#and the things on their face are part of their lateral line sensory system

[enby--emrys]

Mermay: Deep Sea

Pseudoliparis belyaevi, a species of snailfish, is the deepest fish ever found. I feel like it must be lonely down there...

#mermay #mermay 2023 #my art #mermaid #copic #deep sea #fun fact they dont have scales #and they produce a molecule that acts as a protein stabilizer for their gelatinous skin #and the things on their face are part of their lateral line sensory system #and they are cute

[ronearoundblindly]

The Stark Legacy (30)

Tony Stark's Daughter (OC) x Bucky Barnes epic slow burn

Furnace, part of Book III: Power (see previous or series)

Summary: When Tony tries to put Cloak in danger, Lil'Sam steps in, giving her father more to worry about. Later, Samantha realizes she's developed a crush on someone she shouldn't--her friend, Bucky.

Warnings for budding romantic attraction and feelings of insecurity. Mild language. Rated Teen/15+ ONLY. WC 4.2k

CHAPTER THIRTY—August-September 2039

Sam rubbed her eyes furiously. When she slept, she dreamt of staring at even more screens. It was hard to know when she really was awake and working.

Bruce usually blurted out the next question on his lengthy list for Sam to work out an answer to while he continued down the line. Today focused entirely on a problem the team had toyed with for months, but she didn’t know why it was so urgent now. No one told her what was going on…not on purpose, at least, and after months of pushing to be heard and included, to no avail, Sam’s mental investment whittled down to the size of pea. That tiny lump still kept her from sleeping well anyway. 

Sam yawned while Banner mumbled something under his breath before turning to her.

“I’m sending you a mock up for a containment casing. Run diagnostics for allowing sensory control of the Space Stone, will you?”

“No prob, Bob,” Sam said flatly, nearly cross-eyed from fatigue. She adjusted a few parameters in the model before getting up to stretch. “‘Bout time for a pick-me-up, I think.”

She didn’t get the chance to leave the lab.

An alert sounded on Bruce’s console, prompting the doctor to heatedly warn someone over comms that “we aren’t ready yet.” Whoever it was didn’t listen, and after removing his glasses, Banner’s frustrated pinch of the bridge of his nose told her it was her father. By now Sam recognized this as the universal symbol for: No, Tony, please don’t. Bruce pinched his nose often.

Tony burst through the double doors, ordering the men who followed him to clear the center of the room. “The idea is to not blow up the room, but no promises,” he shrugged. He pointed to several tables. “Goes, goes, be careful with that one—”

“It’s untested, Tony.” Bruce stood, shooing a lackey away from snatching the stool he sat on.

Tony stayed facing the door. “Doesn’t matter. Time’s up and we need to see what we are up against.”

“What’s happening?” Sam’s station was pulled over to a far corner. Unsurprisingly, Tony didn’t answer her.

Tyrone walked in, wearing one of the minimal space suits used for travel to the orbiting station. Tony clapped him on the shoulder.

“Good—” Tony held on to the helmet while Ty adjusted a glove “—they’ll be in with it shortly.”

Bruce stepped forward. “If the signal just went off that a ship is outside of the solar system, we have enough time to practice this.”

“Not really,” Tony snapped, “if that’s the main ship of Annihilus, we need to know right now and keep it from getting to Earth. If it’s a scout ship, we need to keep the fleet from getting bigger.”

Sam tried to get close to Ty. “You’re teleporting to space? Have you ever done that before?”

Ty’s dark eyes lowered to fiddle with a clasp.

Tandy raced in, bright red in fury. “Like hell you’re going, Ty.”

Sam turned to Dee. “Have you ever given him enough energy for that?”

“They don’t want me to do it,” Dee choked back, “they want him to use that thing.”

A man and woman carried in a heavily armored trunk. Sam knew what lay inside.

She gripped Ty’s arm. “You can’t touch that thing,” she warned. “Even without direct contact, the radiation exchange damages homosapien tissue, particularly blood vessels.” She turned to her father. “He can’t touch that, Tony.”

“Kid, this is not a negotiation. Cloak here is an Avenger in all but name—that’s next month, right?—so he knows the risk.”

“You can’t expose him to that without testing it,” Sam insisted.

“Sit back down, or leave,” Tony spat back. “This has nothing to do with you.”

Ty interrupted. “Actually, sir, so far I’ve only used Lightforce from Dee—Dagger…sir.”

“I’ve heard you like cereal, too,” Tony added, spinning a finger to speed up the pace of the two charged with the heavy trunk.

“—and he won’t just have a radiation burn from the damn stone. He could die.” Tandy stepped between Tyrone and Tony for good measure. One good grip of Tony without his armor and Dee could have him on his ass.

“Well, I hope not,” Tony said calmly, “but he’s a big boy. Energy is energy, and he’s gonna need a boatload. Move, Black Swan.”

The agents finished the security protocols, opening the trunk to reveal a glorious flash of blue light. Tucked in lead lining sat the Space Stone, a raw ingot of power from the Big Bang itself.

Sam rounded on Tony once again. “You want the info so bad, get it yourself. But Ty isn’t doing random interstellar teleport without practice.”

Tony looked at Tyrone, reaching around Dee to hand the helmet over. “He’s got the coordinates where the ship pinged.”

“Sam, you said it yourself,” Bruce added, “if an apparatus can aid in controlling the energy—”

“We aren’t even sure it’s the right type of energy,” Sam screamed, her anger rising in time with Tandy’s.

Ty coughed for attention. “I want to help, but that distance is going to take a lot out of me. I’m not gonna drain Dee to—”

“No,” Sam and Dee screeched in unison. Fists white with rage as she glared at Tony Stark, Tandy concentrated her power towards her fingers, but before the girl could spray the room with daggers, Sam grabbed her arm, syphoning the Lightforce into herself. 

The light rippled and magnified beneath her skin until a hum was audible across the whole room. “You want your recon so bad,” Sam asked, “you got it.”

Sam smacked her hand down across Tyrone’s forearm, and the two disappeared in an eerie cloud of inky thick fog.

One-hundred and four seconds later, the pair reappeared in the midst of an explosion of yelling between Tony, Bruce, and Tandy. Sam’s frozen body clanked onto the floor. Ty detached his helmet, mid-apology. 

“I didn’t know she was doing it,” he murmured, shaking.

As Tony stood, terror blocking any movement he made, Bruce flung himself forward to check Samantha. Tandy moved Ty away to comfort him, watching the rest intently.

Frostbite receded as the pink returned to Sam’s skin, and in a lengthy, frightful gasp that howled through the room, she started to breath again.

Hoarse still, Sam sat up to look at Ty. “You saw it, right?”

“Yeah,” Ty breathed, “I saw them.”

“Nevermind, I fixed it now,” Sam burst at Tony while rushing away.

He followed, pissed. “Oh, you fixed it? And we’re supposed to take your teenage word for it?” The reverberation in the open Wakandan halls echoed their angry words.

Sam spun around. “Then don’t take my word for it. Take all that oh-so-precious Earth-saving time to check my math. You can help me with my homework.” He felt spit hit his neck Sam was so close. “I’d be so grateful!” She mocked him with a bow.

“You don’t think I’m doing all this for you, so you can be safe here? Pay attention, Sam, I’m afraid of what being around me would do to you.” Tony grabbed her arm, clutching the delicate connection with his daughter. “People hunt me down. They torture. They kidnap. They kill.”

“You’re hurting me.”

“I just want you to—” He heard it again. The snap. The bone under his hand collapsed, making the same hollow sound as Thanos’s fingers on Titan.

Sam’s face sank faster than her body. Her sunken cheeks, the deep grey under her flat brown eyes, the almost plastic gloss of her skin. The sickly face of his daughter morphed with a devious grin. The short hair darkened and pulled back from her face, revealing a sharp peak and crazed eyes. The nose pointed above an equally sharp goatee, and there beneath Tony, arm in his hand, kneeled Lemuel Dorcas.

The grin parted. “How’s our girl doing?”

Tony punched the sweat-soaked sheet off in the dark. Another nightmare. One of hundreds to plaque his life. At least this time Sam didn’t become Pepper, he thought. He could never shake Pepper crying while her arm hung mangled, but nowadays Dorcas crept into these dreams more frequently. He knew it wasn’t real.

The evil doctor’s lingering question echoed in Tony’s mind. Our girl. Who was Sam now? Who did she belong to?

She’d laid cold and unmoving on the lab floor, all to prove him reckless and hotheaded.

Four ships. 

Not a scout, the start of a gathering. They were scanning the system. Tony’s longshot chance was to keep Satellite Station cloaking how advanced their planet was and hope the ships passed them by. Earth needed to go dark immediately.

Tony would never tell her, but Sam may actually have saved them by stopping the use of the stone; that was the exact energy signature they needed to avoid Annihilus detecting. For the first time since the Stone War, he was grateful Vision had never been restored to use the Mind Stone. Perhaps that was the only good thing to come out of its destruction in the facility explosion that killed his wife.

He could use more recon on how the ships were scanning and how much they already knew about Earth. However, after the stunt she pulled, Sam wasn’t allowed near Ty, and even if Ty teleported out there again, how long would it take to find answers? Could they even understand what he’d find?

Four hours of sleep, Tony thought, good enough. He dressed and left for the lab.

Your brain goes to strange places when you’re bored. Sam’s fresh appreciation for life without direction framed the sentiment in gaudy, bright gold in her mind. You’re so far down the rabbit hole…

She’d been banned from her “job” since teleporting. Unable to see Tandy and Tyrone while they took on further Avengers’ duties, Sam lived without interaction most days, lonelier than her basement in Wakanda. She was allowed no tech devices either, seeing as she her proficiency was known and highly suspect by Bruce and Tony.

Bucky suggested keeping a journal. He explained over another homemade lunch that he used to keep notebooks while hiding in Romania. “Helps collect my thoughts, practice what I want to say. Sometimes, when I write out my version of what happened in a confusing situation, I can see it from a different perspective,” he’d explained over tomato soup. Sam had offered her grilled cheese sandwich expertise to compliment the meal. Bucky had even let her use her hands to cook them, though she knew he thought it a little unsanitary.

In her lengthy entries in Composition books, Sam wrote directly to Missy, as if her long gone friend could respond to the new dramas of life with Tony Stark. After a while, her thoughts answered her in Missy’s monotone: flat yet sarcastic, and somehow loving, too.

Nothing distracted her from overthinking one very particular thing Sam noticed: Bucky was always around. Not everyday because he’s got shit to do. He went out of his way to get her out of her room. If Wilson were here, he would too, so would Dee and Ty. When Bucky said goodnight, he hugged her tighter than necessary. Didn’t he? 

It wasn’t meant to be anything more than comforting. Right? Couldn’t be. 

Sam ate like an animal and bowled like an old woman. She’d yelled at him, and she made him angry enough to yell at her. So…Can I be trusted to think this out logically? I’ve died twice this year so far.

He’d woken up to stop her and Tony from fighting…after Big Sam saw them in the atrium. Because he protects people. That’s the job. He protects everyone in the building, everyone in the world. That’s it. Bucky simply saved the day, again…and then kissed my head and smelled my hair…

You think, you don’t know that.

He taught her to cook, multiple meals now. He bowled with her. Like a date, but definitely not a date. He…

Does he smile more? Sam swore Bucky smiled more, but he’d been on other dates. He could like one of them. 

But he touched her shoulder or arm when asking what she was up to or how her day was going. He wanted to talk to her. That’s stupid. He did that before, even on the ship to Wakanda, even at the wedding; I’m only noticing now that I’m bored. 

And you smelled him first. 

Sam sighed. Bucky’s scent was a mix of warm linen, citrus soap, and musk…paired with her daddy-issue tears smudged onto his pectoral. Sam acknowledged that was a little perverted, especially since that olfactory memory eclipsed any part of the accompanying arguments she had with Tony, a relationship that drained her entirely. 

Her emptiness refilled with a wholly different feeling, an antsy excitement, an uncertainty, a deep shame. That’s not normal. Right? He’s simply a good hugger. Oh my god, just shut up!

Her brain warred with her now, as it did everyday recently. Nights were the worst. Sam could keep it together when Tony called her Sass. She could block out some of it while working but pushed aside with no other distraction… 

How does anyone get anything done? Hormones are stupid. 

You’re better than this. Buck up—

GODDAMMIT.

Her discomfort radiated to every cell. Sam wished to scream the tightness in her throat loose, blow apart the pressure crushing her chest with an inferno. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Sam couldn’t do it. She avoided the root of the feeling for weeks. She had a relationship with her father, albeit rocky, one of the only things she had ever truly wanted, but Tony alone wasn’t enough. Dee and Ty weren’t enough. 

The guilt of wanting this, however, him in particular, it threatened to suffocate her soul for a greedy child.

Yet still, each little thought haunted her. Bucky Barnes haunted her. 

Tonight in particular, her room became a stifling prison. In the open air of the grounds, in the dark, the rolling chirp of insects harped a symphony of company. At least this was a cool, breezy prison. She was still alone though, and the heat turned over and over in her gut, growing.

The steely blue halo surrounding the moon became an eye, and the dark, wispy shadows of clouds became long, soft hair. It’s not real. She could feel it between her fingers, and the heat grew. Stupid. The low bass of echoing water spoke to her gently, calling Sam from her screen-dreams to food down the hall, and the heat grew. Quit thinking. Her hand met the button of her jeans to push the blaze back, but then the cool metal slid over her fingers as a familiar military jacket. 

You’ve got to be kidding. 

Sam released her hand, almost crying out in frustration, instead letting a few tears fall in trade for silence.

No, she repeated. No, no, no, no. He’s not yours to want. He’s never going to be yours. Let it go now. Let this die now and move on. But how does something fed by absence, fed by nothing real or logical, die? Nothing encouraged this feeling except fantasy and hormones. Sam was smart enough to know that. Intelligence changed nothing. Intelligence killed no emotion, stifled no threatening bursts of flame. Control was a joke. 

Before she could stop, the tears became soft sobs, broken by uncontrolled heaving breaths. The bugs were loud; the ringing in her ears was louder. The reverberation of warring forces inside her grew violent, the yellow hue under her skin guaranteeing an unhappy resolution. Raising her left arm in anticipation, Sam could feel something inside about to snap.

Arms wove around her chest and waist from behind, gripping her sides with a solid clutch. “I’ve got you. It’s ok,” a beloved voice sounded, “you’re alright.” 

Without permission, her body melted and drained of fight. Where the hell did he come from?

Do you even care?

The void left by her sudden loss of heat was sickening. Sam’s tears flew out as the dam broke. The body so betraying her seemed to double down on its own vulnerability towards Bucky Barnes. Stupid.

Sam collapsed her weight against him, crying like a baby unable to speak. 

“I’ve got you,” he repeated. Bucky slowly released her to sink to the soft grass and sat beside, face to face, his hand calmly resting on her leg. 

Oh, great, watch me cry. Sam struggled to make herself quiet, but the delicious discomfort radiating across her leg slowed her progress to regain equilibrium. She was trying to smother freshly lit kindling.

“Here,” Bucky started, holding out a pair of earbuds, “I find music helps.”

Sam didn’t move. “Helps with what?”

“Sleeping,” he replied. “Nights have always been hard for me.”

Sam tried to swallow, hearing herself gulp to rid her throat of an immovable rock. She settled the headphones in without looking up.

Even with a slow, steady hum of gentle jazz, the lump remained and her tears fell. After a few bars, his hand left her thigh to wipe her cheek, and whether in relish or disbelief, Sam’s eyes closed to push the last salty drops loose. His thumb swept over her cheek one more time.

Sam felt tortured by his presence. She spat at herself internally. 

That is a gross exaggeration. He actually was tortured for years, decades even, and you, little idiot girl, who hasn’t even lived for two decades, have no right. 

She forced her eyes open, sniffing dramatically to move her head away. He returned to clasping his hands around his knees.

Sam braved a peek up. “Oh my god.” She raised her head entirely. “Where’s your hair?”

Bucky laughed, clean shaven and cropped. “I have that effect sometimes.” Sam kept staring. “Captain America needs to be PR ready for November. Nat’s orders.”

The ceremony was set to induct Cloak and Dagger, her best friends if she ever got to see them again, into the Avengers’ team proper. New blood. Fighters. They deserved the honor, but Sam hid her frustration. She was just as powerful, if untrained. 

Whose fault is that?

Sam pulled out an earbud. Her mind went blank, staring. He was a whole different person. Sam had to take in all the new details. Pieces of his face she’d never seen in person before, the ghost of his military portraits from the 40s, like the old footage Sharon had showed her of their unit were brought to life in front of her. She fumbled for words. 

“It’s not always…pain,” Sam finally admitted, eyes darting across his calm face then retreating to the shadowed tree line behind him.

Bucky nodded with a knowing look. His relaxed, pristine face made Sam more uncomfortable. He had no idea. He listened to her nonsense as if it were important, as if she was even intelligible in this blubbering state. She gulped again. Her mouth opened and closed like a gasping, stupid fish. She wiped her face with a shaky hand to break his gaze.

Oh yeah, you’re doing great. Really seductive.

With him sitting right beside her, everything overwhelmed her. The breeze became suffocating with the addition of his musk and a new element, aftershave. She just knew it was there; it was the same air that brushed across his face. The moon that so reminded her of his eyes shone down on them both, and those eyes could see it, too, could see her, too. His soft hair and rough hands were within reach, and Sam’s chest felt crunched between the 18-wheeler of her desire and the pavement of reality.

Bucky remained calm, oblivious, lazily rolling his eyes over the training field and Sam alike. He let the next song play. Sam thought he might be able to hear her pounding heart without his own cover of headphones. Instead, the intoxicating man with dark hair checked his small device and leaned back onto his own bent arms, stretching out like a feral cat beneath the moon. 

She pushed the earbuds back. Sam’s arm twitched involuntarily, clenching against her shirt. You’re killing me here. What’s your next smooth line? ‘I like the way the moonlight hits your crotch?’ Oh, damn it, stop. 

In her mind, she was crawling all over him in a dozen different ways, but then she caught the change in her breathing and slapped a hand violently against her mouth and nose, hard enough to feel a twinge against the nerve running to her eyes. Don’t break your own nose. He didn’t see, did he?

His face is less than four feet away. It’s safe to say he sees you.

Sam was totally unqualified to handle this. Lila had been too old to talk to her about boys. Laura had thrown in a few vague phrases about ‘the right time’ and ‘when you’re ready.’ Nat allowed herself a few crude jokes around Sam before she stopped calling or coming to visit, but not even a mild reference to sex during training. Annie had encouraged her to ‘have fun’ with Lucas because he was a ‘nice guy.’ Meanwhile, her best friend in the whole world was a computer program which could quote anatomically correct articles on the science of attraction and physical intimacy. Sam thought she might throw up just thinking about it. Tandy would know what to tell her if she were here.

You need to let this go. You need to let it die now and move on. The voice in her head was starting to sound like Missy, clinical and objective, unsympathetic.

Bucky had known her since she was a baby. His most vivid memory of her was probably still a four year old screaming at him, calling him a monster while he tried to help her. 

Ungrateful, spoiled brat. That’s all you are to him. End of story. Sam had to tip her hat to the voice of Missy; she sure knew how to quash an argument. The diminishing cracks were soothing in this instance, distracting.

Sam snapped to alert when a hand broke her dead stare at her own crossed arms. Bucky looked down at her with an outstretched arm, waiting. She plucked out an earbud.

“You ready for bed?”

The hell? 

Bucky half-retracted his arm, seeing her shocked face. “You don’t have to,” he corrected, “if you don’t want to.”

Oh, god, shut up! Trying to suppress a firework show under her skin,Sam repeated her imitation of a fish out of water.

“Keep the music if you want,” he added, holding out the control.

That’s not exactly what she wanted, but Sam supposed that was the less awkward of her options. Before she answered, Bucky glanced the song detail on the tiny screen of his player, taking the earbud Sam removed and putting it in his own ear with a smile.

“This is a good one,” he said, grabbing her hand to pull her off the cool ground. “You’ll like this one.” Without warning, playful Bucky pulled her close as if to dance.

His smell assaulted her, muting all thought. The linen and soap wrapped in something sweet she couldn’t place. He was right though; the smooth instrumentals were like a lullaby with the soft swaying movement in his arms.

Words sprang to life mid-song.

“I can’t believe that you’re not here with me, to have a laugh or share a tea with me…”

Sam let herself breath deeply. He smelled like grass, that was the new sweet note. She kept her face away from his chest, but he’d taken one of her hands in his, Bucky’s right hand against her waist. It was a terrible test she was bound to fail.

Her brain gave up, and the music filled her head.

“To never look into those eyes again, the sun might just as well not rise again…”

Sam looked up as the song rang out in one ear, and a falling star caught her eye. She almost thought about how romantic this all was until the fiery streak continued to approach. 

The spot grew, headed straight for the compound. What the hell is that? More alarming still: it turned in the air above the trees to aim at her and Bucky on the lawn.

“Get behind me, Buck.” Sam pushed past him, stirring what she could in her arm, forcing the pressure of her anxiety forward. Fireworks might be necessary.

A silver suit landed twenty meters away. Tony? It looks too small—

Bucky tried to grab Sam’s shoulders to pull her out of the way. “Who are you? Why are you here?” He stepped to the side, a palm on Sam’s stomach, holding her back.

The surface of the humanoid suit rippled into a mimicked body and a face. 

Sam’s face.

“I’m finally able to return to you,” it intoned.

Holy shit, Sam froze. “Missy?”

[Chapter 31: Miss]

[Main Masterlist; Light Masterlist; Ko-Fi]

#the stark legacy #tony stark's daughter #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes x oc #bucky barnes fic #slow burn #slow build #epic tale #avengers fanfiction #tony stark fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #mcu fanfiction #alternate universe

[chews-erotically]

*Waxing Gibbous 

Pairing: Ezra + femNurse! Reader

Rating: Hard M / 18+ ONLY

       * Warnings: None really, maybe more angst/ comfort

      * Summary: You arrive on Central and begin your recoveries.

      * Word Count: ~1500

*Part ONE* *Part TWO* *Part THREE* *Part FOUR* *Part FIVE* *Part SIX*        *Part SEVEN*

 PART EIGHT

     If you had fled the Green moon even ten minutes later, Ezra would have died. That was the grim information relayed to you by the sling-back medic after he’d been rushed to a med cot, given high-flow oxygen and sedated. He was critically ill. You’d been told immediately upon arrival and quick assessment that once you reached the Pug you were going to be transferred directly to a teaching hospital on Central.You were faring a bit better, but not by much. Your shoulder had been cleaned and bandaged. As you were conscious, you were given supplemental oxygen through a nasal cannula.

    The medic had attempted to press for some detail concerning how you’d both ended up in such states. Exhausted and struck numb, you’d simply shrugged and moved to rearrange the intravenous line of lactated ringer’s solution going into the catheter inserted into the top of your forearm. The machine had started beeping, and the sound was like a hammer to your skull.

    Once you reached the Pug things moved quickly indeed. Transport was coordinated in the Pug med bay and a nurse approached you, stating that she would be taking you into an exam room to obtain an updated set of vitals and enter your information into their data system. You had refused.

    “I’m not leaving him.”

    Clearing his throat, the nurse tried to explain the protocol he had to follow. You held up your hand to still his speech.

    “Save it. You won’t change my mind. I’m not leaving him.”

 ***

     Once on the transport you’d been able to keep your eyes open for perhaps twenty minutes. You’d passed out sitting on the hard metal bench with your head slumped forward onto Ezra’s cot, your hand clasping his.

 ***

     Central was cacophonic. After the eerie quiet of the Green the sounds, chatter, colors and thrumming life surrounding you was beating into your brain like a staccato mace. Your head throbbed. You flinched away from the shoulders brushing past you. You were close to panic, overwhelmed by the sensory overload. You took deep, measured breaths. You stayed as close to Ezra’s cot as possible. You had to resist the urge to climb into it with him and throw a blanket over your head.

    They were going to have to take Ezra away from you. You knew this logically. He was fragile. Needed intubation, needed close surveillance. He was most likely septic at this point and it was uncertain if the damage he’d suffered to his lung tissue would be permanent. You knew he might still die. You knew this, and you wept openly, pitifully.

    “WAIT!” you’d croaked out, shakily grasping the shoulder of the ICU nurse who had begun rushing him down the hallway for STAT bloodwork.

    She’d turned to you with sympathy shading her features.

    You gazed at her name badge through waterfalls.

    “....Mollen. That’s your name?”

    A pause. “Yes,” she’d replied softly. You knew you needed to trust her.

    “His feet get cold at night. Only at night, otherwise he says they’re like furnaces. He can’t sleep well if his feet aren’t covered. Please cover his feet. Please,” you’d choked.

    She had given you a small, sad smile. “Of course.”

    “Thank you, Mollen.”

    You had stood pathetically twisting your hands together with tears coursing unabashed until Ezra turned a corner and disappeared from you.

 ***

     “Prognosis is precarious,” One of the physicians had pulled you into a private room to go over findings with you. You had since been seen and treated; miraculously you had not needed surgery, though you would most likely have permanent nerve damage to your thumb and two fingers on your left hand. You’d been told that you’d most likely be in the hospital for a week or two; you needed IV antibiotics and respiratory therapy in addition to wound care.

You’d requested a private room as close to the ICU as possible, passing a piece of aurelac to the Intake Administrator. He’d accepted with wide eyes, and you’d gotten your room.

    The doctor was solemn as she looked over the rims of her glasses at you.

    “Your partner has diffuse opacities in the lower lobes of his lungs. The left is partially collapsed. We’ve intubated him, as you know, to allow his lungs time to rest and strengthen. He is septic, and he’s being treated with an experimental cocktail of three different antibiotics, dexamethasone for inflammation, and vasopressors to maintain his blood pressure. 

    “Fortunately, his body is strong and his kidney function is improving. He has remained without a fever for the past eight hours, so that is reassuring. If he continues to show improvement I am fairly confident that we can begin planning for extubation within the next two to three days. If he can tolerate extubation and begin breathing on his own, we can start weaning his oxygen and begin to wake him up.”

    Though you knew what you were walking into, you steeled yourself. 

    You entered his room and stood a moment to process the sheer enormity of the amount

of  medical equipment keeping Ezra alive. You took in the tubes and wires, the bags of 

fluid infusing through catheters, the softly beeping sensors. When you were not in your 

room or engaged in your own treatments, you were here. You pulled up the chair that

Mollen had placed especially for you, and you began your silent vigil once again.

    Ezra looked so small in that bed, so fragile. He was dwarfed by the machinations

surrounding him. He was pale, wan. As you always did, you grasped his hand and

squeezed, ran your thumb over his knuckles the way he’d once done with you.

you talked to him softly, describing the room, going over what had happened since you

had escaped the Green. You talked about your own treatments and progress. You 

described Central, how busy and bustling everything was, how many people flooded the 

streets each day. Theatres you’d seen across from your window, coffee shops and 

bars you wanted to explore with him. Your favorite activity was reading to him. You had

spent a great deal discussing all manner of art, and Ezra loved to talk about books both

well-loved and those he longed to read but had been unable to find. As you found

yourself in the incomprehensible position of having more credits than you could ever 

imagine possessing, you had books delivered to your room.

    Ezra was extubated the day you received your last dose of antibiotics. You were due to

be discharged in three days. His organ function had improved at a rate that had exceeded

the expectations of his medical team. His encyclopedic list of medications had shortened reassuringly. He was strong enough to tolerate the extubation and was transitioned to a nasal cannula. You rejoiced in this, though your anxiety spiked as the physicians began the arduous task of bringing him out of sedation. It did not happen all at once as many thought, but gradually and in increments. It happened in sighs and twitches, thrashes and groans. You wondered if he dreamed. You hoped that he could hear you repeat your devotions.

    You had secured a lease downtown, finding a loft a block from the hospital. It was spacious, covered in windows that stretched, floor to ceiling, and opened onto a balcony that afforded you a breathless view of Central. You had never had something so nice in your life. 

    You had been discharged for two days, you had started to plan how to turn your new space into a safe space for both you and Ezra, when you were alerted by the hospital that Ezra had awakened. He was asking for you.

    You doubt if your feet touched the ground as you rushed to the hospital, stopping only to catch your breath.

    You entered his room panting, vibrating. 

    Ezra was sitting upright, the first time you’d seen him not supine in weeks. He was pale, he sported dark and sunken circles under his eyes. His hair was wildly curling, his blond streak sticking straight out. He was sipping gingerly on a cup of water with a shaking hand.

    Your Ezra. Beautiful Ezra.

    “.....Ez?”

    He looked upon you as if you were an apparition. He went to move shakily to his feet, and you were there before he could stand. Enveloping him in your arms, kissing his face, feeling him and inhaling whatever you could of him, of his vibrant life.

    Alive.

    You realized you were both weeping, you chuckled as you took turns wiping the wetness from one another’s face. When he spoke, his voice was rough, you knew it would take time for Ezra to regain his mellifluous cadence. 

    “Beautiful star, our souls cannot escape one another, universe try as it might to tear us asunder.”

    “I missed you, Ezra. Sweet love, I’m never letting you out of my sight ever again. Ever.”

    “I wish you luck trying to part from me at this point, Dove.”

    You knew you’d done something right, standing against him. 

    You knew you were home.

#chews-erotically writes #ezra prospect #ezra x reader #ezra #ezra fics

[lovelylogans]

honey, you’re familiar (like my mirror)

see other chapters, warnings, and notes here!

chapter two: limbic resonance

limbic resonance: the idea that the capacity for sharing deep emotional states arises from the limbic system of the brain. these states include the dopamine circuit-promoted feelings of empathic harmony, and the norepinephrine circuit-originated emotional states of fear, anxiety, and anger.

PATTON

“My best guess, Patton, is that I think you’re just very social, in sensate terms.”

Patton blinks. They’re sitting in his apartment, this time, a variety of writing practice sheets spread out on his carpet that he really should be grading, but Emile had popped in, and, the same way he has for the past five days, Patton immediately turned his attention to him, in hopes of figuring out what’s going on.

“Well,” Patton says, unsure of what to really say, before he just settles on, “that’s not new.”

Emile smiles, reaching over to pat his hand.

“What we’re doing right now, we call visiting,” Emile explains. “Sharing is something you can only do with your cluster; parents of a cluster, like me—”

“And our psychic grandpa Harley?”

“And your psychic grandpa Harley is to me,” Emile agrees, “is a bit more of a fuzzy area. I can share a bit with you, though—” he gestures to the mostly-finished meal he had made for Patton, the dirtied pot, pan, and utensils sitting on a countertop in Patton’s apartment, “so that’s nice! Harley could only share with us a little, memories, mostly. Young sensates, like you and your cluster, tend to have very little control over it at first. It usually comes with practice. You seem to be visiting almost everyone in your cluster.”

“Well, I don’t even know if I’m controlling it,” Patton says. “I just find myself in places sometimes.”

Emile nods in understanding.  “Visiting isn’t like calling or texting someone. It’s not something you make happen, it’s something you let happen.”

“...I’m not sure I understand the difference,” Patton admits.

“It usually takes a while to get,” Emile says affably.

“And I never really stay for long,” Patton says. “I kind of had a conversation with one, I think, but I don’t know how much I imparted hi, I’m one of your psychic partners in life now, you know what I mean? The longest I’ve ever stayed is about five minutes, and I’m pretty sure he was out camping and asleep.”

“You’ve got time to figure it out,” Emile says encouragingly. “And I’m here to help, or explain questions you have, whenever I can. None of that vague you are more than yourself then whoosh, disappearing into thin air thing Harley pulled for our cluster. I want to be a helpful parent, thanks.”

That’s mostly what they’ve been doing over the past five days—Patton’s been trying to figure out what on earth is going on.

He’s already figured out that Emile isn’t a hallucination—his kindergartners had only been too eager to shout “HI MR. T’S AMERICAN FRIEND!!!” into his cellphone, and they’d all heard Emile’s responses back, so the is this really happening or am I seeing things? question has been resoundingly answered.

It’s the whole surprise! You’re not exactly human! thing that’s been tripping him up. Emile’s been trying to explain it in scientific terms, but honestly. Patton is a kindergarten teacher. He has no idea what epigenetic factors means. He just knows that Emile’s been throwing around the term homo sensorium a few times. That sounds like not exactly human to Patton.

“Have you gotten through to anyone else in the cluster like you have with me?” Patton asks Emile, rather than think about that a bit more. All he gets is another headache.

At least the migraine’s fading.

“Not quite,” Emile says, frowning. “You’ll probably connect with them sooner than I will; you have been connecting with them much more than I have. I just see glimpses.”

“So, just to make sure I get it,” Patton says. “I’m now psychically connected through—what’s it called again?”

“Psycellium,” Emile prompts.

“Right. I’m now psychically connected through something called psycellium, a psychic nervous system that we have because we are sensates, or homo sensorium.” 

Emile gives him a thumbs-up.

“Sensates are a species of humans that are telepathically connected to each other. Every sensate is part of a group or cluster of sensates and members of a cluster can connect and communicate with each other wherever they are in the world.”

“Got it in one,” Emile says.

Patton huffs, flopping onto the bed.

“Honestly,” he says. “I’m so glad I’m the one blinking to you most often. I’d hate to try figuring this out without anyone who knows what’s happening.”

LOGAN

It’s been a demonstrably strange past five days. Logan has been keeping notes.

He typically carries around a small notebook as a virtue of his profession—it’s very helpful to jot down things like observations of unusual penguin behaviors, supplies he needed to put in a request for, or potential questions to ask scientists within other disciplines, rather than relying on remembering it all by rote.

He usually does remember it all by rote, but he thinks that’s greatly helped because he bothers to write it all down anyway. Handwriting information has been proven to help send information to the hippocampus, where the decision is made to either store the information long-term or let it go. If he writes something by hand, all that complex sensory information increases the chances the knowledge will be stored for later.

Anyone who happened to crack open his notebook and look at his notes for the past five days would surely think he was going mad.

May 8th—Migraine @ approx. noon; strange man in pajamas @ approx. 4 pm. 

May 9th—tasted savory (meat?) when drinking tea @ 6 am; strange man (codename consideration?) cursing loudly in spanish @ approx 10 am; diff. man on computer pages that should have been locked to him @ 3:21 pm; saw a flash of sunny road @ approx 5 pm; migraine persists.

And so on, and so on. The frequencies have been growing over the past two days; he’s filled up the entire page allotted for usual day-to-day notes with just the strange things he’s been hearing, smelling, tasting.

Seeing.

He’s seeing things. That is rarely a good sign for one’s brain chemistry. And it’s not like there’s a proliferation of therapists, brain surgeons, or MRIs in Antarctica.

Now, he jots down May 12th at the top of the page, adding migraine persists, 6.5/10 pain @ 7 am, which is at least a little bit better than days past. He taps his pen on the desk, wondering if the dream he’d had about sitting on a couch beside a man as he proselytized a cartoon amid couple’s therapy warrants notation. It had all been people he’d never seen before. 

As he taps, he frowns and pauses his movement; then, he gently nudges the notebook aside, in case of shadow.

No. There is a pile of dirt under the notebook.

Logan glances around the barracks, and moves to sweep the dirt off his desk; even as he is trying to be tidy about it, the dirt gets under his fingernails, and Logan scowls down at it. The dirt’s very stubborn. He sweeps at the dirt again, and again, but the pile only seems to grow, and he sweeps and manages to knock his notebook off his desk—

Logan groans, getting down on his knees to retrieve it, And then he puts two hands down, to press himself back up, and—

He looks up. The scent of spices, familiar and yet unplaceable in his mind, is in the air. The sun is beating down on his back. 

Logan’s lips part slightly with surprise; for one thing, he is in Antarctica, and sunny hot days are not something he experiences particularly often there.

For another, a man is staring at him. His lips part, too, his hands in the dirt, fingertips bare centimeters away from Logan’s; it’s as if they’re looking into a mirror.

They stare.

The man is black, his hair freshly cut, by the look of the clean, fresh shave along his sideburns, his hair buzzed short. He has a strong jawline, and thick eyebrows, set into his face to make him look as if he’s perpetually furrowing them. His mouth is set in a thin line as if he’d been pressing his lips together in concentration. 

His skin is clear and glowing in the light. He’s rather handsome, Logan thinks nonsensically, and then firmly attempts to set that thought aside. There’s a slight smudge of white from where he has not rubbed in his sunscreen along his cheekbone. 

His bare hands are buried in the dirt; he’d been planting something before Logan showed up, Logan knows it.

“Where am I?” The man asks, in a language that Logan does not speak and yet still understands; they are back in the barracks in Antarctica, Logan sitting at his desk and the man kneeling on Logan’s bed, and yet simultaneously they are in that sunny garden, fingernails encrusted with dirt. “What is this?”

“Antarctica,” Logan says, confused; if this was a figment of his mind, surely the man would know where he was? “Where are you?”

“Pretoria,” the man says, and they’re kneeling back in the dirt. He looks as confused as Logan feels.

“In South Africa?” Logan says, befuddled. Of all the places his mind could place him—why somewhere he’d thought about studying, but never actually gone?

The man’s eyebrows actually furrow, now. “Do you speak Xhosa?”

Logan shakes his head. He returns, “Do you speak Polish?” 

The man snorts, but he shakes his head too.

“Then how are we understanding each other?” Logan murmurs, and jots down in his notebook, language differential? Research Xhosa.

“I don’t know,” he says.

They stare at each other a bit more. Then:

“Logan,” the man says, suddenly certain with it.

He knows my name, Logan thinks, something in his stomach fluttering with what he’d like to think is unease. It would be much more appropriate if it was unease.

But a hallucination would know his name.

“You drink black tea in the mornings,” he continues. “With raspberry in it.”

Logan blinks rapidly because suddenly he can place the scent of spices in the air—the meat he’d tasted.

“Umngqusho,” Logan says, the word rolling smoothly off his tongue despite never having said it or heard it in his life. And then he recoils, because—

“This cannot be real,” he says, rapidly scrawling it in his notebook, even though he can feel the dirt under his fingernails, see the street filled with people out for walks, smell the dinner’s spices lingering on the air, feel the heat of the sun. 

“I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to visit my psychologist again,” he agrees gloomily.

Virgil. Virgil agrees gloomily. His name is Virgil.

Fantastic. Now his mind is naming these hallucinations. Isn’t there some saying about not letting children name animals because then they’d get attached? Would there be a similar philosophy with hallucinations?

He notes it anyway—PRETORIA, VIRGIL—and swallows, looking to the door of the barracks. He’d be expected to do some kind of work within the hour, and to get some kind of breakfast before that.

“I don’t understand this,” Logan says, and if that isn’t terrifying, “So, if you don’t mind, I’d prefer to assume you are a very vivid hallucination.”

“Sure,” Virgil shrugs, gesturing to the pile of dirt. “I’m busy transferring a new jacaranda tree anyway.”

“Now that’s resolved,” Logan says, heart pounding, “I’m going to resume finishing off these notes and get some tea.”

“Of course.”

“And I’ll be pretending you’re not there.”

“Same,” Virgil says, and he returns his attention to his jacaranda sapling.

Logan swallows, mouth suddenly dry, and adds a starting time to this hallucination before he closes his notebook, gathers his bag, and walks in the direction of the dining hall.

Or, he tries. Because—

There is a fence in his way. Logan scowls, turning to face Virgil, who has turned his attention away from the jacaranda.

“Sorry,” Virgil mutters. “I don’t know how I came here, or how to go back.”

The hall, again, Virgil still crouched, looking suddenly absurd attempting to plant something into the tile. The absolute lack of any sensation to note the transition is more of a surprise than the transition itself.

“Maybe it’s some kind of calling system,” Virgil muses. “Like a subconscious call we can’t control, in case of danger or changes in our environment—like pisum satvum, they communicate stress cues via their roots to allow neighboring unstressed plants to anticipate an abiotic stressor. Falik found that unstressed plants demonstrated the ability to sense and respond to stress cues emitted from the roots of the osmotically stressed plant.”

“Perhaps,” Logan says, then, “You’ve studied this?”

“Well, I’d hope so,” Virgil says. “I just got through defending my thesis for a botany doctorate.”

Logan blinks. “Congratulations.”

Virgil gives him a curt nod, then says, “You’ve got a doctorate too, don’t you? Astronomy.”

“How did you know that?”

“No idea,” Virgil says, examining Logan. “Just did.”

“Well, our respective doctorates aside,” Logan says. “I don’t detect any stresses in my environment apart from this.” He gestures between them.

Virgil frowns at him, before he says, “Have you had a migraine lately?”

“...yes,” Logan admits. “A dreadful one.”

“Well,” Virgil says. “Maybe that’s our stress.”

Logan frowns. “Maybe. I don’t see how that would cause me to start hallucinating someone an ocean away, though. Or sending stress to you. Surely we aren’t the only two people in the world with a migraine at the moment.”

Logan focuses so much on attempting to continue what he usually does in the mornings that he doesn’t notice a woman lingering in the shadow of the dining hall, frowning thoughtfully after Logan.

“Larry, honey?” she says, to what anyone else would see as thin air. “I might have one.”

A pause.

“Well, that’s always the question with these science types, isn’t it.”

JANUS

Janus pulls back from his home PC with a slow exhale, rubbing his fingers along his brow. Well, the migraine hasn’t been solved, but at least this question has been, even if it raises an entirely new one.

Bright side: he’s found a name.

Dark side: Why on earth is a fugitive Mexican murderer blinking in and out of his life?

And a New Zealander, and an American, and an African, but he thinks the murderer should probably be at the top of the list of why on EARTH.

Janus examines the admittedly scant description; no one seems to know what this R.J. Duke person looks like, or even his real name, but Janus does, somehow. He knows that R.J. Duke’s real name is Remus, even if R.J. Duke’s legal name is different from that. He idly toys with the concept of messing about with the Mexican equivalent of the DVLA to swap over his gender to the proper one, but he figures hacking a foreign government and especially hacking a foreign government concerning the information of a wanted murderer even if no one seemed to know that this name listed is the wanted murderer.

That seems quite confusing. Janus turns to the legal notepad on his desk—writing things down longhand is a pain, but even as secure as his home setup is, he doesn’t necessarily trust this information falling into Key’s hands. He doesn’t even trust Key with his normal cell phone number.

REMUS REGIO Trans man—deadname in system hasn’t legally transitioned? Remus=RJ DUKE, no one seems to know?

Janus pauses. He drums his fingers on the table, staring at the latest ID photo of Remus Regio. There are a few notes of juvenile delinquency in his record. He could crack it, if he wanted, to get the full reports. He’s about to when he feels a soft, slight gust of wind; like someone’s walking up behind him.

And then there’s a hand on his desk, someone leaning in to stare at the screen with a look of longing on his face so agonizing it makes Janus look away.

He knows who this is, too: there’s a segment on his notepad labeled ROMAN REGIO, stage name Roman Prince. He looks very similar to Remus, enough that if anyone got them side-by-side the familial resemblance would be undeniable.

Good thing R.J. Duke wasn’t the type to add an about the author section in the dust jackets of his books.

“Are you looking for him?” Roman asks, brusque. He has an accent, one a casting director would request as a “sexy Latin accent.” 

Janus chances a look at Roman; the longing is gone, as if he’d imagined it, replaced by a mask of general indifference, with a slight look of contempt in his eyes at the sight of Janus.

“I suppose,” Janus says. “Are you?”

Roman’s face twists up again.

“You aren’t?!” Janus says. 

“He hasn’t told me where he is, he didn’t bring his phone—” Roman says, anguished.

Janus stares at him.

“Are you stupid?” He says incredulously. “Of course he didn’t bring his phone, it could be tracked.”

“Stcheww-pid,” Roman says, in a frankly ridiculous attempt at mocking Janus's accent.

“Oh, very mature,” Janus huffs. He should have figured an actor would be the bratty, stuck-up type.

Roman sticks out his tongue. Janus rolls his eyes.

“Why am I hallucinating a tiresome family of famous Mexican creatives,” Janus asks the air.

Roman’s face screws up into a scowl. 

“Why am I hallucinating a snobby colonizer?”

He turns, just to be sure. Roman is gone.

“Rude,” Janus says loudly to the suddenly empty air, in case he can still hear him. 

EMILE

Emile carefully folds his top lip over his teeth after years of practice, engaging in his maybe-once-a-month shaving routine. He’s never really been able to grow a beard or mustache, but he does grow stubble, very slowly, which makes him look rather scruffy if he just leaves it.

He taps the razor on the sink to shake off the foam, rinses it, before he returns his attention to the mirror and beams.

The face that isn’t his own meets his eyes a moment later and jumps in fright, before whipping his head around to check if there’s anyone behind him.

It’s not strange to see another face looking out of a mirror at him—honestly, he’s a little surprised Linny hasn’t shown up to make faces at him in the mirror before now, like she usually does—it’s just that this isn’t the face of one of his cluster.

The man frowns, confused, which pinches the scar on his face, which—

“Oh!” Emile says excitedly and puts a hand to the mirror. “Oh! Hello! You’re, um—you’re Janus, yes?”

“What the hell,” the man mutters in a distinctly British accent, and reaches for the edges of the mirror; Emile thinks he’s trying to prise it open, as if to see if there’s some kind of device behind it to project Emile’s image.

“I’m not actually there!” Emile says brightly. “Oh, this is wonderful, this means that you’re all going to start breaking through a bit more—I think, it’s not like there’s a parenting book for this kind of thing. Anyways, you’re not going crazy, or whatever you might think, it’s just that your brain is built a bit differently, and it turns out to be the exact same type of different as five other people, so you’re all psychically connected now!”

There’s a very long pause. Then:

“The fuck?” 

REMUS

“Don’t eat that.”

Remus twitches, which honestly, is the best reaction he’s had to all these weird hallucinations so far. If this is some kind of form of demon retribution from Miguel Contreras, one would think he’d send the demons after his actual murderer who poisoned him, rather than the person who wanted to kill him but didn’t. 

He can imagine the way Roman’s face would twist up if Remus freely admitted to wanting to kill someone, which is how he knows it’s maybe not normal to admit that he wanted to kill someone, outside of the slightly joking, oh, I’ll kill him! thing people say.

But hey. Remus didn’t kill him. The didn’t part has to count for something. Right?

“That’s a hallucinogen,” the man continues.

Remus stares at him. Is that meant to sound like a bad thing? Because going on some kind of mushroom-induced trip would be awesome right now. He slowly raises the plant to consider it.

“It’s an aphrodisiac,” the man adds hastily.

This does not sound like a bad time at all. He brings the plant closer to his mouth.

The man slaps it out of his hand.

“It also might kill you,” he scolds, looking at the plants that Remus has managed to gather. “I’m assuming you’re going to try to eat all of these?”

“Yes,” Remus says.

The man stares at the plants. He nudges one aside with his foot to survey the pile.

“So there’s like a sixty percent chance you would have died if you ate all of this in one sitting,” he says.

“A forty percent chance I would have survived this mind-meltingly great time, though, and I’ve taken worse odds,” Remus points out. 

The man pinches the bridge of his nose as if he has a headache. Remus is very familiar with seeing people perform this gesture at him.

“How do you know all this, anyway?” Remus continues.

“Botanist,” the man says, crouching slightly to press his hands against the dirt, rubbing it between his fingers. “Where are we? Seems like a tropical climate.”

“Mexico,” Remus says, refusing to give a more specific location than that. 

The man gestures vaguely, and Remus looks around—he’s in a dark bedroom, lit only by a desk lamp that’s busy shedding most of its light on a tray full of what Remus thinks are maybe flower saplings.

“South Africa.”

The man rises to his feet, hands planted on his hips.

“Right,” he says decisively. “You’re in a forest environment, it should be easy enough to gather enough edible plants to form some kind of meal. Maybe not an appetizing one, but a meal. C’mon.”

And so begins a very odd day, even by Remus's standards.

The man—Doctor Virgil Wright-Nkosi, Remus spots a diploma waiting to be framed sitting on his desk—starts teaching Remus about stuff called quelites, which are edible sub-products of other crops, usually vegetables, as well as a variety of edible flowers, which cacti are safe to crack open and use as food, and which plants need to be tossed into a fire and which are fine to eat raw.

All the while, even as they’re hiking through the forest, Virgil occasionally reaches back to his bedroom in South Africa, pulling down thick textbooks to show Remus pictures of the various growth stages of plants, or googling things on his laptop to double and triple-check his knowledge (he does that for literally almost every plant, and somehow Remus knows it’s because Virgil absolutely wants to be sure Remus isn’t poisoned) or just to check on his little flower saplings.

So by the time the sun is setting in Monterrey, and by the time it’s the witching hour in South Africa, Virgil and Remus survey their little pile of plants.

“Do you know if this is a hallucination or not?” Virgil asks him abruptly, a sudden about-face from his day full of somewhat normal behavior.

Remus shrugs, spreading his hands.

“Maybe I ate one of those hallucinogens—”

Virgil winces, almost on instinct, as if the thought of shrugging away concerns and popping a random plant into his mouth is giving him heart palpitations. It probably is.

“—and my brain’s trying to give me a plant expert to, I don’t know,” Remus says, smiling humorlessly. “Get some knowledge about rosary peas. Free me up from that pesky murder charge.”

Virgil turns to him, his jaw dropping.

“That what?!” He says, and then, as if the shock of realizing he’s been educating a fugitive all day is just too much for him, he pops away. Gone.

Remus looks at the plants.

“Thanks for dinner, I guess,” he says to the empty air and goes about sorting all the plants they’d plucked together.

VIRGIL

Murder charge. A murder charge.

Virgil’s mind is spinning even as he’s lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, his hands folded on his stomach. He is making absolutely no attempt to fall asleep.

Murder charge.

That is not the type of thing someone should just casually drop in the middle of a conversation!

Virgil had, obviously, figured out that this was kind of a strange dude; very specific types of people tended to camp out in caves without in-depth knowledge of the plants around them. Campers who overestimated their hunting capabilities, for instance. Hikers waiting to see rare animals. 

Also, Virgil had just kind of figured that he was in an extended hallucination, and, to quote an American comedian he’d been introduced to in college, he’d been in one of those days where you’re like...this might as well happen?

He’d made an appointment with his psychologist, regardless. So he was a little less stressed about the whole hallucinating strangers thing, if only by the virtue of figuring he’d know what was going on with his brain soon.

And also maybe because the nice Polish scientist in Antarctica had been a strangely settling presence, simply by virtue of how solid he’d seemed, but Virgil’s very carefully not thinking about any feelings that could have been inspired in him at the sight of a Polish man with very nice hair and a deep voice and very blue eyes. Not even the thought of how it had felt like Virgil had been straining to reach something and meeting the scientist felt like some kind of blessed release.

But now this stress has ratcheted up even higher, way past his original stress levels.

Murder charge.

But—wait.

A Mexican accused of murder whose weapon of choice was rosary peas?

Virgil rolls onto his side, knowing before he even stands up to go to his bookshelf that he’s going to be researching all night.

ROMAN

“Honey, I’m home,” Roman calls out wearily, dropping his keys into the bowl on top of the entry table. They clatter against the ceramic and rest side-by-side with their twins.

“Welcome back, beloved!” A much perkier voice calls from their living room, completing the joke. Roman traipses into the room.

Sasha is lying on the floor on her stomach, feet kicked up in the air, eyes narrowed at scripts spread across the floor. 

“Hey,” she says. “My agent says I should probably post something, people have been resorting to pap shots of us to create buzz and I’m trying to pick new projects. I hope I get another slasher film, I’ve wanted to do another one ever since I finished my last one. Scroll through our prepped shots and pick one for me, will you?”

“I can take a selfie and put it on your story, the Roshas loved that last time,” Roman says.

“Mm, repeating ourselves, too close to the last one we did,” Sasha says. “Nah, I think a throwback one would be better. If you wanna do a story, get over here and I can kiss you on the cheek.”

“I’m all gross and sweaty,” Roman says. “Hardly swoon-worthy.”

Sasha mutters something under her breath about that working for some people, but Roman shakes his head. He looks at the floor to peek at a script. He immediately sets it out of her reach.

Sasha raises her eyebrows at him. “No?”

“No,” Roman says, flicking aside the script for good measure. “He almost always writes a homophobic role in there. Early on, I got called in to do stunts for the scene where…” He tilts his head slightly, trying to recall the exact line. “Oh, right. The Hispanic coke dealer is about to give another kind of blow job when he finally gets the bullet he deserves.”

“Jesus,” Sasha says. “Yeah, keep that one far away from me, thanks. Oh, here—”

She unlocks her phone, goes to the photo album she’s entitled Rosha PR Shots and hands it to Roman.

Roman scrolls through. They’re all very posed, but they don’t look like it—a virtue of two actors together, he guesses—shots of them lounging on the couch, shots of Roman and Sasha at a romantic dinner, shots of Sasha fixing his tie before a red carpet.

“This one,” he says at last, coming across a more candid shot of Roman cooking dinner (for Sasha, it is implied by the candles on the table and the low lighting of the room.) “Nice and romantic. Domestic, even.”

“Perfect,” Sasha says and sends it off to her social media manager to be posted, surely with some kind of caption like dream guy, dream dinner, or something like that. It’ll drive the Roshas crazy, and maybe it’ll help things die down. 

He also knows he’s hoping in vain. They’ve been living together a year and a half, “dating” for another year before that, and it’s never died down. Last time he went to a grocery store he’d seen a tabloid with the pair of them out getting coffee on the front, speculating about what they’d done the night before by the state of Sasha’s hair (they’d eaten only egg rolls for dinner and watched a lot of The Good Place together and she’d fallen asleep on the couch) but the unsettling part was he hadn’t even seen the pap that snapped it.

Roman thought it would die down, but naturally Roman and Sasha have stumbled their way into the nationwide favorite couple. 

Shame the whole nation doesn’t know they’re rooting for roommates bearding for each other.

It’s a mutually beneficial relationship—they have a default red carpet partner in each other, the fact that they share an apartment (Roman’s bedroom is converted into an office whenever a magazine invites themself over for a profile) means they can afford a suitably glitzy place with very good security, and they also don’t get blacklisted from the business for being gay.

People writing fanfiction about them is a bit weird, though. Roman’s all for creativity, and he wrote some back in his day, but reading it about himself is a trip and a half.

Sometimes Roman and Sasha have nights where they drink lots of wine and read particularly graphic paragraphs out to each other. It’s honestly way funnier than any comedy movie they could pick—the concept of either of them would have heterosexual sex alone. Let alone the widely-spread fan theory that Roman has a heart-shaped mole on his ass.

It’s very weird being famous.

“You wanna order in tonight?” She asks him. “That place that does that really nice chicken dish down the street’s running a pretty great deal.”

“Yeah, I’m not up for cooking,” Roman says.

She frowns at him, rising up to put a hand on her forehead, the way she has for days. “Migraine still?”

“Migraine still,” Roman agrees. Her hand feels cool, but not cold, the way it would if he was feverish. 

Sasha sighs. “And you’re sure you don’t know why? No other symptoms?”

Roman feels a little twist of guilt in his stomach.

“No,” he lies.

Sasha believes him at his word, the way she always does because they know everything about each other. He knows about the long-term girlfriend she’d had when she was in college in San Diego and the nasty end; she knows about Roman’s lactose intolerance and how little he heeds it; he knows about her line memorization techniques; she knows about his parents’ messy divorce.

She’s his best friend. They know everything about each other. Everything.

Or, at least, they did, before Roman’s mostly-hermit brother got accused of murder and Roman got a horrible migraine a week later. And the hallucinations.

Sasha would probably send him straight to a hospital if she heard like a good friend would. But he can’t go to a hospital now—not in the middle of a shoot, not when his brother’s on the run, not now. And that’s not even going into what the tabloids would say if he suddenly got shipped off to a hospital because he was seeing things.

Roman rolls over on the couch and smashes his face into a pillow, blocking Sasha’s face from his sight. She’s a good friend, a great friend, the best friend he’s ever had. And he’s lying to her.

Sasha makes a sympathetic noise and pats his ankle. “I’ll grab dinner this time, okay? You go ahead and take a nap.”

It’s very sweet of her to try and make him feel better, but it makes him feel just a little bit worse.

#my fic #my fanfic

[wallwriterstuff]

Am I allowed to place in a request for Mr svelte tracker boi Demetri? I need my greek boi fix. 😅😂 My stimming (due to my slight autism and anxiety) has been kinda bad lately and I was wondering if you could do some headcanons on how he would be with a reader who has that going on? (For example, some of my stimming signs are restless, uncontrollable finger twitches sometimes, and sudden limb movements and facial twitches I can't control 😅) Thanks! Also, sorry if this is too touchy a subject!🙈

You most certainly are allowed and I cannot express how hard I fangirled when I realised it was you in my ask box. I played it very cool but just know I was dying inside from the moment I saw your username come up XD 

TW: Mentions of anxiety and sensory overload. If that’s a little personal to you please be cautious about reading this one!

I’m incapable of writing short things it seems so it’s another long one.

Self-stimulating behaviour, known more commonly as stimming, usually involves repetitive movements and/or sounds. Though it is most often associated with autism (I know when I first saw the word stimming that was where my mind immediately went to) everybody stims in some way, shape or form to relieve stress, tension, anxiety, boredom etc. Some ways are less noticeable than others such as nail biting or finger tapping, while others can be more obvious and disruptive to your social/daily life like licking certain objects or scratching at skin.

I learned all this from doing a bit of reading before taking on this request and if you want to know more then the link to the article I read is right -----> HERE <------ ! It’s informed my ideas for this headcanon request and though I’m open to discussions about the topic to help educate myself and anyone else who wishes to learn more, what I will not tolerate is any sort of hate or discrimination based on the links to developmental disorders and mental illness that stimming has. This blog has and always will be a safe space for anyone and everyone and a little respect for one another will help keep it that way. Be kind folks!

So without further ado, how would Demetri react to you stimming I wonder?

Part 1: Headcanons below the Keep Reading Line Part 2: Teeth (fic) Part 3: Control (fic) 

·         He honestly wouldn’t really notice for a while because, well, humans aren’t exactly designed to be as flawless as vampires

·         Impromptu nosebleeds, migraines, sneezes…they’re just glitches in a faulty system so why is the way your leg just bounced up off of the floor while your sitting any different to those other equally as involuntary things

·         He’s struggling right now to, after all he just met his very human mate and it’s quite overwhelming for him to have to adapt to all these new feelings and situations he finds himself in, but he deals because he can

·         Some days, you just…can’t

·         Getting attacked by a man with some bizarre fascination with your neck is bad enough but being whisked away by strangers is somehow even worse. At least in the first scenario once it’s over it’s over, now you’re just living an anxious person’s nightmare in a new place full of new people

·         Volterra was beautiful, but it wasn’t home. No cosy apartment, no neighbours cat to feed, no monotonous shifts at work…

·         Actually, most of the time you’re left utterly alone to navigate an unfamiliar castle, and the times you aren’t alone is when there’s a man claiming to be your eternal lover in front of you

·         Try to convince me this man doesn’t rip the band aid off and profess his love for you with dramatic flair just TRY

·         Your days are filled with endless boredom where you’re doing nothing at all until someone checks on you, and then fight or flight kicks in because oh HELLO Mr Vampire guard are you here to give me lunch or kill me?

 ·         Demetri had thought that perhaps you were okay with that, since you hadn’t really outwardly reacted beyond the way your cheek twitched up into a smirk once or twice as he spoke. Hell, you’d even winked at him…right?

·         You did that a lot so he really genuinely thought that maybe you were just trying to flirt with him, build a relationship with him. Your constant little winks and the way your fingers twitched when he was nearby, like you so desperately wanted to reach out to him…

·         It took a few weeks before he realised how wrong he was

·         You’d reached for a sip of water and your arm had just whipped outward from your body

          + You’d absolutely drenched him with your entire glass of water and could only stare in abject horror wondering what the supposed vampire would do next, since you’d interrupted him rather smugly detailing his plans for your first date

·         Silence

·         There was just silence

·         It only made your anxiety worse and the muscles in your face just spasmed without your permission and - god did you just smirk at him again, oh no        

         + “I’m glad one of us finds this amusing. If you did not like the idea there were other ways to tell me so.”

 ·         You almost want to cry from sheer embarrassment at this point because the date really had sounded like it could be fun and now you’d just straight up thrown water in his face like he’d insulted you in the worst way imaginable

·         So you come clean and tell him about your stimming

·         He’s really worried at first because autism? Anxiety he’s heard of but autism sounds very dangerous, are you dying? You’re probably dying. He’s going to lose his mate –

·         Another involuntary finger twitch from you forces him to calm down because your anxious enough without his worrying on top, so he kind of brushes it off and makes no big deal out of it

·         Squeezes your hand and kisses your forehead to try and reassure you all is forgiven, even if he does have to go change a very expensive looking designer shirt and god you’re so sorry

·         Of course, that kind of makes it worse for you because anxiety brain is activated and your 99.9999% sure he’s actually furious with you still and has only pretended to forget it while he’s plotting his revenge

·         You see him late at night when you struggle to fall and stay asleep, reading in the low lamplight at his desk across the room, his laptop propped open and a notebook before him but you’re too scared still to ask what it is he’s reading so intently (probably good suggestions on places to bury your body welp)

·         It’s a complete surprise to you therefore when he does take you out on that date he promised you not two weeks later

 ·         He’s chosen a nice overcast day so he’s in the least conspicuous clothing he owns

            + Demetri’s least conspicuous clothes still consist of the most chic and expensive brands you know of and he sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the quaint little market stalls he’s brought you to see

·         Despite the gloomy weather the people of Volterra are out in full force though, swarming the market stalls and chattering and laughing as flashes of gold and silver from jewelry hit your eyes, bright coloured fabrics following

·         It’s all just too much

·         There’s people everywhere and so much noise, so many colours and lights and people brushing past you…

·         Your fingers clench tight around his, his hand immersed in a glove to keep his freezing skin from chilling you too much

·         He squeezes back lightly, eyes shifting to glance down at you with the kindest smile on his lips

         + “Keep squeezing my hand whilst we find somewhere quieter to stand.”

·         Your fingers seemed to take turns pressing into his rock solid skin, an odd sort of comfort coming from the fact you know you can press down hard and he won’t so much as register the sensation, and Demetri squeezes back, just firm enough he knows you can feel the pressure of his palm on yours

·         He takes you to a quiet little side road where the noise is much more faded and there is so much free space around you you feel like you can finally breathe again

·         He still hasn’t stopped squeezing your hand, taking turns with you as you take some steady breaths and try to focus your senses a bit, one thing you can feel, two things you can see, three you can smell...

 ·         “I hope you can forgive me, I did not expect the market to be so busy today with the weather like this.”

·         His apology takes you completely by surprise because how would he even know you struggled with crowds? You barely know each other?

·         Seeing your surprise Demetri rather sheepishly admits as to what exactly he’s been reading all those nights you’ve seen him at his desk, and you’re a little overwhelmed to realise he’s been reading about you

·         Medical journals, mummyblogs, charity websites and more, if it had any information about autism and stimming he’s browsed through it and taken copious amounts of notes, observing you religiously to see what might be relevant to you and how he can help ·         +  “I read somewhere you self-stimulate to calm yourself when you are anxious or your senses feel overwhelmed, is that what happened?”                                    “Well, yes, actually, I…I…”

            “And did it help? Taking you away from the source of stress and letting you squeeze my hand like that?”

·         It had actually, you felt much calmer and Demetri’s obvious acceptance and willingness to help you manage your stimming and anxiety today were one of the first little moments you fell in love with him, looking back on it 

·         He didn’t stop there either. Together you sat down and made a list of all the things that you found most often triggered your stimming, and all of the things that brought you joy so he could figure out things to avoid and things you might like for your future dates

·         Within hours of arriving home you’d gotten a whole new daily routine set up so you weren’t left to languish and wonder what was going to happen next

·         Three days later an express shipment of your favourite smelling scented candles arrived alongside a Bluetooth speaker, supplies Demetri insisted were necessary for nice calming baths on the days your anxiety was playing up

·         He started doing mindfulness practices with you in the evenings

·         He never touched the volume controls for his laptop, speaker or TV, leaving it to you to control the volume so you could set it to a level you were comfortable with, and he religiously policed the noise on his floor to           + “Where are you going? The movie just started…”                                                    “To tell Felix to turn his music down.”               “You’re vampiring again Metri, I can’t even hear that.”

·         When he signed you up for Yoga and meditation classes at a centre in town you drew the line and told him he was going overboard, but bless him he had tried

·         Overall he’s a solid 15/10 for effort, even if some ideas are still experimental - you’re enjoying the deep pressure massages a lot though – and he sometimes goes a bit mother-hen trying to get you out of situations he thinks you’ll struggle with, when actually you’re coping just fine today

·         You love him dearly for it

#twilight #twilight headcanon #demetri volturi #volturi headcanon #stimming #autism #tw anxiety #tw sensory overload #the volturi #twilight fanfiction #I tried my best so I hope this is okay #Demetri is totally the type to go overboard and try absolutely anything to make you comfortable

[nomazee]

Designated Driver

one-sided akaashi x reader; slight bokuto x reader 

word count: 2800+

content: college!au, parties, mentions of alcohol/intoxication, mentions of walking home alone (reader is alone on a dark night for about fifteen minutes), unrequited crush, light arguing

cross-posted on my ao3

PART TWO

(i’m back! again! with more writing that i just word-vomited out in a crazy short amount of time! it’s a little bit messy and akaashi is sort of OOC but regardless, i hope you enjoy it. this might turn into a multi-part fic but i’m not sure yet--i’ll have to see if i can find a way to extend the plot enough to write another chapter or two.

happy reading!)

☾.:°∗★.:☆:.★∗°:.☽

You were starting to regret going to this party. 

With a sigh and a once-over of the room, you caught a glance of Akaashi’s figure near an unfamiliar girl’s as they chatted happily. You only agreed to come to this stupid party because he was dragged along by Bokuto and asked you to come and accompany him so he wasn’t awkwardly standing in the noisy, crowded apartment. The roles had suddenly reversed twenty minutes in, though, and now a group of girls chatted with him happily while you stood against the wall, phone in one hand and trademark red plastic cup in the other as you longingly watched the scene before you. 

Akaashi had told you to tell him when you wanted to leave so you both had an excuse for your “escape.” Looks like that deal was out of the question. He seemed to be enjoying himself. 

Truth be told, you’d taken a liking to the guy for a while now. Your feelings toward him had started way back when in junior high--but at that point you had bigger things to worry about so you didn’t act on or really care about your feelings at all. It’s funny how now, in college, with frantic classes and exams and extra-curriculars, your feelings decided to flow uncomfortably yet consistently through your system every time you even caught a glance at the blue-eyed boy.

It hurt a little to watch the way he chatted so amicably with some random girls he’d met. He was an introvert at heart--not to say he was completely inept in social situations, but you knew he definitely preferred to stick with those close to him. You supposed tonight was an exception, along with the group of four-- no, five girls laughing at whatever charming remark he’d made this time. 

Honestly, the pain thrumming through your veins wasn’t primarily caused by his uncharacteristically flirty personality tonight. It was mainly because of the fact that he pretty much retracted the wordless pack you’d made to stick together at the party. Now you had virtually no one to walk you back home--safely. You either had to suck it up and approach him first or deal with walking back to your apartment. Alone. At night. On the way back from a college party, while buzzed. 

Logically, you picked the former. Temporary embarrassment was much more worth it than the potential consequences of the latter option. 

You took a deep breath, checked the time on your phone (half past midnight--much later than when you originally intended to leave), and pushed yourself off the wall with cold, shaky legs and approached the harem surrounding your friend. 

You tapped on his shoulder lightly, and his head swiveled around to face you. His lightened expression dropped the slightest bit at your familiar figure and you couldn’t help the turn of your heart at that. 

“Um…” Hyper-aware of the attention you’d garnered from the people he was talking to, you avoided making eye-contact with any of them and Akaashi. “It’s getting a bit late--” very late, actually, “--is it okay if we go home now?” 

Akaashi’s eyebrows furrowed, as if disbelieving of the very simple request you made. “What? Why?” 

Did you not just tell him exactly why? Refraining from sighing out loud, you repeated your request. 

“You said you’d walk me home when I wanted to leave. And it’s… almost one. So I figured we could get going now.” 

His smile returned, and for a second you hoped he’d come to his senses and leave the overwhelming environment with you, but those thoughts were quickly shot down with his next statement. 

“Oh, you can get going! Don’t worry about me, I’ll find my way back to my apartment.” 

Oh. Okay. That was great. Good to know. 

You simply gave him a shaky smile, too tired and exhausted and overwhelmed by all the sensory stimulus of the party to even try to clarify anything with him. The silent, judging gazes of the girls pricked your skin and made you flustered. You swiveled on your heel and walked into the kitchen, where you dumped your drink into the sink and made your way to the front door. 

It was whatever, you thought. You’d be fine. You had your pepper spray in the back pocket of your jeans (which you took out and clamped tightly in your hand), a working phone, and you were sober enough to navigate your way through the dark streets without stumbling or forgetting the way back to your building. 

All of these affirmations still were not enough to quell the quickening beat of your heart and the sweat lining your palms and forehead despite the cold of the night. Your senses were on overdrive, flinching at every rustle of the wind and distant footsteps on the other side of the street. 

The streets weren’t completely empty--cars passed by occasionally and there weer a few people walking on the sidewalk, too. That was enough to calm you down the slightest bit as you traversed your way through the more urban area of the town. 

Your thoughts were loud, though, the contemplation of how Akaashi even thought of you anymore flooding your previously composed thoughts and becoming a bit too much for you as you slipped into a small grocery store to take a break from walking and maybe get a snack, or gatorade, or advil. 

Your breaths were shaky and the backs of your eyes pricked slightly with oncoming tears. Willing yourself to calm down, you buried yourself in an empty snack aisle and gazed emptily at the vibrant chip bags, trying to be the slightest bit optimistic about the situation. 

I should be happy for Akaashi, you thought. He’s not the most social person, so obviously he saw something in them that led him to actually keep talking with them. Maybe he’ll get a date with one of them. That’d be cool. That’d be new. That would… kind of hurt. But I should be happy! I am happy! I promise! It’s great that he’s stepping out of his comfort zone, and--

“Hey, [Name]!” 

You flinched at the call of your name and nearly pressed on the nozzle of the pepper spray hidden in your palm. You turned to your left to find someone you weren’t expecting to see. 

“Bokuto…?” 

Said male gave a bright smile, walking closer to you and glancing over the options in the aisle. 

“I saw that you left the party, but Akaashi was still there, so I was wondering where you went. I was walking back to your apartment to check on you and made sure you got back safely, but then I caught you walking in here so I followed you.” A pause, and then his eyes widened as he processed what he said. 

“I mean--! I didn’t, like, follow you, I just-- I was going to your house and found you here--! That sounds bad too! I promise I wasn’t being creepy, I just--” 

“Bokuto,” you cut into his frantic rambling, “it’s fine. I would’ve rather had it be you than anyone else.” 

Your friend’s face flushed momentarily before his bushy eyebrows furrowed in confusion and concern. “Wait, what about ‘Kaashi? I thought he was supposed to walk you home?” 

You appreciated his genuine tone, but couldn’t help but feel your mood damper at the mention of the dark-haired man. “Yeah, but… he was kind of busy. So I just went home alone.” 

It was quiet, and Bokuto was about to say something before you cut in to clarify. “But it’s fine! I told him I was leaving, and I was okay with going alone. I can handle myself. I promise.” 

That did nothing to change the worried expression on Bokuto’s face. His eyebrows remained furrowed as his irises flitted from your face down to your hand. Slowly, so as to give you a chance to pull away, his hand reached for your own and you let his fingers lace with yours. 

“Hey,” his tone was soft, now, a contrast from his exuberant mood before. “Are you okay?” 

The question was vague--but you knew what he meant. Bokuto was not dumb, no matter how many people thought otherwise. You figured he knew about your feelings for Akaashi despite you trying to keep it under wraps. He noticed the small glances you sent in the direction of your best friend, the soft expression that came over your features whenever he talked to you, and the stories about him that you’d absentmindedly tell in the middle of a conversation. 

You didn’t want to look Bokuto in the eyes, afraid that if you did, you’d end up a sobbing mess in the middle the Target snack aisle. That’d be humiliating. Even more so than it was to be abandoned by your ‘best friend’ at a party and left to fend for yourself. (That was harsh. But you did have a right to be a little bit bitter.) 

“I’m fine.” You responded. “Just a little tired.” 

He gave you a soft and comforting smile, and you reciprocated the gentle squeeze of your hand that he gave you. “Let’s get some snacks, and then we can go to my apartment and hang out. Or yours. Or we don’t have to hang out, at all. It’s up to you!” 

Ah. There he was again. Considerate and caring as always. Your dampened mood softened a little bit and you mustered up the strength to direct a smile and nod in his direction. 

True to his word, he let you pick out whatever snacks and drinks you wanted (though you picked a few of his favorites out of guilt, which he definitely noticed and gave a sardonic chuckle at). He paid for them, which you objected to very strongly and paid him back through Venmo (leading to a back-and-forth transfer of money before you got paranoid that your accounts would be suspended for suspicious activity) before making your way back to your apartment. 

You always had a stack of his and Akaashi’s clothes at your house for nights like these where you all went out, got tired, and had to crash at one of your places. Passing his clothes to him, you let him take the bathroom and shower while you set up an array of snacks on your living room table and set your phone up to charge behind the couch. 

An hour into a rewatch of your favorite comfort series, Bokuto’s phone buzzed rhythmically in his pocket, signaling an incoming call. He looked at the contact name and his eyebrow creased momentarily. “It’s Akaashi.” Your curiosity peaked at the name as he answered the phone, volume set loud enough that you could catch whatever the opposite end was saying. 

“Hello?” 

“Bokuto,” Akaashi’s voice was almost frantic on the other line, and concern immediately flashed through both yours and Bokuto’s features. “Do you know where [Name] went?” 

Seriously? Was he joking? It’d been nearly two hours since you told him you were leaving. You were half asleep, and he was wondering where you were? 

“She’s with me,” Boktuo responded. “Why? What’s wrong?” 

“She disappeared,” Akaashi responded, voice a little relieved at the new awareness of your whereabouts. “I tried finding her so we could walk home but she wasn’t there and no one saw her. And I texted her a bunch of times and called her, and she didn't respond, and I was getting really worried that something happened.” 

Texting? Calling? At first you were confused and doubtful of his words, but then remembered that your phone wasn’t near you right now and you’d set it on silent to charge. Bokuto’s expression mirrored the mild annoyance he felt at Akaashi’s obliviousness to the situation. “Her phone’s on silent and charging right now. But, dude, she left two hours ago. She said she asked you to leave and you were busy. She was going to walk alone but I left with her so that nothing happened. Do you seriously not remember her asking you?” 

Akaashi exhaled after a pause in the conversation, and your stomach turned in anxiety. “Well, yeah, I remember. But I thought she was going to wait for me to leave so that we’d still walk back together.” 

You felt the need to explain the situation personally to the black-haired male before any further confusion resulted in the three of you. Mouthing “speaker” to Bokuto, the man obliged to your request and set the call up so you could hear Akaashi clearer and speak to him, too. 

“Akaashi,” you started. “I asked if we could leave and you misunderstood and said that you’d be fine going home alone. You looked busy with the girls so I didn’t want to bother you anymore. I left alone.” 

The line was quiet before Akaashi’s voice spoke up, beginning to sound a bit shaky from both the confusion and the alcohol. “[Name], I didn’t… I didn't mean to leave you alone. I’m so sorry. God, I’m so sorry, that was stupid.” 

Your heart swelled at his apology, as much as you tried to fight the simmering feelings beneath your skin. Though, you still couldn’t help but feel annoyed at how he’d let you leave alone only to claim he misunderstood your words (even though you were sure you were clear enough) and give you an apology over the phone. 

“It’s okay, but… it’s just that you promised to stick together but you almost immediately split up with me the minute we walked through the door. I would’ve been fine with that as long as you at least told me you were leaving me or that I should find someone else to take me home. I could’ve done that with a decent time of notice, you know?” Feelings and words rushed out in the haze of your tipsy exhaustion, and from your peripheral vision you caught Bokuto’s concerned gaze as your words trailed off. 

“I know, I know and I’m so sorry. I won’t do it again.” Akaashi said, genuine guilt threaded through his words. “Can I come over? That way we can-- we can still spend time together for tonight. And I can sleep over and make you breakfast in the morning--those crepes you really like.” His words were frantic, and you really did feel bad for being frustrated with him in the first place. Maybe it was the haze of the alcohol that made him so dismissive of you in the first place--or that could be what caused his sudden guilt for his actions. Regardless, you thought that keeping him at your place wasn’t the smartest idea, especially with how late it was becoming. 

Bokuto seemed to have taken your silence as hesitation, and was about to respond for you before you spoke up again. 

“Thanks, Akaashi. But I don’t think that’s the best idea right now. It’s late, and you should get home soon. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.” Before he could interrupt with another plead, you let the pad of your finger press firmly against the red button on Bokuto’s phone screen, ending the call and leaving you in the silent living room, the fuzzy drone of the television remaining in the background. 

“Are you okay?” Bokuto seemed to be checking up on you quite a lot tonight. As much as you appreciated it, you really were not in the best state of mind to have a heartfelt conversation about your unrequited feelings for Akaashi Keiji. It was nearing three in the morning, and you wanted nothing more than to pass out on the couch and leave your responsibilities for past daybreak. 

“I’m really tired, Bo.” Your exhausted really did show in your voice. “I think I’m going to bed.” 

He gave a gentle smile, letting you stand up from the couch and brush down your clothes. “Okay. I’ll stay on the couch, but, uh, do you have a blanket I can borrow for the night?” His smile turned sheepish at the request but you just shook your head and softened your expression. 

“It’s fine, my bed is big enough for both of us. You can just sleep there with me.” It’s not like you hadn’t done it before. There were even times where all three of you--Bokuto, Akaashi and you--shared your decently-sized bed for the night and there were little to no qualms with it. Bokuto was hesitant at first, but accepted your offer and followed you to your bedroom where you both huddle under the covers and faced each other on your sides. 

Bokuto smiled at you yet again--something he’d been doing a lot that evening as a comforting gesture, and the sight reminded you just how lucky you were to have a friend like him. Thoughts of Akaashi lingered in your mind but were less persistent than before, and as you drifted off to sleep you felt a soft pressure on your forehead and the distant mumble of a goodnight.

#haikyuu #hq #haikyuu fanfiction #hq fanfiction #haikyuu x reader #hq x reader #bokuto koutarou #bokuto #koutarou bokuto #koutarou #akaashi keiji #akaashi #keiji akaashi #keiji #bokuto x reader #bokuto koutarou x reader #koutarou x reader #koutarou bokuto x reader #akaashi keiji x reader #akaashi x reader #keiji x reader #keiji akaashi x reader #haikyuu bokuto x reader #haikyuu akaashi x reader

[spartanguard]

even death won’t part us now (1/?)

Summary: Two covens, both alike in dignity, / In fair New York, where we lay our scene, / From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, / Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes / A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; / Whole misadventured piteous overthrows / Do with their death bury their sires' strife. (Captain Swan + West Side Story + vampires. But not as sad. Probably.)

rated M | AO3 | 1.2k words

A/N: So this story has been in the works for quite some time and been through numerous variations. I was originally going to do it for @cssns last year, but couldn’t get it to work. When things got going for this year’s event, @kmomof4 asked if I’d give it another shot and...it clicked this time! It’s been fun to work on (and see how many Hamilton references I can squeeze in). Hopefully you all enjoy it!

thank you to @thesschesthair for that GORGEOUSSS banner!! she’s made some incredible pieces for this and I can’t wait for you all to see them! and thank you to the best beta ever @optomisticgirl for looking this over!

for your listening pleasure

part one—overture

There's a lot of romanticizing when it comes to vampires. The eternal youth, the perfect looks and body, the heightened senses—all are excellent perks. 

But no one mentions the absolute mania when a vampire is new. Suddenly, everything is brighter, sharper, clearer, louder, smellier, more detailed than before, and it's a sensory overload—it's impossible to hear your own racing thoughts over the cacophony of everything else. 

So you try to run, but that's a whole other revelation—where to run when you never tire? When adrenaline is pumping so hard that it would probably be easy to scale a skyscraper? (At least it would be quiet up there, right?) And when your new instincts are telling you to find people—to find food—but the thought of being near all those scents and sounds is enough to turn your stomach and make you lose your last meal as a human. 

(Except you already did that—when you somehow managed to fight back against the asshole who turned you and accidentally shoved him into the jagged point of the wood that used to be your dresser and watched him bleed out in front of you until nothing was left but gore and dust.)

Which brings you back to running, but it doesn’t take you far—not until you’re crashing into a pair of arms that are far too strong (inhumanly so) and are somehow connected to a pair of unnaturally blue eyes that you briefly drown in so deep that nothing else about this individual registers. And the whole thing is so surreal you wonder if it’s even real, or just a mania-induced hallucination.

Regardless, you somehow end up at the doorstep of who might be the nicest people who have ever walked the earth (and they’ve walked it for quite a while, and people probably isn’t the best description, not anymore) and memories of your ocean-eyed savior get pushed to the back of your mind. Because, in case you hadn’t figured it out yet, this couple confirms what your wildest thoughts were telling you:

You’re a vampire now.

Welcome to eternity.

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★

2005

Killian Jones let out a completely unnecessary sigh as he watched the door close behind the fledgling. Honestly, he was lucky he got there when he did; any later, and the newbie would have likely gone full mad, risking not only the safety of any mortals nearby, but also exposure of their world. 

That, and Gold probably would have killed him. For real this time. (It had been threatened often enough that it was likely empty, but after nearly 250 years, Killian knew what the beast was capable of—what had put him in this position in the first place—and therefore knew not to write off the possibility completely.)

It had been a fairly routine assignment: take out Walsh, one of the most conniving members of the Coroza coven with a penchant for turning his mortal girlfriends, and take out said girlfriend if he had turned her.

Killian hadn’t managed to get there in time to prevent the transition—Walsh’s paramour, one Emma Swan, apparently didn’t want to be found—and by the time he’d arrived on the scene, the freshly-turned vampire had already managed to kill the idiot, but was in shock.

He caught her in the alley behind the apartment building; despite their hysteria, new vampires are relatively weak compared to elder statesmen like him, so it wasn’t hard to subdue her.

And he should have ended her right there. He had a blade on him; it would have been incredibly easy to put it through her heart and let her wither away.

But there was something in those bright green eyes of hers—something behind the fear and anger and madness—that made him stop. It was familiar, but like a long ago memory; he couldn’t place it, but it was enough for him to second guess her elimination.

He couldn’t bring her back to Aurum, though. He’d spent too many years working his ways up the ladder to be accused of succumbing to a pretty face and disobeying direct orders from Gold. If he could hide her, though…

He knew a couple from Coroza who lived not far away. Despite being on different sides of this rivalry, he knew them to be respectable, and wouldn’t turn away a new vampire in need of some stability.

It was hard to tell if Emma was aware of it, but he quickly scooped her up and ran the few blocks to the Nolan’s Hell’s Kitchen townhouse, depositing the girl on the front stoop, buzzing the doorbell, then dashing off across the street as fast as possible (the blink of an eye to the average mortal). He was deep in the shadows of an alley when he saw the door open, Emma guided in, and then both the door and the case were closed. 

Which only left one thing: what to tell Gold. Outright lying wouldn’t work; but perhaps a white one would cover it. 

That was what he went with when he returned to the man’s penthouse in Chelsea. “It’s all taken care of, Mr. Gold,” he’d assured his boss—a rather reptilian man he’d long ago started referring to as “Crocodile” in his head and had somehow managed not to slip in the ensuing centuries. 

“Fantastic; always good to hear, Mr. Jones,” Gold said, rising from his throne-like chair in his office. “I know that it’s a bit soon, but I do have another assignment for you, if you’re amenable,” he continued. (It was a bit sadistic for Gold to act as if Killian had any choice in the matter; it was nigh impossible to go against an order from your sire, though Killian had long ago figured out how to work the system—and Gold’s typical vagueness—in his favor; this order might be too direct for that, though.) “It’s in England, and I want you to go tend to some business of mine. It might take a while. I don’t trust anyone else to handle this; please go and be my representation.”

“Of course, sir,” he answered respectfully, having figured out how to hide the resentment in his voice many decades ago.

“Splendid. I’ll see to it that your affairs here are tended to in the meantime. Enjoy your trip.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Not an hour later, he was at LaGuardia (because apparently Gold was too much a cheapskate to pay for him to fly direct out of JFK), in line with luggage, passport, prosthetic hand, and one-way ticket to London. One perk to never sleeping was that taking a red-eye flight didn’t affect him much; but that didn’t make getting through security any less painful—thus, the false hand rather than his preferred hook. (Also annoying: having a layover in Chicago—in the opposite direction, seriously; he should have paid himself.)

He at least let himself zone out once they were off the ground at O’Hare; he didn’t actually sleep but he could at least rest. 

He let the sounds of the plane lull him into something of a hypnotic state, but one thing persisted in his mind’s eye: those green eyes, and whatever it was that sucked him in. 

(They would do that often over the next several years.)

It wasn’t until he was lumbering up the jetway at Heathrow that he realized what it was: the look one got after being left alone. It’d been years since he’d seen it, but it used to stare back at him in his own reflection. (Which, as the polished metal of the luggage carousel reminded him, he hadn’t seen in centuries.)

Hopefully, she wouldn’t have that anymore. Too bad he couldn’t (ever) say the same.

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★

thanks for reading! short intro, but longer chapters from here. tagging some peeps (let me know if you want on/off the list!)  @kat2609 @xpumpkindumplingx @shipsxahoy @amortentia-on-the-rocks @mryddinwilt @cocohook38 @annytecture @shireness-says @ohmightydevviepuu @profdanglaisstuff @wingedlioness @word-bug @distant-rose @wellhellotragic @welllpthisishappening @let-it-raines @pirateherokillian @bleebug @its-imperator-furiosa @fergus80 @killianmesmalls @sherlockianwhovian @ineffablecolors @laschatzi @ive-always-been-a-pirate @nfbagelperson @stubblesandwich @lenfaz @phiralovesloki @athenascarlet​ @ilovemesomekillianjones​ @whimsicallyenchantedrose​ @snowbellewells​ @idristardis​ @scientificapricot​ @searchingwardrobes​ @donteattheappleshook​

#cs ff #cssns20 #cssns 2020 #cs vampire au #even death won't part us now #my ff

[theres-no-protocol-for-this]

Necessary Repairs

Part III. I don’t even know if you have to read any of the other parts. SecUnit should probably have slept through most of its own healing, but that’s not this machine’s luck.

Part I | Part II

At some indeterminate point later, I woke up.

I was receiving minimal sensory data, and none of it was sight-related. A diagnostic subroutine spun up and casually began sending me bursts of error messages I couldn't even begin to translate.

Oh, and the world was pitch black.

It took me more than five seconds to determine that the darkness was self-inflicted and open my eyes. Longer still for the random noise to resolve into sounds I could understand -- the hum of an air circulation system, at least two distinct voices, and an automated warning system. My connection to the feed stabilized, but the walls that normally guarded my mind against its onslaught were conspicuously absent.

Something else was shielding me, something big and surprisingly gentle.

Friend?

I could feel cold metal under my back and head, probably the medical suite platform. My internal temperature refused to rise, so I was shivering and couldn't stop. It felt like I was still leaking, and the pain ebbed and flowed with each passing moment.

“Would you like me to turn up the heat?” Transport asked.

Yes. Where the hell am I?

I felt a mild shock as the governor kicked in. It hadn't liked my tone, apparently, or the phrasing of my answer, and wasn't shy about letting me know. The standard code read, "you're outside of protocol and need to adjust your attitude."

Silently, I cursed the damn thing. I was getting used to life without it.

A moment later, Transport answered, "SecUnit, you're still in medical, and your performance rating, while stable, remains abysmally low."

The ship paused and sent me a couple of data packets that succinctly described all the things still wrong -- which was most of them. I should've probably remained in stasis, but the medical unit was calibrated for humans. So, it hadn't given me nearly enough sedative to knock out the organic parts of a construct for any appreciable amount of time.

I was awake, kind of.

"I'm waiting for your vital signs to improve," Transport added. "Until then, would you like to watch an episode of that one show you liked?"

Yes, please.

The ship's calm tone reassured me, even though everything else looked like shit. My diagnostics were coming back with nonsense, still. The governor couldn't find a SecSystem to connect with. The Traveler didn't have or need one of those; it had a skeleton HubSystem instead managed security, life support, and logistics. My inflexible governor couldn't figure out how to interface with it.

Surprise, surprise...

It fell back on some preprogrammed garbage, complete with a minimal set of actions and responses. "Yes, please" and "No, thank you" was probably the best I could manage at the moment without incurring its wrath. I'd try poking at it later when my performance no longer looked quite so dramatically sad.

Captain Owens pulled up a chair and sat down where she could see me. Transport shared the view from one of its cameras, so now I could see her, too. It also queued up an episode of a long-running serial and waited for the captain before it started playing. I wanted to ask about the hostiles but couldn't -- thanks governor -- and Transport didn't seem inclined to enlighten me.

I suppose it was only fair; it was doing its best to keep me calm.

MedSystem sorted out the sleeping issue in the meantime and had injected more sedatives into my resupply channel, so sleep was happening shortly, whether I liked it or not. I could practically feel my diagnostics slowing down to a crawl since they relied on data from my organic parts, which were affected by the drugs.

"Good afternoon, SecUnit. I'm glad to see you're awake." The captain nodded in my direction and then turned toward someone I couldn't see. "As I mentioned, thanks to SecUnit, we came out of the boarding attempt in one piece. I'm sorry to hear your ship wasn't as lucky."

A stranger in formal wear came into camera view as he approached Owens. I figured he was the owner of that second voice I hadn't been able to identify earlier. The logo on his tunic looked familiar, but I couldn't place it. Parts of my memory felt like tangled network cables.

"Indeed, but this is still better than nothing. I don't suppose you've already contacted your bonding company?"

The captain's face scrunched up in confusion. "We're insured outside of the Corporation Rim," she explained. "I've sent a message, but I'm here pretty much on my own."

Outside of the Rim, everything appeared to work in ways that were incompatible with corporation control.  A lot of the propaganda around freehold planets implied they were a complete shitshow. Except, clearly, the Traveler was doing just fine.

I had a sudden burst of "bad feeling" in my organic neural tissue. Something about the newcomer didn't sit right with me. I thought it might be unwise for the captain to tell him anything about herself or her ship.

"No, thank you." It sounded like my voice, but I didn't remember speaking. Hi buffer, I thought I'd never see you again.

The newcomer gave me a puzzled glance. "So, where'd you get your unit then?"

Owens shrugged and schooled her expression. I'd seen that face before when she'd spoken to her daughter before our first jump. "I rented it from a friend, as a security consultant. It's doing a great job."

I was?

I mean, the human was alive, and the Traveler had an intact hull, so I guess things weren't terrible. I could practically hear the Transport laughing on a private channel. If I could roll my eyes, I probably would have, but the governor frowned on that sort of thing, and my eyes had closed minutes ago.

"I see. Well, if you wouldn't mind giving us a hand with repairs, we can both be on our way." The man watched the captain like a hawk. "I would also recommend getting your unit checked out at a licensed repair station when you get a chance. With this level of damage, there's no telling what other problems are hiding under the surface."

As far as statements go, it was polite enough, but I didn't like it. It sounded to me like a threat.

Performance rating dropping. Initiating emergency shutdown.

I really would prefer you didn't.

***

Memory fragment:

The mining installation doesn't inspire confidence. There are eight of us and two combat models. Ten security units should be enough to keep a workforce of 153 miners and a dozen more supervisors in line. Everything looks worn and rundown, including the humans.

Protocol dictates that we take shifts. A human has created a schedule to which we adhere. The two combat units are mixed in with the rest of us.

It's my patrol shift. I walk through one of the mining shafts and stop at the far end. I can hear a supervisor arguing with two of her employees—something about the rocks they've uncovered. I turn around, ready to head back to the primary installation, when one of the combat units walks up to the three humans.

It has been summoned by the supervisor.

The supervisor tells it to fire on the workers. It does, without question. Bodies crumple to the floor. Then, the supervisor notices me.

***

Transport popped into my feed. "Wake up, SecUnit. How're you feeling?"

"Like I got shot."

The words were out before I could consider the consequences, and I braced for an electric shock -- or worse. Nothing happened. Performance reliability was at 87% and rising steadily. My diagnostics routines had run several times, and the results looked promising. I was also no longer leaking, and most of my organic parts had grown back.

I had two arms again. That was nice.

Transport shared a smiling sigil. Reason unknown. "You did get shot, silly. MedSystem patched you up pretty well. If you're up to it, my captain and I could use your help." It paused and added, "Captain suggested that you might want payment in exchange for services rendered. That's how it works in CR, right?"

I had my doubts about anything actually working in the Corporation Rim. Still, arguing with a clearly sentient ship about theoretical economics didn't sound appealing. I'd rather get shocked again.

"OK," I said aloud and sat up. "Priority question: who was here earlier?"

"Dr. Alexander Soren is the current captain of an ArialHydra exploration vessel. They are stranded in this sector after a pirate attack. Captain Owens speculates that it may be the same group of pirates. We were lucky to have you on board."

Lucky. Right.

I shoved off the platform and crumpled to the floor in a pile of arms and legs. Hi there, limbs. A few minutes later, I managed to get up and stumble around under my own power. I admit to sitting on the floor and trying out my new arm. It didn't have a cannon -- MedSystem didn't have the required parts -- but it was fully functional, otherwise.

"I've seen Dr. Soren before." I couldn't remember where. That bothered me.

"Perhaps you were deployed on one of his survey missions?"

"I don't know."

One of the ship's drones floated into the room, carrying spare clothing, which it dropped directly on my head. I grabbed at the falling fabric and started getting dressed. It was the Traveler's standard-issue uniform, beige and blue and generally not hideous. I missed the protective qualities of armor, but it would've been weird to wander through the ship's pristine, carpeted halls with it on.

Captain Owens walked into the medical room and waved at me and the drone. "I see you're both here and scheming."

"We're not scheming, and technically, I'm everywhere," Transport informed us.

"I don't think you should trust Dr. Soren," I blurted out.

Owens narrowed her eyes. "Do you know anything you'd care to share?"

I shook my head. Constructs don't get gut feelings -- we don't even have a gut to have them with -- and my memories of any encounters with the doctor had been removed. Memory wipes aren't typical, but occasionally, a bonding company or a manufacturer/repair company decides they're necessary. I've had at least one that I know about. I also had no idea how to explain that my organic neurons probably remembered things the rest of me didn't.

"Well, in that case, has Trav told you what we need?" At my puzzled expression, the captain said, "We gave the other ship supplies, and they're almost ready to depart. And they're making a fuss about..." She sighed. "Something. I really don't care. They'll be coming back aboard in a few hours to discuss whatever it is. And I would feel much better if you were there. Just in case. And only if you're feeling up to it."

Protecting humans was literally the only thing I liked about my job. "OK."

"Great. Do you want a weapon?"

"Depends on how threatening you want me to look." Any weapon I wielded would be for show unless the human was in danger. And if she was, I had a miniature cannon hidden inside an arm.

The captain pondered this for a moment. Her face went through a range of expressions that Transport interpreted for me as "Captain Owens thinks the other ship's posturing is stupid and would like to be on her way, but it would be impolite to leave, so here we are." I agreed with the captain's assessment.

Finally, she said, "Let's try without any extra threats and see what happens. The quicker we get this over with, the better."

Transport suggested we spend the time between now and the upcoming meeting watching more of its favorite shows. I agreed.

#the murderbot diaries #SecUnit #let me sleep #into the unknown #fanfiction

[jiskblr]

The Metaphysics of Magic Items

Every individual has channels of energy which flow through them, which collect, pool, and travel along lines which are very similar from one person to another, though not precisely equivalent. The field of magical items has for the most part been the field of manipulating those channels; early items were usually weapons and armor, which touch only on the most surface-level aspects, and our ability to create more sophisticated items advanced slowly in early times, because we did not possess a good understanding of the principles at work. In a quirk of history, the first channels we learned to manipulate effectively were the ones we know regard as the most idiosyncratic and sophisticated: rings. Rings interact not with the local pooling of energy, but with a deeper level of soul-stuff. This requires fine control and is only possible for the most powerful of spellcasters, but it does not involve systematic understanding of the local flows of energy, and so was separable from the rest of the field. The various bodily affinities were gradually understood in bits and pieces, with the first attempts working only for a single type of effect, such as bracers of armor, and usually only in their weakest form - even early rings are, while powerful, much less powerful than we now know is possible. Also early were potions and oils, which operate using the internal magic channels but in a sufficiently consistent way that a rough, very descriptive understanding, without much grounding in theory, allowed them to create a variety of effects operating along similar lines.

It was in the heart of the dwarven empire in the reformed days where magic was no longer verboten that the first systematic understanding of the individual's magic channels began to be achieved. The first treatises written concerned specifically the channels in the legs and feet, but even this was enough to galvanize the field of item creation: methods which had previously been developed for boots of speed and greaves of stealth were, with the benefit of this systematic understanding of a piece of the whole, expanded to accomodate greater power within three decades, and to expand to a much greater variety of effects within two centuries. From there, the systematization tackled the arms and hands, which went much slower than previously because of misunderstandings caused by rings, which were at that time believed to operate only if found in the traditional shape and location of a physical ring. The insight that they were not interacting with the local channels in the hands allowed scholars to more directly analogize the hands to the feet, with rapidly-productive results when the barrier of misunderstanding was overcome. The community of crafters which discovered these principles was initially a guild system which guarded their secrets closely, but the overall concept of interacting with local channels was not kept secret as effectively. For this reason, crafters in other regions discovered similar principles but applied to other parts of the body. The elvish carvers first found the channels in eyes and were particularly effective in creating sensory-enhancement techniques, and then later generalized to the head and face. The core torso proved more difficult to map, though it has not particularly proven difficult to use once it was mapped; scattered druidic traditions managed to map the waist, but the full torso wasn't understood except in the later-developing study where both dwarves and elves, as well as other communities catching up to them, achieved full understanding of the whole body's map. This eventually unified with the methods used by potion-brewers and other makers of consumable-effect items such as the feather token into an overall set of methods. These take a very skilled craftsman to master the full range of applications, but the theory is consistent and understood by most wizards.

To complete the set of common crafting specialties, let me quickly digress on the spell-like items. Scrolls are as old as wizardry and have been rediscovered repeatedly; they are a minor variant of the notation and stabilized spell that a wizard places in their spellbook. The wand was known relatively early in history, definitely present in Lantide and brought to our continent by expatriates, but their creation was not actively passed down by the elves, and the principles needed were lost during the magic purges of the early dwarven empires. It was only alongside the systemization of magic channels that their creation was rediscovered, and understood as the self-contained 'prepared snare' of magical energy that we now use to create them, which is a mixture of the basic scroll with some techniques used for weaponry, creating a final product which can be used by an apprentice caster, a non-mage crafter, or by anyone who chooses to train in their use, which is common among adventuring fixers. The new - and, we believe, better-developed - theories also laid the groundwork for the staff, which combines the aspects used for weapons, the variants on those structures used for wands, and some fine-grained patterning most similar to rings, and created a powerful, sophisticated extension of a wizard's magical networks which allows a skilled spellcaster a much greater range of spells and can be, in a very real sense, a prosthetic extension of the humanoid body - which is why, unlike almost all other magical adornments and tools, it can be recharged from their reserves. It will come as no surprise to my audience that I am a carver of staves, and while I know several other varieties from earlier in my career I truly believe staves are the pinnacle of the crafter-mage's art. Or, at least, they are for now - perhaps in coming centuries we will advance our crafts and make new and yet-more-marvelous types, as our precessors invented staves.

The overall theory of items and the 'bodily affinities' which shape who makes things and why rests on the basic principle that a magic item functions by manipulating the magical channels of the one who uses it. There is a continuum, of course; weapons touch only very lightly, armor slightly more, and sophisticated items can be made to minimize the entanglement, the 'unaffilious' items. But the greater variety of wearable items all use close bonds to a particular part of the network, and have their effects by altering that network to draw on the spells and effects prepared in the item. Wearing two items which try to bond to the same part of the network will, at best, make one work at slightly-reduced capacity and the other not at all; the modified network created by one effect is the wrong 'shape' for the other to bond to it - unless, of course, one of the two has been crafted to not require it, but that is much more involved and takes, for a crafter practiced with both types, twice the time and materials. In principle there should be dozens or even hundreds of possible network sections which an item could bond to, but for the most part the modern crafter divides them into a standard set of twelve. While a few of these have clear delineations, such as the eyes, it is important for the student to note that most of these are essentially arbitrary. It is a fact that the channels in the vicinity of the waist are well-suited for effects which enhance the physical characteristics: strength, endurance, speed, agility. But while any system of crafters which developed independently but with the same knowledge base would make something very much like belts of giant strength, they would not necessarily call them "belts"; they might instead make breeches of giant strength and consider the lower torso part of a different affinity. The virtue of our standard set of twelve, however, is that it is widespread and covers almost all crafters who trade with us. If you create an item with one of our standard twelve affinities, you can be assured that it will interfere solely with other items made to use that same affinity. If you instead make breeches and make use of the channel segments lower on the body, you may have created an item which interferes both with the waist and with the knees and lower legs.

There is, however, reason to think this problem is not eternal. As our theoretical understanding grows more precise, it seems likely that we will find that some of these affinities can be subdivided, allowing more than twelve to be worn simultaneously. We know for certain the affinities are not perfectly interfering, from the art of 'kytoncrafting'. Like many other niche crafting methods, its origin is distasteful, coming from torture cults which revere the extraplanar kytons. But the methods are, when used with informed consent and restraint, ethical and fascinating. Kytoncrafted adornments embed into the flesh, interfering with the circulatory system of blood, and life-force directly, rather than primarily with the magical channels. The result creates wounds which never heal properly until removed, even with the aid of divine healing, but they do not interfere with traditional items utilizing the same 'body affinity', so that, for example, one may wear boots of speed together with ankle piercings of the spider, and have both function perfectly. To date, all attempts to refine this to remove the lasting injury have made them more difficult to create and embed, ultimately approaching the same end state as an unaffilious item. But it gives reason for optimism nonetheless; one boundary can be breached, and with time we can breach more.

#divine shells #3.Q #jisk worldbuilds

[toysoldiers-rwby]

[CS] 7. Intermission

Cutting Strings

Characters: Team APCX, Winter, May Word Count: 4k

A small break before Atlas Academy starts.

Read on Ao3

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Error: File Protected. Reason: Intermission.  

General Ironwood called a meeting with his most trusted leaders. Penny stood next to her father and the pair was mostly silent. Winter and Clover did a wonderful job reasoning with General Ironwood. But, must to Penny’s pride, it only took one line and a serious look from Winter.  

"You paired Aurora and Xanthic together, sir."  

The room was silent for a long time. Everyone was tense, even her own father. Whatever history that brought up seemed to subdue the General a little. He passed Team APCX to the Specialist Schnee under two conditions. The first is that Xanthic will continued to be tightly monitored. Winter agreed. Penny watched her carefully, trying to separate the lies and the truth. She had a small tell, a micro twitch of her jaw when she lied.  

“I guarantee Xanthic will have no unauthorized form of communication.” Winter said.  

She kept the backdoor Scroll a secret.  

Aro and her father redesigned the gravity cuffs to looked more like normal bracelets. Xanthic requested some thickness to be returned to it for a ‘punk’ aesthetic. Aro increased it by a few millimeters and added unnecessary studs and lights.  

Winter had Military Technicans outfit Xanthic’s home with surveillance equipment with the exception of the bedrooms and restrooms. A member of the Ace-Ops or Robyn’s team would be with her at all times.  

Over the past week Penny learned it was formal talk for ‘hanging out’ as Joanna had put it. Everyone seemed fond of her garden and the rare patch of grass on Atlas. During one visit with Winter, they had found Xanthic lounging outside, basking in the rare sun while Elm and Joanna argued about the correct methods of eating a tomato growing in the garden. Joanna bit into it like an apple much to Elm’s cringe.  

In the mornings she’d work on Billy, who now had more than a headbutting function and could understand simple commands such as sit and stay. Afterwards she’d visit Xanthic then return to the facility together to train. Aro and Ciel’s schedule varied due to work and school, but they were there for at least an hour every day.  

Penny greatly enjoyed her new routine. Until it became routine for her to fail. She was an engineering marvel of software and hardware, yet all members of the Ace-Ops, Winter, and even Fiona had beaten her with ease.  

Today her opponent was Aro. It felt like a downgrade even if reason told her the usual elite graduates were just away on a mission. Penny wasn’t as confident as she should be. Her algorithms calculated a 0% chance of losing. It was the same software that provided an inaccurate of assessment of Winter’s summons. Still Penny was determined not to fail.  

But the mechanic was nearly impossible to hit.  

No matter the angle Penny attacked from, Aro was able to dodge like she was a fish in the sea. Gliding left, skidding right, hovering in place when idle or flying like a bullet during attacks.  

Penny pulled back Floating Array and deleted her previous assessment and calculations. They favored in a normal civilian. Not one with a stylish audio and Aura sensing instrument that acted like a 360 camera.  

Aro grinned. She stopped floating, Penny could hair the faint clicks and other mechanisms in her legs as it ejected empty Dust cartridges. She opened a vent to release the built up steam. Penny was instantly on edge. Her own systems weren’t as sophisticated as Aro’s sensory horns, Penny heavily relied on visual analysis. If Aro used that as a smokescreen…  

“If you figure out a way to look any cuter I’ll consider forfeiting,” Aro said. In a voice that didn’t sound winded, like it was effortless. Like the elite graduates. Penny didn’t smile but she could feel her Aura warm her systems and the air in her chest. She huffed out air almost visible in Solitas’ cold atmosphere. Then alarm flickered across Aro’s features. “Down!”  

Penny instintively listen, diving as low as possible. A powerful arc of hard-light dust flew above them. It stressed against the barrier for half a minute before finally shattering.  

The pair looked at their teammates. Xanthic was sparing against Clover. The man took a few hits, proving Xanthic’s accuracy was not luck but also not a refined skill either. On the far end of the room was Marrow and Ciel. In front of them was a few Atlesian Knights they were using for semblance training.  

Penny heard a loud explosion. Hard-light blades and metal took up nearly all her vision. Aro’s unsmiling face focused on attacking. She tried to lean back and bring up her arms or bring down Floating Array to block but Opponent Aro was too fast. Another loud explosion pushed those blades hard against Penny’s Aura and sent the metal women flying back a few meters.  

Several blades dug into the metal tiles, immediately stopping Penny’s slid. Two guns fired at Aro while other components, both swords and guns, hovered close for defense. It was both a deterrent and precaution.  

Mostly a deterrent.  

Aro must have realized it. The swift hit and run pattern was thrown aside. She charged forward again. By now Penny was familiar with Aro’s speed. She was visually aware of her opponent but her analysis programming was searching for something unfamiliar. Sudden movements or an unnatural bend in Penny’s lasers- as if it a comet just escaped orbit.  

Of course! All that gravity Dust!  

Direct attacks would be ineffective. Penny could swing Floating Array in from the sides but Aro was too agile. The only openings were when her opponent attacked and Penny was forced to defend.  

Again, Aro broke through her defenses. Her velocity was unhindered by gravity, boosted by combustion, with a weight of a heavy women and metal limbs thrown into the attack. Penny bolstered her Aura, this time taking the hit with open arms and closed them tight around Aurora. She leaned in, fired Floating Array in a constant stream to counter balance the momentum.  

“H-Hey!” She squirmed. It may have been sheer luck that had Aro’s arms pinned in the bear hug but ten blades and four guns pointing down at her defeated opponent was calculated.  

Penny grinned looking up at Aro. “I win!” Aro seemed to… growl in effort? Her sensors and systems couldn’t quite understand it. Was this a Faunus warning or was Aro’s gravity Dust causing a minor glitch again. Aro wiggled in her grasp and carefully kicked her legs as if she would find purchase in the air. It added many new sensations Penny would try to understand later but right now she focused the feeling of accomplishment and success.  

Aro let out a whine, Faunus ears peeking out as they lowered and her posture deflate. Finally Focus flickered off. Penny was rewarded with those unmasked sea-green eyes. The glow hid many things, mostly the embarrassment Penny saw now. She giggled and grinned, cuddling into her soft and temporary trophy.  

“Wait!” Fiona’s voice echoed through the entrance. She was covered in dirt and mud, boots tracking in the outside environment as she skidded in. Winter was right at her heels, and barely manage to dodge the tiny Huntress when she finally stopped. “Aurora- Aura. Ah!” Whoever was following them didn’t see Fiona. May and Joanna collapsed onto their teammate. "Get off me, you gigantic assholes!!"  

“Sorry!”  

Elm quickly ran in and picked the pair off. Winter helped Fiona onto her feet, a bit clumsily as her eyes was looking at Penny and Aro.  

“So,” Winter tried to level her voice, “You’re training is… going well?” She asked.  

“I won!” Penny said with a large smile. Floating Array folded into her pack and she jogged towards Winter. Aro grumbled and wiggled. Penny didn’t let go but loosened her trophy enough to be comfortable in her arms. Her voice took on a serious and honest tone, “Civilian Aurora fought valiantly!”  

“But you won,” Winter said slowly. She and May looked at each other, over Fiona who held up a middle finger at her teammate. May scoffed at her and pushed it away while Winter gave both Penny and Aro a skeptical look. “By… a hug?”  

Penny looked at her arms still around Aro. By now the women wiggled one arm free and used it to slightly brace herself against Penny’s shoulders. Penny’s grin went back up to Winter, “That is correct!”  

“It works, just not for everyone.” Joanna said with a shrug. “She has all those swords and Winter has her summons-”  

“I don’t like this conversation so I’m awkwardly changing it,” Aro declared, voice very blunt but still very embarrassed. “HHZT (Hazelnut) and SGME (Sigmarite) finally broke the tie?” Their elite group of Huntsmen and Huntresses had an unfinished competition back from their Academy days. As part of the Accelerated Program, the Academy would rearrage them for certain missions. Or maybe it was an unoffical team? Like Robyn and the other freelancers.  

“HHZT, won. Of course.” Fiona said hands on her proud chest with an grin that was far too innocent and confident. Penny recalled Xanthic using the term ‘shit-eating grin’ which Penny was greatly opposed to. Ciel explained the phrase as smug.  

The other members of Team HHZT trickled in. Harriet and Vine raised a brow at Penny and her trophy while Robyn gave a smile.  

“I’m guessing you won? Congratulation, Swords.” The leader Mantle’s happiest Huntress team said.  

“Thank you ma’am!”  

“Can I- down? Please?” Aro asked softly. So softly Penny was tempted to ignore it. The tone of voice was new, too high pitch and nervous. Unsure if it was a positive or negative response, Penny decided that caution was better and set Aro down. She took a deep breath, as if it would help the blood rushing through her cheeks and neck.  

“Sorry if I held you too tightly!”  

“Apologize for something you actually do,” Aro said in a very Xanthic-like drawl. Complete with a roll of her eyes but it was so much softer. So more like Ciel when she was sleep deprived. Maybe a tad softer. Penny couldn’t help but to respond with a bigger smile. It was after Aro flustered and floundered that Penny decided she liked this new behavior.  

"Goddess curse your fucking fishing rod!!" Xanthic screamed. Clover laughed slightly, not a true laugh but still a sound of enjoyment and amusement. Like a fish the hacker was dangling off the string, body awkwardly tangled in the wire. While this was a common sight over the past week, Penny wasn’t aware of how flexible Xanthic was. “How is this a weapon anyway?!”  

“My semblance and skills are pretty consistent.”  

“Don’t let Ironlimp rub off on you. Just spit it out-”  

“You’re talented, not skillful.” Clover said. Xanthic’s jaw snapped shut and she muttered curses under her breath as she tried to free herself again. Elm and Harriet chuckled. “Marrow and Ms. Soleil are almost finished. How’d the search and destroy mission go?”  

“Xanthic’s drones were accurate.” Winter said. No matter how many times Winter needs to slip back into work mode, Penny still haven’t grown to like it. “All essential and optional targets were eliminated.”  

Clover smirked and raised a brow. “Who won?” All team members of SGME; Winter, Joanna, May and Elm, either scowled or pouted. “Congratulations HHZT.”  

“It feels so nice to finally settle that score.” Fiona said grinning up at SGME. May groaned and playfully shoved the troublemaker away. She then gasped, fist landing in a palm. “Oh right! Aro you are projecting an Aura. Right?”  

“Uh… haha,” Aro couldn’t even formulate a lie without Focus. She huffed looking extremely guilty as a green shimmer covered her body-  

“Aurora!” Penny gasped while May yelled. She could feel her power unit both decrease in performance yet go into overdrive. She hadn’t hold back during training. If Penny had taken a different approach for to win- Her simulations were vivid in her mind even as Penny grabbed Aro’s upper arms. General Ironwood requested Penny knew the outcomes of failure, she was preprogram with the knowledge of death and dying but not the emotional connections of loss until now.  

“You- What if you got hurt!” Penny said.  

Aro held steady eye contact, “You didn’t land a hit. The only time you touched me was the hug.” It wasn’t a challenging stare but not the lively glowing one Penny was used to. Easy to fluster but possibly even more brash without her semblance? She didn’t backdown but the defensive tension melted a little. Aro wasn’t a different person with Focus off but it was still a shift in personality. “I’m sorry.” The words quickly tumbled out of her mouth and seemed to surprised even Aro.  

The silence in the air was so thick it nearly shocked Penny.  

“Oh.” May blurted out in quiet surprise. Aro frowned, glaring at May who fumbled a little more. “W-What? You’re one of the most arrogant and narcissistic person I know!”  

“Because I deserve to be.” Aro said quickly. Organic defensiveness quickly resorting to a bit of aggression.  

May took a deep breath, pinching the bridge on her nose. “Focus on the Aura problem, we can talk about the other stuff later,” She muttered quietly to herself. Of course Aro heard it and she tried to relax. “Please, promise me you’ll actually try with the Aura stuff?”  

There was an instinctave and resistant growl-like whine.  

“Aurora!” Three people yelled. Penny was much softer compared to May but Winter’s was the sternest. Aro flinched. She took a deep breath. It took a little bit for the mechanic to meet May and Winter’s gaze. Her eyes flickered to Penny who still looked worried and guilty.  

“I’m sorry,” Aro blurted out again. “I’ll take this Aura projection thing seriously.”  

“We’ll add Aura training to your regimen.” Winter said with a sigh. “Both you and Xanthic are far from adequate-”  

“I’m what now?!” The two genius yelled loud enough for it to ring around the trainng room for a few seconds.  

Winter tried steeling her features, but her brows kept twitching together in frustration. She coldly stared at Xanthic as the hacker yelled and Aro’s furious eyes glowed bright with Focus. The mechanic’s body went taunt, the fabric across her shoulders and chest straining. "You’re talking to the pair that made the world’s smallest portable hard-light printer and scanner you piece shit-"  

“And that’s our cue to leave,” Marrow said smoothly walking past the large group while Ciel reluctantly stood next to her teammates. The Ace Operatives that weren’t already filing out of the room sneered. Only Marrow and Clover gave their superior officer good luck wishes as they left.  

Robyn gave Winter a pat on her shoulder, “I’ll be sure to write 'Death by Iron-Knee’ on your grave.” Fiona and Joanna chuckled safely from the exit.  

“Ugh. Get out,” Winter said with a tight jaw. Her hand suddenly shot out, a tight grip around May’s wrist. “Not you.” May glared at her. With a look they came to an unease agreement and faced the furious pair.  

Aro glowered, almost intimidating with her bright eyes and sharp horns. “We did survive encounters against the White Fang and Grimm!” Her cold tone almost sold it.  

“You two are talented, yes.” May said slowly. That did little to calm Aro and Xanthic down. “But… this is not… your area of expertise?”  

“You two are highly unprepared.” Winter correctly flately. Penny watched as frustration boiled over both Aro and Xanthic’s wounded ego. Winter gave May a sharp glance, “Don’t coddle them.”  

“I grew up in Menagerie where we don’t have the luxurious kingdom defenses.”  

“Aro, it’s not the same.” Winter tried to reason.  

“Perhaps, ma’am,” Ciel spoke up. The group turned to the officer-in-training. Penny stepped closer to her, a little protective with a smile that almost defused the situation. It worked on three, Xanthic seemed to grow a little more furious. “Glade and Xanthic would respond better to a demonstration. The Atlas’ Welcoming Fair is focusing on the third and fourth years this week.”  

“Oh! Good idea,” May gasped.  

“No, bad idea,” Aro said nose wrinkling in disgust. “Atlas Military and Hunts Associations are scouting for recruits. Business companies are looking for a new face to slap on their product. It’ll be filled with people trying to make connections with people like me.”  

Aro was right about one aspect, she did deserve to be arrogant- “Oh!” Penny gasped, eyes wide. She looked at her Faunus, “Does ‘Aro’ stand for arrogant?”  

Ciel’s professional demeanor completely broke beside her. She coughed on air, trying not to laugh but still somehow managed to murmur, “Holy shit.” May just immediately crackled, head thrown back in laughter while the last three stared with disbelief for a few seconds. It broke around the same time Penny tilted her head in confusion.  

“Now it does,” Winter mused with a smile. She cleared her throat, trying to calm May down. The Huntress only squatted, hands clasp over her mouth with tears pricking her eyes. “Aro,” Winter’s professional demeanor cracked with a brief smile. The Faunus softly growled, a weak show of teeth and ears poking out low. “Would draw unwanted attention.”  

“Like your white as fuck hair wouldn’t,” Aro quickly shot back.  

“According to the search algorithms, her defining traits are sharp gold horns and glowing eyes.” Xanthic said. She rubbed her chin eyes glancing upward in thought. “I think I erased or edited a lot of her old photos. So if she uses her old horns and manage to keep her semblance off she might be okay.”  

“I think the average person would connect Winter and a women with green hair,” Penny said steadily with a raised brow.  

“Average person,” Xanthic gestured to Ciel. Her teammate huffed and rolled her eyes though she gave no verbal comment. Ciel did have excellent marks but compared to the elite huntresses and geniuses in the room she did fit the definition of average. “See? We can use Ciel for a test run.”  

“My father has your previous model for research purposes! I’ll get them.” Penny said walking off. Winter called Fiona to deliver something from her room.  

Out of sight but not out of hearing, Penny heard May gasping for breath, “Oh that settles it, I love her.”  

It took longer than expected. Without daily and meticulous organization their storage was in minor disarray. Penny wondered if Xanthic would permit her bots to help her father out. The AK-200 had mistakenly placed Aro’s previous sensory equipment under weapons.  

“Of course Fiona would choose this outfit,” Winter’s murmur came from the kitchen.  

When Penny returned to her team and supervising Huntresses she nearly dropped the military grade case. The two most noticeable members of their group underwent minor physical changes. It was simple clothing and hair alterations but Penny’s visual analysis struggled to link the names Winter and Aro to their appearance.  

Seeing Penny’s reaction, Winter immediately stood up, “I’m changing back into my uniform.”  

“Nope!” May used one hand to shove Winter back into her chair. Then she went back to braiding Aro’s hair. Penny stared at Aro for a moment and the women just raised a brow. Without her horns May was free to run her fingers through wavy pale green locks uninterrupted. She brushed them behind her heavily scared Faunus ears that twitched around with a giggle. “The entire point of this is to look different.”  

“I can’t believe she found this…” Winter murmured. Penny had perfect memory. Just a glance was enough permanently capture the leather shrug tight around Winter’s arms and shoulders. Some odd code in her programing told her to double check the metal buckle that clasp the collar of the shrug snug to her neck.  

Luckily Aro’s sign language was a good distraction. Xanthic interpreter what Winter and May was saying, her expressions mimicking the individuals. Aro sneered and giggled. Penny was surprised she could at least differentiate interpretation from a conversation.  

“Penny, would you like to enter the betting pool?” Ciel asked.  

The metal women jumped slightly with a small gasp. She turned to see Ciel raise a brow slightly but much more focused on her scroll. “Fiona is betting no more than four of them will be able to find Specialist Schnee and Ms. Glade at the Fair.”  

Penny set the case containing Aro’s outdating cybernetics down and tilted her head in thought. “Hm… I think I’ll pass. Betting and gambling doesn’t seem like a positive habit.” She remembered the tense conversation Ciel had given Penny after losing to Xanthic.  

“I agree with Ciel but I’m pretty confident that no one will recognize us even if we are together.” Xanthic interpreted. Aro continued signing, this time with a large grin and finished pointing to May who smirked. “We do have a spymaster with us.” The hacker finished, voice surprisingly faithful to Aro’s fluctuations.  

May tied the braid and walked to the front to admire her handiwork. It was a much more roguish appearance than her usual gentle or business persona. The top fluffed out like a Mohawk while the sides were pulled tight and flat, revealing scars and cybernetics that glowed under her skin or on the surface. Aro popped open the case. Instead of sharped angle and shining horns this was a matted metal with ram curls that framed her ears and taper to safe round tips. May stepped around to help guide then into the ports and lock them in. Even the cybernetic glow was muted.  

Though Ciel was there for the transformation she stared hard and squinted at Aro. Her ears fluttered and she nervously shifted. “Huh…” Ciel muttered. Then she gave Winter the same cold calculating stare. The soldier didn’t flitch but Penny had the time to confirm the metal buckle around her neck. Winter’s hair was long enough brush past her shoulders and due to the constant bun had some waves imprinted into her locks.  

“Yeah, I’m betting they won’t recognize either of you.”  

“Really cute,” May pointed to Aro, “Almost illegally hot.” She smirked at Winter who glared.  

Penny looked between Winter and Aro. Her programing was drawing a blank. Visual analysis was focused on identification and injuries, though she could feel an odd glitch triggering a reaction in her power unit and her aura. A systems check was telling her that her temperature was higher than normal but well within functioning range.  

Error: File Protected. Skip Intermission?

#Penny Polendina #fic #cutting strings #pre-fall of beacon #APCX #Aurora Glade #ashley xanthic #ciel soleil #winter schnee #may marigold #qued

[nothingsolutions]

**2020 Short Film** screen play draft

Showcase life as a teenager in the 2010's. What defines this generation? What will we be remembered for?

Have random segments appear and "add" to the story but take you down another rabbit hole. Keep having people asking for more but still not having answers to their previous questions.

*Have the entire story loop.

Gut Feeling

Gut Feelings

Genetically Modified

Burn if Found

Disorder

FDA Approved

Stimulant

Sensory Overload

Inborn Pattern

MUSIC

Sooner or Later - N.E.R.D

(Perfect for drive home)

Everyone Nose - N.E.R.D

Purple Baguettes - 88GLAM

Dirt and Grime - Father's Children

Territorial Pissings - Nirvana

(Skating away from home)

Never Can Say Goodbye - Jackson 5

(Perfect for falling back in bed / ending)

The End Has No End - The Strokes

(Loading Docks)

Anti Matter - N.E.R.D

Partners in Crime Part Three - The Internet

(Playing loud in the car that almost hit MAIN)

She Works Out Too Much - MGMT

(Right when they fight / spinning)

Heavy Hitter - Jack Harlow

(Loading Docks)

Molly - Iann Dior

Hive - Earl Sweatshirt

Gonna Love Me - Teyana Taylor

My Pain - Lil Capi

Shoes - Lil Capi

Swim in the light - Kid Cudi

No Church in the Wild - Jay Z & Kanye

The Boy - Shannon and the Clams

Tongue Tied - Grouplove

La-La means I love you - The Delfonics

Dance yourself clean - LCD sound system (3:08)

I hope youre doing ok - Pity party girls club

Creep - Radiohead

Lose my sleep - Jacob Boring

Hometown - French 79

Between the buttons - French 79 (2:09)

Leaf Wraps - The Homies

Oblivion - Grimes

Cha Cha - Freddie Dredd

Switch: Six - Gums

Hottest in the city - Ty

Hell n Back - Bakar

Oof - Inner Wave

New Flesh - Current Joys

Pill - D.Savage

Wow, I can get sexual too - Say Anything

Angelic Hoodrat - Kenny Mason

Sometimes (feat. Swo) - Anxiety Attacks!

Vertigo - The Hellp (running scene)

Beans - Dirtboimil

Ghostbusters - Jayy Davi$

Paper Planes - M.I.A.

Lethal Presence - Night Lovell

Phone - Lil Capi

New House - Toro y Moi

Oblivion - Grimes

Float - The Neighbourhood

Love my Way - The Psychedelic Furs

The Sharpest Lives - My Chemical Romance

Last Living Souls - Gorillaz

Mystery of Love - Mr. Fingers

Mac Miller - Congratulations piano

((https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmXJpbIizUU) perfect for orange bag scene in field)

Blowout - Radiohead (last scene running down the hill)

CAST

Couple on Roof - Tori + Pablo

People in living room - Jackson,

People in Chris room - Chris, Arya, Capi

Kitchen Chopping carrots - Emma

Emma's Room - Cole

Plastic Bag/ Girl bumps into -

Bleeding Skater -

Puts down camera / in car -

Car Passangers - Levi, Casey,

*Concert

Audrey - Herself

Levi - Himself

Driving car hits Levi -

Dinner Scene - Emma +

Mirrored Dinner scene - Emma + Lookalike (Salena)

**Concept**

*Intro

\Audio: Angelic Hoodrat - Kenny Mason fade 2 Cha Cha - Freddie Dredd\

Beginning of the video is sitting in Emmas room. Shot from the opposite side so you can see the whole room and subject.

Very dimly lit (only red lights on) with music blasting.

Constantly zoom shots throughout the house with muffled music in the background to show where the movie starts. (Hallway zoom/ kitchen zoom/ bedroom zoom (Chris)/ all slow-motion with people interacting in the scenes.) People sitting on the couch/ playing Fifa/ coming out of the bathroom. Shot from outside the house to signify the volume of the music?

Cut back to subject on the computer in the right side of the room sitting on the bed.

The computer screen is glowing on the with the face of the subject. You can just see the subjects eyes over the top of the computer screen.

Close up on eyes scanning the room (slow down x35/ x45) name title appears (REF1) and goes back to typing (can barely hear the typing)

Through the glass window of the kitchen (low shot looking up) show sibling cooking something. You hear the chop of the carrots rhythmically just a little off beat to the music heard from Emmas room. Eventually she cuts one last carrot and walks to the room.

Cut to the same zoom shots but pulling back still in slow motion showing that the sibling is marching to the room.

Shot from inside the room is zooming to the door after you hear a faint knock and the Sibling passes the camera (rotate the camera) and slams the computer screen shut. As the computer screen is shutting close up on eyes slowly looking up.

Starts to scream and slowly closes eyes.

**Goes into the first transition.**

Goes black for a second but can still hear scream.

Goes back to color and MAIN is still screaming but you can only see the sky. (Head neck and blue sky)

!!!HEAD MUST BE IN THE SAME PLACE AS THE PREVIOUS FRAME!!!!

FOR CONTINUITY THIS IS A MUST Mid section head on the top line.

When the drop of the song CHA CHA - FREDDIE DREDD starts pan down in a parallax motion showing the subject is in public. Walking 'against the grain'. If everyone is walking one way have subject walk the other. Essentially getting in peoples ways.

When walking bumps into someone hard, abruptly, startling both people. By bumping into that person, the perspective is shifted to her.

@Her

Can see she's speaking but entire thing is bleeped out

(Hit each other and starts to walk away still on MAINS perspective and and she's passing she said what theeee and after it switches to her to see his perspective on the situation but then it just sticks with her.

Cuts to a kid almost getting hit by a car

'Life flashes before his eyes'

REF1

For introduction to character have a close up with face (only eyes) and name mid center

*REF: Screen Shot 2020-01-13 at 12.25.51 PM*

*Jean Jacket interlude

Back of jacket always in view from the middle of the rule of thirds.

Always shot so the jacket is right in the middle.

Only the back of the person at all times

Short shots Burst style

About 45 seconds spread throughout the video??

Or just one segment??

Shot ideas

*Making out see back of dude wearing the jacket dark shot

*Concert shot wearing the jacket walking through the crowd

*Wearing it in a house party with people doing shots around him

*

Burning candle to show the passing of time.

Shot with the LED light but only a circle of light.

Shoot with a projector over the subject

((

Make sure its apparent the music is coming from cole

As she walks closer it gets louder and louder and the music keeps on changing throughout the beginning shots

-

Shot of outside of Emmas house

Shot with 2 people 1 dude 1 girl

Dangling feet off of the house

To establish location

At sunset

Close up of them

Acting like a couple

Being close and messing around with the blasting

Music in the background

ZOOMING SHOTS THROUGHOUT THE HOUSE PULLING IN

See people all throughout the house

Playing Fifa

Gitar hero

Cooking in the kitchen

REF: 2

Low shot thru kitchen window you see (Emma/) cooking

Something. Low shot with light coming from behind her light

Coming out the window

Cut to shot of her back and see her

Cutting carrots and after a few chops she throws down the knife

And says "ughhh"

ZOOMING SHOTS THROUGHOUT THE HOUSE PULLING BACK

Showing Emma walking thru the house

Going to ""Coles room"" to shut the laptop

See people all throughout the house

Pass Gitar hero

REF: 2

))

[cloakedandsoaked]

Wants and Needs

[This is straight-up porn. Don’t read it if you don’t want to read porn. Contains lots of blood, a wee bit of self-harm, consensual non-consent, and probably other things I haven’t thought to warn for.]

As Dantalion threw his head back, lines of fire cutting down each side of him, his last remaining thought flickered in wonder at how he had managed to find himself here. For ‘here’ he most certainly was, covered in sweat and ichor, with a demon he'd just met leaning over him in an unfamiliar bed, to which he was tightly bound. And then the thought was gone, banished with all the others to wherever thoughts disappear to in the throes of ecstasy.

If it had stuck around, it might have elucidated for us the circumstances that had led Dantalion to this peculiar state of affairs. Indeed, it might have told first of the deep itch that had taken hold in his bones some time over the past few days, an itch to which he was all too accustomed. It came in times of stress, in times of boredom, and, sometimes, at least as far as the duke himself could tell, for no particular reason at all.

In the past, he would have ignored such an itch. Or, failing that, he might have tried to scratch it himself, though that usually didn't take very well or for very long -- and it seemed to upset Sahar, which he had no real inclination to do.

But now….

Well, he had been trying to allow himself as much of what he wanted as possible. In the aftermath of his emotional experiments, giving in to desire seemed to help quiet the hollowness, at least for a time.

And what he desired was for someone to hurt him. Properly.

Not enough, of course, to render him unfit for duty; he was needy, not insane. He just wanted someone to, y'know. Rough him up a bit. Take the edge off that grasping, cloying thirst beneath his skin that cried out for some kind of stimulation.

One of the downsides to using his physical form as a sensory muffler was that he sometimes felt too muffled, almost claustrophobic under the smothering blanket burrito of his flesh. And since he wasn't going to leave that flesh unless absolutely necessary, sometimes -- just sometimes -- he needed something to reach between the bars of his self-made prison and touch him for real.

Or, at least, as close to 'real' as it was going to get.

He'd had Sahar set up the appointment for him, even allowing her to select the practitioner. Someone discreet, secure. (Obscenely well-paid, as should be obvious.) Thankfully, she had a shortlist ready and waiting, as it had been for years. It was an old argument of theirs, and, until now, she had never convinced him to book.

With only half an hour 'til the appointment, Dantalion had quite nearly bunnied out, despite the fact that he would lose his deposit. However, he found his mind turning to Asmodeus, and his resolve pulled through. Asmodeus would be disappointed by the idea that he couldn't even visit a professional dominant without turning coward. He took a deep breath, centered himself, and flipped the switch on his nervousness.

That's right, this is supposed to be good, isn't it? The hollowness was back, and with it, the itch, and with the itch, an unsettling but not unfamiliar sort of desire. Yes, this is how it's supposed to be. No more nights spent trying to clench himself together, or worse, trying to find fulfillment in his own claws, but unable to escape his bullet train of a mind even as he bled a pool onto the floor. Straightening his back, he had left his office with a new confidence.

And that confidence held, even through the consultation. Of course, he and Master Rodger (Really? Tal had thought, ‘Rodger’ of all things?) had communicated by email the day before, so both of them knew at least some of what to expect.

Well, Tal didn't expect Master Rodger to have easily a metre on him (Not even counting the horns, stars!); that part was a surprise. And not at all an unwelcome one, Tal noted vaguely in the part of his mind that wasn't focused on maintaining his social mask. Although he knew his mask was going to slip at some point in the evening, and, indeed, that was part of the point, it didn't do to be anything less than a perfect gentlebeing outside of the scene. Manners mattered.

It helped that Master Rodger (For real, that has to be a work name, Dantalion kept thinking. And of course it was.) was warm and open, exactly the sort of person to make one want to reflect those qualities back. It rang a bell of familiarity in Tal's mind; it carried an essence of similarity to the seeping heat of Asmodeus, but much less intense, and without the sense of nervousness and... almost… violation? that always came along with it.

(Then again, he hadn't seen Asmodeus except in picture form since his experiments with the switch method, and next time, the experience might be totally different. It was hard to say. He rather hoped so! That was part of the purpose of the whole affair, after all.)

They discussed the usual necessities. Safewords, limits, aftercare, any other concerns. They settled on the classic traffic light system for safewords; no surprise there. Most of Tal's limits had been outlined in their online communication, but he reinforced a few. I'm in charge of my breathing. I'm in charge of my eye contact. Master Rodger made a point of reminding him of a limit or two of his own, including 'no kisses on the mouth', one Tal actually took quite a bit of comfort in. It wouldn't have been something he'd have listed, himself, but it was certainly not something he enjoyed most of the time.

It did, admittedly, get a bit awkward when Dantalion had to show him (for it was a tricky subject) exactly how he liked and didn't like his hair and scalp to be touched. No amount of warmth and openness could save him there. He felt as if he were on display in a way far more scandalous than was typically possible for the amount of clothing he still had on. The sensation was, if he were honest with himself, a little bit exciting, though that didn't cut through the social ticklishness of the moment.

And then they were ready, and all at once, the nervousness from before sprang again like a tiger to devour him from the inside. In what way, he wasn't sure, but he must have revealed it as they made their way to the back room, for Master Rodger laid a paw in the middle of his back (which was honestly about as low as he could reach with his paw without bending; Stars, but he's tall!), and rubbed a calming circle there. "Just like we talked about, right? Is this okay?"

Tal first tensed at the contact, then relaxed into it. Taking a deep breath, he steadied himself. "First time jitters. It's fine. I'm a high-strung personality. But then again, that's why I'm here." He was babbling, and he realised it. Rather than continue, he nodded at Master Rodger, who opened the door for him.

"Five minutes, and we'll start. You can put your clothes on the chair by the door on the right." It was a solid acknowledgement of Tal's stated preference that he begin the scene already in the nude, and he appreciated it. Master Rodger gave him a once-over, and then corrected: "Make it three; I really don't want you sitting in there fretting a mess."

Tal smiled sheepishly, and went on in.

Four minutes later, he was turned over one comically long thigh, face and torso resting on the edge of the great, black bed, bum in the air.

Not all went so smoothly. Only a few minutes of spanking with some sort of implement (he couldn't see what, but he knew it wasn't a paw) had him flushed and squirming, and not with the response he had most hoped to have. This would have to be rectified. "Excuse me, sir?" he ground out, tense with the sensations and his own pride.

"Yes, kitten?" He stopped what he was doing, keen to listen to whatever it was that had made Dantalion speak up now, when he had been so seemingly reserved.

Tal sighed and shifted against the thick leg that bore him up. "I mean no offense, but this is really… doing more to turn me on than to hurt me." He pinked further in embarrassment, as if the evidence of his cock was not enough to humiliate him. Dantalion was clearly more than a little pent up.

"Already asking for more, eh? Greedy." He ran a single claw up Tal's spine, with just enough pressure to be felt. "I like it."

Tal shuddered at the implication on his skin, and his ears pricked as he heard a rustling noise. The anticipation was almost overwhelming as he waited, breathless, for the dom's next move. He wasn't expecting gentleness. 

However, that's exactly what he received; a velveted paw soothed small circles on his arse, coaxing out the too-small sting that had gathered there. Dantalion made a strangled noise between a sigh and a growl, and ground his hips up into the Master's leg.

"You have permission to ask me for 'more' any time you like. Understood, kitten?"

Dantalion twisted his face into the bed until his neck was crooked and only his mouth peeked out. This is torture! Fuck, it can't have even been fifteen minutes yet. "Yes, sir," he sighed, unsure whether either of them had really understood the point of this whole endeavor.

Crack!

Tal arched off the bed, more in shock than pain, though the pain hit him a half-second later, and he welcomed it with a soft moan as he collapsed back down. The moan was cut off with another stroke, followed by three in rapid succession. "Fuck," he hissed, hands scrambling to find purchase on the tight-laid bedsheets.

"Color?"

"Green, sir!" Tal's eyes ghosted closed as another short rain of blows fell with an unrelenting sting that had him panting again in seconds. This time, it was the proper kind of panting; the last thing on his mind was his cock. He spat a few choice swears into the bed, only just managing to 'be good' and stay in place on Master Rodger's knee. Not that he wanted to get away; far from it! But much longer, he knew, and his body would cease to obey him as he gave into the sensation. Tal was a writher.

Seeming to sense this, Master Rodger put a heavy paw between Tal's shoulders, not pushing, but steadying, guiding him back into place. The contact appeared to seep some of the rising tension from Tal's frame, and Master Rodger purred a few words of praise at the quick response.

Tal whimpered lightly at the regard, and was rewarded with a new rhythm of slaps, slow but unceasing and a little heavier than before. His mind began to fog with the first strands of that most pleasant of dizzinesses, and he knew he had to act quickly if he wanted to ask: "Sir, please," he breathed.

"Mn?"

"What in the name of good glorious fuck are you hitting me with?" he asked, voice giddy and a little awestruck. He wasn't gone yet, but he was too far gone to worry about sounding as easy as he truly was, which was a mercy.

Master Rodger chuckled softly, but didn't cease in his work. "Tawse. You said it was a favorite, mn?"

The answer surprised Tal, almost enough to bring him out of his happy place and into a realm more intellectual. Instead, he burst out giggling. He'd never had a tawse used on him over the knee before; it was just impractical for people with an average arm and thigh length to use with any real efficiency. Gods, did Sahar hit the mark with this one.

"Yes, sir," he eventually remembered to reply through the laughter.

"You're making me wonder if I'm hitting you hard enough, there, kitten." The Master's voice was light, but contained a genuine query.

"More please, sir!" Tal chirruped, despite the fact that his tremulous body had already begun to imitate the vibrations of a washing machine on spin.

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

And now, some fifty minutes later, Dantalion had lost his last thought to the claws of Master Rodger. His back was an utter ruin, stuck to the bedsheets with thick, black ichor. He had been flipped at some point, though he didn't have the presence of mind to remember how long ago. Everything was pain and the way his body gloried in it, trembling between the impulse to flee the aversion, and a hunger for more of the sensation lying beneath.

Every few moments, the former would win out, and, whimpering, he would recoil from the agony of claws ripping at the skin over his ribs. But then would come a hushed, encouraging word from the Master, perhaps a soft kiss to the jaw or a tug of hair, and the battle would shift once more in his favor.

This addling metre went on for some time, each pass pulling Dantalion deeper into the whistling throb of his flesh, a flesh which felt more expansive with each shuddered breath. He was crying in earnest, now, whether or not he realised it, and the ends of his hair were coated in the same blood that soaked the bed. Bloody too were his lips, which he had bitten nearly through in places, struggling to process the sensations happening in his body.

Master Rodger would rouse him to reality occasionally, just long enough to get a color from him (always a confident 'green'), but otherwise, Tal was lost.

Lost until he felt an unexpected sensation amidst the singing of his nerves.

He jerked his head up, and looked down through gummy eyelashes to see a rather intense-looking Master Rodger between his legs, one paw stroking Tal's cock. He hadn't even noticed he was hard again (or, perhaps, still), and wasn't that something? The absurdity of the situation overcame him, and he leveled a thoroughly poleaxed look at the dom, tear-reddened eyes awash with bewilderment at the change in circumstance.

Master Rodger took the reaction in his stride, pausing to soothe at Tal's lower belly, which had been left untouched by the methodical mauling of before. "You're okay, kitten. It's alright. You've done so well for me. I'm going to give you a little reward; does that sound good?"

It would be a lie to say the words didn't go directly to Tal's cock, nearly bypassing his mind altogether, as it was still quite muddled. But he managed to nod and mumble something that must have been an understandable affirmative, for Master Rodger resumed stroking him. (Lost to him for the moment was the fact that this had always been part of their plan; the pawjob wasn't meant to have been a surprise.)

The changeover in sensation was its own kind of violence, disrupting the settled flow of back-and-forth between too much and just enough that had categorised the previous stage of the scene for Dantalion. Now, there was no 'too much'; though the tacky sheets clung to the wounds of his back as if with tar, and his whole torso clamoured at him every time he tensed, none of it compared to the incandescence of a laceration in progress. And the pleasure he now felt was of a totally different stripe, tapping into a need less potent, but which he was still all too eager to have filled.

Speaking of being filled -- When Master Rodger was certain he had navigated the change, he allowed Dantalion a moment of respite while he fiddled around with something off to the side. Tal heard the tell-tale click of a lube pump (for what he now realised must be the second time, though the first had been lost in the fog), and had only a second to prepare before something chilled slicked at his entrance.

He tensed automatically, and before he could loosen again, Master Rodger was on the case. "Shh-shh, relax your body for me. Nice and easy. That's a good kitten." He placed a gentle kiss inside Tal's thigh, and his cock twitched in response, both to the praise and the kiss.

The Master slid a wedged cushion beneath his arse, propping him up for better access. It put a strain on his back and legs, and made him feel even more vulnerable than the restraints themselves. Too, it forced his balance backward onto his upper back, pressing his wounds all the more heavily into the bed.

However, something soon distracted him from all of that. A cool pressure captured his attention as the Master began sliding something into him. He had a silent thought of thanksgiving that the dom had listened and furthermore believed him when he had outlined that he required no preparation; the one-two-three fingers game was aggravating at the best of times for one who controlled the tension and dimensions of his own arsehole, and downright torturous at the worst, when all he wanted was a solid pounding. Now was quickly turning into one of the latter times, so it was especially lovely to just get on with things. (Besides, he was pretty sure that that precise configuration of prep was mostly for bad fanfiction, anyway.)

Master Rodger did seem to be taking his time, though. Dantalion wiggled mutinously, fighting for purchase against his restraints. The wedge kept him too off balance to do anything of use, however. "Please."

The Master resumed his pacifying noises, but also the stroking of Tal's cock, which at least put an end to the squirming. And, soon enough, the toy was inserted to its full length. "Sir, please," Tal huffed, kicking one of his legs down against the bed with the little range of motion he had. The not-quite-burn of the stretch inside him was tantalising, but nowhere near the spark-like bursts of pleasure that would come with active thrusting. He did have to give the Master credit, though; the 'little' reward was not nearly as small as he had implied.

"That's beautiful," Master Rodger reckoned. "Keep begging, kitten. Let me know how much you need it."

"Need it." Tal echoed, still too drunk on himself to look for new words. "Please, sir! Please-please-please." In vain he tried to grind down on the toy, and his failure brought to him a mind-clearing sort of panic. "Fuck, sir, please! Fuck me, I can't--" He cut off with a gasp as the toy was pulled out quickly and rammed home again with force. 

And it didn't stop there; the Master set a dazzling rhythm with both toy and paw which immediately had Tal arching his ravaged back. Nor did the begging stop but for the brief moment of the gasp; Dantalion resumed pleading as soon as he caught his breath, babblish and inane though it soon turned. Nor did the panic stop, for now there seemed to him something he needed more than he had needed the toy, something hidden in the glowing heat that built in his lower body.

After a few minutes, that heat coalesced into something real and attainable -- the prize was in reach -- and Tal's begging turned to hoarse moans. Then everything went silent except for the slicking sounds of the Master's ministrations, and Dantalion came white strands upon his own stomach. He held his breath for a few short seconds, then slumped, panting and sated.

Master Rodger trilled his approval in soft, sweet words, and removed the toy. Still (and his eye took on an evil gleam), he had no plan to stop stroking Tal's cock. A fact which Tal realised all too quickly, as the sensations morphed from pleasure to acute aversion. "Oh, no," he murmured.

"Oh, yes, kitten," the Master replied lightly. "Hang on tight."

"Oh, no." He was already so wrung out! What did this fucker expect from him?! "Fuck-- No, no, no, no, no!" Tal writhed, trying in earnest to escape the Master's hands, both of which were working him with a fervor. The tears were back in an instant as he thrashed about, seeking relief. He twisted his face into the side of his arm and bit deeply -- anything to distract from the shock of overstimulation.

"Color!" Master Rodger demanded.

It took about five seconds for Dantalion to wage the war on himself, to persuade himself to accept what it was he truly wanted in this moment. "Gree-hee-heen!" he then sobbed, stripped of the pretense that this was anything other than exactly what he had asked for and needed. The admission hurt nearly as much as, or perhaps more than, the electric sensation between his legs. His pride was broken as he lay keening and twisting atop the bed.

But, as all things do, it eventually ended. There was a sensory stillness in the aftermath that couldn't be stirred even by the damage to his torso; it was as if thick cotton had been shoved into the ears of his skin. He vaguely noted that the Master was speaking to him in a kind and mellow voice as he undid the restraints and massaged at the corresponding joints. What words were said, he did not perceive and likely couldn't comprehend if he did.

However, he knew that he had explained as much in their orientation. There was no harm now in drifting. He gave a casual thumbs up, turned onto his side, and curled into the fetal position -- where he stayed for nearly half an hour. Everything was so soft in this place, so fuzzy and self-contained. It couldn’t even be called a ‘happy place’, because happiness required more awareness than Tal could currently muster, or would desire to. But it was peaceful, and that was all he had truly wanted.

Eventually he did get up, though. As his sensory processing came back up to snuff, he was more inclined to move, to speak, to listen. For a while, Master Rodger held him, and they chatted about the ups and downs of the scene while drinking water. When they were both sure of Tal's steadiness, the Master helped dress his wounds, at least insofar as they really required it. Just something to keep the blood in until they healed of their own accord. Tal gave it two days. Four, max, for a couple of the nastiest ones.

When all was said and done, Dantalion returned to his office feeling like a new demon. Now he could really concentrate on work. But first he would have to order three very special gift baskets: one for Master Rodger, one for Asmodeus, and (the reason he would be ordering them himself and not delegating,) one especially nice one for Sahar.

#tales from the library #sahar #master rodger #(not sure why i'm tagging for him but who knows.) #(he MIGHT come back)

[brokenjardaantech]

rk1700 december day 4, 9, 23, 28: broken/damaged; sensory overload; resurrection; instinct

written for @rk1700december. day 4: broken/damaged; day 9: sensory overload/overheat; day 23: resurrection; day 28: instinct.

trigger warnings: temporary character death (how else can i resurrect him?), sensory overload, a bit of robogore

again, female connor is called rhea. rk900 is called cronos.

also on ao3

----

‘Tell me again why you’re suddenly training me?’

There is a certain irony when the only time Cronos sees Anchor without her underarmour is when they’re supposed to beat the crap out of each other with spacetime-bending, physics-breaking space magic that apparently every single android in the world has, but there she is, standing in the middle of a deserted gym dressed in a black tank top and standard-issue trousers, and Rhea, bundled up with several layers due to the lack of temperature control in the gym and Mars is cold, is seated on a bench pushed against the wall and is nibbling on a piece of thirium chocolate. 

‘The situation is getting worse out there,’ says Anchor as her hands light up with swathes of blue. ‘The Administrator has ordered me to give both of you training so that you can defend yourself in case we got attacked, and seeing that Rhea -’ she cocks her head towards the other android - ‘is under no condition to fight and you two stick together at all times anway,’ out of nowhere, she throws a biotic sphere towards Cronos which he dodges easily, ‘giving you enough training should offer enough protection. Lesson one: use your biotics wisely.’

She yanks her head back and pushes again, and this time the force slams into Cronos’ chest quicker than his processors can register what exactly happened. It does, however, activates programmes he didn’t know exist in him. His nerves tingle, the air around him crackles with static, and the next thing he knows is that his world is tinted a shade of blue so bright it is nearly white. Power and mnemonics - familiar yet foreign, like a dormant instinct awakening - rush through his mind, his circuits, his veins, urging him to open a corridor through spacetime which brings him directly through Anchor. He will kill her, he realises as time seems to slow down and Anchor’s face gets closer, closer, closer. Another surge of energy, a bright spike of light -

And nothing.

----

She can’t. Can’t see, can’t stand, can’t imagine, but it’s happening in front of her, the bright lights, the splash of thirium, the horrible creak of Cronos’ chassis before he becomes a mess of tubes and wires and grey plastic on the floor of the gym and he is dead, dead, dead, dead and he’s gone and she’s going with him and she can’t and runs and runs and runs until her world is dark her body in pain and no one is shouting behind her and there is only pain, pain pain…

----

The scraps and scattered biocomponents that comprised Cronos’ body wriggles and trembles on the floor of the gym as if guided by an invisible force, moving towards a specific direction with his processors as the epicentre, and when two pieces are close enough to each other, they slot together into a larger piece like an invisible builder completing a part of a puzzle. The thirium dries and evaporates. The click of chassis against chassis remains constant.

The door of the gym opens to reveal Anchor bringing two large containers of fresh thirium with her. Her face is blank as she approaches the nearly-completed body on the floor, nor does her expression change as she uncaps one of the containers and pours the thirium down his throat, exchanging the empty bottle for the other one when all the blue blood has been drained. 

A skinless hand smacks the bottle away suddenly, and Cronos jerks into a sitting position with a bone-rattling coughing fit, biotics crackling uncontrollably on rapidly-generating skin in wisps of dark blue. He takes a deep breath and looks down at his biotics-swathed hands.

‘Is this your plan?’ he asks as he flexes his arms and retracts his powers. ‘And I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to -’

Anchor waves his apology away. ‘Not the first time the Administrator programmes weird shit into her androids,’ she says, giving a hand to help the android stand. ‘That’s her signature move. A Charge, as she calls it. I couldn’t have countered it if she had been in your place.’

Cronos busies his hands by making himself presentable, his fingertips touching where the dried thirium is and has to override his auto-scan function. He looks around and realises, ‘Where’s Rhea?’

Anchor calls up a map of the facility on her omni-tool. ‘Can’t get a signal on her,’ the hologram blinks away. ‘She can’t be far. I’ll issue a wing-wide search, and if there’s no sign of her -’

‘I know where she is,’ Cronos interrupts without knowing why. Then a small stream of data starts letting itself known, a barely-there presence in his mind that is so familiar and is crying for help. ‘I can sense her.’

He doesn’t wait for Anchor to give him permission to leave and instead bolts out of the gym guided purely by the small trickle of Rhea’s consciousness. Being broken lines of code, it isn’t even coherent data that he can make sense of without decryption or further processing, but his legs seem to have their own will and bring him through hallways, pass staff who he doesn’t greet, cannot greet because he is so focused on his task, round unfamiliar corners and into unfamiliar hallways, and finally stop in front of a strangely-familiar door. It looks identical to the one leading to the lab where he was built and where they more or less figured out what was wrong with Rhea (and it was a lot), but then again, a lot of hallways and rooms in the facility look familiar from being modular and deserted to the point that nothing distinguishes them from one another. There is power feeding into the door which saves him the hassle of rerouting energy from stars-knows-where, and after receiving no response - both in reality and through their bond - for five minutes, he interfaces with the door and it slides open with a small hiss.

Their bond explodes.

NO LIGHT! Rhea yells through their connection. In reality, she screams and pulls on her hair, a sharp, ear-piercing sound, and Cronos makes the mistake of slamming his bare hand on the door to override it as the sound only makes Rhea jerk and sob even more. The only source of light in the room is the holographic lock indicator hovering in front of the door, but still Cronos dims it until he can barely see anything. The proximity sensors kick in automatically, his world turns grey, and there Rhea is, curled up in a corner in a foetal position with tears rolling down her face, her LED hidden from view behind her palm in her hair. Minimising the sound of his footsteps and approaching her slowly, he brushes her hand away so that both of them have some light to see by - and to deactivate her skin as he kneels down while deactivating his own. With no barriers at all between them, he draws her into his arms, temple against temple, cheek against cheek, hand in hand, Rhea’s back against his chest, her body between his legs, he opens his mind to her and her to his, sharing knowledge and processing power and every single bit of pain Rhea experienced in the last twenty minutes. It felt like a lifetime.

It was to you, Rhea says through their interface. I saw you die.

Didn’t feel like dying to me. Somehow I know I am always going to return.

Rhea turns her head for a kiss which Cronos gladly gives her, a gentle press of lips with no tongue so that they won’t overwhelm Rhea’s system again in such a short period of time. Maybe later when both of them have calmed down. Maybe after they tell Anchor that they are indeed alive and well.

Can we stay here for a moment? Rhea asks.

Cronos nuzzles her LED spinning in serene blue that reminds him of sunsets. Of course.

#tw: gore #tw: sensory overload #rk17cember #rk1700 #dbh connor #dbh rk900 #oc: anchor/anna #detroit: become human #groom lake aftermath

[thebiasrekkers]

Fragmentation 5.0 - KNJ

Plot: How does one measure freedom? Are our choices truly our own, or are they part of a preset design outside of our control? We all have a question burning inside of us, though few speak it out. It is the question that drives us forward, seeking purpose in our lives. What is The Matrix?

Rating: NC-17 // NSFW

Genre: Series | The Matrix!AU | angst | sci-fi | action | drama

Pairing: N/A

Warnings: Strong language, allusions to suicide, extreme angst, graphic violence

Links: FAQ || BTS Masterlist || Admin E’s AO3 || [ REQUESTS ARE OPEN ]

Word Count: 2,269

AN: Now we get Namjoon’s perspective. YAY. Also in the Real World in Zion. Again, all information in the universe can be found on the official Matrix Wiki so please use that as a reference guide if you ever get confused!

Tag List: @aroseforyoongi​, @prisczero​, @pinkpjmin​, @btsaudge​, @flowerwrites06​, @unoriginal-username15432​

© thebiasrekkers (Admin E). All rights reserved. Reposting/modifying our work is prohibited. Translations are not allowed. Plagiarism/stealing is not tolerated by any means. Legal action will be taken in instances of theft.

“Oh look,” a voice said suddenly, “it’s the prodigy.”

Namjoon sighed as he continued typing away on one of the system computers. For the last three years, he lived in Zion’s control tower. It was where all the trainees went who hoped to become Operators for a ship. In less than a year of his boarding, Namjoon showed excellent marks in reaction time as well as hacking prowess. It was no secret that he was far ahead of the rest of his class and there were rumors that he would graduate in the next year if he continued to excel in every area of expertise they could throw at him.

That didn’t make him very popular with his peers. Then again, it wasn’t like he actually cared. They all had a common goal and as long as that remained true, then they only needed to focus on doing their jobs.

Who cared if it was some popularity contest?

“Wait guys. You know he hates that title. We have to call him by his alias, remember?”

The tone was snide and insincere. Again, Namjoon didn’t care. He had other things he needed to devote his attention to. Rumor was that he would be boarding a ship soon to help with a simple reconnaissance mission. Nothing too overly complicated, but he wasn’t about to turn his nose up to the task. The lives of Matrix Operatives were in his hands and that was a responsibility that no one should ever take lightly.

So he continued to tune out his fellow classmates, focusing his energy on the program he was creating. It was a training program that would be used in the Construct - an exercise to help hone the sensory perceptions of operatives so that Agents wouldn’t be able to get the jump on them. When Agents obtained a target, they were relentless in their pursuit until an Operator was able to get them out. Namjoon wanted to prevent such tragedies from ever taking place. What better way than to prepare the operatives in any way possible?

He received word from his mother that Taehyung would be boarding a hovercraft next year. To successfully become a pilot, a trainee needed to physically handle the controls for years. Namjoon barely saw his brother due to his own hacker training, but it was guaranteed that they would not cross paths for several more years once Taehyung boarded a vessel.

Namjoon felt a hand on his shoulder, but he continued typing away at his station.

“Don’t listen to them,” said Vermillion, giving Namjoon a gentle shake.

“I don’t,” he replied, his eyes narrowing at the line of code he was reworking, “I always tune them out.”

“Typical. That’s just like you, Spectre.” Vermillion chuckled, sliding into the chair beside him. She peered over his shoulder as he continued working. “That looks pretty advanced. I can’t wait to see it when it’s finished.”

Pressing several more keys, Namjoon saved his progress and closed out the command console. Everything was transferred to the mini disc that slid out from a tray on the main hub. He popped it into a small case and shoved it into his pocket. 

“It’ll take a few more weeks before I’m satisfied.” 

Namjoon stood from his chair, grabbed his bag, and made for the exit. He didn’t have to look to know that Vermillion was hot on his heels. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her, but he’d come to be a very solitary person. He rarely saw his mother and there was a good chance that he wouldn’t see his brother for several years. Not until they were both finished with their respective Training Programs. 

“You’re not going to report to the Head Programmer of your progress for the day?”

He smirked. “He already knows.” Turning to look at her, he continued walking. “I was told to help out at the Command Tower for a few hours.”

Vermillion’s eyes widened. “Wow. Forreal?” 

He nodded and they continued walking through the various metal corridors. The shocked look on her face was well-placed. Most people didn’t get to work at the Command Tower during training because there was a high risk of something failing because of an amateur mistake. The fact that their teacher cleared him for work at the Command Tower was another testament to Namjoon’s skill level. 

They reached the elevator for the Command Tower. Namjoon’s hand hesitated over the button as he looked at Vermillion. She seemed to want to say something else to him, so he waited. But after a handful of minutes of silence, he sighed and pressed the button to call the lift.

“Well, I’ll be seein’ you,” he said as he readjusted his bag’s strap along his shoulder.

The metal doors groaned as they slid open, granting him access. He stepped onto the lift and just before the doors closed, he saw Vermillion’s smile as she waved at him.

“Do well, Spectre.”

He flashed an easy grin in her direction. But once the doors were closed, the smile fell off his face immediately. Namjoon didn’t have any time to waste. There was a chance the war could be over in his lifetime. It waged on for damn near a century already. The people of Zion, human-born and field-born alike, were all tired of this seemingly never ending conflict. His parents saw the brunt of it during the beginning phases - children when their parents were fighting for their freedom.

Namjoon didn’t want to pass this burden on to his children.

To keep that from happening, he would work himself into the ground. Until there wasn’t a single breath left in his mortal body.

Four Years Later

Spectre pulled out his mini computer, booting it up to look over the dossier files of the ship he was newly assigned to. He was originally slated for Operator duty the previous year, but he opted out of it. His brother, Edge, hadn’t returned from his training tour yet. The benefit of finishing at the top of his peer group was that Spectre got to pick and choose a few things here and there. 

Namely when he would be boarding a ship. 

He quipped a brow at the list of crewmates on his future ship. There were some impressive resumes on the vessel. Certainly nothing he could turn his nose up at. The Admiral must have had a hand in the assignments and there was clearly a reason why Spectre was placed with that particular group. Based on the skill records of everyone on board, save for the pilot, they all had more than one year of field experience that wasn’t “on the job training”.

The Captain and First Mate in particular. 

His eyes scanned over the pilot’s name and he couldn’t help the smile that pulled at the corners of his mouth. Spectre had all the faith in the world that his brother would make it through the Training Program, but he hadn’t expected to see his name on a crew member manifest just days after his ship docked back home. 

“Yo, Big Bro!”

Spectre lowered the mini computer to his side, lifting his gaze up to see his younger brother strolling up the long metal walkway toward him. He closed the computer, slid it into his pocket, and waved to Edge. His little brother wasted no time closing the distance between them, taking off in a dead run and barrelling into him. Spectre grunted when he felt Edge’s shoulder crashing into his chest, his arms encircling around his waist. He laughed as Edge lifted him up off the ground.

“Hey,” Spectre said, patting his younger brother’s head, “a little over the top, don’t you think?”

Edge set him down, placing a fist on his hip. “Are you kiddin’ me?” He pouted. “I haven’t seen you in years. I should be setting off fireworks.”

Lifting a basket off the ground and handing it to Edge, Spectre shook his head. “Yeah, don’t do that. We’ll get court-martialed.”

Edge’s heavy steps reverberated off the metal flooring. “It would totally be worth it, though.” 

“It wouldn’t, actually, but whatever.” 

The brothers shared a smirk with each other. 

It didn’t take them long to reach their house. The door was already open just as they saw their mother stepping out. She carried a basket of linens in her hands - presumably to go do laundry at the water recycling plant. The minute her eyes shifted in their direction, however, she seemed frozen in place. They took a few more steps toward her, watching as she dropped the basket at her feet. The dirty clothes and bedding would remain ignored. They already knew what mattered most to their mother.

“You’re back,” she finally managed, her hands trembling as she reached for them, “I knew you’d both come back home together.”

The two brothers filled their arms with their mother - holding her closer than they believed was possible. Her smell hadn’t changed and the strength in her embrace was just as they remembered it when they were children. She openly sobbed against each of their faces, overwhelmed with how much they’d changed. Yet they remained the same. They were men now, but the brothers knew that they would always be her little boys.

Her pride and glory.

After what seemed like too short a moment, their mother pried herself from them. “You two must be starving,” she said, turning to usher them into the house, “I’ll see about gathering some rations for dinner.”

Spectre leaned down to pick up the discarded laundry basket. “You don’t have to do that, Mother,” he offered, but he could tell that she would not be hearing any of it.

“Go inside and unpack your things. I’ll be back!”

They both sighed in unison as they watched their mother dart off down the metal walkway and across the bridge. Spectre turned to Edge and they both shrugged, making their way inside the home they hadn’t been in for several years. Lucky for them, nothing had really changed.

Spectre poured himself a cup of water, handing it to Edge and then poured another. “Have you gotten your assignment yet?”

Edge smirked as he pressed the metal cup to his lips. “Of course I have.” He gulped down half the water and set it down on the metal counter. “I’m stoked as fuck that I’m going to be piloting the ship you’re the Operator of.”

“That’s it?” Spectre lofted a brow at his younger brother. “Nothing else?”

“I mean, not really.” Edge shrugged. “I don’t know much about the others. I’m just glad I’m with you.”

Chuckling, he shook his head. He should have known that his brother would still continue to be simple-minded, even after all of these years. It didn’t come to him as a surprise; not really. In a way, it was almost relieving to know that his brother remained wholly the same - even after the intensity of the Training Programs.

“Did you get a chance to look at the ship?”

Edge whistled, sailing his hand out across his body in a dramatic flourish. “Bro, let me tell you…” He leaned sideways, bumping his shoulder against Spectre’s. “Just thinking about flying that ship is giving me a hard-on like you wouldn’t believe!”

He rolled his eyes, lightly elbowing his younger brother’s side. “Seriously? Come on.”

“I’m dead-ass serious, Bro. Like, holy shit, the Amaterasu is one sexy fuckin’ vessel.” Spectre watched a gleam sparkle in his younger brother’s eyes as he spoke. “She’s the newest hovercraft in the fleet and that baby was made for speed and destruction. I bet she could make it to The Fields and back before a Sentinel could even detect what actually happened.”

Spectre quipped a brow. “New stealth tech?”

He watched his brother nod emphatically. “Oh yeah, and then some.” He clapped his hands together. “I can’t wait to test that beauty out.”

Pulling out his computer, he looked over the ship’s diagnostics. There was some serious hardware put into the hovercraft. If the deployment of the Amaterasu was successful, the engineering crew would work on replicating the ship’s schematics for future hovercrafts. As exciting as that prospect was, Spectre couldn’t help but frown a little.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the Amaterasu was a guinea pig ship. This would be the first time the crew would work together as a collective. Some were still fairly young, their minds “freed” but needing more time to mature. There was also the chance that they would all clash when it came to their personalities and work flow.

He barely got the sigh out of him before Edge wrapped an arm around his shoulder to pull him in close. “Hey, c’mon, Spectre! This is what we went through all that training for, right?” Edge winked at him. “Everything’ll be fine. Every single member of the crew is the best of the best of the best, right?”

Spectre nodded. “Yeah…”

“So there’s nothing to worry about. We’re going to be the talk of the entire fleet. Everyone in Zion is going to know our ship.” Edge laughed, causing Spectre to grin; his enthusiasm was infectious. “We’ll do great things, Bro. I know we will.”

Spectre ruffled his little brother’s hair. It brought him an overwhelming amount of relief to know that his younger brother had, in fact, barely changed at all. In a time where their future was bleak and uncertain, pure optimism was necessary. Hope was needed.

And he would do whatever he needed to do in order to ensure that that hope never died.

#bangtanarmynet #btsbookclub #btswriterscollective #hyunglinenetwork #ficswithluv #bts #bts fanfiction #bts fanfic #bts fanfics #bts the matrix #bts the matrix au #bts the matrix!au #bts science fiction #bts scifi #bts science fiction au #bts scifi au #bts science fiction!au #bts scifi!au #kim namjoon #namjoon #RM #bts namjoon #bts RM #thebiasrekkers #bts thebiasrekkers #thebiasrekkers bts #bts fragmentation #fragmentation bts #defragmentation bts #bts defragmentation

[thegreatsaiya-z]

Saiyan Biology Part 2 

(Actual Info under the cut)

Teeth

Saiyan teeth are based partially on baboon teeth in that the canine teeth are notably larger than the rest of the incisors, although the rest of the incisors are also fanged, and suited for ripping and tearing.  However, their molars are still similar to those of most omnivores, and are used for chewing.  As a result, saiyans are classified as an omnivorous species, although they take the concept of eating everything to the extreme-for example, while a saiyan will gain little to no nutrition from eating stone or metal, they are technically capable of digesting materials commonly thought to be entirely inedible.  Saiyans tend to prefer meat because it is high calorie and high protein-both necessities for their biology- but they do require plant based nutrition for a rounded diet.  Their teeth are capable of cutting through bone, and their molars capable of grinding down tough woody stems.  A saiyan’s digestive system is equally robust, and capable of resisting most parasites and poisons found in food.  As a result, cooking is not a requirement for digestion, but most saiyans tend to have at least a couple foods they prefer cooked (or alternatively complex food items that require cooking to come together). Also, while not their primary food source, due to their incredibly large calorific requirements, saiyans on the battlefield will fall to eating the the bodies of their not-always fallen opponents (i.e. that one scene of Vegeta snacking on a random alien mook’s arm), which doesn’t help increase their intergalactic standing. Like some reptiles, saiyans are born with all their teeth and they exhibit polyphyodonty-if a tooth falls out, another will grow back in its place.  Despite the large size of most of their teeth, they are fully hidden by the lips.  Saiyan jaws tend to be larger and wider than those of most similarly sized mammalian species, and they have an incredibly strong bite force-although again, they are similar to crocodiles in that even a fairly small force stopping movement of the jaw will be an effective neutralizing method.  

Half-saiyans retain the oversized canines, although the rest of the teeth are similar in appearance to those of a human.  Half-saiyans are born with canines, and the rest of their teeth grow in sometime between three to six months.  Apart from this, their teeth are similar to those are full saiyans, as are their digestive capabilities. Their jaws are larger than those of most full blooded humans, but not necessarily to the extent that their canine teeth will fit properly.  As a result its fairly common for the canine teeth to project outwards and protrude slightly past the lips.  This is entirely a cosmetic issue, and could theoretically be remedied by braces, although the issue of placing the braces for long enough remains an issue, particularly with the amount of facial trauma most saiyans go through, and also the problem of finding a dentist willing to stick their hand in that mouth.

Quarter saiyans, like half saiyans, retain most of the dental and digestive capabilities of a full blooded saiyan.  They have oversized canines, although not to the extent of full or half blooded saiyans.  Like human infants, they are born toothless; their canines grow in within the first couple of months, afterwards the rest of the teeth grow in between six to eight months.  They do have a set of baby teeth, but after those grow in they retain the polyphyodontic trait.

Eyes

The pupil and iris of a saiyan have no differentiation, is ovular and elongated, and contracts and expands with the light (and, occasionally, emotion).  Their visual acuity is no better than a human, although their night vision is far superior.  Without the use of ki-energy, saiyan eyes possess tapetum lucidum- otherwise known as eye shine, which allows for vision in low-light activities; with ki-energy, a truer backlight is possible, allowing for some vision even in pitch-black environments.  In fact, the general environment of earth tends to be a bit bright for saiyan eyes, resulting in slit-like pupil/iris’s.  This is because saiyans originally evolved in a low-light environment from living under the canopy of their original forested planet (listen. listen.  You do not get monkey-based species without trees.  I do not know what was the saiyan origin planet in the main universe was, but I do not care, a rain forest type environment makes sense.), and later on the red sky of planet Vegeta was relatively dim compared the sky of planet earth.  Additionally, because they tend to gain power with the moon, saiyans are naturally at least partly nocturnal, which also plays a part in their keen night vision.  Saiyans also have sensory organs present in the inside corners of their eyes that allows them to sense heat energy of nearby organisms (i.e. that thing snakes can do? yeah kind of like that).  

Half saiyan eyes are rather similar to those of a full saiyan, although the sensory organs are under-developed and unspecific.  Gohan is actually tremendously, horrifically blind without glasses nearsighted, although not as a result of an incorrect blending of human and saiyan genes or entirely as a result of eyestrain from reading.  Admittedly he did strain his eyesight throughout his childhood, because it didn’t get bad enough that he needed a book half an inch from his face in order to see it until high school, and he didn’t realize most people did not see the world in various states of blurry.  Luckily, saiyan and half-saiyan eyes are similar enough in function to human eyes that regular glasses do work.  

In quarter saiyan eyes, the thermoreceptor organ is entirely absent, and pupils are more ovular even in day-light.  Otherwise they function much the same as full and half-saiyan eyes do.  

Noses

A saiyan’s sense of smell is probably their most developed sense.  It is very sensitive, and capable of picking up minute differences in scent.  They are adept trackers by smell alone as a result.  That said, saiyans aren’t particularly good at blocking out potent smells, and overwhelming scents-particularly unpleasant ones-can be debilitating much as high pitched noises can be to a Namek.  Unlike humans, saiyan noses have diagonally set nostrils instead of downward facing ones, much like new world monkeys.  In half and quarter bloods, the angle of the noses shifts downwards with the addition of human blood, but otherwise the function remains the same

Body and Proportions

Saiyans tend to be stockier than the average human, and very much embody the idea of being built like bricks.  They’re a warrior race from a high-gravity environment, and they look it.  They have long torsos and longer arms, and a prehensile tail and prehensile feet from their arboreal ancestors (who were comparatively closer to modern saiyans than humans closest tree dwelling ancestors).  A saiyan tail, apart from its noted sensitivity to being yanked and containment of trigger glands for the Oozaru transformation, is also an important part of a saiyan’s balance.  Ki-energy can serve as a substitute, but without actively circulating energy, a tail-less saiyan has not insignificant balance problems.  As children, saiyans tend to lean more towards a quadrupedal stance, although it’s considered improper in higher echelons of Saiyan society.  As they grow older and proportions shift, they tend toward bipedality.  Unlike human primates, saiyans have retained claws instead of nails.  

Half-saiyans have more variety in body shape, although they still trend to more solid builds (e.g. even Gohan, the person closest to being a twig of everyone with saiyan genetics, has fairly broad shoulders and a barrel chest).  Typically, the length of the torso, arms, and legs are more or less equal in length to each other.  Half saiyans retain the prehensile tail and feet, although they’re not quite as hairy as a full blooded saiyan would be.  Their nails aren’t quite claws, but they’re still thickened and come to a natural point.  

Quarter saiyans have similar body shapes as half-saiyans.  Their proportions are close to human, although they’re noticeably off to a practiced eye.  The tail is thinner and shorter, but still present, and while the back of the foot is fairly human in shape, the feet are still prehensile.  Their nails are mostly blunt, but still thicker than a full blooded humans would be.

Due to the high gravity environment of both planet Vegeta and the original saiyan origin planet, saiyan skeletal and muscular structures are several times more dense than those of most humanoid species of comparable size.  This allows saiyans to hit harder and lift more than most species, assisting in part of their infamous power.  Their skin and most of their other organs are similarly tough-without energy circulation, they can still be harmed by mundane means, but it takes a considerable amount of force to result in damage (e.g regular hand guns or even a car crash wouldn’t amount to much more than mild discomfort, but something along the lines of a missile launcher would) On the flip side, the amount of energy required to maintain their dense physicality is incredibly large.  Even without much activity, around twenty to thirty thousand calories are necessary for a saiyan to function.  Strenuous activity and/or energy use increase the required calorie usage exponentially.  As a result, a saiyan can die of starvation in a matter of days.  The tough physicality and intense calorie requirements are considered dominant traits, and remain present in half and quarter saiyans.

#dbz #speculative biology #biology #saiyan biology #dragon ball z #son goku #son gohan #son pan #listen!!!if you're gonna make an alien species of violent monster-monkey space pirates #let them look the part!! #let aliens be weird and funky looking #its!! space #mash up a bunch of things that sound cool!!! #long post #psuedo science

[ljandersen]

Missing in Action

Pairing:  FemShep/Kaidan Alenko, ME-3 Summary:  They’ve finished their meal at Apollos, and Shepard has one thing on her mind.  Unfortunately, more than a steak sandwich stands in her way. _______________

Shepard’s heart beat in rhythm with her footsteps, meaning a gallop.  She dragged Kaidan by the fingertips down the dock.  The Normandy rose before them.  Once through the Normandy’s door, the decontamination cycle started.

“The Citadel has the slowest damn elevators,” Shepard muttered pacing the airlock.  “Why’d those salarians have to get in with us?  Are those close-door buttons just props?”

Kaidan laughed, face flushed, and eyed her obliquely.  “Shepard, that really wasn’t nice.”

“What?  Pushing the button?  I was this close to shoving them out with my boot.  Giving them a good ‘shoo’ hand flapping.  You take forever to eat a steak sandwich, by the way.”  Shepard glanced at the camera overhead.  She twisted away from Kaidan with more caged pacing.

“There’s time.  The reapers aren’t in the nebula yet.”  Kaidan smirked.

Damn that smirk was cute.  Ah!  She swung away again and faced the Normandy’s door.  Now she’d unblinded herself and let the feelings escape, it was an endorphin trigger just looking at him.  Since the day in life support, she’d hoped a busy schedule and some distance would solve things.  Now, she didn’t want to solve it.  At least, not by burying it.  The doors hissed open.  Shepard dove onto the gangway.

“Oh, hey, Commander.”  Joker called from the cockpit.  He swiveled around in his chair.  “Got some flight records you need to sign off.  Like, ASAP.”

Shepard froze.  She ground her teeth and spun around.  She stumbled into Kaidan.  She gave him a good leer before shuffling around him.

“Give ‘em to me.”  Shepard put her hand out to Joker.  “With the speed I check them, you’ll be wishing the Normandy was that fast.”

“Whoa.  Don’t insult my woman.  She’s right there.”

EDI turned in the copilot’s seat.  “Jeff, this body is not the focal point of my sensory input.”

“Yeah.  Heard that before.”  Joker leaned an elbow on his armrest.  “Makes it a little weird, EDI, when your sensory input involves the whole crew.”

“I can be selective in disabling sensory input according to stimuli and location.”

“EDI, not in front of the Commander.”

“Joker, my patience is so thin a sneeze will tear it.”  Shepard waved her hand.  “Well?”

Joker frowned at something behind Shepard.  Shepard followed his gaze to Kaidan.  Kaidan stood on the gangway a few steps behind her, arms crossed, and studying the ceiling vent.

“Joker,” Shepard snapped.

“What?  Oh, yeah.  It’s here somewhere.  Had it on one of these datapads.”  Joker fumbled around below his seat shifting through the heap of wrappers, soda bottles, and datapads.  “Huh.  Nope.  That one’s not it.  Got to be –”

“This really ASAP?”  Shepard put her fists on her hips and loomed over him.

Joker looked up into her shadow.  “Commander, you seem kinda antsy.  I’ve got it around here.”  He picked up another datapad and discarded it.

“Joker, these reports obviously aren’t ASAP.”

“What flight records are you trying to access, Jeff?  Perhaps I can be of assistance.”

“Uh …”

“You typically use ship-interfacing datapads.  I can do a basic positioning search if given specific identification criteria.  Alternatively, I can download the report onto a new datapad if recovering the original datapad is immaterial to the report’s full review.” 

“No, EDI.  I, uh … I’m sure it’s here somewhere.”

“Perhaps the datapad you are unable to locate has been misplaced at your side terminal.  A pile of debris on the console could be concealing it.”

Joker gave a tight chuckle.  “Uh, doubt that, EDI.  Why’d I be over there with it?  I’m sure it’s somewhere.”  Joker held Shepard’s eye and teetered on the edge of his seat.  He poked blindly at the side terminal.  His eyes slid sideways to the side screen, and he cursed. 

“Jeff, this search is increasing your heart rate.  Your unstable position may precipitate a fall.  Let me assist you.”

Shepard frowned at Joker and stepped to the side to see the object of his blind fumbling.

“No, EDI, I’ve got it.”  Joker waved EDI off.  He gave Shepard a cheesy, shifty-eyed grin.  “Hey, Commander, why don’t you –”

“What the hell’s that?” Shepard lunged at the side terminal and tapped the screen.  “This live?  External surveillance cameras.  The airlock too?  Joker?”

Joker jabbed a round button next to the screen.  The picture flipped.  “It’s set to autorotate cameras.  Just like to be aware.  You know.”

“There are no ASAP reports, are there?”  Shepard hissed.  “EDI, was Joker watching me on the surveillance camera?”

“EDI,” Joker whispered under his breath and gave her a pointed a stare.

“Jeff was made aware of your approach.  Security footage was observed.  Should the settings on these cameras have restricted access?”

He’d seen her towing Kaidan by the hand then.  Shepard clenched her jaw and stared down at Joker.  “You … I’ll deal with you later.  I’ve got something else I need to deal with ASAP.  Now, where did … Dammit, where’d he go?”

“Which crew member do you wish to locate?”  EDI came up beside her.

“Major—There he is.”  Shepard started down the gangway.

Kaidan passed her and plopped down a mini-ladder.

“Kaidan?” Shepard said.  “What the hell are you doing?”

He shrugged and waved at Joker.  “You’re doing flight reports or whatever.  Heard something clinking around up here.”  He climbed up the ladder, tugged off the overhead panel, and stuck his head inside.

“In the vent?” Shepard sputtered.  “Who cares?  Get down.”

“Who cares?”  Kaidan ducked his head down from the vent.  “You know, I was just talking to Adams about the thermal element that cycles into the life support system.”

EDI rubbed her chin.  “There have been anomalous readings in this section of the life support ventilation.”

“Are we going to die?” Shepard put her arms out.

“An unlikely outcome,” EDI said.  “The anomaly is confined to three meters of ductwork.  The CIC and cockpit are supplied by –”

“Hear that, Kaidan?  We’re not going to die.”  Shepard tugged on his uniform.

Kaidan flared blue, and Shepard reeled back.  He was reaching for something in the duct.  The shock from his biotics made her laugh.  They crinkled goosebumps up her arm.  She hadn’t expected him to flare.

“Kaidan.”  Shepard pushed down the giddy feeling and straightened her shoulders.  Her heart beat against her ribs.  Not overwhelmed by the battlefield, she could feel the unique resonance, the flavor of his biotics.  The rush of energy was so familiar.  It felt … felt good.  Felt really good.  “What are you doing, Kaidan?  Don’t make me knock the ladder out beneath you.  We have a, uh … report to review.”  Joker snorted and gave Shepard a flat look. 

EDI turned her head to Shepard.  “Removing the ladder from under Major Alenko without warning may cause injury.  As you are concerned with a task dependent on his involvement—”

Joker moaned and tipped his head back against the seat.  “EDI, please.”

“It is not recommended you risk a physical injury that could impede accomplishing your task,” EDI concluded.

Shepard rubbed her arm.  “Uh … well, I ... Kaidan!  You almost done?”

“Found some loose bolts.  See.”  Kaidan lowered his hand and showed a palm full of bolts.  Blue faded off his skin.  He must have been using biotics to collect them out of the duct.  “Think I got all of them, but there’s loose casing back there.”  He hopped off the ladder.  “Probably should let Adams know so he can get someone up there.  We’d need to order the parts before leaving the Citadel.”

Shepard leaned into him.  “You doing this to aggravate me on purpose?  This some mental foreplay you’re trying out?  Because I hate it.”

Kaidan gave a strained laugh.  He glanced sideways at Joker.

“No,” Kaidan whispered.

Joker snorted. “Uh, yeah, Kaidan, you're quiet enough I can’t hear the words.  Don’t need to hear ‘em to have my skin crawling.  I mean, Commander, again?  Don’t do this.”

“Joker.”  Shepard walked over to him.  “Butting into my personal life is way out of line.  Only warning.”  She stared down at him.

Joker fidgeted with his cap and spun around.  “Loud and clear.  Just trying to be a friend.  Sorry I care.”

Shepard glared at the back of his chair.  She opened her mouth, mind spinning with words, then snapped it shut.  She’d deal with this later.  She spun around. 

Kaidan was strolling down the gangway into the CIC.  He held the comm in his ear.  “Yeah, think it’s block five toward the helm.  Found some loose bolts.  Looked stripped, like maybe the refresher system overhead is grinding against the top of the duct.  Casing’s coming loose.”  Kaidan stopped.  He listened rolling the bolts around his palm.  He looked back at the open vent.  “No, I didn’t try that.  You really think … Oh, no.  I agree.  Makes sense.  I can see if –”

“No, you can’t.”  Shepard hooked his elbow.

The bolts spilled out of his hand.  They scattered across the floor of the CIC.  Kaidan spun in a half circle watching them roll through the grate.

“EDI,” he said.

“I will recover the bolts,” EDI said.

“Uh, thanks.” 

Shepard pulled him toward the elevator.  He reached for the comm in his ear again, but Shepard dragged his hand down.

“Shepard, I should probably sign off with Adams.  You stopped me mid-sentence.”

Shepard pressed the comm in her ear and stopped at the elevator.  “Adams?  Hey.  Major Alenko’s out of order for a while.”  She listened.  “He’s fine.  Catch you later.  Shepard out.”  She gave Kaidan a pointed look.

“You’re so impatient.”  Kaidan chuckled under his breath.  “You going to tear me apart the minute the elevator doors close?”

“No.”  Shepard cast a bitter glance toward the cockpit.  “Joker’s watching us on the camera.  Cabin door closes though … Won't be a piece left big enough to identify you by.”

Kaidan laughed.  It came out a bark.  He smothered it with the back of his hand and smiled lopsidedly, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

A private crossed the CIC to them.  “Major Alenko, I have –”

“No.”  Shepard batted back the incoming datapad.

The private stopped short with wide eyes. 

“Later,” Shepard said more smoothly.  “He’s off duty.  Mission reports take priority.”  The elevator door opened.

“I—I understand, Commander.  So sorry.”  The boy backed up.

“Shepard …” Kaidan growled under his breath.  “Hey, Ellingsworth, you can message that to me.  I’ll get it back to you.”

The boy’s eyes brightened.  “Uh, thanks, sir.  Sorry to interfere.”

Shepard yanked Kaidan into the elevator.  She slapped the button for the cabin and interlaced her hands behind her back.  Kaidan copied her posture.  The elevator lifted them up a floor and opened to the landing in front of her cabin.  

She bounded out and rushed to the door.  A hand snared her elbow.  Kaidan pulled her around to face him.  Her breathing tightened.  He was so close. He slid fingers into her hair, held the back of her head, and studied her eyes.  Goosebumps pricked across her skin.  

The cabin door opened at her back, but Shepard stepped closer to him instead.  She wrapped her arms around his neck.  His lips spread into a soft, wide smile.  Damn, he was attractive.  It wasn't just the symmetry of his face or those eyes.  It was something magnetic beyond the concrete. His eyes dropped to her lips, and he leaned down.  

Shepard lurched onto her toes and crushed her mouth to his lips.  He tasted like she remembered.  His lips moved like she remembered, soft and slow at first, exploring and velvety against her growing smile.  She flicked her tongue across his lips, and he opened his mouth.  Her blood roared.  His tongue slipped slowly against hers.   The floor fell away.  She drew at his mouth, his tongue, all the oxygen in the room.

“I missed you.” She panted between kisses.

“Missed you more,” he murmured.

His fingertips caressed down her throat and splayed across her collarbone.  She trembled.  So much like she remembered and so different.  She thought she remembered every touch.  It was all new but familiar: the pinprickling trail of his fingertips, the vertigo of his deepening kisses, the heat of his breath against her face.  

She worked her fingers between the buttons of his shirt and touched the hot skin beneath.  He made a low sound in the back of his throat.  Each labored breath drowned her deeper in his smell, fresh soap and pine. He tasted of premedatory mint.  A sweet taste. She pressed against him with his chest thumping under her fingers.  Her memory was too dull to record this.

She drew back gasping for air and laughed.  He opened his eyes.  His grin widened with dragging breaths rushing through his lips.  Shepard grabbed his collar in both hands and pulled him backward into her room.

From “About Mars”:  AO3 and FFN

#Shenko #fanfic #Kaidan Alenko #femshep #femshep x kaidan #About Mars #fShenko