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danddymaro · 3 years

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Trusting Pt.2 | Steve Rogers x Reader

Pt.1 Wanting Compromise

Word Count: 3505

Getting Through It

She stretched her two arms out as far as they extended while her glowing (e/c) eyes were fiercely trained onto the flying vehicle,

“ Secured,” She stated lowly, speaking down onto the communicator attached to her suit with a half smirk.

“Good job (f/n)," Tony’s voice responded back, “ Just hold on for a bit longer,” he encouraged her, advancing towards the fleeting jet, Rhodey at his side doing just the same, hell bent on the same mission the other two were.

She'd felt certain of their success until a sudden anchoring weight hooked her with surprise, striking her with a low blow to her unsuspecting figure,

'What....What's...What’s going on?' She wondered with confusion, unexpectedly growing faint.

It was then that her body began to feel sluggish, a heavy weight falling upon her before the world around her began to take a blurring spin,

“Hey…” She started, her voice silky soft as she tried to reduce her panting breaths into steadied ones, already knowing what was coming if she succumbed to the sudden dizzy spell, “Tony?” She said while using the same small voice, for just a split second eyeing the ground beneath her.

It was a mistake on her part as the anxiousness she felt multiplied by tenfold once she caught sight of how far off the ground she was.

Bile threatened to flow up, the bitter taste already there, climbing up to her tongue,

‘Shit,’ She thought while her head lolled to the side, her hands lazily falling back to her sides.

“I can’t..,” she muttered, as her hold on Rogers and Barnes fell, ultimately allowing them to escape before the other two could reach them.

Her unconcentrated eyes rolled up before she slowly drew her heavy eyelids down, falling forward into the mercy of the air.

'I guess this is it,' She thought with strange calmness gracing her as she quickly descended onto the ground, headfirst into an upcoming, harsh collision.

The frantic repeated call of her name fell upon death ears as she fell into a deep sleep, too forgone to even recognize any of the desperate cries that were addressed to her. Instead, she curled into a fetal position, feeling warmth sooth her throughout the darkness, a feeling she found comforting in contrast to the icy , cold smothering she had expected.

Fire engulfed her, and soon enough, the little ball of fire shot down onto the earth's land like a falling meteor, something Iron man witnessed with horror from a long ways, already having known he would be unable to reach her in time.

The remainder of their broken team lay aghast, stilled at the crash.

Vision flew towards the woman, her motionless body worrying him, his face conveying visible concern as he approached her, fearing the worst,

“Miss (f/n)?” He called out to her, kneeling before her with perturbed, blue orbs.

He then carefully moved her, rolling her from her side to her back, his cybernetic blue eyes gazing at her with attention, falling over her paled face where the color of her natural tone had been drained.

"How odd," He breathed, bewildered by her current state.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t relieved to find her well, but rather, it was that he was dumbfounded at the lack of injuries.

'Even her suit is torn,' He observed, carefully eyeing the burnt uniform with tightly pressed lips.

It had taken more damage than she had, furthermore baffling him.

"Miss (f/n)? " He said with concern, his hand gently falling over her heart, feeling the calm beat resonating from it. Her breathing was stable, as was the placid motion of her heart beneath his palm,

"You seem fine," He observed as his hand then dipped down to her navel with the same confusion, trying to find any abnormalities before he stopped abruptly, his hand remaining hovered over her abdomen.

"Could it be?" He said to himself as gingerly, his hand pressed to it, his eyes looking down onto the small part of her body with growing amazement,

" I see…" he muttered, a small sigh of relief falling past his lips as his arms slipped beneath her neck and knees, picking her up with caring gentleness.

"That was quite a scare," He told the unconscious woman, shaking his head all the while.

He cradled her near, holding her protectively within his arms, "Mr. Stark," he addressed his creator. " Miss (f/n) is alright, but it seems she had a...well, let’s say, a short spell…" he said while trailing off.

"English," Stark replied back sternly, sounding gruff and stiff. “Please, just tell me she's alright,” he added, closing his eyes tightly. “Just tell me she made it,” he muttered, his voice hoarse.

With a small twitch to his lips, the AI nodded with certainty,

"Sir, she's fainted." Vision explained, and at the news, Tony’s brows creased, puzzled.

“Fainted..?” he replied, “ But the fall, is-”

“She’s alive and well, though I can’t be certain how...She doesn't seem harmed,” The artificial being insisted with notable relief weaved within his mellow, calmed voice.

At the news Stark nodded somberly, releasing a small, held in breath, willing to accept it, so long as she was alive and well.

For now, it was all that mattered.

Landing, the brunette male set his sight on the (h/c) haired young woman, War machine falling in suite at his side,

" You go ahead and take her to get treated, " Rhodey suggested, already knowing it was the only thing Stark could have in mind, "I'll take care of things here, alright?" He said with a placid smile, receiving a thankful nod from Tony,

“Sounds like a plan,”

After that it was hours before she came to, and by then she’d been placed in medical care, keenly watched through every second of it.

She had woken up to a full room, her (e/c) colored eyes wide and observant as she let them fall upon both Vision and Tony first, then to her tentative doctor, the familiar faces somehow doing nothing to sooth her.

Around her, grim faces all looked back at her, causing her to grow concerned, " What's going on?" She asked with a thick, hoarse voice, her attention falling onto her doctor, wanting to know why the silence in her room was riddled with such a coarse tension.

Clearing her throat, the blonde female offered her a small smile,

"It's a miracle you're even here," she started releasing a small bemused chuckle, " But we're all happy to have you back," She said while speaking in a tentative tone,

" We took the liberty of running some test over you, and we really couldn't find abnormalities in regards to your health. " She said with uncertainty, " And then Vision here, requested we run a different type of test, one that baffled us, but nonetheless we conducted," she said while rolling her hands together, trying to find a way to break it down to the patient.

"And ?"(f/n) Asked , not missing the way the coffee eyed male in the room looked aside with a tightened jaw.

"Oh...well, Con...graduations?" Her doc said with a little, unsettled shrug, "You're pregnant," she added with a small, unenthused cheer, knowing that the news wouldn't be something the woman wanted to hear.

"Oh..." was all (f/n) said, nodding with tightly pressed lips. "Well...thank you," (f/n) uttered quietly, seeing the medic nod with the same kindness being offered, not taking any personal offence to the lack of ambient response.

“Your about two months along,” Her doc added, still trying to maintain the same soft optimism in her tone. “It’s amazing... really. Enhanced being such as yourselves, you always amaze me.” She said with true admiration. “ I can only surmise your child is the reason you survived.

I’ve seen it happen before.

They already they have a sense of survival, protecting themselves and their mothers, lending their own strengths to their guardian.” She added with tenderness.

“Anyways,” She added, “ I will leave you to yourselves, “ She added, “Unless you have any other questions for me,” She offered, receiving silence and a lazy ‘no’.

“I see then. I will be back later, ” She said, a little, understanding nod left to the other woman in the room as she exited the room.

Still attempting to process the news, (f/n) sat through the uncomfortable silence with the two men of her former team before swallowing down hard,

"Tony...Vision," She said addressing both of them, her (e/c) colored eyes moving to each of them individually as she spoke,

“Please,” she started in a hushed voice,” this can't leave the room,” she told the two males, her (e/c) colored eyes begging as she reached out to the one closest to her, her hand tightly wrapped around Stark’s good arm.

"Please?" She said again.

Nodding, Vision gave her a faint smile, his right hand rising slightly in a show of oath. “ I give you my word, miss (f/n), I will not speak a word to this to anyone other than yourself,” he told her, making her nod with appreciation, her eyes immediately going full focus onto the other man with expectancy, wanting to see the same show of compliance,

"Tony?" She asked him, wanting to get a word out of him.

With a Stern face, Tony shook his head in disapproval before turning to Vision himself,

"We need a moment alone," he told the cyborg, his voice hard and dour, enough to be able to cut through diamond.

‘Annndd....Of course,’ (f/n) thought to herself, swallowing down her bitter tasting spit as she sucked in a deep, low breath, having known he’d say that.

“Very well, but ... Mr. Stark, please, remember to be flax with her," Vision advised, his gaze falling over the man as he spoke to him, his artificial blue eyes gazing at him with his own form of plea,

"She is in a very vulnerable state right now, please be mindful of that," he added, turning to (f/n) and giving her a reassuring nod, “And of course...Miss (f/n), If you need anything, anything at all... please don’t feel afraid to ask,” he told her, moving to go through the room's wall, but instead taking the door, remembering Wanda's previous chiding.

“The door, use the door,” he murmured to himself, leaving both (F/n) and Stark on their own with a small ‘click’ of the door.

Tony waited until he knew they were alone, being the first to speak ,

"Alright," Tony started, "Who? That's all I'm asking... I just want to know...who?" He pegged on, staring at her intently, a burning gaze that seared holes into her body.

"Does it matter?" She said quietly, her eyes falling over to the plain, powder blue sheets placed over her lap.

Her hands then came into vision as she moved them there, placing her gaze solely on them in order to try and find something to calm herself.

'This can't really be happening,' She told herself, anxiously tearing off the little dry pieces of skin off of her lower lip with her teeth.

Nodding, he looked at her with bewilderment, "Um, excuse me?” he asked her with insult in his tone. “ Yes, it actually does, because if you don't tell him, I will." He snapped.

Rolling her eyes (f/n) sighed in a way that was notably filled with snide, “ Your not my father, or my mother, or anyth-"

"I'm your friend," he finished for her, swallowing up a large breath.

"Remember that?" He asked her. "I'm your friend, and I'm not going to sit back and watch you struggle alone or suffer.” He explained, “So, I want to know who he is. Because if you're afraid to tell him, I'll break the ice. Maybe he's a good guy, what do I know?" He asked her shrugging in a simple manner.

" But If by any chance... by any possible chance I hope is slim and none existent... You've found yourself hooking up with a complete asshole and you just don't want him around... I'll make sure he doesn't come close to you and your kid ever again." He told her his hand cutting through the air before him in a chopping motion.

He’d do anything for her, and he wanted her to know it.

“You don’t have to worry about that," she replied back, pain swimming within her (dark/light) pools. " I don’t think that's an issue anymore,” (f/n) said before she sighed softly, following up with a small hollow chuckle, "You really don’t," She answered back, hanging her head.

"Because he's not coming back," she added in a short mutter. “He made that very clear already,” she added, her hand skimming over the spot he had struck.

It didn’t hurt, but coincidentally, it was right where her heart was, the pain during then being something she felt coming from deep within a place she couldn't reach to soothe.

‘He might as well have blown a hole through me,’ She mused. ‘It leaves the same feeling...The same message...’ She added dejectedly.

Backing up Tony shook his head, his dark brown eyes wide as he begun to understand, "no...no...no...no- (f/n), tell me you didn't, " He said in denial.

"Once, " she told him, lifting up a single finger, sluggishly dropping it down as she rose her face up to look at him, “And I guess that’s all it took,” she added while straining to smile, her (e/c) eyes already watering.

“I'm just thinking of the luck I’ve got...” she muttered with a shake to her head, “Man...Just terrible isn't it?” she said while chuckling, a small bit of her truly entertained by the situation, because it would be her shitty luck hitting her with another one of it's low blows.

She placed her right hand right over her forehead, holding it as she hung her head again, actually laughing, sounding loud and obnoxious, a twinge of pain audible as her voice wavered until the show of amusement morphed in a choked sob.

Stark looked at her still with disbelief, but also with confusion, because as much as he didn’t really agree with the other man, and had actually just fought with him, he knew a one-time thing was strange for him.

He didn’t seem like the type, and he was sure (f/n) wasn’t either.

“How did you two...” he trailed off not knowing just how to ask, “How?” he asked her instead, not knowing how else to phrase it.

(f/n) took a short breather before sucking up snot back up her nose, steading her voice to explain,

“I-I've always been in love with him." She started.

“I know...” he answered back, softly, having already known, because every so often they’d touched the subject.

“That day... he’d been so sad...so soft and broken...” she revealed. “I wanted nothing more than to hold him... To be held by him as well,” she said with a bittersweet smile directed at the man as she looked up at him,

“I’m so stupid, because I should have known,” she murmured, " I … I thought that by skipping over the whole proclamation of love and just going straight forward to well, just doing it, he'd get it," she added, actually tearing up.

“But it all became so complicated... and none of it happened the way it should have,” she went on, and as he heard explain furthermore, he ran his free hand over his face, signing into it as he begun to understand the tension that had settled between the two during that time.

There had been a shift that was notable to everyone.

" He assumed it was just a passing thing, and then on top of that he said he was confused!” she added, exclaiming the last bit with utter frustration.

“He was confused!” she repeated yet again, all with the same aggravation,

“I should have been honest...I should have said much more... but I just didn't want to pressure him anymore," she said, yet again putting her hands over to her forehead, pressing them over the spots aside her head to soothe the growing pain swelling from within her cranium as she let loose,

" And then he started seeing Peggy more, which I would never...Ever forbid him from, " she said sniffling. " Because how could I hold envy for his first love?” she asked him. “ How could I be upset when fate had screwed him over so badly?” she asked.

“He’s watching her forget him, meeting him every day over and over…

He watched the woman he’d loved for years.... the same one he’d idolized become ill and feeble...her days counted...” She ranted. “ I wouldn’t have cared that he still saw Peggy...I wouldn't have ever complained!” she hiccupped.

“ But she just happened to have a pretty fucking niece, o-one he'd already met and had small talk with," she rambled, stumbling in between the sentence,

“One he mentioned with a little too much fondness...” She went on, " And I'm not stupid...women know when shit happens, they have a sixth sense for this Tony… and her being the one to give him Intel, to conspire with him, that means he trusted her," she told him, her hands slamming down onto her sides with frustration.

"He went to her… like he trusted her more than he should have...” she sneered.

“That’s why he was confused, That's why he couldn’t just..." she railed off while wiping a few tears that had escaped, not bothering to finish off that sentence. “I just know something is there,” she said with a bite to her lower lip. “And I ask myself why couldn't there have been something real with us? Why couldn't he see me...” She said brokenly.

“To make matters worse, I’m not even sure he even thinks of me as a friend," she admitted to Stark, " And that's the bit that hurts the most, the fact that he doesn't trust me...” she said while thinking back to their fight.

Moving closer to her, Tony put a hand to her shoulder, “ Hey, (f/n)” he said softly. “It’s alright, just calm down…and look, I’m sorry,” he told her, not having wanted to upset her.

All he wanted was to show her he cared. Now more than ever, he wanted her to feel comforted.

“We don’t have to keep talking about this,” he told her, visually showing his sympathy for her as he saw how pained she was, “At least not right now,” He added, giving her a small, lax squeeze to remind her that he was actually there, not just in body , but in heart.

Shaking her head whilst forming a tight smile, she let her head fall onto the side where his hand was,

" He's gone now anyway," (f/n) reminded Stark with a soft murmur, letting it truly fall over her that there wasn’t any way he’d come back. If they couldn’t force him to cave, they'd just have to wait and see when the course of their roads would one day intertwine yet again.

With a dry laugh escaping from her mouth she perked right up, like she just remembered something important…

And she did...

The back of her hands moved to whip away the small, annoying salted droplets clinging to her eyes,

" And now I'm pregnant. I'm here with a bitty, little baby in my tummy," she told him, a flicker of hopefulness twinkling in her eyes amidst the throbbing pain.

Shakily her hand trailed down to her stomach, her palm laying over the place her child would occupy.

“I’m actually pregnant!” she chirped as though after all that time it finally hit her. “I’m actually pregnant Tony!” she said, closing her eyes tightly, happy.

It wasn’t what she’d expected, and much less how she wanted it, but there within her womb was a life.

“I have everything I need,” she declared. “ All this time I thought that I wouldn't be able to live without him, “ she began, “ But I’m here... this little sweet child of mine and I are here...alive,” she said with starry eyes, staring at him with a shining glint to her eyes that was full of budding hope.

“It shouldn’t be possible, but somehow I’m alright,” she went on. " And I know I can get through this," she said with certainty, feeling a surge of powerful sureness course through her.

"Yeah," He answered her, "And you can count on me for anything," He reminded her, "Whatever it is you need, I'm here for you," he added while offering her the same soft look, knowing she was pained, understanding that all she needed was love to get by.

'It'll be hard,' She thought to herself. ' But I'll get through it...We'll get through it,' She added with a hand pressed to her navel.

‘ And wherever you are now Steve...I hope you’ll do fine as well...’

Next : Wishing You Were Here

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triple-a-enderdragon · 5 years

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Meet the Locals!

Hermits, in this AU, come in three different flavors; avatars, those who were given magic, and those who have magic of their own.

Avatars: Hermits who have had the (mis)fortune of being chosen by an Element, beings who represent different aspects of the world (more on these guys later). Avatars can channel the power of their Element and have certain related abilities. This is elaborated in each individual avatar’s infodump.

Given: Hermits who have obtained magic via other superpowered beings other than the Elements. Their powers and abilities vary greatly.

Personally Obtained: Hermits who were either born with their magic or obtained it without the intervention of any superpowered being. Again, their powers and abilities vary greatly.

Hermits! In (kinda) alphabetical order!

Bdubs: Flavor 3; can manipulate space and distance, but in small areas. He can make these changes “permanent”, most prominently in his builds; or temporary. He mainly uses it as a way to travel more quickly and safely between locations. The larger the area, the longer the time held, and the more dramatic the change, the faster he tires out. However, the small area of his builds and the subtlety of the magic used makes these permanently sustainable.

Biffa: Secret flavor 4; but he’s the only one. He has no “real” magic, but his stubbornness to not die is magical on its own. Biffa originally came from an...interesting world. It was a hardcore world, meaning perma-death. This world had a gladiator-style arena that he never left (until he left that world). He was thrown into fights constantly, which led to the almost total (violent) removal and replacement of his fleshy bits. He is about 90% cybernetic and can become a bloodthirsty little monster. That’s why he’s on the Strike Team! Known as the Berserker, he is the frontal assault in most confrontations, drawing the attention away from the flankers, Iskall and Python. His fighting style may seem random and haphazard, but it is well structured and takes full advantage of his metal body. As an ST member, he has special weapons, two axes and a greatsword.

Cub: Flavor 2; Bestowed with Vex magic alongside Scar and is an OP. Cub, besides having handy mechanic-exploiting knowledge, has some control over the elusive magic of the Vexes. He knows not of the true nature of how he and Scar came about it. Cub’s speciality is utility magic and he mostly uses it to test the limits of the world around him. Because the magic can be volatile, he (and Scar) must use a focus or risk great damage to himself. Cub’s focus is a fairly small sphere of translucent quartz that, over time, has grown small cracks of a suspiciously light blue material.

Docm: Flavor 1; Avatar of Redstone, whether she knows it or not. Frankly, whether he knows it or not, either. ~Once upon a time~, Doc was a regular researcher, doing regular researcher things. Until one day. An explosion rips through the facility, fusing several things together. Two of those things being Doc and a creeper. Also, he lost some body bits as well. This explosion drew the attention of Redstone (an Element!), who had been watching him closer than she normally would (read: at all), took pity on him and replaced his lost body bits with some snazzy redstone bits. Needless to say she didn’t expect that would make him her avatar. She then went back to minding her own business. Or, at least, trying to. Something about Doc is just...captivating. Can’t be this avatar business. Oh no. ANYWAY. Doc can manipulate redstone. Fun! He can also feel the circuits and how they work, allowing him to make incredibly accurate diagnoses of other hermits’ redstone circuits. He also has a weird and exceptional way with a channeling trident...

Evil Xisuma: Flavor 1; Avatar of Void, kind of an accident. EX came into being when Void made a very bad mistake. Void saw all these Elements with their avatars and decided they wanted one. (bad reason, but oh well.) Xisuma just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It would have gone smoothly (if X consented. He probably would have), but someone else didn’t. The world guardian smacked Void back into their place, but not before they took a bit of X with them. The piece of X’s soul that Void stole became EX, kind of an avatar, kinda not. EX lives in the void of the End, between the death layer and Oblivion. He catches (and sometimes collects) whatever falls in. If hermits ask nicely, then he may return some items they have lost, but he rarely does this as most of their things aren’t collection-worthy. His favorite collection is of souls, those that somehow ended up below the death layer.

False: Flavor 3; Has powers over enchantments. False is the champ of PVP; the only other hermits that can hold their own against her is Iskall and Biffa. Her preferred weapon is the bow, in which she is unparalleled. Some time ago, between world 4 and 5, she (and Iskall) were pulled to The UHC to compete. False won (no surprise), but she was forced to stay behind to watch Iskall fight through (and win) the next round. During the upset of his “win”, she slipped away to the 5th world. False hasn’t told him what she saw in that 2nd UHC. Switching gears, False is Commander of the Strike Team, and so that is her alias. While very capable at PVP, she is the only member who can strategize on the fly; such that she takes her super special bow to high ground and controls the field as a chessboard. If things get really dire, she can supercharge the enchantments of one (or all) of the boys and essentially make them unstoppable for a short period of time. She cannot do this for very long and is completely vulnerable the entire time. That’s why Wels is there!

GTWScar: Flavor 2; Bestowed with Vex magic alongside Cub. Scar is the one to bring Vex magic down on him and Cub. He knows it is not a gift, but a pact. In order to gain the protection of the Vex, he had to essentially pledge himself to them. His relation to them is very Avatar-like in nature. Most of the time he can do his own thing, but occasionally the Vex will guide him to do something, as stated in the pact. Where Cub has the less intrusive utility magic, Scar has the more intense evocation magic.

Grian: Flavor 1; Avatar of Air. Has wings! Now, I know what you’re thinking. ~Evo~, right? Well, I grant you but a taste and nothing else. Grian lived in Evo for a while, went through all that, became a baby watcher and everything, then vanished. A certain something has found the crown jewel to its collection. A trade, it proposed. You can come and join me. No unnecessary restrictions will be upon you. No benchmarks. No goals, other than your own. In return, you will be a blank slate. I will not tolerate a being tainted by Them. I guess it was a bit taken aback by how enthusiastically Grian agreed. He remembers nothing of Evo (except that something happened), or of the deal. He is the brand new avatar of Air, as he had shown exceptional flying skills and no fear of heights. Without the need for rockets to stay airborne and an inherently curious personality, Grian has very quickly become the air equivalent to Iskall’s ground scouting.

iJevin: Flavor 3; Has various slimy powers. Slime has alchemical properties. Jevin is a slime. Full stop. Okay, not full stop. But he is a slime, just a really weird, blue, potentially one-of-a-kind one. He wasn’t created in a lab, but he was found and dumped in one to “be studied”. Unfortunately for the researchers, Jevin was also very sentient. And sentient slimes don’t like to be “researched”. So he left. He managed to (very poorly) disguise himself as human and waltz out the door. Whilst exploring worlds, he discovered some very interesting properties of his slime. When used in potion-making, it can enhance the properties of the potions significantly. To the annoyance of the other hermits, he prefers to make poisons and other negative-effect potions. They have to coerce him to make more beneficial ones. The other hermits don’t know their drinking Jevin-juice. Shh, don’t tell them.

Impulse: Flavor 2 & 3; Is an OP and has mob wrangling powers. More useful than it sounds. Impulse seems to just have a way with mobs. Unlike Ren or Cleo, he can’t control or talk to them; which makes this even more mysterious. Mobs just...behave differently around him. There’s a reason he always has a trading hall within days of getting to a new world.

Iskall: Flavor 1; Avatar of Diamond. A bit unhappy about it. (jus’ a bit). Iskall’s early days hail from hardcore worlds, where he had to hone his PVP and tracking skills to survive. Between worlds 4 and 5, he (along with False) were pulled into The UHC. He and False had two very different experiences. Long story short, in a battle against another skilled PVPer, Iskall lost his left eye. Upon winning, he became MIA for several hours before following a trail, left by False, to the hermits’ fifth world, now sporting a shiny new eye. This shiny new eye gives him control over all things diamond. If it’s gear he made, full control. If it’s gear someone else made, partial control. He can detect other people if they’re wearing diamond gear. He can also detect diamond ore in a 5 chunk radius around himself, 16 if he’s concentrating. All these cool abilities come with a downside; if his eye is removed, he will not survive long without it. Iskall is a member of the Strike team, dubbed the Hunter, due to his unmatched tracking skills. Along with Python, he is a flanker. Iskall’s preferred weapon is the glave, because polearms are awesome. Also, how can he thrive in such cold biomes? This man’s a walking furnace I tell ya. The downside is that he can’t stay in the Nether too long or he’ll start to overheat.

Joe: Flavor 3; Can cast Suggestion at will and always succeeds. Basically, Joe can subtly influence peoples’ emotions, always in the interest of safety and diplomacy. Okay, that’s not entirely true; he also does it to confuse and befuddle. He’s very good at that. Another thing he’s good at is healing. Joe is the resident medic. While other hermits, (Iskall and Wels), have rudimentary medical knowledge, it’s mostly field dressing. Joe has a more extensive knowledge of long-term treatments. He is the one wrangling Jevin to produce beneficial potions.

Keralis: Flavor 3; Hypnosis. Look into my eyes. Nothing but my eyes. Keralis can captivate one person at a time with his gaze, but once captured, he cannot look away without breaking his hold.

Mumbo: Flavor 3; Can alter reality, but doesn’t know it. Whatever he believes will happen (or not), will happen. Mumbo may possibly be the most powerful hermit; he can unknowingly alter the outcome of whatever he’s thinking about just by believing in his new reality. The catch? He can’t do it at will. Thus, he can never know about it. The only person who knows about it is Xisuma, and only after some intense investigation over several worlds. Aside from that Mumbo is well-versed in redstone, and is better at it than he thinks. His problem? What he thinks becomes reality.

Python: Flavor 3; If he doesn’t want to be seen, he won’t. No matter what. Not invisibility, I swear. Camouflage!! Python was apart of someone’s attempt to make attack creepers; an unsuccessful venture. You’d think he’d be more chameleon or something with how well he can blend in with his surroundings, but no. Python is a member of the Strike Team. While he’s not as good as Iskall at tracking, Python is (predictably) better in the stealth department, earning him the alias Assassin. He moves much like a viper, striking with his twin daggers before his target has time to react. He works exceedingly well with his fellow flanker, Iskall, to take down all sorts of enemies.

Ren: Flavor 1; Avatar of Life. Can speak with animals and can turn into a massive grey wolf. ‘S pretty cool. Ren came to be an avatar out of desperation, and Life was the only one who could help him. It’s not quite what he expected, but it’s pretty cool all the same. He can communicate with animals and can even, at the right moment, become one. His favorite shape to take it that of a grey wolf.

Stress: Flavor 1 & 3; Lucky girl! Or is she? Avatar of Water and a certain magenta surprise later on. Stress became Water’s avatar almost as a second thought. There’s a reason she’s known as the Ice Queen and not the Water Queen; Water neglected to give Stress full access to her powers, as the Element is much like Redstone; keeping to herself. Not that this hinders Stress in anyway, she is still a force to be reckoned with. She doesn’t feel the cold and experiences no ill effects from prolonged exposure.

Tango: Flavor 1; Avatar of Fire. He ain’t too happy about it either. Tango became and avatar in a similar fashion to Ren, except he turned down Fire’s proposition, saying he’d rather die. To which Fire replied, “You are in the Nether. You die here, you are mine irregardless.” Needless to say Tango’s still a bit salty about that whole ordeal. At least he can spend more time in his favorite dimension, the Nether! Impulse and Zedaph often find him taking a dip in lava or sleeping in a bed of his own flames. On the heat scale, if Iskall is a furnace, then Tango is a miniature sun.

TFC: Flavor 1; Avatar of Earth; but at this point, they’ve pretty much become one. Tfc is the wrangler of the other Elements as Earth is the oldest one around. At this point TFC and Earth have bonded to the point where they are almost indistinguishable from each other. Of course, hermits can still tell if it’s TFC or Earth talking. Usually it’s TFC; Earth only comes out when absolutely necessary. Since they are bonded together so completely, TFC can bring out the pure, raw power that Earth has to offer, something that no other avatar can claim.

Wels: Flavor 2; Made a pact with an entity eons ago. He can never be defeated as long as he is protecting someone. Well, not so much a pact as a promise. Wels gave his word to this entity that he would always protect those who need it most, and in return the entity’s power would shield him from death for as long as he protects someone. Even with this protection, he has to be careful; once the conditions have passed, he will succumb to any fatal wounds he sustained over the fight. To counter this, Wels has gotten incredibly skilled at defensive battle. He may not be an attacker like the rest of the Strike Team, but his sword and board tactics have come in handy more times than one can count, earning him the alias Bastion. False owes him her life several times, when he protected her as she unleashed her magic.

Xisuma: Flavor 2; Admin! Admin powers are granted as host of each world’s resident guardian. Xisuma handles all of the behind the scenes, keeping an eye out for anomalies, sending Iskall to investigate “visitors”, generally making sure everything is running as smoothly as possible. A while ago, X had a runin with Void. Long story short, EX came into existence and left X missing a piece of himself. Because of this, he often finds himself forgetting simple things, like conversations or bits of projects. He has also had to enhance his helmet to help his breathing, as he now finds the overworld and Nether atmospheres to be too oppressive.

Zedaph: Flavor 3; No magic can affect him. That’s it. Even Mumbos’ reality-changing ability can’t touch him. Zed is the much-needed keystone in the midst of all the magic running around this world. Even he doesn’t know the full extent of his magic-negating ability, except that it hasn’t truly been tested yet.

ZCleo: Flavor 3; Due to a glitch years ago, Cleo is now a zombie. She can talk sense into undead mobs. Cleo was once a normal person. Well, as normal as she gets. What I’m saying is she wasn’t a zombie yet. But a glitch happened years ago at the exact moment when she (and other people in different worlds) died and respawned, trapping her between life and undeath. She took this very well, immediately trolling any hermit she could find. Cleo has expressed a preference to being undead, as the only mobs she has to worry about now are creepers and spiders. Occasionally a limb will fall off, but she takes it in stride.

#hermitcraft #hermitcraft au #lore #hermit lore #time to strike back #ttsb #third stop #AND WE'RE OFF

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overwatchworks · 5 years

Text

McGenji Week, Day 4: Lost In Translation

@mcgenjievents

You can read it here on Ao3 if you’d prefer!

Jesse had his arms crossed over his chest, brows drawn low as he stared at the man that was glowering back at them. His eyes were red, a respirator covering the lower half of his face, tubes and wiring and scars covering him.

Partially completed prosthetics still being attached to his legs and arm. His chest was an amalgamation of metal and synthetic material. Jesse could see glimpses of lines and screws traveling up his head beneath the fuzz of his hair. A cyborg. Jesse was staring at a cyborg. Angela sure was something.

“I had to reconstruct his legs and right arm, though, I am still in the process of making them fully functioning and equipped with weaponry. His torso is completed, and the jaw and spinal augments are as well. He has fully functioning eyesight and hearing, with a few enhancements thanks to the cybernetics.”

“His body is accepting them fairly well, but there have been a few materials it rejects. However, I have pinpointed what they are and am working on a new coolant-based fluid that can keep the machinery working and synthesize with the organic parts of him and his bloodstream,” Dr. Ziegler explained, Reyes nodding as his eyes drifted over her report and the cyborg’s diagnostics.

Jesse glanced at the tablet, seeing a little name in blue in the corner. G. Shimada. The gunslinger glanced back to the man, found that he was being stared at as well.

“What’s the status on completing him, doc?” Reyes asked, eyes flicking up to Shimada as he made a metallic sounding growl.

“Another two weeks, earliest. And let me tell you, I am not about to rush this just because you want another agent,” Ziegler chided. Reyes smiled dryly, handing her the tablet.

“I don’t just want him for an agent, I need him for a mission. He’s got information we’ve been missing for months now, so I’m not asking you to rush. I’m just saying, don’t take your pretty time on him.”

“I assure you, he will be ready when you need him to be.”

“I’m counting on it, Angela. I’ll be back in two weeks to check on it. McCree, let’s—”

“What’s his name?” Jesse interjected, unable to keep the question from tumbling past his lips. He was tired of them talking about the man as if he wasn’t right in front of them, listening to every word.

Must have been hard enough to feel like a person without everyone talking about you like you were not. Everyone turned to stare at him, Jesse raising his brows and slipping his hands into his pockets, easing his shoulders back.

“It’s Genji Shimada,” Reyes told him with a slight frown, Jesse grinning and turning to Shimada.

“Well, Mr. Genji Shimada, it was a pleasure meetin’ you. See you in two weeks,” Jesse told him, winking. Shimada’s glare did not change, but that didn’t matter to Jesse. He walked out with Reyes, the commander giving him a strange look.

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doin’ what?”

“That’s an agent, Jesse.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So, don’t do this.”

“Do what?”

Reyes sighed, shaking his head.

“I know that look.”

“I ain’t givin’ no looks,” Jesse huffed, still thinking about those piercing red eyes.

“You know what, I’ll just say I told you so when I get proven right.”

“Listen, just ‘cause I said bye don’t mean I’m suddenly head over heels for him! Y’all were talkin’ like he wasn’t even there, and he didn’t like it, I was watchin’ him the whole time!”

“Oh, you were?”

“Gabe, I swear.”

“Just accept that I’m right.”

“Jesus, you’re worse than Ana...” Jesse grumbled, arms crossing over his chest as he glared. Reyes just smiled, shaking his head fondly and continuing to read over the notes he had been given for Genji Shimada. - It took a week of Jesse going to visit Shimada in the med bay every day before he maybe started to think Gabe was right. Two, and he could admit it was true. Jesse didn’t really know if Shimada liked it or not, considering he would simply stare at the wall or roll over with his back facing the cowboy as he told stories and talked, but he kept coming in anyways.

He figured out that Shimada could not talk, the respirator rendering him unable to speak, but filling his lungs with oxygen in compensation. But, he could write. Angela had come in a few times while they were on a break from surgeries and prosthetic attachments, chatting to Shimada as she hooked him up to the machinery around him.

When he would not respond, she would tap the little notepad resting on his bed in a chiding manner.

“I do not know how to make you more comfortable or if I need to fix something if you do not say anything,” She sighed, Shimada picking it up with his good hand. He stared at it a moment, then glanced to Jesse.

The gunslinger smiled a bit, watching curiously as Shimada started to scribble something down shakily. Angela looked at it when he was done, then laughed. Shimada made a strange huffing sound, indignation written in the fine lines around his eyes, which were narrowed.

Expressive, even with most of his face covered.

“What?” Jesse asked, the doctor starting to jot down Shimada’s vitals.

“He says you make lots of noise,” Angela translated. The gunslinger chuckled at that, Shimada’s gaze darting to him.

“Yeah, that I do. Sorry if it bothers you, Mr. Shimada, I can be quieter if you need me to.”

A slight shrugging motion was made in reply, nothing more being written down or shown.

“Speaking of quiet, Genji is going to need some time to rest, please. You can come back tomorrow, Jesse.”

“Can’t argue with the doctor’s orders.”

“No, I would advise not to,” Angela deadpanned, Jesse laughing again and standing.

“Alrighty. See you tomorrow, Mr. Shimada. Been nice talkin’ to you.”

He followed the doctor out of the door, giving Shimada a little wave goodbye just like he always did. Angela closed the door quietly, then glanced at Jesse with a raised brow.

“I am glad you go in there, he needs the socialization. All he ever gets to see is me and a few officials from Overwatch command stuck in here like this. He’s supposed to be kept secret, which only isolates him further. It’s not good for his mental rehabilitation, and I worry about him. I can only do so much for his body, but not for his mind, so thank you.”

Jesse rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, feeling himself get warm in the cheeks.

“Aw, hell, I ain’t doin’ nothin’ but annoying him, I’m sure, going in there and talkin’ his ear off like that.”

“No, he likes it. I know he waits for you to come in, and I see the way he seems to get more lively when you’re in there. It certainly is not the same for when I walk in,“ Angela told him knowingly. Jesse looked to Shimada’s door, then smiled a bit to himself.

“Well, if you say so. I need to get going. Thanks for lettin’ me stay so long.”

“Of course. See you tomorrow, Jesse.”

“Bye, doc.” - The first thing Jesse did after the mission was go to the med bay, however, he wasn’t there for Shimada this time. He thought about him, sure, but the blood loss was making him woozy. Only a few cuts, but they were deep. They had done what they could to stall the blood flow, but the ride back to base had been a long one, and the cuts were hitting some unlucky places.

The ones on Jesse’s leg were giving him the most issues, blood soaking the multiple layers of bandages they had applied. Angela muttered under her breath as Jesse limped towards her with a weak tip of his hat.

“Heya, doc. Fancy meetin’ you here.”

“Just get on the table.”

Jesse grinned and did as he was told, laying back with a groan. He really was in pain, but it was the strange kind, the one where he could not quite pinpoint where it was coming from. It was just everywhere. His fingers tingled, started to go numb.

“I cannot believe he sent you in here alone...I’m surprised you can still walk,” Angela sighed. Jesse closed his eyes, making a muffled sound of acknowledgement.

He knew he was drifting, focus too far gone to do much other than stare past the fuzzy line of Ziegler’s body. Just past it to where someone else was sitting. Red eyes, staring back at him. Jesse brightened, giving Shimada a sluggish wave.

“‘S good ‘t see ya, Mr. Shimada. Been a hot minute,” The gunslinger slurred, hardly recognizing the words tumbling out of his own mouth. Shimada’s brows furrowed, and he looked to Angela.

“He says it is good to see you after so long,” She told him with a sigh, Shimada’s eyes dropping back to Jesse. There was an extended silence, then a nod from the ninja.

“I will let you fix him.”

Jesse’s eyes widened at the metallic voice, unfamiliar, yet definitely coming from Shimada. He watched as the cyborg turned and left swiftly, blinking slowly before looking to Angela for answers.

“He just started using his voice again, now that the trachea I had to replace is healed well enough. That’s the most he’s said to me, you have a good effect on him.”

“You think so...?”

“I do. Now, sit still and let me ‘fix you’ like he says.” - Once Shimada had been training approved, he had silently followed Jesse around as the cowboy showed him the ropes. Then he got his ass handed to him during sparring, and Jesse had the distinct feeling that the cyborg had been holding back, too.

Training together soon turned into missions together when Shimada was cleared for them, Reyes figuring out quickly that they paired well as a team. And they did.

Jesse would shoot covering fire for Shimada as he struck into the enemies in a quick motion, tearing the remaining foes down like they were nothing. Talk about everything and nothing during their long flights, Shimada meeting him with silence every time, but he was always listening. He just never said much back. Sometimes he did tell a story of his own, and on even rarer occasions, Jesse would hear a quiet chuckle.

Little things like that kept the gunslinger hooked, hoping that one day, he could hear more from Shimada. More than what he could gather from just the expressions in his eyes, the quiet mechanical tones of his voice, barely able to translate what the ninja was feeling or thinking.

When they weren’t paired for missions, Jesse would always go to see Shimada—mostly the night before—just to talk to him, or say goodbye. It was one such night that the ninja finally said something back.

Jesse was sprawled out on the cyborg’s bed, taking more than a few liberties seeing as how Shimada had been wary to let him inside to begin with. But he hadn’t said anything, as usual, simply sitting on the edge of the mattress, watching Jesse with something that almost looked like fondness in his eyes as he talked.

“Now, I don’t think this is gonna be a tough mission, but if I die in some freak accident, I’m givin’ you the rights to my boots and hat. Mark this down, Mr. Shimada, it’s an honour, and before you say it, you’re welcome. But only if it’s a freak accident. If I get shot, they go to Reyes, we already made a deal there—”

“You don’t have to call me ‘Mr. Shimada’, you know. It’s nice, but just Genji is fine.”

Jesse blinked, lifting his head to stare at the ninja, surprised.

“Oh. Well. Alright, Genji,” Jesse murmured, trying out the name.

It sounded nice, and Genji’s eyes crinkled around the edges. A smile. The gunslinger grinned back after a moment, sitting up fully and clearing his throat, warm in the face.

“And don’t die. Freak accident or no. Take care of yourself, McCree. Anata ga inakute sabishīdesu,” Genji told him, Jesse frowning at the last part, still in awe that the ninja was telling him this at all.

“What?”

“Be careful,” Genji shrugged. Jesse nodded, then stood with a lopsided grin.

“I will, but only because you told me to. And just on a side note, my friends call me Jesse. I’ll see you around, Genji.”

“See you...Jesse.”

The gunslinger tipped his hat as he left, closing the door and feeling a swell of warmth in his chest.

Damn, Reyes had told him so. ~~ あなたがいなくて寂しいです, Anata ga inakute sabishīdesu: I would miss you.

#mcgenji #jesse mccree #genji shimada #mcgenji week #day 4 #fic #sfw #blackwatch era #WhiskeysWorks

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spamzineglasgow · 5 years

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Bon Iver’s hauntological i,i (William Fleming)

Image Copyright: Bon Iver / Jagjaguwar

In this essay, William Fleming takes a detailed look at bon iver’s new album, i,i: through acid communist hauntology to oedipal melancholia and the future’s cybernetic fracture.

> This week I’ve been reading Mark Fisher and listening to Bon Iver’s new album on repeat so I combined the two.

> Mark Fisher, in his Ghosts of My Life (2014), laments the dearth of creativity in popular music after the turn of the century, the loss of experimentation and of hearing something New and Radical, and the persistent replication of past methods, sounds and images. Fisher was no Adorno though (I don’t think anyway?). His essays are emotive and developed from a deep desire for a compassionate politics; Ghosts evokes the pathos of his seminal Capitalist Realism (2009). One of the key themes associated with his work on pop culture, is the use of the Derridean term ‘Hauntology’: the haunted ontology of futures that never came to be, the spectral disturbance of time and place as the possibility of political becoming dissipates. As he details in Ghosts, Fisher initially used hauntology as a genre-defining term for music. He identified artists which were 'suffused with an overwhelming melancholy; and they were preoccupied with the way in which technology materialised memory', this results in us being made 'conscious of the playback systems’ and of ‘the difference between analogue and digital’, 'hovering' out of reach behind the media’. Fisher uses this conceptual framework to analyse a raft of musicians and their work but there is a consistent emphasis on the political narratives of class and race which shape these cultural offshoots.

> Despite being one of the biggest records of this summer – and thus perhaps a bit bait for me to discuss? – Bon Iver’s i,i bares all the hallmarks of the hauntological genre: melancholia, the clash of digital and analogue, anachronism, the suggestion of political solidarity, artistic experimentation.

> First a confession: I first listened to Bon Iver because, in 2011, there was a girl on twitter I fancied who posted a video to Birdy’s Skinny Love. Birdy’s rendition is a wisp of a song, sad and grasping and completely lost on a shallow sixteen-year old and probably rightfully so. Failing to select the next song, I’m guessing Bon Iver’s original version played. For the first time I felt I’d discovered adult Sad Music. None of the ghd straightened, dip-died, angst-ridden emo tunes I’d gotten into a few years prior to impress my first girlfriend; or the one ballad acting as the penultimate track on one of the indie-rock albums from my older brother’s excessive collection. (- Does anyone know how to recycle these properly?). I would wallow in performative sadness playing immediately gratuitous and instantly gratifying XBOX games, quickly repeating the heartbeating guitar of Lump Sum on For Emma, Forever Ago or the wails of Holocene from Bon Iver, Bon Iver as I pined for my yet-to-be second girlfriend.

> I went off Bon Iver for a few years: these days, the quiet acoustic melancholia of these first two albums doesn’t fit with any aspirational sense of masculinity of mine. Being a man and being non-toxically emotional isn’t about listening to acoustic guitars and barely audible snares whilst you lie sulking in your room or on the drizzled walk to the library or job you hate. Instead it’s about communication, solidarity and empathy – ‘I’d be happy as hell, if you stayed for tea’. And so, when 22, A Million came out I was into it. Everyone thought it was a bit shit the first time few times they listened to it but this gave me cover to pretentiously purvey that they just didn’t get it and listen to it over and over. It was still the same anguished voice of Justin Vernon – but it was finally coming to life. Revived through stretched synthesizers, neologisms which made you question the contributors on A-Z Lyrics, and deconstructed bass. The piano riff on 33 “God” interrupted by alien helium-infused voices and the stammering, looping saxophone of 45 are still highlights. Listening now, 22, A Million initiated the hauntology of Bon Iver.

> At times, i,i feels like Bon Iver’s latest album is a playback of their first album, but one done through a signal sent by an analogue walkie-talkie found on the abandoned spaceship from Alien: Isolation – itself maybe the most harrowing video-game I’ve ever played, one which is played in constant anticipation of being found. Listen to the intermittent signal of Holyfields,: the bleeps and radio fuzz a beacon we sent out into space, only for it to sporadically and hauntingly talk back at us – a cultural SOS signal.

> i,i is the same guitar riffs from albums one and two but cybernetically fractured through time. The same syncopated kick drum but ripped out from the mid noughties and dumped in a Iain M. Banks novel or an episode in Love, Death + Robots. Fisher, quoting Derrida, quoting Hamlet: ‘the time is out of joint’. In these time fractures, it’s not just the music’s original location which is torn into the future, but also objective fragments of past culture: the sax (Sh’Diah) and violin strings (Faith) torn from eras when politics and music were still intertwined.

> The first track on the album, Yi, is garbage. But it is orbital astro-garbage – a notable anthropocenic feedback loop! – sitting uncomfortably at the stratosphere of an album which explicitly reflects on ecological destruction. Yi’s inaudible conversation and the ‘Are you recording, Trevor?’ set it up as a soundcheck for the album too. Including a soundcheck evokes Vernon’s emphasis on the album as a performance piece in the accompanying mini-documentary Autumn. In the doc, Vernon mentions the problem of ‘How is it going to be played live?’. Immediately, we are forced to imagine i,i as more than just another album on Spotify.

> Yi bleeds into iMi, a psychedelic echo of a track built from interspersing a melancholic vocals/arpeggio combo and an encroaching synth/dub beat combo. We is similarly eclectic, digitalised vocals juxtaposing with endearing, major-key sax. Following is Holyfields,, perhaps the most alien but most beautiful song on the album.

> Hey, Ma is the headline single from the album. An ode to Vernon’s mother and a sense of the sunrise walk home after the summer party (I’ll try and avoid further seasonal references: the four albums are set up to represent the four seasons, i,i being autumn, but IMO this is pretty naff).

> There is a sense of time passing in Hey, Ma, a nostalgia for the yet to be – ‘Well you wanted it your whole life’ – but with this passing is a sense of desire – ‘I wanted all that mind, sugar / I want it all mine’ – and of becoming or evolving – ‘You’re back and forth with light’. Becoming is the famous Deleuzean postmodern motif; i.e. being is constantly flowing and reforming. Bon Iver’s becoming, however, is not a flow, but a hauntological wrench into the future state. The entire album feels as though you’re experiencing the tech-enhanced evolution of Bon Iver’s music. That skipping between soft indie and futuristic synth reminiscent of the OG Pokemon games when your Pokemon was evolving and it would flicker between its past and future states. But becoming is never complete. As Fisher highlights, ‘futuristic’ no longer refers to a time/space but is now merely an adjective. We’ll never hear the Bon Iver made entirely on digital tech.

> For Fisher, melancholia is a productive force of political resistance. He distances his ‘hauntological melancholia’ from that of Wendy Brown’s ‘left melancholia’ which ‘seems to exemplify the transition from desire (which in Lacanian terms is the desire to desire) to drive (an enjoyment of failure)’. Fisher’s melancholia, ‘by contrast, consists not in giving up on desire but in refusing to yield'. Under scrutiny, Bon Iver’s first two albums fail this melan-test – they are a spectacular, self-pitying self-indulgence. Self-pity as a common form of masochism. For Deleuze, thinking through Jung, thinking through Bergson (yeap, I know), masochism is always regressive, flipping the Oedipal on its head as a form of un-becoming.

> Is Vernon’s song to his mother a masochistic form of melancholia; a self-pitying reversal of the Oedipal? ‘I wanted a bath / “Tell the story or he goes”’; ‘Tall time to call your Ma / Hey Ma, hey Ma’. The type captured by Maggie Nelson in The Argonauts (2015) when reflecting on Ginsberg’s poem Kaddish, which is dripping in, in Nelson’s words, ‘misogynistic repulsion’. Or is Bon Iver’s a hauntological melancholia? One of stubborn resistance. The type of mother-son relationship photographed by Donald Weber in his response to Alison Sperling and Anna Volkmar’s conversation on the post-atomic (Kuntslicht, 39: 3/4). Weber’s photographs were taken over two years in Chernobyl. The, now fetishised, explosion in Chernobyl perhaps the example of the nuclear, a hauntological theme post-WWII, made material. The bursting of a political, biological and biopolitical reality which was never meant to be. Weber’s photo of a middle-aged man and his elderly mother is captioned: ‘Mothers sought to be photographed sitting close to their sons, in domestic scenes of proud companionability. Their eyes signal an unalterable communion. And more – elevation. A man’s mother transcends the material order, and rises easily above even the most squalid circumstances. It is the frank declaration of her biological supremacy: This is my child’. If it is this relationship captured in Hey, Ma, it may promise a spectre which can be made material. An artefact which can continue its evolution, its becoming. ‘Let me talk to em / Let me talk to ‘em all’.

> Finally, that Hey, Ma’s nostalgia is a culturally productive one is suggested by one of its more memorable lines: ‘I waited outside / I was tokin’ on dope / I hoped it all won’t go in a minute’. In Fisher’s posthumously published Unfinished Introduction to Acid Communism, he, when imagining the process of resistance and a new politics whilst citing Jefferson Cowie, writes 'these new kinds of workers – who “smoked dope, socialised interracially, and dreamed of a world in which work had some meaning” – wanted democratic control of both their workplace and their trade unions’. The curious, outdated use of ‘dope' in Vernon’s lyrics then mirrors Cowie’s use of 'dope', echoing Cowie’s nostalgia for a lost working-class culture of 1970s America. Fisher uses Cowie’s argument to piece together an acid communism, which I will return to, but this, surely consequential, similarity further constructs i,i as a contemporary hauntological album.

> Following Hey, Ma comes the Sunday-school piano of U (Man Like). Raising an image of a crisply ironed, white America, like that depicted in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000), which acts as a reminder that nostalgia isn’t always productive. However, the nostalgia is continued with Naeem ‘Oh, my mind, our kids got bigger/ … / You take me out to pasture now’. Fisher asks ‘is hauntology, as many of its critics have maintained, simply a name for nostalgia?’. However, he argues that it is not a ‘formal nostalgia’ but one of solidarity and of a longing for the process of social improvement. Naeem, despite its nostalgia, continues the flickering between hope and despair. The joyful ‘More love / More love / More love’ and ‘I can hear, I can hear’; the anguished ‘I can hear crying’ and ‘What’s there to pontificate on now? / There’s someone in my head’. The latent and angelic child-like choir on Naeem another hauntological theme. As Fisher declares, ‘no doubt there comes a point when every generation starts pining for the artefacts of its childhood’. However, Vernon’s evoking of childhood is one perhaps linked to the, at times damaging, trope of ‘future generations’ in environmentalism. It is still a political longing though – ‘I’d Occupy that’. Occupy: that great post-2008 political uprising which dissipated into a mere exemplar in an undergraduate geography textbook.

> Next, Faith brings back the aliens from 33 “God” but this time, for attention, they’ve brought their clean guitar and slowly morph into the catholic choir we began to hear on Naeem. God died and, despite the sexy, liquidity of our modernity, we miss him.

> Marion momentarily brings us back from the cybernetically fractured semi-future. Back to the £3-coffee coffee-shop where you’re telling your friend that you think you and that girl will probably get back together but you need the time to be right. The hope is sucked back out; we’re back in capitalist realism and Arctic Monkey’s fourth (fifth?) album. Luckily, Salem restarts the signal to bring us back from our self-pity, dragging us to the obfuscation we were enjoying. Salem’s witches are still here and they’re pretty good at Ableton.

> Next, Sh’Diah grows from an autotuned prayer – ‘Just calm down (calm down) / And she’ll find time for the Lord’ - into a yearning saxophone riff/rift. But, alas, RABi, the album’s final song, returns us to a blues guitar and Vernon’s vocals. If the oscillation between past and future throughout i,i was a dialectic, the depressing outcome is ‘consumer capitalism’s model of ordinariness' (Fisher) of the neoliberal present. As in Fisher’s hauntology, the technologically-infused creativity of i,i is a lost future. Watching Vernon being interviewed feels like this. He’s got the Pacific-North-West hipster look: vegan but drives a V6 truck. Goes to the craft brewer’s bar and talks about that latest public health campaign to encourage men to talk about mental health over a pint but refrains from actually talking about depression. (Maybe serving beer in 2/3rd schooners means you never end up getting to the important part of the conversation?)

> But why does it matter? Because it’s about political and cultural (and creative) imagination. Fisher’s last big, and tragically but appropriately unfinished, philosophy is that of Acid Communism. Maybe there is a future !

> Fisher mourned not only the flattening of pop music, but also the ‘culture constellated around music (fashion, discourse, cover art)’. In contrast to a digital album which you never perceive in any physical manner, Bon Iver have emphasised various forms of art in their work, ensuring a communal creativity. There are multiple iterations of the album cover art on public posters and on social media. More excitingly though, is the collaboration with WHITEvoid, a Berlin-based sculpture group/company, which is discussed on Autumn. Prepared for live performances, WHITEvoid have constructed an ensemble of floating mirrors and kinetic lighting made from ‘space-age metal’ and motion tracking sensors. An artistic contribution as ethereal and tech-enhanced as the accompanying music and one which aestheticises our material sciences. The lighting provided by WHITEvoid in collaboration with the experimentation in sound system, similarly shown on Autumn, constructs the performance of i,i as an ongoing innovation and experimentation. The effort put into the upcoming live performances of i,i ensure that it is a music to be experienced not merely consumed. In another discussion on Autumn, Michael Brown, Bon Iver’s Artistic Director, says ‘you have to be in the moment with other people, you have to be able to know that the person next to you is having the same communal experience’.

> In Krisis (2018:2), Matt Colquhoun sees acid communism as a “project beyond the pleasure principle” (2) and of an “experimental” politics. If the sounds of i,i are hauntological, then the spectre it suggests is one of acid communism. The acid is provided by its accompanying artistic experimentation and the communism is its emphasis on the political and the communal.

Text: William Fleming

Published 30/8/19

#SPAM #essays #music criticism #bon iver #ii #Mark Fisher #acid communism #hauntology #Derrida #capitalist realism #ghosts of my life #William Fleming #essay

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dictionarywrites · 6 years

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mmm i’m not gonna be doing anything with this

egh, frostiron, man. i just never feel like it really WORKS.

the point of this one was meant to be frostiron with dashingcollector as a sidepiece but like, i’m alreayd super done with it, so have 2k of a beginning that i’m not gonna do anything more with, ‘cause i’m just gonna delete the doc lol

it’s a shame to have wasted 2k worth of effort on it but like ! ah well. not everything works out.

i might lift some dialogue from this to reuse - i’m really pleased with the loki & tan dynamic and i might reuse that knife moment in the Wedding Collection, but... egh. this just doesn’t work with tony in it, so i might come back to it and pick it apart for scraps.

Once upon a time, Tony Stark was the heir to Stark Industries – a huge, sprawling company that supplied a lot of high-end electronics across the Earth, and then to the surrounding solar system, and a little bit farther. High-end electronics, of course, included weapons: weapons used on Earth, and then… And then weapons used in other places. In Star Trek, in The Original Series, war had always seemed like such a last resort. Earth government never seems to see it that way.

Once upon a time, all that happened – that was a long time ago.

Reaching forward, Tony shifts his hand over the control panel, letting his fingers drag through the holographic display it projects, his light sensor gloves telling the ship exactly where he wants it to go. It’s only a little cruiser, a three-man rig that runs with just one, and the saleable model has basic amenities – a two-bunk cabin, a one-bunk cabin, a kitchen/living room, and a whole lot of storage space. Of course, Tony’s tricked his out a little, but it’s still snug.

He likes snug, these days. Can’t stand spaces that are too open.

Not after—

“We are approaching Knowhere, sir,” JARVIS says, and Tony relaxes slightly, leaning back into his seat and setting his hands on his knees. The ship continues to take her established route forward, gliding with ease on the course he’s plotted and avoiding all the little chips of asteroid and space rock.

Knowhere sprawls before him, the sick sprawl of old flesh and exposed bone: the head of some long-dead Celestial, mined at every angle by scientific groups of all kinds. It’s gross, in all honesty – it’s damn gross.

Tony doesn’t need the money that comes with what he does. He doesn’t need to be a travelling engineer, do the big-ticket jobs from one space station to the next one, flying in, doing the big repair or co-ordinating the big project nobody else has the expertise to do, and flying off again. In all honesty, Tony has enough credits saved – he could buy himself a little planet or a modest space station, and he could be a homebody, work on his own projects…

But he needs the distraction, and he likes to travel. Like this, he has the best of both worlds: he works on his own projects on the long-haul through space, and he works on big repair jobs or rehauls when he arrives at his destinations.

“Docking at Port 432,” JARVIS says, and Tony nods, stepping up and out of the flight deck. He pulls on a dress shirt over his oil-stained vest, buttoning it up to the ARC reactor that glows under his sternum, and he changes his battered jeans for a pair of black slacks. A suit jacket is a little much, and he’d rather be able to let his iron suit bloom out from his wrists at the first opportunity – it’s best not to try that with a loose jacket, else… Well, suffice it to say, the last time was a little bit messy. As he puts on his shoes, JARVIS says, “Are you sure about this engagement, sir?

“Nah,” Tony says, pulling on his sunglasses. “I’m not sure at all.” JARVIS lets out a low huff of sound, and Tony smiles slightly as he hears the docking procedure finish, the airflow clicking into ignition between Tony’s ship and the station. Moving swiftly out of the airlock, he allows the ship to lock behind him, and an attendant dressed in yellow and decked out with cybernetic enhancements meets him in the corridor.

“Good morning,” the attendant says, pinning up their brightly blue hair. “Name?”

“Tony Stark, he/him,” Tony says, and he draws a chip from his pocket, holding it on his palm and letting the attendant scan it. “Here to meet the Collector.” The attendant’s polite expression stiffens, and their expression becomes pinched and tight, their eyes distant.

“Yes, sir,” the attendant says crisply, and they deliver instructions without the slightest bit of small talk amidst the clean words, and Tony’s lip twitches in amusement as he steps into the lift that leads up toward the Collector’s Museum.

Taneleer Tivan is known throughout the galaxy as a renowned curator, carefully working upon his collection and expanding it as best he can. He’s a dangerous man – this, Tony knows. His facility houses living “specimens” as well as the average collector’s fucking trading cards, and it revolts Tony, disgusts him, but… There are other people, here on Knowhere. People who get hurt, if the life support goes down. And Tony knows that a lot of the specimens sell themselves to Tivan, that they give themselves over to being in a cage in a facility for the rest of their lives – does that make it better? That should make it better.

Sighing, Tony moves down the corridor, hearing the quiet clank of his boots on the metal grating. He moves in parallel to the great marketplace, which always stinks to high Hell of ammonia (he’d come here a few times, as a kid, with Dad…), and he moves quickly down a gangplank and in toward the Museum.

No ammonia here, but the scents are strong, and they’re different every time.

This time?

Place smells like ice.

Tony stops in the doorway, inhaling and taking it in, taking in that scent that smells of nothing, but is still so distinctive, cold… Standing at a metal desk, there is a human in a black tunic embroidered with silver accents that much the piercings through the shell of his ear and the side of his nose, and he is carefully shaving away layers of ice from an artefact with a tool that Tony can’t quite see. His black hair, which is glossy and long, is tied up in a loose bun, a shining silver hairpin keeping it away from the nape of his neck, and he wears a pair of black-rimmed glasses.

“You guys haven’t got contacts out this way, huh?” The man looks up, looking Tony up and down, and he frowns slightly. He has very thin lips, Tony thinks – they’re thin and pink, and pretty. His eyes are a bright blue, mirroring the ice he works on, and he watches Tony for a long few moments before he answers.

“You assume much,” he says darkly, and his voice is low and resonant, ringing in the air and surprisingly deep, coming from such a pretty face. “Anthony Stark, I take it?”

“Tony,” he corrects.

The attendant taps a button on the edge of his table, and Tony leans forward to catch a glimpse of the face in the display. It isn’t, as he had expected, the face of Taneleer Tivan, but another human-looking face, this one blond and with a golden moustache over his lip, his skin a rosy colour.

“Please advise the Collector that Anthony Stark has arrived,” the attendant says mildly. There’s an underlying sternness to his tone, as if he expects the other man not to obey – and it seems like he’s right to expect that.

“So formal,” Fandral chides, and the display looks directly at Tony, his pretty face shifting as he grins. “And with such a handsome man, Loki. You know not what you do to yourself.”

“I have no especial care for handsome men,” Loki says, his voice very snide indeed.

“How I have learned that bitter knowledge!” Fandral says, clutching at his heart, and Tony laughs as Loki’s thin lips twist into a scowl.

“The Collector, Fandral, now.” Fandral chuckles, but he gives a salute with a green-gloved hand, and the hologram goes dim. Loki holds up one bare hand, gesturing with two fingers for Tony to move closer, and Tony does, slowly walking into the room and slowly sliding to take the stool that Loki gestures to. It’s weird, to see a guy working on an artefact like this with his bare hands. Loki’s hands are ivory-white and marked with pink scars: a chunk of flesh is missing from the heel of his right hand, an unnatural dip showing between the meat of his palm and his wrist, and as well as the little cuts and drags and callouses, he can see a savage bite mark dragged over the fabric of his left hand. They don’t look soft, either, those hands: they look hard.

Tony’s mouth is a little bit dry as he watches them work, watches Loki drag his palm slowly over the ice and shave away another layer, allowing fragments of ice dust to fill the air in sudden clouds.

“What, uh, what instrument you using for that? Ice-cutter in the palm?”

“You are here to speak to the Collector,” Loki says primly. “Not to me.”

“What, I can’t speak with the locals?”

“I am not local.”

“No, you’re a little too pretty for that.” The compliment garners no response at all, not even a neatly raised eyebrow or a sardonic stare. It passes through the air between them, and Loki acts as if he hasn’t even heard it. “You, uh, you heard of me? Tony Stark.”

“Yes, of course,” Loki says. “You are the Collector’s 0800 appointment.” Tony frowns, leaning back slightly, but Loki’s thin lips twitch at their edges slightly, betraying the barest hint of a smile.

“Oh,” Tony says, sarcastically. “You’re a joker, I get it, real funny.”

“I have heard of you,” Loki allows, and a few layers of the ice come away at once, coming away from the left hand side and bearing the dark brown wood of whatever is frozen inside. Loki frowns, picking it up by the base and peering at it, and then he delicately shakes his head, a tiny shift of his head. “You hail from Midgard, do you not? You recently parcelled apart Stark Industries, your father’s company?”

“Midgard?” Tony repeats. “I’m from Earth.” Loki glances at him, and then he blinks.

“Oh, no… Midgard is what we once called your planet, upon the world upon which I grew up. Asgard.”

“Oh,” Tony says, his voice very quiet. Asgard is… old news. It was about thirty years ago, now, that the whole world was smashed to kingdom-come – they called it the Ragnarök, the Twilight of the Gods, and the whole disc (because it wasn’t really a planet) just… Collapsed. Hundreds of thousands of people died: Tony remembers being just a kid, and hearing it blow up all the subspace frequencies, seeing Æsir and Vanir crying in the streets of New York, back on Earth. “I didn’t realise you called us that.”

“The old ways,” Loki says distractedly, still peering at the wood. “Such as they were.” He returns, then, to his work, shaving away parts of the ice.

“It wasn’t so recent,” Tony says. “It was like, three years ago. That I did that.”

“Very recent,” Loki replies. “You Midgardians… Terrans, is it? Time passes so quickly for you. Three years is the blink of an eye, child.”

“And how old are you, huh? Three thousand?” It’s a joke, but Loki shows no sign of humour, and instead he keeps Tony’s gaze, his eyes widening by a fraction, his lips quirking into a tiny smile.

“Closer to five,” Loki says. “You see not the signs of middle age about me, the scant silver in my air, the wrinkles at my eyes?”

“Um,” Tony says, staring at Loki’s hair with an analytical eye and seeing no trace of grey. “No?” Loki laughs, and the sound rings like a distant bell. He’s pretty when he laughs: Tony notes the fact with a little bit of guilt. It’s been a long time.

“Your guess was correct the first time. I draw close to three-thousand and a score.” Tony shivers, feeling the immensity of that, of three thousand years. God. That’s— That’s freaky. That’s damn weird.

“And a score, huh?” Tony repeats, a little airily. He can’t quite keep the mockery out of his tone, and it makes Loki pause for a moment, glancing at him with slight surprise—

“Mr Stark,” says a voice from across the room, and Tony glances to the guy that enters. He wears a tunic like Loki’s, form-fitting and showing off the build of his chest under the silken fabric. Instead of black, he wears green, and the thread and the accents are a shining gold instead, matching the colour of his hair. He has a charming smile on his face, his blue eyes glittering with delicate amusement, and he moves like a dancer, all but skipping across the floor. “If I might present to you, sir, Taneleer Tivan: the Collector.”

He steps gracefully aside, and Tony looks at Tivan for the first time in— God. Thirty years at least. Tony’s no longer the little boy standing awkwardly at his father’s side, more distant that he’d like to be, unsure where to put his hands or where to stand. Tivan had looked down at him, imperiously looking down at Tony from the length of his nose, and Tony had been hyperaware of how dark the stripe on his chin was in comparison to his skin, how soft his hair had looked. Tivan had seemed like a creature of hyperbolic proportions: the black too black, the white too white, the eyes too deep, the nose too strong…

But he’d seemed tall, once upon a time. Ridiculously tall.

They’re the same height now, six foot two, an it feels strange to meet eyes with him, to look him in the face.

“Mr Stark,” Tivan says delicately, and he beams, showing white teeth and letting Tony shake his hand. They’re a little cold, Tivan’s hands, and Tony shakes the hand he’s offered firmly, watching as Fandral moves to stand behind Loki and speak quietly to him.

“You want me to detail your life support systems, right?”

“That is correct,” Tivan says, giving a small inclination of his head. There is a secretive smile on his face as he continues, and he glances over Tony’s shoulder before he does: “It will take some time, to perform all the… repairs on your own, even with the assistance of your drones, but I would rather… have somebody that I can… trust.” Something flies through the air, whistling past Tony’s ear, and he flinches: Tivan catches it out of the air before it can drive itself into his head, and he looks at it impassively. He doesn’t flinch. It’s a short blade, a throwing knife made of some kind of titanium alloy, and Tony moves to stare at Fandral and Loki. Fandral’s eyes are wide, and he is glancing between Loki and Tivan both, but Loki is scowling, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. “And, ha. And also, of course… Somebody I cannot afford to… miss. Here in the museum.”

He tosses the knife back, and Loki immediately hides it somewhere in his tunic, but where, Tony couldn’t hope to guess. As soon as he has the blade back, he turns back to his work, continuing to shave the ice away from the wooden thing in his hands. His tight shoulders relax, and Tony doesn’t think he imagines the slight quirk of a smile on his face.

“Uh,” Tony says. “What the Hell was that?”

“Loki… sees slights where there are none to be seen,” Tivan says slowly, not without some amusement, “Please, Mr Stark. Come… with me.” Tony follows Tivan down a walkway and then up the stairs, moving into a clinical room not unlike a doctor’s office. Insects in glass cases line the upper parts of the walls, neatly sectioned out, and there is a mix of curation equipment and computer hard drives, and Tivan gestures neatly to a chair before his metal desk. Tony sits down, leaning back into it, but Tivan remains standing, leaning back against one of the counters at the wall.

“Who are they? Loki and Fandral? What kinda names are they?”

“They are Asgardian,” Tivan says, shrugging his shoulders. “They are… Hm. Hard workers. Well. Loki is.”

“Why keep the other one then?” Tony asks, and Tivan laughs, the sound resonant and rumbling.

“They come as a pair,” he says simply, shrugging his shoulders. “But you are not here to ask… about my hiring practices. No? You are here… to work.”

“Last time I was here, Collector, I was with my dad, and we owned the biggest tech company in the sector. Now, I’m a two-bit engineer rocking around the universe in a souped-up motor car, and you don’t want to ask why that is?”

“I know why that is,” Tivan says immediately. Tony sees the understanding in his eyes, sees the comprehension: he knows exactly what happened back on Earth, back in that solar system. He keeps on top of the news, as much as he pretends to be isolated. “Family tragedies… So hard, I am sure. They do not affect me, or my museum, or my planet.” He says it uncaringly, without even the remotest piece of sympathy.

Tony feels relief.

“Okay, Collector,” he says, clapping his hands together. “Tell me what you need doing.” Tivan smiles, and Tony wonders, not for the first time, exactly how old he is. Thirty years and he hasn’t changed a bit, has stayed exactly the same even as Tony’s become a teenager and a young adult and now a middle-aged engineer, and Tivan…

It’s not a good thing to think about. It’s scary, creepy.

He doesn’t want to think about it.

He decides not to.

Ϟ ❄ ϟ ❄ ϟ ❄ ϟ ❄ ϟ ❄ Ϟ

It’s on the sixth day of working on Knowhere that Tony sees Loki again. Loki is in the marketplace, sitting alone at a Jostori restaurant and eating with one hand, his right hand clasping a book. Tony always thought books would be rare, once he left planet Earth behind him, but they’re not – most space stations and planets have tons of them, and it’s only meeting people on small ships with limited space that you only see e-readers or electronic publications.

“You, uh, you eat Jostori food, huh?” Tony asks. He leans on the half-wall that closes the outside of the tables the restaurant has outside, and Loki glances up from his book, apparently surprised at being addressed. He looks Tony up and down, taking in the overalls he’s wearing, the streak of system coolant he can’t quite get out of his hair, and won’t be able to get out of his hair until he can get into the sonic shower on his ship. The job is big – damn big. Tivan had been right about that. It’s gonna take Tony maybe two years planet-side to revamp the whole system, and he and Tivan had worked out a system of order. He hadn’t been clear on why exactly Tivan wanted his entire life support system rewired and detailed, but… He’d given Tony a folder of potential pests he could expect to find, and at least six of them had been the size of dogs, so maybe that’s why. “That stuff,” Tony says. “It’s pretty, like, acidic, right? That stuff would kill a human.”

“It isn’t difficult to kill a human,” Loki replies smoothly, but he leans back in his seat, setting the book down, and he meets Tony’s eyes. Everything about his body language is open, relaxed: even his thighs are spread a little, and his left foot points in Tony’s direction. His lips quirk into the smallest smile, and Tony finds he likes the look of him, likes the way he looks with his tunic unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, bearing the silver vest he wears underneath. “You’re so… fragile.” Tony thinks of New York, thinks of the whole thing in flames, dashed to Hell with nearly everybody in the city dead, and all because of his company…

He swallows the thought, and does his best to put it behind him.

“Loki, right?”

“Loki,” he agrees, and when Tony puts out his hand to shake over the wall, Loki takes it. If he’d thought Tivan’s fingers were cold, they’re nothing compared to this guy: Loki’s hands are as cold as frozen marble, but his smile is— Well. Not soft, exactly. He looks like he’d eat Tony alive.

“I didn’t know Asgardians could eat acidic food either. That stuff’s like, what, a pH of three or four? That stuff’ll burn right through most people.”

“I’m not Æsir – Asgardian,” Loki says smoothly. “I hail from a planet named P’jar: the Asgardians and the people of Earth alike know it as Jötunheimr. My people have always eaten tough foods, fermented meats… Acid comes naturally to us.”

“So, if, uh, if I kissed you… What, you’d melt my tongue off?” Loki laughs, the sound full to the brim with dark amusement, and he sets his chin upon his hand, looking at Tony like Tony’s some fun new toy.

“I am a shapeshifter, Anthony,” Loki says softly. “There is no facet of my form that does not change, does not alter, with but a whim on my part.”

#as defined by dictionary #marvel #1 #fanfic #dictionary writes #tony stark #taneleer tivan #fandral #loki

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thenugking · 3 years

Text

Grand Academy For Future Villains II: Attack of the Sequel, Chapter 3: Legend of Chapter Three. A commentary for Three.

General CW for the whole thing: parental abuse, internalised dehumanisation as a trauma response. Three’s not doing well.

Game 1

Game 2

Chapter 0 | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Alternatively, read on Google Docs here

***

Your mother gives you a nod as you slide into your seat. She's decorated her classroom in a style you recognize from her lab back in your childhood home: deconstructed doomsday devices on the walls, and here and there trophies of vanquished enemies. The column containing her former mentor (and your former professor) Dr. Cerebrist, in suspended animation, is a centerpiece of the classroom.

The Science! elective is open to students of all levels, so while you know a number of your classmates, some are new to you. From the back of the classroom, Sona waves her cannon arm at you, in what you choose to interpret as a friendly and sociable manner.

"I wonder," says your mother, "do you all know what you're doing here?"

This sort of thing is usually the prelude to making an example of whoever's foolish or proud enough to open their mouth, and the class stays quiet.

"Science!" she announces, and begins stalking down the classroom. "The wonder and power of forbidden knowledge! The—"

"Professor Maedryn?" Sona has put her cannon into the air. You see a number of your classmates duck, wary of the weaponry, or of the usual reaction your mother has to being interrupted. But your mother does not react with the flamboyant fury that the class has come to know and expect. Maybe your mother is making a point to you, that she's cultivating Sona as a potential replacement. Especially since you aren't taking the leadership of the Science Fiction residence hall.

Sona seems completely unconscious of her privileged status. "You keep talking about science, Professor," she says, "but when are we going to actually do any?"

Between this and a few other scenes, Three is fairly certain that Maedryn is indeed cultivating Sona as a potential replacement. And with this happening in Three’s game so soon after the first time they ever really disobeyed Maedryn, it makes even more sense. I’m toying with having Maedryn make Sona her TA, too. Being Sci-fi’s RA and genre leader, all while studying for her final year at the Academy is probably more than enough for Sona to be getting on with, without TA duties too, but Maedryn isn’t the kind of person to care about people’s limits. And I’m not sure that Sona would realise that she couldn’t handle all of it quickly enough to refuse.

Three’s first reaction to realising Sona’s their potential replacement is fear that Maedryn may not find them useful for much longer. Closely followed by fear for Sona, who doesn’t deserve to have to keep up with Maedryn’s ever growing demands. They’ve spent so long struggling to remain Maedryn’s number one for their own safety, they haven’t considered how awful that position would be for some kind of actual person with their own desires and freedom.

It’s also seeming likely that Maedryn was the person who got Sona permission to have so many personal weapons attached to her. Which stings a little, considering Three doesn’t dare ask their mother if she’d mind them upgrading “her” body with technological capabilities.

"Ah! Three! Professor Ulik says, even before you enter the classroom. "I've got a stack of quizzes for you to grade. Go ahead, take them now; you can do them along with the homework for this class."

The Evil Landscape Architecture elective is open to students of all levels, so while you know a number of your classmates, some are new to you. A Baroness is already at her workstation, and her eyes flick briefly over to you as you enter the classroom. She moves slightly so as to conceal her design from your prying gaze. Clearly she wishes to give nothing away.

The class is working on an actual piece of the Academy grounds: a burned-out section behind the Dining Hall that was damaged in the Faculty War last year. Professor Ulik, as part of her plans to rehabilitate herself after her place in the rebellion, is turning these grounds into a garden, with the help, not to mention the free labor, of her students.

So far the plan for the garden (occasionally referred to as a pleasure garden, occasionally as a terror garden) is in the design phase. Professor Ulik wants her students to have a thorough grounding in the principles of evil design before implementing anything on the school grounds, and so at first you think today will be another class on theory.

"Ms. The Deathless," she says to a bandage-wrapped junior from Fantasy, "Why did you decide to take this class?"

"Well," says Kayla the Deathless, twirling a bandage around her fingers, "it was, like, to develop my sense of personal style, you know, for my tomb or whatever. Personal style is so important."

"No!" snaps Professor Ulik. "Personal style is of tertiary importance at best. Quaternary! If you do your jobs right, your designs will speak for you. And crush your enemies for you! If you chose this elective because you thought it was going to make you flashier, that you could go swanning about spitting sparks like certain candidates for full professorship—"

That's definitely your mother she's referring to.

"—then you are in the wrong class! I expect hard work, concentration, and your full—full attention!"

Everyone straightens up. A Baroness delicately drapes a handkerchief over her work so no one can sneak a glance at it.

I felt a tiny bit bad in the first game that as Competence-focused as they were, Three’s favourite class was a Style one. Ulik teaching a Competence class is everything they want from their education, and they’re honoured to have the opportunity to work on the design of the Academy itself. With all the problems they’re dealing with this year, working on Evil Landscaping, and starting to see something form and grow the way they wanted it to, provides a much needed escape.

Three spends as much time as they feel they can get away with helping Ulik, and their ever growing interest in design leads to them starting to map out the uncharted areas of the Academy too, and trying to better their understanding of how the Academy expands itself. For now, they only share their discoveries with DarkBoard and Professor Ulik, both of whom are very happy with the results.

And then there’s the fact that Ulik is perfectly happy to insult Maedryn in front of her entire class. Three is a little concerned that this could draw Maedryn’s attention to her in a very bad way, and lead to a further test of their loyalties. They admire Ulik for being so unafraid of Maedryn though--with other people they might have assumed insulting Maedryn was an act of foolishness, but that is certainly not the case with Ulik--and it is refreshing to hear her spoken of quite so dismissively. And it is certainly nice to know Ulik has no particular respect for her colleague, and isn’t likely to get Three in trouble if they ever say anything non-complimentary about their mother.

#Traps of some sort. I'm a master at puzzles, and what's an evil landscape without cunningly designed traps?

You begin sketching immediately, keeping a running column of notes. You design site-specific traps and traps that could be integrated into the landscape anywhere in the garden. You design fatal traps, merely humiliating traps, darkly ironic traps, and some traps that pay obvious tribute to the Sci-Fi genre.

Professor Ulik pauses as she walks by your workstation. She's been going through the room answering questions and making suggestions, but she stops short at the sight of your designs.

"No, no, Three, this is very good," she says, in response to your questioning look. "Very good indeed. I'm going to have to review these, of course, but I think you can be pretty well assured that these are going to have a place in the final design. And I'm going to have to have a talk with the Sci-Fi faculty sponsor—these are exemplary."

Three loves trap design--they’re basically advanced strategy puzzles--and they love it even more when Ulik compliments their work. They know she’s honest, and not impressed easily. But the really important thing here is that Ulik’s going to be finding Maedryn and letting her know how absolutely incredible her kid is.

This is your chance to make any major modifications to your personal appearance—barring unforeseen lab accidents, of course. Looking the part of a Sci-Fi villain may or may not help your residence hall, but it will give you a chance to stand out. And frankly, given that the maintenance staff are all clones of you, standing out might be particularly important.

The clones make Three a lot less eager to change their appearance, actually, and it’s not even primarily about keeping Maedryn happy now. While there’s a part of them that would love to go for a cybernetic enhancement and featureless silver eyes, Three has a surefire way to go wherever they want in the Academy almost entirely unnoticed. They may not be happy about the clones, but if they’re here, Three’s going to make sure they can use them. Even if they don’t need to spy on someone, or gain access to a restricted area, it’s nice to have the option to just slip away far beneath everyone’s notice and just clean or fix something for a bit.

LOADING DARKBOARD STUDENT MESSAGING…

You Have 60 Unread Messages

Message 1

Subject: Your Science! Homework

Message 2

Subject: Your Science! Homework - revision

Message 3

Subject: Re: Your Science! Homework

Message 4

Subject: Tenure Discussion - Assassinations?

Message 5

Subject: DarkBoard, Recall Previous Message!

Message 6

Subject: Tenure Discussion - Assassinations?

Message 7

Subject: NO NOT LIKE THAT!

Message 8

Subject: Recall! Cancel! Do not send! Mewling computer, do you dare defy

CHARACTER LIMIT REACHED

It’s nice that managing the clones is keeping Maedryn distracted, too. Three apologises to DarkBoard for their mother’s rudeness, and mentions that they hope no one who wishes to undermine Maedryn thinks to forward these messages to Professor Ulik and Professor Fen. It is such a shame that AIs have a habit of picking up out of context bits and pieces of dialogue like, “Forward these messages to Professor Ulik and Professor Fen,” as Three and DarkBoard both agree afterwards.

You're awakened in the middle of the night by someone shaking you. You fumble under your pillow for your knife. A hand grabs your wrist.

Val?

"Get up! Three! Grab Anaxogoras and run!"

"What?"

"No time! No time! We've got to get out of the Sci-Fi dorm now!"

You scoop Anaxogoras out of its box and into your arms. It burbles questioningly. You grab for your backpack that you always leave beside the bed. Grabbing your school papers, and your new suit, you fling open the door to your room. Val throws on a bathrobe and the two of you race through the hallways and the stairs, past the outer doors, and out into the night air.

"Val, what are you—"

There's a deafening explosion and the upper deck of the starbase goes up in flames.

Obviously, since Val is roommates with Scorpius, who’s in Thriller, ze does not blow up Three’s room in the Sci-Fi dorm. Ze’d instead be betraying Thriller to Sci-Fi and blowing up their bunker. And while Three isn’t interested in taking part in the genre tournament, they’re at least keeping an eye on what Sona’s doing, and keeping her and Maedryn as happy as possible, so they’d definitely hear about the plan.

The thing is though, Thriller’s dorm getting blown up will be unlikely to reflect well on Professor Ulik, as faculty sponsor. While winning or losing the tournament is unlikely to be a big decider on who gets the tenured position, Three would feel much more comfortable if Thriller did better in it than Sci-Fi. They find ways to subtly undermine Sci-Fi’s efforts when possible, and make sure A Baroness gets an anonymous tip about Val, so the explosives can be deactivated in time. A Baroness, as head of the Shadow Council, is competent and powerful enough to trace the tip back to Three, and suggests that if they don’t want Sona and Maedryn finding out what they did, they make sure the explosion actually goes off in the Sci-Fi dorm.

Meanwhile though, Scorpius is hating being in Thriller and, after running away from zir room one day when ze accidentally released a scorpion in there, ended up hitting it off with Dev, crashing in their room for a while, and deciding Horror was the best genre and absolutely deserved to win the tournament. Thriller, on the other hand, is the worst, and boring, and A Baroness told zir off for accidentally letting zir scorpions escape in the common room, and then all the competent Thriller villains judged zir, so Scorpius is willing to do whatever it takes to bring them down. Ze steals the explosives before Three can pick them up, runs off and dumps them in a dungeon, and promptly forgets where ze left them.

Three was, obviously, not doing well with the discovery that A Baroness had tracked them down and had blackmail information on them. They can at least now counter with a, “I’m sure it wouldn’t be good for your reputation if anyone knew you let one of your own steal and lose the explosives,” while they try to track down any more blackmail on her. Fortunately for them, A Baroness finds that she keeps running into errors on DarkBoard whenever she’s considering moving against Three. While she now finds it even more prudent to keep an eye on them, she decides that having her financial account suspended, her weekly schedule displayed incorrectly, and her homework submissions blocked isn’t quite worth the effort.

Val, meanwhile, has picked up a few things about Three while working with both Sona and A Baroness, and has enough influence with DarkBoard, to also realise it’s worth keeping an eye on them, and their slowly growing narrative weight. And since, if you make a deal with her after she blows up your dorm on a Sci-Fi or Fantasy route, Sona tells you that Maedryn wants her to find information on Val, it seems likely that Three has also been instructed to do that. Three and Val are definitely going to end up having some talks about Destiny and their motivations, although I’ll get into those more in the next chapter.

While all that is happening, over in Fantasy, Cazenar has decided he doesn’t care as much about his genre winning the tournament as he does about betraying Aurion, who recently agreed to be his nemesis. He ends up finding the explosives Scorpius lost in the dungeons, and promptly uses them to blow up the Fantasy dorm. And that’s how all three of my PCs end up trying to take down their own genres in the genre tournament.

#grand academy for future villains #choice of games #three #scorpius sanderson #cazenar vampyroteuthida #marsh ocs #long post #maedryn #sara ulik #darkboard #a baroness #sona iatra #aurion umbrator malisar #valorous flame

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woozletania · 7 years

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Sanctuary, Part 6 (RR/Lylla

After reconciling with Lylla (again), Rocket begins to admit to himself that he feels something for her he’s never felt before. Maybe it’s even love. Who knows? He doesn’t have a lot of experience in the area. After all, who’s going to want to kiss a little monster?

*****

It was the third time he’d woken up in the little round bed with Lylla. This time was different.

The first time they’d shared a bed, he’d been injured and she was exhausted from her escape from the illegal research center where she was made. He’d only crawled into bed with her to comfort her as she was gripped by a nightmare. The next morning he’d crept back out without her ever knowing he was there, as far as he knew. Then he’d said something stupid over a meal and scared her, yet she’d asked him to curl up with her again so she’d feel safe. Both times she’d been scared and he’d still been recovering from injuries he received while rescuing her. He’d once again crawled out of bed, careful not to wake her since he knew she needed to rest.

And then, like the idiot he was, he’d scared her again and that’d been it for the briefly known warmth and comfort of sharing a bed with her. He made her a separate bed and despite what he suspected were Groot’s efforts to get them back together their relationship never quite got back to that point, until last night.

She’d only been on board a week and already Rocket was more confused than he’d been in his life. He’d had enemies, rivals. Even, all too seldom, friends. The Guardians were the closest thing he’d ever had to a family and Pete had stuck with him even when he bit him. Twice. They stuck with him despite all his issues and Rocket knew, deep inside where it counted, that if there came a time where either he or the Guardians had to die he’d step forward to take the bullet. Just as Yondu had, sacrificing himself to save Pete without a second thought.

And after only a week, he knew he’d do the same for Lylla. He’d almost died getting her free. He’d do it again in a second. What did that mean? What was happening to him?

The lights came on in the galley area down the hall and Lylla stirred, wrapped warmly around him and sleepily nuzzling his neck. It wasn’t the first time he’d woken up next to someone. He’d been in plenty of prisons where the prisoners slept in piles and he had to find the least smelly crevice in the stack of bodies to sleep. But this was the first time he woke up sleeping next to someone and liked it. Found himself looking forward to the next nap, the warm presence against his side, the fur against fur, the tickle of her whiskers. The touch of someone who might be built a little differently, but was like him in so many ways.

Gamora appeared in the doorway and tapped the bulkhead gently until Lylla started awake. "Breakfast up in five,“ she said, and though she smiled to see them back in the same bed she didn’t comment on it.

Lylla stretched and yawned as Rocket slid out of the round, padded bed the two of them filled so neatly. He pulled on his armored tunic, snapping the latches even as he listened to her move behind him.

He heard the slight hesitations, the wince. The researchers had done a better job on her than they had on him but she still hurt sometimes when she moved. Hopefully Doc Foster could fix that. Hopefully by the end of the day her movement would be as painless as his was after that day-long session on Paul Foster’s operating table.

"Rocket,” she chirped as he handed over the harness he’d made for her. She slept in the nude, if you didn’t count the fur. Sometimes he did too, but not when he was with her. It seemed wrong, somehow. He always kept on at least his pants.

“Good morning,” he said, and resisted an urge he’d never had before. The urge to lean over and nuzzle her neck, or maybe even to try out this kissing thing that Pete managed so easily. It wouldn’t be right, though. It would be taking advantage of someone who relied on him to protect her.

Not that she needed to be protected, or for him to make decisions for her. She came out of the bed on all fours and hugged him, nuzzling that same spot below his ear where her bite had nearly killed him. "Rocket,“ she whispered. "Why do you trust me? I almost killed you. And then I, I used you to get me out, even knowing what I’d done.”

Now it was Pete watching from the doorway. Rocket ignored him as he hugged Lylla. "I told you. You were desperate. I did things to get free I still don’t like to think about. Yeah, you bit me and rode me out, but you also kept me alive by doing that. Sometimes we do bad things and it still works out all right.“

"That’s pretty much our motto,” Pete said as Lylla fastened her black and green harness. A few minutes later they were chowing down on eggs and sausage once again (the selection in the cupboard wasn’t so good at the moment, everyone agreed) and the highly carnivorous she-otter picked at the muffins Pete had baked, extracting the baked-in berries and happily eating those while leaving the dismembered bready husk behind. That got her a bowl of blue and red berries to munch. Rocket, more omnivorous, ate everything put in front of him including the remains of Lylla’s muffins. They both ate more than one would expect, the shipboard joke being that Rocket ate more than Drax. That wasn’t true, but their enhanced metabolisms and cybernetics consumed many more calories than a normal forty-pound creature.

It was a drawback of the Uplift. An energy hungry enhanced brain, reinforced immune system and cybernetics that drew power from the metabolism. The result was that Rocket ate at least twice as much as an animal his size would and more than once had teetered on the edge of starvation back in the bad old days after he escaped from the Halfworld complex. He’d gained several pounds after coming on board the Milano and thankfully had stopped there. Some sort of weight control system must be in place in his engineered metabolism or else he’d be a fat not-a-raccoon now with all the food he put down.

“You two are going to eat me out of house and home,” Pete joked as he shoveled another helping of sausage-and-pepper omelet onto Lylla’s plate. She at once set to work eating her way around the peppers.

“Need to pick up some fish next stopover,” Rocket mumbled through a mouthful of food. Like Lylla, he ate with his hands.

“What’s fish,” Lylla chirped.

“Aquatic scaly thing,” Rocket said after swallowing. "What you’d probably be eating if you weren’t here,“ which was a diplomatic way of saying the animal she appeared based on was probably a fish eater.

Peter finished serving Mantis, Drax and Gamora (and a small helping for three-foot-tall Groot, who didn’t need to eat much) before speaking. "So, I guess…” He shot a look at Rocket.

“He told me, yes,” Lylla chirped, which got a curious look from Gamora.

“Told you what?”

“Rocket found something in my scans he thinks are poison glands,” Lylla chirped, and touched her cheek. "So I can just bite once and, and leave my victim to die.“

"Ah,” said Gamora, but she didn’t miss the way Lylla’s voice went weak at the end, nor did she miss how Rocket put his hand on Lylla’s when he sensed her distress. That got a small smile out of Gamora. Drax, being Drax, was oblivious.

“Efficient,” rumbled the giant. "What if the target’s biology is different? One poison won’t work on everyone.“

"Don’t know,” Rocket said, mouth again full of food. "Might be set each time somehow, though I didn’t see any way to interface with the implants. I’m pretty sure they aren’t active right now.“

"Because I didn’t kill him when I bit him,” Lylla said, and the hurt in her voice made Rocket squeeze her hand and whisper something to her.

“You nearly did,” observed Drax, which got him elbowed by Gamora. "What?“

After that were several minutes of silence as the crew finished eating. "So, we off to Gumwalt?”

“Xandar,” Rocket said briefly. "‘Parently Doc Foster’s there now. Right in city center where Ronan’s ship crashed, even. It’ll be like old times.“

After breakfast and a shower for Pete, some self-grooming for Rocket, they made their way up to the cockpit. Peter knew what was coming when Rocket turned up the music. Some Yardbirds, along with the ambient ship noise ought to let them talk privately. Lylla’d probably figured that out by now, but she was too polite to poke her nose in every time the music got turned up. Peter repressed a smile at the song choice, though Heart Full Of Soul was at least a less obvious choice than For Your Love.

“I think there’s something wrong with me, Pete,” Rocket said, staring fixedly through the windscreen even as his little hands programmed in jumps with no need of input from his brain.

“No there isn’t,” Peter said.

“I’m goin’ soft in the head,” Rocket complained. “All sorts a stupid thoughts.”

“That’s how it starts,” Peter said unhelpfully, and no amount of prying could get him to say any more. Instead he changed the subject.

"So, Xandar,” Peter said as he checked the series of jumps Rocket had set up that would take them there. Naturally there were no errors. "That’s a pretty drastic move. I thought you said he was out on Gumwalt keeping a low profile.“

"Because he thought I might track him down and kill him,” Rocket said matter-of-factly. "But that’s in the past. If it weren’t for Doc Foster we wouldn’t be having this conversation, Pete.“

"I know, Rock,” said Peter Quill, who over the months had pieced together enough of Rocket’s horrifying background to know that if it weren’t for Paul Foster they’d probably be taking a bounty on Rocket instead of taking them with him. And Doc Foster had fixed up Rocket’s shoddily installed cybernetics, too. Peter never heard his friend hide a wince of pain or saw him flinch in the middle of what should be a simple motion any more. And it’d been Foster, too, who had clued Rocket in to the existence of more Uplifts. If the doctor ever needed a favor, Rocket wouldn’t have to do it alone. All of the Guardians would be right there to help.

“Anyway, he’s on Xandar now. I have his address but he didn’t say what he was doing there. I guess he wants to surprise me.”

And it was a surprise. In fact it turned out to be a whole series of them.

#rocket raccoon #lylla otter #guardians of the galaxy #slice of life

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woozletania · 7 years

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Sanctuary, part 4 (RR/Lylla)

Gamora learns that Lylla is tougher than she looks, and Rocket makes a worrying discovery while going over the scans he took of the otter.

*****

Gamora started out with a halfhearted punch. When Peter suggested she teach Lylla some hand to hand combat she'd thought he was joking, but he was dead serious for a change. Still, in the open area at the back of the Milano, only a few yards from the little round beds the Rocket and Lylla slept in, she found herself facing off against a three foot tall, maybe forty pound otter. She had to crouch down to throw a punch that would connect and she held back.

Which turned out to be a mistake. As her fist swept forward, slow by her standards and soft, Lylla dropped to all fours and darted forward. Before she knew what was happening the little otter ran right up her body and jammed its nose into the side of her neck. She felt only bristling ottery whiskers and a cold wet nose but as Lylla sprang off her to land neatly ten feet away she knew she escaped a serious, maybe even fatal bite only because the otter held back.

"Well," Gamora said, and took a step back. "I didn't expect that. I thought you said only had a little combat training.”

"None, really," Lylla chirped. "But I thought programming counted. They were going to train me, but I escaped first."

"Programming," Gamora said. The word left a sour taste in her mouth.

"Yes," the otter chirped. "Helmet on head, bolted on. 'Direct neural feed'. And then I know where to bite, and how to get in position to do it." She was wearing the green harness Rocket made for her, minus the clip-on armor segments. Several polished bolts protruded from her fur at the shoulders and spine, visible through gaps in her outfit.

"Let's try again," Gamora said. She resolved to not underestimate Lylla this time.

Very quickly she learned that skills borne of endless training against humanoids were nearly useless against an otter. Lylla was if anything more comfortable on four legs than two and unlike other vermin - other quadrupeds, Gamora corrected herself - was smart and well trained, or at least had an intuitive understanding of positioning and movement. She was also cybernetically enhanced, at least five times as strong as she had any right to be.

But she was still only a forty pound otter, and Gamora was cybernetically enhanced too. After twenty minutes of sparring Gamora owned up to three probable deaths or serious injuries due to neck bites that stopped just shy of fangs piercing her flesh, while she had gotten hold of Lylla twice that many times. And once she got hold, whether she was bitten or not, she could claim a win since she could just beat Lylla against the ground or hurl her full force at a wall. Not that the latter was a certain kill, as Lylla was as nimble as a cat and prone to bounce off surfaces like a rubber ball when thrown. Still, the otter admitted that if a bigger, stronger creature got hold of her she had real problems.

"All right," Gamora panted. "Whoever programmed in those reflexes did a good job. I'm not sure what the goal was, though. Sharp claws and a powerful bite only go so far against a creature four times your mass. You could probably kill a single human, maybe even a couple if they weren't augmented or well trained, but you'd have trouble with armed opponents or groups."

"That's all I have," Lylla chirped. "I am to get close and bite, by stealth or appearing harmless if possible, in a fight if necessary." There was a rote quality to her recitation, as though she'd been drilled – or programmed – over and over until it stuck. She probably had.

"And you're good at it," Gamora admitted. "But they put a lot of time and resources in to making you Uplifts. I can't imagine it's efficient to do that for a one-use assassin. Especially since you have all those diplomatic and linguist abilities. Why not just make you cute if the goal is to get you close to your target? How were you supposed to kill someone and then get away to do it again?"

“I don't know,” Lylla chirped.

At the other end of the Milano, someone else was, quite unintentionally, approaching the answer to that question.

"Whatcha doin', Rock?" Peter came up the stairs and flopped into his chair, noting the dozen screens Rocket had up in front of his furry face. The largest had a multicolored diagram and it took him a moment to realize he was looking at a deep scan of some heavily augmented creature.

The long, streamlined body and short legs gave it away. "Lylla?"

"Yeah. I'm going over the scans I took before sending them to Doc Foster. Most of this stuff is pretty obvious," the raccoon said. He pointed a stylus at the bone structure of an arm. "Servos for strength enhancement, skeletal reinforcement and modification to make her bipedal (sorta, she's good on four legs too, like me), some stuff around the brain that deals with Uplift. You don't make a little brain like mine or hers sapient without cheating with computational implants. Like I said, obvious." He sat back in his pilot's chair with a sigh. "But..."

"But?"

"But there's stuff here I don't understand. What's this?". The stylus extended a holographic pointer that he used to indicate a layer under the aquatic creature's pelt. "What is this? It's under her whole pelt. I don't have anything like that. Shallow scans say her fur is actually rooted in the stuff. And her fur...I think her whole pelt has been modified somehow."

"Dermal armor?"

"No, I'd a felt it when I touched her." There was something about the way Rocket spoke that Peter had never heard before. Almost...shyness? Not like the little raccoon's usual brash attitude at all.

"You and Lylla getting along all right, Rock? I thought you got over that problem with the surgical tools."

"Look, can we just focus for a second here Pete? I'm trying to think." Sharp teeth gnawed on the stylus and Peter pretended not to notice Rocket's now well established habit of getting angry when he felt defensive.

"And what is that?" The holo-stylus indicated a thumb-sized...something...at the back of the otter's jaws. "That's an implant. Organic, but an implant. Bio-engineered...gland? Some tech in there too. There's one on each side, like, like..." Rocket put down the stylus and zoomed in with a gesture, suddenly suspicious. "Aw man."

"What is it? Not a bomb or anything, I hope?" But Rocket wasn't listening. His clever little fingers were manipulating the scan, rotating, zooming, until even Peter saw the connections. At the back of the jaws the implanted gland, then a vein or tunnel from the glands though the upper mandible to the top canines. Canines that had a vein of their own, from root to tip.

"Is that -"

"Turn the music on, Pete."

Peter tapped a control on his console and smiled as Spirit In The Sky, an old favorite, began to play. The smile didn't last. "Louder," Rocket said, and he was manipulating the scan as he spoke. Eventually he was satisfied with the volume and the scan and leaned in close to Peter to speak. The implants at the back of Lylla's skull filled the whole screen now, internally complex, with dozens of sub-glands all feeding the vein that ran down to the canines.

"That is an organic factory," Rocket said. "We all got natural ones. Bile for digestion, that sort of thing. This one's engineered to build something Lylla's body wouldn't normally produce. Some compound. More likely a bunch of compounds. I'm not an expert, I can't be sure without more scans and maybe a sample, but they didn't put those glands in her head for nothing, Pete."

"Poison," Peter said, and Rocket shushed him despite the blaring music. Then the raccoon nodded.

"Yeah," he whispered, barely audible over Norman Greenbaum. "Poison."

At one end of the ship Gamora was watching Lylla, fast and supple on all fours, trying to predict her movements. If she had a weapon this would be easy, but even for her the little otter was a dangerous opponent. Much more so than Rocket, who while capable enough hand to hand was nowhere near as formidable as Lylla. They were of equal size and strength but Lylla had the skill to be genuinely dangerous and her musteline - and servo-augmented - jaws gave her a far more powerful bite than the raccoon. Luckily her small size meant her claws were relatively harmless, with Gamora's clothing protecting him from the worst of them. Gamora slipped forward, tried a kick, and wasn't surprised when the otter bent bonelessly to avoid it and very nearly ran up her leg before she pulled it back.

Lylla didn't want to hurt her. Lylla was doing her best not to hurt her. She wanted to be...what? Not an assassin, at any rate. Even so, her cybernetics and programmed-in skills made her dangerous. If she'd been the size of a human Gamora might actually have been afraid of the water-weasel. Still, she was bigger and stronger. If Lylla got in a bite and it wasn't to the neck, how much damage could it really do?

At the other end of the Milano were Rocket and Peter, leaned close together to hear over the music. "You gonna tell her, Rock?"

"I dunno," Rocket said, looking almost as scared as the time Peter had seen him wake from the night terrors. "I don't know if she'd want to know. And I think the glands are switched off somehow, she didn't poison me when she bit me and she was terrified.”

Rocket rubbed his cheek in one of those animalistic gestures Peter had gotten used to and never commented on, like the times he licked his little hands and used them to groom his face-fur. “She doesn't want to be a killer. But I told her I'd explain all the scans I took of her. And, um," he fumbled for words, "I think she kissed me yesterday."

"You think?"

"It was so fast!"

"Well, was it a kiss or not?"

“How would I know?! I don't have a lotta experience in that area. Not like you." Rocket waved at the interior of the cockpit. "Before Nova rebuilt this ship it stank, Pete. I could smell every woman you had in here."

"That was before," Star-Lord mumbled.

"Before Gamora? Yeah, well, you're shaped like just about every two legs in the galaxy, Pete. Who am I gonna kiss, anyway? Who's gonna wanna kiss a little monster?"

You aren't a monster, Peter didn't say. He'd tried it before. As much as Rocket had improved in just a year, only so much of the raccoon's deep emotional scars had healed. The horrible abuse that defined his entire life had left him with no sense of self worth at all. He was an emotional void wrapped in a tough, prickly defensive shell. Being the meanest thing in the room was all that had kept him alive and it was a hard habit to break.

"Lylla did," Peter said, and Rocket just stared through the cockpit glass, saying nothing. "Maybe she still does."

Tomorrow was Lylla's appointment with Rocket's doctor friend, the man who'd smuggled him painkillers when he was being torn apart and augmented. Just about the only man in the galaxy Rocket trusted to work on his cybernetics. Tomorrow they'd know more. The question was, should Rocket tell Lylla what he'd found or let the doctor do it?

“I don't know what to do, Pete,” Rocket said, so low it was hard to hear over the music. “I just don't.”

#Rocket Raccoon #lylla otter #Guardians of the Galaxy #slice of life

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