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tinylilemrys · 10 months

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Lonely In London

Relationship:

Trent Crimm/Ted Lasso

Additional Tags:

Angst and Romance | Romcommunism | Friends to Lovers | Romantic Comedy | Alternate Universe – Canon Divergence

Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Summary:

Henry, worried about how lonely his dad seems to be in London, writes into an advice podcast for some help. A podcast run by an ex-colleague of Trent's – one that he listens to religiously. If Trent falls a little for 'Lonely In London' because he reminds him of Ted, well that's just coincidence. An homage to romcommunism, largely based on 'Sleepless In Seattle' with a few others thrown in for good measure.

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CHAPTER 2

It's ridiculously early on a Wednesday morning when Ted next hears from the podcast.

Dear Ted Lasso (The Ted Lasso???)

Firstly, allow me to apologise if you were hoping to remain anonymous in our correspondence. Your full name is in the email address you used to email us, and I come from a journalism background so not much gets past me. Rest assured that if you are indeed the Manager of AFC Richmond (as the context clues from your letter seem to confirm) your secret is safe with us.

This is just to ask if you would be alright with us setting up a forwarding address for emails from our listeners. We weren't anticipating you being as popular with our listeners as you are, but our inbox is flooded at the moment and seeing as the whole format of our show is dependent on the emails we receive from our listeners, it's making it difficult for us to navigate our normal mail between all the mail addressed specifically to you.

So far, from what I've seen, all of these emails seem to be from lovely people would like to commiserate about that shared feeling of loneliness. That said I cannot guarantee that every email is going to be as innocent. You wouldn't believe the shit we get in our inbox sometimes. Please take this into account when making your decision.

All that's left to say is thank you again for your letter. The episode that featured it has been our most successful by quite a margin and has boosted our subscriber base substatially. I understand that this was likely not your intention when emailing us, but I wanted to thank you for it anyway.

Wishing you all the best for your future adventures in the world of romance. I'd throw my hat in the ring myself if I wasn't such a raging lesbian.

Kind regards, Lauren Miller Content Coordinator, Help I'm So Sad Podcast Breakneck Media Network

Ted reads and rereads the email chuckling each time. It's the best thing he's received for a while. Whoever this Lauren is, he think he'd enjoy shooting the shit with her over a pint. And maybe it's just a particular way journalists write, but some of the bite in her writing reminds him of Trent's.

Which reminds him – he's promised Henry he would do something.

Howdy! Glad to hear Anabelle's safely back in London with you! No pressure if you're busy or if you don't want to, but Henry's been asking when we can get ice-cream with the Crimms again, and I promised I'd ask. It would be nice to talk at any rate. I have some ideas about Richmond that I'd love to pick your brain about as someone who knows far more about this sport I find myself coaching than I do. Let me know. 🌻

He almost second guesses the sunflower, but it's a standard part of their correspondence now, ever since Trent first started reacting to his messages that way and Ted started sending them back. He doesn't know if it counts as flirting, but it's on the border of it enough that he doesn't mind taking the risk.

He's just about to respond to the email when his phone dings next to him.

Anabelle (and I) would love that. She hasn't stopped talking about Henry since last time. She's told me she thinks he's the coolest person ever. In so many words. Let me know when you're free. My schedule is astoundingly open at the moment.

Ted grins.

How about tomorrow around 3? I've heard it's going to be a scorcher of a day by your wilting English standards.

Nice try. You've told me before that it's only barely warmer there on average than it is here. You don't get to play the American superiority card on this one.

(3 tomorrow sounds lovely, though.)

Mr Crimm, practically everything in your royalty-having, tea-loving, swearing-as-affection little country is winning me over. At least let me cling to the one or two things that I still pretend to completely love about America. 🤠🦅

(Looking forward to it🌻)

He worries for a while that he's playing too far into the realm of flirting and scaring Trent off. But then his phone dings again.

Fair enough. It's a small price to pay to hold onto Richmond's secret weapon.

(Likewise. 🌻)

He grins like an idiot and turns back to his email. He's riding such a high now that he can't even be that worried about the whackadoos he might be letting into his inbox as he types his reply to Lauren.

Hi Lauren

Thank you for your discretion. I'm not as worried about myself as I am about the wellbeing of my club and my son, who's staying with me for the summer. So your silence on the matter of me writing in continues to be appreciated.

Please go ahead and set up the forwarding address. Y'all have been so kind to my son and me with the advice, the least I can do is make sure that your inbox isn't a nightmare to navigate.

Also, do y'all have a physical address? I would really love to come by and drop off something small to say thanks.

Hoping to hear from you soon.

Lonely In London (Ted Lasso if you're nasty)

He doesn't bother waiting for a response before setting to work baking a batch of shortbread. Worse comes to worst, he'll give the batch to Trent, who, although Ted knows will never admit it, has a soft spot for it as much as Anabelle does.

Maybe he'll set some aside for Trent anyway.

He's just considering the merits of making a second batch when Henry stumbles out from the bedroom adorable and sleep-tousled, clutching his favourite duck plushie.

"Hey, Bud," he says, throwing an arm around Henry as he comes to say good morning. "Did you sleep well?"

Henry nods and rubs his eyes.

"Are you making your Rebecca cookies?" he asks.

"Yes and no," Ted replies. "Yes, it's those cookies. No, they're not actually for Rebecca. I thought we could take a trip to the Help I'm So Sad studio to give them a batch to say thanks for all their kind advice. What do you think?"

"Yeah!" says Henry, suddenly wide awake. "Can I help?"

"Of course. Why don't you go shower and change quick and we'll make the next batch together?"

"Okay!" he says, dropping his toy on the counter and bounding off with all the enthusiasm of a pre-season Dani Rojas.

"Oh boy, Quackstopher, just wait till he hears we're also getting ice-cream with Trent and Anabelle again tomorrow," he says to the abandoned duck, loud enough that Henry will hear it.

"We are?" he says, racing back into the room.

"Tomorrow," Ted laughs. "Go get today going and we'll get cracking on making some for them too, okay?"

Henry gives a little excited squeal in the place of words and runs off to the bathroom.

For a small moment, Ted can't imagine why he ever needed to write into a show called Help I'm So Sad in the first place.

***

Not since the early days of fancying Shaun has Trent put this much thought into choosing an outfit for something that isn't even a date. But here he is, putting on and removing items of clothing. Changing into and out of jeans. Trying to figure out what provides the maximum amount of looking good while simultaneously looking like he didn't put much effort into putting it together.

"Belle-Belle," he says, turning around to the corner where Anabelle is playing a few of her Barbies to get her opinion on two of his shirts. "Should I wear the pink shirt or the blue one?"

"Pink!" says Anabelle, holding up her Barbie in what Trent assumes is an explanation if the hot pink dress is anything to go on.

"Well, that's on me for asking the four-year-old who doesn’t believe in any other colour, I guess," laughs Trent. "Thanks, Squish."

He wears the pink shirt and is rewarded an hour later with a massive moustachioed grin.

"Nice shirt, TC," says Ted, pulling him into a friendly hug. "The colour suits you."

"Thanks, Ted," he says, hoping that between the glare of the sun and Ted's dark glasses his blush is obscured enough that Ted doesn't notice it. "You're looking well yourself."

"Aw, shucks," says Ted. "Don't get me all flustered now."

Henry steps forward to shake his hand and hand over a box of what Trent, to his delight, suspects might be a batch of his famous shortbread.

"Hi, Teddy! Hi Henry!" says Anabelle excitedly and Ted honest-to-god gets down on his haunches to talk to her.

"Well hey there, always-swell Anabelle," he says. "How's Thursday been treating you so far?"

"Good," says Anabelle, suddenly shy. "I've brought my Barbies and Daddy says we're getting ice-cream."

"That we are," says Ted. "Just as soon as I figure out how I'm getting up again."

He makes a big show of not being able to get up despite Anabelle and Henry's best efforts to pull him to his feet, and Trent is too charmed to even be embarrassed by the number of people watching them. Or the old lady who mutters "sweet little family" a few feet away. Let them believe that this is his dorky partner. Trent should be so lucky.

He's hit with the realisation that he's so in love it almost physically hurts.

With one last hoist, Anabelle and Henry succeed in getting Ted to his feet and when Ted loses his balance a little in the momentum, Trent is only too happy to catch and steady him. Ted, to Trent's surprise, does actually look slightly flustered for a moment, before seemingly shaking it off

"And that's why in our business we say 'teamwork makes the dream work'," Ted laughs. "Good job, squad. High-fives all round."

After a round of high-fives, they make their way into the ice-cream parlour to place their orders.

"Sorry for causing a scene out there," says Ted softly. Now that his sunglasses are folded and hanging from the buttons of his polo shirt, Trent can see his expression is a little sheepish. "It's just, I know Henry enjoys that game. He's had a busy morning and he's a little tuckered out and grumpy to boot. I thought it would pull him out of his funk a little."

"Well, it seems to have done the trick," says Trent, smiling as he looks over at a nearby table where Henry and Anabelle are playing Barbies together. "Once again Ted Lasso's unconventional methods save the day."

"Now, Trent Crimm, that's not fair. You know I'm no match for your flattering prose." He winces as though he's over-spoken. "Sorry, I didn't mean to bring up your old job. Even in passing."

"It's okay to bring up my job, Ted," he says, with a gentle smile. "My time as a journalist may be at an end, but I couldn't stop being a writer if I tried."

"Fair enough," says Ted, looking relieved. "Have you given any thought to what you're going to do now?"

"As a matter of fact, I've just successfully pitched another book idea to my publisher," Trent replies.

"Well, hell, look at you go. Trent Crim, the unstoppable. What's it about?"

Trent might actually perish in the intensity of that smile.

"I was actually hoping to write about AFC Richmond." It's his turn to look sheepish, but Ted, if possible, looks even more delighted. "After all, it's a big year for you being back in the Premier League and all. And so many people, myself included, are rooting for you. Win or lose, it's sure to be a good story."

"That's a great idea," says Ted, looking genuinely delighted. "Keeley and Rebecca have been busting their butts trying to think of ways to boost our image. This is exactly the kind of thing they've been looking for."

"Yes, well, I'm still only going to write the truth. If it's a shocker of a season, I'll write it that way. Though maybe not as acerbically as I once did." says Trent, feeling somewhat self-conscious. "I don't think it will be a shocker of a season though."

"Oh yeah? How do you figure that?"

"Because in the years I've known you, Ted Lasso, I have yet to see you shy away from a challenge," says Trent. He's on the very knife's edge of plummeting into admitting everything he feels for this ridiculous, perfect man. "And I have yet to see a challenge that could best you."

He's said too much. He can't bring himself to look up now. Instead he watches as Ted scuffs a red trainer along the edge of a tile.

"Well, TC," he says in a voice barely above a whisper, "that's just about the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.

"Don't get too used to it," says Trent, feeling the conversation getting away from him into dangerous waters. "Deep down I'm still the bitter old journalist I was a few months ago."

"And I wouldn't have you any other way."

There's no time to unpack that particular statement because it’s at that moment they make it to the front of the queue. By the time they've transported their orders to the table, the conversation has shifted from the tenuous place it was to Henry's one-on-one training with Jamie Tartt and how Roy Kent has even joined for a session or two. Trent wonders if Henry can even comprehend at his age how lucky he is to be getting this kind of input.

To balance out the conversation, Ted asks Anabelle about her time in Scotland and is rewarded with an entertaining but practically indecipherable four-year-old's story that Trent thinks might line up with the trip to see the highland cows Shaun told him about. Ted, to his credit, attempts to follow every word, asking follow-up questions that would make even the most hardened of journalists proud.

If Trent was under any illusions that he could spend time with Ted without his feelings growing more intense each time, today has put paid to that. Trent couldn't be more taken with him, and the idea that he might still fall deeper is as wonderful as it is terrifying.

He's allowed a moment of reprieve by Anabelle accidentally upending her tub of ice-cream and bursting into very noisy tears. Ted immediately volunteers to run and get both a wad of serviettes and a replacement for her. Henry, proving he's every bit his father's son, immediately offers Anabelle some of his ice-cream and her sobs abruptly stop. Trent watches the two of them fondly. They get along so well. It could be so easy. He just wishes Ted could see it the way he does.

Ted's phone chimes on the table where he's left it. In the years to come, Trent will swear he didn't mean to do it. He'll blame it on his almost automatic journalistic instincts. He'll claim it was a compulsion he was still in the process of working out of his system.

That doesn't change the fact that he looks down at Ted's phone in time to catch an email. An email that starts "Dear Lonely In London…"

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Trent's instincts are almost never wrong. It's how he got as far as he did as a journalist. It's what made him so good at sniffing out sources in other papers. He recognises people in writing the way other people recognise faces in a crowd.

He was always going to fall in love with Lonely In London because Lonely In London was always Ted Fucking Lasso.

And he's not stupid. The final pieces of the puzzle are fitting into place. The banter that's teetered on flirting all these years. The actual flirting they were doing right before placing their order today. The way it always stops short of actually going anywhere.

He's Ted's PR nightmare crush. And that, more than anything, is what's so fucked about this situation.

It takes all of his carefully honed deceptive skills to pretend to be calm for the rest of the afternoon, but it's murder. And Ted, Lonely In London Ted, blissfully unaware, joking, just-having-a-grand-day-out-with-the-kids Ted, has absolutely no idea how much more damage he's accidentally done to Trent's poor heart.

Trent grabs a huge glob of ice-cream with the shitty plastic spoon, hoping the inevitable headache will help distract him from his gloom for a while.

Because, really, what do you do when you've come so close to everything you've ever wanted, only for it still to be so far out of your reach?

Despair, thinks Trent, as the ice-cream hits.

Next Chapter

#tedependent #tedtrent #ted x trent #trent x ted #ted lasso #trent crimm

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stellar-waves · 12 days

Text

staring down the sun

. . .

a boondock saints story // connor + female oc

Real men hide their feelings, at least that’s what Connor and Murphy believed in order to survive. Until Elena Jensen helps them open up through therapy before they escape prison and go back to work as the Saints. The boys learn Elena has some secrets of her own as they uncover a network of powerful crime organizations. But when a spark grows between Connor and Elena, so does the threat to the greater good.

. . .

A/N: This is shamefully my first time ever writing in this fandom, despite having loved the movie and crushing hard on Connor way back when I first rented the DVD from Blockbuster. Thank you to everyone who might be reading this crazy thing I just had to get out of my head. I really appreciate it. 💗

All artwork is original and made specifically for this story. Chapters will be updated periodically to include accompanying artwork. Started out with a kiss (how did it end up like this) and then I ran from there.

. . .

warnings: explicit language, canon-typical violence, suggestive sexual themes (no smut here), mentions of past sexual assault, mentions of death and grief/mourning, suggestion of suicidal ideation, injury

. . .

[ * includes illustrated moment ]

[1] how could you realize? *

[2] memories are just where you laid them *

[3] you were wrong, you were right

[4] two dimes in the telephone *

[5] like something's gonna give *

[6] beg for the rest of my life

[7] look at my eyes *

[8] and by morning we'll be free *

[9] but the shadows still remain

[10] the saints are coming

[11] navigate the darkness

[12] god's grace lost and the devil is proud

[13] turn my bones to sand *

[14] silent rage now that fills my lungs

[15] standing here until you make me move *

[16] taste like a summer day

[17] truth or consequence, say it aloud *

[18] use that evidence, race it around *

[19] let me be clever *

[20] hanging by a moment *

[21] got my veins all tangled closed

[22] you can never look back

[23] somehow here is gone *

[24] all the words to what's unspoken

[25] take me to sunrise from indigo *

[26] a long night, open, knowing *

[27] back into the arms that care *

[28] headlights on the hillside *

[29] swallow your pride and drown *

[30] but i wanted to stay *

. . .

#boondock saints fanfic #connor macmanus x oc #the boondock saints #boondock saints #connor macmanus #murphy macmanus #fanfic #fanart #illustrated moments #staring down the sun

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lullabyes22-blog · 1 year

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Forward, but Never Forget/XOXO - Ch: 3 - Chess

Summary: Zaun is free—and must grow into its unfamiliar new dimensions. So must Silco and Jinx. A what-if that diverges midway through the events of episode 8. Found family and fluff, politics and power, smut and slice-of-life, villainy and vengeance.

AO3 - Forward, But Never Forget/XOXO

FFnet - Forward, But Never Forget (XOXO)

Playlist on Youtube

Chapters: 1| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48

CH 3: Silco and Mel Medarda negotiate a peace treaty. An unexpected condition is thrown in.

Delicate in every way but one (the swordplay) God knows we like archaic kinds of fun (the old way) Chance is the only game I play with, baby We let our battles choose us

~ “Glory & Gore” - Lorde

The meeting is at the Riverside harbor.

Ordinarily, it is the liveliest hub in the Undercity. The merchants are the second-earliest risers—that is, second to the rats. The harbor vibrates with the music of boundless industry. The clanging of crates stripping off their metal clothing to unveil their wares. The riot of seafarers swapping prices in dozens of different languages. The skillet-fried sunfish and steaming mussel-soups at the stalls; the shrill calls of the gulls circling for easy snacks.

It's a chaotic microcosm of Zaun. Hard bargains struck, a knife up every sleeve, the air bleeding with fragrance and filth.

But oh! What cornucopia.

Now the harbor is nearly deserted. The exoskeletons of burnt-out ships cast massive shadows. Here and there, stragglers ply their trade. A clutch of sumpsnipes strip metal off a bomb-scored motorcar to resell at the black-market. In the feeble glow of a street-stall, an old woman skewers live eels on stakes to sell to passersby. Clusters of young men and women crouch in fire-gutted alleys, passing bottles of local rum.

A few of them stare in shock as Silco’s armed entourage stalks past. Others call out—cheers that hold the same savagery as curses.

The revolution has stoked the fierce fire raging inside every citizen against Piltover. The atmosphere is still volatile as a powder-keg. The least friction between Zaun and Topside could ignite into a fray.

Piltover's envoy—ten men flanking one woman—stay tensely rooted.

The harbor was their appointed spot. But Silco has barely kept to the appointed time. They are in Zaun's territory now. Let them wait. Let them stew, and sweat and second-guess. Whatever gives his own network the extra leg-up to surveil the surroundings. His teams have already made two circuits of the harbor, one wide, the other narrow.

Now they meet in the middle: Zaun with its colorful coterie of cutthroats fanned out into a claw, Piltover with its darkly-uniformed soldiers in rigid marching rows. Each party keeps their hands open. A peaceable sign, or the absence of its opposite. They each watch the other, a crisscrossing connection of sharp gazes.

Chess sequences. That's how the game is always played.

A half-minute ticks by. Then Silco deals the King's Gambit. He steps forward, a measured tread of footsteps and a piercing directness of eye.

"Councilor Medarda," he says. "Apologies for the delay."

It is a perfunctory pleasantry. So is Medarda's nod, languid as if passed over the rim of a champagne flute.

"An Undercity custom, I take it?"

"Zaun, if you please."

"Zaun. Of course." Her voice, all suave vowels and sumptuous consonants, is devoid of humor. "Please accept my congratulations. New nation. New notions of timeliness."

"In the Fissures, we move at our own pace."

"Shall I synchronize my watch?"

"You esteem your time so highly?"

"Or yours." A tart smile touches her lips. "You're a busy man, of late."

Silco meets her gaze with a sedate veneer, but a crooked twist to his mouth.

The opening bell has rung. The game begins.

A strip of sunlight flashes at the smog-hazy horizon. It silhouettes Medarda in gold. In the squalor, she is splendidly incongruous. Looking mint, as Vander used to say of an attractive woman. Her gown is of clinging off-white satin, with dapples of red, like parchment under a downpour of blood. The fabric, hand-woven textile from the Undercity's mills, probably cost real blood in every stitch. Her hair is twisted up off her neck in a sheath of dark rich curls, and the tips of her bare shoulders gleam like the golden geometry embellishing her skin, everything shellacked from the charcoal scrubs and mineral clays in the Undercity's mines.

In every player's arsenal, there are a variety of weapons. Silco doesn't miss the sartorial message Madarda conveys. Wealth and style—but also Piltover's indispensable commercial ties with the Undercity. It strikes him with a bitter breed of poignancy that this woman is the end product of his peoples' toil: a pureblood feline grown sumptuously glossy on their suffering.

Whereas Silco's own wardrobe, rather than the upshot of that suffering, is its well-tailored symptom. A cutthroat secondhand couture of worsted suits lined in Kevlar, silk cravats edged with garottes, high-buttoned boots with steel-plated toes. In Zaun, stylishness does not serve as a signpost of idleness. It signals threats subdued and obstacles surmounted.

It symbolizes survival.

"How was your journey downriver?" Silco asks.

"Eventful."

"No unpleasantry, I trust?"

She tilts her chin. "Five checkpoints. Each with full body searches. Until I showed the guards your seal. Then it was like an escort to a Demacian gala."

Keep it that way, is the cautionary message.

Silco's smile twists deeper. "Well, you're certainly dressed the part. A Vyx label, I believe?"

"Just what was on hand in my cabin."

"Oh, indeed? We value the patronage."

"And we, the effort."

"It's a living." He gestures along the riverwalk, washed in the first faded waves of sunlight. "Shall we?"

They stroll shoulder-to-shoulder. Their entourages follow at a distance, each keeping a radius of space as if readied to draw their firearms. Neither Silco nor Medarda pay them much mind. They make small-talk, permafrosted politeness layered over sharp-edged wariness, each feeling the other out.

Strangely, they've seldom crossed paths beyond rare glimpses at Topside soirees. Silco despises pedigrees; she disfavors parvenus. Her reputation as a disinherited Noxian heiress with a chip on her shoulder is well-known among men-about-town. But it barely compares with her reputation among Topside's political players as the steel dagger in a velvet glove. Diplomacy is polished into her bones. She works by clouding judgement with a tweak of that Minerva's brow, and swaying emotions with a purr from that Venusian throat.

Ah, but what are honeyed tactics in the Undercity? Simply a confection to suck all sweetness out of.

"Candidly," Silco says, "I am surprised they sent you. I was expecting the Wonderboy."

Or the Yordle. Do they bob like a cork if punted into the water? Or sink to the bottom? Silco has always wanted to seize Heimerdinger by a fistful of fur and find out.

Medarda neither bobs, nor sinks. She meets his good blue eye, and extends an exquisite hand. "Disappointed?"

"On the contrary."

They shake hands. Silco's own is hard and chilly; it envelopes hers, the sharp phalanges pressing into her softer flesh like something locking its jaws. Medarda's smooth face shows no discomfort. Instead, she holds onto his hand and turns it over, eyeing it like a palmist.

"So many calluses," she says.

"A commoner's lot."

"Miner's calluses. Knife calluses. But here—" Her fingertip traces the rough joint of his middle finger. "A scholar's callus."

"Reading my future?"

"The past yields more wisdom."

"A regressionist and an oracle?"

"Merely well-informed." She detaches but stays within arm's reach, regarding him with hazel eyes that appear golden in the slow-creeping sunrise. "After the recent furor, the Council delved into your background. Their efforts yielded little. I took the initiative to do my own digging."

"Did you strike gold?"

"Not enough to write a novel. But certainly a synopsis." She measures him with a dark ascent of lashes. "Perhaps you'll be so kind as to fill in the gaps."

"I will do my utmost."

She keeps her eyes fixed on him. Her manner is all playful refinement; beneath that, it is reflexively probing. Tossing pebbles into the stillness of the blackwater; seeing what leaves a ripple. Silco knows she expects him to play the game accordingly. Mutatis mutandis, as the saying goes.

She doesn't realize such games are topsy-turvy in Zaun.

"You're a self-made man," Medarda says. "Undercity born and bred. You've made a fortune in the steel industry, with an extensive operation of integrated mills. Some say you have a virtual monopoly in contracts to supply Ionia with warship metal."

"Piltover cold-shoulders Zaunite businessmen. I must meet the rising demand elsewhere."

"The breadth of your assets is impressive. But your origins are modest. You were the youngest of three sons, from a hardscrabble fishing district north of the Bonscutt Pump Station."

"Somewhere between nowhere and Das ist mir egal."

She stares at him. "You speak Va-Nox?"

"My mother was Ionian. From the Sotka River in Zhyun. The Void Wars left their language a bastardization of colonizer and colonized."

"Indeed. Family records state that she fled her war-torn island with nothing but the clothes on her back. She settled in the Sumps, where she met your father, a riverman by trade. He patrolled up and down the watercourse circling the Old Hungry. On clear nights, it was his duty to haul out wreckage that had fallen into the river."

"By wreckage, you mean bodies."

She blinks, but doesn't balk.

"One thousand. That is the number of bodies Daddy dragged out of the river before his death. Suicides, drunks, children. Each one doomed as soon as they quaffed the toxic run-off from Piltover's factories." Silco's smile shows no nastiness. Yet the lulling calm of his tone is edged with something sinister. "I was three when I first saw the river's capacity for ruination. Thirty-three when I experienced it firsthand. It discombobulates human beings into shapes that defy description." He sketches a little nod, deference with overtones of derision. "But please go on."

Medarda levels an unflinching look. "You were six when your father drowned in the harbor. There were rumors that he was murdered."

"Shipping magnates don't care for backtalking unionists."

"Your older brothers passed soon after. A blaze tore through your neighborhood. Entire tenements gone up in smoke. In total, nearly eighty families perished. You and your mother escaped unscathed. A year later, the Coroner's inquest unyielded evidence of poor insulation and mass overcrowding in the district."

"Parsimonious slumlords and public safety? Poor bedfellows."

Tactfully, Medarda says, "I'm told your mother suffered a … collapse… soon after."

"Collapse?" Silco repeats with a flat scoff. "Mother went bat-raftered barmy. The Asylum of the Irreparable took her away. She stayed an inmate for the next fifteen years." He shrugs. "I'd visit her on holidays. Wished she'd die, truth be told. I think we'd both have liked that. But bodies can be stubborn."

For a moment, Medarda's expression shows the sweet bareness of shock. She recovers with swiftness.

"By seven, with no living guardians, you were sent to the Hope House Orphanage. By twelve, you volunteered to serve in the mines. By sixteen, you'd cut your teeth on smuggling and racketeering. That same year, you were arrested for stabbing a Patrolman to death. Owing to a self-defense plea, you were released into the care of the Hölle Correctional Facility for juveniles. There, you enrolled in several educational programs—and excelled. By age nineteen, the Warden himself penned a letter of recommendation on your behalf.”

Silco tilts his head in remembrance. “Warden Lascelles. A good man.”

“You have fond memories of him?”

“Fond isn’t the right word. He was, de facto, my jailor. But he understood the impact fatherlessness and a lack of support has on Undercity youths. He preached a firm voice for morale, and a soft hand for discipline."

“His style seems to have agreed with you. Your transcripts from Hölle are exemplary. You even wrote a series of short stories and essays, that captured the mood of the Undercity. One, titled A Death in the Pilt, attracted notice from Piltover's Ministry of Education. That year, the Academy of Piltover accepted you into its school of commerce to meet the Fissures quota."

"Admitted, yes. Accepted? Never."

Her curlicued eyebrows arch. "You found Piltover's hospitality lacking?"

"Topside lets you sit at the table," Silco says mildly. "It never lets you eat."

"Trouble filling your belly?"

"Or my wallet. A bright mind is no currency in the City of Progress. What buys true respect are connections. I began at the very bottom, the lowest of the low. That made me nothing, in the eyes of patrons. To get anywhere in Piltover, you must be next-to-nothing. But that is the privilege of those ensconced in Topside's embrace. The rest of us fall through the cracks."

Medarda's lips pucker slyly. "You sketched a similar narrative in your speeches."

"My speeches?"

"Before the Day of Ash. You rose to prominence as an outspoken advocate for Zaun and Piltover's separation. The spokesperson for the youth wing of The Liberated Lanes, with a treatise published by clandestine press, titled Pay the Lessons Forward. I took the liberty of skimming through its pages.” She quotes, “’In the call for resistance, there is no profound difference between a layman and a soldier.’”

Silco nods gravely. "A frank assessment of our situation."

“It would seem so. Your words struck a nerve—or tapped into a vein—for many Undercity dwellers. Street-corner vigils. Sit-ins. Protest marches. Your presence was invariably linked to each. The then-editor for the Sun & Tower Newspaper attended your rallies. He called you, and I quote 'A dangerous ideologue whipping the underclasses into a frenzy with illusions of victimhood.'"

"The article did say something to that effect." Silco blandly feigns nostalgia. "My small claim to fame."

"Or infamy. On the night known as Bloody Sunday, tensions boiled over. Enforcers were anonymously tipped off about smuggled artillery in the Temple of Janna. They raided the building with flashbombs. In the explosion, fifty-five worshipers—including thirty-two women, twelve children—were killed. Rumor has it one woman was paralyzed below the waist by a bullet. Instead of calling for an ambulance, the Enforcers beat her to death."

"After taking worse liberties."

"How do you know that?"

"I entombed her ashes afterward."

Medarda stares in finely-diluted disbelief. "You knew her?"

"Somewhat." Silco's good eye is unnervingly blank, reflecting nothing. "As per common law, at any rate."

On Medarda's expression, the barest twitch of alarm. But her gold-dark eyes stay guarded.

"No artillery was found at the Temple," she says. "The Enforcers were never indicted for the attack. For the Undercity, it was the last straw. Five months later, the Day of Ash began. A mob gathered at Bridgeside. You were in top form. Your speech was exceptionally fiery. A call to arms. Payback for desecration—then, now and always. It whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Once Enforcers arrived, the scene erupted into a bloodbath. Afterward, there were barely any Undercity dwellers left. The few who survived were arrested and summarily sentenced. You were among them."

Silco nods minimally. "Three years in Stillwater."

Three years. Enough to pare a scholar into a scourge, or grind a warrior into a worm.

That's what the three years—marked by failure and fatherhood—did to Vander. In Silco's absence, the righteous rage had drained out of him. In its wake was a soppiness that reeked of self-hatred. And for what? The deaths of friends and families? The loss of old loves? As if succumbing to the status quo would honor their sacrifice.

To Silco, it was the cowardliest rationalization. Far better to honor the fallen by carrying the torch of revolution in their name. Turn Piltover into their funeral pyre. That's what a revolution was at its core. Not blood or brick or mortar. It was an act of love. A natural cataclysm, with the capacity to sack cities and birth civilizations in the same breath.

Medarda swallows, a subtle movement of her satiny neck. "After that?"

"Hm?"

"After the sentencing. What then?"

Silco leans an elbow alongside the dock's walkway. His other hand trails lazy-fingered over the railing; pockmarked in rust. He rubs his fingertips together, then dips them into his coat to withdraw his silver cigar case. In the background, Piltover's bodyguards snap into alertness.

Silco stops halfway. A smile tugs the split scar on his upper-lip.

"You don't mind, do you?"

Medarda proffers the faintest frown. "I beg your pardon?"

"If I smoke? A wicked habit, but one I cannot forgo at this hour." He dips his head to light up, his pomaded hair picking up the diffused sunrays in a blood-red patina. Smoke curls from his parted lips; Medarda coughs delicately. "Oh dear. Allergies?"

She disguises her distaste with a twitch of her nose. "A potent tobacco."

"Zaun's own brand. Brightleaf."

"It lingers."

"Hmmm. Like bloodstains on a good suit."

"Have you much trouble with the latter?"

"I'd lead a blessed life indeed, if that qualified as trouble." Silco tips his head back, expelling a sharper stream of smoke. "Now where were we?"

"After the Day of Ash." Medarda slinks closer. Her fingertips trail along the railing until her hand nearly meets his own. "You were sent to Stillwater. What happened?"

"I served my penance. The guards at your prison are miracle workers. Truly. They change a man to his marrow." He removes the cigar, contemplating it with an idle roll of his knuckles. "When the rotting slop cores a hole through your gut, they slug it out of you in a river of puke. When the darkness closes in after lights-out, they keep you company in your cell. When the winter nibbles chilblains into your feet, they strip you naked and drag you outside to remember that life could be much, much chillier."

Medarda doesn't flinch. But her hand slips nervelessly off the railing.

"Afterward," Silco says. "I returned a reformed man. I wiped my hands clean. I put my nose to the grindstone. I pulled myself up by the bootstraps. All the things Fissurefolk do, to drag themselves from their natural state of undeservingness. So they may one day—a fortunate day!—look good, upstanding citizens like yourself in the eye."

She stares at him, disturbed or dubious, it is hard to tell. "Simple as that?"

"Simpler."

He tenders the cigar toward her. A pantomime of politeness—Care to try? She shakes her head.

"There remains a shadowy chapter in your life," she says. "I've heard only rumors."

"Oh?"

"Perhaps you'll confirm or deny them. Give me the proper… elucidation … to understand you as a man."

Silco's shrug is a shameless lure. "Whatever helps us see eye to eye."

Predictably, she pounces. "What about your eye?"

"Mine?"

She challenges him with a bold once-over across the dark disfigurement of his face, hidden beneath ashen layers of make-up. "You had a brother-in-arms. The cocky fist to your crafty tongue. You preached revolution from the pulpit. He pummeled revolution into the streets. Old mugshots and police reports mention your boyhood of shared misdeeds. They called him The Hound."

"Man's best friend."

"After your release, you had a falling out."

"All bark, no bite."

Medarda sidles closer. The heat of her body radiates through her gold-speckled gown. Silco takes in the spray of subtler gold on her cheekbones. She smells headily of hot-house hyacinths.

"They say," she whispers, "that he gouged out your eye. And you, his heart."

"Sick dogs deserve mercy."

"They say he left behind an orphan. A troubled girl."

"The Lanes are full of them."

"She was special." Her voice descends into a hush of intimacy. "You took her in. Kept her close amidst a campaign of terror."

"Raise a boy, raise terror at every turn. Raise a girl, and terror becomes you."

"You trained her for years. Not just to fight, but to do what you do."

"I taught her to survive. To never back down. To always win."

"And to unleash chaos on Piltover."

"Chaos is never unleashed," Silco says, their eyes locked from inches apart. "It surfaces wherever injustice takes root."

"And does she share your dream?"

"As she's shared far worse."

Silco's cigar glows red; a wisp of smoke curls from the side of his unscarred mouth. He thinks of Jinx, that night. The pale cleverness of her hands across Fishbones. The eye-searing blueness of her flying braids. The glow of Piltover's wreckage touching the curve of her tearstained cheek.

(We showed them, didn't we, Jinx?)

Victory cost dreams. Dreams cost blood. Blood cost love.

But what did the love of a father for his daughter cost?

He senses Medarda's deep-set scrutiny. The sun expands hazily behind the harbor's jagged escarpment. He glances off, smoke twirling from his untasted cigar. One careless hand meanders along the other's sleeve, smoothing the cuff so the barest half-inch of embroidered fabric shows. It seems like a self-soothing tic disguised as vanity.

Except it is just theater. Offering Medarda the illusion of power—then snatching it away.

In an eyeblink, he swivels.

"Shall we end on a cheerful note, or a bloody one?" he says.

"I—what?"

"Not to cut the reminiscence short, my dear. But the breadth of my life bores even me. The worst way to charm a man is to remind him how heavy his years weigh. And the best rule of a negotiation is to know when to stop belaboring."

He glides closer, Medarda sways back, and he glides closer still. Then—oh my!—she is snatching at the hem of her fabulously unfeasible gown to steer away from a puddle of dead seagull rotting on the cobblestones. Her dainty shoes skid. She barely keeps her balance. Her fingers flutter in the air, the fleeting impulse for a handhold.

Silco's cold fingers fold through hers. The grip is cocksure as a frigging in a Sumpside street-corner. She startles, he steadies her. They disengage with a mutual swiftness: affront on her part, amusement on his.

"Watch your step," he says. "Rough roads in Zaun."

Medarda squares her elegant shoulders. Her poise isn't gone. But it is off-center. Silco knows why. He is not acting according to her private script; he is not adhering to the rules of engagement.

Worse, he is no longer languishing. He is looming.

Bright fingers of sunlight poke through the smog to trace the harbor: all bullet-pocked scaffoldings and scorched ship hulls. In the intensifying glow, the ravages of war are irrefutable. Medarda's eyes pass over them, and Silco's scarred visage. A vein rises and falls in her throat. It seems to dawn on her that she's not drifted downstairs on silk slippers from her warm boudoir to her basement. She's entered a different society, with different rules.

A blind spot in the shadow of civilization.

Silco takes in her discomfort with relish. Dilettantes and despots—they both seek novelty for its own sake, a temporary rescue from their privileged bubble of boredom, which is the profoundest (the only) horror they must endure. They descend en masse to disaster zones. They gawp through prison bars at inmates on death-row like monkeys at the zoo. They size up the madmen in the padded cells of asylums like ghouls at a party séance. The reduce the victims' suffering to comedy and censure, cabaret and consumption.

Then they move on, while their leftovers are left to rot.

Medarda—prodigy of Piltover—is no different. She deigns her presence as a fragrant cloud of charity, with Zaun no better than dung under her shoe. She thinks to reopen the wounds of Silco's sad history, then wield her own attentions as a benevolent balm. His selfhood is an oyster she wants to crack open, to slurp up what's inside, leaving him an emptied husk that does her bidding.

Such sweet delusion.

Whatever she finds inside of Silco is enough to consume her entirely.

"I give you full credit," Silco says. "You blended record with hearsay most cleverly. The rest? She filled in for you."

"I'm not sure what—"

"Her. The girl staying with the Kirramans. Lapping up Piltover's kindness, in exchange for dirt on the Lanes." He flicks his cigar over the railing. "Well, every guttersnipe deserves a day in the sun. Just as Piltover deserves its nose rubbed in the dirt."

"I hardly think—"

"Ah, ah. No belaboring." He gives her a slithering stare-down. "Now listen closely, my dear. I enjoy your wit and your dimples. But I don't have time to play with you. What do you have in mind with this parley? Beyond purveying children's games?"

"I am purveying peace."

"Not payback?"

"One needn't describe it in such terms."

"A little of each, hm?"

"Or something longer-lasting." Keeping a smile in place, she closes the space between them. "Our nations needn't be at an impasse. We can help each other."

"I'm not sure I follow you," Silco says, though of course they both know better.

"It's quite simple. The girl under your charge stole something from us. Used it to tear down our city. We could demand her as tribute. One terrorist as recompense for months of mutual terror. But last time—" Her eyes shade a fraction. "—you esteemed the bargain too little."

"Talis demanded too much."

Too much for a deal struck too late. Jinx is born to blaze through Zaun's history as a miracle, not a martyr. Weighed on the cosmic scales, her crimes are barely a fraction to Piltover's crimes against Zaun. Their inhumanity, their indifference. Never a finger lifted; never a moment's mercy. In taking Jinx, did they expect Silco to show mercy in turn?

(I won’t lose my child again.)

The strangling blackness returns to his chest. Pressure thick as drowning.

Quietly, Medarda says, "I think I understand."

"Oh?"

Something drains from her eyes: a gloss melting into gentleness. "A child's life, for any crime, is no even trade."

"You demanded it, all the same."

"It was a bargaining counter. But those, I find, are best suited to tangibles."

"So what is the new tangible in question?"

"The Hex gem. We would see it returned. In exchange—" her small hand rests on his forearm, "— Piltover will support Zaun."

"Once, you buried us under hostility. Now, you'd bind us through humility?"

"On the contrary. We will recognize Zaun as a new nation. We will help to rebuild it into an equal. You're at a vulnerable juncture. We can ease the transition through aid and access to our Gates. Establish a mutual prosperity between our citizens. A paradise—each in our own image."

Her gaze holds a magnetic glow of goodwill. Meanwhile, Silco feels the bullet click into place within the inner-chamber of his own skull. He gives her the first truly genuine smile that has stretched across his features in nearly three months. It isn't a pleasant smile.

"Your family," he says. "They hail from Noxus. Correct?"

Medarda nods, then blinks down at her hand on his arm. Through her fingertips she can feel it: the low-down vibrations of something monstrous uncoiling inside.

"What's it like?" Silco wonders softly. "Banishment for having a spine of watered silk instead of steel? Perhaps if you'd profited from your family's lessons, you'd have kept an eye to the horizon—instead of your coffer. Then again, Piltover has blinded itself with hubris for years. We are simply its rude awakening."

Medarda darkens and draws away, her eyes flashing.

Much better, Silco thinks.

He is too old—too damned rabid—to be led by his cock like a cunt-struck mongrel. He'd known from the beginning that she would choreograph the meeting on her terms, then offer a backhanded peace-deal like a benevolent mistress doling out scraps, while letting Zaun believe it was a banquet.

Zaun is done being Piltover's mongrel.

"It isn't cowardice," says Medarda, "to prevent more killing."

"My, aren't you the pristine pot to my tar-black kettle."

"What do you mean?"

"You had the temerity to regurgitate my life like a storybook. Yet you never noticed?" His accent carves itself into a cultured contempt that mimics hers to the letter. "My life is any Zaunite's life. My driver's, my lieutenant's, or my bootblack's. Piltover doesn't look us in the eye when it kills us. But it kills regardless—with dirty water, toxic air, gridlocked housing, rigged ballots, and Enforcer's bullets. Now you dare to offer us decolonization through political dependency?"

"Aren't you guilty of the same?" Medarda's gaze, which was golden gentleness a moment ago, is now a tigress' glower. "The Shimmer you've crippled the Undercity with. The terror you wield to keep them in line. The crimes that corrupt the very core of your shining vision."

"Two wrongs don't make a right, eh?"

"Nor good a pretext to do evil."

Silco smile becomes a mouthful of shark's teeth around a throatful of blood. "Ah, but what is evil? A game of semantics. Kick a man to death and you're a murderer. Enslave an entire nation and you're a conqueror." His good eyelid shades to a death-pall. "Surely, your mother taught you that lesson? I've met her a time or two; proselytizing for peace isn't her style."

Medarda's eyes flash brilliantly.

Silco enjoys the effect. Poised, she is attractive as an architectural edifice. You take a roving eyeful and move on with your life. Angry, she is erotically charged, and vulnerable as an exposed vein.

He can imagine how many men have dreamed of stripping away that lustrous façade to sink their teeth into the hot throb of tenderness beneath. He wonders how many more have imagined her as he can: on her elegant knees, her throat baring itself and her lips wet and distended to take what he drives inside.

"Pity," he murmurs. "It seems her lessons didn't stick. Personally, I'd pack you off to the trenches until you learned, and never forgot. You cannot create a perfect society with your eyes wide shut—while shit soils your feet. You want Paradise? Such things aren't built on lofty ideals. They are made in naked ambition, and war, and blood."

"Until there is nothing left."

She doesn't raise her voice. But the ferocity of her tone rips the words into a snarl.

Silco's polite smile becomes a lopsided rictus. Go on.

Medarda drags in a slow breath. Her anger, no longer held at a dignified distance, now suffuses her entire body like a sunlit aureole.

"I am trying," she says. "To protect both our interests." Her hands make supple curving motions in the air, describing a set of scales—or a pair of wedding rings. "We were once a unified nation. A marriage of equals. Now every moment Zaun stays separate from Piltover is moment of peril."

"Marriage? Do they beat and rape their spouses in Topside?"

She doesn't balk at the depthless hatred in his voice. Her expression is grave.

"Today, you celebrate independence from Piltover," she says. "Tomorrow is another story. A nation forged in war remains at war. The Undercity's loss will briefly unbalance Piltover. But we have the Hex Gates. The resources and international goodwill. We will recover. Zaun will not."

"Rather sure of yourself, aren't you?"

"I know that in destroying the Bridge, you have dealt yourselves the cruelest blow. The Council is already on the warpath for reparations. They will enforce sanctions. They will pressure our neighbors into doing the same. All of these are serious barriers to Zaun's growth. Remember—a newborn is most vulnerable in its first months of life."

"Now we've been demoted from battered spouse to newborn?"

She shakes her head, subtly seething. "Jeer your fill. But you are burying yourself in a hole."

"A hole has two ends."

"Isolation or Hell? Then the Fissures are doomed."

"Are they?" He tilts his head. "You destroyed our trucks, but not our depots. You burned our ships, but not our harbor. You stole our wealth, but not our mines. You've certainly not killed our potential. A population of multitalented, highly skilled and ruthless workers. Unlike Piltover, we eat, sleep and bleed innovation. You gave us no other choice. In time, we have the capacity to become a free trade zone."

Medarda's lip curls downward. "Perhaps so. But in the interim? You'll need more than schemes and Shimmer. More than your chem-barons' checkbooks. A nation needs roads, rails, flyovers, highways. It needs schools and hospitals. It needs a lynchpin of humanity. Not this den of wolves you seek to create."

"Wolves are loyal. I can't say the same for foxes."

Something in Medarda's face occludes. It is brief, but not beyond Silco's threshold of perception. On himself, such displays are farcical diversions. On her, he senses something different. The perfect mask of diplomacy dislodged by a moment's doubt.

Slowly, she says, "I'm asking you to reconsider."

"Fall in line, rather."

She shakes her head. Her mask is back in place, but so neutral that she seems to be effortfully clutching it.

Silco says, "You're taking a lot of risks, my dear. Some might argue that, with the blow we've dealt Piltover, things are irreparable between us. You should cut your losses. Cut us loose. Yet you refuse."

She smiles, but it doesn't sit right on her face. "We are the City of Progress and of Principle."

"Is that right? Or—"

"What?"

"Are you trying to prove something?" His tongue flirts absently around his mouth; a rake of incisors and chipped teeth. "Trying to earn someone's respect? Show them that diplomacy is the best recourse. The fox can outwit the worst of the wolves."

"What would you know of that?"

Her words are modulated but also fiercely wound. Her fingers trace the gold ring on her left hand—the Medarda crest. Silco takes it in, and knows he is on to something.

"I think I understand," he says. "If Piltover chose, they could defeat Zaun without bloodying their hands. Get Noxus involved, perhaps? They've a mighty army. They'd thrash us soundly. But what then? Piltover would be in Noxus' debt. In time, the City of Progress would be the City of Paupers—its funds drained and its potential decimated. Just like any Noxian colony. And should Demacia enter the picture? Well." He spreads his arms. "You'd start another Void War. All because we dared to shove your boot off our necks."

"It needn't go exactly as you describe."

"It needn't. But is the risk worth it?" His voice drops conspiratorially. "I'm told you've a taste for risk. But not for war. You're one of those decaffeinated Noxians. Conquest-free, low on bloodshed, with civilized traces of mercantilism. But scratch deeper beneath the surface, and your neurosis is based in guilt. You believe in taking responsibility. In showing mercy."

Caught between self-revelation and self-protection, Medarda scowls. His words have struck a nerve.

"In that case," Silco says, "I have a proposition."

"What?"

"Zaun will not return the Hex gem. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Under Piltover, we've already possessed so little. However—" He crooks a sharp-knuckled finger. "We will offer reparations. Safe passage to refugees; secure zones for diplomats. Mercy, in exchange for access to the Hex Gates."

Medarda tosses her bejeweled head in defiance. "Ludicrous! The Council will never accept."

"Would they prefer more bloodshed?"

"Now you threaten us?" She lets off a sweetly gilded laugh. "Zaun hasn't the manpower to lay siege to Piltover. Nor the weapons to sustain it. We would outlast you in a month's time."

"Or perhaps we'd ambush you from the inside." Silco bares his crooked teeth. "Remember, we are a den of wolves. You've starved us and suffocated us. But you've taught us to survive, in spite of yourselves. Piltover has a reputation to uphold as a beacon of fairness. Fairness doesn't factor into Zaun's vocabulary."

A hot silence grips the air. Silence like a strangulation.

Medarda struggles against its pull. "You are bluffing."

"Then call it."

"You'd sacrifice your people for pride?"

"You'd sacrifice yours for mercy?"

"War is never mercy! Curbing bloodshed is!"

"Well then."

Silco takes a step closer. Before she can recoil, he snatches her dark hands and brings them up to frame his pale neck. Lets her feel the beat of his pulse in the veins. Her wrists are satiny-hot in the callused cold of his grip. He feels the rapid thrum of her heartbeat in his fingertips.

Their eyes lock. The expression that skims Medarda's face is fleeting. But Silco sees something there. Shock, disgust. And fear that veers into a speechless subspecies of fascination. Like a nymph looking into the mouth of a deepsea monster, its jaws laid open, teeth glinting in the aquatic twilight. Her hands roving deeper inside.

"Show mercy," Silco whispers. "Curb the bloodshed."

Medarda sucks in a shaky breath. Her pupils are dilated around golden threads of iris. Their gazes stay fused in a frozen loop, two animals sizing each other up. But when Silco's good eye drops to Medarda's mouth, half-parted and inches from his, her paralysis breaks and she jerks away on a strange noise, equal parts choke and snarl.

"You—" she says.

"I, what?"

She suppresses the adrenalized tremor racing through her body. "You are intractable."

"Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment." Her voice smooths over at the last word; a forcible repossession of self-control. "Eliminating you will not solve the crisis."

"Then what will?"

Medarda searches for something inside of herself, then shakes her head. Regret, refutation. Her eyes drop a few degrees to stare down at the graceful clasp of her own hands. The Noxian ring glimmers in the gloomy daylight.

"I make no guarantee," she says.

"Hmmm?"

She draws in a breath, then releases it steadily. "I make no guarantee that the Council will accept your proposal."

"Let them consider it."

"Letting them agree to our parley was a feat in itself."

A surreptitious smile edges Silco's lips. Hmm. A two-pronged goring in a lambskin sheath: appeal to his logic by reminding him of Zaun's precariousness; appeal to his emotion by claiming that she is in his corner and has already worked wonders on his behalf.

Well, she's good. He'll grant her that much.

"What do you suggest, then?" he asks.

She lifts her chin; a gentle summons. "A treaty."

"Entailing?"

"Peace."

"My dear." He starts to smile, then cuts it off with a warning stare. "Learn to be more explicit."

"Zaun's terms and Piltover's, merged into one. Zaun will keep the Hex gem. But we must have its surety that it will never be weaponized against us. Zaun will have access to the Hex Gates. But Piltover will have its just desserts through reparations. We will grant Zaunites amnesty for war crimes. In exchange, Zaun must host Piltovan journalists safety within its borders."

"You mean tattlers and spies."

"The price of freedom, First Chancellor."

"Or its worst impediment."

A corner of Medarda's lips curves. "Except Thyself may be/Thine Enemy—"

"Captivity is Consciousness," Silco says, deadpan. "So's Liberty."

Silence creeps like the coronal threads of sunlight through smog. Medarda blinks, then catches hold of herself.

"I confess, Chancellor, I had you somewhat typecast."

"Oh?"

"I didn't consider poetry to be your speed."

"A bit of poetry never hurts the shank end of a revolution."

"Then we are in accord?"

"I leave our future—" he says, mock-graciously, "—in your soft hands."

One of Medarda's brows spasms. Then she glances off, but not before Silco glimpses a private frown. As if she's taken his full measure, as surely as he's taken hers. She meets his eye again, and her face smooths itself, once more a study of serene sophistication.

"Thank you for attending the parley," she says. "First Chancellor of Zaun."

"A privilege, Councilor Medarda."

They shake hands. Their arms slide into synch, fingers interlocking. Two players after a satisfactory chess match.

Except, like before, Medarda holds onto his hand, and turns it over in both her own. Her smile holds no edge. Her eyes glow warmly: sunshine and honey.

"I'd like to make a small request."

"By all means."

"It will prove pivotal in convincing the Council of your good intentions." Her hands are a coaxing squeeze around his own. "It involves a citizen of Zaun."

"Anyone I know?"

"A mutual acquaintance, in fact."

A chill of premonition rises. Silco smiles, thinly, "Whom might it be?"

"The girl at the Kirraman's home. Violet."

Silco's expression snaps shut with a renewed charge of hostility. Suddenly he is all venom, as if his body is a siphon for the blackened ichor trapped within Zaun's core.

"What of her?" he hisses.

Medarda drops his hand as if singed. But her eyes stay glued to his, because the waters are chummed and the net is unfurled, and there he is: caught.

"She is a former citizen of Zaun," she says. "She asks to visit the Fissures."

"To see the corpses?"

"To see her sister."

"She has no sister."

"She does." Demurely, "Shall I be more explicit? Your daughter. Jinx."

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dalishborne · 2 months

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❝Are you doing anything for, eh, Valentine's day?❞ The usual calm and steady tone Vasco always held isn't presented. Instead, there's a softer tone to it. Almost a nervous tone as well. As if he is embarrassed to ask such questions. (Cyberpunk time <3)

Oh? The corners of Revie's lips curled in amusement, silently noting the uncharacteristic hint of uncertainty in Vasco's voice. It wasn't often that he let his guard down to allow for even a sliver of vulnerability, not even when she had him strapped to her examination chair, tapped into his interface and digging through the nooks and crannies of his networks. The man was as cool as a Cryo-chip, which only served to ignite a spark of intrigue when Revenelan suspected something akin to interest on Vasco's part. Her stomach did a little flip at the thought.

"Ah, I'm not sure," Revenelan shrugged, electing to keep her tone casual. A cold, blue light cast on her features from the tablet she deftly typed on, supported mid-air by an adjustable tripod clamped to the stand of a softly beeping heart monitor.

"Might be here, might not. The clinic's usually open for Valentine's specials and walk-ins; we've got some pretty gorgeous Bio Connection Implants that are all the rage with couples right now, so I wouldn't be surprised if we get busy. But, beyond that, probably just spending time at home with my cats. Half-priced chocolate and horror movies, just like the last four Valentine's." A sheepish chuckle followed; saying it out loud made Revenelan realize how sad her life must sound, but she was being honest. It was hard enough to find good people to date in Night City, let alone friends that weren't all too willing to sell you out for a stack of eddies. Especially as a Ripperdoc, Revenelan's had too many encounters with people who thought a decent date or mediocre sex was a fair exchange for free cyberware. It got old, fast, and Revenelan found much more fulfillment in the company of her cats than wasting her time on Corpo wannabes and grifty Fixers.

"My romantic life isn't particularly riveting at the moment," She added wryly, swinging the tablet around to Vasco. The screen displayed what looked like a receipt; a small list of services on the left, with prices on the right. Below, a cost subtotal of enough eddies to cause a stroke shone on top of a grand total of: zero. A note on the underneath wrote: Comped – Bestie Discount. :) A blank square at the bottom left of the screen awaited Vasco's fingerprint.

"What about you?" Revenelan asked, masking her apparent interest beneath a relaxed, easygoing demeanour. "Got anything special planned?"

#v:cyberpunk2077.#seeasunset:vasco #seeasunset #THIS WAS SO FUN i miss cyberpunk so much salkjfsa #we already talked abt it but pls bare with my shoddy cyberpunk knowledge atm #i had to like google so much just to Confirm what i was writing abt made sense lmao #also btw bc this is a modern-adjacent verse revenelan probably goes by rev or revie ic!#like shes more comfy with nicknames in this verse compared to her main verse

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heartlessfujoshi · 6 months

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flufftober day 26: promnis 'no stakes'

Title: No Stakes Chapter: 5 of 6 Fandom: FFXV Pairing: Promnis (Prompto Argentum x Ignis Scientia) Rating: Teen (Subtle Flirting - Fluff - Ep Ignis V2 - Minor Angst - First Kisses - Feelings Realization) WordCount: ~2,400 Prompt: Fireplace

Read: Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4

A/N: I had hoped that day 25 would have worked for this story, but it did not :( so, happy belated birthday to Prompto. :) Please enjoy!

---

Prompto knew that they had to move fast. There wasn’t enough time. There was never enough time. Ripping off the bracelet he wore on his right wrist to hide who he truly was, he shoved it under a scanner, which opened a locked door for them with no problem.

“How did you…?” Noctis asked, but Prompto shot him a look. “Later. Sorry.” Noctis said nothing else, Prompto leading his way through to an unarmed area.

The pact with the Hydraean had been a total disaster. Not only had Niflheim come with their army, but there had been other forces at work there. He’d been separated by an explosion from Ignis, who had landed in the water and had said to make sure that the Prince was all right. Luckily, he hadn’t been alone when that happened - he had been with both Gladio and Ignis when they’d become separated, leaving him alone with Gladio.

They had found the Prince, but hadn’t found Ignis. It was through a network of whispers that he’d found out that Ignis had gone with Ardyn to Gralea. While it had been tragic that Noctis had lost his future bride to the chancellor, they had to find Ignis. There was no telling what the madman was going to do to him.

“We have to hurry.” Prompto begged his friends. “He could be in bad trouble.”

“Ignis can handle himself.” Gladio reminded him, as they made their way towards an elevator. “He’s had years of training. Remember - they said he went with him willingly, Prompto.”

He came to a stop. “Are you calling Ignis a traitor?” His eyes were wild with rage, unable to stand the fact that this man was saying such ridiculous things. “Gladio, you can’t be serious!”

“I never said that!” His voice bellowed loud, echoing in the small chamber of the elevator. Prompto winced, backing away from him. “He must have had a plan to come here.”

“You and I both know that he would do anything to save Noctis.” He pointed to the Prince, who had a solemn expression on his face. “Your Highness?”

“I’m fine.” Noctis shook his head. “I know what needs to be done.”

His shoulders dropped as he sighed. “Noct, it isn’t that drastic. We need to find Iggy. Once we find him, everything will be okay.”

“It won’t.” Noctis shook his head. “But it’s okay, Prom. We’ll find him. I know you care for him a lot.”

He looked down at the floor, the elevator coming to a stop at the top floor. “You have no idea.”

“I think I do.” Prompto wasn’t aware that Noctis was looking at Gladio, the two holding a longing gaze before the elevator doors opened up. “Come on - here’s hoping he’s up here.”

They could hear a fight happening as they made their way down the corridor. Prompto began to book it, needing to find Ignis before something awful happened to him. “Prompto! Wait!” Gladio shouted at him, but he ignored him. His feet moved fast, coming to a sudden halt when there was another locked door in front of them, preventing them from getting to where the fight was being held.

Holding his arm up, the barcode on his skin - the barcode that proved he was an experiment from Niflheim - worked like a charm, opening the path towards the cacophony that they heard leaving the elevator. He saw Ignis, and felt his heart stop in his chest.

He was wearing the ring. The same ring that Nyx had worn, and now here was Ignis, wearing the ring that belonged on Noctis’ finger, and was using the power of the Gods to put Ardyn in his place. He felt Gladio and Noctis come up behind him, all three of them frozen in fear as they watched Ignis battle Ardyn as if his life depended on it.

The Crystal was nearby - so close that Prompto could see it with his own eyes. Ignis fell to his knees and screamed, dark purple flames coming from off of his eyes, the sound going straight to Prompto’s heart. He rushed forward, not at all carrying if he was about to die. He couldn’t bear to listen to Ignis be in that much pain.

Ardyn retreated, leaving the four of them alone with the Crystal. Prompto kneeled down next to where Ignis was now laying, and carefully picked up his head, resting it on his lap. His skin was ashen, fractured as if broken apart by the power of the ring. Silver ran rampant on his skin, making him look almost ethereal, if he didn’t look like he was already on the edge of death. Upon first seeing him, Ignis’ eyes had been glowing, much like Noctis’ would glow when he harnessed the power of Ramuh.

“Please, lend me your strength. Protect my friends!” He can hear Noctis speaking to the Crystal, Prompto cradling Ignis’ head on his lap, his lover unaware that they are with him, due to his eyes being taken from him.

A blinding white light fills the area, drawing the breath out of Prompto’s chest. All of the silver scarring on Ignis’ body was slowly disappearing, leaving no trace of the fight he’d just had with Ardyn. But before they could celebrate, Noctis was approaching the Crystal.

“Take care of each other.” Noctis looked back at them, a sad smile on his face. “I’ll be back soon. Wait for me.”

“We will.” Gladio said, standing his ground.

Ignis was now leaning against Prompto, after sitting up to receive the healing power from the Crystal. “Go, Your Majesty.” Ignis’ voice sounded raw. “We’ll be fine. We’ll take care of Your kingdom.”

“I know you will, Ignis.” Noctis stepped into the Crystal, and disappeared.

Prompto felt Ignis’ hand hold tight to his own. “Come on, Iggy. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

“I would have to agree, darling.”

The three returned to Tenebrae, Ravus welcoming them back with open arms. He had been the one to help get them to Gralea to rescue Ignis, as he was the one that had seen him leave with the Chancellor. Gladio went with Ravus, while Prompto stayed with Ignis, not wanting to leave his side ever again.

It was quiet in the castle, almost unnervingly so. It was much cooler here on the continent than it was over on the Lucian side of the world. The fireplace crackled, plenty of firewood burning, keeping the room quite toasty. He felt Ignis stirring next to him, and felt him grasp tight to his arm. He winced, but knew that it was better to let Ignis wake up on his own, not wanting to startle him out of whatever dream, or nightmare, he was currently experiencing.

Green eyes soon were staring into his, the grip on his arm loosening as Ignis slowly came to recognize him. “W-Where are we?”

“Tenebrae. The Nox Fleuret castle.”

“How?”

“Ravus.” Prompto reached for Ignis’ cheek, and carefully caressed it. There was no trace of any scarring, except for two new fresh scars that were a reminder of what he’d done to use the ring. “How are you feeling?”

“My body is very sore.” Ignis closed his eyes, and pulled Prompto into his arms. “But I’m doing much better with you so close by.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to you sooner.” He whispered, tears beginning to collect in his eyes. He didn’t want to cry, but it seemed his brain had other ideas. “You should have waited for us, Iggy.”

“I had to do what I had to do.” A soft sigh left his mouth. “Is Noctis…?”

“Gone.” He still was trying to accept the fact that Noctis was no longer around. “We have to keep the kingdom safe for him.”

“We will. I promised we would.” Ignis hugged him tight to his chest. “I’m really glad you’re here, Prompto.”

“Don’t be.” He snorted. “I have something I need to tell you. Before Gladio does.”

The arms around him stop holding him with the strength that he’d grown to love over the last couple of months. “What’s the matter, Prompto?”

“I’ve been keeping a secret.” He lifted his arm up, and showed Ignis his barcode. “Guess I’m not really a Lucian, am I?”

Ignis took his arm, and brought the barcode up to his lips. The tears he’d been holding back began to fall, as Ignis left little kisses against the permanent scar on his skin. “You are a Lucian. Maybe not by blood, but by everything else, it is who you are. Never doubt that, Prompto.”

“I got us to you.” Prompto whispered, too afraid to speak as his eyes were still shedding tears. “Who knew that I would be the one to help get to you, all because I’m from Niflheim?” A dry sob left his mouth, as he pitched forward.

Strong arms wound themselves around his body as he sobbed hard against Ignis’ shoulder. “Shhh, don’t cry, darling. You are perfect as you are. You did save me.”

“No, Noctis did.”

“But he wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t found me.”

Prompto knew he was right. He knew that he had helped save Ignis, in a way. Much like he’d saved him, time and time again. “I figured I owed you one.” He tried to joke, but a soft sob left his mouth afterwards, defeating the purpose of his comment.

“Oh, darling - you never owe me anything. We save each other when we can.”

“When it matters most.”

“Quite right.”

Rather than sit on the bed, Prompto built them a little cozy resting place in front of the fire. Ignis laid against his chest, Prompto’s arms tucked under his arms to hug him closer. They both stayed like that for a long time, neither saying much of anything, as there wasn’t much to say. Prompto wanted to ask Ignis what possessed him to put the ring on, when they knew how much power it took out of a person to use it. He wanted to ask him why he thought he could take on Ardyn by himself, when they should have done it together. Maybe one day Ignis would tell him, or maybe he wouldn’t.

The fire was a quiet comfort - it almost reminded Prompto of the late nights at Noctis’ apartment, during the cold months when Ignis would light the fire for the Prince to be comfortable. Thinking back to those days before all of this began, Prompto could remember how much he had liked Ignis back then. He had always found him attractive, but always figured he had no chance of getting to be with him like he was now. And boy, was he glad he was wrong.

“Iggy?” He spoke softly near his ear, not wanting to startle him. “Would you like to lay down now?”

“I think it might be wise, or else we might fall asleep on this hard floor.”

Laughing quietly, Prompto helped Ignis up off the floor, and got settled with him under the covers. “Are you okay, Iggy?” He asked, the two of them now facing one another, their noses close.

“I’m as good as I can be, darling. Don’t worry about me.” Ignis’ hand touched his face with a gentle stroke of his thumb, Prompto sighing in contentment at the familiar touch. “You have nothing to worry about.”

“I do, though.” He kept his eyes closed. “Gladio hates me because I lied. Noctis is gone for who knows how long. You almost died. I’d say I have a lot to worry about.”

Ignis kissed him softly, quelling any fear inside of him that was bubbling back up. “Gladiolus does not hate you. He may be upset, but he’ll get over it. Noctis will return when he is ready. And I did what needed to be done. But I am still here.”

“What if Noctis hadn’t asked the Crystal to heal you? Would you have been happy if you had your eyesight taken away?” Prompto felt awful asking him these questions, but he had to know. “Would you have been okay with never seeing any of our faces again?”

Two warm hands touched his face, his eyelids falling closed at the intimate touch. “I would have died if it meant that you would be safe.”

“Me? Or do you mean all of us?”

“You, Prompto. I would die to protect you.” He held his breath, as Ignis continued. “I chose to fight Ardyn because I needed to be sure that you were safe. That you kept the Prince alive.”

“I did a bad job.” He whispered, hating that he had failed.

“You did not. You were perfect. Sometimes the choices we make have their own consequences. I chose to use the power of the Six, agreeing to sacrifice myself in order to beat Ardyn.”

His stomach dropped. “Ignis.”

“But, I am still here.” A kiss touched his lips. “You’re with me. Yes, our King is gone, but he will return. And when that happens, I will get my revenge on Ardyn.”

“Oh, Iggy.” He leaned forward and kissed him hard on the lips. “I love you. Please, never do anything this stupid ever again.”

“I will try not to, darling. But do forgive me if I do.” Ignis’ promise was good enough for him.

They laid together in bed, holding each other close. It was strange to think that the last time they had done this, it had been almost seven days ago. It felt like a lifetime ago. So much had changed since the pact with the Hydraean had gone so terribly wrong. Prompto snuggled closer to Ignis, needing to be as close to him as physically as possible. Thankfully, Ignis seemed to feel the same way, as they both struggled to get closer to each other under the sheets.

Who knew how long it would be until their King returned. Prompto knew that whatever Noctis was going through, they were going to have just as much difficulty as him. Night was coming. They had to get Lucis into a position where the everlasting night wouldn’t be so awful. They needed time to heal first - Ignis from his fight with Ardyn, and both himself and Gladio from the fight in Altissia.

For now, though, he was going to stay with Ignis in this bed for as long as possible.

---

Cross-posted to AO3

#promnis #my writing #fanfic #flufftober 2k23

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crowdvscritic · 9 months

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round up // JULY 23

Spies! Josh Hartnett! Perfect 10s! They all made multiple appearances in July. This summer has churned out one of the best crop of blockbusters in years, and even though this Round Up is a bit shorter than usual, it’s a stacked lineup. Whether you’re looking for big thrills, big emotion, or big art, July had it all.

July Crowd-Pleasers

1. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

A redux of the 1996 original Mission: Impossible in all the best ways. Whatever you think of Tom Cruise, you can’t deny his commitment to the audience experience. Crowd: 10/10 // Critic: 9/10

2. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)

This is the kind of movie that you can tell within in three minutes isn’t totally working but it’s hard to tell why. It looks pretty good! There’s loads of style! Jason Statham is one of the best action leads in the biz! Every actor is doing something fun! (Especially Josh Hartnett, validating my major crush in his Pearl Harbor days.) But not a single character has an arc, and we should’ve opened on an action sequence introducing our heroes and villains so we don’t need so much dialogue to explain our characters or the inciting incident. But you know what? Call the butcher because I love a good ham! I had a great time with this cast doing the Guy Ritchie thing, which means I am gonna watch this so hard again on cable.

youtube

3. Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) by Taylor Swift (2023)

My attempt to swing last-minute tickets to the Eras Tour in Denver for less than $1000 was a no-go, but the treats that are “When Emma Falls in Love,” “Timeless,” and a Taylor Lautner music video cameo softened that blow. The article “The Unprecedented Weirdness of Taylor Swift” in The Washington Post captures some of the unique joys of her re-recordings.

4. Barbie (2023)

Is Barbie an instant classic? Perhaps it’s too of-this-moment for that kind of longevity, but it’s a comedy that made me laugh so hard I cried and also just that made me cry, which I don’t remember ever happening to me within a single movie before. Read my full review for ZekeFilm, and then be sure to listen to the soundtrack after seeing the movie. Dua Lipa, Charli XCX, Tame Impala, Haim, Billie Eilish, and Ryan Gosling(!!) made some bangers! Crowd: 10/10 // Critic: 9/10

5. Do You Like Apples Podcast

I’ve recommended the Do You Like Apples newsletter, and now I’m recommending Billy Rock and Drew Wendt’s new accompanying podcast. I may be biased since they invited me to join their Barbie discussion, but because I like filling my earbuds with thoughts on Wes Anderson’s oeuvre and the best of Harrison Ford’s career, I’m a regular listener beyond our collab. Listen to our discussion of Barbie and then browse through their rapidly growing feed about the world of movies.

More July Crowd-Pleasers: Airport (1970), Book Club: The Next Chapter (2023), Zoey 102 (2023)

July Critic Picks

1. The China Syndrome (1979)

Another ‘70s conspiracy thriller FTW! Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas, and Jack Lemmon are getting suspicious at a nuclear power plant, and their investigation lands on my lists of favorite journalism films and movies that have made me cry. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 9/10

2. BlackBerry (2023)

Product-inspired films are still rocking and rolling in 2023, and BlackBerry is one of the best. It owes a lot to The Social Network, but it learned all the right lessons. I would love to see this cast in conversation for Oscars this winter, but until then, the rage-at-the-corporate-machine soundtrack is keeping me going. Crowd: 8/9 // Critic: 9/10

3. Oppenheimer (2023)

On average, me every 7 minutes in this movie: "Oh hey, I love that guy!” This cameo-packed historical epic/biopic is a clearer-eyed version of A Beautiful Mind, and perhaps most impressively doesn’t feel three hours long. The review in The Federalist and Vox’s analysis of the history of nuclear cinema are excellent companion pieces. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 9.5/10

4. Suddenly by BØRNS (2023)

Like the rest of us, it sounds like BØRNS has been going through some stuff in the last few years. After a five year hiatus, he’s back with his lachrymose synth-pop in a six-track EP. My only complaint? I’m ready for a full album!

5. The French Dispatch by Wes Anderson (2021)

Haven’t I already recommended The French Dispatch as the best film of 2021? Yes, but because I’m a woman of limited interests, I’m now recommending the published screenplay. If you’ve ever wondered just how Anderson and his collaborators create their idiosyncratic stories, reading the complex script gives a new insight into their overlapping minutiae, much of which I missed just by watching.

More July Critic Picks: The Merry Widow (1934), Christmas in July (1940), Some Came Running (1958)

Also in July…

At the start of July, nine writers for ZekeFilm picked our top five movies of the year so far. You can read our individual lists as well as our aggregate top five in our “Best of 2023 (So Far)” piece.

I checked out Haunted Mansion, which was…at least better than the Eddie Murphy version? Read my review for ZekeFilm, which turned into a long list of theme park-inspired films for Disney, and watch more on KMOV to see me correctly predict that Barbie would dominate the box office yet again.

Thanks to a holiday break, I had a little time to finally add a few Best Picture Project pieces. Keep scrolling on the home page to read reviews of The Apartment (1960), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Rain Man (1988), Dances With Wolves (1990), Million Dollar Baby (2004), and 12 Years a Slave (2013)

Until August wraps, you can follow what I’m watching on Letterboxd and the site formerly known as Twitter

Photo credits: BØRNS, DYLA, The French Dispatch. All others IMDb.com.

#Round Up #Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One #Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre #Barbie #Taylor Swift #Speak Now #Speak Now (Taylor's Version)#Do You Like Apples #The China Syndrome #The French Dispatch #BlackBerry #BØRNS #Suddenly by BØRNS #Oppenheimer

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boopathi021 · 1 year

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What is an AI NFT : A Beginner’s Guide By Blockchainx

NFTs have been all the rage over the past year, as the popularity of these digital tokens, along with cryptocurrencies, has buyers around the world shelling out millions of dollars in the booming crypto market. This trend has been part of a major shift in technology, with the emergence of Metaverse and the initial iterations of Web 3.0, in which non-fungible tokens play a vital role.

The first generation of NFTs, the ones most of us are most familiar with, focused on key properties such as ownership, authenticity, uniqueness, and transfer. However, rapid developments in the field of artificial intelligence are now opening the door for applications to expand into areas such as blockchain technology and unlock new layers of potential in the form of AI NFTs.

This is thanks to AI models like GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks), which, once trained with the right dataset, are capable of generating new content on their own, making them an attractive technology to pair with NFTs.

With non-fungible tokens taking over industries such as entertainment, sports, and luxury goods, expect the latest generation of NFTs to only set the bar higher.

What are AI NFTs?

Let’s start with AI.

Artificial intelligence refers to nonhuman models capable of solving complex tasks and performing cognitive functions such as learning, problem solving, reasoning, and perception. In other words, artificial intelligence uses computer technology to try and mimic human intelligence. In the past decade, this technology has made huge leaps and is closely related to many aspects of our daily life. While AI can be used to generate NFTs, the most promising trend right now is the integration of AI into non-fungible tokens. They are called AI NFTs.

AI NFT is a non-fungible token that embeds a generative pretrained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) language model prompt as part of its smart contract. This type of smart NFT is not only smart, but also has other properties such as animation, interactivity, and many other generative capabilities that are still emerging.

AI NFTs, on the other hand, make generative evolution work. For example, a smart NFT can create new content by itself and integrate dynamic experiences into its smart contacts as a result of its self-learning ability. The more an NFT is exposed to a given environment or user, the more it can extract data and build knowledge. Therefore, these types of tokens are not only smart, but also upgradeable, dynamic and scalable. Imagine NFTs that adapt to your conversations and respond to your emotions, evolving with you to create increasingly complex tokens.

This is the technology behind some emerging projects (we’ll get to that in a bit) that aim to combine artificial intelligence with the promise of blockchain technology for a permanent upgrade of the underlying technology structure.

How to use AI NFT?

As we’ve just seen, infusing AI capabilities into NFTs can open the door to unique and personalized experiences that have so far been impossible with other technologies. It’s an experiment that’s starting to see some big names get involved.

A pioneer in this space is Alethea AI, a Mark Cuban-funded project that allows users to embed AI animation, interaction, and speech synthesis capabilities into NFTs. Alethea calls its smart NFTs iNFTs, and explains that its unique AI protocol “provides a mechanism for creators around the world to create interactive and smart NFTs.

One need only look at the project’s own tagline, “Give your NFT superpowers,” to get a full sense of what these new non-fungible tokens can do. In fact, Alethea has already managed to sell its first iNFT, an artificial intelligence avatar named “Alice,” for a staggering $478,000 at a Sotheby’s auction held last year. ‍

As with many other forms of emerging technology, the number of use cases for smart NFTs is unimaginable. Brands may be interested in dabbling and experimenting with these tokens to capture other benefits of artificial intelligence to:

Produce and deliver content in novel ways

reach new audiences

discover new trends

Ability to react and adjust in real time to market factors such as inventory levels and prices

Infusing AI capabilities into NFTs represents a new technological frontier that can be extended to many capabilities.

Benefits of AI NFTs

To think about why AI NFTs could change gamers, we have to imagine what the future might look like. We know this is a tall order, but let’s assume that the evolution of the online world will lead us all to more interactive and richer experiences. We currently spend an average of 7 hours online, but much of the feed can feel one-sided because most of us don’t become content creators, but merely content consumers.

This will change as more blockchain-based platforms like Metaverse emerge and bring interactive changes to the content creation dynamic. Users in these environments will find new ways to connect to what is important to them, enabling a more engaged digital lifestyle.

One of the main appeals of AI NFTs is that these types of tokens leverage deep learning methods in areas such as computer vision, speech analysis, and language to unlock a whole new level of experience for users who increasingly engage as AI.

AI capabilities can be further integrated into the building blocks of digital infrastructure, such as NFT marketplace , which leads to AI becoming part of the entire NFT life cycle.

Apart from some of the aspects mentioned, the combination of non-fungible tokens and artificial intelligence provides a platform for experimentation, and more results can be expected as the technology develops.

Nft Marketplace Development

#Nft Marketplace Development #nft development #nfts #nft community

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jackleviblog · 1 year

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Startup Restaurant Success - Don't Forget the Mission Statement

Opening a restaurant can be an extremely rewarding experience, but it's not without its challenges. It's essential that you keep your mission statement in mind as you go along, lest you lose sight of what made you want to pursue this venture in the first place.

Startup Restaurant?

Startup restaurants are all the rage right now, and for good reason. They're a fun and unique way to open a business, and they can be a great way to network and learn about running a mexican food near me. But making your startup restaurant successful takes more than just getting up and running; it also requires a well-crafted mission statement.

A well-written mission statement can help you define your restaurant's purpose and goals, as well as inspire your team members to give their best effort. It can also help you attract new customers and convince them to return. In short, a good mission statement is essential for success in any business, startup or not.

So if you're thinking of opening your own restaurant, make sure to include a mission statement in your planning stages. It could make all the difference in the success of your venture.

Mission Statement?

If you're starting a business, you need to have a mission statement. And if you're running a restaurant, it's especially important to have one. A mission statement is a concise statement that defines your company's purpose and goals. It should be easy to remember, inspiring to employees, and easy for customers to understand.

A good mission statement will help you stay focused during tough times. It'll also help you attract new customers and boost morale among current employees. If your restaurant is successful, your mission statement will be a major reason why.

To create the perfect mission statement for your restaurant, start by thinking about what makes your business unique. Then focus on representing that in your statement. For example, if your restaurant specialises in Italian cuisine, make sure your mission statement reflects that (e.g., "representing Italian cuisine with authenticity and pride").

Once you've determined what your company's core values are, it's time to write down what those things mean to you and your team. For example, if customer service is a core value at your restaurant, make sure the mission statement says something like "providing the highest quality service possible."

Finally, make sure the mission statement is communicated to employees

How to Write a Mission Statement for Your Restaurant

When deciding how to write your startup restaurant’s mission statement, it is important to remember the following tips:

1. Have a clear and concise message to share with your guests.

2. Be authentic to your brand and what you stand for.

3. Be short but impactful.

4. Be easy to remember and emphasise.

5. Be aspirational but realistic.

6. Build on the core values of your restaurant industry peers.

7. Keep it simple – don’t overcomplicate it!

8. Remember, your mission statement should be reflective of your restaurant’s culture and personality.

9. Make sure everyone in your restaurant understands and supports this mission statement, especially the owners/operators and employees!

10. Use your mission statement as a guidepost while growing and developing your business

Components of a successful startup restaurant

Recently, I was asked to give a presentation on startup restaurant success. In preparation for the talk, I read a lot of articles and blog posts on the topic. I noticed that many people don't discuss the importance of a clear mission statement in their businesses.

The reason why a clear mission statement is so important is because it helps to define the direction your business is going in. Without a defined goal, it's difficult to know where to focus your efforts.

You need to define what you want your restaurant to be known for, and then make sure that all of your marketing activities support that goal. For example, if your goal is to serve high-quality food at an affordable price, you should make sure that your menu items reflect that philosophy.

Another important factor to consider when creating a mission statement is the company's culture. You want your employees to feel like they're part of something special, and having a strong culture will help to achieve that goal.

Finally, don't forget the customer service component of your business. It's important to create an environment where customers feel welcome and comfortable enough to tell you what they think. If you can keep your customers happy, they'll return again and

Tips for writing a successful mission statement

1. Be specific - Don't just state that your seafood near me is a "place to eat", identify what kind of food you will serve, and why it matters to you and your customers.

2. Be aspirational - Mission statements inspire people to aim higher, and they should be clear enough that everyone can understand them but still contain enough detail to inspire people to act.

3. Be inspiring - Your mission statement should contain phrases or words that will encourage people to pursue their dreams and reach for the stars.

4. Be memorable - People will never forget a catchy mission statement, so make sure it's easy to remember and fits the personality of your restaurant.

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importanttigercreation · 2 years

Video

youtube

Welcome to the news channel of the Angry Nature,Today we will tell you about Portugal Rare fore tornado, Footage of a fire tornado has been captured by emergency services battling wildfires in Portugal. The video was shot on Monday at the Alvao Natural Park, and shows the fire tornado developing beside a raging blaze. The fire is now under control after burning over 11,200 acres, authorities have said. So far this year, wildfires have already burnt more than 60,000 acres in Spain and 215,000 acres hectares in Portugal, with the latter representing around 1% of Portuguese territory, the highest percentage in the European Union. #portugal_wildfire #villa_tornado #angry_nature #wildfire #forest_fire _________________________________________ The channel lists such natural disasters as: 1) Geological emergencies: #earthquake #volcanic_eruption mudflow, #landslide landfall, avalanche; 2) Hydrological emergencies: #flash_flood #tsunami Limnological catastrophe, floods, flooding; 3) Fires: Forest fire, Peat fire, Glass Fire, Wildfire; 4) Meteorological emergencies: #tornado, #cyclone #blizzard Hail, Drought, Hail, #hurricane #storm, Thunderstorm, typhoon Tempest, Lightning. ATTENTION: All videos are taken from open sources. The selection is based on publication date, title, description, and venue. Sometimes, due to unfair posting of news on social networks, the video may contain frames that do not correspond to the date and place. It is not always possible to check all videos. We apologize for any errors! Thank you for watching, don't forget to subscribe our channel, We Wish you good Weather,

#IFTTT #YouTube

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polishcinema · 2 years

Text

Discover Polish Film Industry : A map of the best Polish Film Festivals (part 2)

1. OFF CAMERA (April - May)

If you still can decide if you prefer to screen some independent, arthouse titles or more mainstream ones, OFF Camera might be an option for you. Even though it's one of the newest film festivals in Poland, OFF Camera quickly became one of the most important film events in the country, thanks to attendance of big names as a guest or jury members. Since 2008, OFF Camera has invited Andrey Zvyagintsev, Jane Campion, Luc Besso and Petr Zelenka. Aside from these big names, the industry section of Off Camera is also a networking space which attracts a lot of film professionals every year.

2. Kino na granicy (April - May)

For those who hate the pretentious atmosphere and red carpets of big festivals like Cannes, Kino Na Granicy might be a perfect option. This hidden gem, located on a Polish-Tcheque border in Cieszyn, Kino na Granicy is known for its speak-easy and cozy atmosphere. In the programme you will find some retrospectives and masterclasses of Polish or Bohemian masters as well as recent titles from both countries. Moreover, being a favorite spot of film school students and industry professionals, the festival is a perfect place to meet cinema lovers and discuss with a Czech beer in hand ;)

3. Millenium Docs Against Gravity (May)

If you’re looking for good documentaries which resonate with contemporary issues and reflect our society, I think you should try Against Gravity. The festival programme is very rich and dedicated especially to open-minded and curious audiences interested in other cultures. Interesting point about the festival is the fact that it takes place in May in all big cities in Poland, so there are strong chances that you will manage to pass by!

4. Camerimage (November)

If you are sensitive to visual, aesthetic and technical values of the films, I can strongly recommend the Camerimage Festival in Torun, an event dedicated to art of cinematography which unites the best cinematographers from all around the world. In the previous editions, among the invited filmmakers were Roger Deakins (No Country for Old Men), Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now), Michael Chapman (Raging Bull) and many more. If you would like to discuss with one of these names and if you will have a bit of a chance, I recommend you to try to sneak into the closed industry parties ;) Still not convinced?

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yunhofingers-writes · 3 years

Text

It’s just a Game{Teaser}- Seonghwa X Hongjoong

Note♥︎- Hello Everyone! This is s series i was thinking of starting for a while now and now that it’s started, you will have to wait until kinktober is over before the official chapter comes out . With That being said, i want to say that this is my first collab with someone and i’m so glad that it’s with @wonderlandless !! i just know that this is going to be amazing already. We are working on things other than this as well <3 just a heads up.

Genre♡︎- suggestive

Warnings/Tags♥︎- Just seonghwa being seonghwa

Pairing: Hongjoong x Seonghwa

Word count♡︎- 432

❥- Hongjoong need to escape and he needs to escape right now. He runs out of the cafeteria with speed and stumbles over his feet before he makes it to the men’s restroom. He pushes through the door without looking and walks straight to the mirror, throwing some water on his face. The moment he lifts up his heart almost drops to his ass.

Standing behind him was Park Seonghwa.

The person he was trying to avoid was standing right being him at this very given moment. He turns around dramatically slowly and rolls his eyes at the smirk Seonghwa throws at him.

“Missed me?” His smile lighting up the whole room.

“I do not.” Hongjoong crossed his arms, giving him as much sass as he could.

“Sure?” He raises a brow at Hongjoong.

“Yup. If you didn’t know yet, I really hate you. I hate you so much, with that stupid smirk on your face and that stupid attractive face of yours.” Hongjoong is going through a fit of rage and Seonghwa decides that it was just best to not reply, instead, he walks closer to the angry man, using his pointer finger to push him against the wall behind him.

Hongjoong gasps as Seonghwa pushes his body against him as close as possible. He then proceeds to lift Hongjoong’s chin up with his pointer finger, sending him another small smirk before rubbing his hand down his slim body, stopping right at the small bulge that was poking out of his bicker shorts.

Hongjoong kept his eyes open at the new Seonghwa in front of him. The seonghwa he knew would never have the balls to do these kinds of things with him. His mouth was parted, and his eyes were wide open.

“Close them pretty lips before I give them something to stay open with.” Seonghwa licks his lips as the words flys out of his mouth.

“And that’s how you shut Kim Hongjoong up. got that.”

Hongjoong eyes could fall out right now at what he just heard.

“You did all of that to shut me up?”

“I did and on top of that I just like teasing you. See you later, partner.” He smiles and stops by the door before turning around. ”You might want to handle that for me.” He looks down at Hongjoong’s bulge before smirking and walking out, proud of his hard work.

Hongjoong hates Seonghwa.

He sighs and thinks about revenge.

He’s definitely going to get Park Seonghwa for this.

This was game on.

Kristen Crew: @jwnghyuns @serialee @galaxteez @multidreams-and-desires @a-soft-hornytiny @lizsvcks @build-a-roleplay @moonxteez @yeosang99 @yunsangoveryonder @twancingyunhoe @seongsangsgf @little-precious-baby @yutasyiddiepiercing2 @empenguin01 @violetwinters @its-bsma @underratedmisfit @sourmistress-blog @lunarteez2 @http-lovelyknow @wonderlandless @rainteez02 @yungisstar1117 @totheworld-thisisnct

Network ping: @8makes1teamnet

#8makes1teamnet #ateez smut #hongjoong smut #park seonghwa smut #hongjoong #park seonghwa #seonghwa #kim hongjoong

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young-dumb-and-vaccinated · 3 years

Text

The Sommelier (Hannigram x Female!Reader) pt. 20

Shit goes sideways for y/n and Hannibal as they search for Will.

@dovahdokren @deadman-inc-bikeshop @lov3vivian @wisesandwichshark @scpdragon

Trigger warnings: stalking, threats of violence, implied threats of sex abuse

Your text notification sound rang over and over. You pulled yourself out of the abyss of sleep, slowly regaining your lucidity. You checked the time. 3:45AM.

The room was dark, a plush blanket was draped over your body, and Hannibal was nowhere to be seen. It was clear he had no intention of waking you up. You resigned to chew him out about that later. For now, you had to attend to what seemed like the thousands of text messages piling up in your notifications.

But they weren’t text messages. They were comments on all your reddit posts. Dozens of them, all from different burner accounts, and they all said the same thing.

u/lostlamb928723: Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

u/fallenone736139: Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

u/ledastray372935: Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

You threw the blanket off your legs, scrolling through the overwhelming mass of biblical spam. You saw the silver lining immediately: Chase wouldn’t be fucking with you if you weren’t close.

“Hannibal!” You called out, eyes scanning the dark house for any sign of him. He wouldn’t have gone to bed. You let the blood return to your legs before standing up, stretching and searching the house.

You could hear the beginnings of a storm brewing outside. The ambient pitter-patter of rain was usually a source of comfort, but the abrupt claps of thunder out of nowhere put you on edge. You tiptoed around the massive house, eyes up for anything out of place.

“Hannibal?” You whispered, peering through the threshold into the kitchen. You hadn’t noticed how scary his kitchen was until then. It was large, cold and uninviting, especially when it was only illuminated by the occasional bolt of lightning.

Your phone buzzed in your pocket, over and over and over. More of the same, no doubt.

A hand found your shoulder and you jumped out of your skin. You screamed. It took a second to realize that it was just Hannibal, and not your sleep paralysis demon come to life.

“It’s just me, darling.” He soothed, putting both hands on your shoulders. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Fucking hell, Hannibal.” You cursed, trying to catch your breath. “Maybe you could have at least answered when I called your name.”

“I’m sorry.” He stroked your hair, knowing it would soothe your nerves. "I was in the office and I couldn't hear you."

"Why is everything so dark?" You asked.

“The storm knocked out the power about half an hour ago." He explained. The nuances in his voice suggested that this was only one of several inconveniences. "I was hoping it would be back on by the time you woke up.”

"Damn, just when I thought we were getting close." You muttered, pulling your phone from your back pocket. "Here, take a look at this-"

You unlocked your phone and showed him the mass of notifications.

"Strange." He commented. "How are you getting notifications if the power is out?"

"Huh." You furrowed your brow and looked at your phone. “If the power is out, that means the Wi-Fi is down, right?”

“Thus the source of my confusion.” He said.

You opened your phone and saw that you were getting four bars of WiFi. “Then how on earth are all these notifications coming through?”

“Your cellular, perhaps?” He asked, looking over your shoulder.

You shook your head. The network was just a strand of ten numbers. "No, this is... a hotspot? Is your phone putting out a mobile hotspot?”

"I'm afraid not." He lowered his head. “Would your phone connect to a hotspot being put out by some random source?”

“I don’t know, I-- Wait.” You cut yourself off. “Oh no.”

“What is it?”

“Hannibal, call Will’s phone.” You said, frantically.

He was compliant, but he could never be comfortable taking orders from someone without knowing why. His motions were slow and he let the silence linger, urging you to fill it with an explanation.

You rubbed your temples. "When I was in Wolf Trap, Will set up a hotspot for me to call my mom. My phone probably recognized it and connected automatically when the power went out."

A distant, but audible rumbling came from just outside the front door. He caught on as soon as the sound hit his ear. A peek out the window confirmed your worst fears. A phone with a shattered screen was laid directly in eyeshot. You could make out Hannibal’s call icon.

“Shit.” You cursed. “They found us.”

Like clockwork, your phone began to ring. An unlisted number appeared on the screen. You looked at it, and then back at Hannibal.

"Answer." He said. "Let him think you're alone."

Hesitantly, you slid the green answer icon across the screen and put the caller on speaker.

“Hello?” You answered, your voice trembling.

“[F/N] [L/N].” Will’s strained voice croaked from the receiver. “My favorite sinner.”

You shared a look of relief with Hannibal. You grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “Will, oh my god, you’re alive!”

“So you believe in god now?” Will said through his teeth. You weren’t talking to Will. You were talking to Chase. Will was just his current in a long line of surrogate bodies he used and disposed of.

“Chase,” Your voice lowered with severity. “If you hurt him, I swear to shit, I will not hesitate to paint the walls with your insides.”

“Be careful little ears what you hear, be careful little ears what you hear” Will read off. “For the father up above is looking down in love...”

“Chase, you sick fuck.” You shouted. “Pull that dick out of your mouth and talk to me yourself.”

“If you want to talk to me...” Will struggled. “Come here yourself.”

You looked at Hannibal for any sort of direction. In your silence, Chase continued to make his puppet talk.

“Since you seem to be having some trouble finding me,” Will said. “The directions are on your boyfriend’s phone. I left it on the porch for you.”

“Yeah, I found it.” You spat.

“Next time, don’t leave yourself so vulnerable by posting on public forums.” He said. “Some psycho may have found you before I did. Oh, and [F/N]?”

“What?” You snapped.

“No cops. No FBI.” Will said, pain in every word.

You just couldn't take it anymore. "What the hell do you want from me?"

“I want to have a conversation about god’s true love.” Will wretched as he spoke. You had a sickening feeling that Will was privy to what that 'conversation' would really entail.

You wanted to vomit. You could picture the look on Chase’s face, flashing his unnaturally white teeth at the idea of finally having you. Doing fuck-knows-what to you. Using Will’s mouth to say it. Tormenting the man you’d come to love. You channeled your disgust into rage.

“I’ll see you in fucking Borrasca.” You snarled.

#hannibal nbc #hannibal lecter #hannibal x reader #hannibal x you #hannibal x will #hannibal x you x will #hannibal x reader x will #will graham #will graham x reader #will graham x you #the sommelier #hannigram

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illyaana · 3 years

Note

Hey... Could you maybe... Could you make a oneshot consisting of Bakugou's older sibling reader (I'd prefer it to be gender neutral with a more masculine style, however you prefer) x Midnight? 🥺🥺 I love her so much and Horikoshi did her dirty. You can do whatever oneshot that you want/comes to mind, I just want something fluffy. Thank you UwU

Udk how much I squealed getting this as my first ask!

(also whoever you are you made my day/week/month (｡･∀･)ﾉﾞ)

I agree, Horikoshi did her dirty. She had some moments but that was IT. I tried my best, hope you like it!!

(it's more of a you being a hero and being in a relationship with Nemuri rather than a one-shot surrounding your relationship, but there's a bunch of fluffy stuff at the end, so gehe-)

Tags: Midnight x Bakugo's Older Sibling! Reader, Binaural, Fluff, Minor Cursing, Mentions of Blood

Your Quirk: Liquid Maker - You conjure a liquid in your hands (smtg like sweat) when you want to and it can become anything. Name it, you got it hun <3

Synopsis: You are a hero (obviously gehe-) and you were catching some villains. Suddenly a huge explosion came from the middle of Musutafu and you headed straight to the crime scene.

Word Count: 2163

SFW Masterlist ◍ Navigation ◍ Requesting Guidelines ◍ Ask here!

You woke up to the sweet smell of smoke coming from the living room. Groaning, you got off your comfortable bed and raced to the living room to stop Bakugo from his daily antics.

"You really got to stop doing this in the morning, Katsuki," you told the younger male, "It's literally," you looked at the clock, "8 am in the morning and my half-asleep self could've gotten hurt stopping you from breaking all hell loose."

Katsuki scoffed while looking at you. "Why aren't you at work yet? As you said, it's already 8 am."

"Later shift today! I only start at around 10 am."

"Wow, aren't you lucky?" Katsuki said as he walked towards the stove, "I'm making pancakes, but I won't make even one for you until you go bathe. You look disgusting."

"Okay, okay." You say, raising your hands and rushing to the bathroom to get ready for the day.

After bathing, you head back into your room and began to wear your skin-tight hero suit.

You groaned slightly as you slowly pulled the form-fitting clothing up your body.

"I swear to God this isn't getting easier."

"You are literally a fatass, so I'm not surprised," you heard Katsuki scream from the kitchen, "I pity Midnight. The fact she needs to be around a literal piece of garbage who doesn't even look good."

"At least I have someone, unlike your childish ass."

"I am a child," he retorted.

You sigh as you open your room door and head back to the kitchen.

"One day, you're going to wish you were nicer to the people around you."

"Maybe," Katsuki said while passing you a plate with a stack of three pancakes, "...but I am pretty sure you aren't going to be one of them, judging by how much you baby me."

"But you are a child! Didn't you say so a few minutes ago?" you say as you pinch his cheeks, earning a growl from him, "Woah, calm down dog."

"Shut up and eat, fatass."

You chuckle at his words and proceed with the order given by your younger brother.

You loved getting later shifts on Fridays. These were the quieter days in the Bakugo household. Mom usually took her extra days off on Fridays like today, extending her weekend. Dad left for work earlier on Fridays but he'd always buy some spicy thing for Katsuki and you to have in the morning. Something to wish us a good day, I presume. And to top it all off, you and Katsuki would have these "sibling" moments, which mostly consisted of you annoying him to the point he'd lash out at you.

"You're a really good cook, Katsuki. These pancakes keep getting better!" you compliment the 10-year old.

And there it was: you entertainment of the day - Katsuki trying to say thank you but failing miserably thanks to his own pride as a "man".

"T-than- that's obvious, isn't it?" he ends, a blush present on his face, "I make pancakes every single time you have a later shift because you like it. If I'm getting better, that means you've been getting more later shifts. That means you've been slacking off, you stupid Pro Hero!"

"...how did you even get to that idea?"

After calming down a raging Katsuki, you put on your gear and head to the entrance of the house.

"Have a good day at school, Katsuki. Don't do anything you'd regret," you playfully warn him before leaving the house.

The streets of Musutafu were usually peaceful. Ever since All Might became the Symbol of Peace, the crime rates have dropped extensively. Yet, there are always one or two little naughty kids that wanted to play with their quirks - or in simpler terms, people who act like kids and try to do minor crimes using their quirks.

Using the liquid formed in your hands, you aimed at the legs of the two running males in black and wrap their legs together. Within a second, the liquid instantly formed into a rope and bounded their legs together, forcing them to fall face down.

"You both gave me a good morning run, thanks for that!" You say as you place two handcuffs around their wrists, "But you should seriously think about another hobby besides stealing."

From afar, you heard a loud boom coming from the middle of Musutafu.

In an instant, you formed another bunch of rope and tied the two males around their waist and pushed them to the corner of a building.

"Run away and you'll get more than just jail time," you say as you rush off to the scene.

The minute you reached the scene, your eyes widened in fear.

Endeavor was the reason behind the whole catastrophe here?

From behind, you felt a pair of soft hands touch your shoulder.

"I know what it looks like, but trust me it isn't," Nemuri started, "A villain that has a mind control quirk is controlling Endeavor from a distance. I've been trying to locate them, but no luck."

You smiled, looking at your girlfriend.

"You managed to get all of that in a few seconds?" you ask, amazed, "I got a good one, didn't I?"

You felt Midnight pinch you from behind.

"As much as I appreciate the compliment, now isn't the time to flirt with me," the female hero said.

You nod, washing away the playful smile.

"You get all the civilians out of here and contact the heroes through the network. I'll try to get him down and knock him out," you say. Nemuri nodded and began to gather the civilians away from the scene.

"Now," you turn to face the 2nd best hero, "How does one take down someone much, much more stronger than you?"

You slowly gathered your liquid in your palm, allowing the fluid to grow in volume.

"You defeating Endeavor would be a sight to behold, not going to lie here," the villain said through Endeavor, "But I am willing to test out that theory."

You lunged at the fire user while creating a fire-resistant rope to tie him down in your hand. In the other, you managed to conjure a Haladie sword - a sword you've trained with ever since your days in UA.

Using the sword, you managed to propel yourself above Endeavor and cut his back. Using the momentum you built, you used both your feet to hit the back of Endeavor's knees, forcing him to kneel.

You immediately stabbed his dominant hand, preventing him from reacting quickly.

With a snap, the Haladie sword transformed back into its liquid state and wrapped around his left hand.

"I was never planning on defeating Endeavor but merely securing him, dear villain of mine," you say as you transformed the liquid around his left hand into a quick-cancelling glove, "It’s one point for Y/N, right now. No point for little Mindy over here."

You began to build up more liquid in your hands to hopefully form another Haladie sword or at least a blade.

The controlled Endeavor began to get up slowly and turn to face you.

"I didn't peg you to be a dumb one, Y/N."

You felt a blade pierce through your stomach.

A civilian sobbed as they pressed the blade deeper into your body, your blood dripping onto their office coat.

"I can't believe you let your guard down so easily. It was your fault to assume I could only control one person at a time, little hero," the controlled civilian said midst crying.

"And that will be your downfall," Endeavor said as small flames began to grow from the palm of his right hand.

The knife that once was in your body was violently ripped out of your body by the controlled civilian and then used to kill themself by piercing their heart.

Tears fell as you saw the now lifeless male bleed to death right beside you.

"Oh don't worry," Endeavor said, "I'll make sure you also go with him, too. That small wound won't kill you, I know that."

You saw Midnight running towards you along with Eraserhead and All Might.

"You know, I always pictured you crying over a dead Nemuri Kayama whilst bleeding from your stomach, have you?"

Your eyes widened at the statement.

There was no way you were going to let that villain kill her.

"Eraser," you screamed, "Erase his quirk and get Midnight out of here."

'Please don't fail on my now, buddy,' you told to your body as you ran towards Endeavor, 'You still have to live for the people you love.'

You quickly formed another Haladie sword and vaulted from the floor towards Endeavor.

You managed to grab the hand aimed at Midnight and pushed it towards you. Using the remainder fluid you had, you formed another quirk-cancelling glove on Endeavor's right hand.

You could hear a sigh of relief from both Nemuri and Shouta, making you smile.

From afar, you heard All Might saying that he caught the villain that was controlling both the civilian and Endeavor. You were shocked when you heard the number one hero's laugh of victory.

You were amazed at the skill the male had.

A villain that took two people to search for was found by him in a few minutes.

Soon, the wound formed by the dead civilian began to take effect as your vision became hazy.

Before you could lose consciousness, you felt Nemuri's hands wrap around you, catching you before you fell.

When you woke up, you heard the sound of hospital monitors beeping. You felt a small hand gripping around your left hand.

"Why did you let them stab you, idiot," you heard your younger brother say, "Don't go teaching me a lesson with your death - it won't work."

You chuckled, looking at the younger blonde. "If this doesn't work on you, I don't know what will."

Katsuki began to sob on your blanket while gripping on the four fingers his small fingers could grip.

"It's okay, Kacchan," you saw a green-haired boy patting his back, "He is here and he is alive. That is all that matters, okay?"

You smiled, looking at the greenette.

"What's your name?" you ask him.

"I'm Izuku Midoriya! I'm friends with Kacchan," he says with a beaming smile.

"Kacchan, huh?" you tease, "You are really close friends with Kacchan, aren't you?"

Before Izuku could reply, you felt Katsuki pinch your leg.

"I don't even know why I care for you, you fatass."

"Oh, how you wound me," you feign sadness as the ten-year-olds left your room.

You smile at the sight of the greenette consoling your brother as they walk out of the room.

You look up to the ceiling, sighing.

"You are a bit too young to be sighing so loudly, Y/N," Nemuri said as she slowly opened the door, "I saw what you did there. Don't tease Katsuki so often, he is quite mature for his age, you know?"

You smile, looking at Nemuri with her hands on her waist.

"He's growing too fast. I need small moments like this to remember how innocent he is before he becomes the raging little twit I know he'll become."

"Woah, Woah, Woah," she says, laughing, " 'Raging little twit'? You really are a bad brother."

You begin laughing, "I have to be the playful one or else the Bakugo's would be a family of three brooding people and one peaceful man."

"True."

Your eyes widen.

"You aren't supposed to agree, you know?"

"My mother taught me not to lie," she says, smiling.

"Well, white lies aren't bad."

She sits beside you and holds your hand. Tears slowly escape her eyes as she looks at you.

"You are okay, right?" She says, sniffling.

You slowly wipe off her tears and put the palm of your hand on her cheek.

"I'm fine, Nemuri."

You slowly move towards her and place a kiss on her forehead.

You pat the empty side of your bed, "Want to join me?"

She slowly nods as she walks to the empty side of the bed and gets in. Her legs immediately wrap around your left leg as she places her head against your chest. Her left hand extends around your waist and hugs you.

"What are you, a koala?" you joke.

"What can I say? You are a comfy tree."

"Well, I am glad to be of service."

Soon, Nemuri goes to sleep. Soft snores can be heard from her as she rubs her head against your chest.

'The koala became a cat,' you thought to yourself.

Your right-hand goes to the top of her head, ruffling her hair.

"I love you so much, Nemuri Kayama. I always will. If I had to, I would gladly lay my life down so that you'd be safe. I know you're asleep and probably can't hear this, but you are the most important thing in my life - don't forget that," you tell her sleeping figure as you fall asleep.

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