesta Cannon from Mobile Suit Gundam: Unicorn)

Black's (Second deeper voice) Soldat:

===

And Here's Wolf Company, courtesy of my google docs page of my notes:

(MaILES Byakuchi from AMAIM Warrior at the Borderline)

916's Soldat (The R1-N0)

(Zaku Tank from Mobile Suit Variation)

David's Soldat (The Juggernaut)

(GM Sniper II from Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket)

Hayes' Soldat (The Phantom)

(NACHTREIHER from Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon)

Chloe's Soldat (The Mantis)

===

As for the Lightning Griffins, there was no real inspiration, besides the MT's from Armored Core 6.

If I could draw the mechs myself, I would.

I'm still drawing the visual references of the main characters as it is, and that's even slower than my writing.

But that's it for right now, thank you for reading as always, and see you next chapter!

#916 #oc story #original story #mecha story #oc scifi story #long post #long chapter

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invested-in-your-future · 3 months

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There a reason why all four kingdoms speak one same language?

I touched upon it a bit already. In my set-up, for example, even in Mistral, each of the city-states forming it has an "older" language. Locals still tend to call different locations different names. However, only one "official" language is prominent throughout the world.

In the ages past, there used to be countless languages, both the remnants of the way of speech used in the age of Once Upon A Time and also newer variations, but as the age of Ever After progressed and the Kingdoms rose and fell through the years a lot of them had perished. Cataclysms and wars erased countless cultures and languages throughout history.

The Faunus language, for example, is now extinct due to their circumstances and the discrimination they suffered. The Faunus retain a fraction of their myths and folklore but not actual language used to tell them. Within the last century, there has been a significant effort in uncovering more of their history and culture. Before the Great War, it would have run against the prominent discriminatory stereotypes.

Part of the older languages from before remain in use, however - the prime example being the word "Grimm" stemming from a more archaic name the creatures used to have. Likewise, the naming scheme used for cities and other locations throughout the world draws from myths of the old.

(Remnant's culture as a whole places a significant focus upon the myths and tales of the old. Mythology in Remnant's entertainment industry serves similar lore as what superheroes(and, before that, cowboys) do in our world. Different Kingdoms, however, might view the importance of myths differently - the nobility of Mistral, for example, being obsessed with royal bloodlines)

The idea of a unified language became accepted worldwide at the end of the Great War as part of a larger initiative to prevent further conflict. With Kingdom of Vale coming out of the war in best condition, its language, already wide-spread (as Mantle, for example, started off as Vale's colony) became even more prominent.

Still shaken from the terrors the conflict unleashed, the world strived to create various incentives to celebrate culture and minimize division, ranging from color naming schemes to the formation of Huntsman Academies that functioned in an interconnected fashion with frequent student exchange programs, the Vytal Tournament, and other similar aspects of connecting different cultures together.

As far as making unified language prominent goes, one mostly would have Ozpin to thank for that. Ozpin has spent ages fine-tuning his approach but has always been willing to course-correct if necessary. He viewed the idea of unified language as just another step to make communication between Kingdoms clearer and to prevent any possible misunderstandings that would shorten the civilization's lifespan, even if it meant condemning various regional languages to vanish over time at an even faster rate than before.

Right now, various regions still have preserved their original languages (or at least parts of them), and a lot of the population is still fluent in a variety of them. However, the majority of the population also speak the unified language now.

#rwby #rwde #rwby rewrite #rwby au #rwbyr stuff mine

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lit-works · 1 month

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Pt 1.

--This fanfiction is a part of my 'Decades of Marvels' one-shot series that celebrates an era near and dear to me. This story is a love letter. First and foremost, to fellow comic book aficionado, artist extraordinarre, and fanboy Kevin Smith who wrote/started/directed the movie that shares this stories title. It is also an homage to nostalgia, and the most nostalgic generation so far. I shamelessly name-drop as many pop culture refs from the 90s as I can, including the OG MCU (90s X-Men, Spider-Man & Friends, The Fantastic Four animated series).

"Hey, Shogo, how was school today?" Jubilation Lee asked her adopted son as he entered their home on the island of Krakoa.

"lame! Mr.Summers is teaching stupid Quadratic Equations. But, it got me thinking about when he used to be your teacher." Shogo whined as he kicked off his shoes and sat heavily on the living room couch.

"Old Cyclops' mutant math, I remember the concept. He tried to teach me trigonometry." Jubilation recalled as she sat next to her son.

"Seriously? That's crazy. Anyways, do you remember the Danger Room's Shopping Mall Simulation?"

"Ah, the infamous Danger Mall -where Sentinel sales were always booming. No, I do not remember that one. Is that the exercise they had you running today?" Jubilation joked before becoming seriously curious.

"well, yeah, and I started wondering The X-Men had a place to hit up like that to buy stuff before people started ordering on Amazon. Like, was there ever just merchandise instead of a battle looming over the horizon?"

"You bet we did!! There was this one time, a peaceful day off, before I was a full-time X-Person, and I decided to check out a mall. But, you know your mom, trouble has it's way of finding me...even in the food court."

"wait, what's a food court?"

"Ermahgawd, you poor uncultured swine, so...

Once a mecca of American commerce, a gathering place for adolescent youth, and a nice place for an indoor stroll, the mall no longer holds the same place in our daily lives as it did in the summers of the '90s. In the heyday of the indoor shopping mall, one could buy a ham, watch a movie, haggle for a Gucci purse and cap off the day with a round of ice skating. Store fronts were elaborately decorated to look like barns and castles.

Malls across America were filled with seemingly lost or harried, or both, families navigating their way through these temples of consumerism, a long with playful teens in Jnco Jeans and South Park shirts, pink misfits and scene kids lighting up indoors, and the aged mall-walkers.

Families spent a large part of their miserable lives at shopping malls. For generations of Americans, there was no better way to pass time than to completely encapsulate themselves in retail outlets. Wrapped tightly in their warm blanket of commerce, they would loiter aimlessly for hours, often not spending a dime.

There was no greater monument to American capitalism in the latter half of the 20th Century than the mall. The history of the shopping mall can be traced back to the Roman Empire, where teenagers of the day surely milled about in their equivalent of Hot Topic and Spencer's gifts.

The first American shopping mall was built in 1826 in Providence, Rhode Island. Considering the coolest thing to do as a member of previous generation American teenagers was to fight in the wars of 1812, this was an absolute godsend.

The next great thing to happen to America's future adults was the advent of the automobile. The car shook up a number of things, including shopping malls. Shopping mall locations shifted from downtown areas to decentralized suburban spaces that were now accessible to the driving population.

Over a period of a half a century starting in the mid-50's, a staggering 1,500 shopping malls opened in the United States. Countless other mini-malls and strip-malls came into existence during this period as well.

The basic makeup of the new suburban shopping centers followed a very set pattern. Large chain department stores would serve as "anchors", familiar places that would drive traffic to the mall and thus the smaller stores located within the tile strewn floors. Anchors quickly became the key to a Mall's success.

The mall evolved into more than just a shopping center, adding other features than just retail outlets. The American populace could now take a trip to the mall and enjoy movie theaters, restaurants, and by the 80s, the newly ubiquitous video game arcade. By this time, the shopping mall had firmly become an entrenched part of American culture.

For decades, shopping malls appeared as the financial rocks. Individual stores would come and go, but the vacancy rates would always stay low.

And then something magical happened, the malls that teenage girls and soccer moms across the country could only dream of : the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota!

Since opening it's doors in 1992, Mall of America revolutionized the shopping experience of tens of millions of visitors a year. A leader in retail, entertainment and attraction, Mall of America became one of the top tourist destinations in the country and is known around the world.

Back in 1982, the Minnesota Twins and Vikings relocated from the Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington to the HHH Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis. This created an unprecedented development opportunity for 78 acres of prime real estate. Three years later, the Bloomington Port Authority purchased the stadium site and began entertaining proposals for development. Mall of America was chosen from four proposals, and on June 14th, 1989, developers ans local dignitaries broke ground. On August 11th, 1992, when Mall of America opened it's doors, 330 stores opened for business and more than 10,000 employees started their first day of work.

Mall of America now hosts more than 400 events annually, ranging from concerts, to celebrity appearances and fashion shows. Each year 40 million people from around the world visit the Malls generating nearly $2 billion each year in economic impact for the state.

Word had gone out! A once in a lifetime concert being held at the Mall of America in Minnesota: the interstellar pop sensation Lila Cheney was teaming up with America's disco diva Allison Blaire, The Dazzler! The power pair had embraced the grunge movement and would be singing as a duet with a newly formed band called The Resistance in a one-night-only event in the concert Hall of the mall...

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bonewaryreblogs · 2 months

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These Trolls be Trollin' Me

I have many thoughts about Trolls.

The canon backstory is pretty dark, though the movies themselves cover it up with so much rainbows and glitter that you don't really notice it at first and the dark parts are played for laughs. It's prime real-estate for trauma and drama, though, and the fandom has capitalized on this in a way the movies don't dare touch on. I tend to gravitate to traumatized characters anyways, especially if there are cute aesthetics involved!

So.

Before I can go about rewriting the movies (because of course that's what I'm gonna do lol) I need a solid understanding of the backstory and how the characters got to where they are. And that's what this post is all about! Not sure if any of it counts as spoilers but here's your warning anyways lol...

"Hair we go!"

Before time began, there were… 6 Musical Strings! We know not where they came from, only that they have the power to create worlds, and fill them with life. That is how the race of magical beings known as trolls was born. Like all great power, some wanted it for good, others for evil, and so began the String War; a war that divided the trolls’ music into genres and ever more niche subgenres, but never again allowed to mix and mashup their flavors of music. Pop trolls, the most likely to shamelessly utilize sounds from other genres, were blamed for the war and the resulting division, eventually being ejected from the greater Troll Kingdom; however, some small, niche subgenres remained, such as Kpop. The remaining troll tribes adopted an “I ignore you, you ignore me” kind of truce, leaving them isolated from each other.

Forced to flee, the pop trolls traveled south, through the Never Glades, and eventually settled in a tropical-type jungle, centered around an ancient, hollow but living, tree they called the Troll Tree; this became their capitol, where the royals resided. They thrived in the thick jungles, innumerable smaller communities developing and working with nature to be able to support their quickly growing numbers, spreading far and wide. Over time, pop trolls thought they were the only trolls there were, forgetting about the other troll tribes in anything but legend; to everyone but the royals, anyways, who handed down the “true” history of the pop trolls.

This was the status quo until the bergens from the west, traveling in tribal groups with nothing to unite them, discovered they could “feel true happiness” by eating a troll. United by their growing appetite for troll, the bergens led a swift campaign to track down the troll capitol and surround it; first with temporary structures but soon with more permanent buildings, including a castle for the newly dubbed “Bergen King” who led the campaign. Trolls were hunted all year, stored at the now caged in Troll Tree, until Trollstice; a yearly feast set up so as to not decimate the troll population.

The troll royals had initially fled the Troll Tree, hoping to come back and free the others later, but King Peppy was eventually captured while holding Poppy’s egg in his hair, separated from his (mortally wounded) queen and eldest daughter, Viva. As he was at the troll tree, Peppy refused to give up and, shortly after Poppy hatched, led those trapped out of the tree via tunnels. Realizing the tree was no longer secure, the Bergen King Gristle Sr. cast out his head chef, who was charged with keeping the trolls in their enclosure, and Trollstice was abandoned only a few years (decades?) after it had become tradition. Long enough that it felt like it was always a part of their culture. Being only recently united, the bergens didn’t have any other set holidays that everyone agreed on either.

BroZone was working on the Perfect Family Harmony, as were many other family bands of the time, hoping to be able to use it to free troll-kind from the Bergen menace. With initially four members, their parents were captured shortly after Branche’s egg was produced and left to oldest brother John Dory and grandma Rosiepuff to raise. Inducted into the band almost immediately (trolls hatch already at the toddler stage), Branch had a few smaller performances with his brothers before they attempted the Harmony again, on the biggest stage they’d seen. When they failed, the older four brothers left Branch with grandma that night and the pair were captured by bergens early the next morning, along with many of the concert goers, having been drawn by the lively concert.

Grandma Rosiepuff was taken by Chef early, along with a few others, leaving Branch newly grey and blaming himself as he runs away on the day of Trollstice. Since there were constantly new trolls at the Troll Tree, those that escaped weren’t all as traumatized by losing family members to Trollstice as they could have been and those that were tended to put on a happy face and “not think about it” but Branch was unable to do that, having sever survivor’s guilt on top of abandonment issues.

#You earn an internet cookie if you can guess the reference at the beginning #trolls #dreamworks #origins #backstory #rewrite #non undertale #i have no idea how tags work #reverse au

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thebibliomancer · 3 months

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Essential Avengers: Atlantis Attacks Part 1

1989

Ah, geez, here we go again.

Another event made out of linked annuals. Several different writers trying to stay on the same vague page.

Silver Surfer, Iron Man, X-Men, Amazing Spider-Man, Punisher, Spectacular Spider-Man, Daredevil, Avengers, New Mutants, X-Factor, Web of Spider-Man, West Coast Avengers, Thor, and Fantastic Four.

Spider-Man still being greedy and dipping into the event three times.

Like Evolutionary War, I'll try to cover the whole event. I'll cover the non-Avengers material in a pretty cursory manner and the two Avengers annuals in more depth.

I'm here to Avenger, not look at Spider-Man hogging all the screentime.

But while working on this post I've discovered that fourteen annuals is just too many pictures to fit in one post so I'm breaking it up into two.

Silver Surfer through Avengers, New Mutants through Fantastic Four. So each post has an Avengers annual.

Let's see if Atlantis Attacks manages to string a bunch of annuals together into a half-decent story or at least manages it better than Evolutionary War.

I have zero knowledge of this event but I'm pretty sure this Atlantis Attack... isn't Namor's fault.

Scary to consider but that's the truth.

how SHARPER than a SERPENT'S TOOTH

We weirdly kick off the event with the character who least wants to be involved.

You'd think that Punisher would least want to be involved because he hates it when superhero stuff interrupts him shooting people but no. Somehow Silver Surfer wanted to be involved less.

Several galaxies away from Earth, Silver Surfer is doing what he do, surfing through space, when he loses control of his board.

It keeps trying to fly a certain direction and he finds green crap coating the bottom of the board that he can't remove.

He eventually just lets the board fly where it likes so he can figure out what the hell is going on.

The board takes him to a green dust cloud so Silver Surfer uses his power cosmic to reincorporate the cloud.

It turns out that its GHAUR GODLORD OF DEVIANT LEMURIA.

Since Silver Surfer doesn't know who that is and since Ghaur is a villain, he gladly exposits his backstory.

He was a priest of Deviant Lemura (from the Eternals book!) and when the Deviant leader Brother Toad led the Deviants into a disastrous defeat against the Eternals, Ghaur decided something drastic had to be done to give the Deviants hope again.

But the Deviants were portrayed as being always chaotic evil at this point so the thing he did to bring hope to his people was stealing power from the Dreaming Celestial and growing kaiju sized.

The Dreaming Celestial wound up taking over his brain and forced him into trying to dig it up. So the Eternals made a Uni-Mind, ripped out Ghaur's soul, and blasted it into space.

The Silver Surfer happened to fly through the soul cloud and here we are.

Silver Surfer decides Ghaur is bad news and kicks his ass.

I mean, it's actually a big action scene that goes back and forth but Silver Surfer kicks his ass. Ghaur realizes that he's getting his ass kicked in a pointless battle that has nothing to do with his sinister plan and fucks off.

Silver Surfer watches him go and decides, eh. He doesn't want to get drawn into Earth stuff. He uses his powers to send a warning to whoever manages to hear it (Dr Strange and Talisman) but he has his own business to take care of and Earth has plenty of people who can clean up the mess Silver Surfer accidentally dumped on their doorstep.

Man, you are a jerk sometimes, Norrin Radd!

But that's the story of how Silver Surfer wanted to be in this event so little that he bowed out of the story halfway through his own annual.

Meanwhile, Ghaur goes to Earth and pays a visit to Lemuria.

Not Deviant Lemuria. There's a reason why I keep calling it Deviant Lemuria and its because there's another Lemuria that's populated by mermen.

Merman Lemuria was actually introduced before Deviant Lemuria, for the record.

Ghaur finds Llyra, a teal lady and old Namor foe.

He proposes that they team-up because the Serpent Crown whispered to him when he was a space cloud and Llyra has been the prime agent of the crown here on Earth 616.

So, the Serpent Crown.

It is a hat that looks like snakes that has great power because the evil Elder God Set used it as a vessel for his power when he had to flee Earth to avoid a shitstorm he started by eating a centaur and doing the first murder.

It was introduced in a Namor story so has a lot of ties to his lore and also as a general evil artifact that bounces around the Marvel universe. It's even been in Avengers!

Because Ghaur is a villain, he exposits the history of the Serpent Crown to Llyra, who probably knows most of it already.

When Set created the Serpent Crown, he somehow created it throughout the multiverse. People that found and wore it because rulers of their world.

The Avengers had one of their punch-ups with the Squadron Supreme when two Crown wearers collaborated - Earth-616 Roxxon President Hugh Jones and Earth-712 US President Rockefeller.

If you're curious, that took place in Avengers #144, 147, 148, and 149.

It was pretty good. Patsy Walker became Hellcat during that story.

Hugh Jones got both crowns when the Avengers brought one back from Earth-712 but the Thing thwarted him and took the crown to be safely stored at Project Pegasus.

Where the crown corrupted the scientists to using dimensional cannons to summon Serpent Crowns from across the multiverse to join together into a giant Serpent Crown which threatened to resurrect Set.

But Spider-Man with a cosmic cube, Dr Strange, Scarlet Witch, and the Thing destroyed the Giant Serpent Crown, preventing Set from returning to the physical plane.

Woo.

But now Ghaur has a plan to bring about the triumph of the Serpent Crown and resurrection of Set.

But he's not going to tell us the plan yet. We have to wait.

(I'm getting deja vu of Evolutionary War.)

TWO IF BY SEA

The Atlantean attack on the surface world beings -- and an Avenger must DIE to stop them!

So, it's going to be Namor, right? Iron Man isn't currently an Avenger. I mean, every Avenger is an Avenger but he's currently trying to get the West Coast team to hire him back on.

In event plot land, Ghaur and Llyra bring their plan to Attuma, who currently rules Atlantis.

Ghaur actually goes over his plan! Which makes Atlantis Attacks already more forthcoming about its plot than Evolutionary War was!

Ghaur and Llyra are going to re-assemble the Serpent Crown and help Set manifest on Earth. When Set takes over the world, he'll definitely give it to his most loyal servants and Ghaur is offering Attuma a chance to get in on the ground floor.

All he needs is Attuma to use his armies alongside Llyra's Lemurian rebels to weaken the surface world. Especially the United States.

Attuma agrees, as long as Llyra's forces are put under his command, which she agrees to.

Meanwhile, our title boy Iron Man is shadowing some Maggia (a legally distinct Mafia) mini-subs, trying to find out why Maggia activity has been spiking lately.

The mini-subs are following a Completely Normal ship.

Flying above the ocean, Namor is trying to find the monster babies his monster wife had. Remember those? When Marrina turned into a giant sea monster and then died? And Captain Marvel lost her powers? Anyway, Namor is still looking for the babies.

He stops by the Completely Normal ship and asks if they've seen any sea monsters but the Completely Normal ship is Actually Hydra and they assume he's onto them.

They launch an attack on Namor and then blow up the ship when the Coast Guard shows up.

Iron Man joined in to help Namor when the Maggia subs fled due to the commotion.

So now Namor and Iron Man decide to work together to figure out what Hydra is up to and go to visit Tony Stark.

This lets me find out why Tony was acting weird in Avengers West Coast.

In Iron Man #242, Tony was shot and paralyzed by a stalker.

Tony Stark: "I got involved with the wrong lady. She was a bad sport. But a good shot!"

Out of his armor, he's confined to a wheelchair. So he's been spending more and more time in the armor and less and less time as Tony Stark. Which worries Rhodey.

Anyway, Tony decides to go with Namor to Panama because that Hydra ship was registered down there.

(Coincidentally, that's also where the Atlantis Attack plot is today, womp womp)

Namor spots signs of underwater military movement on the sea floor and goes to investigate that while Tony finds the building the Hydra ship was affiliated with.

Iron Man smashes his way through the building and learns from the Hydra boss that they've created a new designer drug that they're going to give away for free to make everyone in America addicted so Hydra can take over.

So Tony kills the guy, I think?? Geez, Tony.

Iron Man: "Probably shouldn't have done that. But I guess everyone gets a little self-indulgent now and then."

Geez.

Iron Man sets the warehouse on fire to destroy the drugs, which should set back Hydra's plans.

He goes looking for the other Hydra ship, full of drug cargo, when Namor reunites with him.

Namor exposes the Atlantean troops as they were trying to move in secret through the Panama canal by hiding under ships.

It is so funny to me that Atlantis Attacks is just another thing happening while Iron Man is trying to deal with the Hydra drug plot which is something that interrupted him trying to figure out what the Maggia is up to! Stuff keeps interrupting the last thing he was doing!

The Hydra ship tries fleeing so Iron Man asks Namor to go after them while he keep fighting the Atlanteans. WITH MICROWAVES. TO BOIL THE WATER INSIDE THEIR HELMETS.

Attuma orders the Omega rocket be fired at Iron Man or at whatever. It actually flies towards a tanker ship so Iron Man blocks the rocket with his body to save the crew.

The Atlanteans try to shoot Iron Man while he's down but fighter jets from Albrook Air Base come in and start shooting them mermen.

Iron Man thanks them and flies off to go help Namor but Hydra blows up their ship again, seemingly blowing up Namor.

Iron Man: "I'm going to do everything I can to uncover what's goin on between Hydra and the Maggia! I swear, Namor -- your death will not have been in vain!"

This early on in the plot, I like that the heroes still don't know what's going on. They've stumbled into the early stages of Atlantis Attacks and Iron Man gives no further thought to it compared to what he already had on his plate.

MOVING ON!

DOUBLE X CROSS

Mr. Jip? That sounds like a slur. It's not, as far as I can find out. But I don't like it.

Anyway, lets get right into the plot and then into the macguffin hunt.

The Serpent Society was hired by Ghaur and Llyra to collect four mystical artifacts. One of the items, a jeweled Cro-Magnon skull was held by a scholar of black arts called Mr. Jip.

That's him on the cover.

He doesn't appreciate being robbed so he bodyswaps Diamondback and Dazzler, for some reason.

And he doesn't like what Ghaur and Llyra are up to. So if the X-Men gather the artifacts for him, instead, he'll put Diamondback and Dazzler back in the right bodies.

Like a lot of bodyswap stories, this sucks.

Diamondback almost immediately tries to sleep with Wolverine with Dazzler's body. And spends most of the rest of the time trying to eat or smoke things Dazzler doesn't want in her body.

Anyway, the X-Men don't want to go on a macguffin hunt and since they're in the Outback era, they have a magical man who can send them wherever they want to go.

But when they try to get Gateway to send them to Mr. Jip, they instead wind up split into different teams, sent to beat the Serpent Society to the artifacts.

Dazzler-in-Diamondback and Wolverine end up in the Savage Land, where Dazzler is catty because she thinks Wolverine was going to sleep with Diamondback-in-Dazzler because the DinD snuck into Logan's room.

She runs off on her own and gets captured and is a huge burden.

Thanks, the X-Men Annual. Thanks for that.

Wolverine winds up rescuing her and fighting Puff Adder, Asp, and Boomslang almost all by himself.

Dazzler does use Diamondback's marksmanship to conk Puff Adder in the noggin when Puff Adder has Wolverine in a bear hug.

And they find the little stone race idol that they're looking for and get teleported away.

Colossus, Rogue, and Havok wind up teleported to an abandoned shopping center in Lima, Ohio and fight Anaconda, Black Mamba, and Coachwhip.

Once Havok breaks out of Black Mamba's illusion, he explodes all the potato chips at her with his plasma powers. That's pretty funny.

Once all the fights are done, they find Rock Python having just found the artifact.

But he surrenders it to them when he sees he's surrounded and has no backup.

This group of X-Men also get teleported as soon as they touch the thing.

Longshot, Diamondback-in-Dazzler, Psylocke, and Storm get teleported to Iceland to find a specific rock on a beach full of rocks.

Cottonmouth, Black Racer, Rattler, and Bushmaster also show up to look for a rock and everyone gets into a fight.

Longshot finds the specific rock, because lock powers. But Rattler causes a rockslide trying to get the rock and accidentally buries himself and Longshot.

Diamondback doesn't give a shit about Longshot and grabs the rock, getting the X-Men and her teleported to Mr. Jip's lair.

He swaps Dazzler and Diamonback back to their own bodies and the X-Men begrudingly turn over the three artifacts.

Wolverine threatens Mr. Jip when the guy dismisses their worry over Longshot, so the magic man magics Longshot to them. He had luckily fallen into a hole and wasn't crushed.

Then Sidewinder, former leader of the Serpent Society, teleports in, and he and Diamondback snatch the artifacts.

TWAS A RUSE.

Diamondback was working for Sidewinder all along and manipulating the Serpent Society for him.

(Sidewinder gives the Serpent Society 10% of the profit. Considering they failed to secure any of the artifacts and they ousted Sidewinder from the team he formed, that's not bad.)

They teleport off to sell the artifacts to Ghaur and Llyra. Mr. Jip gets annoyed at how pointless this entire adventure was and teleports the X-Men back home.

Once they're gone, he bemoans not being able to prevent Ghaur's plan, since it is going to make Dagger (of Cloak and) a target. And perhaps... Storm too.

Which is echoed when Diamondback and Sidewinder sell the artifacts to Ghaur for one chest of sunken treasure. Once the two snake-themed villains are gone, Ghaur implies that they have plans for Storm.

And the magical artifacts? Lemurian alchemists being using them to recreate the Serpent Crown!

I'm impressed that each annual so far has progressed the story in a unique way.

ABOMINATIONS!

Uh oh, Liefeld drew this annual. I flip to the first page and Ghaur is way off-model.

Ah well.

So with the artifacts the Serpent Society found last time, Ghaur has begun reconstructing a giant Serpent Crown.

But he's got other shit going on too.

His Lemurian ally Llyra has gone on a mission to free the Abomination from a Colorado jail.

(Huh. Why is this called Atlantis Attacks when its more Lemurians who are attacking? The Atlantean troops that were caught sneaking through the Panama Canal even get called a Lemurian attack force when the events get referenced. EXPLAIN THE TITLE, please.)

Llyra brought Abomination to New York and meets with Ghaur.

Abomination is still being controlled by Tyrannus, aka the lastest Western Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus, and he wants out.

With Lemurian technology and the high voltage lines that ran to where Avengers Mansion used to be, Tyrannus is freed from Abomination by shuffling him into Emil Blonsky and Emil back into Abomination.

This wins Team Set an alliance with Tyrannus. Who I guess has stuff to offer? And also an Abomination, since he'll obey them since they can get him out of the gamma body.

Except the strain of the transfer messed up Emil's mind and now Abomination is rampaging mindlessly.

Also, the massive energy surge alerted both Spider-Man and She-Hulk who were nearby.

(In She-Hulk's case, because she was yelling at J Jonah Jameson for his shitty views on the homeless. Eesh.)

The two heroes fight Abomination but have some trouble. He's Hulk level and they're pulling their punches to avoid endangering any bystanders.

At some point, She-Hulk gets knocked unconscious briefly. Ghaur, who stuck around to watch how things played out, has identified She-Hulk as a strong lady who could be useful as "an excellent bride -- for the great god Set!"

And the creeper burns a snake mark onto She-Hulk's neck while she's briefly knocked out from Abomination punches.

She-Hulk wakes up, gets back in the fight, and throws a gasoline tanker at Abomination, which causes him to stumble off a bridge and fall onto a boat.

The two heroes decide they'd really rather not go chasing him. So they don't.

Very heroic, you two.

Two days later, a disguised Tyrannus visits a federal prison outside Washington DC to propose a deal to an imprisoned Viper.

The bad guys are still networking and the good guys still don't know what's going on.

Plus, the implied role that Storm and Dagger (and now She-Hulk) have in Ghaur's plan is as "brides of Set."

The plot thickens and by thickening, exists.

KNIGHT FIGHT

Despite the cover and the title, Moon Knight don't really fight in this. In fact, they seem pretty enthusiastic to work together. Marc even takes Frank home to see his mansion.

What they do fight is snake people, or sneople.

Moon Knight sees a man eat a gerbil in a pet shop. For some reason, this makes him suspicious and he decides to look into it. Marc follows the guy to an estate run by Save Our Society, a non-profit dedicated to curing drug addicts.

At the same time, Punisher is on the trial of a drug addict named Ralph Newton who killed a woman for her social security check. But when he checks Ralph's usual drug den, the guy isn't there. In fact, Ralph told his drug buddies that he was going to go straight and get the drug addiction cure from the Save Our Society clinic.

The two heroes run into each other when staking out the clinic and decide to team up.

Very alarmingly, they find everyone in the clinic are snake people and comic book fight scene ensues. The heroes easily having the advantage because the cold weather is making the sneople sluggish.

The two go back to Moon Knight's mansion to research and plan.

They learn that former Hydra leader Viper was released from a federal prison last month by a Dr Tyrone.

Wait, that happened a month ago? So, the Amazing Spider-Man annual was a month ago??

Anyway, the two storm the SOS estate Moon Knight scouted earlier.

Fighting the sneople is harder because they're wearing thermal packs that keep them warmed up. But harder is relative.

Viper surprise injects Punisher with drugs and then flees in a rocket when Frank goes totally nuts.

Moon Knight calms down the drugged out Punisher by showing him his shiny moonerangs and then takes him back to Spector Manor to detox.

These two are such good murder friends to each other.

They go their separate ways at the end to deal with separate business but mention they should team up again sometime.

So I'm not sure what this adds to the story. Definitely something.

Viper is making snake people, presumably for Ghaur. She escapes from Punisher and Moon Knight with plans to improve her process.

Some backup stories in the annuals have been recapping the entire history of Set and the Serpent Crown. Set did have snake people serving him in earlier times so maybe Ghaur is setting the stage for Set's return in that way too.

And now we return to Spider-Man taking more than his share of this event.

The SERPENT in the SHADOW

I wonder if team-ups are the theme of this annuals event. Minus Silver Surfer the broody loner.

Namor teamed up with Iron Man in his annual. X-Men teamed up with Diamondback. Spider-Man teamed up with She-Hulk. Punisher teamed up with Moon Knight. Now Spider-Man is teaming up with Cloak and Dagger. And looking ahead, I see that Spider-Man will also be teaming up with Daredevil.

The man is truly hogging more than his share of this event. Three annuals and also appearing in Daredevil's annual? Save some for the rest of us, Parker.

Anyway, this annual also clears up the timeline. Maybe.

Spider-Man mentions that the fight he had against Abomination was a week ago. The Atlantian/Lemurian attacks on the surface are apparently still ongoing. So either Viper's operation in the Punisher annual was in the future or Moon Knight misspoke.

Anyway, plot.

Spider-Man is looking into a Save Our Society non-profit event. Initially to take pictures to try to sell but later when he examines one of the photos, he recognizes a Sons of the Serpent tattoo on one of the SOS staff. Since the Sons of the Serpent are basically the Marvel version of the KKK, Spider-Man is very curious to see what connection they might have to the similar sounding Save Our Society.

I mean, it could just be that this dude is a reformed ex-Son of the Serpent who can't afford to have the tattoo lasered off. But, no, that's not the case.

Cloak is also looking into the Save Our Society event but because he's wondering if the SOS miracle cure to drug addiction can cure his addiction to siphoning life energy from Dagger. Which he both wants and doesn't want because he's afraid that if their powers didn't require them to hang out, she'd have no reason to be with him.

Aw, buddy, she likes you for you, most of the time I've read you two!

Cloak gets defensive when Spider-Man gets in his business and also near Dagger (because she's blind right now, she threw some light daggers at Spider-Man because it sounded like he was hurting Cloak). But the misunderstanding fight is just so they can team-up later.

Ghaur identifies Dagger as another potential bride of Set and orders Tyrannus to put the Mark of Set upon her.

Tyrannus is happy to do so because he has his own plans that plays into.

Apparently, when he's not in Abomination's body, Tyrannus has SUPER CHARISMA MIND CONTROL. He's able to easily lead Dagger away and also control Cloak when he comes looking for her.

He sends Cloak to steal the ancient Book of Kell from a museum. The book is an ancient text of the Sons of the Serpent cult and contains secrets that will make Tyrannus mightier than Ghaur.

Since he now has what he needs from Cloak, Tyrannus sends a huge number of more transformed snake people to kill Cloak.

Cloak nearly gets overwhelmed but gets saved by a mystery figure.

Meanwhile, Spider-Man investigates the lower levels of the Save Our Society building and finds a "cured" drug addict turning into a snake person.

We learn here and from Tyrannus' conversation with Cloak elsewhere in the issue that the addiction cure is a serpent serum Viper created. It does cure chemical addiction in its early stages but then it turns you into a snake people.

And from Ghaur's exposition when he decides that Dagger is one of the Set Brides, we learn that "serpent worshipers" are required for Set's resurrection.

So that's why they're making sneople.

Tyrannus surprises Spider-Man and SUPER CHARISMAS him into compliance.

Tyrannus: "You're like everyone else in the world, addict and non-addict alike. You want easy answers. You want simple solutions. You want someone to tell you what to do. And that someone, my pet... for now and ever more... is me."

This took a turn.

"A Friend in Need..."

So quick bit about Daredevil's status quo at the mo.

He's having a rough time.

Post Born Again, he had started to put his life back together when Kingpin knocked his legs out from under him again by sending Typhoid Mary into his life. Daredevil was beaten nearly to death and THEN went through Inferno where a vacuum and a dentistcoptruck demon tried to kill him. Having lost all his friends and his law clinic so decided to leave New York and travel around for a while. I think he also french kissed Mephisto somewhere in there.

So Daredevil is traveling around Monroe Falls, New York when he encounters some snake people attacking a guy who won't stop prying into what happened to his friend Wally, who joined Save Our Society.

Daredevil saves the guy but refuses to help him break into the treatment center.

At least until Dr Strange (who had been faking his death, for Dr Strange reasons) comes and asks him to help do something about a growing evil he's sensed in... whaddayaknow... the Save Our Society treatment center.

Also happening in world's colliding, Viper comes to the Monroe Falls SOS center to re-group after Punisher and Moon Knight busted up her last base.

Tyrannus (Dr Tyrone) says she's welcome to use this center until she can get back on her feet but then he pulls a double cross on her. And on Ghaur.

With the book he had Cloak steal and with Viper as a sacrifice, he's going to summon Set early and get all the good servant brownie points before Ghaur can.

When Daredevil (following Strange's request) breaks into the center to create a distraction, Tyrannus sends his hypnotized "pet" Spider-Man to stop the intruder.

He seriously has a collar and leash on Spider-Man and calls him a pet. When I said this took a turn, I meant it.

Even though acting under mind control makes Spider-Man fight at less than peak performance, he's still bouncing Daredevil off the scenery and drowning him until Matt decides he wants to live and knocks the wall-crawler out.

The Book of Kell Tyrannus is using doesn't summon Set but instead a snake demon servant of Dormammu.

Tyrannus figures a snake demon is a snake demon and turns the full force of his CHARISMA to control it but this frees Viper and she shoves Tyrannus into the pentagram to get om nom nom'd by the demon.

Dr Strange banishes the demon. Then for good measure, magically cures everyone of the snake serum, turning them back to normal and inadvertantly depriving Ghaur of all those sneople he needed.

We don't really learn more about Ghaur's big plan except that it will require a sacrifice. But this completes the subplot of Tyrannus planning his own thing within the bigger scheme. And follows up on Viper.

Eh. I really hope we get some more Atlantis in Atlantis Attacks soon, though. Like Evolutionary War, there's been a lot of drugs and not a lot of the thing promised in the title.

And that brings us back to Avengers!

AVENGERS ASSEMBLED

Which means we'll be slowing the pace down a little since Avengers is what this liveblog is actually about.

Sorry every other book I skimmed through on my way here.

(This is also the point where the cast balloons so large that I literally can't tag everyone. Just this Avengers Annual has over twenty characters...)

After working on it since the end of the X-Men Annual, Lord Ghaur and Llyra have completed their giant Serpent Crown.

In fact, it's the best Serpent Crown. Bigger and stronger and more indestructible than that other one that broke.

With the crown complete, it begins to emanate power. Which is felt by any who have worn the crown previously. We see Viper, the Thing, Scarlet Witch, mysterious armored figure from the Spectacular Spider-Man issue, and Quasar reacting to the crown.

Ghaur and Llyra call Attuma to tell him to get on that Atlantis Attacks thing already.

The attack on the surface world to keep the surface militaries and heroes distracted.

Attuma acts all gung ho about it when on the video phone with Lord Ghaur but has privately started to doubt his role in this plan. He's the big conqueror of Atlantis and all so why does he feel like a subordinate in this partnership?

He decides to take a back seat and let his lieutenants Tyrak, U-Man, Lord Arno, and Krang carry out the attacks.

So the Atlantean fleet launches and splits to attack four targets. Cape Canaveral in Forida, Fort Hamilton army base in New York, Langley Air Force base in Virginia, and the Shoreham Nuclear Plant on Long Island.

So basically just the East Coast. Well, this is the Avengers East Coast book. Although the cast list has the Avengers West Coast cast too.

The Avengers (Captain America, Sersi, She-Hulk, Quasar, Thor, and robot Human Torch Jim Hammond is here for some reason) get the reports of the attacks.

They wonder if just the six of them can handle four Atlantean armies. But luckily, this is the Every Avenger is an Avenger era and if there's any situation that calls for a mass muster, it may well be this.

And for some reason, Wasp, Dr Pym, Tigra, and Mockingbird arrive in a tiny panel on the next page.

What, they didn't fit in the big, two-page spread?

Well... Tigra doesn't?

She's still feral and locked in a cat carrier according to John Byrne so he later declares her presence in this annual didn't happen.

She's definitely in this issue and she does stuff but try to remember that you're just imagining it.

This is a pretty big crowd but we immediately cut it down a little. Quasar and the Thing are feeling under the weather (unbeknowst to them, because of the influence of the mega crown) so they're told to sit this one out.

The remainder break into four teams to tackle the four problem areas.

Black Panther, Invisible Woman, She-Hulk, and Mr Fantastic will go to Shoreham.

Robot Human Torch, Wonder Man, Scarlet Witch, the Hulk, and Sersi will go to Langley.

Dr Pym, Tigra (except she's not here, stop making things up), Hawkeye, Thor, Black Widow, and the Wasp go to Fort Hamilton.

And the Vision, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Mockingbird, and Iron Man go to Cape Canaveral.

I guess Hawkeye decided to leave the Great Lakes Avengers at home. I'm sad but also glad because I don't have to tag them.

And I also guess that Monica Rambeau got her powers back? Apparently in a Giant-Size Special one-shot Captain Marvel book? Nice. Now put her back in charge of the Avengers. She was cheated.

Team This Is Just A Fantastic Four of Invisible Woman, Black Panther, Mr Fantastic, and She-Hulk invisibly land the Fantasticar at the nuclear power plant and take the guards by surprise.

Silly hat wearer Lord Arno blind fires and manages to hit She-Hulk, despite telegraphing it so far as to yell that he's about to fire.

She-Hulk has been remarked to be acting subdued in this issue, presumably because of the Mark of Set that was secretly put on her during the Amazing Spider-Man issue.

Either way, she gets zapped and bonks into Invisible Woman, who is jarred into dropping the invisibility so an open battle it'll have to be.

Lord Arno identifies the group as the Fantastic Four ('cause it's the most Fantastic Four possible grouping you can make out of All The Avengers give or take a Ben Grimm who is out sick). And Lord Arno doesn't take the Fantastic Four lightly and immediately summons in his biggest gun.

Hey!

It's Orka, the giant Atlantean with the bad outfit. I forgot how stupid those 'teeth' around his face looked.

But it's fitting that he's involved. He was in that other Avengers Serpent Crown story, on loan to Roxxon. He beat up the entire Avengers team until Moondragon annoyed Thor into releasing even more true power. Because Thor unconsciously holds back a lot on Earth so he can hang with the Avengers?

So this guy is a tough guy and this group doesn't have a Thor.

But he's knocked on his ass two pages later with the combined efforts of She-Hulk and Black Panther picking up a random Atlantean gun.

Seeing Orka go down so quickly, Lord Arno panics and orders RETREEEEAT.

Meanwhile, a Quinjet arrives at Langley Air Force base. Wonder Man, Robot Human Torch, Hulk, and Sersi jump out and leap right into action, leaving Scarlet Witch to park the damn thing.

Wonder Man flies through the Atlantean anti-aircraft guns. Because an underwater people would definitely have anti-air.

Hulk jumps out of the Quinjet with Sersi clinging to his back and crashes through the Atlantean airships on the way down.

And I think Sersi turns herself into a rock to crash into the ground?

Scarlet Witch (after parking the Quinjet) uses her hex powers to alter the probability of two airships crashing into each other as yes.

Wonder Man tells her to take it easy because she's been out of sorts today and she tells him off for trying to mother her. Even tells him that "they're not giving out Quicksilver Awards" which manages to zing Pietro and he's not even here.

I guess giant dudes are a necessity because Tyrak (Attuma's chief spy who has a lot of abilities not related to spying like being super buff) grows giant to fight the Avengers.

Hulk and Wonder Man go to fight him as the two punchiest dudes there. But it is Robot Human Torch who strikes the biggest blow, by melting the device Tyrak was using as a power source, making him bwee-bwee-bwee shrink down so Wonder Man can knock him out.

Meanwhile, Scarlet Witch passes out from over-exerting herself. She falls right into Lord Ghaur's clutches.

He declares her another bride of Set and puts the Mark of Set on her.

What is that now...? She-Hulk, Dagger, and Scarlet Witch? With Storm suggested as another target?

Anyway.

Sersi uses her power of transmutation to turn half the Atlantean soldiers into human soldiers? Or just transmutes their outfits and skin so they look like human soldiers?? Anyway, it gets them shooting each other.

Then Moondragon and Rick Jones show up in a very baffling cameo.

I know this is one of those every Avenger ever situations but Rick Jones isn't an Avenger and isn't even an active part of this story!

Seriously. Moondragon is basically using him as a gun. She's used her mind powers to tap into Rick Jones' latent destiny force power. Remember that stuff that ended the Kree/Skrull War at least for a bit? That stuff. Moondragon uses it to knock some dudes down.

Kinda not even worth showing up for two panels, you two.

Hulk even scolds Moondragon for ruining the good time he was having and tells her to go home.

So that brings us to group 3, headed to Fort Hamilton.

Dr Pym and Tigra in Rover, the ant-head shaped airship that thinks Hank is neat, Thor and Wasp flying under their own power, and Hawkeye and Black Widow on Hawkeye's Sky-Cycle.

I love Rover. It's a shame that more hasn't been done with him up until this point.

The Atlanteans fire at the Avengers as they arrive over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

Thor lands and starts whirling his hammer to blow Atlantean soldiers around. But then they shoot him with an off-panel weapon.

Which wouldn't be a big deal except for Wasp pointing off-panel and going "what's that pointed at Thor?!"

C'mon.

U-Man (or Unter-Wasser Mann, apparently) leads a group of soldiers to charge on the Avengers.

But Hank just. Uses Pym Particles to shrink the entire army.

Okay, so Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Wasp help. And Tigra scoops them up.

Apparently Hank whipped up Pym Particles for everyone.

THIS WOULD INVALIDATE SO MANY TOUGH FIGHTS.

HANK, WHAT THE HELL??

Also, Thor notes that despite leading the charge, U-Man somehow vanished without a trace.

Also also, what? No giant guy this time?

And time for group 4, the final group. Captain Marvel, Captain America, the Vision, Mockingbird, and Iron Man.

Vision fists people, as he is known to do. Captain America throws his mighty shield and all who oppose his shield must yield. Mockingbird bonks people with her battle staves. Iron Man does flying hip thrusts to knock Atlanteans down. And Captain Marvel uses her energy trail to bowl them over.

NOTABLY. Captain America muses that the Vision he's fighting alongside is not like the robot-man he came to know. And that "it could chill a man to the very bone!"

I'm glad someone seems to care. WEST COAST AVENGERS.

Captain America gets the idea to start breaking the Atlanteans' helmets when he throws his mighty shield. Mockingbird follows suit and the Atlanteans deprived of their helmet water run back to the ocean.

Breaking all the helmets individually would take a while so Vision and Iron Man combine forces to blast the whole army with thermal energy.

Captain Marvel could easily have been added to this effort. Just saying.

The whole army flees into the ocean and then... they all get eaten by a sea monster?

????

Captain America: "In some bizarre, inexplicable way... it looks like the ocean has claimed its own!"

Be more alarmed by this!

A maybe explanation for this is the mysterious armored figure that shows up and decks Krang, the leader of this particular army. Then he beats the shit out of him.

I wonder who this mysterious guy is who has past history with Krang.

Maybe it's Raphael of the Ninja Turtles. He is red and angry.

Over in Atlantis, a messenger reports the defeat of all four of the armies to Attuma.

Attuma shouts that he knew this whole plan was folly and made no sense!

(Then why did you sign on?)

But having decided this Atlantis Attacks idea was flawed from the start, Attuma starts to wonder why Lord Ghaur and Llyra insisted on it. What are they really planning? And is there anything Attuma can do to screw them over??

Back at Avengers Island, several of the Avengers assemble to discuss what's been happening.

Wonder Man worries that although Scarlet Witch seems recovered from whatever was making her ill, she's still not acting like herself.

Captain America says that whatever is going on, there's nothing the Avengers can do except be ready for whatever the next move is going to be.

And since they totally have downtime right now, they should look into some of the strange occurrences of the recent past.

Presumably the other annuals.

But unbeknowst to them, the missing U-Man swims towards Avenger Island with more Atlantean troops.

Dun dun dun, continued in next week's post!

Follow at @essential-avengers and maybe like and reblog. I read through fourteen annuals in one week before discovering they couldn't all fit in one post. I'm exhausted.

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