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ghostlywhiskey · 8 months

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Simon “Ghost” Riley - Angel

Pairing: Simon “Ghost” Riley x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 2,301

Warnings: PLEASE BE AWARE - This one-shot mentions blood & implies suicide. I know this is a touchy subject, so please do not read if this will not sit well with you. Your mental health matters. 🤍

Summary: You, Simon and Soap were injured in a crash. A few months have gone by and Simon is having a hard time with the aftermath of his injuries.

Notes: I’m so sorry in advance. I actually sobbed writing this. Any errors or mistakes, please forgive me. I couldn’t reread through the tears.

find my masterlist here

The sound of ringing bounces around your head, the dirt on the ground pressing against your cheek. Pushing yourself up, smoke surrounds you as you cough. Soap is groaning next to you, propping himself up on his elbows. “Oi, fuckin’ ‘ell.” He hisses, glancing down at his leg that has a large gash cutting through his pants. You glance over at Soap, quickly crawling over to him. “Soap.” The name coming out of your mouth more as a way for your brain to register he’s alive. The radio on your vest makes an effort to check your status, but your brain is still only just processing Soap is alive.

Soap uses one hand to press his radio, “Copy. Price, this is Soap. We’re down.”

“Copy. This is Angel. With Soap.” You respond to your radio.

You. Soap. Simon? Where is Simon?

“Ghost!” The shout echoes out into the abyss of the forest. Any ounce of strength in you felt knocked out from the impact of the crash. Fuck. Where was he? Soap needed help first. Crawling over to Soap, you sit on your knees and examine his leg. Blood, so much blood. Not my blood. Not your own. The reminder echoes through your head, if it wasn’t yours, you could handle it. Grabbing the tourniquet attached to your uniform, you yank it off and quickly tend to Soap's leg. Soap hisses as you tighten it on his leg, “Son of-”. “I know, I know.” You say, coughing again from the smoke. “You’ll thank me when this heals.” You say.

Simon? Where is Simon?

Once Soap’s leg is attended to, you slowly push yourself off the ground and stand up. As you go to walk, you wince as your left foot goes to walk forward. Just a sprain. You’re fine. Letting out a shaky breath, you limp as you move through the crash site. “Ghost!” You call again, no response.

“This is Angel. We don’t have eyes on Ghost. Over.” You click the radio, glancing around. Where are you? Come on, Simon.

“Hard copy. Locate him if you can. Working on a rescue team now.” Price’s voice slips through in one ear and out the other.

The corner of your eye catches a glimpse of a leg under a piece of helicopter debris. No. No. No. Rushing over, adrenaline spiking in your body as you go to try and flip the piece of the helicopter. “Simon!” You shout, not even realizing his actual name left your lips, pulling the debris back. Ghost laid there, motionless. Blood, too much blood. Not my blood. Your fiancé’s. “Simon. No. Simon.” You dropped to your knees beside him, obvious wounds to his arm and leg. But, as you got closer you could see his chest rising and falling faintly.

“Price this is Angel. Ghost is critical. We need a medic. Over.” You pull your composure together over the radio, but the strain is noticeable.

“Roger. Keep calm, Angel. Do what you can until rescue arrives. Over.” Price states.

“Copy.” You speak, completely zoned out as you try to tend to Ghost.

The apartment you shared with Simon was quiet. Standing in the kitchen, you worked on dinner as he was at his physical therapy appointment. The only sound came from the TV that was unwatched, the light from it illuminating the living room.

The past four months were far from easy. Ever since the crash, Simon had been to multiple doctors and regular physical and occupational therapy appointments. Out of you, Soap, and him, Simon suffered the worst injuries that day. Specifically, his left leg has been doing the worst in terms of healing. The one appointment he did let you come to, the occupational therapist mentioned their concern of Simon not hitting certain marks, but tried to keep their tone hopeful. But, Simon wasn’t thinking in terms of hopeful or possibilities, he was banking on perfection. Complete recovery.

But, how do you tell a man in the process of trying to heal that complete recovery was unlikely? How do you tell him that without it destroying him and possibly leading him to giving up trying all together? I have no idea.

Your thoughts were clouded as your body made dinner, as if on autopilot considering you weren’t even thinking about what to do next, you were just doing it. The front door opening turned your brain off autopilot and back to manual. Footsteps, in unison with a crutch tapping the floor, made their way to the kitchen.

The presence behind you radiating warmth as lips kiss the top of your head. “Hey.” Simon’s voice filled your ears as you felt his hand not grabbing his crutch rest on your waist, face leaning down to nuzzle your neck. “Hey, baby.” You say softly, stopping what you are doing to turn and face him. “How was the doctor?” The genuine and simple question that could set the mood for the entire night. “Same as always.” He responded, his hand moving to brush a piece of hair behind your ear before he leaned down to kiss you softly.

Weird. That is the most calm response he has ever given after an appointment. Maybe you are being paranoid?

Kissing him back, you reach a hand up to place on his neck and pull back gently. “How about you go shower? I’ll be done with dinner by the time you get out.” You smile up at him, the hand on his neck sliding down to his chest to pat him gently. He doesn’t protest, nodding to your suggestion as he heads to the bedroom.

As he walks away, you resume cooking dinner. You hum softly as you move around the kitchen, trying to avoid letting your worries plague your mind.

After a few minutes, you hear the sound of something falling on the floor followed by a thud. Your head shoots up as you look towards the bedroom door, the knife in your hand dropping on the counter as you rush towards the room.

“Simon?” You call out, pushing the bedroom door open. At first nothing looks out of the ordinary until you turn to look at the bathroom door. The crutch lies on the ground, half in the bedroom and half in the bathroom. Simon sits on the bathroom floor, his back against the wall and head tilted back as he winces in pain. “Simon.” Your voice strained, the concern laced with it as you walked over to him and kneel down next to him.

“Fuckin’ hell!” He snaps, his good leg using the sole of his foot to hit the cabinet in frustration. The action makes you flinch as you reach to turn his face towards you. “Si, are you okay?” The question was laced with hesitancy. “No. I ain’t fuckin’ okay. My fuckin’ leg is shit!” Simon growls his hand reaching for the crutch and throwing it with one arm into the bedroom. The sound of the crutch hitting the floor leaves you unphased as you expect it coming.

“Simon, you need to give it time.” You say, your hand resting on his thigh and moving it soothingly back and forth against the fabric of his sweatpants. “The fact you’ve made progress is a win in itself. But, you need to give it time. That’s why the therapy appointments are important and listening to what they tell you. Like using the crutch.” The tone of your voice is soft, but serious. And you knew him, the crutch was used around you. It didn’t mean he used it when you weren’t around. You knew better than to take his word for it that he used it, he was too stubborn and thought a good day meant he didn’t need it anymore.

“Yeah, I’ve made progress, but it means shit.” Simon muttered, his eyes looking down at your hand on his thigh. “I’ve made progress that would be exciting in two months, not four.” He states, his voice cold and distant. “The constant fuckin’ pain and feeling like it’s gonna buckle as any moment is always there.” He huffs, resting his head against the wall. “I’m so fuckin’ tired, angel.” His eyes looked up at the ceiling, before his head tilted towards your direction.

Simon was tired. He was the kind of tired that doesn’t go away no matter how much you sleep. The stress of his leg, the anxiety that tormented his mind from the crash and aftermath, now finally catching up to him. Everything he bottled up, exploding out as the bottle finally broke. At this moment, on the floor of the bathroom, he was broken. His eyes, the one way anyone could ever tell his emotions behind the mask or not, had the look of complete exhaustion.

You go to speak, but no words come out.

What do you say to someone when they feel like this? When all roads have been taken towards getting better and nothing helps? I have no idea.

So, you do what you know how to do best. Just be there. You move his legs gently apart, moving to kneel between them and in front of him. Your arms reach out to pull his body forward by his shoulders, instantly putting your arms around his neck and resting your head on your arm by his head. “Baby,” You whisper, one hand placed on the back of his head to scratch it since you know how much he loves how your nails feel. “You’ll get through this. I’m here for you. We’ll figure it out together.”

Simon’s arms snaked around your body, pulling you close and holding you tight. His own head resting on your shoulder as you felt tears dampen a spot on your shirt. He pressed himself against you, letting the warmth of your body soothe him. It was something he had always craved, your heat.

"Everything hurts." Simon mumbled, the tears making the spot on your shirt larger. "Everything hurts." He repeated. The contact of your body easing him slightly, the exhaustion settling in as his body relaxed, his muscles relaxing for the first time in who knows how long. A sob bubbled out of him as the words slipped out.

"I want it all to stop. Help me."

Sitting cross legged, you sat on the picnic blanket next to Simon. The fall air was cool against your skin, your leggings and one of Simon’s older hoodies you borrowed once and claimed as your own from that point forward keeping you warm. You always loved his clothes - how oversized they fit on you, the scent of his cologne, pine and even the faint smell of cigarettes that lingered. Most people would hate the lingering smell of cigarettes, but it comforted you. Especially the combination it was a part of.

“Remember when we both said we would leave the force at some point? I’ve been thinking about it recently.” Your voice is soft, almost hesitant to share the information because saying it out loud makes it real. “I’m thinking about getting a teaching degree instead. My mom is a teacher and I’ve visited her a few times to help out and the little kids are so full of life and bright. Pure and oblivious to the world around them.” You speak, playing with the string of the hoodie.

“I wonder what our kids would have been like. Do you think we would have one? Or maybe three? If I could pick, I would want two boys and a girl, I think.” The question you ask comes out strained as you stare at Simon, waiting for his response. But, there hasn’t been a response in a year. The headstone of his grave looking back at you.

It was exactly one year. One year since you got the call while you were out grocery shopping. You don’t remember much from that day, you just remember falling to the ground of the store and everything went black. Part of you thanks your brain from blocking out the day, shoving it to the depths of your subconscious in a box to never be touched and opened.

“I miss you.” Your voice has dropped to just below a whisper. “Why’d you have to leave me? Why was I so oblivious that you weren’t doing better? Why did you tell me you were fine?” You choke out, tears spilling down your cheeks. Delicate fingers are going to reach for the dog chain around your neck. His dog chain with his wedding ring dangling next to it. Your own wedding ring on your finger paired with your engagement ring.

The wedding rings you bought on a whim one day and promised yourselves to each other for the rest of your lives.

“Angel, let’s go get married.” Simon said, the two of you laying in bed. It was a rainy day and you had spent the morning so far in bed. “Today?” You said, confused by the sudden suggestion. Plans for your wedding had been on hold since the crash, not wanting to add any stress to the current situation. “Today.” He confirmed, slipping out of the bed to get ready. “Come on.”

That was at 10:00 AM. Then by the time it was 3:00 PM, you had the last name Riley.

And two months later, you were a widow.

“I love you, Simon Riley. I’m sorry if I never said it enough. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.” The tears hitting the hoodie as they drip from your jaw. A sniffle leaves your nose as you stand up, grabbing the picnic blanket to toss over your arm. You kneel right in front of the headstone, placing a kiss on it.

“Thanks for being my angel now.” You whisper, standing up to walk back to your car.

#simon ghost riley #simon riley x you #simon riley x reader #simon ghost x reader #simon riley cod #ghost x reader #call of duty #simon riley #ghost call of duty #ghost cod #simon riley x y/n #simon ghost x you #simon ghost riley oneshot #simon riley oneshot #i am so so sorry

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konigbabe · 1 year

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the version of you and me

Pairing: John Price x fem!reader

Word count: 4.6k

Tags/Warnings: smut; nsfw; angst and feels; age gap; gendered terminology; female anatomy; alcohol; cunnilingus; oral sex (fem receive); safe sex; protected sex; soft sex; love making; feelings realization; smut wiht feelings

Summary: John was a beacon, a lighthouse that kept you safe and warm in the raging storms of life. He was the one constant in your life, the one person you could always count on. No matter what happened in your life, he was there for you and that made all the difference.

A/N: Not sure whether this should be also classified as angst - what do you think? Requested by @sinclxirx. Part of my A to Z kinks game [A is for Age Gap].

Song associated: To Be Alone by Hozier

masterlist • faq • AO3 • ko-fi

That night, embraced in his presence, you felt like you were drowning. Drowning in an endless abyss of feelings. His eyes were dark pools of emotion, and you felt yourself falling into them, unable to resist; his touch gentle, as if he was trying to capture the essence of your soul; his lips inviting and you felt his warmth radiating through your entire body. You felt safe, secure, and so incredibly alive.

His lips followed the curves of your collarbones, caressing each crevice of your body. Soft grunts, words of adoration and praise flew from his mouth as he worshipped you to your highs, prolonging the feeling of your heat wrapped around him, underneath him, between his fingers.

They were here again.

He was here again.

Similar crew to the last time, few changed; they always do. Sitting at the other side of the pub, side by side, he sat closest to you - his men by his right. Music surrounded you like a cloud of smoke, the same old songs with a new beat. The conversation ebbed and flowed between them like the tide of the sea, and you found yourself drawn to them; like always.

Only his name was a constant though; years of seeing the familiar face, the same blue eyes, eyes squinting, wrinkles pooling around them as he smiled, laughed occasionally. Him and the skull face; they called him Ghost, you learned early on - other soldiers respected him, he respected him. During your first shifts, that man was someone you avoided like the devil himself; but he was indifferent to you, reverent even.

Soon enough, you found yourself drawn to him and the captain. The two of them a comfort zone during long shifts; as you served the soldiers, avoiding their touches, slaps and whistles; these two offered peace in their silence and nonchalance.

Over the years, your eyes started to search his whenever you entered the pub. John Price, his name a sweet melody, as sweet as honey on your tongue. He was a lieutenant back then; back when you got to know him first.

“What’s with the sad face, darling?” he’d ask one day. Sitting at the pub, he came with a woman; a pretty one, around his age, a civilian; based on her clothes. American, you deduced.

Never before you attempted to have a conversation with any soldier at the pub; most of them left too drunk out of their minds to ever remember you, you believed. He wasn’t one of them - he’d start with a glass of bourbon on ice, savoring the bittersweet taste as the rest of his crew drank one pint of beer after another.

The woman left soon after he introduced himself; John.

Since then, he was the reason you looked forward to your job. The conversations grew longer. Deeper. More meaningful. He offered you a hand in friendship and you took it. It was a friendship that was built on trust and understanding, and it was something that you treasured. Your life was changing constantly; people came and went as you lived through university. He was that one constant in it.

John was the first person to congratulate you on your degree; you were the first outside military to congratulate him on becoming captain. He watched you grow, celebrated your achievements with you. You, in turn, helped him as he stepped into a leadership role. Always there for him, offering words of encouragement, advice, and support. You both had each other's back; yet you never saw each other outside that dimly lit pub - with a front pub separating each and every conversation. Or it used to be like that.

Later on, you started wondering if him being a captain was something you should applaud him for. His visits to the pub became less frequent. Deployments started to be longer. The people, his crew, changed constantly. He aged; not only with time - worry and the weight of his decisions had taken their toll. He grew a beard, it suited him though. His voice became rougher. Stern. Demanding.

The role of captain suited him; there was no doubt, but it took away the John you once knew. He had to take on a mantle of authority and honor, and it came with a certain amount of gravity and seriousness. But, despite all of this, he still had a good heart beneath it all.

A pang of pain occasionally exploded in your chest when you saw some of his team members at the pub. But not him. The worst-case scenarios always wandered into your brain, but you still had hope. Praying for the best, you focused on what was within your control at the time.

When he came, you’d stay with him. It was a routine you developed quietly; he’d stay and wait for your shift to be over, you’d sit by his side after, a drink in your hand as you talked the night away. He’d tell you about his adventures, people he’d met - not in detail, he wasn’t allowed to do that; he talked vaguely about everything as if he was reciting a movie.

Those moments were like an anchor to you. It was your own little world, and you were content in it. John was a beacon, a lighthouse that kept you safe and warm in the raging storms of life. He was the one constant in your life, the one person you could always count on. No matter what happened in your life, he was there for you and that made all the difference.

Then you’d part your ways. He would always leave last, sending you off into the night with a good night.

The more you got to know the captain, the more intrigued you became by him. The friendship blossomed, sometimes becoming the talk of his crew; they’d sneak looks at you, whisper among themselves (especially those you learned to be Johnny and Gaz), sharing a knowing smile and you knew; you knew that they knew.

He didn’t know. Or at least never acknowledged it.

Eventually, your conversations outgrew the walls of the pub and you found yourself on the chilly streets of London, laughing and talking about the day's events.

Gaz’s words of encouragement echoed in your mind, alcohol rushing through your veins as you walked through the city. The streetlights shone on the cobblestone streets, illuminating your path. John talked most of the time, your eyes staring at the night sky; stars barely visible.

It took years for John to find out where you lived; yet you never knew much about him in that way, you realized. He had a girl back when he was a lieutenant, that much he told you. That didn’t last long for him as his job took most of his life away, taking the girl away too.

John never dared to cross the doorstep. Your doorstep. The first time you asked, it was an innocent invite; it was extremely late, almost an early morning, and in the middle of January, the coldest time to be in London, and you felt bad letting him go into the bitter cold. Not knowing where he lived, where his home was, you didn’t know if he’d get any sleep before work; at your place, he could at least take a nap.

He retreated; with a thank you and have a good night, he was gone.

The second time, your intentions differed. Walking side by side, arms linked, his gloves warmed your freezing hands; he kept his own in his pockets as he walked you home; he seemed to always do that as of lately.

Each step brought you closer to him. Joined at hips, you cherished the moment. The beanie, his beanie, messed up your hair but you didn’t mind. You watched as he talked, a cloud of cold breeze surrounding his blueish lips as cold nicked at his face. Face illuminated by the ring of light cast by his cigar that he pulled from his jacket when you left the pub; the chilly night was filled with sweet smoke billowing from his mouth.

His words quickly dissipated into the darkness of midnight. Eyes fixated on the way his lips wrapped around the head of the cigar, you watched as he sucked the smoke in before exhaling it out of his lungs, the smoke curling up in the air, creating a mesmerizing show of shapes and figures before eventually melding with the night sky.

It felt like a fever dream for a moment, John’s side profile blurry, the golden glow of the cigar contrasting with the inky darkness of the night and the faint stars twinkling in the background.

The bright blue of his eyes seemed to sparkle with a certain kind of warmth as he looked at you; the stillness of the London streets was almost deafening, the only sound being John’s steady footsteps echoing in the night air as you made your way home.

“You wanna try?” he tipped the cigar your way, “it’ll warm ya up.”

The warm twinkle emanating from his eyes seemed to draw you in. Shaking your head, you murmured, “I shouldn’t smoke, it’s bad for your health.”

His arm shook as he laughed, the sound of his amusement vibrant and joyful.

He leaned onto your side, his hand still cradling the rich brown cigar, and said, “I worry about your health, too. But sometimes it’s nice to do something just a little bit wrong, don’t you think?”

His eyes twinkled with mischief and his lips curled into a mischievous smirk. You couldn't help but feel a flutter of excitement as you looked into his eyes, and you found yourself considering his offer.

“Just this once,” you raised a finger. He nodded, the familiar close-lip smile appearing on his face.

Turning the cigar’s head towards you, your fingers wrapped reluctantly around it. With a lick to wet your lips, you brought the cigar to your mouth, feeling the strange texture against your tongue. The taste of tobacco filled your senses; a touch of earthiness, a faint taste of sweet, soft spicy note.

You felt the unfamiliar sensation of the smoke, and the slight sting of the burning embers. It was a strange experience, one that left you feeling overwhelmed, yet strangely satisfied. As smoke filled your lungs, you could feel the heat of the burning embers and the sharpness of the smoke as it seared through your airways, ending with a convulsive cough.

“You’re not supposed to swallow,” John chuckled, taking the cigar from your shaking hand and letting it sit on his own tongue.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” you tried explaining between each cough; a flurry of emotions coursed through you as you finally took a deep breath, the smoke lingering in your lungs and the taste of the cigar still on your tongue.

Though you hadn't enjoyed it in the way you had hoped, you found yourself strangely content with the experience.

“Maybe next time you’ll get it right, darling,” his smile warm and reassuring.

The walk home halted when you reached your door. The ritual stayed the same; John swayed behind you and you could swear you felt his hot breath on your neck as you reached for the keys, Gaz’s words swirling inside your otherwise dizzy head while you put the keys inside the lock.

“He has absolutely no reason to say no.”

“Just ask, the world won’t end if he says no.”

“Okay, if he doesn’t accept, I’ll take you out, honey.”

A smile crept on your lips, Gaz’s encouragement mingling with the alcohol in your veins like two dancing flames. The door creaked as you opened them, stepping inside and turning to face your companion; the captain himself.

His hands stayed in the pockets of his jacket, a faint pink tint ran across his cheeks. Even in civil, John radiated with authority and control. The aura demanding. Presence captivating. His eyes followed your every move, ensuring you safely entered your flat; your own intoxication made you stumble a bit as you shifted your weight against the door.

“Do you, maybe, want to come in?” you asked, almost mumbling, “grab a cuppa?”

The blue of his eyes pierced yours, face stern. Impassive. Giving nothing away. His thoughts unknown. He understood what you were asking, what you truly desired.

The silence stretched, feeling like an eternity; and you knew. There was no need for an answer, no more. You did it. And now there was no going back; but neither going forward as John looked at you with anguish, sympathy.

“Maybe ‘nother time,” no darling, “I have early work.”

A mask of a smile graced his face, but his eyes screamed the truth. Trying to figure out his thoughts felt like searching for a needle in a haystack. Dizzy and tired, you forced a smile on your face. Deep down you were aware of just how badly you messed up; years of your most precious friendship, a companionship of your dreams, shattered in a minute - even less than it.

Dread spread through you the day you were meant to return to work. He’d be there, he always was. And you'd have to confront the truth. His beanie, accompanied by the gloves he kindly lent you, laid still in your locker.

A week trickled away.

Two weeks soon became a month; that month spilled into two, followed by another.

The pub seemed to stay in time, familiar faces showing up every other week. Yet, no sign of him; your head spun with a whirlwind of emotions and questions. It felt like your heart was sinking into an endless sea of doubt.

Seventeen weeks.

Four months.

That was how long it took until your heart leaped as a familiar figure stepped into the pub, followed by a group of others. Eyes glued to the men, you watched them taking their seats.

All three of them looked at you with weary eyes, yet they managed to offer you a reassuring smile, telling you that everything was alright, that he was fine; simply running late due to all the paperwork. A wave of relief swept over you like a summer breeze, calming your anxious heart a little. At least he was safe…all of them were.

Eventually, they left; he never came.

Or at least you thought.

Stepping into the cold spring night, you registered the same aura, the one you were so accustomed to, before noticing his silhouette. Still, partly in his uniform, he stood near the entrance, fingers wrapped around his cigar like a lifeline, smoke curling around him in a gentle embrace.

“Well hello there, stranger,” he said casually.

“John,” the door clicked behind you, “I thought you were avoiding me.”

He let out a long, low breath, his used cigar dropping into the ashtray bin with a soft thud.

“Wouldn’t miss our midnight strolls for all the tea in England, darling.”

Soft smile decorated his face, the blue in his eyes twinkling like the starry night sky above you; his gaze filled with a sense of comity. Tenderness.

The walk remained peaceful; comforting silence followed your footsteps as he lead you through the city. The fall back into your routine seemed seamless, coherent; making you question what was about to come.

The doorstep separated John and you, but you felt a lingering sadness in the air that could not be ignored. The moment seemed to stretch on endlessly, a bittersweet taste on your tongue; wondering whether you should ask him again.

He came back to you. Seemingly not heaved by the weight of your question like you were for the past weeks.

His words exceeded your mind as he asked, “May I come in?”

Hand on the door handle, eyes boring into his, you stepped to the side. A hand wrapped around your heart and squeezed; hard and heavy. As you watched him enter your flat, his back stayed turned to you, eyes scanning your home for the first time.

A wave of emotions crashed over you; nervousness, anticipation, expectation. Excitement. Your heart raced as you waited for him to turn around and face you. When he finally did, the warmth of his smile melted away all the tension.

The doors chilled your skin through the clothes as you leaned on them, watching John take a step toward you.

He reached out his hand and touched your face, tracing the curve of your jawline with his fingertips. His eyes bore into yours and you felt like you were floating in a dream. The energy between you was palpable and you desperately wanted to reach out and touch him, to feel his warmth and love. But you stood still, almost afraid to break the spell.

“I’m sorry,” his words felt distant as your heartbeat echoed in your ears.

“For what?”

You weren’t sure the words even came out but his answer ensured that they did.

“For not explaining myself better,” he reassured you, the feeling of his breath fanning over your heated cheeks as you swallowed the bile in your throat, “I just- couldn’t bring myself to it.”

The warmth of his hand stayed on the side of your neck, thumb hooking underneath your chin to bring your face closer. Hands squeezing the door handle, his lips brushed over yours; silently asking for permission.

“You were just there, so fuckin’ inviting,” he closed his eyes, leaning against your forehead, “and I just knew, Christ, I knew I couldn’t do it to you.”

“John,” his name was a mere exhale swallowed by his lips as he breathed you in. His leg moved between your legs, thigh pressing against your aching core. Chest smushed against yours, belt digging into your abdomen; his presence was suffocating, yet you welcomed it.

“I didn’t want to be a dick for leaving,” his eyes remained closed, thumb swiping over your chin before moving upwards, the tip of his fingertip brushing over your parted lips, “knew I was goin’ away for months and you had to ask that night. That bloody night.”

Invisible strings pulled you towards the man before you. Lips pressing against his; the scratch of his beard tingled against your upper lip. Your body was on fire. Months of pent-up loneliness, solitude, slowly bottling up to the point where just his lips, just the brush of them against yours, ignited a wildfire inside you.

The kiss was more of a peck. Testing the waters.

“Stay tonight,” you could feel his beard tickle your lips from the close proximity of his body as you whispered the plea. His eyes finally opened, staring into yours with an intensity that made your heart skip a beat.

His fingertips traced the side of your face, skimming over the heated flesh of your cheekbones before resting on each side of your neck.

“I’d love to.”

A gentle nudge sent your face into him; lips smashing against John’s in a desperate kiss. Hands hopelessly gripping his sides. Head filled with dizziness, completely succumbing to the moment. The heat of his skin melted you away; compliant to his every move as if he was pulling you down into his depths.

Tongue gently grazing your lips, a content moan escaped you. Taking the opportunity, you felt him slide into your mouth; soft and delicate, brushing over your teeth before twisting with your tongue. The kiss was like a drug, a seductive intoxication that left you wanting more.

His lips moved against yours with a passionate intensity, as if his very life depended on the connection between the two of you; electrifying, sending sparks of pleasure cascading through every part of your body. You felt as if you were melting into him, becoming one with him, until nothing else mattered. The heat of his embrace was intoxicating.

Hand moving into his jacket, you could feel his heartbeat on your palm; it felt like his heart was racing with yours, quick beats drumming against your skin. Time seemed to freeze, all while his lips moved over yours, grunts and moans filling the otherwise quiet midnight air.

An arm snuck behind your back, tightening around you; pressing your body into his as if he wanted to consume you all. The kiss became messy quickly, hands moving, touching everywhere they could reach until suddenly; somehow, your legs were wrapped around his narrow hips, feeling the bones dig into your thighs, one arm hoisting you up as the other held the back of your head, cradling it like a precious treasure.

“Bed-” his attempt to speak failed, “bedroom,” he tried asking between the kisses; your hungry lips didn’t allow him much space. His mouth devoured yours with a hunger that seemed to grow with each passing second, his tongue exploring and tasting every inch of you as if it was the first and last time he'd ever got to do it.

“Down the hall, the only door to the right,” you pulled away to catch your breath, eyes closed in a blissful moment; John’s mouth latching on your throat as he maneuvered through your flat before opening the door. Cool air hits your overheated skin.

Opening your eyes in surprise, you look around before a chuckle left your kiss-stained lips.

“My right, not yours,” you almost moaned as John sucked at the sensitive skin on your neck, “we’re in my bathroom.”

“Christ,” he mumbled against your flesh, “clear instructions next time.”

Turning around, John almost bashed your doors open. Everything felt like a fever dream; the moment his lips captured yours in the first kiss to now, spread open for him like a blossoming flower, pure and yet-to-be-stained by his blood-red hands.

Completely naked, laying before him as if you were an empty canvas, awaiting the brushstrokes of his touch. His lips traced the skin of your inner thighs, kisses and bites sending shivers through your body; tongue exploring, tasting, and teasing until you were lost in a sea of pleasure.

The rough caress of his hand moved along your wrist, fingers intertwining with yours; reassuring squeeze, a swipe of his thumb over the soft skin of your palm. His beard stung in places, teeth sinking into the apex of your thighs, breath fanning over your soaking core, the cold breeze causing electricity to run through you as he skipped your center and moved to the other leg.

His name left your lips in a whimper, back arched and hips pushing towards his mouth, begging him to finally touch you. To feel you. To taste you.

The room was dark, lit only by the street lamp near your window; looking down between your legs, you could see John’s silhouette, hair messy from your desperate attempts to hold onto him as he kissed away your sanity; cogency.

Your breath hitched at the sight of his eyes, dark and brooding like a stormy sky; the blue oceans turning into tidal waves, crashing against your desire, the urgency to feel him; to feel anything he was willing to give you.

So pretty, so fuckin’ pretty.

His own affirmations of reality spiraled around you, creating a frenzy of longing, surging through your veins the same way hot metal surges through a forge; those words weren’t meant for you.

Wet on wet; his tongue laid flat against your soaking core before he kissed your folds, delving into the depths of your innermost. Devouring you like a ravenous beast. Back arched, hips pushed into him, you felt like he was everywhere; the smell of sandalwood, the taste of tobacco and spice, the scorching feel of his touch leaving a trail on your body, heat spreading underneath the flesh, warming the room.

A cascade of fucks, Christs, moans, and his name fell from your lips. The moment the Captain escaped your lips in a frenzied whimper, his fingers curled upwards, dots of white swirling in your eyesight as he thrust his fingers to the place that made you basically scream, plead for him to finally fuck the living soul out of you, to fill you up with his warmth and attentiveness, to take you to that place where nothing else mattered.

A blanket of darkness overtook your body, chest rising as your lungs seemed to forget how to function. The tight knot in your abdomen releasing a wave of pleasure inside you. John’s lips remained wrapped around your aching clit, tongue lapping at the nub with utter finesse, fingers stroking your gummy walls; eyes burning into your face as he watched your body reach its high.

A feeling of accomplishment flooded his veins; he did it, he finally did it; did you to be precise. His head swirled with all kinds of thoughts of you, the way your body reacted to his touch like it was starved for him. Did you deny yourself when he wasn’t around?

The tip of his tongue trailed between your breasts, feeling the burning skin underneath the wet muscle; still covered in your own juices, he painted you - tainted your skin with his filthy hands.

“Please tell me you have condoms,” he pleaded, voice raw with need as his tongue flicked against your earlobe before taking it into his mouth, tugging it ever so lightly. His body was like a furnace, enveloping you in its blistering heat.

Head spinning, utterly fucked up already, it took you a moment to process that he had spoken.

“Nightstand,” your lips searched for his skin, “my left.”

You felt him chuckle more than you heard it, mouth latched onto his collarbones as he stretched his body. Coarse hair of his chest scratching against your sensitive nipples, eliciting a moan.

Mind hazy, everything felt foggy yet so overwhelming; one moment, he asked you if you wanted to get the condom on, seeing your pupils blown, lips swollen and legs desperately locking his hips against you - so out of your mind, high on him; you were high on Captain Price - so he took the charge.

Then his hands landed on your ribs, thumb caressing the underside of your breasts, as his cock split you open in a slow, agonizingly taunting motion. Fingertips traced your side, gliding over the curve of your waist, the soft plump flesh of your hips, sending sparkles through your veins as it moved to your thigh, stroking its full length while he stayed seated deep inside you; he would pay anything in the world to see you like this again; so pliable, absolutely at his mercy.

Moving torturously slow, as if he was punishing you; savoring every inch of you against him, drawing filthy moans, his name, his rank out of your lips before capturing them in a bruising, messy kiss. All teeth, biting and grasping against each other while he rutted into you with a leisurely pace, hand resting on your thigh, the other stroking your cheek - you were so good to him, so tight, so pretty, so fuckin’ wet and pretty. Made for him, for his cock, to warm his bed, to be by his side in the morning, to kiss him goodbye as he deployed and be his welcome kiss as he left the gates of the headquarters as he returned.

His embrace never left you, not when he had your legs over his shoulders, heels digging into the flexing muscles of his back; not when he kissed you with a new-found passion as his hips rutted into yours in a steady rhythm, or when John crumbled underneath you, feeling the tight squeeze of your core as he reached his own high, hands grasping at your hips to guide you onto him, to let you know not to dare to stop.

Laying in his arms, hair freshly washed, skin glowing with that newfound orgasmic afterglow, he told you about his time away, the people he’d met; the same way as if you were back in the pub - but this time, you were at your home, feeling the heat of the captain’s naked skin against you, lips pressed against your temple as his fingers casually stroked your arm.

Oh, to be alone with you….

#john price #captain john price x reader #john price x reader #john price x you #cod #codmwii #captain price #cod x reader #john price smut #john price angst #angst #smut #moni writes #reader insert #callofdutymodernwarfare2 #codmw #callofdutymodernwarfare

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absolutecreaturevibes · 6 months

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Hey creature lovers! I want to introduce you to my ‘Creepylutions’!! Inventing eeveelutions that lean into the weirdness and spookiness of some of the ghost, dark, poison, etc. Pokédex entries is SOOO much fun. I hope you like these!! <3

-Myceleon [grass/poison] A fungal eeveelution that occurs when an eevee is raised to trust its trainer among a team with at least three different fungal pokemon. She sports multiple strains of fungal dna in her body and can produce poison or antidote at will. Hard to tame but intensely loyal once trust is established, Myceleon are rare but incredibly valuable for medicinal research.

-Abysseon [dark/water] When Vaporeon delve too deep into the abyssal zone of the ocean they sometimes evolve to adapt to the impenetrable darkness and crushing pressure of the deep sea. Abysseon never open their eyes, but see through translucent eyelids in a limited color spectrum.

-Conflagreon [Ghost/Grass] During forest fires, Leafeon sometimes remain rather than fleeing due to a sense of responsibility to protect their forest. These evolve into Conflagreon, the forest fire Pokemon. They are much easier to spot in a recently burned forest but any old forest zone that has regrown from fires will often have one flitting through the underbrush. Despite their ghostly forms, they are beneficial guardians that increase the fertility of the forest.

#pokemon #eeveelution #pokemon fanart #fakemon #creature art #absolute creature art #fanart

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thehollowwriter · 5 months

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The Official (Remastered) Bio of Finn Clearcove

Basic Info:

Class: Class C

Dorm: Octavinelle

Club: Gargoyle Research Club

Birthday: 20th November

Age: 17

Height: 146cm

Dominant hand: He's ambidextrous

Unique Magic: Mirror Image. He can copy the voice of anyone he directly touches and their physical form if he pushes hard enough. If he wants, he can limit it to certain characteristics. (E.g: voice or eye colour)

Preferences:

Favourite subject: Art

Hobby: Painting

Likes: Butterflies, reading, music, cooking, painting

Dislikes: Large crowds, loud people, showing his teeth, loud sounds, bright lights

Favourite food: Chocolate mousse, shrimp

Additional Info:

Homeland: The Coral Sea

Species: Cookie Cutter Shark Mer

Family: His father and later on Chrysos who belongs to @distant-velleity

Nickname: Blue Angel, courtesy of Floyd (thank you @azulashengrottospiano for the name!)

Relationships: Finn is polyamorous with the Octavinelle trio

Appearance:

Finn has long, fluffy forest green hair that has a curly seaweed/kelp like shape that goes to just past his is shoulders. It is often tied in a tight bun. His eyes are a bright amethyst and his teeth look like they came straight from the mouth of an angler fish, twisted and horrific.

Finn is very chubby and most people think "soft" and "squishy" while looking at him. Until the dread sets in, that is. He's quite pale as well but has recently started to tan a bit. He is very very small and most of his clothes have to be taken to be adjusted so they actually fit him.

In his true form, Finn's tail and face are forest green in colour, just as is the rest of him. The palms of his hands are seafoam green. His tail is like that of a cookie cutter shark's.

Finn's... fins are riddled with holes and tears. There is a large patch of scarring on his left shoulder and the middle of his tail. He has long black claws that are retractable and incredibly sharp.

Personality:

Finn is quiet and mostly keeps to himself, barely speaking to most people unless absolutely necessary, and is usually polite. He lives be the rule "don't bother me and I won't bother you". His "default" expression, if you will, is usually just a blank or serious face.

Finn is intelligent and quick-witted. He often weeds information out of people for Azul, taking the role of the "therapist bartender" except most people get an uncanny valley feeling if they look at him for too long. Despite his politeness something about him always feels wrong to others. They get this sense of dread that make them want to leave as soon as possible.

Finn is quite sadistic and has a deep love for the twisted and macabre. This is often reflected in his paintings, many of which are disturbing in nature. He is very happy to extend his sadistic ways to other students if he deems it necessary. Only if he deems it necessary. (What he deems as necessary can vary)

Finn is, most of the time, immensely confident in himself and who and what he is. He is quiet but he is not, by any means, shy or timid. He does have his insecurities though, mainly about his teeth since they're often viewed as ugly. He covers his mouth whenever he laughs or smiles in public.

Some "Fun" Facts:

▪︎Finn is haunted by the ghosts of the siblings he devoured in the womb in true shark mer fashion, they aren't aggressive towards him but they are tethered to him and cause him nightmares and endless stress and fear (they are the cause of the sense of dread people get around Finn)

•Finn's voice is very soft and very nice to listen to. It's like a flowing river. He's difficult to hear at times.

▪︎Finn enjoys flying and is very good at it

▪︎His family comes from the deep of the midnight zone, so he is well versed in abyssal magic and the dangerous and powerful spells that come with it

•Finn likes to garden

Fic Masterlist

Art by @clovenoko

Art by @boopshoops

.....................................

A/N: Here's the boy! New and improved with an extra long personality section ooops

Tagging: @distant-velleity @krenenbaker @kitwasnothere @officialdaydreamer00 @jaylleoo14 @oya-oya-okay @cynthinesia @azulashengrottospiano @whspermy-name @minteasketches @the-banana-0verlord @adarkenedforest @whspermy-name @twisted-wonderland-but-gayer @ramshacklerumble @cyanide-latte @boopshoops @skrimpyskimpy @jovieinramshackle @quartztwst @amOnline @offorestsongs

@the-trinket-witch @ghostiidasponk @poisoned-pearls

#quinn quips #finn clearcove #octavinelle #twisted wonderland #twst oc

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corinnetheanime · 2 months

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Here is a new DP OC. An actual ghost one btw.

Meet Sigurd, the other servant of Pariah’s. In life, he was the Nibelung who slew Fafnir, the abyssal Wraith Monarch that terrorized the region and held the Ring inside its belly. However, the dragon’s poisonous blood resulted in his death (and his soul’s insanity).

Eventually, Pariah would reobtain the Ring, and Sigurd became known as the Raven (Huginn) by his side alongside the Fright-Knight (Muninn). To Pariah’s enemies, he was known as the Mist-Knight. Dracoslayer.

Dora and Aragon are both terrified of this guy for a very good reason.

When Pariah eventually fell, and the Fright-Knight sealed away with him, Sigurd has never been found. Nobody knows what happened to him. Some say he fled to who knows where. Others say he perished in battle. Some say he fell into the abyss itself (ie., the mist falls beyond its home). But whatever happened, he faded away into Ghost Zone legend.

Personality wise, he’s utterly insane, and has an obsession for both gold/riches and blood. Yet never once has anyone heard him speak. Not even Pariah himself.

Always shrouded in fog was the Mistwalker. Always saturated with blood was his Næġling. Always beware the mist, lest it take your soul.

#danny phantom #my art #artists on tumblr #dp oc #ghost #knight #Sigurd #siegfried #oc #concept art #dannyphantom #phandom #mist #sword #sketch #character design #art #danny phantom fanart

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fascinatedscrawls · 9 days

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Phic Phight Prompt: The Box Ghost, aka the most un-frightening pathetic nuisance ever, is actually incredibly powerful compared to the average ghost.

Word Count: 1910

For @phantomphangphucker

Summary: After dying in a warehouse collapse, one ghost sets out to make the ghost zone OSHA Compliant one box at a time.

Working with a couple different crews and shifts for a decade or two means getting used to going by a nickname or three. He's not one to linger on the past, but when he thinks back he's pretty sure that there was a stretch of time where he didn't hear his legal name for weeks, possibly months, so adapting to this new green dimension where no one can get his name right isn't difficult.

Or, the name thing isn't.

Asking everyone to call him the Box Ghost is easier than correcting their pronunciation of his actual name. Everyone around here seems to be going by one title after another - so Boxy (his favorite nickname that the others have given him here, but unfortunately too close to other's monikers to use as an introduction) keeps it simple for his own benefit. Explaining things can get frustrating and having to do so repeatedly is boring, so Box Ghost it is!

Making a habit of introducing himself every time he sees someone isn't a new habit, but it makes itself useful here even if he doesn't have nearly as much trouble remembering ghostly faces as he did human ones.

So introductions - easy!

Needing to sound threatening to get his point across? That's more difficult to get used to. Boxy doesn't exactly like fighting, not after losing the few fights he got into when he was alive. But, if a few threatening words is all it takes to make this place safer, he can put on the act.

Because this place - the Infinite Realms - they're sorely in need of his help.

Back when he was alive, Boxy watched countless safety videos and participated in even more inspections over the course of his career. He rolled his eyes, slouching his way through the required checks, going over lists and participating in drills before getting on with his actual work. While he and the others were careful with the boxes they handled (as they'd be on the hook if they weren't), they usually just made jokes about the old cracked and slowly bowing walls. They weren't in charge and it wasn't hurting anyone, what was the harm?

He knew the harm now.

He might not have blood these days, but Boxy swears he can feel it boiling whenever he sees cracked, bending, and broken walls. Can feel the ache in his jaw from clenching his teeth when he looks at sagging, leaking, and collapsed roofs.

The numerous cliffs hanging out into the swirling, glowing abyss he can't do anything about, but the all the other places where these ghosts live - those he can fix.

Newly dead, he tried suggesting improvements he remembered from before. Tried providing examples he'd seen in practice. Tried offers to fix the old castles, the burnt homes, the cracked caverns only to be fought tooth and nail at every turn - often literally. Fighting back was instinct, one he fought more than the other ghosts whose homes he was clearly insulting.

He smothered the impulse right up until the first time he was thrown through a stone wall.

Boxy still doesn't quite remember what happened directly after that, only the result and the result was very good.

When he came to every wall in the area was square, the rooms complete, the roof secure, and the ghost who lived there? Well, they were a little worse for wear, but they brushed off his concerned look with something between a shrug and a shudder.

"Warn a guy." They had said or, rather, muttered before flying into their now safer home and slamming the door.

So Boxy took their words to heart.

"Beware!" He greeted others as he found more buildings in need of his help. "I am the Box Ghost!"

The practice of holding his hands up in a mild threat came later, after a lot more fights followed by a short run of successes - each of which ended with the other ghost cringing away from him.

Boxy still isn't fond of threatening people. He does this for their safety and the safety of others - so that no one ends up like he did, but if that's the only way to keep everyone safe he'll play his part.

Besides, maybe after this he'll move on to what is clearly his true calling - acting! His old coworkers always used to make fun of his attempts to act, but with just a few words and an exaggerated angry gesture or two he seems to be pulling of 'threat' really well!

Then again, maybe he'll stay off the stage. His ghostly powers don't lend themselves to it in the way he's seen with others. He can fly, but he can't teleport. He can stand up to other's blows, but he can't shapeshift or take on their faces.

His powers mostly lie in his interests, which doesn't seem uncommon in the Infinite Realms.

He can move himself - handy for getting around. He can move boxes - something he's so familiar with he could do it in his sleep even before his death, though not having to touch them is something he still delights in. And, most importantly, he can bring buildings up to code.

This last one is by far the trickiest to do. It's hard to explain what he does and how he does it in words. It's something similar to how he always knows which stack of boxes aren't stacked correctly even when they look secure. He can feel the fault lines, taste the breaking points, smell the way the not-gravity of this place pulls on a structure.

He chose 'The Box Ghost' not only because boxes are, obviously, amazing, but because boxes hold up to the pressures of this place better than other shapes. The right angles, the rigid sides, when put together just right they can stand up even under dragon fire or unexpected island collisions.

Of course, leaning into his name and specialties leads to strange consequences.

Something about this place, it twists things. It took a while for him to notice, but the strength of his boxy architecture is improving, but not without cost. He thought it was just experience, but then he tried to keep the shape of a tower as he improved it and something about the rounded walls made it fall apart.

The fight he had with the owner for causing the tower to crumble was less memorable than the testing that needed to be done after that (sure the guy could turn into a dragon, but his castle was more than big enough to trap him in). With his mastery of all things square and box like, Boxy specialized to the point of being unable to not make things square.

It isn't a huge problem, most purposefully non-square things were built with more thought than the broken down buildings he needs to fix, but it is annoying at times.

He doesn't give it much thought after that, other than making a note to tell ghosts of his cubic specialty when he introduces himself, so he continues his campaign, hoping that one day he can share the burden of this quest to ensure safety in the Infinite Realms. Looking back at all those videos and checklists he knows that this isn't a one-person job, he needs the government to get in on it for his work to be effective.

Unfortunately, any attempts he's made to speak to those in charge either leave him with new clients or with frustratingly few answers.

"The king is in forever sleep," is not the answer he's looking for, especially when he's trying to confirm what kind of building codes are currently in use in this place. As more people hear of him, Boxy finds both more and less resistance to his safety crusade. Some invite him in meekly, while others refuse to bend to his (clearly terrifying) threats, instead posing some honestly, quite reasonable questions about the safety of the buildings he's putting in place.

It's while he's trying to find this justification that he comes across the permanent portal for the first time.

"This doesn't belong here!" Surely they'd have some permits up and posted if such a thing was supposed to be built in the middle of a thoroughfare like this! It's not Boxy's first interaction with a portal, but it's certainly the first man-made one he's seen. He takes the time to inspect it from every angle - the only roughly octagonal shape, the poor welds on the metal, the lack of safety measures - it's horrible! And probably beyond his (non-existent) pay grade.

He turns to go report this to the scary knight who guards the king's castle only to nearly get run over by another ghost gunning for the portal.

When he straightens up, he finds himself in a nightmare of safety violations. Boxy stares in horror at the clearly DIY walls, the uneven floors, the stairs with steps that are clearly too tall.

Sure, there's a lot of sciency things scattered around the place in ways that look dangerous, but Boxy isn't familiar with that side of things. He disregards it in favor of what he knows how to fix.

So, of course, that's when the alarms go off. The portal slams shut behind him and lights start flashing. A recording blares too loud for Boxy to understand, but he's done enough drills that he knows what to do.

Quickly, quietly, Boxy exits the building and heads for a safer area.

He waits for a handful of minutes before realizing it wasn't a fire alarm after all and the fire department won't be coming to give an all-clear. Normally he'd head back, but the extra time outside has let him realize where he is.

The realm of the living!

There are side walks! Rows of homes, most of them safe and square! For a moment each of the box like suburban homes glows as he happily resonates with the cubic structures.

It cuts off as a delivery truck drives past.

Boxy's attention is captured especially when he realizes the boxes within are filled with books.

Books! Books in Boxes! Books are just what he was looking for - now he can get examples of building codes for the king whenever he wakes up!

He dives into the delivery truck and gets so lost in the ecstasy of so many good, old-fashioned, cardboard boxes, neatly and professionally stacked inside a box truck that he only comes back to himself after he's introduced himself to someone - warning, threatening gestures and all.

After so many successful fights it's a shock when the white haired teen bests him so easily. Then again, just as the boxes and that truck seemed to energize him, the cylindrical capture device the child pulls on him seems to sap the fight right out of him.

It seems like no time at all before he's back in the zone, staring at that misshapen portal once again. It may be a safety hazard, but that won't stop the Box Ghost. He'll brave the portal and fight as many times as he needs to in order to get the books necessary (and maybe a few more boxes, as a treat) to fix all the broken parts of this Realm.

When the Ghost King wakes up and starts managing this place again, the Box Ghost will be first in line to talk to him - together they'll make this place safe for all ghosts!

#phic phight 2024 #the box ghost #danny phantom #one shot #phantomphangphucker

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the-oaken-muse · 11 months

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Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse

Dannymay Day 24: NASA

Read it on AO3, if you dare.

Of all the places in the Infinite Realms Juno could have sent him for community service, it had to be the fucking Ghost Zone. He never thought he’d miss the Netherworld, but at least there he didn’t have to deal with Warden Pasty Face and the stick up his entire ass.

He banked a hard left, bobbing and weaving through the zero gravity obstacle course provided by the ectoplasmic landscape. Behind him, the thud of armor against rock let him know he was down a pursuer, as one of the guards collided with an island of floating debris.

God, this place was a dump.

He dove through a thick patch of green fog before ducking behind one of the many floating doors littering the not-air; grateful that he didn’t have breath to catch. Walker’s goons zoomed past his hiding place, following his previous trajectory on a trail that didn’t exist.

Ha! Suckers!

He may have evaded them for now, but he would have to keep moving. When they realized that he’d lost them, they would fan out and search, leaving no stone unturned until they eventually found him and dragged him squirming back to that hell hole of a prison to be crushed under Walker’s boot once more. He needed to put as much distance between himself and this part of the Zone as possible. Or better yet, find a way to the human realm.

He looked to his left, green. He looked to his right, green. He looked down, an endless abyss of green stared back at him.

Looks like he was going to have to ask for directions. Great.

The next door he came across was a deep shade of plum with intricate panels of solid mahogany and a crystal knob. He yanked it open.

“Hey! Anybody home? Hello? I’m lookin’ for—”

A sopping wet sponge splashed against his face. It lingered there for a moment before slowly sliding down, down, down and falling into the chasm below, leaving his face dripping suds. “…the ...nearest portal to Earth.”

The door slammed shut.

“Ugh, soap.” He wiped his face with his sleeve, smearing it with fresh grime.

He floated over to another door, this one a dark weathered indigo with a heavy iron latch. He pulled it open with a loud creak, “Wazzup!”

A burly, tattooed arm emerged from the dark interior and slapped him across the face with a dead fish before slamming the door shut.

Jesus, the ghosts here were rude. At least it wasn’t soap this time.

Next, he spun the wheel on a silvery lavender hatch until it popped up with a hiss.

“Hullo down there!” his voice echoed back. “I’m lookin’ for a human portal! Can ya help a brother out?”

A thick tentacle, in a green so dark it was almost black, snaked out of the hole. In a blink, the tentacle lashed itself around his neck, crushing his useless windpipe.

“Look, I’m a hugger as much as the next guy, but this is a little forward, don’tcha think?” he wheezed.

In response, it whipped him back and flung him into the infinite green like a pitcher throwing a fastball.

He soared, eyes watering, hair whipping, and jowls flapping, for what felt like an eternity, but the five watches on his arm all agreed was only a few minutes.

His flight ended abruptly when he splatted against a strange metal structure. Its surface hummed with energy, vibrating his entire being. He peeled himself off, smoothing out the dents its rivets left in his skin, and took a look. A swirling vortex brighter than the surrounding ectoplasm filled its patchwork steel frame. Unlike the other doors, it remained fixed in place rather than floating up and down gently in a sea of green; it was anchored to something, to another dimension.

Bingo.

He stood on the edge of the portal, plugged his nose, and dove into the pool of light.

The portal spat him out in a large room made of the same patchwork metal as the doorway. Though the scent of death was strong here, in the glowing green of the machinery and in the air, it was mixed through with the unmistakable vitality of the living.

Perfect. Now he just needed to… find a way to get his powers back again…

He slumped forward and groaned.

Living people with The Sight were one in a million, and of those, the ones that were dumb teenagers were even fewer. There was no way Lydia was going to help him out again after the whole fiasco with their wedding either. He needed a new plan, a new pawn… well, there was no time like the present to start looking.

He floated up, poking his head through the ceiling into a modest kitchen. There was a table for four in the middle of the room, but only one chair was occupied. A pair of faded blue jeans and beat up red sneakers bounced impatiently and he could hear the scratch of pencil on paper. Sounded like homework. Bo-ring!

Like a shark fin cutting through the waves, the top half of his head glided across the floor to the fridge. Maybe they had beer.

A small pile of brown crumbs just under the door caught his attention. He sniffed at them, chocolatey. He floated a little higher so that his mouth breached the tile and licked up the remains of someone else’s fridge raid.

“Mmm, fudge.”

The kid at the table startled and looked over in his direction. He could almost believe they were making eye contact right now.

It couldn’t be that easy, could it?

“Who the heck are you?”

Looks like it could. He cracked a rotten grin and rose fully out of the floor.

“I’m the Ghost with the Most, pleasure to meet ya, kid.”

He held out a hand to shake, a centipede skittered down his arm and around his dirt-crusted knuckles before heading back into his sleeve. The boy just stared at the proffered digit in disgust.

“The most what? Grease stains on your shirt?”

“That and so much more! You name it, I’ve got it. Charm, good looks, STDs—”

“Modesty.” The boy deadpanned.

“Hey! I’ll have you know I wear pants at least…” he began counting the fingers on one hand, “thirty percent of the time!”

“That’s not what I— You know what? Give me one good reason I shouldn’t soup you right now.” The boy snatched a thermos off the table and waved it threateningly.

Jeez, tough crowd.

He wasn’t sure what kind of soup was in there, but something told him he didn’t want to find out.

“Beeecauuuuse…” His eyes darted around for something he could use to turn the situation to his favor. Math worksheet? No. Half eaten sandwich? Maybe later. NASA t-shirt? Perfect. “I’m a star, kid.”

“Oh yeah? What kind of star?” The boy narrowed his eyes skeptically.

“Red supergiant, Orion constellation… I’m sure you’ve heard of me…”

He crossed his fingers behind his back. Please work, please work.

“Betelgeuse?”

“Got it in one, kid.” He swallowed his relief and winked. “You’re even quicker on the uptake than Lydia!”

“Who?”

“Uhh, no one! Hey, what’s that?”

Betelgeuse darted over to a group of photos on a shelf and picked one up.

“Who’s the chick in the tight blue suit?” He whistled, letting the back of the frame fall open and the picture to unfold. “Really doesn’t leave much to the imagination does it?”

“Um, ew! That’s my mom!” The kid snatched the photo out of his hands and inspected the back of it. “How did you even do that?”

“I’d let her be my mommy any time.”

“…I will literally do anything for you to never talk about my mom ever again.”

“Anything?”

“Like, within reason. I’m not gonna, you know, kill anybody or anything.”

“Would you… be willing to… maybe… say my name three times in a row?” He bit his lip in anticipation.

The kid considered him suspiciously. “Is this like a kink thing?”

“What? No! Pshhh! No! Well maybe sometimes… Absolutely not, no. Cross my heart! See!” He drew an X on the right side of his chest.

“Yeah, no. Still don’t trust you.”

“C’mon kid!” He skidded to his knees in front of the boy. “Please, please, please! I’ll owe you one! I’m good for it! Promise!”

He clutched at the NASA shirt desperately. He couldn’t let this kid slip through his fingers, it might be another hundred years before he found another living person who could see him. He’d tasted the blood of freedom and he wanted more.

The boy grimaced and tried to pull away, Betelgeuse scrabbled after him. “I’ll get out of your hair, promise! Just three little words! Just three!”

“Okay, jeez, fine. If it’ll get you leave,” the boy groaned.

“YES! I mean!” He cleared his throat, “Yes.”

“Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse. Now get out of my house.”

Power surged then fizzled within him.

“Wow. That was anticlimactic.” He deflated. “Ah well, a deal’s a deal! See ya kid!”

He flew up through the ceiling with a sloppy salute.

What a chump! That was almost too easy.

-later-

That was definitely too easy.

Betelgeuse scowled as yet another hand reached through his head to grab a jug of milk.

His powers had been on the fritz ever since he got them back. One minute he was turning the floor into a writhing mass of roaches, the next, poof, they were gone! The unsuspecting sap he’d been about to scar for life left… unscarred.

He could tap someone on the shoulder, but when they turned around, they just looked straight through his carefully crafted horror show of a face; he’d hidden in dumpsters to jumpscare people taking out their trash, but they didn’t even see him; and his fruit fly cream pies went right through their targets.

Figures, it was just his luck that the one fucking human in this whole damn city who could see him was fucking defective.

Betelgeuse opened the glass door and stepped out of the grocery store refrigerator, he needed to find that kid.

#dannymay2023 #day 24 nasa #danny phantom #danny fenton #beetlejuice #betelgeuse #space nerd danny #loose interpretation of the prompt #crack #crack fic #swearing #feel free to peer pressure me to continue this one after dannymay

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inioranackatori · 5 months

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Have a Bunny

The Ghost Zone is known to Creation as the Realm of the Dead.

The King of the Dead kicked his dad off the throne an ageless time ago because he went Abyss (or a bit) nuts. But what if the Frozen King had started the tradition by kicking the original Dead King off his throne? And just locked his deposed predecessor in a sarcophagus of eternal sleep?

And when Pariah got woken up - whoo. The Charred Council was not happy about that.

Or maybe the events of Darksiders 2 & 3 let Clockwork undo the 100 year mess of Darksiders 1?

Or -

TL;DR: The Kingdom of the Dead is a subsection of the Ghost Zone/Infinite Realms. The Horsemen somehow meet Danny (King or otherwise is writer’s choice). Chaos ensues.

#Danny Phantom #Darksiders #crack fanfic ideas #Hell of it all is I think it could work #Bunnies need to get in line I already have #Pause to count #Too many WIPs!#*yeets bunny into the Tumblr void*

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phantomskeep · 1 year

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Putting the "Fun" Back in "Funeral" Chapter Three

AO3 | Chapter Two --- Chapter Four

Chapter Three: Emotional Constipation Has Never Been Easier

When Danny made his way out of the swirling green abyss many dimensional beings called home, the sun had long since set. As he was hovering over the Ops Center of his childhood home, he sent a quick text to a chat that was fondly named “Ghostly Therapy Plus Some.” It was a work of love that Tucker had made for the original ghost-fighting trio - a private server so encrypted that even the Guys In White couldn’t get in. The chatroom was home to many summons for late-night calls, memes based around the Amity Park rogues, and various debates between the now-adults who occupied it. Danny knew, even at ass-o’clock in the morning, that his friends would respond to any message he would send.

It was with no small amount of guilt that any sort of late-night text left Danny’s side of the chatroom. His friends, Jazz and Danielle included, had completely normal lives outside of Danny’s whacky one. Each one of them had successfully left Amity Park. They were in college, or out exploring the earth with no care in the world. It was Danny who was stuck, who was stagnant in a haunt that no longer felt like his.

However, the Ghost King also knew that if he just disappeared for a few weeks his friends would freak.

So, a quick text was sent. A completely normal “hey guys can u call rq” which elected an immediate response from Tucker. It made sense, as he was off in California double majoring in computer science and computer programming. It wasn’t quite as late for him, especially compared to Jazz and Sam. Both of them were on the east coast with majors in psychology and social justice respectively - they were an hour ahead of Danny, timezone wise. Ellie was… somewhere in the world. Chances are she would either respond within a few minutes or would not respond at all.

While the local ghost hero was waiting for a response, he was lazily heading south from Fentonworks. Easily drifting on his back above the cloud layer currently overhanging Amity, Danny couldn’t help but rest his heavy gaze upon the millions of twinkling stars before him. It was only twenty-four hours ago that he had fought his last ghost as a semi-normal person. His entire world had shifted, changing completely. Danny now had the ultimate power of the Ghost Zone. It was a startling realization that hit him quickly, and he couldn’t help but grieve his childhood. While he hadn’t really had much of one in the first place, Danny still wished things could have been different. That he was in university with his friends, studying astrophysics, trying to be an astronaut.

But no. He had to step into a portal to a different dimension and have it open up on top of him. He had to die before he even started highschool - and he couldn’t even do that correctly.

A loud groan of annoyance left cold lips, gloved hands coming up to grasp at white hair. The ghost boy flipped around to float on his belly, facing the dark clouds rumbling below him. Grasping on the tingling feeling of intangibility, Danny summoned his power to the forefront of his being before letting gravity take hold of his form. He dropped quickly towards the ground, eyes closed. Powerful winds encased Danny in a mockery of a hug, tugging at him like a plea to stay in the air where he was safer. It was from years of practice that the halfa knew when to allow such a pesky notion of gravity peel away from him, his monochrome shape hovering just above the down-trodden apartment complex he called home.

A bright flash lit the sky behind Danny’s still form, the clap of thunder chasing behind not even a second later. Bright green eyes tracked his shadow as the late-spring lightning storm passed through Amity. He hovered there, for a moment. Allowing the wild winds whip around him as the storm’s power picked up, shaking the leaves of blossomed trees. Distantly, Danny registered that rain began drizzling from the cloudbed he was just so far above. It was with a mournful shake that Danny finally moved to enter his barren apartment.

When his boots lightly tapped his threadbare carpet floors, Danny let the rings of his transformation wash over him. Gone was the royal outfit he had still yet to inspect, and in its place was the slightly dirty clothes the young man had pulled from his floor earlier that very day. Black hair flopped to cover his eyes, no longer snow-white and being kept out of view by his powers. It was with a quiet sigh that Danny moved to push the strands back, pulling his beat-up phone out from his pocket.

With practiced movements, Danny allowed himself to fall back onto the worn couch shoved in the middle of his living room. The halfa didn’t move to turn on the lights around him - there would be no point in it, after all. He could see better than an average human. Just another of the many side-effects of half-dying.

A quick entering of his password had Danny’s cracked phone unlocked, icy blue eyes skimming the two messages of confirmation from Sam and Tucker. Quickly tapping out “jazz?” and smacking the send button allowed Danny to let the device fall onto his lap. He threw his arms back dramatically, face tipping back to eye the water damage on his ceiling critically.

He really should put in a maintenance notice.

A buzz from the top of his thigh had Danny grabbing his phone. He unlocked it, read the message sent by his older sister, before heaving his body from the old couch. Wandering into the single bedroom of the apartment, Danny snatched his laptop from where it was charging on his bed. The man booted up the clunky device, quickly joining the video call where Sam was already waiting.

The sound notifying other members of the call pinged twice, and Danny couldn’t help the grin and automatic “Jinx!” said at the exact same time as Tucker. Laughter filled the cyberspace as Sam rolled her eyes at her two boys.

“Hello to you too.” The goth’s sarcastic voice echoed around Danny’s barren bedroom. With a dramatic sound, Danny turned and flopped himself onto his bed, keeping a steady hold of his laptop the entire time.

“Hi, Sam, Tuck,” Danny said, smiling as he burrowed himself into his pillows. “How’s school going for you guys?”

Tucker’s loud groan caused Danny’s smile to widen. “It’s nothing but studying for finals and finishing up projects, man.”

“That’s what you get for being stupid and wanting two degrees.” Sam’s cutting remark was waylaid by her smile.

The young tech genius smirked at his camera, using a hand to move his glasses up on his nose. “I think you mean being smart?”

“Actually-” whatever friendly argument Sam was about to stir up died before it could live when a loud ping alerted the three friends to another person joining their call. A round of greetings passed in response to Jazz’s tired appearance, and Danny couldn’t help but feel guilty for interrupting his big sister’s sleep.

“Hi, everyone.” Jazz’s smooth voice came through the speakers of Danny’s beat-up laptop. “Is everything okay, Danny?”

Said man had to fight to keep the guilt from showing on his face. Not only was he interrupting Jazz’s sleep but he was also worrying her with late night calls. While it was true that the young man hadn’t been the best at keeping up with his friends (and sister), he had been trying to talk to them more in the few weeks leading up to his coronation. Obviously, if Jazz thought he would only call if something was wrong, Danny wasn’t doing the best job at it.

“Yeah, yeah.” He said, nervously rubbing the back of his neck. “Clockwork and I were just talking earlier today and I kind of wanted to get you guys’ opinion?” He paused, but quickly rushed out the last part of his weird explanation. “Well I kind of already agreed to it so I guess this is more of a warning? Kind of?”

Silence filled Danny’s bedroom as his three friends cautiously exchanged pixelated looks. “What do you mean by that?” Sam was the one who spoke, sounding exasperated.

“Yeah, man, can we get some context?” Tucker spoke next, looking worried.

The halfa heaved a large sigh, bracing himself to dodge around the truth as he had learned to do. “So, I was in the Ghost Zone, yeah? And Clockwork and I started talking. He asked me if I could go on a long-term time adventure for him in like a different dimension or something?” He paused, pulling air into his lungs in a habit he never could quite break. “He said that it would only be a few weeks that would pass in this dimension, but a few years in the other.”

Sam immediately started protesting after the words left Danny’s mouth. “No. Absolutely not.”

“I’ve already agreed to it!”

“No! You don’t get to just up and disappear on us for years!”

“It won’t be years, Sam! It’ll just be a few weeks! You guys will all be busy with your finals, anyway!”

“It’ll be years for you, though! You would be like what, twenty-six by the time you came back to us?”

“Maybe, yeah, but it’s not like it’ll matter!”

“Of course it matters, you idiot! You’ll be alone, in a different dimension, growing up without us!”

“It’s not like I can grow up, anyways!” Danny finally shouted, hair being pulled by his shaking hands. He didn’t look up from where he was staring at his laptop’s keyboard. He didn’t want to look at his friends as he finally admitted an ugly truth he had been trying to prepare himself for since gaining the knowledge that he was the future Ghost King.

A stunned silence filled the call, the only sounds Danny could hear was the gentle pitter-patter of rain tapping along his window and the distant sound of rolling thunder.

“Danny,” Jazz’s hesitant voice broke the agony whirling throughout the young man’s head. “What do you mean by that?”

Blue eyes flickered back and forth across his keyboard, taking in the broken “enter” key that he never quite got around to fixing, to the dent the old technology had on its lower left side. Danny remembers when he was told that his forms would stop aging. The raging denial that had filled Clockwork’s tower as he argued against his mentor. How his being had filled with absolute betrayal, all aimed towards his own body.

Clockwork had explained, back when Danny was first told about what being the Ruler of the Realms would entail. How all ghosts eventually stopped aging at the top of their prime, how very few of them had changes happen to their forms after only ten years of being a denizen of the Ghost Zone. He had explained to his ward that because Danny was only half of a ghost and still had a human form, usually this means he could continue to age regardless - though at a slower rate. However, because Danny was meant to take the throne and would therefore have to perform the coronation ritual, he would stop aging as soon as the Realm fully accepted him.

When Danny originally questioned what Clockwork meant, the old ghost had gone on to explain to him that being the King of all Ghosts involved gaining new powers on top of his responsibilities. As soon as Danny gained all his new abilities and learned to control them, his aging would halt.

The near-panic attack that the halfa had after that particular information bomb was something the two had silently agreed to never bring up again.

So, yeah. For the past couple of years, Danny had the time to come to terms with not only being the Ghost King, but he also had to learn to accept that he would never be able to grow old. He would never be able to follow his family and friends into death - a rough lesson he had to learn with Dan - and he would be forever alone in a castle surrounded by the dead. It was something Danny did his best to never truly think about, even though his ghostly mentors did their best to support him through his journey of becoming the King of the Zone.

Danny had never brought it up to his friends before. Ghost Writer, after one particularly bad fight with Valerie, had taught him a lesson he would never forget. The halfa had gone to the ghostly author to rant about how his friends had been pushing him into telling Valerie that Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom were one and the same. Typically, whenever Danny needed someone to vent to he often went to anyone except Ghost Writer, but the then sixteen-year-old had honestly been itching for a fight. Instead of a brawl, though, the gray-skinned being had sat Danny down in one of his library’s squishy armchairs and taught him. The halfa had reluctantly listened as Ghost Writer spoke to him about an old legend of a man who’s cunning was his greatest power. Of how this man, adrift from everything he had ever known, had used the knowledge he had gained fighting enemy after enemy to prove everyone around him wrong and get back to his homeland - to his family. Ghost Writer wove words together in a beautiful way, that night, and for a while Danny really thought he had a shot at telling Valerie why he was being such a bad boyfriend to her.

The two of them were not trying to fight, honestly. But the pressure of having to run off at the drop of a hat to take care of a ghost problem had been quickly becoming too much for both of them. Hence, running into the Ghost Zone to pick a fight with someone who would actually be a challenge. It wasn’t his fault that Ghost Writer suddenly decided that teaching Danny was better than fighting him. And, despite it all, Danny had walked away from his time in the library more sure of himself than he had in a while.

However, when he passed through the portal, he saw a small, helpless blob ghost fighting against the restraints being used to hold them down. Danny was shocked still as his parents shot a bright, electric blue beam straight through the helpless being, leaving behind only a smoking spot on the steel table. His parents had cheered, after that, not noticing their greatest failure hovering in front of their greatest success. The two had excitedly talked about how they were sure that test was the best one they’ve had in weeks, about how excited they were to learn more on how to destroy the pesky unfeeling masses of ectoplasm.

It had made Danny sick to his stomach.

The hope that Ghost Writer had given him that day had rapidly turned into a warning Danny always held closely to his heart. Knowledge is power. Don’t let anyone know you, don’t let anyone see you. Don’t be a fool and give them the power to destroy you.

So Danny hadn’t told Valerie about who he really was. He hadn’t told his best friends about being the future Ghost King. He never dared to tell his parents that their invention had killed him before he even made it to highschool.

Knowledge was power, and power killed.

But here he was, ignoring the story of Odysseus, and telling his friends that he would never get to grow old with them. That he was stuck, forever caught in the body of a young adult until someone challenged him for the throne and did him in.

“I mean…” Danny finally croaked out, curling up a little bit as he carefully balanced his laptop on his knees. “I mean that I’m going to stop aging. Soon. Clockwork said. And I-” He broke off, wishing he could hide his head between his ripped jeans and never have to face his friends as he spilled out such a bitter fact. “I won’t be able to grow up with you guys, anyway.”

“Oh, Danny…” Jazz’s soothing voice wasn’t as comforting as one of her hugs, but her familiar cadence still caused him to shudder out a sob. “Little brother, you know we love you no matter what. If you stayed as a scrawny fourteen year old boy we would still stay by your side. You’re still my brother if you’re old and gray, or if you stay as young as you are now.”

“Yeah,” Tucker’s voice had a shaky confidence to it, sounding forced to even someone as socially inept as Danny. “Y’know you’re stuck with us forever, Danny.”

“But it won’t be for forever,” another sob tore out of Danny’s chest, though there were no tears. “I’m going to be forever. You guys will grow up, you guys will die and I’ll be alone!” He spat the last word out, tearing his hands from where they had been buried in his dark hair. His trembling digits were caught in the eerie green glow of his ecto-blasts, body filled with too many emotions but with no way for them to get out. Sharp eyes turned to the screen where his friends’ faces were warily watching him. Danny caught the reflection of his irises, a radiant neon beacon shining in the darkness of his room. Lightning cracked across the sky, and the sound of it filled up the empty space he had created with his confession.

“I’m going on this mission,” Danny said with a confidence he did not feel. “Clockwork said it would help me. I trust him. He- he wouldn’t tell me something that’s not true.”

“Alright,” Tears were spilling from Jazz’s teal eyes. “Alright, Danny. We trust you, we trust Clockwork.”

“No!” Sam also had tears in her eyes, but she didn’t let them spill. “If this is true, then we need to figure out a way to stop it. There’s got to be a way!”

Tucker’s broken voice cut over the last of the resident goth’s. “Sam, Sam no-”

“We can fix this!”

“There is no fixing it.” Danny distantly noticed his voice was an empty, broken thing. “I’ve asked.”

“We can find a way-”

“Sam, you’re not helping right now,” Tucker cut in. He was scowling, glasses reflecting the light of his laptop. “Like Jazz said, we trust you Danny. If you think this will help, then go for it.”

“We just want you to be safe, to be happy.” Jazz added. Her voice was still shaky, but she was doing her best to be brave in the face of her little brother’s emotions. “If Clockwork says this is something you need to do, then go for it.”

Danny paused, bowing his head. The toxic green glow that had once surrounded him had dimmed, but the pattering of rain only grew louder as the wind picked up. “Clocky said there’s others like me there. That a friend of his would be able to teach me.”

Jazz hummed, the sound barely picked up by her own laptop’s microphone. “That’s good, little brother. Did he say for sure how long you would be gone for?”

“Not really,” Danny said, barely lifting his head. His voice was still devoid of emotion, just a shade of who he was. “He- he said it would be a week or two for you guys. He never really told me how long I would be in the other place.”

A smile that was blinding white despite being forced graced Jazz’s elegant face. “Well, I know for sure Valerie would be more than happy to take care of Amity Park while you’re gone. Thank you for letting us know you’ll be gone!”

Danny was suspicious at Jazz’s sudden acceptance of what he just told her, but brushed off his concerns. At this point, he just wanted to hang up and mope until he felt brave enough to go back into the Ghost Zone. Nor did he want to tell his older sister that calling on his ex-girlfriend was not going to do any good, as he could simply ban travel into Amity Park while the halfa was dealing with this other dimension. That would mean explaining how he could order ghosts around, which was really something he wanted to avoid for the next sixty years.

“Yeah, yeah of course…” Danny said skeptically when Sam and Tucker didn’t say anything. He chanced a glance at his screen, noticing both of them looking down and furiously typing.

“Just- just at least text us before you go.” Emotion coated Jazz’s voice, though Danny wasn’t able to fully pick them apart by the time Jazz kept speaking. “We love you, Danny.”

“Yeah, Danny,” Tucker agreed, his voice still filled with that false confidence. “Maybe see if you can keep us updated every once in a while?”

“I don’t think that would work,” Sam cut through. “So just… keep a journal or something. We all know you have the failing memory of a goldfish.”

Danny couldn’t even muster up the energy to feed into the age-old argument between the two of them. “Y-yeah, okay,” he nodded as he spoke. “I can do that.”

“Good.”

A yawn, obviously fake even to Danny, cracked open Jazz’s jaws. “I need to get back to bed. But, Danny, go get packed and let us know before you go, okay? We’ll keep an eye on Ellie and Amity as much as we can.”

“Sure, Jazz.” Danny agreed, trying to smile at his friends. “I’ll text you guys before I go.”

“You better.” The threat came from Sam, who was no longer angrily typing but was now visibly fuming. “I don’t like this, so you better be safe.”

“Of course, Sam.”

“And get us souvenirs! Take pictures, be a tourist. I expect a lot of stories about everything when you get back.” Tucker cut through the tension created with an easy-going grin.

Danny found it in him to give a small, genuine smile to Tucker. “Yeah, Tuck. I’ll bring you guys back something cool.”

It was then that the four finally said goodbye, and Danny closed his laptop with a definite click. He stared out at his barren room, at the boxes that had never been unpacked.

When Danny originally moved out from his parents’ house, at the ripe age of eighteen, it was with a certain type of excitement. Jazz had helped him house hunt and Vlad - who had long since given up on any attempts at being a major Fruit Loop - was on call to discuss the legal side of things when the siblings got tripped up. He had picked his current apartment because it was on the cheaper side. Because even if Vlad said “no strings attached” with a steady stream of please believe me-this is not a trick-honesty-honesty-hONESTY, Danny couldn’t help but be a bit wary of accepting help.

However, when it came around to actually packing up all his stuff from his childhood home, Danny’s excitement had fled. Packing up his model rockets, he couldn’t help but be surrounded by the memories attached to them. The Saturn V his dad had helped him build when he had come back from his first day of kindergarten crying about his classmates making fun of him from having kooky parents. His dad had helped Danny build it for all of thirty minutes before he was distracted by something down in the lab, and little five-year-old Danny finished it up himself after waiting for his dad to come back. For seven hours, Danny waited for his father to live up to his promise to be back in “just a second”.

His hanging International Space Station had been a gift from his mom, back when he broke his leg fighting off the mutant food in the fridge. Danny had been so scared of the rotted deli ham that had attacked him whenever he was looking for a meal. Jazz had been at a Mathlete meeting or something, so it had been up to Danny to get his own food that day. The sliced ham, old enough to be green without the assistance of ectoplasm, had jumped on him as soon as he opened the fridge. He remembers screaming for his parents to help him, and he tried to climb on top of the kitchen table, away from the mutant meats. They had surrounded him for hours, crying for someone to come save him. When he finally started to gather up the courage to bolt for his room, though, the possessed processed food had finally managed to climb onto his hiding space. Danny had been so scared that he had fallen off the table, twisting his leg in a way that it snapped, the break echoing across the empty house. It was only with the help of adrenaline that he managed to hide himself away in a closet, stuffing random coats under the crack of the door so that the meats couldn’t get to him.

That was how Jazz found him, when she finally made it back from her meeting. She dropped out of Mathletes the next day.

Danny had been seven at the time.

Those memories had haunted him as he packed up the various models he had gotten as birthday presents from his schoolmates, or apology gifts from his parents. It was with a certain sadness that he pulled down the glow in the dark stars lining his walls and ceiling, remembering how Jazz had pestered their parents into helping him put them up.

At the time, it had seemed like every small childhood thing in his room was tainted by the signs of how badly his parents had treated them.

When Danny had finally finished packing up his old room, he couldn’t find the energy to unpack the unlabeled boxes in his new home. So they were stacked hazardously throughout every room. His kitchen, the living room, even his bathroom wasn’t safe.

It was now three years later, and they were still untouched. It had taken his parents six weeks to realize that Danny had moved out. The call he had gotten from them was a furious one - Danny had yelled at them with a type of security he had never felt before. He listed off every reason why he had been so excited to finally move out from under their thumb. Why he was angry at them for not noticing if he just disappeared. How they only ever noticed the bad but never the good. How he couldn’t live in a house where they tortured and experimented on sentient beings.

It was at this point in their argument that his mother hung up. They hadn’t spoken since.

“Get yourself together, Fenton,” Danny mumbled to himself, brushing his laptop off of him. The Ghost King stretched, gazing forlornly at the sealed childhood around him. Shaking himself to get rid of the hazy feeling, the young man started to gather up various important items he might need in a massive blue duffle bag covered in NASA and ghost themed patches.

It was time he packed up, took a nap, and then set off towards Clockwork’s tower, after all.

╭( ๐_๐)╮

Want to keep reading? The rest of the chapter is on ao3 because goDDAMN THIS IS ONE LONG BOI

Taglist (as always, if you want to be added/removed just let me know!): @vixen-uchiha @apointlessbox @mentalcarebear @asphyxia778 @horribly-lost-and-gay @may-rbi @blacksea21090 @kyrianclawraith @fisticuffsatapplebees @stargazing-bookwyrm

#dead on main #DCxDP #DPxDC #dp x dc #dc x dp #Putting the Fun Back in Funeral #the spirit of gotham is a lesbian #pariah dark is a seahorse dad #danny fenton #danny phantom #jason todd #danny fenton needs a hug #danny fenton is a sad little baby man #he's trying to file his taxes #same tho #I just filed mine #and yikes #danny fenton died of taxes not the ghost portal #L bozo

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dont-talk-back-to-heapass · 2 years

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Captainsona Picrew Time!!!

Here is, as promised, the big post with the taglist and shit. I made it in the form of an FAQ because idk how to do this lol.

What is this project?

I'm making a picrew (an avatar maker on the Picrew website) for In Space With Markiplier captainsonas! If you don't know what that means, go watch ISWM, I am begging you, it is so good. Ahem. Anyway, it'll have a lot of customization, from canonical outfits to lots of facial expressions to realistic and rainbow skin colors. I will be posting updates on the project, and taking input and suggestions, during the long, long, process of making it. This post is general info and an FAQ for the project and the process.

When will this be done?

To be honest, I don't know. I have a lot of stuff going on, and while I am really passionate about this project, it takes many many hours to make even one part of a picrew.

As of making this post, I've spent around nine hours on just the drawing, not including uploading and figuring out the actual Picrew side of things, and I only have the ears and head uploaded, with the mouths almost done but not even colored.

So it will take a while. However, I do plan to post it as a WIP when I have enough of it done to be somewhat usable.

What's the taglist for? How do I add or remove myself?

The taglist is a list of people that want to be tagged when I post updates about the picrew. (You can also follow #captainsona picrew, if you want to see them but don't want to be tagged.) It'll be at the bottom of each post about the project, under the cut.

To add or remove yourself, just let me know via ask, dm, comment, or tag!

What program/brush are you using?

I use Krita, a free art program, on my Windows Surface 8 and a brush called "d) Ink-3 Gpen" (the yellow pen one that's in the favorites by default). It's a square-ish brush that doesn't change opacity, so it's good for the clean, solid lines I want in my picrew.

How do I make suggestions?

You can drop suggestions in my ask box, or message me directly! (If it's in the tags or comments of a post, it may get lost.) Feel free to just chat with me, too!

Why are you doing X that way? Don't you know there's a way more efficient/standard/easy way to do it?

Nope, I don't! This is my first time making a picrew, my first time making a taglist, and my first time making such a big project. If you have any suggestions on how I can do any of the above better or easier, please do let me know.

(taglist under the cut)

Taglist (hopefully up-to-date)

@intellexual-asexual (as promised) @goldglitch @zephyrus77 @technologyvoid @nicenice7 @kaar-ne @lostglassguitars @happistar @hink12 @captain-m-faye @weird-hellsite @dimnomss @i-got-a-bad-feeling-about-this @god-tier-bastard @bluewolfangel @themanbehindurfather @calvin-kingofwhatever @worldtravelerbuff @kai-justis @backtothefuturefan88 @fennfruners @catonfence @i-need-a-real-username @yourthoughtsjim @the-fat-raccoon @inesdsleep @the-actor-you-love-to-hate @weirdmixofweirdness @flerpdederp-likes @captain-heebie-jeebie @starry-nightengale @soap-stains @abyssal-zone-stares-back @talander2can @sleeping-void @immyowengod @drops-ofmadness @valis-geese @miss-antivinny @matter-of-the-universe @survive0000 @just-4nother-ghost @rustychips @cursednevermore @ashofacrow @niconooo @justablix @hink12 @voidling-games

#captainsona picrew #dragonn talks #iswm #iswm captainsona #markiplier #picrew #pinned post #big project #long post #my picrew #taglist #tag list

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lakemojave · 3 months

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The area that stumps many new players is the drowned city of New Londo, lost far below the firelink shrine and connected to the Blighttown and the nearby canyon filled with drakes. You can stumble into this zone by mistake very early, and all of the enemies are fast attacking ghosts who cannot be hit by your weapons at all unless you’ve been cursed or use a pretty uncommon expendable item before going in. It’s a very frustrating zone at first, even with the curse, because the enemies are so dense and numerous that I was often killed in the second or third little zone of the map. Like many late areas of Dark Souls, it’s pretty frustrating mechanically, but it fascinates and excites from a lore perspective. You’re here on your quest to fill the Lordvessel; the rulers of New Londo are a boss called the Four Kings, who were just about the worst I ever got stuck on my new game plus. The Four Kings fell to a fate similar to Manus, they were tempted by the knowledge and power of the Abyss, so they plunged into a small pocket of the abyss just below their city. The city was flooded, all its citizens killed, just to prevent the abyss from spreading like it did in Oolacile. The fear of the abyss and the corruption that it brings in its wake is so fascinating to me after playing the DLC because humanity came from the abyss in the first place, a connection the DLC makes quite explicit. If the current age, the age of fire, is powered by the fire’s connection to souls, then the corruption brought about by the undead curse comes from the withering of souls and their eternal existence. Souls only disappear if they are lost upon consecutive deaths, but even then your fallen souls have the chance to spawn rare enemies in their place--souls, like matter, are not destroyed, simply transferred from one form to another. Humanity is different. Humanity is finite, precious, the item for it is exceedingly rare and all it takes is one death to return to your withered and undead state. What happens when the finite becomes infinite, when the rarity of human existence becomes an endless void from which there is no escape? What happens to the immortal world when exposed to formless, boundless mortality? We are finite creatures, both in dark souls and in real life. Our time on this earth and in this existence will one day be snuffed out, and all we hope for is to burn brightly before it all ends. We are all human, we are all the same creatures with the same desires and needs, but we are also all unique, each one of us providing our own conceptions of color and beauty and personality to the world. Your character in Dark Souls is not a character, it’s simply a vessel to which you may pour yourself, but its existence is balanced on a constant flux between Humanity and Soul, fire and dark, life and death. For one to triumph over another means to lose yourself completely--the balance cannot be disrupted. Without these two disparate selves, all that’s left is an endless expanse of trees and fog and nothingness.

Check out the second half of my review for Dark Souls one! This part concerns the mid to late game stuff, some of the hidden areas and the DLC, and my own unwrapping of this game's big ol philosophical musings about cosmic balance and the endless cycle of life and death. Check out this and more for less than a dollar a month!

#dark souls #the complete history #shameless plugging

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theoscout · 8 months

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This article is behind a paywall so I'll add it under a 'read more'

I already removed a bunch of unnecessary stuff such as website formatting but if you go to the article you'll see images and stuff.

Points of interest:

Stockton Rush throwing a tantrum and freaking out his guests because he went against instructions and got the sub stuck under a boat

"give him the fucking controller"

Rush ignoring safety instructions from David Lochridge aka the guy who got fired for saying the sub was dangerous but giving him the controller after he couldn't unjam the sub after an hour

Lochridge getting the sub out in 15 minutes

everyone in the submarine community including Susan Kasey (the article writer) watching Stockton Rush like a horror movie

they warned him but couldn't do shit :(

really a lot of the stuff in the previous article I reblogged but daaaammmn if you read between the lines this thing is scathing lol

THE ABYSS

The Titan Submersible Disaster Was Years in the Making, New Details Reveal

To many in the tight-knit deep-sea exploration community, OceanGate’s submersible dives were reckless and often dangerous, writes best-selling author Susan Casey.

By Susan Casey

August 17, 2023

OceanGate’s Titan submersible prior to its final dive on a mission to see the Titanic wreckage.OceanGate Expeditions/Handout via Xinhua News Agency.

41.73º N, 49.95º W, North Atlantic Ocean, June 18, 2023

Fate cleared up the weather, blew off the fog, and calmed the waves, as the submersible and its five passengers dived through the surface waters and fell into another world. They entered the deep ocean’s uppermost layer, known as the twilight zone, passing creatures glimmering with bioluminescence, tiny fish with enormous teeth. Then they entered the midnight zone, where larger creatures ghost by like alien moons. Two miles down, they entered the abyssal zone—so named because it’s the literal abyss.

Deeper means heavier: pressures of 5,000, then 6,000 pounds per square inch. As it descended, the submersible was gripped in a tightening vise. Maybe they heard a noise then, maybe they heard an alarm.

I hope they watched the abyss with awe through their viewport, because I’d like to think their last sights were magnificent ones.

As the world now knows, Stockton Rush touted himself as a maverick, a disrupter, a breaker of rules. So far out on the visionary curve that, for him, safety regulations were mere suggestions. “If you’re not breaking things, you’re not innovating,” he declared at the 2022 GeekWire Summit. “If you’re operating within a known environment, as most submersible manufacturers do, they don’t break things. To me, the more stuff you’ve broken, the more innovative you’ve been.”

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In a culture that has adopted the ridiculous mantra “move fast and break things,” that type of arrogance can get a person far. But in the deep ocean, the price of admission is humility—and it’s nonnegotiable. The abyss doesn’t care if you went to Princeton, or that your ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence. If you want to go down into her world, she sets the rules.

And her rules are strict, befitting the gravitas of the realm. To descend into the ocean’s abyssal zone—the waters from 10,000 to 20,000 feet—is a serious affair, and because of the annihilating pressures, far more challenging than rocketing into space. The subs that dive into this realm (there aren’t many) are tested and tested and tested. Every component is checked for flaws in a pressure chamber and checked again—and every step of this process is certified by an independent marine classification society. This assurance of safety is known as “classing” a sub. Deep-sea submersibles are constructed of the strongest and most predictable materials, as determined by the laws of physics.

In the abyss, that means passengers typically sit inside a titanium (or steel) pressure hull, forged into a perfect sphere—the only shape that distributes pressure symmetrically. That means adding crush-resistant syntactic foam around the sphere for buoyancy and protection, to offset the weight of the titanium. That means redundancy upon redundancy, with no single point of failure. It means a safety plan, a rescue plan, an acute situational awareness at all times.

It means respect for the forces in the deep ocean. Which Stockton Rush didn’t have.

Stockton Rush in front of his Antipodes submersible EyePress News/Shutterstock.

Unfortunately, June 18, 2023, wasn’t the first time I’d heard of Rush, or his company OceanGate, or his monstrosity of a sub. He and the Titan had been a topic of conversation talked about with real fear, on many occasions, by numerous people I met over the course of five years while reporting my book The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean. I heard discussions about the Titan as a tragedy-in-waiting on research ships, during deep-sea expeditions, in submersible hangars, at marine science conferences. I had my own troubling encounter with OceanGate in 2018 and had been watching it with concern ever since.

Everyone I met in the small, tight-knit world of manned submersibles was aware of the Titan. Everyone watched in disbelief as Rush built a five-person cylindrical pressure hull out of filament-wound carbon fiber, an unpredictable material that is known to fail suddenly and catastrophically under pressure.

It was as though we were watching a horror movie unfold in slow motion, knowing that whatever happened next wouldn’t be pretty. But like screaming at the screen, nothing that came out of anyone’s mouth made any difference to the ending.

In December 2015, two years before the Titan was built, Rush had lowered a one third scale model of his 4,000-meter-sub-to-be into a pressure chamber and watched it implode at 4,000 psi, a pressure equivalent to only 2,740 meters. The test’s stated goal was to “validate that the pressure vessel design is capable of withstanding an external pressure of 6,000 psi—corresponding to…a depth of about 4,200 meters.” He might have changed course then, stood back for a moment and reconsidered. But he didn’t. Instead, OceanGate issued a press release stating that the test had been a resounding success because it “demonstrates that the benefits of carbon fiber are real.”

Rush didn’t even break stride. He ran right on ahead, plowing hard into his director of marine operations, David Lochridge. Lochridge had emigrated from Scotland to work for OceanGate—selling his home in Glasgow, moving to Washington State with his wife and seven-year-old daughter. Unlike many of his new colleagues, Lochridge was an established undersea pro: a submersible and remote-operated-vehicle pilot, a marine engineer, an underwater inspector for the oil and gas industry. He’d piloted rescue subs for the British navy to save men trapped aboard downed military submarines.

By January 2018, the Titan was nearly completed, soon to begin its sea trials. But first Lochridge—who according to his contract was responsible for “ensuring the safety of all crew and clients during submersible and surface operations”—would have to inspect the sub and pronounce it fit to dive. And that wasn’t going to happen.

Lochridge had been watching the sub’s progress with ratcheting alarm. He’d argued with OceanGate’s engineering director, Tony Nissen; OceanGate had responded by refusing to let Lochridge examine the work on the sub’s oxygen system, computer systems, acrylic viewport, O-rings, and the critical interfaces between its carbon fiber hull and titanium endcaps. Mating materials with such wildly divergent pressure tolerances was also…not advised. (Nissen did not respond to requests for comment.)

When Lochridge voiced his concerns, he was ignored. So he inspected the Titan as thoroughly as he could. Then he presented Rush and other OceanGate senior staff with a 10-page “Quality Control Inspection Report” that listed the sub’s problems and the steps needed to correct them. “Verbal communication of the key items I have addressed in my attached document have been dismissed on several occasions,” Lochridge wrote on the first page, “so I feel now I must make this report so there is an official record in place.” These issues, he added, were “significant in nature and must be addressed.”

“Titan could not get classed because it was built of the wrong material and it was built the wrong way. Once he made up his mind, he was on a path from which there was no return.”

Lochridge listed more than two dozen items that required immediate attention. These included missing bolts and improperly secured batteries, components zip-tied to the outside of the sub. O-ring grooves were machined incorrectly (which could allow water ingress), seals were loose, a highly flammable, petroleum-based material lined the Titan’s interior. Hosing looped around the sub’s exterior, creating an entanglement risk—especially at a site like the wreck of the Titanic, where spars, pipes, and wires protrude everywhere.

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Yet even those deficiencies paled in comparison to what Lochridge observed on the hull. The carbon fiber filament was visibly coming apart, riddled with air gaps, delaminations, and Swiss cheese holes—and there was no way to fix that short of tossing the hull in a dumpster. The manufacturing process for carbon fiber filament is exacting. Interwoven carbon fibers are wound around a cylinder and bonded with epoxy, then bagged in cellophane and cured in an oven for seven days. The goal is perfect consistency; any mistakes are baked in permanently.

Given that the hull would be “seeing such immense pressures not yet experienced on any known carbon hulled vehicle we run the risk of potential inter-laminar fatigue due to pressure cycling,” Lochridge wrote, “especially if we do have imperfections in the hull itself.” The hull would need to be scanned with thermal imaging or ultrasound to reveal the extent of its flaws. “Non-destructive inspection is required to be undertaken and subsequent results provided to myself prior to any in water Manned Dives commencing,” he added, digging in his heels on the scanning. This would reveal any weak spots and provide a baseline that could then be used to check for signs of fatigue after every dive.

Scanning the hull shouldn’t be a problem, should it? Lochridge noted in another document that OceanGate had previously stated the hull would be scanned. (Spoiler alert: The hull was never scanned. “The OceanGate engineering team does not plan to obtain a hull scan and does not believe the same to be readily available or particularly effective in any event,” the company’s lawyer, Thomas Gilman, wrote in March 2018. Instead, OceanGate would rely on “acoustic monitoring”—sensors on the Titan’s hull that would emit an alarm when the carbon fiber filaments were audibly breaking.)

Lochridge’s report was concise and technical, compiled by someone who clearly knew what he was talking about—the kind of document that in most companies would get a person promoted. Rush’s response was to fire Lochridge immediately, serve him and his wife with a lawsuit (although Carole Lochridge didn’t work at OceanGate or even in the submersible industry) for breach of contract, fraud, unjust enrichment, and misappropriation of trade secrets; threaten their immigration status; and seek to have them pay OceanGate’s legal fees.

In the lawsuit, OceanGate cited its grievances. According to the company, Lochridge had “manufactured a reason to be fired.” In 2016, he had “ ‘mooned’ through the large viewing window Tony Nissen and other members of the OceanGate engineering staff through [sic] with whom he had been arguing.” He had “repeatedly refused to accept the veracity of information provided by the Company’s lead engineer and repeatedly stated he did not approve of OceanGate’s research and development plans, insisting, for example that the company should obtain a scan of the hull of Titan’s experimental vessel prototype to detect potential flaws….”

Now unemployed, distressed by OceanGate’s allegations, and beset with legal bills, Lochridge was in a vulnerable position. He countersued for wrongful termination and sent his inspection report to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA, in turn, passed it to the Coast Guard.

OceanGate’s onetime director of marine operations, David Lochridge (foreground), who raised concerns about OceanGate’s engineering, speaks aboard the Cyclops 1.Andy Bronson/The Herald/AP.

Ironically, Lochridge had saved Rush from himself at least once before. In June 2016, Rush piloted OceanGate’s shallow-diving sub, the Cyclops 1, to the site of the Andrea Doria, a hulking 700-foot ocean liner and epic entanglement hazard that had sunk in 1956 off Nantucket, in a patch of the Atlantic known for its murky fog and seething currents. The ship lies in 240 feet of turbid water, cobwebbed with discarded fishing lines. At that depth, it is accessible (and just barely) to advanced scuba divers, 18 of whom have died there. Rush was headed down to “capture sonar images of the shipwreck” with Lochridge and three clients.

Word gets around in the deep-sea community. I learned of what happened next from two sub pilots from other companies, who both told me the same story on different occasions after hearing it from OceanGate personnel. I also reviewed correspondence related to OceanGate’s lawsuit against Lochridge and his wife, in which Lochridge describes the incident. (Lochridge declined to be interviewed.)

As chief pilot and the person responsible for operational safety, Lochridge had created a dive plan that included protocols for how to approach the wreck. Any entanglement hazard demands caution and vigilance: touching down at least 50 meters away and surveying the site before coming any closer. Rush disregarded these safety instructions. He landed too close, got tangled in the current, managed to wedge the sub beneath the Andrea Doria’s crumbling bow, and descended into a full-blown panic. Lochridge tried to take the helm, but Rush had refused to let him, melting down for over an hour until finally one of the clients shrieked, “Give him the fucking controller!” At which point Rush hurled the controller, a video-game joystick, at Lochridge’s head. Lochridge freed the sub in 15 minutes.

The expedition had been planned to include 10 dives, but instead it ended abruptly, with OceanGate citing “adverse weather conditions.” After returning to shore in Boston, Rush held a press conference. “We were able to view the Andrea Doria area for nearly four hours, which is more than 10 times longer than scuba divers can,” he announced. The dive, OceanGate’s website noted, had “focused on the bow of the vessel.”

Writing this now, I feel a variety of emotions. Empathy, of course, for the families of those aboard the doomed Titan. Despair for the “mission specialists” whose trust in OceanGate was so misplaced: Shahzada Dawood, Suleman Dawood, and Hamish Harding. Sadness, because I knew and admired PH Nargeolet—a deep-sea icon whose expertise on the Titanic led to his fatal association with Rush. PH and I sailed together in the Pacific on the 2019 Five Deeps Expedition, when explorer Victor Vescovo piloted a revolutionary sub, the Limiting Factor, to the deepest spots in all five of the earth’s ocean basins. (Journalist Ben Taub was on the Five Deeps Expedition in the North Atlantic and wrote about it for The New Yorker.)

Vescovo had commissioned the Limiting Factor in 2015 and hired Nargeolet as his technical adviser to vet the sub’s design and build. Happily, PH didn’t have much to do. The Limiting Factor was built by Triton Submarines, a company known for its high quality and smart designs, whose cofounder and president, Patrick Lahey, is regarded as the world’s most experienced submersible pilot. Vescovo’s sub was certified—at great cost and difficulty, over several years, from inception to completion to sea trials to dives—by senior inspection engineer Jonathan Struwe from Det Norske Veritas (DNV), a Norway-based international marine classification society that is the gold standard for safety.

And my God, the testing. Every piece of the Limiting Factor was pressure-tested to 20,000 psi, equivalent to a depth of 43,000 feet—20 percent greater than full ocean depth. There was so much testing that Triton built its own state-of-the-art pressure chambers in Barcelona, Spain. The only high-powered pressure chamber large enough to fit the passenger sphere was located in St. Petersburg, Russia, so the four-ton titanium orb was shipped halfway around the world. For days the sphere was squeezed mercilessly, simulating repeated dives to depths beyond any existing on earth. Afterward, it showed zero evidence of fatigue. “Even millions of cycles would not adversely affect it,” Lahey told me. The crushing pressure only makes the sphere stronger.

When I boarded Vescovo’s ship in Tonga, I had already digested Nargeolet’s incredible résumé. It was given to me by Captain Don Walsh, Navy deep submergence pilot number one. He and Jacques Piccard made history by diving 35,800 feet to the Mariana Trench’s Challenger Deep, the ocean’s absolute nadir.

Struwe dived with Lahey to 35,800 feet—he wanted to, but also he had to. How else could he certify the Limiting Factor worthy of the first-ever DNV class approval for repeated dives to “unlimited depth”? Struwe was so integral to the sub’s success that Lahey considered him to be a codesigner.

All this made Rush look awfully foolish within the community as he trash-talked the classification societies. “Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation,” he complained in a blog post. His sub was simply too advanced for the uninitiated. But Rush also used slippery language to infer to clients that the Titan would be classed: “As an interim step in the path to classification, we are working with a premier classing agency to validate Titan’s dive test plan.”

“He actually had the DNV logo up on his website for a time,” Lahey recalled in disgust. “I told Jonathan Struwe about it and he called Stockton and said, ‘Take it down, and take it down now.’ ”

When I boarded Vescovo’s ship in Tonga, I had already digested Nargeolet’s incredible five-page résumé. It was given to me by Captain Don Walsh, Navy deep submergence pilot number one. Walsh commanded the bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960, when he and Jacques Piccard made history by diving 35,800 feet to the Mariana Trench’s Challenger Deep, the ocean’s absolute nadir. Walsh was 87 years old when I met him in 2019; he had dedicated his entire legendary career to deep-sea science, engineering, and exploration. “PH is kind of my parallel on the French side,” he told me. “He’s a walking history. He can give you the European angle on deep exploration.”

Nargeolet had been a decorated commander in the French navy, the captain of France’s 6,000-meter sub, the Nautile, and the leader of his country’s deep submergence group. As commanding officer of the French navy’s explosive ordnance disposal team, he’d de-mined the English Channel, the North Sea, and the Suez Canal. And that was just on page one.

I felt awed to meet him, and a bit intimidated. But PH was a deeply humble man. He talked about how much he loved the ocean, how diving brought him a sense of peace beyond anything attainable on land. He described how the French pilots in the Nautile would stop for lunch on the seafloor, laying a tablecloth, breaking out silverware, and decanting a bottle of wine. What’s your favorite place to dive? I asked him. “Volcanic vents,” he replied without hesitation.

PH also loved the Titanic—he made his first manned dive to the wreck in 1987 and had revisited the site more than 30 times. No one knew the ship’s past and present as intimately as he did. (He would later write that from the moment he saw it, the Titanic had “placed itself at the center of my life.”) He laughed as he explained why he got a kick out of seeing the Titanic’s swimming pool: “Because it looks like it’s empty and it’s full of water! You don’t see the surface, you know?”

One morning, as the Limiting Factor was being launched, I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder: I was standing too close to the winch. Nargeolet guided me to a safer spot, cautioning me in his lovely French accent: “When something goes wrong, it goes wrong very fast.”

If empathy and sadness were the only emotions I felt, I’d be able to sleep better. But I am also angry. Angry at Rush’s disrespect for the deep ocean, a realm he professed to want to explore but in reality did not understand. Angry because five people are dead and many others were jeopardized (all of whom must feel like they’ve survived a game of Russian roulette) after Rush was warned for years that his sub wasn’t fit for purpose.

My anger is also personal, because when I first heard about OceanGate back in 2018, I was just beginning to learn about submersibles, just beginning to report my book. I didn’t yet know how reckless, how heedless, how insane the Titan was. I didn’t know that the 4,000-meter sub’s viewport was certified to only 1,300 meters. I wanted desperately to dive to abyssal depths but at the time couldn’t see a way to do it. The handful of vehicles in the world that can dive below 10,000 feet were all dedicated to science.

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Then suddenly there was Rush, holding forth in the media about how his brilliant new sub would take people to see the Titanic and saying things like, “If three quarters of the planet is water, how come you can’t access it?” and “I want to change the way humanity regards the deep ocean.” I wasn’t very interested in diving to the gruesome Titanic, but I was extremely interested in diving to 13,000 feet. Rush’s operation sounded like exactly what I was looking for.

I called OceanGate and spoke to a marketing executive, a young person I won’t name because they left the company long ago. The 2019 Titanic trips were nearly sold out, they told me, but there would be future expeditions even deeper: “The end goal is not 4,000 meters. We’re already building to go to 6,000 meters.” This was possible because of Rush’s many advanced innovations, they explained. The Titan’s pressure hull would be made of “space-grade” carbon fiber, monitored by an array of acoustic sensors. “Steel just implodes,” they said with assurance, as if this was something that had ever happened. “But carbon fiber gives a warning 1,500 meters before implosion. It makes very specific snapping sounds. There’s no other acoustic hull-monitoring system in the world.” True. No other deep-sea submersible in the world had such a system. Because no other deep-sea sub needed one.

Fortunately, I knew enough to speak to a few people before I got anywhere near the Titan. One phone call was all it took.

Terry Kerby, the veteran chief pilot of the University of Hawaii’s two deep-sea subs, the Pisces IV and the Pisces V, recoiled when I asked him what he thought about OceanGate. “Be careful of that,” he warned. “That guy has the whole submersible community really concerned. He’s just basically ignoring all the major engineering rules.” He paused to make sure this had sunk in, and then added emphatically: “Do not get into that sub. He is going to have a major accident.”

Kerby referred me to marine engineer Will Kohnen for a more detailed explanation of why the Titan was “just a disaster.” Kohnen is the chair of the Marine Technology Society’s Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee. He helped write the class rules for submersibles, owned and operated a company that manufactured submersibles, and had decades of experience in the field.

And Kohnen, a straight-shooting French Canadian, knew all about the Titan. “It’s been a challenge to deal with OceanGate,” he said with a sigh and then launched into a two- hour explanation of the reasons why. Carbon fiber is great under tension (stretching) but not compression (squeezing), he told me, offering an example: “You can use a rope to pull a car. But try pushing a car with a rope.”

The bottom line? A novel submersible design was welcome—but only if you were willing to do the herculean amount of testing to prove that it was safe, under the gimlet eye of a classification society. OceanGate decided that process would be too long and expensive, Kohnen said, “and they were just going to do whatever they wanted.”

His committee had recently written a letter to Rush—signed by Kohnen and 37 other industry leaders—expressing their “unanimous concern” about the Titan’s development and OceanGate’s “current ‘experimental’ approach.” Rush needed to stop pretending that he was working with DNV and start doing it, stop misleading the public, stop breaching “an industry-wide professional code of conduct we all endeavor to uphold.” The group concluded by asking Rush to “confirm that OceanGate can see the future benefit of its investment in adhering to industry accepted safety guidelines…” The letter, which has now been widely publicized, was a stern warning, the epistolary equivalent of being hauled into the principal’s office and smacked with a ruler.

Surely, people in the submersible world thought, Rush would come to his senses. Surely he wouldn’t actually go through with this?

Rush ignored the Marine Technology Society’s letter. He ignored the fact that it was signed—at the top—by Don Walsh. Don Walsh! If you know anything about the deep ocean, you know that when Don Walsh speaks, you shut up and listen.

“He doesn’t tell the truth, what’s his name—Rush,” Walsh observed to me. “He’s absolutely 14-karat self-certitude.”

“Have you met him?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” Walsh said tartly.

“What was your impression?”

Walsh chuckled. “Oh, he tolerated me. He was correct. He was polite. He really wanted to tell me how he was all out on the cutting edges of technology, places I couldn’t even imagine.”

Rush ignored the fact that the letter was signed by the cofounder of EYOS Expeditions, Rob McCallum, whom he’d known since 2009 and had tried unsuccessfully to hire for OceanGate’s Titanic operations. McCallum’s client list was awash in wealthy ocean explorers. He’d led seven expeditions to the Titanic with Russia’s two Mir submersibles and had dived to the wreck himself. When McCallum learned more about the Titan, he wanted nothing to do with it: “I’ve never allowed myself to be associated with an unclassed vehicle. Ever.”

Rush ignored the fact that the letter was signed by Terry Kerby, a former Coast Guard navigator who led the Hawaii Undersea Research Lab for 38 years and had made more than 900 sub dives in the Pacific. “You have enough to worry about if you’re exploring volcanoes or shipwrecks without having to worry about whether your submersible is going to survive,” Kerby told me.

“Would you ever agree to pilot a sub that wasn’t classed?” I asked.

“Never. Nope. No.”

Rush ignored the fact that the letter was signed by Patrick Lahey, a man who forgot more about manned subs yesterday than Rush would learn in his lifetime. Lahey had not only signed the letter and warned Rush repeatedly about the Titan’s dangers, he also quietly paid the Lochridges’ legal fees in the hope that the inspection report would be dissected in court and made public. But to Lahey’s “bitter disappointment,” Lochridge decided to settle, withdrawing his OSHA complaint and agreeing not to discuss OceanGate publicly in exchange for being left alone. “I think Stockton had really intimidated him and frightened him,” Lahey said. “I certainly would have continued that fight, because I believe you take something like that right to the end. But he didn’t want to, and I knew it wasn’t my decision.”

By spring 2018, it was evident that Rush’s deep-sea sub would never be certified. “Titan could not get classed because it was built of the wrong material and it was built the wrong way,” McCallum said. “So once Stockton made up his mind, he was on a path from which there was no return. He could have stopped, but he could never fix it.”

Rush was angry that McCallum had been steering EYOS’s clients away from diving in the Titan, though many had expressed interest. “I have given everyone the same honest advice which is that until a sub is classed, tested, and proven it should not be used for commercial deep dive operations,” McCallum wrote to Rush in March 2018. “4,000 [meters] down in the mid-Atlantic is not the kind of place you can cut corners.”

“It is my hope that when you cite OceanGate’s missing classification that you also offer the following,” Rush replied in a sour email. “1) that this need is expressly your opinion, 2) that there has never been a fatality in an unclassed sub, (3) that there are subs in current commercial operation that are not classed, (4) and that Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and SpaceX all follow the same ethos [False: They had to get FAA approval] and relevant and respective industry certification paths.” He concluded by lecturing McCallum: “Industry attempts to disparage innovative business, operational and design approaches will not help advance subsea exploration.”

PH Nargeolet, who died in the Titan implosion, poses next to a miniature of the Titanic, his life’s obsession.JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images.

At Kohnen’s invitation, I attended the Marine Technology Society’s 2019 meeting. By that time Rush had been ignoring its letter for a year. “The program is an overview of manned submersible operations worldwide,” Kohnen said, addressing the group. “Today we’re doing the deep submersible review work.” This consisted of an alphabetical rundown of every deep sub and the status of its operations. When he got to the letter O, Kohnen cleared his throat. “Anybody here from OceanGate?” (Silence.) “No?”

OceanGate’s recalcitrance was like smog hovering over the conference room. During a coffee break, I heard the Titan mentioned in the same breath as the UC3 Nautilus, a creepy Danish sub whose owner had killed and dismembered journalist Kim Wall on a dive. In a corner, two marine engineers were worked up, and I caught a snatch of their conversation: “When it’s compressing it can actually buckle,” one engineer said in an exasperated tone, referring to Rush’s carbon fiber hull. “Like if you stand on an empty soda can.” The other engineer snorted and said: “I wouldn’t get into that thing for any amount of money.”

Clearly, Rush would do as he pleased. He would register the Titan in the Bahamas and sail from a Canadian port into international waters, thus skirting Coast Guard regulations that any commercial sub must be classed. OceanGate’s lawyer, Thomas Gilman, emphasized in a legal filing against the Lochridges that the Titan “will operate exclusively outside the territorial waters of the United States.”

Anyway, Rush wasn’t carrying paying customers—he was enlisting “mission specialists.” This wasn’t some cute marketing ploy, like American Airlines giving a kid a set of plastic pilot’s wings. In maritime law, crew receive much lighter protections than commercial passengers—and to Rush’s mind, calling them mission specialists and putting them to work on the ship made them crew. On a podcast, CBS reporter David Pogue noted that, in advance of shooting his segment on the 2022 Titanic expedition, OceanGate had emailed him “a document that basically said, ‘In thy news reporting thou shalt not use the terms ‘tourists, customers, or passengers.’ The term is mission specialists.”

So, yes. Many people felt that a catastrophe was brewing with the Titan, but at the same time everybody’s hands were tied.

On the Titan’s second deep test dive in April 2019—an attempt to reach 4,000 meters in the Bahamas—the sub protested with such bloodcurdling cracking and gunshot noises that its descent was halted at 3,760 meters. Rush was the pilot, and he had taken three passengers on this highly risky plunge. One of them was Karl Stanley, a seasoned submersible pilot who would later describe the noises as “the hull yelling at you.” Stanley was no stranger to risk: He’d built his own experimental unclassed sub and operated it in Honduras. But even he was so rattled by the dive that he wrote several emails to Rush urging him to postpone the Titan’s commercial debut, less than two months away.

The carbon fiber was breaking down, Stanley believed: “I think that hull has a defect near that flange that will only get worse. The only question in my mind is will it fail catastrophically or not.” He advised Rush to step back and conduct 50 unmanned test dives before any other humans got into the sub. True to form, Rush dismissed the advice—“One experiential data point is not sufficient to determine the integrity of the hull”—telling Stanley to “keep your opinions to yourself.”

When the world learned of the Titan’s disappearance on June 18, no one I know in deep-sea circles believed that it was simply lost, floating somewhere, unseen because—the mind reels—it didn’t have an emergency beacon. “The fear was collapse,” Lahey said bluntly. “The fear was always pressure hull failure with that craft.”

“I remember him saying at one point to me that one of the reasons why he had me on that dive was he expected that I would be able to keep my mouth shut about anything that was of a sensitive nature,” Stanley told me in a phone interview.

“Like what?” I asked.

“I don’t think he wanted everybody knowing about the cracking sounds.”

Shortly after that, Rush did make an accommodation to reality. He sent out a press release heralding the Titan’s “History Making Deep-Sea Dive to 3,760 Meters with Four Crew Members,” and then a month later canceled the 2019 Titanic expedition. (He had previously scrubbed the 2018 expedition, claiming that the Titan had been hit by lightning.) Now, Rush was off to build a new hull.

Surely, people in the submersible world thought, Rush would come to his senses. Surely he wouldn’t actually go through with this?

But he did. 2020 was a write-off because of COVID. In 2021, Rush took his first group of “mission specialists” to the Titanic—and with him now, as part of his team, was PH Nargeolet.

It’s not that Nargeolet's friends didn’t try to stop him. “Oh, we…we all tried,” Lahey said. “I tried so hard to tell him not to go out there. I fucking begged him, ‘Don’t go out there, man.’ ”

It’s that Nargeolet knew everything they were saying was true and wanted to go anyway. “Maybe it’s better if I’m out there,” Lahey recalls Nargeolet saying. “I can help them from doing something stupid or people getting hurt.” In the implosion’s aftermath, the French newspaper Le Figaro would report that Nargeolet had told his family that he was wary of the Titan’s carbon fiber hull and its oversized viewport, assessing them as potential weak spots. “He was a little skeptical about this new technology, but also intrigued by the idea of piloting something new,” a colleague of Nargeolet's, marine archaeologist Michel L’Hour, explained to the paper. “It was difficult for him to consider a mission on the Titanic without participating in it himself.”

Now the reports are emerging about the plague of problems on OceanGate’s 2021 and 2022 Titanic expeditions; more dives scrubbed or aborted than completed—for an assortment of reasons from major to minor. A communications system that never much worked. Battery problems, electrical problems, sonar problems, navigation problems. A thruster installed backward. Ballast weights that wouldn’t release. (On one dive, Rush instructed the Titan’s occupants to rock the sub back and forth at abyssal depths in an attempt to dislodge the sewer pipes he used to achieve negative buoyancy.) Getting all the way down to the seafloor and then fumbling around for hours trying to find the wreck. (“I mean, how do you not find a 50,000 ton ship?” Lahey asked me, incredulous, in July 2022.)

One group had been trapped inside the sub for 27 hours, stuck on the balky launch and recovery platform. Other “mission specialists” were sealed inside the sub for up to five hours before it launched, sweltering in sauna-like conditions. Arthur Loibl, a German businessman who dove in 2021, described it to the Associated Press as a “kamikaze operation.”

Fair is fair: Some people did get to see the Titanic and live to tell about it. Plenty more left disappointed, having spent an extremely expensive week in their branded OceanGate clothing, doing chores on an industrial ship. (OceanGate’s Titanic expedition 2023 promotional video, now removed from the internet, showed “mission specialists” wiping down ballast pipes and cleaning the sub.) And when Rush offered them 300-foot consolation dives in the harbor, even those were often canceled or aborted.

Sadly, those problems now seem quaint.

When the world learned of the Titan’s disappearance on June 18, no one I know in deep-sea circles believed that it was simply lost, floating somewhere, unseen because—the mind reels—it didn’t have an emergency beacon. No one believed that its passengers were slowly running out of oxygen. If the sub were entangled amid the Titanic wreck, that wouldn’t explain why its tracking and communications signals had vanished simultaneously at 3,347 meters. “The fear was collapse,” Lahey said bluntly. “The fear was always pressure hull failure with that craft.”

But the families didn’t know, and the public didn’t know, and it would be ghastly not to hope for some slim chance of survival, some possible miracle. But which was better to hope for? That they perished in an implosion at supersonic speed—or that they were alive with hardly a chance of being found, left to suffocate for four days in a sub that had all the comforts of an MRI machine?

“When I found out that they were bolted in…” Kerby told me, his voice anguished. “They couldn’t even evacuate and fire a flare. You know, there’s a really good reason for those [hatch] towers. It gives everyone a chance to make it out.”

“The lack of the hatch in the OceanGate design was a serious deviation from any and all submersible design safety guidelines that exist today,” Kohnen wrote in an email, seconding Kerby. “All subs need to have hatches.”

No knowledge of the tragedy was preparation enough for watching television coverage of the Titan’s entrails being craned off the recovery ship Horizon Arctic. Eight-inch-thick titanium bonding rings—bent. Snarls of cables, mangled debris, sheared metal, torn exterior panels: They seemed to have been wrenched from Grendel’s claws in some mythical undersea battle. But no, it was simply math. A cold equation showing what the pressure of 6,000 psi does to an object unprepared to meet it.

One person involved in the recovery effort, who wishes to remain anonymous, told me that the wreckage itself was proof that no one aboard the sub had suffered: “From what I saw of all the remaining bits and pieces, it was so violent and so fast.”

The abyss doesn’t care if you went to Princeton or that your ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence. If you want to go down into her world, she sets the rules.

“What did the carbon fiber look like?” I asked.

“There was no piece I saw anywhere that had its original five-inch thickness,” he said. “Just shards and bits…. It was truly catastrophic. It was shredded.”

Now, back on land, he was still processing what he’d seen. “I think people don’t actually understand just how forceful the ocean is. They think of the ocean as going to the beach and sticking their toes in the sand and watching waves come in, and stuff like that,” he reflected. “They haven’t a clue.”

“Is there any possible reason the Titan could have imploded other than its design and construction were unsuitable for diving to 4,000 meters?” I asked Jarl Stromer, the manager of class and regulatory compliance for Triton Submarines. Stromer, who has worked in the industry since 1987, began his career as a senior engineer at the American Bureau of Shipping. He’s an expert on the rules, codes, and standards for every type of manned sub—the nuts and bolts of undersea safety.

“No,” he replied flatly. “OceanGate bears full responsibility for the design, fabrication, testing, inspection, operation, maintenance, catastrophic failure of the Titan submersible and the deaths of all five people on board.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In the beginning, OceanGate’s mission had seemed so promising: “Founded in Everett, Washington in 2009, the company provides manned submersible services to reach ocean depths previously unavailable to most individuals and organizations.” But there’s a vast chasm between intention and execution—and pieces of the Titan now lie at the bottom of it.

After the tragedy OceanGate went dark, suspending its operations. Its website and social media channels were suddenly gone, its promotional videos deleted. Emails sent to the company received this reply: “Thank you for reaching out. OceanGate is unable to provide any additional information at this time.” Phone calls were greeted with a disconnection notice.

Only one person familiar with OceanGate’s thinking would speak to me on the record: Guillermo Söhnlein, who cofounded the company with Rush. And Söhnlein left that post in 2013. “So I don’t have any direct knowledge or experience with the development of the Titan. I’ve never dived in Titan. I’ve never been on the Titanic expedition,” he told me. “All I know is, I know Stockton, and I know the founding of OceanGate, and I know how we operated for the first few years.”

Okay, then. What should people know about Rush? “I think he did see himself in the same vein as these disruptive innovators,” Söhnlein said. “Like Thomas Edison, or any of these guys who just found a way of pushing humanity forward for the good of humanity—not necessarily for himself. He didn’t need the money. He certainly didn’t need to work and spend hundreds of hours on OceanGate. You know, he was doing this to help humanity. At least that’s what I think was personally driving him.”

Before the Titan’s last descent, there hadn’t been a fatal accident in a human-occupied submersible for nearly 50 years—despite a 2,000 percent increase in the annual number of dives in that period. In the 93-year history of manned deep-sea exploration, no submersible had ever imploded. “Ultimately it comes down to not just technology,” Kohnen told me, “but the rigor of the nerdy, detailed engineering that goes behind it, to determine that things are predictable.”

“This disaster validates the approach the industry has always taken,” McCallum agreed. “Stockton could have been held in check by professional engineers, independent oversight, and a genuine culture of safety. That he wasn’t will be the subject of much investigation. For those within OceanGate that enabled this culture there should be a long period of self-reflection. This tragedy was predicted. It was avoidable. It was inevitable. It must never be allowed to happen again.”

Those rules Rush so disdained? They had been refined, honed, universally adopted—and they had worked. Submersibles had earned their title as the world’s least risky mode of transportation even as they operated in the world’s riskiest environment. Because there is one last rule that every deep-sea explorer knows: The goal is not to dive.

The goal is to dive, and to come back. This story has been updated. CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified the provenance of the UC3 Nautilus. It was a Danish submarine.

Susan Casey

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#susan Casey #oceangate #stockton rush #david lochridge #I'm going to name an oc after david lochridge #he tried so hard to save everyone's lives but still failed #doesn't hamper him being awesome but still #submersible

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