#gypsum cave

[professorcalculusstanaccount]

they are out of the hole! I had to clean up the final scene from my roughs. I couldn't leave them down there

from my story The Gypsum Maw, the last part is posted here but there's a whooole chunk of story I have not cleaned up and posted that has happened between these parts, from the introduction of Allan to the sabotage plans to how they managed to obtain dynamite!

#fanart #tintin #adventures of tintin #captain haddock #archibald haddock #allan thompson #chang #snowy #milou #comic #the gypsum maw #tinchang #long post #each time i try to move on to a new story the cave just drags me back in

[k151k1ll1ll4]

#anhydrite #cave #nature #black and white #geology #plaster #gypsum #gypsum rock #calcium #calcium sulfate #plaster rag #alabaster #formation

[lupinus-bicolor]

going crazy bouncing off the walls gnawing on peoples arms trying to hold myself back from talking about caves. i fucking love caves so much holy shit theyre so cool

#Personal #caves caves caves caves caves ca #rotating the breathtaking selenite gypsum crystal formations of Giant Crystal Cave in my mind right now #the geothermal activity.... the extreme conditions they had to conduct research under...... the near sterility of the crystal formations.... #THE MICROORGANISM THEY DETECTED EVIDENCE OF WHOS DNA MATCHED NOTHING IN THE KNOWN DATABASES....... #chihuahua desert gets the best geologic formations i stg

[art-that-fucks-you-up-tournament]

QUARTERFINALS MATCH TWO

"Cueva de las Manos (Cave of Hands)" (created in several waves between 7,300 BCE and 700 CE) / "NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt" (1985-present)

CUEVA DE LAS MANOS: its so basically human. the hunting and animal scenes are strangers to the every day life of many people, but this hasnt changed. this art makes me want to put my hand outline next to theirs and become part of it. (anonymous)

NAMES PROJECT AIDS MEMORIAL QUILT: fucks me up bc so many people died and so many people suffered and their partners didn’t have legal rights as next of kin and so many had been disowned by their parents and had to be held by a stranger while they were dying and if i could resurrect anyone in the world i’d dig up either reagan or thatcher and kill them again (jaskierx)

("Cueva de las Manos" (Cave of Hands) is located in Santa Cruz, Argentina and consists of outlines of hands, as well as some depictions of animals and hunting scenes created using various mineral pigments and gypsum on rock. The paintings cover about 60 m × 200 m (200 ft × 650 ft) of the cave.

The "NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt" is an ongoing community art project honoring people who passed away due to AIDS-related causes. It consists of approximately 50,000 panels of 3 by 6 feet (0.91 m × 1.83 m) panels, which is an estimated 54 tons of material. It is currently housed in San Francisco, but is often displayed in various places in the United States.)

#art that fucks you up tournament #polls #atfyu polls #id in alt text #oh the humanity

[ut-museum-guide]

Comfort Fics to Soothe the Soul

_In no particular order

4 fics contain dark themes

5 fics contain smut (3 of 5 eventual)

12 fics are reader fics

5 fics are Sans x Sans

.

1. Skeleton Games

By poetax (279k words)

Characters: Muffet, Red, Edge, Reader

Tags: Feuding neighbors, vampire reader

Note: None

.

2. Doom and Gloom All Up in Your Room

by TrashCollector (95k)

Reader (room owner), Dust, Horror

Domestic harem

.

3. A Sea of Hope

By Aylish91 (26k)

Reader (runaway skeleton), Axe (Horror)

Piratetale, Y/N x Axe

Note: abuse recovery

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4. Poor Little Meow Meow

By Mystique, TallDumbass (58k)

Reader (vet), Killer

Fluff and Angst, domestic, ship

Note: eventual occasional smut

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5. A Lovely House of Bones

By Green_Heart88 (37k)

@/greenheartart

Reader (host), Sans, Paps, Blue, Stretch, Edge, Red

Domestic living + recovery

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6. Six Skeletons, One Store Clerk

By mccloudydayz (249k)

Reader, Sans, Paps, Red, Edge, Stretch, Blue +

Harem, Domestic, multiverse shennanigans

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7. Aggre(g/v)ation

By Llama_Goddess (180k)

Reader, Sans, Red, Skull, later Mobfell Sans

Domestic, lots o’ shippin’

Note: Mobfell’s house onwards is intense

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8. On the Top of the Bone Pile

By Lyrjok (422k)

Reader (in band), Red, Edge, Blue, Stretch, Gaster Sans

Harem,

Note: eventual smut

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9. Dirty Laundry

By popatochisp (162k)

Swapfell Sans, Swapfell Papyrus, Reader

Domestic, romance

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10. Stowaway Bitty

By Historically Dragon (301k)

Bittybones (Brassberry), Reader (broke and making do)

Slice of life

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11. A Trio of Misfits

By Sabinarius (56k)

Bittybones (Baby Blue, Lil Bro), Reader

Slice of life, money troubles

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12. Smoke in the Mirror

By Catsitta (76k)

Mobfell Ensemble, Red, Sans

Sans x Sans

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13. The Killing Kind (Comic)

By @/thegrinningkitten

Geno-Error x Reaper, Sans x Sans

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14. Papyrus Dates a Bird

By WhatteauYouDoing (70k)

Reader (bird), Papyrus, Sans

Slice of life, magi

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15. That Danger that Lurks Underwater

By AKA_Indulgence (67k)

Sans (meroctopus), Red (mermaid), Edge (mermaid), Reader (human)

Toxic romance, Sans x Reader

Note: dark themes

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16. Saving Three Ex-cell-ent Skeletons

By RecklesslyCaffeinated (90k)

Reader, Sans, Red, Horror

Nurse x prison inmates, harem

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17. Who Done It?

By Catsitta (15k) complete

Mafia Sans, Mafia Red, Mafia Edge, Reader (barista)

Mafia!Kustard, mystery, Sans x Sans

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18. Cave Bear

By Llama_Goddess (35k)

Reader, Horrorfell Sans, Horrorfell Papyrus

Fall into underground, daily grind

Note: dark themes

Related one shot

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19. Just Buisness

Catsitta (37k)

Sans, Red

Single parent struggle, sugar daddy red

Sans x Sans (debatable)

Note: dark themes

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20. Burn Me Down

By Gypsum Lilac (22k)

Edge, Reader

Fast food domestic, mental health

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21. Storm

By Nilchance

Horror, Sticks (Farmtale Sans)

Hurt/comfort, Sans x Sans

Note: smut

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22. The Soldier and the Carnal Skeletons

By Writers_War_Zone (113k)

Sans, Horror, Blue, Reader (ex soldier)

Animal instincts, harem, kink

Note: smut

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23. Little Red

By Spectroscope (53k)

@/spectascopes

Human!SwapPaps, Human!SwapSans, OC bittybones

Bittybones, trauma recovery

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24. Firsts and Seconds

by Skerb (103k)

Sticks (Farmtale Sans), Bitey/Buddy (Horrortale Sans)

Injury recovery, strangers to lovers, Sans x Sans

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25. Starry Eyed

By nilchance (90k)

Sans, Red, Edge, Stretch, Gaster (AI)

Prison recovery, soulmates, pirates, outer space, Sans x Sans, Stretch x Edge, Red x Edge

Note: dark themes, occasional smut

.

26. AVA

By Inyahs (356k)

Anomaly OC, bittybones oc, UTMV ensemble

~ Wise crack hermit goes on adventure with grumpy insomniac bitty~

.

From @undertale-museum

#undertale fanfic #undertale #bittybones #underfell #underfell sans #sans undertale #farmtale #horrortale #horror sans #underswap #swap sans #swap papyrus #horrorfell #mafiatale #mafiafell #mobfell #mobtale #baby blue #lil bro #brassberry #swapfell sans #swapfell papyrus #gaster sans #killer sans #dust sans #undertale museum

[honourablejester]

“There are some that suggest that areas of heavy limestone have some sort of connection to paranormal events.”

I’m watching a video about the hauntings of Houska Castle in the Czech Republic, and this line came out, and I just …

Okay. Noodling around, apparently this is about properties of limestone as a material (made of deceased organic creatures, so more psychically permeable), which is a whole different ballgame, but if it was about limestone areas, I can tell you exactly why they’re associated with hauntings and other mysterious things.

It’s because they’re full of fucking holes.

Limestone is ridiculously vulnerable to water, and karst caves can be fucking huge. As an exercise, hop over to wikipedia’s list of longest cave systems in the world, and head down through the list, and see how many of them are limestone (with some gypsum for variety). The same for the list of deepest cave systems. Limestone areas are often just riddled with gaps and holes and weird formations, and weird noises from weird formations, and people vanishing because goddamn holes opened up under them when a below-ground cave finally got eaten enough to collapse. They’re just …

Limestone areas are full of caves. The caves go long and deep and weird. People hide in them. People die in them. People vanish near them. They’re just full of holes. So yeah, they’ve a reputation for weird shit and people going missing. Because they’re full of holes.

Sorry. I’m actually not opposed to paranormal stuff. I quite like ghost stories and paranormal exploration and all of that. Just. Talk about the actual natural causes first?

Especially since this particular case, Houska Castle, the whole thing is that a bottomless pit opened up in the limestone under it and is rumoured to descend to hell. And like. Yes? It’s limestone. That shit do happen.

The stories are really fun, though.

#random #paranormal #geology #limestone might be haunted #but it's DEFINITELY full of holes #big ones

[justanotherbirdbrain-blog]

may i receive your rant on why every videogame ever chooses to have columnar basalt in places basalt should not be, like in unsuspecting caves or just dotting beaches with no volcano in sight... because god, that gets me going.

Let me preface this rant by saying, I love when videogames at least try, like I can look at a rock and actually say, "hey that's columnar basalt and not *generic rock texture*" (Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's texture shortened my lifespan). So generally speaking, if I can tell at least vaguely that someone googled photos of rocks when creating a game I am more happy than not, but!

My GOODNESS! I think I could extend this rant to just videogame cave systems in general! Like, caves are only formed in limestones and marbles (And some limey sandstones and salt deposits), BUT for some reason we are mining and finding Rubies? Emeralds? Metals? These caves they are depicting are clearly just supposed to be these natural caves and not abandoned mines, which would give them some leeway to put whatever desirable gemstone or ore they wanted in the game, but they don't choose that for some reason, and it is beyond me why!

And can we talk about how all of these caves got there in the first place? Like limestone only forms in marine environments! Are you telling me that the entire continent you designed was underwater to the extent to have a spiraling cave system forming at least every ten miles of trail explored (Skyrim I am looking at you)? And how acidic is your rain? Are we experiencing an industrial evolution? I CANNOT, also in what situation are these random massive quartz crystals in otherwise fine-grained material forming? Like one, Who would actually leave that laying there? No one. And two, how is this forming? Like are you trying to say this formed after the cave was created or what? If that's the case the more likely mineral would be calcite or gypsum.

My little bird brain can't wrap my head around what they are trying to do here! (The second image is from ESO and I give it a lot of lenience and to be fair they are trying to depict these are geodes that are surrounded by a massive basalt but they are also showing stalactites and stalagmites which aren't in basalts so it still gets points docked).

But yes! Seeing inaccurate geology, columnar basalts included can take you out of a game so fast, same with the imaginary ores that are kind of based off real metals. I think I would be more ok with completely fake names, because then at least I wouldn't have anything to associate it with.

That being said! I will end this rant by pointing out videogames that when either I was playing or my fiancé was playing I was pleasantly surprised by the geology/accurate textures.

ESO- elder scrolls online, I know I just docked it points above, but genuinely they do an amazing job depicting different rock types to the point that on their islands they have limestones. with. fossils. I nearly cried. Of course they still have random metal seems everywhere but it is an MMO and resources are necessary so I can ignore that as long as they keep making accurate landscapes.

Titanfall- I will just add an image because it will speak volumes

like does that shale/siltstone have ripple marks in the middle right hand side? beautiful. amazing. perfect. chief's kiss. (Apex also does a decent job which is a battle royale game that takes place after the Titanfall games, the textures aren't as good obviously but you can definitely tell what kind of rocks are at each map)

3. Horizon Zero Dawn- the graphics in this game are just genuinely impeccable and it takes place in the US but after the collapse of civilization. In a lot of ways, I think it made it a bit easier for the designers, but they still did an amazing job depicting the rocks accurately! I believe there is a Youtube video which compares the actual locations to the videogame locations.

some obviously tilted sedimentary rocks

sandstone arches

@cosmic-tuna please add more games if you know any!

#geology #rocks #videogame lore

[ilostmygh0st]

The Cave of the Crystals is a cave in Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico that holds the world's largest selenite crystal formations. Selenite is a type of gypsum composed of calcium sulfate and water molecules. The cave was found by the Industrias Peñoles mining company in 2000.

#crystals #crystal #naica #naturecore #mexico #selenite #mining #tumblr #cave #minerals #geology #nature

[spiritheyregone]

Most of Carlsbad Caverns' speleothems (cave deposits such as these stalagmites) consist of the mineral calcite (CaCO3) that precipitates from groundwater that enters a cavern. Some speleothems are also composed of aragonite and gypsum. (USGS)

#archive #archiving #web archive #cave #caves #cavern #carlsbad caverns #carlsbad #speleology #speleothem #speleothems #stalagmites #calcite #usgs

[dromaeo-sauridae]

i wanna talk about caves gimme your cave facts

since you didnt ask for anything specific so im just gonna say whatever comes to mind

- the type of cave you probably think of, the kind with different formations and pools of mirror-like reflective water, is called a cavern, solution cave, or karst cave. these are formed when water enters a crack of soluble rock like limestone and erodes it away

- some of the other ways caves can form is by the wind or ocean. these ones look vastly different to caverns and are known for there flowing shapes. ive yet to visit a sand or sea cave yet!

- stalactites, those big rock icicles that hang from the ceiling. grow about .005 inches a year. when you go into your next solution cave, look at those stalactites and think about how long it took for them to get as big as they are

- the largest underground lake in america is called the lost sea, second only to the lake inside dragon’s breath cave in namibia. (in the non-subglacial lake category. subglacial lakes are big enough to even make me shudder

- we all know axolotls. those cute minecraft mobs that eat fish and live in caves, right? ….nope. axolotls live in freshwater lakes in mexico. they resemble cave animals like the olm because they bot exhibit neotony. neotony occurs when animals (salamanders, in the axolotl and olm’s case) retain juvenile traits instead of growing out of them

- the largest cave in the world is han son doong in vietman. son doong, along with other asian caves similar to it, is large enough to support its own rainforest ecosystem and has stalagmites over 200 feet tall. its the holy grail of caves to visit, and hopefully i’ll be able to make the trip someday!

- mammoth cave is the longest known cave system in the world, and is a solution cave. but walking into it, you dont see any of the usual cave formations. thats because the cap of the mountain much of mammoth rests under is shale, which is less soluble than rocks like limestone and gypsum. that didnt stop the green river from carving it out from underneath, though. the green river still flows through mammoth and occasionally floods some passages in the wet season.

thats all i can think of! if anyone wants to know more specific stuff i will gladly tell you as much as i know

#people talking to me #caves #caverns

[professorcalculusstanaccount]

"It's hopeless! Every man who has gone in is either too large to fit down the squeeze or they completely lose their nerve and turn tail!"

"Don't despair, we'll get him out. We just need someone small, tough, and with no sense of self preservation."

A caver is stuck down a gypsum cave and has sparked a media frenzy. Tintin's editor sends him to America to get in on the story, but Tintin quickly discovers that while the attention the story garnered might have sent more help the caver's way, the disruptive crowds, moneyed interests and media circus might have only aided the cave's endeavour in holding its prisoner captive.

#adventures of tintin #tintin #snowy #milou #animation #2d animation #gifset #gif #my stories #the gypsum maw #claustrophobia #caving stories always freak me out #do not go down the hole #i was inspired by the nutty putty caving incident and the sand cave incident

[saturnofthecreek]

Rajeshka; Navigator; Ua-Xaryn

I am paralyzed like a lowly moth finally claiming the light it buzzes around. The quartzite grinds me down into my essential components; I am no more than circuitry.

You who are so sure of your place. We summon you for greater purpose.

Who are you? That voice, it is not that of the Rajeshka Architect, nor is it His sister. Help me!

Help you We will, you need only cease your thrashing, and this will go much more smoothly.

No! Explain yourse-

*crack*

I pull myself up on the tendrils of my core. I am in a cave. Great pillars of gypsum hold the cave together like the ribs of some dead beast.

You are safe. This is your destination.

I stand in a pool of sulfurous water, the crust at the lake's edge is only faintly visible in the incandescent light. It blooms into fractal patterns; it blooms into HIS fractal patterns. My mind is suddenly at ease.

We will show you your purpose. Listen.

Uyari, Taseem, Remoil. All dead worlds, but only a fraction of those which were once habitable, but now lack any life.

Hubris of their denizens or a stray jet from a quasar, it does not matter. Ua-Xaryn. We bestow this purpose upon you. You will bring them all home. No sophont will be without a homeworld any longer.

#worldbuilding #scifi #xenobiology #writing #of circuit and sinew #cosmic horror

[nolonelyroads]

YM SIte, UT. Sticking with the Cave Valley Style, here’s another iconic glyph located in a high, shallow alcove. The central anthropomorph contains yellow (limonite or ocher), red (hematite or iron oxide), and what looks to me like blue (malachite or azurite) but is most likely white (gypsum or caliche). My editing may have given a blue tint to the white pigment. You can see the white (blue) around the outside of the body and in the dots above the head, which is another common characteristic of CVS anthropomorphs. The two red spots above the shoulders could be earrings or jewelry. Notice the small yellow figure to the left.

The rest of the site contains a mix of petroglyphs and graffiti, but there are some very old gyphs here. Slide 3 shows a beautiful concentric circle design and a figure that both exhibit full repatination, where the exposed rock surface has developed a new varnish that matches the rest of the rock surface. Slide 4 shows one of the only examples of Cave Valley Style figures in petroglyph form that I know of (the triangle forms towards lower center).

#rockart #petroglyphs #pictographs #utah

[art-that-fucks-you-up-tournament]

SET FIVE - ROUND THREE - MATCH ONE

"Cueva de las Manos (Cave of Hands)" (created in several waves between 7,300 BCE and 700 CE) / "Winged Victory of Samothrace" (c. 200-190 BCE)

CUEVA DE LAS MANOS: its so basically human. the hunting and animal scenes are strangers to the every day life of many people, but this hasnt changed. this art makes me want to put my hand outline next to theirs and become part of it. (anonymous)

WINGED NIKE: she’s in the center of three staircases, one coming up from the ground floor and two coming down from the floor above on either side, so when you start walking up the stairs you see her rise over the top like the prow of a ship. she’s enormous, framed between the staircases, and the flow of the wings and the skirt is absolutely stunning and i Did genuinely tear up coming up those steps for the first time. (mischiefseven)

("Cueva de las Manos" (Cave of Hands) is located in Santa Cruz, Argentina and consists of outlines of hands, as well as some depictions of animals and hunting scenes created using various mineral pigments and gypsum on rock. The paintings cover about 60 m × 200 m (200 ft × 650 ft) of the cave.

"Winged Victory of Samothrace" or The Winged Nike is a sculpture made of parian marble. The sculpture is 5.57m (18.3 ft) tall, including the boat shaped base, and the statue only is 2.75m (9 ft). It was originally found in Samothrace, Greece, but is currently held in the Louvre in Paris.)

#art that fucks you up tournament #polls #atfyu polls #id in alt text

[whentheresmoonlight]

Sand Lines, Ch1: Tuesday

Read on AO3

rating: teen

pairing: bakudeku

word count: 5.7k/40.6k

summary: It wasn’t a vacation. It was only convenient that Katsuki’d managed to trick Miruko into thinking it was.

Katsuki doesn't need a break. Post-war life has been peaceful. Too peaceful. So under the guise of a vacation, Katsuki heads to the American southwest, the only place where he can do the thing he wants to do the most: blow stuff up. Big time. And it's all going to according to plan for about five minutes, until Deku comes along. They've barely seen each other since graduation last year and Katsuki could, should blow him up for getting in his business yet again. Instead, they learn about post-war life in the way they've done everything: together.

a/n: Thank you to Ice, Genevieve, Wolfie, and most especially Lin for reading this fic and reassuring me that it's not total garbage. I really appreciate it ❤

next chapter

master list

Tuesday

White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico

A sunburn was coming on.

It was midday on the missile range in the middle of the desert and the sun shone hell’s helmet right on Katsuki’s head. Despite the gallons of sweat and the light breeze, his soaked hair was hot to the touch and the skin on the tops of his ears pulled tight with forthcoming blistering. But he carried on.

The heat pried perspiration from Katsuki’s skin, dripping from his nose, his chin to soak into the sand below. When Katsuki stepped on those sweat-hardened discs of gypsum, they crunched underfoot, dissolving back immediately into the fine grains of sand they’d been before.

His grenade launchers were heavy with fuel, only the good stuff from his quirk as he stretched one arm out in front of him. There were a number of metal sensors out in the distance, even the closest one nearly too far to see in the blinding sunlight. Katsuki squinted, narrowed his vision on it, and rolled his shoulder back before jumping in the air and firing the explosion straight out.

Katsuki’s body blew back, the sweat burning from his skin immediately as the explosion burst forth over the White Sands Missile Range. Katsuki tucked his body in, landing on the ground in a backwards somersault to avoid the sand burn he’d gotten skating across his back during his first attempt. 

Katsuki’s grin split, the corners of his mouth tight and chapped from the unexpected lack of humidity. But he didn’t mind as the remnants of the explosion effervesced into the air, lingering only in the tingling from his pecs to his fingertips. A blast like that would have shattered his arms, Deku-style, without protection. But with his bracers, they were just rattled. He still had a couple blasts left in him.

He hauled himself up, even his legs a bit shaky as he walked towards the sensors. The closer ones would measure the damage of the attack, how far back he could blow a foe. Ones off to the side would measure just how big the blast had been.

This was nothing like what Katsuki was limited to in a gym. There, every explosion had to be contained; he had to constantly calculate how to reduce damage to nearby people and infrastructure. This was maybe the one place on Earth where Katsuki could discover the ceiling of his capabilities. 

Katsuki circled both arms in wide circumferences as he made the long walk across the sand to his sensors. The pain was good and his quirk was performing perfectly in the summer heat. The dryness of the New Mexico desert made his sweat evaporate much faster than it did in Japan, but that didn’t matter when it was stored in his gauntlets.

When Katsuki found his sensors, he let out a whoop. Meters and meters of distance, kilotons and kilotons of damage. With that kind of firepower, he could level buildings, blast out a cave in a mountain bigger than his city apartment and live there. He was half-tempted to run a victory lap just for the hell of it. Usually, he had someone’s eyes on him when he managed something truly impressive with his quirk. But today he’d have to celebrate on his own.

He gathered the sensors up, metal practically sizzling against the dampness of his gloves. They’d be a bitch to measure and reset, but it would give him time to stock up more sweat and go again. In weather like this, he didn’t need more than a brisk walk in the sun to soak his gauntlets, and he had the half-empty ten-gallon water cooler to prove it.

He returned to that bright-orange beacon and his bulk-sized sunscreen pack, all resting under a wide patio umbrella along with a camping chair he’d bought from the Walmart Supercenter in town. Most important were the materials loaned from the range. It was like his own private beach, sans water, plus pressure gauges and sensors. He tossed his gloves under the wide shadow that the tall sun allowed his umbrella to cast, sat, and stretched his shoulders, feeling the reverberation of his collarbone clicking back into place right up to his ear. Then he sighed and leaned back.

Now this, this, was a vacation.

*

It wasn’t a vacation. It was only convenient that Katsuki’d managed to trick Miruko into thinking it was.

This past year had been a vacation. Graduation was supposed to mean the big leagues, but when you’d already defeated the world’s biggest bad at seventeen, getting emergency calls for petty thieves who wet themselves as you tackled them outside the shop they’d just held up was pretty embarrassing. 

It had started earlier than that, though. After being nearly disintegrated to ashes finer than this damn sand by a real villain, flitting around Ground Alpha, Beta, Gamma as classmates pretended to be villains was no grander than playing cops ‘n robbers. A third-year final exam was as good as napkin math.

Nah. He didn’t need a vacation, not while chasing D-listers under the Energizer Bunny. What he needed was a good shake up. Japan was boring. Tired. Training in isolation in the desert? That was what would get him closer to number one than ever. 

He’d just moved from his shoulders up to his neck, stretching out his traps with easy neck rolls when he spotted it. A blight in the distance among the vast blanket of white dunes. There was a plume of gray overtop this relatively flat part of the missile range. But Katsuki’s explosions didn’t make that kind of smoke, the stuff that could suffocate you if you breathed it in long enough. All his smoke had dissipated before he’d sat down.

“What the fuck?” Katsuki murmured, his tongue dry in his mouth. He wasn’t drinking enough water.

There wasn’t hardly any wind to speak of at the moment, but the cloud was either growing or coming Katsuki’s way. Katsuki stood and crouched low, shook out his hands, trying to get the feeling back in them. That last move had drained him, but his gloves were at least partially saturated as he picked them up from the dusty ground. He was never totally dry of his quirk, and any villain would find that out quickly.

But no idiot would try to get the jump on Katsuki with nothing better than a Smokescreen quirk. At least, not if that was their only quirk.

Katsuki shook away the thought, even as the adrenaline in his veins melted away and his posture slacked against his will. Because if this was a quirk, and not a fire—and it couldn’t be a fire, because there was absolutely nothing that could catch anywhere around—then it was a quirk he knew well.

But…it couldn’t be that, could it? Katsuki was in the middle of the desert, the sandy toe jam of America. It had to be a mirage—those happened in the desert, right? He’d thought that mirages were usually characterized by water, desert oases for doomed travelers, but maybe his mind had conjured up something else. Something more familiar.

But as he tried to blink it away, rub his eyes and erase the mirage, it continued to grow, and Katsuki couldn’t deny what it was. There was no fire, and there was no attack. No, it wasn’t a surprise—it was a signal. A goddamn stormy portent from a stalker idiot.

Katsuki relaxed his pose, slouching as he threw the gloves back to the ground. He went for the orange jug and drank like he’d been trapped in this desert for days instead of only a couple hours. His flight had landed only that morning. Izuku must have been in the sky at the same damn time to have tailed him so fast. He wondered how many flights flew from Los Angeles to El Paso every day.

“Kacchan!” Katsuki heard mid-drink. He continued to swallow his fill before moving on to the sunscreen. It was as warm and runny as bath water.

“Kacchan!” Izuku called again as he jogged into view. He had an impressive pace, running on the sand with no evidence of One For All doing teal-toned tricks around his body.

Katsuki spread the sunscreen over his face, taking extra care to cover his ears and then running the excess through the roots of his hair. He wasn’t wearing his jagged fins—no need for aesthetics in the middle of the desert—but dammit, he should have worn a hat. His scalp was gonna be as pink as Raccoon Eyes’.

“Hey, Kacchan!” Izuku said again, barely panting as he slowed to a stop in front of Katsuki’s meager set-up.

It figured that the moment he tried to do something new with his quirk, this nerd would show up. It was practically its own kind of smoke signal to someone like Izuku. Katsuki couldn’t even be surprised.

“Funny, thought I just heard Deku,” Katsuki said, slathering his arms, taking care to work his fingers just a little bit under the sleeves of his costume so he wouldn’t wake up with any surprise red, peeling patches tomorrow. “Maybe he got a quirk that throws his voice ten thousand kilometers. Sounds like the kind of shitty quirk one of the past holders woulda left him with.”

Katsuki grinned, keeping it mostly to himself as he faced away from Izuku. 

“Kacchan,” Izuku whined, and if it weren’t for the jet lag and the aggressively dry heat, Katsuki would think he was back in Musutafu. “I’m here to help!”

Katsuki’s lip curled up. “Who asked you for help?”

“Miruko,” Izuku said, and it was all Katsuki could do not to curse at being caught out. “What, you thought you could petition the U.S. military for months to use a missile launching site for training and no one would find out?”

Maybe.

He’d thought that using All Might’s pull instead of Miruko’s might lead to some discretion. All Might was the king of secrets, and Katsuki might have expected the same of the U.S. military. Apparently not.

“If it took me months to be able to set foot on this site then how are you here?” Katsuki asked.

“I said I would help control your quirk,” Izuku said with a shrug.

“Contr—Deku,” Katsuki spat. “You can’t even control your own quirk.”

Katsuki stared over Izuku’s shoulder at the smoke still sticking to the air, the only thing intersecting the wavering heatwave lines on all sides.

“I was actually trying to be visible,” Izuku countered, but he still turned back towards the smoke. “One sec.”

Izuku put a hand out and took off in a blur. Shots of Air Force blasted from his fingers, clearing the smoke out faster than it had arrived. Spots where his quirk flared over his body were brighter even than the near-white sand in the shimmering heat, but they blurred as Izuku ran. Seconds later, he was back by Katsuki’s side, barely sweating.

“You got lost,” Katsuki said. “You were supposed to keep running back to the airport.”

The words came out less convincingly than Katsuki had intended. Must have been another dehydration symptom.

“Look, Kacchan, I’m already here,” Izuku said, like he was being the reasonable one. Like he was ever the reasonable one. “My flight back isn’t till next week, like yours, so you’re stuck with me.”

“Story of our lives,” Katsuki mumbled, picking up his glove again, now coated on both sides with fine gypsum. He smacked it twice against Izuku’s side to bat off the worst of it, earning himself a frown. “I’m sure the Easter Bunny didn’t send you to keep us out of trouble. So what gives?”

“No, not that,” Izuku chuckled as Katsuki thrust his sensors at his chest. Izuku grabbed them, reflexes tight as ever. His biceps were barely flexing under the weight while Katsuki could still feel that lactic acid burn receding from his. “Well, not that we’ve gotten into trouble in a while, anyway. I, uh, think she just wanted to catch you in the lie, honestly, and well.” Izuku held up the equipment. “Point one for the boss.”

“Well, mission accomplished,” Katsuki said, stalking out of the shade of the umbrella. He was rehydrated, relubricated, and recalibrated. Even if his right hand was still tingling a tad, his left was good to go. “Now that you’re through with that rot, you can make yourself useful.”

“Measuring the strength of your attacks?”

“Yep, and you’re my caddy,” Katsuki said as he bounced in place, allowing his sweat glands to dilate. “Have fun being ball boy on my vacation, Deku.”

Izuku grinned, unzipping one of the pockets on his costume. He was wearing the whole damn thing, down to the hood that was plastering itself to his dampening back. “That’s not all I’ll be, Kacchan.”

He dipped a hand into the pocket to pull out a dinky little notebook and miniature pencil. It’d be filled before the day was done, guaranteed. It was Katsuki’s quirk, and this was Izuku.

“Bring it on.”

*

The thing was, this was the first time Katsuki had seen Izuku in weeks. He’d only seen him a handful of times in the last year.

They’d both decided to sign under the Trix Rabbit upon graduation. She had the physical prowess with an emphasis on legs that Izuku needed, and the brash, make-your-enemy-your-punching-bag attitude that Katsuki wanted. He definitely wouldn’t have clocked her as someone to send a babysitter after him on his not-vacation vacation, but then, he wouldn’t have expected her to force him to take a vacation anyway.

And why make Izuku that babysitter when they were never put on patrol together and only partnered up for occasional busts?

Both of them were powerful heroes with big reputations, even as first-year rookies. And things were calm enough in Japan now that their combined manpower would be overkill for nearly any villain or incident. So the last time Katsuki had seen Izuku was a Class A social hour a few weeks ago, and before that it had been for an emergency call that they’d both taken, that had only taken ten minutes to wrap up and toss the perp into the paddy wagon. 

This last hour one-on-one was more cumulative time than they’d spent together in months.

And it was…okay. Not what Katsuki had planned, but if Izuku wasn’t going to get in the way, then Katsuki wasn’t mad that he was there. Really, it just felt like One For All training again, except this time it was about Katsuki. And instead of Katsuki being there because he was making up for being an asshole, they were there because, well, they wanted to be. Or, well, Katsuki had wanted to be and Izuku had horned in on it.

“The pressure wave was really impressive in that second blast, and you reached the autoignition temperature way too quickly for me to measure. I wonder if it happens faster when it’s this hot outside? Obviously, you’re producing more sweat, but if you’re also able to ignite it faster, that’d be amazing to know. Not that a few milliseconds here or there makes much of a difference, but reflexes are important and Kacchan’s have always been amazing. And the temperature of the blast! It was over five thousand degr—wait, is this fahrenheit? No, it’s not! Very impressive!”

Izuku’s knees were an inch deep in sand as he looked back and forth between the gauges and his notebook, using one of his knee pads to keep the damn thing open as he scribbled. He was either already getting a sunburn on the whorl in the back of his head, or all his nerdy excitement was making the blood rush up there. But dammit if his nerdy excitement wasn’t helpful. If it wasn’t something Katsuki had been missing.

“Deku,” Katsuki blurted out. “Learn any new quirks in the last year?”

Izuku looked up from his notebook and chuckled, letting the sardonic tone roll off him as it always did. “Pretty sure I’m maxed out on quirks, but I’ve been trying some new things. I’ve gotten a handle on using Blackwhip as a propeller for Float, which can help some with speed, but not as much with control as you’d think. I’m still working One For All’s percentage up, and you’ll notice I haven’t been to the hospital once! The infirmary, yes, but not the hospital!”

In the past, Izuku and Katsuki had done that kind of training together. Even after everyone had found out about One For All, Izuku and Katsuki had still been training partners. It might have even made sense for them to be hero partners. Now Katsuki didn’t get to see any of it.

But Izuku was seeing it. Now. His eyes were on Katsuki again.

“Congrats on keeping your bones together, idiot,” Katsuki said. “Where have you been then? I know Cottontail ain’t kept you that busy. So what gives? You haven’t yammered my ear off like this in months.”

Izuku frowned. “It’s not like you’ve reached out to me either, Kacchan,” he replied, and evasively so, if Katsuki had anything to say about it. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing either.”

Well, fine, Katsuki didn’t care. He made eye contact with his fingers as he flexed and unflexed them in his gloves. He’d have to take a longer break after that one, since his right side was still tingling and his left had just nearly been blown clean off.

He never had to wait like this during his regular training—he never used moves that took this much juice out of him. But he could still stretch. Definitely manage an ab workout. Technically, he could jog, but the desert sun would probably slap him flat against the hot sand if he tried. And if Izuku thought he could get ahead with whatever post- or pre-shift bullshit he’d managed to find instead of training with Katsuki, he had another thing coming.

While Izuku sank deeper in the sand, Katsuki walked back to his water and took another big swig. It was cold—he’d filled the thing half with ice from the get-go. The temperature difference fisted at the back of his throat, tightening his soft palate with every swallow, but it was worth it for just a speck of relief on this summer day. Then he sat himself on his tailbone in the shade and began a rep of v-sits.

“Kacchan, what are you doing?”

“Keeping from getting soft like you with your dogshit posture,” Katsuki grunted as he balanced through his crunches.

“You already look good,” Izuku said. “You must have bulked up this year, haven’t you?”

He had. The general lack of villains, or at least interesting ones, had allowed him to devote more time to training than when he’d been in school for it. Frequent spars with Shitty Hair—since Izuku hadn’t been around—and regular trips to the gym had served him well. Going to a place like this was the only way he could surpass himself and get to an even higher level.

Of course, calling Izuku soft was an obvious lie—he’d clearly kept up some kind of a routine in the last year too. The only soft things about him were his chubby cheeks and, presumably, his hair. Not that Katsuki had ever checked. And it showed as Izuku tilted his head at him, smile falling all slant on one side, like it was swung down by gravity. In the silence of the desert, he could still barely hear the little exhale that usually passed as a laugh for Izuku. Katsuki kept his lips firmly downturned.

Katsuki finished his set, abs tight and new sweat already forming when Izuku’s shadow disappeared with his own under the umbrella. His feet were inching up into Katsuki’s space, but Katsuki ignored him in favor of continuing counting before beginning his next set.

“I didn’t rent a car.”

Katsuki huffed. “Guess One For All will get a good workout on your run back to town, then.”

This Missile Range had its own town name. Probably its own zip code too, in this sparse country. It was miles to get anywhere that had a real hotel, or even a McDonald’s. But Izuku could probably charge up Fa Jin and make it there in three or four jumps, if he really put his back into it.

“I also didn’t reserve a hotel room.”

Katsuki began his v-sits again, and his words came out as a grunt. “Then do that, Deku. It’s not like anyplace here will run out of rooms.”

“…I don’t have any currency.”

Katsuki broke his balance, slapping his hands down in the cool sand. The granules stuck to his sweat immediately. “What’re you telling me, Deku?”

“I’m gonna need a ride back to your hotel…at the very least.”

“Well, enjoy waiting a few hours then.”

“Kacchan.”

Katsuki didn’t stop his set, though he’d lost count. He spared Izuku a glance, solely because gypsum could only be so interesting.

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough for the day?”

“Fuck off.”

He sped his crunches up a bit, returning his hands back to form, parallel to the ground, alongside his legs. Done enough for the day? The sun would still be up for hours. His day didn’t usually stop until nine or ten pm, and, jet lagged or not, he was going to stick to that.

“I’m serious, Kacchan,” Izuku urged, having the nerve to squat down to Katsuki’s level. Katsuki’s bangs were plastered to his face, laden with sweat and sunscreen, so he could only make Izuku out through a flaxen blur anyway. It blended him right in with the white sand. “You can’t pull off another explosion like what you just did, not today. Not for a while, at least. So we might as well get out of the sun and go back into town. Take a shower.”

The word can’t set the burn rising in Katsuki’s muscles to a familiar fire of contrarian spite. It was reflexive, a well-worn groove that he couldn’t help but slip into, especially with Izuku. Even though he could see the groove and all the paths around it by now, he’d still tumble in and feel those fanned flames of resentment.

He dug deep and filled them with sand.

“Tch, since when are you the voice of reason?”

Izuku grinned. “Maybe I’ve gotten better in the last year.”

Katsuki scoffed. “Fat fucking chance.”

Truthfully, Katsuki hadn’t put much thought into an itinerary for this trip. Not even which hours would be at the Missile Range and which would be in the hotel. He’d been given free range to this plot of land during business hours, and he intended to squeeze every minute out of it that he could. But it wasn’t the best place to recharge after pulling off an explosion impressive enough to make Izuku monologue into his diary for ten minutes straight.

“You carry the water jug,” Katsuki said, standing up and grabbing the arms of the camping chair to collapse it. “Don’t track any sand into the car.”

Izuku glanced at the sand that coated both of Katsuki’s hands up to the wrist, and then around to the patch that was surely still stuck to his pants. As he’d stood up, some had fallen from there and was now beaded into his leg hair, and sticking to the sweat there. Meanwhile, Izuku only had his shoes and knees to contend with, and Air Force to blow it off with.

“Haha, alright, Kacchan.”

*

Route US-70, Otero County, New Mexico

“Eep!” Izuku winced, plastering himself to the passenger door as a pickup truck zoomed by on Katsuki’s left down the two-lane highway. “Gosh, every time, it looks like it’s gonna hit you.”

“You’re just confused by the side of the road,” Katsuki said, putting extra effort into minding the lanes himself. Switching from the right to the left side of the car was fucking ridiculous. “ ‘Sides, these lanes are crazy wide. And it’s not like you couldn’t hop outta the car and stop another one with your bare hands. Or Blackwhip it and drop it on a cactus somewhere.”

“I’d rather not, though.”

It was only the fifth car they’d seen since leaving the military base anyway. Seriously, no one lived here. It felt like it was just him and Izuku for miles.

Which, after not seeing each other in so long, was kind of weird.

A year ago, it wouldn’t have been a surprise to have Izuku pop up mere hours into his vacation abroad—hell, Katsuki hadn’t even been able to feel shocked when Izuku had shown up, presumably quirkless, to the first day of class at UA. But now? It filled Katsuki with some kind of pit in the bottom of his stomach. Maybe it was just an after-effect of the long flight or the dehydration or the massive attempts at rehydration. Water sloshed in his belly along with an unease at the nerd’s appearance, and he had to table it immediately. They were good. They’d left school on good terms. Things were fine on the brief occasions where they’d seen each other recently. It was chill. It was fine.

“Wonder if there are any heroes here,” Katsuki mused, turning to the topic that had always been safe for them. “Maybe one who gets more powerful the less people he sees and the more loose dirt he inhales.”

There was a small twister way out in the distance. Some dirt and debris making a tornado not much taller than All Might himself, and dissipating into nothing before Katsuki’s eyes. It might have been miles away for how far Katsuki could see in any direction. There was the dinky town of Alamogordo in the distance, but on every other side was nothing but dirt, shrubbery short enough to trip over, and then mountains flanking every side. In between were dozens of kilometers Katsuki could see radially. North, south, east, and west. Even Izuku wouldn’t be able to run end to end without getting exhausted.

“There are bands of traveling heroes in this region,” Izuku stated, peeling himself away from the door. “Agencies that capitalize on speed, usually having one member with some kind of teleportation quirk, so that they can hit alarm calls all over the rural regions of the state without having to waste too much manpower on each small town.”

That made enough sense. Katsuki, for one, would hate to be cooped up in this lame town where the only crimes were probably paying the rent late or maybe some minor trespassing. Almost as much as he hated teleportation quirks.

They finally started seeing a few more cars as an overpass came into view with a few intersections under it. Katsuki flipped on the turn signal and headed into the hero-forsaken town.

“Wow, it’s nothing like the movies.”

America had wormed its way into Katsuki’s consciousness the same way it had Izuku’s—All Might. Between living in Los Angeles and all of his movies being shot there, Katsuki wasn’t sure if Izuku had ever seen a glimpse of America that wasn’t tinsel town. Maybe New York City in some other sappy American export movie.

But this was not that. There were no skyscrapers—the tallest building appeared to be a Holiday Inn, of all of three stories in height. Tallest in the valley at least; some of the buildings working their way up the mountain were higher up, Katsuki supposed. And the houses weren’t sprawling mansions, or even the metropolitan apartment complexes that weren’t so different from Musutafu. No, they were all orange and brown. Terracotta roofs and stucco walls with lawns of gravel and dirt and the occasional wizened desert tree. And the cactuses, of course.

“It’s nothing like a real place,” Katsuki corrected.

It was another long, straight road, now flanked by dusty strip malls and pistachio fields. And when the GPS signaled a left turn, he thought that the mountains must have thrown it off. Or perhaps this town had no internet.

“This can’t be it.”

His GPS turned him into a brown parking lot of a brown building with a brown sign reading Motel. And, judging by the doors dotting the building’s facade like windows, all rooms led directly outside. Bed to parking lot.

“This is definitely it,” Izuku said, double checking the address. “But it looks fine.”

“Tch, you also think your hair looks fine.”

“I don’t think about it much at all,” Izuku said with a grin as Katsuki pulled into a spot. They unclicked their seatbelts and stepped out of the air-conditioned car and were immediately blasted by heat and the dry smell of dirt. The earth had the smell of having been toasted to nutmeg brown, dried and hardened in the skillet of this basin for millenia.

Heat radiated off the asphalt, pale and dusty though it was. It warmed Katsuki up to his knees just on the brief walk to the front door.

“Checking in,” Katsuki said in English the moment his foot stepped in the lobby. “I need to change my room from a one bed to a two. Bakugou. Katsuki.”

Katsuki sounded his name out slowly to the receptionist before laying an arm on the desk, staring the woman down. 

“O-Okay. No problem, that just increases the room fee.”

“Done.”

It only took a moment for her to hand him the keys, Katsuki balking at the described continental breakfast. The remnants of child-sized boxes of Fruitloops and Cheerios, and cellophaned honeybuns and danishes were still cluttering a card table to the side. Izuku called a thanks back to the clerk as Katsuki dragged him outside to grab their bags and find their accommodations.

Sharing a room was an easy calculation. It was cheaper and, if Katsuki had his druthers, they wouldn’t be spending much time in the room beyond laying down their heads at night. And besides, it looked as though this town offered its people very little besides space. Motel rooms presumably provided the same.

They climbed a rickety staircase up to the second floor balcony, Katsuki calling: “Don’t jump, Deku, or you’ll take us down with it,” before coming up to their door.

Inside was a sight unto itself. The floor was carpeted with a wall-to-wall carpet that, charitably, could be described as smart for being a similar shade to the rusty brown dirt that Americans tracked in with their shoes. The beds—across the room from each other—were covered with a quilted faux-satin in a vague tarnished gold color, and the walls were questionably off-white. The nicest feature was the photographs of the desert. Decent shots that highlighted the White Sands Park, the flora, and the mountains. And if that wasn’t the best part, then the slim lamps that barely illuminated the uglier parts of the room were.

“This is great!” Izuku beamed as he slipped off his shoes and dropped his duffle. “Thanks for the room, Kacchan! Why don’t you shower and I’ll see where we can go for lunch? Or dinner—I have no idea what meal we’re on.”

A glance around told Katsuki that there wasn’t any kitchenette to speak of in the room. The closest it seemed they had was a coffee maker sitting on the sinks next to the water closet. Not much hope of making a potable coffee, much less anything else.

The most Katsuki could say was that at least the room was clean. The dusty smell from outside followed them into the hotel room, but at least it was pleasantly chilled and humidified and, as Katsuki stepped into the shower, he didn’t spot so much as a speck of mold. As a place to bathe and sleep, this would do.

Now, Katsuki needed to fight the hot desert off of him with its opposite. He set the water to cold, and it tasted heavy with minerals as it dripped into his mouth. As it tore the sweat off of him, the exhaustion from the flight and the training and the heat began to sink in. His arms weren’t too stiff to wash himself, but lifting his hands up to his hair pulled unpleasantly from his armpits to his pectorals, and articulating his fingers was slow work, like they were frozen in the winter.

When he stepped out, Izuku had already claimed a bed and was lost in his phone. As he heard Katsuki step out, door opening, wet feet slapping against retro yellow tile, he grinned.

“Kacchan, there’s so much Mexican food! Everything looks amazing!”

“Yeah, yeah, just choose one,” Katsuki mumbled as he toweled off his hair, another towel wrapped around his hips.

It wasn’t weird to be wearing nothing but a towel in front of Izuku. They’d bathed in communal showers countless times before. But it had never been in a shared bedroom. Katsuki’s stomach tightened suddenly, probably just the abdominal workout doing tricks on his core, so he shoved it away, putting extra rigor into toweling off. He could probably step outside and have it dry in five minutes, but the thought of facing the sun again now that he could see the pink of his ears in the mirror was discouraging. He needed some aloe.

“Well, I don’t know if we wanna choose the one with the highest rating, or maybe the closest one?” Izuku mused. “Also, we might have to stop by a bank, because I don’t want you to pay for everything. Gosh, I wish the exchange rate were better right now. But none of these places look too expensive. And aside from the fast food, they all look locally owned.”

Katsuki flopped onto his bed to unzip his suitcase and root through it to find an outfit. He’d have to ask the front clerk about laundry service to take care of his costume elements. He debated taking a pain reliever as he grunted through pulling on his t-shirt, but decided against it for now. Even if it would do some of the work of loosening his muscles for him, he needed to know if he’d overworked them without medication. Once his shorts were on, he lay back on the bed and stretched one arm over his chest, his shoulder popping encouragingly.

“You know what? We’ll be here a week and there aren’t too many establishments. Maybe we’ll just start with the closest and then hit them one by one?”

Katsuki hummed his agreement, eyes falling closed as he switched to the other arm. This one didn’t pop, but his fingers did begin to tingle as the stretch cut off just a bit of his circulation. He’d hold it for just thirty more seconds and then…

Rest.

#anjum writes #bkdk #bakudeku #dkbk #dekubaku #bkdkbk #bakudekubaku #dkbkdk #dekubakudeku #katsudeku #ktdk

[dailyunsolvedmysteries-movedd]

Tragedy at Sand Cave

William Floyd Collins, better known as Floyd Collins, was born June 20, 1887 in Logan County, Kentucky to Lee Collins and Martha Jane Burnett. From an early age, Floyd developed a hobby of exploring caves. This pastime led to the discovery of Crystal Cave in 1917 beneath his father’s farmland. Floyd developed the cave into a tourist attraction that boasted unique helictite and gypsum cave formations.

Floyd knew of another potential cave located on property owned by Beesly Doyel. This cave, known as Sand Cave, had prime real estate situated right beside Cave City Road. Travelers would easily pass by Sand Cave before continuing to the other show caves such as Mammoth Cave. Floyd entered into an agreement with Beesly Doyel to explore Sand Cave and share the profits if the cave proved worthy to show.

Floyd first entered Sand Cave on January 30, 1925 with only a single kerosene lantern and shortly found it offered many challenges. He found himself squeezing through tight passageways – at one point so tight that he had to inch through on his stomach, with one arm stretched out ahead of him, pushing his lantern, and the other arm at his side. Beyond this crawl, the cave began to open up, but his lantern suddenly began to flicker. 

Floyd knew the peril of losing light in a cave, so he reluctantly began his return journey. As he returned through the tight crawl, his foot dislodged a 27-pound rock which wedged his ankle in place. Try as he might in his awkward position he could not remove his foot. He was trapped in a stone straight-jacket. Thus begun Floyd’s harrowing tale in Sand Cave.

 Once it was discovered that Floyd was trapped in the cave, rescue efforts slowly ramped up. Engineers, geologists, and cavers were called in from all over the local area and state. When more conventional means failed, miners began digging a shaft to reach him. Rescuers worked long hours day and night in hopes of finding a solution to getting Floyd unstuck from Sand Cave. The workers encountered periods of rain and cold weather, cave collapses and disagreements among leaders on how to proceed. The rescue efforts spanned over 17 days with many tactics to rescue Floyd attempted, but all of them ultimately failing. Throughout the rescue efforts, the story became too big for Cave City. People began to arrive from all parts of the country and a "carnival atmosphere" took hold at the mouth of Sand Cave. Vendors appeared, selling food, drink and souvenirs. Thousands of sightseers descended on Cave City, and the state was forced to dispatch troops to keep order.

On the eighteenth day after his entrapment, rescuer’s finally reached Floyd via a 55 ft. vertical shaft, but it was too late. Floyd Collins was pronounced dead of exposure, and Sand Cave was sealed with Floyd’s body inside. Only months later would his body be removed for a formal burial closer to his family’s home near Crystal Cave. He now rests in the Mammoth Cave Baptist Church Cemetery.

#sand cave #sand cave tragedy #accidents #death #Floyd Collins