#in the same breath as he launches a nuke

[revacholian-girl-utena]

This system does not require faith — only accordance.

Alt text: Screenshots from Revolutionary Girl Utena with overlaid text. 1: Dios on a white horse, standing up high on a broken bridge. Text: An innocence is infallible.

2: Dios and young Utena looking at young Anthy, suspended in the air on the swords of hate. Text: The decisions made by one are not decisions.

3: Anthy's silhouette against a pink background, pierced by many blades, hair flying. Text: They are inevitabilities —

4: Touga looking out the tower window at the stars. His shirt is open and he holds a potted cactus. Text: what would have happened anyway,

5: An apple with a slice cut out, pierced by many forks. Text: only accelerated.

6: B-ko the shadow girl in Prince costume, taking a heroic stance. Text: An Innocence is a continuous, compressed event, a sacred human being.

7: Akio, dressed as End of the World, holds Utena, dressed as a rose bride. Text: It is an honor and a glory to live when one is in office.

8: Closeup on young Utena and Dios's feet, standing at the edge of a sheer drop. Text: YOU — Is one in office now?

9: A dark, empty stage with a rose design on the lowered curtain. Text: No.

10: Young Utena standing alone under a spotlight. She is staring at the spot where young Anthy disappeared. There are cracks in the wall resembling the shape of the swords coming out of Anthy's body. Text: We are alone.

#revolutionary girl utena #disco elysium #shoujo kakumei utena #dios #akio #utena #anthy #touga #kanae #csa tw #for clarity in case this doesn’t read the way im intending for it to read #the comparison between akio and the innocentic system is the idea of like. why they’re called innocences to begin with #the idea that they are ‘’innocent’’ in that everything they do is 1) inevitable 2) a reflection of the will of the world and everyone in it #akio and the prince archetype both have echoes of that idea #the prince as someone who is infallible and sacred and a necessary part of the world #and akio as someone who uses that rhetoric of infallibility and of only being a reflection of the way the world works #to write off his heinous crimes a la the innocenses and their war crimes #and ‘’we are alone’’ is utena recognizing the death of the prince. she is alone. she has to do this herself #in sacred and terrible air miro says something like ‘’be at peace. i am innocent and so you all are as well’’ #in the same breath as he launches a nuke #i feel part of utena’s arc is about rejecting the idea that something is acceptable just bc everyone else around her seems to accept it #bc the truth is more that her peers have resigned themselves to their fates… it’s not truly what they want. they just cant imagine smth else #and so rather than say ‘’i am innocent and so we all are innocent’’ #she learns to say ‘’i am guilty of many things but i can change. and so can you. and so can the world’’

[hylaversicolor]

i have so much to talk about

but let’s start with this line from edo hashirama (in the present) describing the aftermath of the fallout between him and madara: “he decided to completely erase his friend, to erase me from his life.”

this shows so much about hashirama, namely: he does not fully understand madara’s predicament at this point in time. right now the number one thing keeping hashirama going is the future village that he and madara have committed to building, for the simple fact that he and madara are doing it together. he doesn’t understand how madara could choose izuna over this dream he had thought they shared, because in hashirama’s mind, the village is a win for everybody, izuna included. this is something i love about hashirama: he’s determined to a fault, and once he gets his mind set on something, regardless of his circumstances or surroundings, he will pursue it. this is not necessarily a good thing either. just look at his outburst during kawarama’s funeral. butsuma was wrong to hit him obviously, but he was technically out of line, shouting and making a scene during a difficult moment. then the same thing happens when madara renounces his and hashirama’s friendship; hashirama makes one last plea to madara, saying stuff like “you haven’t really given up on our dream have you??” even though there’s no way madara will be able to respond; he’s got tajima breathing down his neck and izuna’s life on the line. the only option for madara in this situation is to make a swift retreat.

this “he decided to erase me from his life” is a misinterpretation of madara’s intentions. hashirama is hurt (they both are) but he doesn’t yet understand that regardless of whether or not madara was telling the truth when he said hashirama was stronger than him, by causing tajima to retreat, he saved their lives. he was able to take a three-against-three battle and disperse tajima’s and butsuma’s attention from his and hashirama’s younger siblings, ensuring that the next time they met in combat, tajima and butsuma would both have bigger things on their mind than taking out the other’s child. in addition, if you read the scene this way, this was also the first instance of madara sacrificing his own “”social standing”” to save people he cares about, a pattern of behavior that would ultimately culminate in the moon’s eye plan. madara is willing to be disliked or seen as the enemy to spare the lives of his loved ones. it took ending his friendship with hashirama, but he got izuna out of immediate danger. (for now.)

and then hashirama and madara pull their punches for 15+ years. just look at the difference in the way they fight before and after izuna dies. before izuna dies they’re almost casually exchanging blows; after he dies they’re practically launching nukes at each other, but put a pin in this and we’ll come back to it. unlike izuna and tobirama, who are aiming to kill,* just look at the way madara is wide open when he notices izuna getting hurt and rushes to him. hashirama doesn’t do a thing about it, in fact he even throws down his sword and makes it clear he has no intentions of fighting further. they were just going through the motions.

anyway now i NEED to talk about the most pivotal madara moment in the entire series. this goes way back to the stone skipping. the stones are not just stones, they are ideals, and hashirama effortlessly gets his stone across the river while it takes a few tries for madara to get the same result. all of naruto is just madara and hashirama (albeit behind the scenes sometimes) getting on and off the same page, over and over, understanding each other and then going long stretches where they have no idea what’s going on in the other’s head. they’re trying to complete each other’s dreams and complement each other’s worldview but they’re coming at it from two different directions. (more on this later)

anyway the stones are not just stones and we know this because they are the objects used to deflect butsuma and tajima’s killing blows. in a single instant hashirama and madara save their brothers’ lives and sacrifice their dreams for the future at the same time. but while hashirama immediately rebounds and has his aforementioned outburst, madara does not. he accepts defeat and decides that izuna and the village cannot coexist.  madara has created this dichotomy where hashirama has not. it’s either the village OR izuna; hashirama OR izuna. it can’t be both in his mind. hashirama and madara both have hangups. where hashirama gets single-minded and has tunnel vision about the village, madara does the same about izuna. and. and!! in the one moment where he has the opportunity to actually save izuna’s life, he chooses to honor izuna’s wishes and not give in to the senju’s demands; he chooses izuna’s honor over izuna’s well-being. and then he disappears from the battlefield and abandons the clan to the senju and basically makes the worst mistake of his life, all because he cares more about izuna than anything else in the world and cannot conceptualize the coexistence of his and hashirama’s dream and izuna’s life. madara has been selfless the whole time. every decision he makes is based on keeping izuna safe and alive, but there’s a contradictory selfishness to it (ok selfishness isn’t the right word, it’s not really selfishness as much as it’s selflessness as a way of deflecting guilt and blame), because madara has self-worth issues stemming from the loss of his other brothers and if he loses his last brother he has nothing left to live for. madara is TERRIFIED. he has to save izuna because if he doesn’t, he is worthless.

ok now it’s time for the pin from before. after izuna dies madara is the one launching nukes. hashirama’s strategy is all about de-escalation. this is the first time madara has actually gone all out against him. he’s got the susanoo, he’s shouting, he is angry and grieving and he doesn’t care who he hurts. uchiha, senju, clans are meaningless now that izuna is dead. but hashirama tries to put him to sleep with the pollen and continues trying to appeal to madara’s humanity, even if there’s only the slightest chance that madara can be reached. it ALL comes down to the village and their dream, too.

then comes the ultimatum, and again this is madara and hashirama struggling to get on the same page and understand each other once more. madara is defeated and tobirama is about to kill him when hashirama is like, wait. to which madara just kind of sighs and says get it over with, it would be an honor to die by your hand (god. GOD.). i think he always kind of expected things to end up like this, with hashirama killing him after he lost izuna, just because so much of madara’s character from the beginning was motivated by fear of losing izuna, he had to have imagined it ending this way.

so then madara gets desperate, and he’s like ok if i make the most insane ultimatum i can possibly think of he’ll definitely just kill me,** because he definitely won’t kill tobirama, and he won’t kill himself either. BUT he made a severe miscalculation and completely underestimated how little self worth hashirama actually has. this is a wild moment because hashirama was never at a disadvantage like madara was; he always just barely had the upper hand in everything from conversation to combat. he was the one whose stone crossed first, he was the one who was still standing at the end of their spars while madara was on the ground. and yet in that moment he was ready to toss his advantage aside. he was completely ready to die because in hashirama’s mind, it’s for madara. it’s for their dream that they shared. he can’t do it with anyone else. it has to be the two of them.

the suicide attempt was hashi’s response, 15+ years too late, to madara’s “maybe this village thing just isn’t going to work out [implied: because you value ideals and i value my brother].” and this is not to say that hashi didn’t value his brother too but because of madara’s specific hangups he felt that he couldn’t dedicate any energy anywhere else, whereas hashirama just genuinely believes in himself so much that he is able to protect tobirama and have this village in his head. and it’s not that hashi thinks of himself highly he just thinks he needs to be the one to build the village for the same reason madara thinks he alone can protect izuna. they both had the same thought process and came to different conclusions. (sidenote: the fade from madara’s gloved hand grabbing the kunai to them both un-gloved, shaking hands???? i am. feral)

and just as madara has this contradictory selfless/selfish reasons thing going on with regards to izuna, hashirama has a similar thing. deep down, hashirama really really really wants madara to like him. he is admired and liked by the senju clan and eventually by the village when that comes to be, but the person whose respect he really truly yearns for is madara’s, because madara was the very first person to Understand hashirama. madara was the first person to see hashirama as someone whose opinions should be valued, someone who was going to change the world for the better someday. everybody else up to that point had ridiculed him or shut him down or questioned him when he said the world is messed up and i’m going to fix it. he is Worth Something when madara is there, and he NEEDS madara to give him the ok before he builds the village. it is THEIRS.

which brings me back to “he decided to completely erase me from his life”. this is DEVASTATING to hashirama, just as izuna’s death is to madara, because the village/izuna carry equal weight in hashirama/madara’s minds. the whole warring states period was madara not understanding how izuna could fit into hashirama’s dreams for the future, and hashirama not understanding how izuna WOULDN’T fit into it, because they are just both that stubborn.

*maybe. perhaps a tobirama meta soon? there’s a whole separate other thing going on with tobirama this whole time that i would LOVE to get into at some point

**he knew hashirama wouldn’t kill tobirama, and he obviously didn’t want hashirama to die because the second hashirama tried to kill himself madara stopped him.

#txt #naruto #madara #hashirama #hsmd #founders #meta

[tare-anime]

16.  Once upon a time in the far future……? (AO3)

Prompt: “Hey, look at me. I’m not going anywhere.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Loid, you have to-.... nnnggghh……" The Forger matriarch tried her best to speak through clenched teeth and concentrated on controlling her breathing till the pain subsided a little and she could continue, "You have to let go of me…."

"No way. We're in this together," Her husband stubbornly held her hand. 

"Loid, come on. You have to be reasonable! You can't….. nnngggghh!!" 

"Yor, hang on!! Please!! Somebody do something!" Loid pleaded and desperately searched for help. 

Throughout his life, he had never felt this much dread. He'd truly rather stop a nuke being launched, or defuse a bomb under the tight observation of a horde of SSS officers than have to stand by his wife and be helpless. 

A new surge of blood coming out of his wife and soaking her bed sheet just made his heartbeat skyrocket. 

"Loid! They're trying to help. But you need to let me go!" 

“No!” He firmly said, “Can’t I follow her and stand by her side throughout the process??” He looked at the nurse standing across him.

“Dr. Forger, you know full well that only authorized personnel may enter the Operating Room,” the woman answered flatly, clearly unimpressed by the antics that were happening in front of her. 

“But I-....”

“Loid!” Yor grabbed her husband’s chin and forced him to look at her, “Hey, look at me.”

After she was sure that her husband was focused on her, she continued as steady as she could, “I’m not going anywhere. These people will make sure I’ll be okay. You just need to calm down and ….. Ugggghh………. And let them do what they’ve already done so many times before.”

Loid gulped and still tried to say something, but Yor cut him, “Please? Just stay here. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Finally, he nodded, and with a trembling hand he caressed his wife’s head, and whispered, “Okay. Be sure to come back.”

Yor smiled, “I will.”

Loid then straightened his body and let go of his wife’s hand.

“Finally!!” the midwife rolled her eyes and started pushing the hospital bed, entering the Operation Room.

Loid wiped the sweat from his brow and sat down at one of the waiting seats across the OR’s double door. 

That didn't last long though. 

Drowning in nervous energy, Loid started to pace up and down, which made several people who waited there, obviously being in the same condition as him, give him sympathetic looks. 

“PAPA!!” 

Loid’s head snapped to his daughter who ran to his side, “Ssshhh… Anya. You may not run and yell at the hospital!”

Panting, the kid seemed to ignore his demand, “How’s Mama? Where’s my brother?”

“She's just entered the operation room. We’ll have to wait for some time.”

“This kid has been restless the whole way from school” Frankie who just arrived at his side chimed in. 

Loid chuckled, “Aren’t we all?”

"They'll be alright," Frankie gave his arm a few pats. 

"Yeah, Papa. Everything is going to be alright. Bond said so," Anya grinned. 

The calm energy of those two managed to calm him down to some extent, so the man was able to smile back, "I never doubt it." 

They then sat down at the waiting chairs, with Anya munching on her snacks, and Frankie sipping his coffee. 

Loid still had no appetite though. 

Finally, after what felt like an eternity the OR’s door opened. 

“Mr. Forger?" 

“That’s me!!” Loid abruptly stood up, and ran to the nurse’s side, followed by Anya and Frankie.

“Congratulations! A very healthy boy!” the nurse smiled and showed him his son.

Loid’s heart melted when he saw the boy stir. 

“Hey there, Leon….” He cooed. 

“Papa, I wanna see him!” at Anya’s request, Loid picked her up.

“Hey brother!” Anya’s smile was so bright, while Frankie wiped at his eyes.

“We will bring your son to the nursery room. You can meet your wife in the recovery room in a few moments. Through that door,” the nurse pointed to another double door and started walking to the nursery room, with all the whole family in tow.

They watched through the window how Leon was being cleaned and measured. 

“He’s so cute, Papa!” Anya squealed. 

Every time Loid saw his baby wail and squirm, and blink his eyes, he felt proud. 

And he should share that pride with the mother. 

Patting his daughter’s head, he addressed them, “I’ll go meet Yor now.”

“We’ll wait here,” Frankie answered. 

Loid nodded and started to walk in the direction of the Recovery Room.

Entering the room, he put on the visiting gown, and silently walked towards the designated bed. 

Slowly he approached his sleeping wife. 

When he held her hand, her eyes fluttered open, and he gave her the biggest smile of a very proud father, “Hey…..”

Yor smiled back, “Hey. How’s our boy?”

“Kicking and screaming.”

Yor chuckled sleepily.

“He looks a lot like me though,” he added, feigning a disappointed look, “But at least he’s got your eyes.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Yor bemusedly asked. 

“I can already see how naughty he will be.”

Again, his wife could only chuckle tiredly. She then mumbled, “Hm…. sleepy….”

Caressing her hair lovingly, Loid kissed her forehead and whispered, “Sleep. I’m not going anywhere.”

Their family was growing. And even though there was a tiny bit of fear in his heart regarding the uncertainty of the future, with all of them on his side, Loid knew he could handle it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The OC was borrowed from @bluwwo​, and the pic/character design was borrowed from @musiciati​.

Once I saw a pic of 'types of husband at the waiting room' at the hospital. I chuckled because the pic was so dramatic. But then, when it was time for me to labor, I was the one who need to calm my hubby XD (He's such a sweetheart).

And that's the end of this series of one shot. Thank you so much for reading :D Until next time ^^

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#spy x family #loid forger #yor forger #anya forger #frankie #oc #far future #expanding family #sxf fics #fanfic

[pandoraborn]

Cruelty of the Beast - Part 15

( previous. )

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Characters: c!Puffy, c!Quackity, c!Tubbo Word count: 2069 words Content: major character death (referring to Tommy’s prison death), grief, memorials, manhandling, quackity talks sense into tubbo, talk of war, impending doom, dragons, war is coming

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Nothing can ever go right in this place. Tubbo has never felt more angry or isolated in his life, with no one close he can fall back on. It had always either been him and Tommy, or him and Ranboo. Ranboo had already made it clear that he was sticking with Dream, but had left Tommy’s situation vague.

Tubbo is tired of arguing with everyone over it. He’s tired of everyone telling him to move on from Tommy, and it shows in the way he keeps his back pressed against the wall, with a crying Michael clinging to his leg. It shows in the way Tubbo is glaring furiously at Puffy with tears forming in his eyes. He’s seconds away from grabbing a weapon and lashing out at her.

“I can’t watch you do this to yourself anymore!” She cries out. “It’s killing all of us, you need to open  your eyes, please!”

“I don’t know when all of you decided to give up on Tommy, but I sure as hell am not.” Tubbo’s voice is flat as he tightens his grip on Michael. Having to explain to the toddler that his papa isn’t ever coming home was bad enough, Tubbo doesn’t want to have to explain about Uncle Tommy, either. “What’s happened to you, Puffy? You swore you’d protect him. You swore you’d never give up on him. So now that he got into one fight with Quackity, suddenly he needs to be treated like some war criminal? Remember what happened last time we isolated him?”

“Tubbo, I know. I really don’t think this is a misunderstanding this time.”

“It’s always a misunderstanding!” Tubbo snarls. His lip curls back as his hands tremble. “Everything everyone feels about Tommy is one giant misunderstanding! No one ever actually pays attention to him! You think I’m going to turn my back on him? I’ve already done that, I’m not doing it again.”

“Tubbo, he threatened Quackity,” Puffy tries to reason. “He plainly said he wasn’t coming home. We have to assume he’s working with Dream and Wilbur.”

“I’m calling bullshit,” Tubbo snaps. “Tommy hates both of them. He also hates Technoblade. Quackity up and disappeared for months without telling any of us what he was up to. His lands words were even ‘don’t trust anyone’. Why would I trust him?”

“Because he was there, Tubbo. He spoke to Tommy, to Ranboo, to Techno...we have to trust him on this.”  Puffy pulls back to text someone on her communicator. Without thinking, Tubbo snatches it from her hands and tosses it hard against the opposite wall. The noise has Michael crying even more louder.

“Tubbo!”

“I’m not falling for this bullshit,” Tubbo snarls. “I’ll break it again if you dare insinuate Tommy went and allied himself with the people who hurt him the most. We’re his friends. It’s up to us to save him and bring him back.” Crouching down, Tubbo wraps his arms around his son, holding him tightly. Michael whimpers.

“Papa,” Michael whines. “Where’s Papa?”

“It’s okay,” Tubbo whispers. “Daddy’s got you. You’re safe with me.” A pointed glare is aimed in Puffy’s direction. “Puffy was just leaving.”

“No,” she responds. “You need someone, I’m not leaving you alone to deal with this anymore. We have to face the truth.”

“There is no truth,” he mutters. Tubbo at least stands up, gently pulling away from Michael .”I need to put my son to bed, and you need to leave. I don’t want  you here anymore.”

There’s no sound from her as she picks up the communicator. It’s not completely broken, but the screen is cracked and hard to read right now. Puffy tries to brush away some of the dust.

“Tubbo, I really want to help you.”

“Unless your help is trying to find and bring my best friend back home, I don’t want it.” They stare each other down. Tubbo doesn’t hear his door opening and closing. He doesn’t hear the footsteps until a hand snatches him by his shirt and slams him roughly against the wall.

Tubbo winces, stifling back a yelp of pain as he stares into Quackity’s eyes. “Tubbo, I’m going to tell it to you straight. The Tommy we knew died in that prison. As far as we’re concerned, Tommy is dead. You need to open your eyes, Tubbo, and come to terms with the fact that we’re all you have left. Your best friend? Your husband? They’re gone, and they’re not coming back.”

“No.”

“Puffy, take the runt upstairs,” Quackity instructs. “Tubbo and I are going for a walk.” Quackity doesn’t wait for her to respond as he drags Tubbo outside. “I want to show you something,” he continues.

Tubbo struggles to keep up, forcing his feet to keep moving. Quackity had become far stronger in his bizarre absences, and admittedly, Tubbo is scared of him. He doesn’t dare try to pull away though, rather letting Quackity drag him around.

They continue moving until they’re at the memorial Tubbo had built. Tubbo doesn’t want to be here, he wants to go back home. This place brings back awful memories that he’d tried so hard to suppress, and it’s like Quackity is forcing Tubbo to relive all the trauma and agony that had brought them to this point.

“Read the sign, Tubbo.”

He tries to turn his head away. “No, I can’t.” It’s not a stretch, his eyes are already blurring. “Please let me go.”

The older man shoves him forward hard enough that he almost trips and face-plants into the sign. “Read it, Tubbo!”

With shaky breath, Tubbo blinks in an attempt to clear his vision long enough to focus on the sign. “In..in the memory of T-Tommy...” Everything is threatening to spill over. Gripping the edges the stone the sign’s placed on, Tubbo tries to still his trembling body. It’s not working. It’s also not stopping the flood of memories that come back.

From Tommy being exiled.

Dream manipulating Tubbo.

Dream humiliating Tubbo in front of everyone.

Tubbo giving up and accepting defeat...

Losing Tommy to death.

“He...he was take-taken from us too soon.” Tubbo’s breath is barely a wheeze as he finishes. This is just as embarrassing as being told  he sucked in front of the entire server. Back then, he hadn’t cried. This time, he’s barely holding himself together.

“Why did you build this?” Quackity asks.

“Because he was dead...he was killed in the prison.”

Quackity lets down, sitting down on the bench. He does pull Tubbo down with him. “I’ve been poking around Tubbo. I found this, and I found other memorials for Tommy. Statues, that Puffy, Eret and other people built. He was great to all of us.”

“So why...” Tubbo pauses to swipe his sleeve across his face. “Why doesn’t anyone care enough anymore to save him? He’s...”

“He was my best friend too, at one point.” Quackity’s voice is more gentle. “There was a time I’d have done anything for him. But the Tommy I encountered just now isn’t the Tommy I knew. He wasn’t anyone’s Tommy. He was mean and harsh, and he knew exactly what he was doing and who he was siding with.”

“I don’t understand.” It’s as if all the anger had evaporated. Tubbo hates Quackity’s approach, he hates the manhandling, but even Tubbo has to admit it’s more effective than Puffy’s mothering approach. It doesn’t mean he understands anything. He probably never will.

“Tommy died, Tubbo. He died in the prison, and he came back at Dream’s hand. We have to assume that Dream fucked with him somehow in a way we can’t fix, because otherwise we’re all going to be asking the same questions forever, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life asking why.”

“But...it’s Tommy. We can’t just...”

“Tommy’s dead, Tubbo. You didn’t spent time making this entire memorial for him only for it to be thrown back in your face. Puffy didn’t build a statue of him only for him to threaten me. None of us mourned his death, only for him to pick Dream. He’s dead, and gone, and we have to assume that the new Tommy is some imposter.”

For the first time since the prison break, Tubbo feels his heart breaking. He’d been living in denial for so long, always holding out hope that one of his two soul mates would come rushing back to him. Even after meeting with Ranboo, Tubbo had held some tiny sliver of hope that Ranboo would’ve changed his mind and come running back.

But deep down inside, Tubbo had always known. He’d always known that there was no going back, that the prison break had just been the beginning of the end.

Leaning against Quackity, Tubbo swallows back a sob. He’s not going to cry now, that’s better saved for when he’s alone with only Michael to hear him. Right now, he needs to be the tactician. At least Quackity’s pulling him in for a hug.

“I’m sorry, Tubbo,” Quackity whispers. “You still have us. The entire SMP is always on your side, you know this.”

“We need a plan.”

“I talked to Sam already,” Quackity says. Sitting up straight, Tubbo clears his throat, trying to compose himself. “Sam’s already making weapons, and he’s already spread the word to others. Eret’s making preparations to protect the kingdom.”

“I need to fortify Snowchester.” Tubbo clears his throat again before standing up. Priority one is getting away from this stupid memorial. The thought of burning it to the ground crosses his mind. “I can’t let anything happen to Michael.”

“So, talk to people. You have allies, Tubbo. You have Puffy, Sam, me, probably Jack. Eret, and so many others who are willing to pick up a weapon and fight.”

“I have an armory.” Tubbo’s eyes glisten.

“What are you talking about?”

“I have all of Dream’s stuff. His armor, some weapons, and even some potions. God apples.”

Quackity stares at him for a moment.

“I even have nukes,” Tubbo finishes in a whisper.

“They have tons of explosions,” Quackity says slowly. “But I don’t think even they can fight back if we use a nuke.”

Tubbo wags a finger, narrowing his eyes. “No, this is going to be on my terms. I’m not launching one at people we still care about. Just because they’ve decided to start some civil war doesn’t mean we’re just going to kill them. I want care and precision with this.” He turns to walk back toward Snowchester. “I have to think about my son first and foremost.”

“Okay, wait,” Quackity says. “How many people know you have nukes? I can tell-”

“Not many,” admits Tubbo. “Jack knows. T...oh, shit.” Tubbo’s eyes open wide as he stops in place. No, freezes completely. “No, no no no, shit!”

“Tubbo, what’s wrong?” Quackity, alarmed, grabs at Tubbo’s arm and shakes him. “Talk to me! What’s wrong?”

“Tommy and Ranboo,” Tubbo whispers. “They both know.”

There’s a long pause before the realization catches up to the older man. “Tubbo! You realize they could come here a...” he trails off.

In the distance, the prison alarms sound. They had since been rewired to alert Sam of intruders into the SMP, programming them to announce the arrival of hostile enemies. The alarms sounding now doesn’t mean anything good for the SMP or any of the aligning territories.

Quackity slowly turns back to Tubbo, gripping him tighter. With a whine, Tubbo yanks back, turning to march back toward Snowchester again.

Following close behind, Quackity glances in the direction of the prison. His blood is freezing in his veins at the thought of what’s to come.

“Tubbo, there’s no time for care and precision anymore. We have no time to prepare for anything.”

“I know,” Tubbo murmurs. “Quackity, Ranboo insinuated something to me that I didn’t understand til now.”

“What?”

“They have a dragon.”

“How..” Quackity swallows. “How the fuck do you know that from whatever vague words he said to you? You can’t possibly piece-” he’s cut off when Tubbo points. It’s dark as shit and hard to make out anything in the night sky, but Quackity follows his finger toward the prison.

In the distance, barely outlined, is the shape of something that’s only growing bigger. Big enough that Quackity can now hear the roar.

“Tubbo?” He hums as he reaches into his pack for his sword. “Get the nukes.”

#dream smp #dream smp fanfiction #dark!fic #cruelty of the beast #cruelty of the beast ch. 15 #quackity #tubbo #captain puffy #angst #major character death #not really but they're treating tommy as if he's dead #talk of war #mild violence #quackity mostly manhandling tubbo #impending doom #war is coming #long post #please be safe while reading this #miishae writes

[ofstarsandfireflies]

Now, you’re probably wondering why I didn’t use Groundhog Day.

The answer is simple.

This one is far closer to what I was going to write for Groundhog Day lol.

It had been the Chitari attack when it had happened.

Tony had foolishly grabbed hold of a nuke and powered it through the wormhole to destroy the mothership in a desperate attempt to end the battle once and for all.

And while he’d been trying to call Stephen one last time to say goodbye, Stephen had been racing to catch up to him before he was lost forever.

Both the nuke and Tony disappeared through the wormhole, and when the blast had hit, Captain Rogers had given the order to close it, sealing Tony inside to be taken out by the blast before Stephen could reach him.

And almost immediately, Stephen was standing back on the Helicarier, watching Tony fix up his suit so he could fly it back to Stark Tower.

Again, then.

This time he stopped Rogers from issuing the order for just a little longer.

This time he managed to grab Tony.

But this time he wasn’t quick enough to get them out of the way of the blast and they were both killed.

Again.

He used his powers to pull Tony through the wormhole, but his suit couldn’t withstand the power and burned right through the metal.

Again.

He tried to be the one to take the nuke through the wormhole but Tony knocked him out of the way to save him from doing something so foolish.

The world needed its Sorcerer Supreme.

It could get by without Iron Man.

And Stephen couldn’t get his words out to tell him that while the world could go on without him, he couldn’t.

Again.

This time he managed to be the one to knock Tony out of the way and fly it up to the wormhole, but with no air to breath in space and no suit to keep oxygen flowing to him, he died instantly.

He tried wearing the Iron Man suit instead but Tony wouldn’t let him.

He tried keeping Tony out of the battle altogether but he came in at the last second anyway.

It was when he began interfering in more situations that Tony wasn’t even lasting until the end of the battle.

Stephen managed to take out the leviathan Tony had killed from the inside only for another to snap him up in its jaws.

Stephen tried shielding Tony from a blast only for it to be pushed back toward an oil tanker and explode, killing the both of them.

A building fell down on him.

His suit didn’t catch him in time.

The Helicarier exploded with everyone still in it.

No matter what Stephen did, he was just making things worse and pushing Tony into untimely death after untimely death.

So, he tried telling Tony what was going to happen, hoping that would somehow improve his chances of survival.

It didn’t.

When that failed, he tried telling the others, but the outcome was still the same.

He tried.

And he tried.

And when he failed he tried all over again, determined to make this man he had fallen in love with survive more than an hour or two.

He knew everything of the battle they’d been fighting by the time he’d reached six digits.

He knew where everyone was going to be at every exact moment in that ruined part of the city.

And just when they’d made it and the nuke was launched, Stephen was with Tony the entire way, and he heard what he had missed on the very first run through.

How Tony wished they’d had more time together.

He’d stopped crying over the frustration of being unable to save the man he loved, and over the empty space that would forever be a black hole in his heart without him in his life anymore back when four numbers had seemed like an eternity.

Since then he’d just powered through, restarting the timeline whenever he’d failed to keep Tony safe.

But now, well into seven numbers, he found them well up again as Tony’s voice crackled and then cut out.

And he couldn’t go through it again.

He wouldn’t.

He’d seen this man die in every way and hadn’t been able to stop it from happening more than any sane person would ever put themselves through.

So, having nothing else he can possibly do, he found himself on the Helicarier once more.

Back when Tony was fixing his armour, the first thing he always saw when the loop reset.

Before this moment, they weren’t even friends.

Stephen hadn’t given Tony’s mortality a second thought as he listened to his morality come into question.

God, it seemed like an age ago.

Tony smiled at him as his helmet powered up, giving him his full attention.

And when Stephen tried to give him his warning once again, tried to keep Tony from going into that battle he never lived through, Tony asked him the same bewildered question as to why Stephen suddenly cared so much as to what happened to him.

And Stephen finally snapped.

He cared because he’d been through this over and over and over and over and over and he was finally starting to break.

He cared because he knew Tony.

Knew everything about him to the point he could write his autobiography for him.

And it mattered what happened to him because he mattered to Stephen more than anyone else ever had.

Even if there was no point in trying to fix something before it was broken, he wanted Tony to know how he felt.

That for all the powers he had, for all the experience he had memorised all in hopes of saving this one man who had only known him a couple of hours, in the end they were absolutely useless because they couldn’t prevent the one thing he desperately wanted to keep safe.

Keeping Tony from battle hadn’t worked.

Guiding him through the battle hadn’t worked.

Delaying any single part of the battle hadn’t worked.

And Tony wasn’t going to back out. Not when he could do something.

Of course Tony would want to fight.

Of course he would want to risk everything to save as many people as he could.

Stephen expected nothing less, but he’d hoped this would be the one time Tony would listen to him.

So he did the only thing left to do.

The only thing he hadn’t done yet.

He left.

He left the Helicarier entirely and found his master waiting for him on the roof of the Sanctum, asking him why it had taken him so long to come see her.

She couldn’t leave the Sanctum unguarded, she couldn’t help him with his impossible task of saving one man’s life while countless others ended around him.

He needed to come to terms with the fact that he couldn’t save everyone.

Her smile hid behind it a truth he didn’t have time to ask questions about as the wormhole opened once again and he spied Tony’s suit flying up to beat back Loki’s army.

He couldn’t leave Tony to fight alone.

He could leave him to die alone.

He’d made a promise to himself that he would stay by his side and he was going to keep it.

Because afterwards, if there ever came an afterwards, he wanted to keep keeping that promise.

Turning his back on his master, he flew up to Tony, grabbing a single enemy and throwing it into a small group before it could touch him.

Stephen put all his frustration into every attack, making Tony stare at him in wonder when he took out an ambush waiting for them before anyone even realised they were there.

It impressed Rogers so much he handed over command to him.

Stephen just stared at him.

This hadn’t happened before.

He felt like he was going to be sick.

He was now in control of when Nat shut down the wormhole.

He was in control of whether Tony made it out of there alive or not.

And he couldn’t screw it up.

Impatiently, he waited.

He directed the team he had become a part of while keeping an eye on Tony at all times and he waited.

Tony was shot out of the air and hit the ground beside him and he helped him to his feet, gripping his hand tightly in a bid to keep him with him just that little bit longer.

And Tony held his back, yanked him into a kiss, and took off again as word of the nuke being released reached them all.

And Stephen, along with every Avenger and every citizen who had survived this bloody never ending battle, watched as their hero flew the nuke up into the wormhole to save them all.

Stephen closed his eyes, counting down the seconds he could waste to give Tony that little bit extra to come back to him.

And when he didn’t, when Stephen realised he’d failed him again, he closed his eyes and gave Nat the order.

But when he looked back up at where the wormhole was closing in on itself, just as it did, something fell through.

Stephen was rooted to the spot.

Had it worked?

Had it finally worked?

When Tony continued to fall, Stephen knew somehow was wrong, blasting into the air to catch him as his stomach tied itself in knots.

He pried off the helmet, letting it fall to the ground as he felt for a pulse.

And held Tony tighter when it beat against his fingers.

Tony slowly opened his eyes, pulling his head away from Stephen’s shoulder where it was resting and looked up at him.

And Stephen smiled back.

They’d won.

They’d actually won.

Quotes -

“What difference does it make? Because we’re never gonna get there. No matter what we do...no matter how carefully we plan...we can’t get off that beach.”

Stephen losing hope.

“You wait there till I get back. You’ll be safe.”

“I’m a soldier. I volunteered. I’m not walking away.”

“You die here! Right here! I can’t save you. And if I go on and kill the Omega, you’re dead. Forever.”

“Why does it matter what happens to me?”

“I wish...I didn’t know you. But I do.”

Stephen trying to protect Tony but Tony not understanding why.

“Thank you...for getting me this far. You’re a good man, Cage. I wish I had the chance to know you better.”

Tony’s phone call.

Just A Chance With You -

A never ending loop has to have a hole in it somewhere, and Stephen isn’t giving up until he finds it.

January, February

Missed a Day? Catch up here!

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4

#ironstrange #strangeiron #osaf’s movie night

[olivarryprompts]

Fanfic Friday #7

Welcome to Fanfic Friday! Each Friday I will post a new fanfic here and on A03. Enjoy x

Read and save it on A03 here https://archiveofourown.org/works/32577124

{the anatomy of caring}

Ships: minor stevetony, focused on Tony & Peter

Warnings: none, it’s just fluff :)

Wc: 2355

It was obvious to anyone who knew the two well. It was Steve and Tony, Iron Man and the Captain. It simply made sense. If the logic wasn’t enough, the two looked at home with one and another. They slipped together like puzzle pieces. Tony always helped Steve through the confusion of a new world, and Steve always knew just how to help Tony deal with the anxiety of their reality. They were the perfect couple, and they both knew that.

Then, the spiderling came along. Tony saw a mirror image of himself in Spiderman. A young, ambitious boy who had the curse and gift of superhuman powers. He defied death each day he swung between buildings, and Tony couldn’t help but be enthralled. He couldn’t help but figure out who the kid was (It was pretty easy to figure out it was a kid, considering he only showed up outside of school hours). Steve, knowing his lover so well, knew instantly how protective Tony felt over the kid he’d merely stalked on the internet.

So when Tony explained the plan to show up at Peter’s with the “Stark Internship” it was no surprise to the captain. To the rest of the team, who’d all moved into the tower, it was a complete shock. The fact that Tony Stark, genius, billionaire, playboy, wanted to help this kid hone his powers and skills.

“You,” Bruce said, “Want to help this kid..what? Be a superhero?” “Well, someone’s gotta,” Tony explained like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Someone has to?” Nat questioned. “He can’t go around swinging off rooftops and beating up bad guys without any training. Or backup.” “Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t your idiot ass do that?” Sam questioned. “I was not a kid. And I had money, friends, people,” Tony wildly gesticulated. “I am beyond confused,” Nat laughed. “Same train as Romanoff,” Clint agreed. “Guys, this is not that hard. Come on. Let’s take this scenario. He ends up meeting some guys, and, instead of, say, winning, he loses. And either he dies, or gets badly injured. Who does he have? No one? He bleeds out. He’s a kid for fuck sake.” “Cap’s been awfully quiet,” Clint pointed out. “What? I knew this was coming days ago,” Steve explained with a smile, “I know my man. He wasn't just gonna let this kid get himself into trouble if he could do anything about it. Plus, Tony doesn’t keep tabs, he violently invades lives.” Tony shot him a look. “With love, invades with lots and lots of love,” he quickly fixes, flashing his million dollar smile at his boy. Tony just rolled his eyes and focused on addressing the group, “Look, I know it’s a lot, but I think it’s just what I have to do. And I own the tower, so, my choice,” he said with a hint of banter in his voice. Tony headed towards the elevator. “Where the hell are you going?” Sam asked. “The spiderling’s.”

Tony left before he could hear any of the exasperated responses. It was a fair drive down to Queen’s where the boy lived. He parked outside the small building, and he then climbed the seven flights of stairs to the apartment. He knocked on the door and greeted, “Hello, I’m Tony, Tony Stark.” He smiled his media smile, extending a hand towards May. “I-I know. Mr. Stark, hello, w-what are you doing here?” “Well, your nephew Peter applied for the Steptember Grant, and well, he got it,” Tony said, thrusting all the enthusiasm he could muster. He maintained his fabricated nonchalant, disregarding manner in most places. “Wow this is, this is incredible! Peter will be home any minute now. Come in, come in. Can I get you a drink?”

He was back at the tower, recapping his meeting with Peter to Cap. “-can you believe no one knows? Well, now it's knew. No one knew this kid was swinging around. And he got these powers with no one to help him through it, and god, it must have been awful. But, he’s good, Cap, he’s so good. He feels the need to help people, beyond just guilt. He’s, he’s-” “Tones,” Steve said, kissing his cheek, “Take a deep breath.” To be fair to the man, he hadn’t slept for at least 36 hours. With all that coffee in his system he had the right to be a bit uncomposed. The two were sitting at the breakfast bar, well Tony was sitting and Steve was behind it, cooking some eggs for the younger man. “I’m just glad I found him before he killed himself trying to save the world.” “Me too. How long has it been since you’ve slept?” “J?” “Sir, it has been 36 hours.“ “Tonyyyy,” Steve said, clearly disappointed. “Steveeee.” “I’m forcing you to bed.” “I have work to do. Plus it’s only eight o’clock.” “Eat then sleep, honey,” Steve said in that voice that you just didn’t ignore.

C2

At first the “Stark Internship” started as Tony upgrading Peter’s suit, monitoring his patrols, and teaching how to fight. Well, Natasha taught him how to fight. After she offered, Tony was in no place to deny. It was overwhelming to Peter. He was being taught about tech with Tony Stark and being taught how to fight from the black widow.

For the first couple weeks, he was a nervous wreck in the tower. He’d hardly speak to anyone and only do and touch what he was told to. He’d change, head straight to the gym, and then Natasha would train him. At first, the training was silent, other than Nat’s coaching. Then, slowly, the two began talking. It started with Nat asking how he first got his power, then it moved to her first missions, and then suddenly Nat knew a lot about Peter. And Peter was one of the few people in the world who knew a lot about Natasha. “-so what, you fought alien robots sent by Thor’s brother?” “Yeah, that's about right. I had to get up to one of the buildings, so, with Cap’s shield as my trampoline, I launched myself onto one of their flying machines. Pretty fun time up there.” “Holy shit, that’s incredible. How’d you stop them?” Peter knew how the battle had gone down, afterall he’d been in New York during the attack, but it was something else hearing it from an actual Avenger. “Well, it was quite complicated. The scientist-” Nat reminded him to keep his wrist straight. He made the fix, and went back to punching the bag. She launched back into the tale,”The scientist, remember him, who Loki’d controlled woke up mid battle. He’d installed a death switch for the portal, but to access it we needed the scepter. But, the thing is, the government basically sent a nuke toward New York in an effort to contain the aliens, so Tony grabbed the nuke and aimed from inside of the portal and threw it at their main spacecraft. This turned off all of the alien tech. He was a he-” “Hey Kid, Nat. Please don’t tell me you're telling the New York story,” Tony said from the entrance. “Hi Mr. Stark.” Nat rolled her eyes, “I am telling the New York story. You were a he-” “Don’t say it. You almost done?” “I’ll call it. Good job today kid.” “Thanks.”

Similar to the gym, he’d become far more comfortable around Tony and in his lab. At first he’d sit silently, doing his work. Then he got used to Tony’s eccentric tendencies, he memorized the layout and where everything was, and he’d also been unofficially given a workspace. It became easier and easier to feel comfortable. The late night coffee and deep chats were simply a bonus. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, it felt like he had a father figure. It was nice.

One day, Tony was vibin’ to ACDC and chatting with Steve whilst working on Mock 50 of his new suit design when Peter showed up. Steve being in the lab was something Peter had also become accustomed to. “Jarvis, please get some good music on in here. Queen perhaps?” Peter requested. He did it to annoy Mr. Stark, and it did just that. “Hey kid,” Cap said. “Don’t “hey kid” him,” Mr. Stark said, faking anger, “Did you just insult my music? How dare you? I am revoking all Jarvis privileges.” Peter laughed alongside Cap. “Sir, you can’t do that. I quite like the kid, and the innovations he is creating require my attention.” “Why did I program you to have a goddamn personality?” Tony said, focusing back to his work, “And Jarvis, put the quality music back now.” “Anway, how was school?” Steve asked. “Good, yeah. The same really. We had another one of your “fitness” videos for class today. Real good,” Peter joked. “Oh god, please don’t tell me they really use those.” “They really use those,” Peter smiled, “I’m going for a shower. See you in a flash.” “Wrong superhero, kid,” Mr. Stark called. “Idiot,” Peter heard Cap mutter into the top of Mr. Stark’s head.

Upon returning, he noticed the absence of the team leader. “Where did Cap go?” “Actual work or something stupid like that.” Peter just smiled as he settled down at his workstation. He wanted to try out some new formulas for his web fluid. He’d had an idea in spanish class, and scribbled it down in his notebook. He fished for it in his backpack.

It was so easy. Too easy. And so so comfortable.

C3

“Come on, I’ve got something to show you.”

Peter had just finished sparring with Nat, and Tony, unusually, came up to the gym to “collect” him. He hadn’t done that for months. Mainly because Peter stopped coming straight down to Tony’s lab. Instead, he went to the kitchen and, mainly because Steve forced him, ate some food. He usually ended up in a random chat with Sam or Bucky. Occasionally he would catch Banner, and he’d end up in a different laboratory. He was always happy to learn about what the incredible doctor was up to. Sometimes, he was even able to provide a suggestion or two. Bruce always looked impressed by the boy. It made Peter smile.

Then he would actually make his way down to the lab, but not before trying to find Hawkeye. He'd wanted to learn some tricks with the bow and arrow. Somehow, Clint would be dragged into teaching Peter how to fire a bow once a week. At least. Clint pretended he minded through teasing and jokes, but realistically he loved hearing about the kid’s week. He’d always been good with kids. It became a running joke that Clint would let Peter know about all the tech upgrades he wanted, and then Peter’d report them to Tony. Most of the time Tony replied with something snarky like, “Tell the idiot he shouldn’t have picked a dumbass weapon like a bow and arrow,” or “do it yourself if you care that much.”

The Avengers Tower had become home just as much as his apartment in Queens was, and it was clear that Tony knew that. Hence the, “Come on, I’ve got something to show you.” He took the little Avenger to the elevator, hitting floor 80. He was a little confused given that floors 75-90 were all bedroom floors for the avengers or just spare bedrooms. “Mr. Stark-” “You’ll see, kid.” In reality, Tony was nervous. He and Steve decided a while back that Peter deserved his own space in the tower, but he had been scared that Peter wouldn’t like it. That he picked the wrong colours, or mattress, or well, anything.

The doors opened and there were two doors facing one another. Tony opened one of them with a key he pulled out of his black suit. The door opened and he was met by a beautiful and modern room. It had a huge bed and tv. There was a desk equipped with the latest stark Holographic technology. In the corner was a suit, specifically a spider suit. That is when it clicked. “Mr. Stark, is, is this all mine?” “Yeah kid, sorry if you don’t like anything. Cap and I did the best we could knowing what you like. And ye-” Peter cut him off with a hug, “thank you.” “Anything for you, kid. Just say the word. Want a tour?” Peter eagerly nodded. “Alright so that’s the bed, obviously. No more sleeping in the guest rooms or that couch in the worksho-” “You sleep ther-” “Don’t say that I sleep there, I am no role model for sleep schedules.” Peter just smiled. “This is a little workshop area I mocked up. You can’t really tinker up here, but do all the designing you want,” he pulled up the most recent project Peter was working on, “Then, just through there is the bathroom, a little lounge area over there and yeah, that’s all. Oh, there’s two mini fridges by the lounge area.” Just as Tony finished his explanation, Steve showed up. “Tones, you showed it to him without me,” Cap complained. “Sorry, babes, you took too long.” he turned around and placed a little kiss on his lips. “It’s fine. How do you like it Pete?” “It’s, it’s-” Peter couldn’t think of any words to describe how incredible it was to have a room at the Avengers Tower, but more importantly how incredible it was to have so many people looking out for him. Before he had just one, Aunt May. She is amazing, but he’d always longed for just a little more. Then, with the Avengers, he’d been given a lot more. They became his family. And now his home. “Thank you,” was all Peter could muster before falling onto the floor.

The two of them, now in each other's arms, just looked down fondly at the boy. “We did good,” Cap whispered. “We did good,” Tony agreed. They did good with more than just the room.

#avengers fanfic #basically peter being unofficially adopted by the avengers lol #irondad #peter parker #tony stark #stevetony #steve rogers #natasha romanoff #fanfiction #avengers #the avenger #found family

[echo-three-one]

Chapter 35

No. As much as I want to, this is not a Taylor Swift reference.

THE ROAD SO FAR

Red

John 'Soap' MacTavish

Site Hotel Bravo, Afghanistan

The plan was simple, infiltrate the area, locate for intel regarding Nero and leave. The darkness of the cave was at their advantage, but despite all that, the area they were situated in was far too crowded.

Green laser pointers scattered everywhere, they danced like party strobes inside the dimly lit tunnel on the way deeper into the base. Loud chatter could be heard as they discussed their tell tales on the different kinds of women they met.

France crouched by Soap's side and whispered.

"John, we lost Ghost. He said he was going to cover our six. Now he's gone." For a second, Soap looked worried but then again, Ghost was capable of handling his business on his own.

“We’ll just rendezvous with him later. For now, we need to focus on our main objective.” He muttered, advancing stealthily as the patrol passed through them. Francine took a while to check on her corners and she advanced farther than Soap, using her adept indoor combat skills into play.

Soap just watched her, marvelling at her swift movement. This was her forte, the initial thing that stunned him back on the O-course. He couldn't help but drop his jaw as her movements left him awestruck.

"Clear." She muttered, causing the Scotsman to shake back to reality as he took one last glance at their six and moved forward.

"This place has a lot of rooms. Should we split up and scan one by one?" Soap asked, looking at Francine. The interaction was serious but they could feel sparks in the air. It was inevitable, but they both dismissed these lingering feelings and proceeded to the mission.

"Okay… but stay on the line. I don't want to lose you again." France muttered shyly as she moved left.

"Aye. Will do." Soap chuckled and moved left.

"Sheesh. Get a room you two… Captain, can they move on a different line?" Gary interrupted over comms. Price just chuckled.

"Glad to hear you're nearby, Roach." Soap replied, entering one of the many rooms.

Leaning close to the wall, he carefully scanned the documents lying on the desk. They consisted of academic research regarding EMP effects on the battlefield and how to repel it's effects.

"No sign of Nero here but a lot about their big project." Soap muttered.

"Copy. I also have the same results. It's just aerodynamic manuals and books about flight." France said on the other line, her tone sounded curious and amused.

"Team, brace yourselves. I'm bringing the party in full swing. Gary! Hit the lever!" Price advised as the alarms started blaring, bringing the whole facility on high alert.

"Price! What was that for?!" Soap asked, covering behind the room.

"Sorry lad, desperate times call for desperate measures, we have to stop the nuke." Price stated and his line cut off, with gunfire being the last thing they heard on their end.

"Price? Alex? Roach? Ghost? Does anyone copy?!" Soap roared over comms. 

"Soap…" a faint British gasp from comms.

"Ghost is that you?! Where are you?!" Soap sounded panicked, lowering his voice after he heard footprints stomped outside his room.

"I'm on the lower floor. Shit… Alexandra… she's here…" Ghost groaned, Soap could hear the pained expression on his voice.

"We're on our way! Hang tight! Don't you dare die on us!" Soap said as he kicked the door open, shooting enemies that were already cornering France.

“I won’t, but make it fast. hehe… I should've just watched your six…” Ghost’s low tone continued over the comms as Soap and France hid by the doors and fired whenever they could. Enemy waves seemed to go on forever and the longer they got stuck there, the longer they got worried about Ghost.

Out of desperation, the duo began cooking grenades, tossing them on spots where enemies gathered, on corners where they hid and on every entryway where swarms would appear.

“Shit. That was my last one.” he muttered as he felt his body lighten. They've consumed most of their ammunition in a single room.

“I guess that was the last of them.” France sighed, wiping sweat off her forehead. 

“Let’s go get Ghost.” Soap ordered and they both made their way down the stairs. The two had no idea about the map layout, but the urgency of the situation led them to where Ghost was. The room was dimly lit, sparks of faulty electronics flew from the roof and the spinning red signal light was the only bright light illuminating the area.

Upon seeing his teammate, Soap quickly stepped forward but paused as soon as Ghost warned him.

“No! There are traps. One got me.” he heaved, slowly raising his head. Maxine immediately inspected the door and disarmed the set trip wire, as they quickly moved by Ghost’s side.

“Ghost, you're going to be okay.” Soap assured, assisting France in applying first aid on his wound. It was a huge burn by the stomach, the explosion deeply injured his skin causing him to bleed out. Crimson red blood glinted off the surface as the red signal momentarily illuminated the floor.

“I used to be careful you know… But as soon as I saw her, I lost all my senses. I had to break her free from that prison.” He breathed, almost struggling, grunting as France applied pressure to the wound.

Soap quickly got up and shot the lock with his pistol, kicking the door open and approached the unconscious redhead lying on the floor. She had a notable few bruises and scars here and there, signs of torture. Soap attempted to wake her up but she didn’t move, he quickly pressed his hands on her neck until he felt a faint pulse. 

“She’s alive.” Soap declared, turning to Ghost and Francine. 

“Haah- Thank God she’s fine.” he groaned as Francine shushed her as he attempted to get up.

“It’d be better if you don’t force yourself for a while.” She suggested.

“We’ll get you two out of here.” Francine said, Ghost just chuckled, coughing in the process.

“Don’t do that!” She scolded. The ground suddenly shuddered causing them to lose balance.

“This is bad. We can’t stay here any longer!” Soap yelled, carrying Alexandra on one shoulder while assisting France on Ghost on his other shoulder.

“Price! We got Alexandra and Ghost and they're injured! Where’s Nikolai?” Soap yelled over comms.

“He won’t be here until after two hours. Shepherd’s making his escape using the river.

Roach! Go grab that boat, we won’t let him get away!” Price’s final transmission was relayed to their ears as the connection turned blank.

He had no idea where Alex and Jack are, but as long as the Nuke hasn’t launched yet, they still have time.

Halfway through the prison cells, Soap and the rest of the team heard footsteps echo from nearby.

“You have got to be bloody kidding me!” he cursed as they picked up the pace and escaped the area.

They hid themselves in the room with the aviation books, barricaded the two unconscious allies while France continued to tend to Ghost’s wound.

“Haaah- You’re getting nowhere with me like this. Just leave us. Like Romeo and Juliet.” Ghost whispered, his tone was serious and both France and Soap didn’t like it.

“No.” France spat as he unslung her rifle and tossed it to Soap, along with her ammo.

“I’m not going to leave anyone behind. Not again.” She declared, eyeing at Soap, someone she once lost on a mission. This prompted Soap to move forward and take a peek outside.

“It’s clear.” he announced, the ground rumbled once more. He went back to assist France, Ghost tugged his rifle.

“I think I can still shoot.” he mutters as Soap gave him the gun without any arguments. And so they moved to the docks, it was going to be a long walk from their location, but they did it anyway. Their formation occupied the whole width of the hallway, meaning any bullet flying toward them would surely hit its mark.

Despite the huge flaw, Ghost managed to make it easier for the group to move forward, despite the room being dark and blinking red, and the fact that Ghost was still injured and continuously losing a lot of blood, he still could target and shoot down enemies.

"Nice shot." Soap praised as they carefully navigated to the outer part of the cave, the raging river coursing below them.

Soap could feel another tug on his rifle as Alexandra started to move.

"Gun. I'll cover your six." She whispered faintly as Soap did his best to give her his gun.

They became a human tank of sorts. With Soap and France as the tires, capable of carrying and navigating their descent to the river, while Alexandra and Ghost were the weapons, shooting incoming hostiles that dared to block their way.

From the distance, Soap and France could see speedboats coursing through the river, following a huge helicopter not too far ahead of them. The trail they left behind was utter chaos. The ground shook as they almost lost their balance, urging them to descend quickly.

Under normal circumstances, Soap would've felt pain, but his adrenaline rush compensated through, making him finish the last step and board on the remaining boat.

The engine hummed as Soap navigated through the river, they carefully followed the path of destruction caused by the two.

Broken speed boats were everywhere, unconscious or dead bodies floated by the water as the grand chase happened. Soap wondered if Price and Roach caught up with Shepherd.

"All these for info on Nero." France frowned, her hands tended to both Ghost and Alexandra.

"There's still a nuke out there. I wonder how Jack and Alex are holding up." Soap glanced at France and muttered. Her short hair blew as she assisted the two, Soap envisioned her as a nurse for a short while, then shook it off immediately after a bump on the river.

"John! Look ahead." France warned as John turned. The place was hugely filled with water and destruction was still everywhere. He coursed the safe path without all the debris and the wreckage.

"What happened here…" Alexandra groaned.

From a distance, the ground shook and smoke bellowed just by the horizon ahead.

"There's a…" Francine whispered.

"Shit! We're headed to a  waterfall!" Soap roared and gripped the controls to shore, luckily they saw it quickly as they settled on the dusty riverbank as the sand blew against the team.

"This is dangerous. Sand might infect their open wounds." Francine said, concerned about the situation of the two injured. 

"I'll help you seek shelter then I'll check on Price." He said, lifting Alexandra and assisting France on carrying Ghost.

They soon found a small cavern like structure that would provide shade from both sun and dust that masked the area. Soap took his rifle from Alexandra, slung it on his body and left.

"John. Be careful." Francine said, her eyes looked very concerned and Soap would do just about anything to protect that kind of look. He didn't want to disappoint.

"I always am." He smiled and turned back, his head hitting the roof of the cave.

"Ack!" he muttered and left, causing France to chuckle. 

A quick peek of the waterfall and Soap saw the plane crash which bellowed black smoke. The rest of the ground was unclear as the sandstorm covered most of the area. There were no signs of movement and Soap carefully crossed the mountain path downward to the crash site. Shepherd didn't make it out. This is the end of the line for him.

Next Chapter : The TEN Kilometer River

Notification Squad my Beloved

@bumblingbee1 @smokeywhalee @samatedeansbroccoli @ricinbach @whimsywispsblog @enderio

#horrayfic #john soap mactavish #alex echo 3 1 #codmw #john price #gary roach sanderson #simon ghost riley #whateverittakes #cod

[on-a-lucky-tide]

Sweet True Lies: Part 1

A/N: Geralt’s a special agent for MI6 and Jaskier’s his analyst. They’re on a mission to secure nuclear launch codes for a stray nuke cooked up by a private company who, until recently, only sent electric cars into space. Geralt and Jaskier are the best in the business, but Geralt has a weakness for tall, dark and handsome that tends to get him into trouble at the worst times. Or is it the best?

Warnings: genre typical violence; eventual smut. Pairings: Eskel/Geralt; Yennefer & Geralt; Geralt & Jaskier.

(Duplicated from AO3).

“I’m not sure you quite understand. She said I was needy—take the first left, I’ve turned the security cameras off—and then , in the same breath , said I didn’t pay enough attention to her.”

“Mmhm,” Geralt pauses, his back pressed to the wall as he glanced around the corner.

“You know, I forgot the three-month anniversary. Who counts their anniversaries in months, anyway? Oh, Geralt, watch your twelve, mobile patrol; pistol and potential melee weapon.”

Geralt stops at the end of the corridor and waits for the heavy, booted footsteps to reach him before he strikes. One hand secures around the guard’s mouth and nose, while the other arm wraps tightly around his chest and biceps. The veins bulge in Geralt’s neck as he maintains the hold until his victim falls limp, but Jaskier continues to witter away in his ear.

“She pulled out the big guns though. Said her mother never liked me, which was a blatant lie. When I went over for fajita night I got seconds and she pinched my cheek. The woman was a saint.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt breathes, drawing in deep breaths after his brief struggle. “Need somewhere to hide the body.”

“Dead or unconscious?”

“Unconscious,” Geralt lowers the body to the ground to conserve his strength and free up his arms in case another guard happens to join him. “He’ll be out long enough for me to collect the codes and get out of here.”

“There’s a cleaning cupboard down the hall, on the right.” Geralt can hear the tap of keys as Jaskier reviews the maps and checks the rest of the security patrols. “You’ve got six minutes to hide him and get to the stairwell before two more are on you. They’re circulating anti-clockwise, will come from your six.”

Geralt grabs the limp man from the floor and hoists him over his shoulders, before walking quickly down the empty corridor. The cupboard’s exactly where Jaskier said it would be, and Geralt wastes no time in binding the guard up with a ream of electrical wire he finds stashed under a metal unit. There was never any question, really. Jaskier’s the best analyst in the business—attentive, sharp and multi-talented—but other operatives just can’t stand his incessant chatter. Sometimes he sings too. Not generally a problem unless Geralt’s face is pressed into the crotch of a large Russian henchman with severe body odour, or he’s clinging to the edge of a building with a crazed scientist stamping on his fingers; Jaskier crooning ‘My Heart Will Go On’ with added vibrato added a certain level of stress to the whole affair.

“Okay, Geralt,” Jaskier chirps. “Good job. Patrol’s two minutes away. Head east down the corridor, turn right twice, keep to the left side of the wall, there’s a camera that I can’t get to but it’s mostly pointing into a staffroom.”

Geralt glances up at the silver placard on the white-washed wall—Bureau 20-30—they need Bureau 30, which means travelling to the very end of the building with its huge wall of glass windows. Geralt’s escape is down a fire escape into a back alley. Jaskier’s been keeping an eye on it the whole time; intelligence suggested it was unsupervised, but you could never be too careful. Even if it wasn’t occupied by anyone associated with the company, Paris was notorious for young, adventurous lovers looking for a quiet nook to explore their passions. A witness was a witness.

There are no more patrols as Geralt crosses from wall to wall, eyes searching for blinking cameras to ensure none have escaped Jaskier’s net. The security men downstairs are currently watching a carefully constructed repeat of their men patrolling empty corridors. Jaskier studied the routines and patterns of the security staff for a whole week to make sure it was infallible.

He finds the office and crouches down by the lock, withdrawing the folded picking kit from his back pocket. For a multibillion-dollar corporation, they really did have some antiquated ways of keeping their most prized possessions safe. Just proved that those that worked with computers trusted them the least; Jaskier told Geralt as such before he hopped onto the plane to get here. Just as he pulls the first bobby-pin from its pouch, Geralt spots the tiny marks around the lock. He reaches out with gloved fingers and runs his fingertip over the scratches. An untrained eye would’ve missed them. “Jaskier, we have a problem,” he breathes.

“What? Tell me.”

“Someone’s already been here.”

“Shit,” Jaskier barks and begins tapping furiously at his computer, his blue eyes probably flicking from screen to screen in search of evidence of their culprit. He swears again when his intelligence fails to reveal anything, and there are no cameras for him to peer into the room. “I can’t get in. You’re going in blind, Geralt.”

“Roger that.” He stands slowly and withdraws the pistol from beneath his arm. It takes him a moment to twist the silencer into place before he presses down on the door handle. It creaks open on poorly fitted hinges and Geralt grimaces at the noise. No reaction from inside. The hallway remains blessedly clear too. With a final breath, Geralt slips into the darkened room and lifts the pistol to eye level.  

His eyes adjust quickly as he closes the door behind him. It’s a clear, warm summer’s evening and ample moonlight spills through the wall of glass windows. The furniture is sparse but casts long shadows, and Geralt holds his breath as he surveys the room. There’s movement by the desk and he squeezes off two rounds; he learned a long time ago to shoot first and ask questions later, and had the scars to remind him.

“Shit, Geralt,” says a familiar voice. “It’s me. Put that fucking weapon down before you hurt yourself.” It belonged to a woman, with bright eyes the colour of violet due to the special contacts she wore to provide a live feed to her handler, and long, raven hair currently wound tightly into a bun behind her head.

“Yen?” Geralt whispers, gun still braced, because he has history with the CIA that hasn’t always ended in his favour. “This isn’t a joint operation. What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Could ask the same thing,” she growls, shifting her hands slowly back to the keyboard she’d been hunched over when the door handle dipped. “We told MI6 to sit this one out. You’re too heavy handed.”

“I’m heavy handed?” Geralt hisses. “You might as well have taken a hatchet to that door.”

“I was in a rush,” she whispers, now hunched fully over the computer; there’s a memory stick poking out the side. She’s downloading the codes. “Someone panicked when she couldn’t get into the security feeds.” Geralt could almost see Triss’ meek expression as she sat behind her computer in Washington; she’s a nice girl, but still young and slightly flappable. Both Yen and Geralt have a history of picking up the stray and unwanted within their respective organisations.

“What’s your escape route?” Geralt glances over his shoulder, ears straining for the sound of footfalls in the hallway.

“Same as you probably,” she sighs. “Down the fire escape. Now, if you’re quiet, I may just share a copy of the codes with you. You know, as an apology for Belarus.”

Geralt scowls. “Take more than nuclear launch codes to make up for that clusterfuck.”

“Alright, how about nuclear codes and a glass of whiskey in your hotel bar?”

“Hm,” Geralt considers with a frown. “If it’s from cask two hundred and sixty-three.”

“Ha ha.” Yen rolls her eyes as she watches the percentage on the loading screen slowly begin to creep up.

“Sorry to interrupt this lovely reunion,” Jaskier says urgently down the earpiece. “But you have some company, and it’s not the good kind.”

“What do you mean not the good kind?” Geralt pushes two fingers into his ear and shifts away from the door.

“As in, I’ve got no trace of who the fuck he is.” There’s more furious key tapping. “Can’t get a face on him either. It’s completely covered. Even the eyes. He’s got some kind of optics in place, I can’t—you need to get out of there. He’s definitely not friendly, and he’s packing some serious heat.”

From Yen’s change in posture, Triss has clearly cottoned on to their new arrival too. She cusses at the computer impatiently, before replying to the frantic voice in her own earpiece. “Give me a countdown.” She stares intently at the screen as if the power of her ire could make the internal hardware work any faster. Time feels like it stands still. The two operatives hold their breath as their analysts mark the progress of this mystery player number three with increasingly urgent whispers.

Geralt can feel his heart pounding in his chest, the adrenalin pulsing through his body, urging his limbs into action as imminent danger closed in. Finally, after what felt like several lifetimes, Yennefer snatches the memory stick from the computer and booted everything down. “Jaskier, we’re ready.”

“Right, you’re going to need to make a run for it,” Jaskier replies, his voice tight. “He’s almost at the corner.”

“Yen.”

“With you,” she slips the memory stick inside her vest, grabs her own weapon from the desk, and they count down from three before leaving the office. As Jaskier predicted, their visitor rounds the corner just as the door clicks shut behind him. The exchange of looks is silent. They see the flash of a weapon and both let off a single warning shot before breaking into a sprint towards the fire escape. Combat in a building is never a good idea. Noise, chaos, property damage . Not to mention the fact that Jaskier’s carefully recorded security loop didn’t cover the listening ears of regular patrols. It’d be Belarus all over again.

As Yen and Geralt run down the corridor, Player Three breaks into a sprint in their wake. He doesn’t seem to care about the security cameras—or perhaps knows they’re not operational—because he makes no effort at discretion. His booted feet squeak on the immaculately scrubbed floor tiles and Geralt risks a glance over his shoulder as they reach the window. He’s huge. Easily over six foot, with broad shoulders and arms that could crush Geralt with a single squeeze if they got hold of him. Tactical retreat is definitely preferable to hand-to-hand, and he urges his compatriot to move a little faster. “Ladies first,” he growls as Yen throws herself at the latched window.

They break out into the warm, midsummer evening and begin dropping down the metal stairs towards the alleyway. Player Three appears at the window and, now that he’s out in the open, lets off a spray of gunfire in their direction. The bullets ricochet off the metal barriers and Geralt ducks back against the wall to return some covering fire while Yen drops down into an industrial bin full of black bags. Once she’s secure, she turns to buy Geralt enough time to join her. As Geralt reaches the ground, she breaks into a sprint towards the mouth of the alleyway. Their hunter wastes no time in swinging down after them; his size belies his agility and he drops down on the outside of the balconies, big hands grasping the outside of the railings as he falls four feet at a time.

“Jaskier, we need wheels with some power,” Geralt pants, falling into step at Yen’s side.

“On it. There’s a Tesla Model 3 just across the road, give me a moment.” Tap tap went the keys. They reach the car—a non-descript silver Tesla with tinted windows—and Yen shoves him away from the driver’s door. He braces against the passenger side and lets off several more warning shots as Ironman makes it out into the street. They don’t slow him much and soon he’s sprinting down the pavement, dipping behind parked cars and a newspaper kiosk as Geralt tries to get a clear shot. Thankfully, the street’s deserted. It’s two o’clock in the morning.

“Jaskier, hurry the fuck up,” Yen snarls across the roof of the car.

“Is she giving me orders?” Jaskier asks, shrill. “There, done. Thank you for your services, China.”

“When I get home, you and I need to talk about your Discord friends,” Geralt says as he ducks into the passenger seat and Yen revs the engine.

“Yes, well—bloody hell, who is this guy? He’s like Robocop and the Terminator had a baby.” Because Jaskier has access to the CCTV outside in the street and Robocop just smashed through the car window of a Jaguar parked up across the street. Just as Yen floors the accelerator and pulls out from the parking spot.

“Get rid of him,” she grates, and Geralt winds down the window with his pistol in his hands. As she twists and turns down the narrow Parisian streets, Geralt braces his hip against the car door and takes several shots at the car in their wake. Two smash through the windscreen on the driver’s side, but they miss by a few inches and Geralt can’t get another clear shot on target as Yen swerves around a corner. He’s forced to duck back inside as a well-aimed shot glances off the roof, and then punches through the back window.

“Tyres, Geralt! Or the engine,” Yen yells as she yanks the wheel to the side. They’re heading towards more crowded streets and a car chase with added gunfire isn’t something that the CIA or MI6 want appearing on the French evening news. Geralt drops his aim and takes out the driver’s side tyre. The vehicle swerves, bare metal sending sparks flying as exploded rubber falls free. It catches on the edge of the pavement and flips over.

“Done.”

“We need to lay low for a while. Make sure our Robocop didn’t survive that crash. If there are two copies of the codes out here and he’s still alive, then there’s twice as much chance whoever the third party is will get hold of them. I’ll meet you at the Royal Monceau in two days.”

“Uh, Geralt, I don’t think M will pass the claims forms on that—can she choose something a bit more downmarket? Maybe the, uh… I dunno, the Holiday Inn?”

Geralt grimaces, and Yen rolls her eyes. “He’s just suggested the Holiday Inn, hasn’t he?”

“I’ll meet you at the Monceau,” Geralt replies, tapping his ear piece so that Jaskier hears the ‘ thump thump’ ; their agreed signal for ‘stop talking, I’m not listening’. “Are you going to stand me up again?”

She rolls her eyes. “You were late, 007; I didn’t stand you up. ”

“Hm,” Geralt hums. They drive for twenty minutes in silence and she drops him off outside the non-descript hotel he’d been staying at. He watches the Tesla disappear around a bend, and then heads in for a well-earned shower.

If Geralt had looked back for even a second, he would’ve seen their third-party crawl from the wreckage of his car; not even Jaskier, who’d been too intent on following the progress of the Tesla and checking both official and unofficial channels for intel, noticed. As he panted, his hazel eyes memorised the plate with only a passing glance, and then he disappeared from the street like a ghost in the night.

Part 2; Part 3.

#rawrkinwrites #Spy AU #Eskel #Geralt #Jaskier #Yennefer #Modern Era #Geralt 007 Rivia #Yennefer & Geralt #Jaskier & Geralt #Eskel/Geralt #Eskralt #Geraskel

[abused-sides]

First of all, love your writing 💞 Second of all, if you are still taking asks (I saw a post where you mentioned it but idk), can you please write about virgil (I'm sorry he is just,,, so easy to project onto) being abused at home and the other sides find out about and confront him or something? Thanks 💕

Always taking asks and prompts <3 And lmao I literally named myself after Virgil, I’ll never complain about writing him and I’ll always understand being able to project the most onto him 

I hope you don’t mind me doing the high school au! If you’d prefer a different setting, feel free to send another ask <3 

Also thank you! You’re really sweet <3 

Trigger warning: This au follows Virgil dealing with parental abuse. 

More tws for: Scratches, bruises, underage drinking, yelling, passive aggression, manipulation from unsympathetic character

Logan: 

It was a few months since Logan and Virgil finished their project together. Virgil expected to be slowly phased out of the group since he was no longer useful, but they didn’t seem to have those intentions. In fact, he was invited around more than ever, which... Surprised him, to say the least. 

He stared at the sky as they walked. The sun was just barely starting towards the horizon, and a flock of birds flew overhead. His feet urged him to break off from Logan, to head towards his own home, but he ignored it. Roman and Remus had invited everyone over after school. Had invited him over. 

“Virgil?”

He brought his gaze to Logan, looking at him questioningly. 

“Isn’t it a little hot?” He nodded to Virgil’s thick hoodie. “I know some of the classrooms can be cold, but you’re sweating. I wouldn’t want you to overheat- It’s still a long walk.” 

His face heated up and he looked away. “It’s not too bad,” he mumbled. 

His wrist still ached from his mom’s hand clamped down as she dragged down the stairs the night before. It had been popping all day, and he knew the bruise had darkened over time. 

Logan frowned deeply. “I don’t want to press, but... It’s really not safe.” 

Virgil hesitated. Logan would be suspicious anyway if he didn’t, right? Why overheat at the same time? 

He kept his gaze stubbornly forward as he shrugged his jacket off and threw it over his arm. Logan’s eyes trailed down the claw marks on his arm, to the purple and black ring around his wrist. 

He raised an eyebrow. “Do you have a cat?” 

“No. Why?”

Why didn’t you lie? 

“It doesn’t look like those have been treated. When we get to the brothers’, do you mind?” 

Butterflies fluttered in his stomach. “I don’t mind.” 

Roman: 

Patton fussed over Virgil’s arm when they got to the house, but Logan brushed him away and got Virgil fixed up. Afterwards, Virgil put his jacket back on, and it wasn’t mentioned again. 

Close to two a.m., Remus staggered to his feet and flicked the t.v off. “Alright, everyone staying the night, come with me, the rest of you fuck off.” 

Roman huffed. “Just because you got yourself drunk and can’t stay awake anymore doesn’t mean the rest of us need to crash early.” 

Remus booped Roman’s nose. “You’d regret waking me up.” 

He grinned. “If you pass out, I will be drawing on you. I’ve got the Sharpies ready.” 

Janus rolled his eyes. “You will not, because if you wake me up-”

Roman smiled. “I’ll stay away.” 

Remus pointed at Janus. “Aha! So you will be staying with me!” 

He leaned in, but Janus covered Remus’ mouth. “Brush your teeth first.” 

“I think I’m going to head out,” Patton giggled. “You know how my parents are.”

“Yeah, I have two tests tomorrow.” Logan downed the rest of his hard lemonade and tossed it in the trash. “Pat, I can walk you home.” 

Remus fell into Janus’ lap and whistled. He grunted as Janus shoved him off. 

“Virgil?” Roman looked to him. “Staying or going?” 

He swallowed. “Uh, I can- I can stay, if that’s alright.” 

Roman stood and shooed Janus off the couch. “You can sleep out here, if you want. Assuming Janus has made up his mind.” 

Janus pointed at Roman with his free hand as Remus led him into his room. “Keep your fucking Sharpies to yourself.”

“Goodnight, guys!” Patton called as he followed Logan up the basement stairs. 

“The couch shouldn’t be too uncomfortable, but if you need anything, you remember where my room is, right? Upstairs, it’s the one closest to the kitchen.” 

Virgil nodded. “I remember.” 

“Cool. Night, Virgil.”

“Night.” 

Roman turned off the basement light as he left, swallowing Virgil in darkness. He settled back, pulled the blankets to his chin, and stared at the ceiling. 

There were cracks in the ceiling. Muffled giggling floated through Remus’ closed door, the intro to one of the Saw movies playing quietly. His eyes watered, his chest tight. 

What would his parents say when he got back? When would Virgil go home? He jumped at any chance the others gave him to stay the night. Sometimes he went weeks without going home. Sometimes his parents didn’t care, gave him a grunt of a greeting and told him of the leftovers in the fridge. Sometimes they yelled. Sometimes Virgil walked away with more bruises. He’d never be able to predict them. 

He woke with a start, eyes wide. He blinked frantically as the room came back into focus. He fumbled for his phone and squinted at the bright light. 

4:09 a.m. 

He sighed and flopped back. Another movie played in Remus’ room, but their giggling and talking had stopped. 

Exhaustion pulled Virgil’s eyes shut. He fell halfway into sleep before launching upright, scrambling to turn on his phone’s flashlight. 

He tried several more times falling asleep, even a few with his flashlight still on, but each time he got close, his body insisted he wasn’t safe. He had resigned himself to staying that way through the night when the basement door opened, the light flicked on, and Roman came downstairs with his phone and a worried frown. 

“Virgil?” 

His heart hammered. “Shit, did I wake you up? I’m sorry-”

Roman shook his head and sat on the couch as Virgil folded his legs close. “No, I was awake. Remus texted me. What’s wrong, is the couch too uncomfortable?”

“No, I- It’s fine. I’m sorry, I...” He laughed a little, pushing his bangs back. “You didn’t need to come down here. I’m fine.” 

Roman stared at him as he thought, eyebrows pinched. After an agonizing minute, he said, “If you can’t fall asleep, you can come with me. I’m just watching YouTube.” 

He hesitated. “I don’t want to bother you.”

Roman shrugged. “I’m bored anyway.” He stood and gestured for Virgil to follow. “Come on.” 

Virgil scrambled to follow, his footsteps silent. Virgil understood why he didn’t originally invite anyone to crash with him-- His bed was tiny. Still, he patted the spot beside him and allowed Virgil to cram in next to him. 

He handed Virgil his T.V. remote. “You like those scary videos, right? The, uh... Like, the ‘real’ ones?” 

“Nuke’s Top 10,” Virgil mumbled, thumb hesitating over the buttons. “What do you want to watch?” 

“I’m good with whatever. All my usuals are boring right now.” 

Virgil’s brain moved sluggishly before he thought ‘fuck it’ and put on one of the newer videos, before settling into bed. Roman pressed in behind him and rested his chin on Virgil’s shoulder. 

Virgil fell asleep quickly. Roman’s warmth seeped into his back. He smelled like spices. 

He startled awake around 5am. 

“Virgil?” Roman grabbed his hips to keep him from falling off the bed, voice heavy with sleep. “Virgil, what’s wrong?” 

Virgil gripped Roman’s hands as he fought to catch his breath. “I’m fine,” he panted. “I’m sorry, go back to sleep.” 

“Nightmares?” Roman lazily ran a hand up and down Virgil’s arm as he settled down. “We didn’t have to put on those scary videos, you know.”

He shook his head. “That’s not why.” 

Roman was silent for a while, to the point Virgil thought he’d fallen back asleep. Then he asked, “Are you safe?” 

Virgil blinked. “What?” 

“Are you safe?” He squeezed Virgil’s arm, below the scratches. “We’re not going to get an announcement about you during homeroom later this year, right?” 

Virgil rolled his eyes and sighed. “Of course not,” he whispered. “I’m fine.” 

He paused. “Alright. My parents won’t ever care if you need to stay here for a while. Just so you know.” 

“I’m safe.” He pocketed that away for later. 

Patton: 

Patton gasped as Virgil walked into homeroom. He jumped out of his seat and ran over to take Virgil’s uninjured hand, leading him to their desks. 

“What happened?” He stared at Virgil’s cast in horror. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Virgil insisted. “It’s just a few fingers, they’ll heal.”

Patton grabbed his shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Virgil. What happened?” 

His eyes clouded with panic. He stumbled over his words for a minute before spitting out, “I- I accidentally shut them in the door, it’s fine.”

“Virgil... This isn’t like you. You’re not clumsy, you’re not...” He looked at Virgil with sad eyes. “Are you lying to me?” 

Virgil wet his lips. “No. It was just an accident. Please don’t make a big deal out of it? Please?” 

Patton rested a hand on the side of his face. Virgil leaned into his touch. “Sweetie, I... I need to make sure you’re okay. How do I know this isn’t just going to happen again?”

“It won’t,” he promised. “It won’t. I already fixed the problem, okay? It won’t happen again.” 

Patton hesitated. “Okay.” 

Remus and Janus: 

“This is a stupid idea,” Janus grumbled as Remus dragged him down the sidewalk. 

“Listen, everyone is freaking out, I think it’d calm them down to get some answers.” 

“It’s fucking cold,” he complained. 

Remus sighed and shrugged off his jacket. He held it out. “Better?”

Janus hid a smile as he pulled it on. “Yeah.” 

Feeling a little stupid, Janus followed Remus’ lead and crouched as they got to Virgil’s house. They pressed themselves against the wall under one of the big windows. 

“How long are we going to be doing this?” Janus whispered after a few minutes of nothing. 

Remus shrugged and pulled a book out of his backpack. Janus gave him a flat look. 

“You’re kidding.”

Remus raised an eyebrow. “What, you expected something to miraculously happen the second we arrived? We barge down the doors, carry Virgil out fireman style, and live happily ever after?” 

“Of course not,” he hissed, “but what about-”

Remus pressed a kiss to his mouth. “Please?” 

Janus’ face turned red. He wrapped the jacket tighter around him with a glare towards the road. “Fine.” 

They sat in silence for hours. Remus read his book and Janus curled into his side, largely getting in the way but stopping his complaining. 

“VIRGIL!” 

They jumped, Janus’ heart lodging itself in his throat. 

“VIRGIL, WHERE ARE YOU?!” 

“Follow me,” Remus whispered. 

Janus was too terrified to move, but he was more scared to be left alone, so he scrambled after as Remus circled to the back of the house. They situated themselves under the open kitchen window. 

“I’m here,” Virgil said breathlessly. “I’m here.” 

“Took you long enough,” a man sighed. “Why isn’t this emptied?”

A pause. 

“Sorry, I’ll do that now.” The dishwasher creaked open. 

“It should have been done hours ago.” The man’s voice was cheerful, upbeat. Janus’ skin crawled. “What happened to that?”

“It- It wasn’t done when I got home from school. I’m sorry, I forgot.” 

“You forgot.” The man chuckled. “And if we just forgot to make dinner for a few nights? To pay our rent a few months? Would that be okay?” 

Virgil didn’t answer. 

“Of course it wouldn’t!” The man snapped. “We all have shit to do, Virgil, and they have to get done.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Virgil’s voice was quiet, resigned. 

“I wouldn’t have to fucking remind you all the time if you knew. What do we have to do to get it through your head? Your mother and I, we work so hard, and you can’t even unload the fucking dishwasher?” 

“I’m sorry, I forgot.” Virgil’s voice came out thick, dishes clacking together quietly. “It won’t happen again, I promise.” 

“This house is a fucking mess. Looks like you forgot to sweep, too. Do I even want to look in the bathrooms? What have you been doing?” 

“I’m sorry, I was working on homework-”

“DON’T LIE TO ME!” 

Virgil sniffled. Remus gripped Janus’ hand hard enough to bruise. 

“I’m sorry, I’ll get it all done, I promise.” 

“Tonight,” the man snapped. “Before dinner, in fact.” 

Janus frowned deeply. It was already close to eight.

“Oh, I’m sorry, do you have a problem with that?”

“Wh- No, no, I-”

“You wanna make that face again? Like a little toddler? When are you going to grow up, Virgil?” 

Virgil started to answer, then cried out as something shattered. He gasped, grass crunching under a shoe. 

The man’s voice came out low, so close to the window it took everything Janus had not to sprint away. “Clean this up. Don’t get blood on the carpet. Do your chores, and go to bed. I don’t want to see you for the rest of the day.” 

Janus peeked up at Remus as footsteps stormed away. Remus’ vicious glare only hardened as Virgil’s soft sobs drifted out the window. 

xxx 

His friends were quiet. It put Virgil on edge. 

They were once again piled together in the brothers’ basement. Janus, instead of how he usually pretended to hate Remus- Something Virgil didn’t understand and didn’t think he ever would -sat curled up in Remus’ lap, ignoring the others stares as Remus ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed his back. Patton was more touchy with Virgil than usual, more gentle. Like Virgil was a shattered plate held together with tape. 

“Okay.” Roman shut off the T.V. “I can’t do this anymore. Virgil, we need to talk.” 

He bristled. They’re sick of you. He pulled his hoodie on and shoved his phone in his pocket. He nodded, ready to leave. 

“Remus and Janus overheard something,” Patton said, resting a hand on his knee. “You can’t lie to us and say they aren’t hurting you anymore.”

Virgil’s eyes widened. “Wh- What?” 

“Your dad,” Janus mumbled, “last night. With the dishwasher.”

Fear washed over Virgil hard enough for sweat to bead on his forehead, stomach rolling with nausea. “He was having a bad night. It’s fine.” 

“Virgil, this should have gotten stitches,” Patton said softly, one hand tapping close to the bandaid on Virgil’s hand. 

“And no good dad does that on a ‘bad night,’“ Remus snapped. 

“Remus,” Roman sighed. “Not helping.” 

Patton’s eyes filled with tears. “We just want to make sure you’re safe.”

“That you survive until graduation,” Logan pointed out. 

“You can trust us,” Patton insisted. “Please, you can be honest.”

Virgil’s bottom lip wobbled as he leaned into Patton’s side. Patton guided Virgil’s head to his shoulder and wrapped his arms around him tightly. Roman hurried over to cuddle into his other side. 

“We know there’s not much we can do right now,” Janus said quietly, eyes on the ground. Remus kissed the side of his head, “but we can’t do anything if you don’t... Talk to us.” 

“I know.” Virgil sniffled and buried his face in Patton’s shoulder. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Yeah,” Roman whispered. “Yeah, we can put on another movie. Or- Logan, can you set up the Xbox? We can play something for a little bit.” 

The six of them rotated through multiplayer games on the Xbox. Patton insisted on being Virgil’s partner each time, and when they waited their turn, he kept an arm around Virgil’s waist. He cuddled into Patton’s side, occasionally letting his eyes fall shut and his mind zone out. 

Everyone stayed over in the brothers’ basement that night, crammed on the couch and piled on top of each other. The next day, things largely went back to normal, until after school where everyone jumped to invite Virgil over. 

He laughed. “I can’t be four places at once.” 

“I call him!” Patton kissed Virgil’s cheek and hugged him. “Try again tomorrow.”

Virgil blushed as Remus whined about Patton not being fair, Roman smacking the back of his head. 

Virgil followed them all as they headed to Patton’s house, laughing and talking over each other. Virgil was pressed between Patton and Logan. 

Virgil peeked at Logan from under his bangs while everyone was distracted. “Thank you.”

Logan smiled. “My pleasure.”

#high school au #logan #roman #patton #virgil #janus #remus #logan sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #janus sanders #remus sanders #sympathetic deceit #sympathetic remus #abuse tw #abuse mention #yelling tw #manipulation tw #lmk if i missed anything

[seanshumblehome]

The Secret Trio in:The Sons of Liberty (Part 5 - The depth’s).

      Tensions where high in the elevator as the boy’s watched the levels go by, wondering when or where they would stop.Suddenly the elevator jerked as it came to a stop, they prepared themselves, ready to fight whatever was on the other side of the elevator doors.When the doors slid open Randy threw a mix of smoke and flash bombs, Danny and Jake then rushed in with Randy following in behind.Once the smoke settled the boy’s where slightly embarrassed to notice that the room was empty.While Randy checked for traps, Jake covered the doors while Danny used the computer at the desk to find out where they where.After making no progress Danny sighed then stepped away from the computer.

“Got anything Danny?” Randy asked as he approached the desk.

“No, we’re just going to have to walk around and hope we find a map that’ll lead us to something important.” Danny said as he walked away from the desk.

“Unless we ask somebody.” Jake suggested as he pointed down the hallway to an unsuspecting guard.

“Good idea Jake,” Danny said as he patted him on the shoulder, “I’ll go ask him if he knows where we are.” Danny continued with a smirk.

      Randy and Jake watched as Danny sneaked up to the guard and wrapped his arm around his neck, Danny then slammed the guard into the cold metal floor with a thud.

“Ah who?” The soldier growled in contempt.

“Hush, I’m asking the questions, where are we?” Danny asked as he tightened his grip on the guards neck.

“Hmph, you’re on sub-level nine.” The guard answered.

“Where would you guy’s keep your plans, you know important information guy’s like me ain’t supposed to know about?” Danny asked smugly.

“Mission control is on level ten, you couldn’t miss it.” the guard grumbled

“Thanks, now how would my friends and I get to this places power supply?” Danny asked.

“Through sub-level eleven. the geothermal reactor is there.” The guard answered.

      Content with the information he had gotten Danny punched the guard knocking him unconscious.

“So what’s the plan now?” Randy asked.

“Same as always, we find out what they’re doing here, then set the place to blow on are way out the door.”  Danny answered with a smirk as they began walking down the hallway.

“Then let’s go man, I don’t like being underground for too long.” Jake said as he made his way towards a door.

      The trio quickly began making their way through the mountain facilities hallways and corridors, knocking out any guards they came across, time was of the essences.At any moment the guards trapped outside the facility would bust in and warn the base to the trio’s presence.After a few moments the trio now stood before to large automatic doors with the words mission control center over the doors.The doors slid open to an empty room filled with computers and a large screen that took up most of the wall.

“This must be the place.” Jake said as he looked around.

“Yeah, alright guys get searching, there’s gotta be something here that’ll tell us what’s going on her.“ Danny said as they entered the room.

      The trio wasted no time ransacking the place for any info they could find, flies, computers, didn’t matter, they began sifting through as much as they could. As Randy and Jake searched the giant screen come on filling the room with a soft blue light, as they turned their attention to it they noticed Danny standing at a computer that was in front of the large screen.On the screen a 3D graphic of what looked like an air craft carrier with jet engines on it’s sides sat in the center of the large screen.

“Uh Danny I don’t think this the time for games.” Randy joked, earning a glare from Danny.

“It’s not a game, it’s what they’re building,” Danny answered, “Watch this.” Danny said before pressing a small red button.

      The trio watched as a map of the United States appeared on screen followed by an icon of the airship flying over Washington, then it began to launch missiles and striking multiple States.Randy and Jake watched in horror as the simulation showed Norrisville and New York being struck.

“Those are nukes, aren’t they?” Randy asked with a whimper, Danny only responded with a nod.

“Yo no way am I letting a bunch of chumps blow up my city, not on my watch!” Jake shouted as he slammed his fist down on the table.

“Is that why they’re selling nukes, as a contingency?” Randy asked as he turned to Danny.

“No from what I gathered, they’re a diversion for their main event, the hostile take over of the government.” Danny answered.

“But we got time to stop this right?” Jake asked as he turned to Danny.

“The airship is in an underground hanger close by, if we destroy the reactor that should keep it form getting air born.” Danny answered.

“Then let’s go stomp these fools out.” Jake growled as he cracked his knuckles.

      The boy’s rushed out of mission control and began running towards a stairwell, as the trio made their way to sub-level eleven a loud alarm suddenly went off through out the base.

“Guess they know we’re here now.” Randy shouted as they ran down the stair’s.

“Then we need to hurry, move it!“ Danny ordered.

      The trio rushed to sub level eleven, hearing the sound of boots run following them, then they saw it, the entrance to sub-level eleven.Danny quickly opened the door allowing Jake and Randy to run straight through, after closing and looking the door behind them Danny turned to see a large machine in the center of the room.The machine hummed as red hot magma was pumped through the machine, it’s near limitless energy powering the base.

“Jeez how are we destroying that?“ Randy asked in awe at the machine’s size.

“It would take a dump truck full of bombs to even put a dent in that thing.” Jake said as he ran a claw against the machine’s metal, leaving no scratch.

“There’s gotta be a way, Randy put bombs on anything that looks like a support structure, Jake just try and break anything, I’ll see if there’s a computer or a control console that I can mess with.” Danny ordered before taking of towards what looked like a control room.

      Quickly they all went to work, Randy stuck ninja bombs to anything that looked weak, Jake went from cable to pipe attempting to smash or pull apart anything that he was strong enough to break, while Danny just mashed buttons in the control room.Warning lights blinked, alarms cried, the reactor itself chugged, hissed, shook and rumbled as the trio ran a muck.Soon the boys regrouped at the bottom of the machine.

“You think that did it?” Jake asked.

“I think so, we’ll know when it blows up.” Danny answered

“Then let’s get out of here before that-” Randy was silenced when bullets began flying past them.

      The trio took cover where ever they could as the soldiers fired upon them. Randy then throw a smoke bomb at the soldiers blinding them and momentarily halting their fire.The trio rushed out from behind cover, pushing past the soldiers and flying up the stairwell.

“Oh I hope these stairs all the way up!” Jake shouted in concern.

“Less talk more fly!” Randy shouted as he spurred Jake in the side causing him to fly faster.

“We’ll make it just keep going up!” Danny shouted.

      As they flew up the stairwell, a loud explosion came from beneath them, looking down Randy watched as a massive pillar of fire raced up after them. With every second they got closer and closer to the top, the intense heat engulfed them as the fire got closer and closer.Once at the top the trio reached the top, ran through the door and leaped for cover as fire erupted out of the door.

“You guy’s alright?” Danny said as he breathed a sigh of relief.

“I think so.” Jake said rubbing his head.

“A little crispy around the edges but I’m good.” Randy said with a chuckle.

      Then as if on cue the ground beneath them began to rumble, the boy’s watched as soldiers bolted from a room that looked like it was engulfed in flame. Explosions could be heard through out the base over the sound of blaring alarms and soldiers yelling.The trio got to their feet and made their way towards what looked like a small underground hanger.Upon entering it they watched as multiple shoebills took off through the open hanger doors, some struggling to get off the ground while others flew out effortlessly.The trio followed in the shoebills example and flew out through the open hanger doors.The feeling of immense relief filled the trio as they watched the scattered soldiers flee in seemingly all directions.

“Man those guy’s didn’t know what hit ‘em!” Jake shouted confidently.

“I don’t think these shoob’s are ever coming back from that!” Randy shouted joyfully as he bumped fists with Jake’s.

      Danny couldn’t help but feel proud of his small team, they had taken down a force that out numbered them ten to one but against all odds, they still beat them, sure they would still have to deal with the small squads but they could be easily dealt with, Danny sighed and smiled enjoying the victory...but that feeling was short lived when he suddenly felt a sharp stabbing pain in his chest. Looking down he saw it, a long fleshy tentacle tipped with a long, jagged blade that was sticking out of his chest.Randy and Jake watched as the tentacle was violently ripped out causing Danny to plummet to the ground.Danny slammed into the ground so hard he bounced and landed on his chest,Randy and Jake raced to the ground, landing next to him Randy leaped off of Jake’s back and quickly used his art of healing on his wound, Jake turned to face their attacker and upon seeing him he felt a cold chill run down his spine.There stood Sigma, with his blood covered whip arm, he then watched as the arm formed into a long, sharp,blade that was almost as tall as he was.Jake then looked at Danny, his wound was partially healed but he would need more healing somewhere safer.

“Is he gonna be alright?“ Jake asked, concerned.

“He’ll live,” Randy answered wrapped his scarf tight around Danny’s wound covering it, “But he’ll need to get out of here right now.“ He continued as he tied a knot and severed the end of his scarf that was connected to the knot.

“I’ll fight him, buy you guy’s some time to get out of here.” Jake said as he tired his best not to look afraid.

“No, you take him,” Randy said as he stepped in front of Jake, “You can fly and you can carry him longer than I a can cause of the whole, dragon thing.”  He continued as he pulled out his sword.

      Jake didn’t want to leave Randy here to fight that monster, but Danny was barely hanging onto to life, he sighed and he slumped his shoulder’s before picking up Danny.

“I’ll come back as soon as he’s safe, just try not to die till I get back.” Jake said before taking to the air.

      Sigma watched as Jake flew off, carrying Danny in his arm’s, Sigma then looked back at Randy and began approaching him.

“It would’ve been smarter to run.” Sigma said in a stern tone.

“Maybe, but you and I got unfinished business.” Randy said as he approached.

“Then what are you waiting for?” Sigma asked in stern tone.

       Randy and Sigma rushed towards each other, once he was close Sigma swung his blade arm towards Randy but Randy slid under his attack, Randy then drove his sword deep into Sigma’s side causing him to growl in pain. Randy leaped back as Sigma swung his blade arm at him once again, Randy countered by swing his sword at his chest, slicing through his kevlar vest. Sigma leaped back and transformed his arm into a bladed whip, Sigma swung his arm towards Randy but he countered by ducking it and cutting his arm off. Sigma grew increasingly more impatient with Randy, voiding all of his attacks but still landing attacks on him, it infuriated him.The ground rumbled beneath them as the underground base destroyed itself, suddenly pillars of fire erupted from the ground around them.As they fought the ground beneath them gave way causing them to fall into a underground hanger, Sigma and Randy landed a catwalk that hung above a raging oil fire beneath them.Sigma rushed towards Randy, violently swinging his blade arm at him, Randy blocked and dodged his attacks, Randy leaped over Sigma then cut off his blade arm, causing him to roar in agony and turn his other arm into a blade.Randy ducked his attack, ignited his blade and pierced Sigma straight through his heart causing him to roar in pain.Randy then ripped out his sword and kicked Sigma away, before Sigma could counter he was struck in the chest with a fireball that carried him over the railing of the catwalk and straight into the oil fire, Sigma roared and began incoherently shouting as he burned alive.Randy barely escaped the hanger as it collapsed, burying the hanger in dirt and rock.Randy looked around seeing that he was alone, even with the onset of exhaustion Randy knew that standing around waiting for Jake seeing as there still could be soldiers in the area, so he did his best to remember which direction Jake had flown towards. After figuring it out he then began walking in that direction.

“Meanwhile“

      With Danny in his arms Jake flew as fast as he could towards San Fransokyo but as he flew Danny began to awaken.Dazed, he looked around for a moment taking in his situation and surroundings, he then noticed the makeshift bandage wrapped around his chest along with the pain.

“Jake...where are we going?” Danny asked weakly.

“Back to the city, you got hit bad by that monster dude Sigma.” Jake answered.

“Where’s Randy?” Danny asked with concern.

“He...stayed to fight him.” Jake answered shamefully.

“He what!!!” Danny shouted before flinching in pain, “We need to go back, he can’t possible fight him alone.” Danny said as he attempted to pull himself out of Jake’s grasp.

      Danny then phased through Jake and began flying back to save Randy. It only took moments to get back to the clearing.The clearing was ravaged, with a large hole in the middle and fire was scattered around the area.Then he saw him, Danny rushed to Randy who had found a tree to lean against.

“Randy!” Danny shouted as he approached, “Randy are you alright, can you walk?” Danny continued as he placed his hand on Randy’s shoulder.

“I’m fine just...exhausted.” Randy said pausing for a yawn.

“Heh I know that,” Danny said in agreement, “So where’s Sigma, he run of again?” Danny asked curious.

“I killed him, kicked him into a pit of fire.” Randy answered sternly. 

“Well that’s one problem solved,” Danny said with chuckle.

      Before Randy could respond the ground then began to violently shake. The sound of snapping trees, tumbling rocks, and sliding dirt filled the air as the boy’s watched what looked like a massive set of doors rising up from the ground. Then like a while breaching the surface a gigantic aircraft carrier-like airship fly into the air.The boy’s watched as the airship then turned to the west and headed towards Washington.Jake soon joined Danny and Randy watching the ship flew off into the distance.

“No!” Randy shouted as he forced himself to stand, “We blew up their wonking base, we turned it into a smoking hole in the ground!” Randy shouted again.

“How would we even stop that thing, it’s giant!” Jake said in shock.

“I don’t know,” Danny quietly mumbled.

“Well we need to think of something and quick.“ Randy said frantically.

      Danny starred at the ground thinking as Jake and Randy shouted back and forth about what to do.He looked back at the ship which was a quickly disappearing into the clouds, he sighed then grabbed Randy by his shoulder, interrupting Randy and Jake’s argument.

“Randy do you know if there’s a military base near by?” Danny asked getting a puzzled look from Randy. 

“No, what just because I knew where one base was means I know where every U.S. military base is.” Randy sarcastically replied.

“Well let’s find out cause we’re gonna need a shoebill to get on that ship.” Danny said startling Randy.

“Are you trying to get us killed, that thing defiantly has guns on it that’ll blow us out of the sky the moment we get close!” Randy shouted.

“I don’t even think I could get us close enough without getting shot.” Jake mentioned.

“I know, but I have an Idea I’ll explain once we figure out where to get a ride.” Danny said with a smirk.

      After looking up where a military base was the boy’s then flew off towards the base.Whatever Danny’s plan was Randy and Jake hoped that they wouldn’t be to late.

To Be Continued in (Part 6).

#rc9gn #Danny Phantom #american dragon jake long #secret trio #the secret trio #randy cunningham 9th grade ninja #randy cunningham #danny fenton #Jake Long

[7-wonders]

I love Daddy Michael ! I would like how he will react when his little bub will grow. First step, first tooth, first word...

I love this so much! Here we go, baby Langdon’s milestones! Let me know if you want some more of this; I’ll be putting this under a ‘read more’ since it’s so damn long.

First tooth--

Michael, to put it lightly, is exhausted. You both knew that having a baby wasn’t going to be a walk in the park, but neither of you anticipated just how much stress went into being first-time parents. It’s a full-time, 24/7 job, on top of carrying out the apocalypse. However wiped-out Michael is, he knew it couldn’t compare how drained you are. His heart aches for you when you’re forced to get up every two hours to feed the baby, often taking at least an hour to soothe your child back to sleep. Michael’s gone on business far more often than he wished to be, leaving you to attend to the baby’s needs by yourself. 

When he returned this morning from a meeting with a couple of the world leaders who will be responsible for launching the nukes, the house was far too quiet for his liking. He’s always had the underlying fear that you’ll up and leave him one day with no warning, and that fear suddenly comes to the forefront of his mind when he can’t hear any signs of life. Michael starts to dart from room to room, coming to a stop when he finally picks up on the baby’s cooing noises from the nursery. He peeks his head in, not wanting to disturb you if you’re trying to get the baby to sleep. Instead, his stomach drops in pity and sympathy.

You’re sitting on the rug, back pressed against the crib as your shoulders are wracked with sobs. Baby’s laying on the play rug that’s set up beside you, happily babbling and attempting to grab at the small toys that dangle just above the set of chubby hands. Michael falls to his knees beside you, pulling your hands into his and kissing the tears that track down your cheeks. 

“My love, what’s wrong?” He asks in concern.

“I’m sorry, I probably look so pathetic right now.” Michael starts to reassure you, but you just continue talking. “I’m just--I’m so tired, and-and Bub only wants to play and absolutely refuses to nap, and I know that you hired some very capable nannies but the thought of anyone else watching our baby just terrifies me. I can’t--I can’t do that.”

“Hey, shh, don’t worry. You don’t have to do anything you’re uncomfortable with.” Michael pulls you into his arms, hugging you tightly and trying to calm you down. “Why don’t you go take a long shower or bath, and then you can go get some sleep?”

“But...what about the-”

“I am Bub’s other parent, darling. You’re off the clock tonight, and that’s final. You need to rest, or else you’re going to burn yourself out.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” Michael plays with the wedding ring on your finger before standing and pulling you up with him.

“Alright,” you say in an unsure tone, “but come get me if the baby needs to be fed.” There’s plenty of milk stored in the freezer for the baby, and you both know that, but you just don’t want to be failing as a mother in any way.

Two hours later, and things are going great. You haven’t tried to disobey Michael once, the baby’s been fed and bathed, and Michael’s feeling overall accomplished. The odd fussiness of baby, however, throws the blond Antichrist off of his rhythm. Since birth, the baby’s been so calm, always observing everything that’s going on with wide eyes. Today, though, has been a complete change in the baby’s burgeoning personality.

“C’mon, lovey, what’s the matter?” Michael questions tiredly, rubbing the baby’s small back. The little red cheeks, angry from constant whining, makes Michael’s heart melt. He’s resorted to laying down with the baby on his chest, desperately hoping the baby will sleep so he can join you in bed. 

There’s no pacifiers around, and the baby’s been uninterested in every toy that Michael’s presented since the pair moved to the living room on the other side of the house to prevent you from waking up. He lets the baby play with his fingers, not even blinking when they get covered in slobber. The baby gnaws on his fingers, a regular routine by now. What’s not regular is the sudden jolt of pain Michael feels on his finger.

“Ouch,” he hisses, pulling his hand away from the baby, who immediately starts to cry again. “What weapon are you hiding from me in that mouth of yours?”

Michael gently works his thumbs into the baby’s mouth, attempting to pry it open in an attempt to see inside. His first thought, however irrational it may be, is that the baby’s (all of six months old, mind you) managed to get a hold of a knife. To his surprise and delight, a pearly white tooth is starting to peek out of the bottom gum of baby’s mouth. 

“Well look at that!” Michael grins, proud of his child’s ability to break a tooth through the gum. “That’s an easy fix, let’s go see if there’s something cold for you to chew on in the freezer.”

/////////////////////////////

First step--

Ever since the baby’s started standing up a week ago, it’s been an eager waiting game on behalf of you and Michael. You’ll hold your breath whenever those small, chubby hands are used on a table or the chair to pull baby up into a standing position, or when Michael sets the baby down on those wobbly legs. Unfortunately, all of your attempts have proven fruitless as of late. Your child certainly knows how to crawl with the best of them, but it seems like walking isn’t going to be happening for a while.

It’s when you least expect something to happen, that it does finally happen. Michael’s in his office, working on some quick tweaks to the Outposts, and you’re taking the opportunity to go through the baby’s outgrown clothes and determine what to donate and what to throw away. Ever since you’ve become a mother, your ability to focus on multiple affairs at once has become a superpower of yours. You’re sorting through the clothes while, at the same time, watching the baby out of the corner of your eye. Baby’s gripping onto the crib while standing up on unsteady feet, chattering away to you while you hum and nod to keep up the ‘conversation.’

It’s when the baby lets go of the crib and remains standing that you turn your attention to your firstborn. You don’t want to look too excited, in case the baby gets stage fright, but you can barely hide the brewing glee as Bub continues to stand. Slowly, as if you’re approaching a wild animal, you hold up your hands.

“C’mere, lovebug!” You coo, baby smiling a toothy grin and starting to wobble towards you. Stifling a gasp, you smile right back as shaky steps are taken until Bub reaches your arms and falls into them. “Good job! Oh, my sweet baby, I’m so proud of you!”

You nuzzle into the soft skin of baby’s neck, blowing raspberries until giggles pierce the air. Not able to restrain yourself from sharing this moment with Michael, you stand up and make your way to his office. You don’t even bother to knock, knowing that he can sense you before you’ve even opened the door. He still pretends to be surprised when you do enter, looking up from his papers with a pleased smile. 

“What brings my two favorite people to my office today?” Michael’s confused when you don’t greet him with a kiss, instead crouching down a few inches in front of his chair. 

“Watch this,” you say excitedly, grinning as you let the baby stand while holding onto your fingers. “Go get Daddy!”

In a matter of seconds, his confused expression turns to glee when the baby lets go of your fingers and starts to walk to Michael. He’s speechless, large hands automatically reaching out to catch the child if need be. The need doesn’t arise, Bub instead walking all the way over to Michael. He catches the baby, swooping the laughing infant through the air. 

“You did it! You finally walked!” Michael snuggles the baby to his chest, pressing kisses to the downy curls. “When was this new skill acquired?”

“Hmm, maybe thirty seconds before we came in here.”

“Our kid’s a genius.”

You can’t help the laugh that escapes you. “Slow your roll, okay? We’ll discuss that if Bub’s doing calculus within the next three months.”

/////////////////////////////

First word--

“Come on, say it! Say ‘dada,’“ Michael pleads with the baby, who giggles at their father’s antics from their high chair. Michael sighs, dropping some more Cheerios on the tray and into the waiting hands of the baby. 

“Michael, Bub’s not going to say anything if you continue with your pestering,” you say from the kitchen, where you’re making a more substantial breakfast for the adults.

“I’m not pestering, I’m just...encouraging.” He swears he hears you mumble something along the lines of ‘if you’re being encouraging, I must be a fucking billionaire.’ “What was that, love?”

“Nothing!” you call back all too quickly.

“Well,” Michael turns his attention back to the amused baby, “if you’re not going to say that, maybe you can say...ball? Cereal? Dog?”

“Why don’t you just have ‘em recite the Declaration of Independence, while you’re at it?” You can’t resist to sneak in an insult as you re-enter the dining room, placing a plate of eggs and toast in front of Michael while sitting down with your own.

“Remind me why I married you, again?”

“Probably my wit, or maybe my amazing personality.” You smile at him cheekily, the baby’s hand on your face drawing your attention away. “Hi, cutie. You keeping Daddy company?”

“Always,” Michael replies.

“So, about the Sanctuary,” you look back at Michael, getting down to business, “you promise that we aren’t going to have to stay underground forever?”

“I’ve promised you countless times before, and I’ll promise you countless times again. It’s only temporary until my father has deemed the world ready to be remade again.”

“I just don’t want to raise our child, and any future children we may have, in a f-u-c-k-i-n-g nuclear fallout shelter,” you spell out the curse word, really hoping that your child’s first word isn’t ‘fucking.’ “And what about when the end of the world does happen? I don’t know if I can be alone without you for weeks at a time.”

“You won’t be. I’m not going to go anywhere unless you are absolutely, one hundred percent okay with it. We’re a family, and I don’t think I could be alone without you for weeks at a time either.”

You take a sip of your coffee, nodding. “Thank you for this. I know it must be annoying to answer the same questions over and over again.”

“It’s not annoying, I would do anything if it meant you would feel better.” You smile, reaching your hand across the table and grasping his.

“Mama!” A little voice yells, obviously not pleased you’re looking elsewhere.

“Yeah, lovebug?” You hum, more focused on moving the food around your plate, until the voice calls your name again and your fork clatters to your plate in shock.

Michael’s head turns towards the baby, mouth hanging open. “Did you just...?”

“Mama!” The baby calls again, laughing at the shock that’s obvious on both your faces. 

“Bub’s first word!” You say, clapping your hands together in excitement.

“Seriously? All the practice we’ve done, and your first word is ‘mama?’“ Michael says in disbelief. Baby keeps repeating the word over and over, pleased at the reactions.

“What can I say, love, you’ll get it next time.”

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[ticklikeabomb]

Birth in Reverse - Part 8 (Finale)

Pairing : Plus size Reader x Bucky Barnes ; Nadia (twin morphed into Y/N) x Thor

Warning : Language, Angst, Death of Character

Word Count : 1.7k

She couldn't sleep that night, several emotions crushing through her. The day spent with Pepper was nice but Nadia still felt out of place. Physically, emotionally and mentally. The fact she hasn't heard from you since the mission made her tense and stress even more. 'Y/N? You there', she whispered in the partially lit room. No response. 'Come on please. I…I nee… nevermind', she sighed. Standing up, she put on a sweatshirt and headed to the compound's kitchen. She stopped before entering, feeling a presence in the room. "It's just me", his voice filled the place. She entered and saw Bucky. "Can't sleep either?", he asked and saw her shake her head. "Yeah me neither. You want some hot chocolat?", he asked. "Is it good?", you asked intrigued since you never had it. His eyes locked with yours, a hint of pain crossing his. "It's the best", he replied a small smile crossing his features. He served her a mug before serving himself. "Thanks", she mumbled. "You're welcome." "I'm going to the roof, you wanna join?", she asked him. He nodded and followed her, taking place on one of the couches, the warm beverage battling the night's colder breeze. 

She broke the silence and told him, "I get why she likes you so much. You're a pure soul, peaceful. You have that sort of hypnotic vibe going on, attracting everyone when you arrive in a room." His eyes widened at her words, shocked at her description. He never thought that of him, always seeing himself as a damaged man, the murderer unworthy of second chances. "Wow…I ehm thank you I guess", he stuttered. Nadia chuckled and confirmed, "Like I said pure soul." You both continued sipping on the excellent chocolat. After a while she told him, you weren't reaching out to her for a while now. "There's one thing I would like to try and see if she comes back but I don't know if it's a good idea", exclaimed Nadia nervously. "Tell me maybe I can help", he leaned forward concerned. "I want to provoke her feelings by…kissing you." "What?"

"Maybe if I kiss you, she'll come back", Nadia told him and looked at his reaction which was between shock, concern and uncertainty. "Look if you don't want to, I'll try something else", Nadia stood up about to leave back inside. Before he could protest, Bucky's body jerked up and asked her to wait. She turned around and looked at him, seeing him nod. She put her mug down and stepped closer, her lips inches from his. Their breath fanning each other's faces. A second later, Nadia closed the gap and caught Bucky's lips with hers. Bucky felt the difference, even if it was the same body. Her’s was raw, fiercer, desperate while yours was sweet, slow, passionate. The kiss got feverish, Bucky's hands squeezing her hips when suddenly she jerked off him and slapped herself. 'BIIIITCH HOW DARE YOU?'

"Y/N? Finally", chuckled Nadia out of breath. 'WTF??' "It was the only way to get you back. Why did you stop interacting", asked Nadia desperately. 'Why you kissing my man? You are in so much trouble ! HE IS TOO!'. Nadia turned to Bucky and told him what you just said and saw his Adam Apple bubble up and down. "Sorry", he mumbled under his breath. 'YOU WILL BE', your angry thoughts surfacing your shared mind. "I'm gonna go", said Nadia and headed to your room. "Why have you been MIA?", she asked you. 'I didn't want to interfere'. She shook her head not understanding, "Interfere in what? I don't get it". 'On you getting a life, having a chance for happiness', you replied with a small but firm voice. "Oh", she breathed out, not expecting that. She felt her eyes getting wet and declared with a shaky voice, "I can't be happy if there is a missing part in it. I - I can make it if you're not in it. We're sisters. We're connected for the best and the worst." Your body began to tremble, too many emotions crossing your souls. You spent the rest of the night figuring a way out of cohabitation without one or the other let go. 

——

"Just a sec", shouted Nadia across the room. She was finishing doing her hair when the knocks on her room door echoed. She reached the handle and opened, facing Happy. He presented a bag to her and told her it was from Pepper. She thanked him and went back in the room. Inside was a note saying 'The party won't be the same without you in this dress' and Nadia reached the dress in question. It was the one she tried on during the shopping spree with her aunt. 'That's nice of her', you said. Nadia nodded amazed. She put it on and looked at herself in the miroir, feeling beautiful. 'They're not ready', you said amusement laced in your voice. "Hell no they aren't", smirked Nadia. The next firm knocks told Nadia that Thor stood behind the door. It was their official first date. They wanted to keep it among the compound and that's how they decided one of Tony Stark's parties would be the best. Not a traditional first date and probably not the most romantic one but you were beyond that at this point. When he saw her/you his eyes sparkled. "You look ravishing Lady Nadia." 

"Please just Nadia and you look amazing too", she commented flirty. He presented his arm and accepting it, they joined the others at the party. They spend the night chatting, dancing and laughing with the team. You and Nadia never felt so much love in a room, wherever it was amicably or romantically. Eventually the party ended and Thor insisted in bringing Nadia to her room. "I've had the best night ever, thank you Thor", she told him. "The pleasure was all mine." Their eyes kept switching between their lips while closing the gap between each other. When their lips collided, Thor's lighting prickled Nadia's skin deliciously. They kissed like there was no tomorrow : wild, passionate, desperate. When they disengaged, Nadia felt her hand tickle and her eyes widened. "Oh no", she whispered before her hand smacked Thor in the face. 'Payback's a bitch !', you exclaimed amused. Nadia caressed Thor's face and apologized. "Sorry long story. Y/N says hi." He frowned but smiled that dorky smile of his and shook his head, "No problem I understand that Lady Y/N's heart is on someone else." Nadia bit her lips from smiling so hard and kissed him once more before telling him goodnight and head inside her room. 

It's been two days since the party and Nadia tried to share her time between Bucky and Thor. You were in the middle of training when Fury called an emergency meeting. He told the team, they were seeking a Hydra attack bigger than they ever had. Everyone was called on the mission and suited up as quickly as possible. Hydra managed to infiltrate two severely protected nuclear weapon sites. It turns out some of the commanders were Hydra members. The team was split in two to cover both of the sites. You/Nadia were with Bucky, Thor, Tony, Wanda, Vision, Rhodes and Peter while Steve, Sam, Natasha, Bruce, Scott, Tchalla, the Dora Milaje army on the other. 

"Be safe people", commented Tony through the comms. Nadia, Bucky and Thor all shared a look. And the fight began ; the order taking out every Hydra agent without mercy and at that you were the best. You all fought for what felt like hours. You ended up in the room here the nuke was being prepared for launch. "Get away from that controller", she screamed at the man, who only laughed loudly. "Make me", he challenged her. She groaned in rage and ran towards him. She quickly disarmed him and killed him. She heard the panel light up and saw the building's roof open up. She tried to stop the countdown and was succeeding when the sound of shoots echoed in the room. She reached out to her stomach and saw her hands filled with blood. It all came like a violent wave crushing her, she fell on her knees. Bucky and Thor entered the room, their faces screaming horror. They saw the previous hidden Hydra agent stand behind her and pull the trigger one last time. The last thing she remembered was them. One final good thing before the grand ending. 

Bucky ended by tacking the member out while Thor fried the panel's system. They turned her around, her pulse weakly bumping their final moments. "Stay with me Y/N, please. You can't leave me", cried Bucky. "Nadia, my queen keep fighting. Please don't go", echoed Thor same feelings. The last thing you felt was levitation and then blackness. 

You woke up, your face sweaty, gasping for air. "Good Lord you scared the hell out of me", you heard beside you. You turned your head and saw Nadia sitting beside you, a worried expression on her face. "Nadia", you whispered in shock. You touched her arms and copped her face in disbelief "You're here with me." "Ok you're starting to really freaking me out. Chill, you fell asleep on the desk", she replied her brows still frowning. "You had a nightmare?", she asked. You looked around and found yourself in the college room where you had the bomb vision. Lost, you declared "Yeah I think I did but not everything was terrible." A man in his 50 entered the auditorium and began his speech. "You ok? ", whispered Nadia in your ear. You nodded and quickly replied that it just felt so real. 

"I have the pleasure to introduce to you the Avengers who kindly passed by to share some advices with you", said the Dean making the room roar in anticipation. You saw every member of the team enter, the team that you were still a member of a few minutes ago. Your eyes landed on Bucky while you heard Nadia's sneaky comment about Thor, "He yummy". You couldn't keep your eyes from him and he must have sensed it because they lock with yours. He frowned slightly and you truly knew that all of it was only a dream. Feeling caught, you fixed your eyes at the window waiting for the bomb to explode the building but it never happened. It was just another (bitter)sweet summer day. 

* gifs not mine, credit to owners*

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[evien-stark]

✧I Need You✧ Chapter 105

The lovely room you’d woken up in didn’t include a side bathroom. Perhaps you were getting a little too comfortable to the five-star lifestyle. SHIELD usually had nicer places than the one you’d ended up in- wherever that was- but considering you seemed to have been pulled out by rogue agents (a bare summation that you’d put together yourself) and shunted to wherever this was, perhaps you should forgive the whole no-shower thing. 

It did, at least, have a sink. So while Tony was busy with a few things that you could only guess what they were, you turned your back on him to let him work and took a very minimal amount of time removing your shirt and gathering up a handful of paper towels to try and wipe the dried blood off your arms and the sides of your neck. It hurt to move around, still. You weren’t sure how long ago you’d been shot, or how bad it had been… it felt pretty bad. So much so, in fact, that even though you were tempted to unwind the bandages from your chest, you thought better of it. 

Whatever momentary peace you’d had was broken when a soft knock came at the door. It made you hurry to put your shirt back on with a small call, “Just a second.” Although Tony’s ire was sharper. “Occupied.” 

A literal second was all the person on the other side waited, you were barely fully clothed again by the time the door opened. “We’re running short on time.” As you looked up you saw Maria Hill, arms crossed. “We’ve gotta start making some moves.” Her smile at you was extremely brief. “Can you move yet?” 

Tony answered for you. “Enough to go home.” 

“I’m not going anywhere.” In fact your grunt of pain suggested exactly that. “Where are we, anyway? What happened?” Things were understandably a little fuzzy. You might have asked Tony what he was doing there, or how he’d gotten here, too, but… seeing as you were glad to have him near, you didn’t particularly care. 

As Maria stepped aside, into the room, Steve was not too far behind her. “You jumped in front of a bullet meant for me.” He seemed… uncomfortable to say the least. And very solemn. 

Tony looked up at him. “Usually some gratitude applies. But I’m sure you’ll send her a note on some nice stationary when we’re done.” You couldn’t make out if he was angry with Steve. He’d have no reason to be- probably just misplaced.

And- the last voice you’d have ever expected to hear, brought up the rear of this little circus show, as Nat wheeled Nick-fucking-Fury into the room. She seemed injured, too. At least you weren’t the only one covered in band-aids. “We’re in the last unknown bunker. Off-grid.” 

“Oh.” You said, accidentally a little more loudly than you meant. “I died and went to hell. Is that it?” 

The laugh that left him seemed to hurt him at the same time, sending him into a soft coughing fit that put a stall in the room. “Good to see you, too.” But when he caught his breath and held up his hand, he directed a strange smile your way. “What was it I was supposed to say- you were right- and we’re personally destroying Project Insight?” 

“That supposed to make me feel better?” If you’d had any energy left, you might have growled this at him. 

Shifting back, Tony pulled a USB stick out of a laptop. “Payload’s ready. Shame we have to have three hands on the proverbial wheel. Would’ve been a lot easier to take out from the comfort of this lovely sewer.” 

Nick gave him a look. “If you’re gonna launch or unlaunch a project like this, you have to be very sure.” 

“I get it.” Tony answered pretty dryly. “Like simultaneous turnkeys to  launch a nuke- but hey- seems like you always knew exactly what this was, huh?” Anger successfully redirected. And to a person that deserved it. “That Zero Day on the backend is pretty cute. Also pretty useless considering you expected you’d need a present cocktail to activate it. Also not as hidden as you thought.” 

Fury rolled his eye. “We get it, Stark. You’re smarter than the rest of us. Now, if we could just move on to formulating an actual plan- we have to assume everyone on board those helicarriers is Hydra. The tough part isn’t inserting the keys, it’s getting past them to do it. And if we’re lucky we can salvage what’s left when we’re done.” 

“No.” You were surprised just how many people said this at the same time. But you didn’t wait for the silence to clear. “Let me get this straight- sorry I’m the last horse finishing the race here- so we have to get aboard all three of Project Insight’s helicarriers, insert keys with a payload- all at the right time- to try and take them down- and you want to take them back?” 

“Oh. I must have misunderstood.” Tony dropped the stick on the table so he could cross his arms. “Was that the plan? Sorry. I have a complete destruction order.” 

Steve waved a hand. “We’re not salvaging anything. We're not just taking down the carriers, Nick, we're taking down SHIELD.” 

This shocked you, if only a little. It was nice to have everyone on the same side- but to think Steve and Tony had talked, in your brief lapse of unconsciousness and recovery, about fully dismantling SHIELD? That was… 

Fury was getting pretty upset. “SHIELD had nothing to do with this.” 

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Tony’s smart sass cutting the room. “Seems like SHIELD had everything to do with this. Negligence and ignorance don’t exactly scream innocence to me.” 

Steve shook his head. “You gave us this mission, this is how it ends. SHIELD's been compromised. HYDRA grew right under your nose and nobody noticed.” 

Scoffing, Nick half turned to level an icy glare Steve’s way. “Why do you think we’re down here? I noticed.” 

Squaring up, Steve met him blow for blow, voice lowering. “And how many paid the price before you did?” 

You were grateful when Natasha stepped between them. “We don’t have time for another quarrel of ethics.” Then she looked right at Nick. “...and for the record-” 

Fury turned his head down. “You agree. Yeah. That’s the consensus, huh? We all agree?” Looking around the room then. 

“SHIELD, HYDRA, it all goes.” Steve giving the last order on this matter. 

                                                      ----

There was an very limited window to suit up- almost an impossibility for you, seeing as yours was extremely damaged. Tony had been working on it alongside getting those USBs loaded. He was nothing if not a genius- and a genius multi-tasker, at that. But even so… 

He looked a little beat up himself as he handed your Heart Reactor back to you. “We need a plan.” Not physically damaged- yet- but… for one reason or another pretty emotionally wounded.

Even though he pressed the device into your palm, he was reluctant to let go. From your position on the bed you looked up at him. “Isn’t that something we should do with everyone out there?” The team had left the two of you for some privacy, but it wouldn’t last long. 

And if it was time to start forming groups and figuring out who did what, everyone needed to be present for that. He frowned lightly, letting his fingers slip away from yours. “I did the best I could- given my extremely limited time, tool set, and inhospitable environment-” 

Trying to cut his grumbling off, you shifted off the bed, leaning up to press a kiss to his cheek. “I’m sure it’s fine.” Pushing the Reactor to your chest after. 

But he wasn’t able to let you go yet, as his hands came to your hips. “You know I’d never speak bad about my own work- but- it’s not enough. You get backed into another corner like that again- you might not make it out.” 

“Well- we have almost the whole team, right? It’s less likely to happen again-” 

“Be serious about this, for a second- and- that’s coming from me.” He was in that twisted mood he always fell into when you got hurt. When he had to come at the very end of a fight or a mishap, and you were in bad shape. It scared him straight to his core. It unnerved him, same as it made him angry. “You know I think you can do anything- and I know you won’t just go home- so can we please just split the difference and have you on civilian escort? These things aren’t going down without a fight, and there’s a lot of people in the giant radius we’re looking at that are gonna get hurt.” 

Innocent people, as always. That had nothing to do with any of this. And no chance to help themselves. No means, either. As fire rained down on them within seconds, without notice, and would trap them. Yes. Someone needed to be on civilian duty. You just… didn’t want it to be you. Not because you were above that sort of thing, you weren’t, that was one of the most important jobs there was. But… 

“I have fought with Nick and with SHIELD and with- probably all of this longer than I realized I was. And that guy, whoever the hell he is-” 

“We’ve got bad news on that front, too.” Interrupting you so suddenly that it cut your little rant short. 

“What now?” Who could it be? Who else could you possibly know that would make this a startling revelation at this point? 

“Haven’t heard the full story. But whisperings around the dingy water cooler out there are that it’s Rogers’ friend.” 

Alright. Not a startling revelation, being that you would have no idea who that was. But kind of… upsetting? Nervewracking? What was the right word here? “How is that possible?”

Tony crossed his arms after shrugging his shoulders. “We’re in a SHIELD sewer after Hydra just exploded out of the woodworks. Anything’s possible at this point, wouldn’t you say? Maybe he got a shot of the same serum. I don’t know. But the point is- this just got personal. So we should let Rogers handle it.” 

But this was just not convincing enough. One of Steve’s old war buddies? Back from the dead- now some crazy super powered killing machine? And going after Steve no less? Hired by the bad guys? There seemed to be a lot of missing pieces here. “You know- there are billions of people on the planet. Especially considering he’s also got a whole lifetime gap. Aren’t we doing the whole- thinking about a zebra when it’s probably a horse thing?” 

“I’m always of the mind to agree with you. But he seems pretty set on this.” “Then I need to talk to him before we leave.” The only way this would start to make any sense. It had to happen, anyway. While you weren’t entirely convinced he was someone Steve knew, you were sure you’d seen something… off about him. Then again. You’d been shot near point blank in the chest and had gone down pretty hard. It was hard to remember what you thought you’d seen. 

There was just a lingering feeling of something not being right. 

“Good luck with that. He could barely look me in the eye. He’s gonna give you the same flight plan. And probably skirt around everything else.” 

This was a fucking mess. And not exactly the right time to be in one. “You? Why? What happened?” 

Tony’s brows knitted before he aimed a dry look your way. “You walked directly in front of a bullet with his name on it- he said it himself. He’s feeling pretty rough about it.” 

There was a whisper here, almost too easy to catch: And he should. You tried to keep your own stare back not… judging or accusing, but… “Did you yell at him?” 

“Yell?” Almost as if he couldn’t believe you’d ask something like that. But as you continued to stare at him, not backing down, he broke, raising his hands in a sign of defense. “Not- I wouldn’t call it yelling- it was a very sternly worded ten minute monologue.” 

“And if he took a shot for me, you’d yell- sorry- ten minute sternly monologue at me, is that right?” 

His answer was quick and biting as he settled his hands on your upper arms in a soft hold, almost begging you to understand with the look he leveled your way. “Much as I like Steve- honey- I’ve known you far longer. And much as we’re all a team- you’re the one I’m worried about, at the end of the day. Because you’re the one that’s important to me. That I get to come home to, when things are settled. That I spend my time with. I didn’t come at him because you put yourself in a situation for him that he couldn’t get out of. Way he told that story- he has every right to feel bad about it. And if you’d died over it-” 

Sooner than either of you had realized, the grip he was holding you in had grown too tight, and you pressed your lips together once, reaching to soothe your hands up his chest. “Tony…” Softly, urging him to calm himself. 

It seemed to break him free of the dark storm cloud he’d been sucked up into. As he took a breath and relaxed his hands, he dropped his head, gathering his thoughts. His eyes were gentle but resolved when he found yours again. “Don’t ask me to explain why it upsets me- the danger you’re constantly in. You know why. I love you. And it’s not about doing the right thing. It’s that you had to make a choice. His life or yours. And he never should have needed you to do that for him.” 

Despite it feeling sort of… wrong to argue with him about this- especially considering how fragile he suddenly was over this, because it was you, you couldn’t bite it all back. This wasn’t Steve’s fault. “He thought it was someone he’d knew-” Right? That was why he’d frozen. 

“If Rhodey pointed a gun at me I wouldn’t just wait for him to shoot me, or for someone to step in front of that bullet for me-”

“You know Rhodey’s alive- if it’s someone that was supposed to be dead-” 

“What- how far you want me to go back- if my dad had dug himself out of his grave- I still wouldn’t-” 

“Alright- alright! Calm down- take it easy!” 

His words had grown sharp and almost terrifying. It was why you knew you shouldn’t have tried to argue with him- he wasn’t going to relent on this. But the darkness that had suddenly manifested was… not an easy thing to deal with. Reaching up, you cupped the sides of his jaw in your palms, easing him away from that edge. 

He took a breath. Stabilizing, almost. And then sinking into your hold on him, shoulders drooping. “Honey… I will sit by your bedside as many times as I need to. Just like you do for me. Because that’s what we’ve put ourselves in. That’s what we decided we were doing. But this was different. Shock or not. He picked a side, when the other side he was on was losing. And he’ll pick it again. I guarantee it.” 

“Why? Why do you think you know that?” Almost begging to understand why he was going in so hard on this. He and Steve respected each other. Got along. And even though you knew he loved you- so desperately so- that didn’t mean that this had to put a wedge in between things. 

As he almost slipped away from you, seeming like he didn’t want to say what he seemed to know, you held his face up. Not letting him escape. Leveling his gaze with yours again. Waiting. “I heard them in the hall, while you were out. Old buddy of Rogers- shows up out of the blue- working for Hydra. They’re leaning pretty hard on the assumption something’s not right upstairs- if it even is him. Who do you think they’re waiting to put in the ring again. On the off chance they’re right. Who do you think they’re willing to use as collateral damage?” 

It was quite a different feeling, your heart breaking over the mistrust of people you thought were friends. “Stop.” But it couldn’t be true. He was hurting. And maybe he’d heard some semblance of this plan- but this couldn’t be the whole of it. Nor did you think he would make it up. So the truth was somewhere in the middle. “We can just talk to them. And find out.” Which was your preferred method of doing things. Nobody ever won running whisper campaigns. 

“I’m not trying to start something. I’m just… doing what they are.” 

“And that is?” 

He answered with a startling conviction. “Picking my side.” 

“Tony…” It was as warming as it was unnerving. “It’s one guy. We don’t know anything yet.” 

You found a little relief as he nodded. “Yeah. I’m not trying to pick apart the team. I’m just… trying to make it clear. Where my loyalties lie.” 

At this- at the very least- you couldn’t help the twitch of a smile. “Never a doubt in my mind.” 

His head dipped in a little, voice lowering. “I will always pick you. It’s always you, for me.”

...at this, it was impossible to not let the unnerving part drift away and instead sink into the warmth, only, instead. His devotion for you touched you right at your core. Easing up on your tiptoes, and bringing him closer, you kissed him carefully, winding your arms around his neck, ignoring the quick spark of pain in your chest. His hands came to steady you, palming over your hips. While you wanted it to go on forever, at this point, having missed him terribly in that small time apart- 

There was work to do. And aside that, as you broke, you let him know quietly, “I’ll always pick you, too.” In the important things- the things where lines had to be drawn. That wasn’t now, you were sure. But… if there ever was a time… you and Tony were a team. Inseparable. 

That was the way it was meant to be. 

“I love you.”  A careful and sure murmur against your lips. 

One that was easy to repeat. “I love you, too, Tony.” 

#Tony Stark #Tony Stark x Reader #INY Chapter One Hundred Five

[mgrgfan]

Past of the future, future of the past...

Chapter 5. Soarin' over the space...

A small speck plunged through the atmosphere of Earth, burning pretty bright yellow. Dozens of radars and telescopes were tracking it. It's really ironic, but the Sky High Pokemon, who was supposed to rule the skies and above, was now helplessly falling to the ground, mercilessly dragged by gravity and burned by atmospheric ram pressure. All Draconids, who were now watching TV, could not believe their eyes. The Dragon Lord, the great Rayquaza… got destroyed by the titanic machine, constructed by sorisians. The machine, which was crammed full of nuclear weapons, capable of obliterating cities, should they start flying to Earth. In fact, the same thing could be said for most of other TV watchers… bar sorisians. For them, what little re-entry of the serpentine dragon they've seen, marked a beginning of a new age - an age of open skies, when people can turn their gazes towards the stars and not be afraid, that someone territorial and feral will stop their journey before it even starts. While the rest of the world was either shocked, horrified or furious, Soris was celebrating the first victory of their first space warship. Now the other regions will know, that the Empire is not something to be tampered with! ---- On the Grey Sea, a decent fleet, consisting exclusively of nuclear-powered ships, was underway, towing a giant floating unusually-looking rocket in the middle of the formation. Several ships with "buzzers" - arcanotechnological devices, designed to drive off the Pokemon before the launch - and depth charge launchers, a tanker with kerosene, an electrolyzer-equipped ship for creating liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen on site, four deep space communication ships, several frigates with anti-air weapons and a single launch control ship - all of those machines were preparing for something great. A personal tiltjet of the Emperor, which was speeding to the landing pad of the launch control ship, only confirmed this further. A long distance from it, a research plane from Kanto was flying, trying to get a decent picture of what the heck was even happening. If the reports of astronauts from a nearly year ago were to be believed, imperials claimed, that their Moon mission was launched by the similar rocket 3000 years ago… but how? And what was their reason for this launch, not even ten hours after the launch of their space warship? And what was the payload of this giant rocket? ---- Young Draconid could not believe, what she was seeing. She once saw the Lord Rayquaza with her own eyes - a long, majestic serpentine dragon of incredible power. What lied before her… wasn't like it. This one was thoroughly burned, up to the point when the originally green skin wasn't recognizable, some of the mug-fins were completely destroyed, eye sockets were empty and scorched, the horny ridges of mouth were chipped, one of the fangs was missing… The strange crackling sound interrupted her thoughts and, less than a second after, someone rudely yanked her away and started to mercilessly drag her. "What the Reverse World?" "The less we spend time near the corpse, the better," the assailant replied, revealing himself to be Damien. "The Geiger counter is going crazy near it, as you've heard. When we are back at the Meteor Village, we'll need to throw away our clothes, shave all the hair on our bodies and wash ourselves thoroughly, lest the radiation poisoning get much worse." "Radiation poisoning?" "Valencia works on the nuclear power project, she knows a lot about it and lended me a Geiger counter. Let's go faster, since the sooner we decontaminate ourselves - the better." ---- "Fueling of the Water Dragon is now finished. The rocket is ready to be set into launch position," said one of the launch control officers. "Fill the cap's ballast tanks and set the rocket into launch position," gave an order the Emperor, who was just delighted to see one of his creations being ready to go flight pretty soon. "Executing, Your Majesty." Giant rocket started to slowly sink and, after several hours, stabilized itself half-submerged and vertical. "The rocket is now in the launch position, Your Majesty. Buzzers working good, no Bedolangs or other Pokemon for several kilometers, all systems good." "Excellent. Resume the launch countdown." "Aye-aye." ---- "Much better," said Damien, who has just finished thoroughly washing himself with soap, having already shaved everywhere he was able to. To his left, Helian sat, also washed and completely shaved. "Now can you tell me, what is the meaning of all this?" asked them Renza, who was clearly not happy. "We've seen Rayquaza's corpse. It's so radioactive, the Geiger counter near it goes crazy and, apparently, the corpse itself glows in the dark slightly." "... Wait, what did you just say? Rayquaza's… corpse?" "Yes. As much as it's shocking to us all, apparently, sorisian nuclear weaponry was able to kill the Dragon Lord. And no, you better don't go there, since, as I've already said, it's radioactive as heck. I think we've got a small radiation poisoning by merely standing near it. Good thing wind was blowing away from us too..." "Damien, Renza, I don't feel so we…" started Helian, then fell to her knees and started vomiting. "Uh-oh," murmured the shaved Draconid, carefully helping her to get back up. "Well, it's been six hours already, so, it shouldn't be so bad. Does your head ache?" "Barely, but… yes," Helian said, trying to not throw up again. "Well, Renza, now you see, what the radiation poisoning is. Bury the bag with our old clothing somewhere and get us a new ones. Oh, and also - call the Elder!" "Will do," replied the scared Renza, sprinting out of the building. "Don't worry, Helian, the worst part will be over in less than a 24 hours and all of it will be over in a month or so," murmured Damien, trying to calm the girl down. ---- "... Ignition sequence start, four, three, ballast detached, all engines are running! Liftoff! We have a liftoff! Fifty-four minutes past the hour, liftoff on the Water Dragon!" As those words were being said, the rocket, which was calmly floating in the sea, shuddered, the water around it started to rise from the giant bubble of exhaust gases, but the rocket was already lifting off and setting the course for beyond the sky, propelled by titanic aerospike engine in the aft and four smaller assist engines on top of the first stage. "Never gets old," the Emperor said with a nearly childish glee on his face. "Ah, I remember, how hard it was to fit an aerospike in there… At least it works and is pretty cheap to manufacture and use, as well as recoverable." "The combustion instability for the big bell was even bigger of a bastard to get rid of, though," noted one of the engineers, who worked on this project. "No wonder we've ditched it after a single launch and placed an aerospike engine instead." "Yeah. Arcanics for stabilizing combustion in engine of this grade aren't cheap and aerospike is just better overall." "Not for non-atmo conditions, though." "Of course." ---- "Zemlino has just reported launch of the Water Dragon, crammed full with cargo," happily reported the comm operator. "A hundred-something of drive nukes, a few tons of liquid hydrogen, two retro-missiles and, what's really important - repair supplies!" "Cool!" whistled the engineer. "It's pretty much a miracle, that we not just survived yesterday, not just achieved victory, but also made it with no serious damage to the ship." "Yeah, but this very un-lucky Hyper Beam, which passed right between the second-stage shock absorbers, was… unnerving," the pilot replied. "Even though they are armored, if the shock absorbers got damaged and stuck - we would've been left with no primary propulsion and, as you can guess, majorly screwed." "To speak truthfully, you are the real hero of yesterday battle," noted the weapons operator. "I don't know, how you've managed to do it, but to take the most powerful attacks on the well-armored pusher plate or, at least, make them just scratch the hull's surface - it's more than something. If not for it, our ship would've got a few "unplanned ventilation ducts" - maybe, even through the drive bomb magazines or reactor!" "Me? How about you? After all, it's you, who was constantly scoring the hits on this dragon and not letting it get a metaphorical breath!" retorted the pilot. "Gah, I was just deciding targeting and launch priorities for the offensive weapons, while the fire control system did all the aiming and shooting!" "Comrades, let me just say, that we were all heroes yesterday," interrupted them the captain, who was trying to prevent discussion from getting out of hand. "We all did our part in taking out the tyrant of the sky, so, no need to get hesitant about your achievements. By the way, it's time for us to go rest and allow second shift to take the stations." "Aye-aye, comrade captain!" ---- Deep under the Lumiose City, inside the War Room, quite a few people sat. "So, basically, now we have a giant militarized spaceship above our heads," one of them said. If his badge was to be believed, he was the current Secretary-General of the Pokemon Nation. "As scientists from Unova told me, it uses nuclear explosions for propulsion and for weaponry." "Nuclear explosions? Isn't that just a theory?" said a woman from Kanto. "As you can see, not anymore," unovan president replied, slightly irritated from having to state something so obvious. "By the way, Mr. President, I must note again, that cancelling the Castelia Project was a very, very big mistake," one of the nuclear scientists decided to put a word. "Castelia Project? You mean, weaponizing Forces of Nature and using them against us during this war was not enough?!" the Hoenn delegate responded with a great fury in voice. "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" the Secretary-General decided to take a measure before the actual battle could've ensued. Even if no one had a Pokemon here, all-out physical pummeling was still not entirely out of the question. "Anyway, I will stand on that cancelling the Castelia Project was a great mistake," scientist resumed his talk. "Since, apparently, Soris Empire had no moral or other restrictions in performing their own version of it, which resulted in what we see today - they've got nuclear explosives of many kinds, while we've never ever performed a single test, making the nuclear explosions pure theory until the recent events! We have absolutely nothing, that can even scratch their ship! And it is loaded to brim with nukes, probably, ready to turn entire regions into scorched wastelands! Even the Rayquaza itself fell before this horrible weaponry - by the way, we still have no idea, where should we dispose of this corpse, which is so radioactive, it glows in the dark..." "Loaded to brim? Are you so sure about that? It's entirely possible, that they've exhausted their armament during the fight - there were quite a lot of explosions!" "Not anymore," said a director of the Mossdeep Space Center, getting off the phone. "Just a few minutes ago, a superheavy rocket was launched from the sea. Of course, it's not the same kind of monster, but still something. For what it looks like, it's a cargo mission, designed to resupply their space warship. I'm sure, that there'll be a lot of nukes to replenish the storages." "Arceus damn it," representative from Sinnoh mumbled, grabbing his head. "Can you contact the rulers of the Soris Empire?" "The Emperor is now onboard one of the ships in the fleet, which launched this superheavy rocket. The Empress… we are trying to contact her, but she is not available right now and representative refuses to give any comments." "And those damn journalists are on it again…" stated grimly the Kanto's representative, looking at the TV screen. ---- "Workpods deployed, set to meet the cargo carrier," reported Pyotr Petrov, who was working as an engineer in the second shift. On the outside, one of the lander bays opened, allowing two small, mostly-cylindrical crafts with several manipulators and chemfuel engines, to detach from the space warship and enter the interception course to meet the "Hauler" superheavy cargo spacecraft and ensure, that it safely arrives to the "Red Explorer" for resupplying the massive nuclear pulse-propelled vessel with drive bombs, hydrogen, spare parts and like this. Right now, the pods were working in the automated mode, even though each of them was able to house a single human operator, should the situation require it. As Pyotr looked on the flying pods through the secondary cameras, he thought, that, probably, Pokemon Nation would have used a Reuniclus or something for operation like this. He still could not understand, how did it come, that they were in so close with Pokemon. Of course, cosmonauts of the Nation were using some kind of spherical containment devices, as the crew of the Space Lab 2 reported, and scientists of Soris Empire were going just crazy about them, but… how did it come, that they've relied on Pokemon so much? ---- "Zhorik, how long do we have to wait?" asked the captain in slightly irritated voice. Right now, the entirety of this shift of bridge crew gathered in the mess hall in the outermost level of the habitation centrifuge, which was pretty cozy, with a big display on the wall, several stands with books and magazines (mostly the "Human Will Conquer Space Soon!" and "Human Conquers Space!", because someone in the ground crew had a strange sense of humor), a few tables with comfortable chairs and a galley with mini-bar. "Not much… Here!" happily exclaimed the engineer, who has just managed to reconfigure one of the backup comm antennas into a TV signal receiver and jury-rig a decryption program for the broadcast standards of Pokemon Nation, before running the decrypted signal to the display. "Let us try to tune to one of their channels…" A few minutes of fiddling with settings later, they were greeted by some kind of a news broadcast about their recent battle with, how the hoennians called it, Sky High Pokemon. None of the cosmonauts knew the general language of Pokemon Nation well (though no one from Soris did as for now, even the linguists - the language barrier is not an easy thing to overcome!), but they could get a basic outline. "Taras Grigorievich, do they really think, that we sleep and dream of nuking their cities to ashes?" asked the perplexed sensors operator. "Apparently, yes. Just like we are afraid of them using their Pokemon - especially Ghosts and Psychics - to wage a war on us. Teleport raids, guerrilla warfare and so on… In short, this'll be really bloody, should it happen. I don't know, if the people of Soris would be able to win." "And they are afraid of us razing their cities from orbit, where nothing of their origin can reach our ship without getting intercepted. Makes sense… and parity - if they try to attack Soris, we blow their homes up with nukes and vice versa." ---- "Drive bomb magazines reloaded, RCS tanks full of propellant, retro-missiles loaded into silos, damaged armor plates replaced. I must say, our ship is now almost as good as new", reported engineer Petrov, looking at screens. He was very happy, that there were no heavily-damaged parts, which would've required more repair than removing a damaged armored plate and slapping a fresh one in place, as well as the fact, that most plates were designed to be easily interchangeable. After the trainwreck of a repairability the Project 21A Space Ferry was, no one wanted to go through the same nightmare, except for Pokemon Nation with their Space Shuttle (though even this was debatable). "Wonderful," replied the current commander of the ship. "Incoming transmission!" said the comm officer. "Patching through." Author's notes: "Human Will Conquer Space Soon!" (10.05.400 AFE - 18.05.425 AFE) and "Human Conquers Space!" (18.06.425 AFE and ongoing) - monthly magazines in Soris Empire, which are mostly centered around the Imperial Space Program, but also host some comics and stories. Even though, originally, they weren't selling well, they've managed to rack up a really decent fanbase over time, especially after the Sergiy Vyugenko started to write his stories for those journals. AFE - After Foundation of the Empire. Water Dragon rocket is based on the real Sea Dragon, except with aerospike engine in the first stage (second version of Water Dragon). Bedolang - the Pack Hunting Pokemon, very dangerous aquatic predator, native to Soris. During the Shift, for the reasons yet unknown, most of the Bedolang population got time-shifted as well, while the rest slowly died out from inbreeding. At the current day, the shifted population is sufficient to safely breed and starts to become a sea hazard to rival Gyarados again (in fact, before the Shift, packs of Bedolangs were known to hunt and kill Gyarados without much problems). However, due to the actions of Soris Empire, they prefer to avoid the ships.

[michaelmyersmalewife]

LEVIATHAN | 12. A Call to Arms | MASTERLIST

words: 4k+

A/N: cant believe we’re only 3 chapters away from the end

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Jodie and the others weren't sure if Serizawa succeeded.

Not that that was their choice. If they had decided to stick around, the shock wave from the explosion would rip the sub apart. And it still might, as they raced back to the surface.

"Thirty thousand yards until we're outside the convergence zone." the commander said as they raced, or at least floated quickly, away from the underwater city and its fallen god.

She was a bundle of frayed emotions ready to burst, and she couldn't help but think of the worst. What if Serizawa hadn't done his job? There was just as big of a chance that he might've died before arming the bomb. Hell, the sub might've malfunctioned just like the drones and he was still back there, waiting. Jodie felt her stomach drop. What if there was something in there other than Godzilla, ready to devour anyone that entered?

They couldn't just go back and try again. They had more nukes but no more subs. If Serizawa failed, they were out of options.

But then, just as Jodie was beginning to feel as hopeless as ever, pure light shone through the abyss. She breathed a sigh of relief, but then the reality of what had happened hit her like the wave that was hurtling towards them too fast to register.

"Shock wave incoming -!" the commander shouted.

When it hit them, Gill reflexively grabbed Jodie's hand. She jumped a little, forgetting that they might very die in seconds. She gripped back, letting that familiar warm feeling wash over her.

In the next second it felt like a mountain had landed on her chest as the submarine was suddenly accelerated to speeds it was never meant to withstand. The hull groaned, shrieked, snapped - the metal walls tearing themselves apart from the force. The smell of something burning filled the air as the lights flickered wildly. And even at the rate they were travelling, they were still surrounded by pitch black water.

But in seconds a faint light appeared above them, growing brighter as they hurled toward the surface by the expanding explosion. They broke into the air, tossed up by a jet of water. Jodie's senses were fried, and for a minute she couldn't quite register what was going on around her. For a brief moment, she felt weightless.

And then the sub slammed down on the ocean's surface like a breaching whale, nearly throwing everyone off of their feet from the impact.

As the sub began to steady itself, Jodie took in a breath she hadn't known she was holding. The lights were still a bit jittery, but as a whole, everything seemed as intact as it could be. Glancing down, she realized she was still holding Gill's hand in a vice grip. They didn't let go.

"You okay?" she muttered.

Breathless and wide-eyed, Gill nodded, letting out a shaky laugh.

"Send a distress message to the Argo." the commander said.

_____

Climbing out onto the submarine's upper deck, rain thundered from the dark sky above.

Waves crashed against the sub below them, rocking it beneath Jodie's already unsteady feet. In every direction, all she could see were the restless waves extending to the horizon.

Behind her, one of the soldiers launched a rescue flare. It shot up, burning brightly but its glow was dimmed when it reached the low-hanging clouds. She doubted anyone would be able to see such a feeble light in the midst of Ghidorah's tempest.

Mark looked around them with binoculars, searching for anything that weren't waves. A ship, the Argo, a blue light..

"Anything?" Chen asked over the rain.

He shook his head. Jodie brushed back the damp hair that stuck to her face, the same spiraling thoughts coming back to her. What if the bomb hadn't cured Godzilla? He was in a weakened state, they could've easily killed him. But he had survived nuclear blasts before, right? But that was decades ago, with older weapons. Did Serizawa die for nothing?

As if to quell her mind, the ocean ahead of them began to boil and churn.

Not like the rogue waves that crashed into each other, or an odd crosscurrent, but an explosion of water that was building up, only slower. The sea was being pushed up from beneath by something big.

And then there was a light - not the warm yellow light from the cave or the explosion - an electric blue glow that shone through the waves.

Jagged scutes that could've only belonged to Godzilla emerged like a mountain range, crackling and dancing with energy. His head was the next to breach the surface, rising high above them as waterfalls of seawater fell from his body like curtains. As he continued to rise, tons of displaced water rocked their minuscule craft. Jodie grabbed for the railing as the sub shook.

With a whir, the light from the titan's back shot up his spine - his eyes glowing with his internal fire and shining through the cracks in his scales - as he turned his head toward the heavens. A tower of blue fire erupted from his jaws, stabbing into the dark clouds and igniting them from within. It seemed like an affirmation, a celebration of his sudden recovery - but also a challenge, as the clouds from Ghidorah's storm began to part just ever so slightly.

Maybe no one had seen their rescue flare, but they might've seen his.

Gill let out a winded chuckle as she stumbled back from the force of his ascension, a faint smile appearing on Jodie's face. But then his attention was focused elsewhere - directly at them. The titan's brows knit together, bending down toward them as if noticing their tiny forms for the first time. Jodie held her breath. They must've seemed like ants to him, but nothing in his gaze seemed outwardly threatening despite his intimidating presence. The lizard sniffed the air, sending out a humid puff of air over them.

The sub's commander reached for his sidearm.

"Nobody move!" Mark shouted.

As the titan leaned over them, Jodie became caught in his warm amber eyes, and for a second she swore that he stared back. Like he was trying to say something. And somewhere in the back of her mind she thought he did, or at least a feeling had passed between them. Something that struck deep in her heart.

Godzilla had every right to wipe them off the face of the earth. Not only had they nearly killed him, but they also likely destroyed what he considered his home. And yet, there wasn't that same malicious hostility she had seen in Ghidorah. Annoyance, maybe. But it felt more like a thank-you than anything.

Everything seemed to slow down, the world dropping from beneath her feet until all she could hear was her own breathing, her own heartbeat - and Godzilla's. She had always heard Serizawa, Chen, and Emma talk about the connection between humans and titans, how coexistence was possible between the two. And in that moment, she understood what they meant. What they really meant.

Out of the corner of her eye she also saw Mark staring up at him. She wasn't sure if he saw what she had, but for the first time since Colorado she didn't see hate in his eyes.

Then Godzilla broke their mutual gaze, leaving them all shaken and amazed, but almost with a sense of clarity. For some strange reason, she knew they were going to be okay.

The titan turned, looking down at them one last time before diving back into the sea, scutes slicing through the waves. As his tail splashed back down, Jodie snapped out of her daze.

"I know how to find them." Mark whispered, turning to Graham.

But before he could clarify, a sonic boom shattered the air. She looked up with dread, expecting to see Rodan or some other flying creature. Or worse: Ghidorah. But instead it was the Argo. It didn't look great - battered with smoke climbing from several places - but to Jodie she had never wanted to see anything more.

As they boarded the craft, Coleman was there to meet them.

He must've seen something in their faces, or maybe he had been counting and realized there was one missing among them. But then she realized Graham had still been clutching Serizawa's notebook in her hands. Those two had rarely been apart, 'two halves of a whole mind' they would always say. Coleman's face fell when everyone gathered on the bridge. Everyone except for Serizawa.

"Let's make him proud and not screw this up." Mark said.

"God, how did he, um -"

"By saving us." Chen said.

"So what's the latest, Sam?" Jodie asked, derailing the conversation when she began to feel a lump in her throat.

He let out a heavy sigh. "Where to start - uh, we think Emma activated the ORCA somewhere near Boston. That's why Ghidorah and Godzilla are headed that way now. But we haven't been able to pinpoint its location without the missing piece of the ORCA signal -"

"I've got the missing piece." Mark said, looking over the waveforms on the screen before him.

Everyone stared at him. Jodie tilted her head. She couldn't see anything different from before.

"It's Godzilla, right?" she said.

"But we already tried that." Coleman said, confused.

"It's not Godzilla," Mark replayed the ORCA's signal, pointing to a specific waveform that appeared on the screen in front of them. "It's us."

"What do you mean 'us'?" Foster asked.

"I'm not sure how but Emma combined Godzilla's bioacoustics with a human's to create the ORCA's signal." Mark continued.

"The titans must think it's another apex predator, it's brilliant." Graham said.

Stanton pulled out his flask from his vest, unscrewing its top. "Well, we are a bunch of horny, murderous carnivores."

"Yeah, it's real poetic. Now what?" Foster said.

"We track it, we find it, and we get my daughter back."

After taking a particularly long swig, Stanton gestured at a video feed of Ghidorah's storm. "Great, what about Moe, Larry, and Curly over here?"

"Godzilla will bring balance." Graham with a familiar firmness.

Stanton, already a little tipsy threw her a cheeky look. "Oh, I get it." he said. "A little of Serizawa's old 'let them fight' action. Used to love it when he'd say that."

"No." she said. "This time, we join the fight."

_____

As the Argo sped towards Boston, Jodie stared at the news feeds on the screens in the bridge.

She knew that Emma had turned on the ORCA, but they hadn't told her that it had effectively paralyzed most of the titans. Literally. In nearly every news coverage it all showed the same thing: confused titans Only three were known to still be active - Ghidorah, Rodan, and Mothra. And now Godzilla.

Maybe she changed her mind, she thought.

After all, she wasn't trying to kill everyone. It was just a reckless mistake. A mistake that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. And even then, Ghidorah and his pal Rodan were still active. Although the tides were turning, nowhere was safe with those two still around. Jodie didn't know how to feel.

At the very least, Godzilla was on their side. And Mothra, though, she had reportedly left shortly after they departed in the sub. According to their trackers, she was headed back to her home in China. But according to the twins, she was "covering her bases", whatever that meant. If she decided to make another appearance, it'd be an even match.

But as for the human side of the army, they didn't have much. Only a fraction of their fleet had escaped Ghidorah's wrath, but more aircraft made it out in time, and they were desperately trying to find places to refuel and rearm before rejoining the fight. Jodie could feel it was going to be a big one.

And now that Mark had cracked the ORCA's code, they were able to get a fix on its exact location, which was where they were headed now. With the remainder of their fighting force coming together, they dove headfirst toward a battle with a being wielding power beyond all understanding. But this time, they had a monster of their own leading the way.

_____

Madison was snacking mindlessly on a tasteless food-adjacent bar of something they had nabbed from the ship when it happened.

Something flashed across her eyes, or maybe it had all been in her head and she just thought she saw it, but regardless she had seen a bright light. Blinking it away without a second thought, she carried on. But seconds later she had felt an overwhelming pang of remorse, and shortly afterward, gratitude. For what? She found her eyes beginning to tear up but she rubbed it away, confused.

Looking around the room, no one else had seemed out of the ordinary. The Regulator was standing by the door, looking out for any possible intruders, and Elena was sitting in a corner of the room, far from the ORCA and the headpiece. The room suddenly felt a little stuffy.

No longer feeling hungry, Madison put the bar away, choosing instead to observe the evacuation.

"I'll keep an eye out for anything weird." she told Elena. The woman nodded.

Taking a pair of binoculars, she headed up the stairs to the roof of the booth. The sky had shifted from rolling gray clouds to a pale, sickly yellow on the horizon. Gusts of wind mussed her hair and spun stray leaves from the roof. The air felt damp even though it wasn't raining. Something about the entire atmosphere felt prickly. It was cool but now and then a warmer breeze passed through, and the smell of something burning came with it. He was coming, she could feel it. At the very least, the last of the helicopters had left the stadium. Boston had become a ghost town for as far as she could see. There was no one left wandering the streets, no headlights moved between buildings, no honking horns. The sirens had died down. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. But with the ORCA's song still blasting away, she knew the calm wouldn't last before the storm arrived.

Its sound was almost symphonic. It was simple, like a heartbeat. But it sounded different since the first time she heard it in action. Those weirdos had done something to it, something that her parents had never been able to figure out back when it was in its earliest development. She remembered how angry it had made Mothra back at the temple in China, and it had a similar effect on Ghidorah and Rodan. But with the other titans, it seemed to freeze them in their tracks, like their minds weren't capable of differentiating between the alpha frequencies produced by their king and the ORCA. Mothra...she seemed to be safe from Ghidorah's reach. But she hadn't heard from her in a while - at least, she was sure that voice had been her. She wondered if the pupa had already transformed. What did she look like now? With Ghidorah taking out every threat to his rule, she was sure to be in danger. Was she still okay?

She decided not to dwell on it, choosing instead to think of the bigger problem at hand. They had carried out their plan, and while it seemed to be working, this was as far as they thought ahead. Now they just had to play an agonizingly slow waiting game. Maybe she put too much faith in them, but hopefully Monarch would figure out what was going on. Maybe her father would be with them. If that were the case, she would stay here in Fenway. If Elena and the Regulator wanted to take cover, she'd let them. Madison wasn't straying from the ORCA's side if it meant a possible rescue.

But of course, the Controller might come after them instead. They could just as easily detect the signal as well, and though her mom had promised to buy them some time, she could only do so much. And he was probably pretty pissed off if he found out, which he undoubtedly would. If he caught them, she doubted he'd let them off easy. That was a pretty good reason to get lost.

So which was it to be?

After a few minutes of debating, her mind began to wander. That feeling from earlier still hung in the back of her mind. It felt really familiar. She didn't want to believe it, but she had to know. Shutting her eyes, Madison searched for a connection.

But like her previous tries, there was nothing.

Just an abyss through which she sloshed through black, shallow water. It was still scary, but with Elena not too far away, she felt just a little more at ease. She called out into the void.

Was that you? Please, say something - anything, she pleaded. I know you're not dead, you can't be.

Somewhere, off in the distance, there was a blue light, glowing and growing in intensity. She didn't have the chance to register where it was coming from before she was submerged in radiant blue.

She felt an odd sense of relief, until she was thrown off her feet, tumbling for a while before landing on something that felt...solid? Madison pressed her hands into the ground, fingers curling around something soft. Sand? Looking around, she found that she was no longer in that dark abyss, but on a beach bathed in a monochromatic blue. Waves crashed on its shore, the water coming up just past her ankle. She stood up.

The only sound she could hear was the ocean, her own breathing, the sound of sand crunching beneath her shoes.

But then she felt something behind her, a light. So she turned around. Just a few feet ahead of her was a wall of scaly flesh, and as her gaze went higher, she saw a leg. And that leg was attached to a torso, and with that torso was a pair of arms that bore claws at least three times her size. It was Godzilla.

His teeth glinted in the dim lighting of the mind-beach, but it wasn't the snarling smirks that Ghidorah usually wore. It was something more genuine, or at least as genuine as a reptilian could be.

You can't put a dent in me that easily.

Madison smiled.

Somehow, the titan seemed to notice her relief, and with a deep rumble that almost sounded like a bass-boosted purr, he bent down. He kept bending until his snout was mere feet away from her. It reminded her of that moment in China, with Mothra. Only she was more hesitant to reach out to him now.

She hated to admit it, but Godzilla intimidated her. His presence was all-encompassing. And it was hard not to feel microscopic around him. But looking into his eyes, there was a humbleness to him too, something tired and old. It reminded her of her father.

Slowly, Madison outstretched a hand.

Godzilla stared at her with a passive gaze as she grazed his scales. And with a puff of hot air from his nostrils, he stood back up. Everything was going to be okay.

But then something in the atmosphere changed, and Godzilla could sense it too. His scutes flashed in warning, looking nowhere and everywhere.

You gotta get outta here, kid

But what about you? Are you okay?

With a roar, Madison was expelled from the headspace before she could send another thought through. Like no time had passed at all, she found herself back on the roof. But something was different.

It began with a strange feeling, the prickling in the air becoming so intense it snapped her back to reality in seconds. Then she felt a pressure in her ears, like when you were cruising in an airplane. And shortly afterward, the wind picked up - the flags that swung on the rooftop flapping harder and harder. But in the blink of an eye they stopped - only to start wildly flapping in the opposite direction. She shivered.

In the distance, something was moving. It was hard to focus on at first, but then she realized it was the sky. The yellowed lens of the horizon was gone, replaced by rolling clouds so dark they were almost black. They poured in like fog, squeezing between buildings with increasing speed, engulfing them, brightened by coils of lightning. Thunder clapped all around her, and a strange deep thudding, like a bass-boosted cackle. Or like an animal sound made in the back of a really big throat.

If dad or the Controller were coming for her, they were all beaten out by Ghidorah.

Like an angel of death, dragging the heavens with him, the clouds began to close around the stadium from every direction. Heart banging in her chest, she wanted to move but found herself stuck in place.

"Madison!" a voice called from behind her.

It was Elena, holding the door open and waving for her to come back inside. She didn't think twice as she sprinted behind the door, helping her pull it closed against the increasing wind. The pressure in her ears increased, the floor beneath her feet pulsed, a plastic cup on one of the desks rattled and rolled to the floor. The booth's windows shook as the charcoal-colored fog filled the stadium. The lights flickered, and the ORCA's song bent into a weird warble.

Then she heard the beating of wings. Very large wings.

Madison backed away from the window, letting Elena guide her to the back of the room. She tried to see through the fog and behind the glass, but she couldn't focus on anything. Not that she needed to. He was there, she could feel it. His beating wings grew louder and louder until they weren't, softening until there was silence. She held her breath.

He didn't know where they were, but that didn't stop Ghidorah from slamming down into the arena. The ground cracked beneath the force of his landing, and the entire building shuddered, knocking them all off their feet. Madison lay on the ground, stunned, while Elena and the Regulator were attempting to prop themselves up with their arms. They all huddled under a table, staring out the window in silent fear.

Ghidorah looked agitated, heads whipping around, searching for something. The ORCA had done its trick, the sound from the speakers puzzling him. He thought he was hearing another top predator, possibly Godzilla or some unknown beast that was challenging his authority. And like any tyrant, he had come here to kill his competition and take back his throne. But there was no challenger to beat, just the stadium.

But that didn't stop him. His right head zeroed in on one of the speaker towers, hissing before ripping it from its mount. When the sound didn't stop, he moved to the next set of speakers, and then the next. All three heads worked in tandem, destroying the threat to his power.

Terror had frozen Madison in place. She couldn't think, all she could do was look at him. Elena wasn't any better. She was shaking, a single tear streaking down her face as it looked like she was holding in a scream. Madison could only imagine what Ghidorah was telling her now. She didn't envy her. Madison closed her eyes, trying to focus on anything other than the three-headed horror outside.

"We have to get out of here." Elena whispered.

"But he'll see us -" she whispered back.

Ghidorah's eyes passed over the booth for a brief moment, and Madison almost choked on her own breath.

"He'll know where we are anyway." Elena continued, brows knitting together. "I'm trying to block him out, but he's..he's too strong. I don't know if I can hold him back any longer."

Her comment was punctuated by another rumble, nearly sending them across the room. Breath heaving, Madison turned to the window, shooting the dragon a deadly glare before crawling across the floor just behind the Regulator. But as they began moving, she still heard the ORCA's hum from across the room. Now that the outside speakers were dead, the only source of the signal was a mere foot away from them.

"Wait," she said, reaching for the ORCA from under the table.

Her arms couldn't quite reach, but from beside her, a pair of hands extended forward, picking it up as quietly as possible. Crouching low, they tip-toed toward the exit only to turn around, feeling eyes behind them. Turning around felt like wading through water, but just as she expected, all three heads crowded up behind the window. Glaring at Elena before passing over Madison herself. The middle head's eyes squinted in an insidious leer. Gotcha.

"Oh shit."

Ghidorah reared back, an ear-splitting shriek erupting from his jaws as golden lightning flared through his teeth. They sprinted for the door, the Regulator ushering them through as the windows shattered behind them. Miraculously, it had missed them all, instead frying every piece of equipment within the room. Even then Madison could feel the prickle of electricity dance along her skin. But it didn't stop there - the lightning followed them as they ran, disintegrating what was left of the broadcasting booth as if it were nothing. As she ran, she felt the lightning's heat seep into her bones, it was almost painful, but there was no time to stop. She screamed, the sound barely audible over the cacophony.

They flew down the stairs, taking two or three at a time as Ghidorah ravaged the rest of the stadium, blasting it with his lightning, slashing it with his tails, ripping out chunks of it with his steel-toothed jaws. He was desperate to find them, his new top predators, titans clocking in at something equivalent to an ant. It would've been funny if they weren't about to die.

Then the stairs ahead of them disintegrated in another blaze of lightning, Elena nearly tripping forward had she not grabbed her arm and tugged her backward. They swerved into a row of seats, a spiked tail sweeping just behind them. Everything slowed as the stadium began to collapse in on itself. Madison found herself falling more than she ran the last several yards, tumbling out onto the field itself.

Elena was still grasping the ORCA in her arms, the Regulator helping Madison up from having scuffed her knee on a piece of rubble.

The stadium's exit was right there, less than a yard away. It would've been so easy to just sprint out of sight, duck into another building and hope for the best. But Ghidorah was there waiting for them, all three heads swiveling to focus on each of their three faces. The dragon's heads wore a sadistic grin, teeth glinting in the dim lighting. The malevolence she had seen in each of their eyes was still there, multiplied by a hundred. Only this time it was directed at them, and them alone.

Ghidorah trilled, but to Madison, all she heard was awful laughter.

#seizure warning #godzilla #king of the monsters #godzilla king of the monsters #kotm #godzilla fanfic #leviathanfic

[more--than--anything]

Episode Review: "I'm having the time of my life." [S4E08]

Mid-season finales always tend to end on a major cliffhanger, and this one was no exception. We have Tasha and Reade pointing guns at each other, Kurt and Remi on the brink of hand-to-hand combat (with Remi’s health rapidly declining), and Shepherd is on the loose again. Did this episode live up to expectations?

Y: I love Blindspot’s midseason finales. They always have a way of thwarting one threat only to make way for something bigger and more sinister and more dangerous. We thought Remi was dangerous? Well, now Shepherd is on the loose. We thought Mad Maddie was all kinds of crazy? Well now she’s teamed up with the biggest most dangerous man south of the border. Nothing says happy holidays like sending you on a four-week hiatus spent eating your weight in all kinds of foods while you get more and more worried about your fictional characters day after day.

L: Blindspot definitely does cliffhanger finales right. I love how we wrap up a few loose ends, but still manage to end on this great sense of motion, like we’re paused on an indrawn breath, but we have to wait until January to exhale. Once we’re done stuffing chocolate and cookies and other holiday treats in our faces, we can use the paper bags they came in to hyperventilate into!

It’s just another day at the FBI... until NORAD reports that a nuclear missile is heading toward New York City. Well actually, someone trying to blow up New York is a pretty ordinary day at work for our team, but something about this attack is just a little different than the other ones they’ve thwarted. How does our seriously-decimated team rise to meet this new challenge?

L: “Kind of feels like we’re due for some good news right about now,” says Rich, just before all the screens at the NYO turn red and announce, “Ballistic missile inbound to New York. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.” Our team is certainly no stranger to dealing with nukes and terrorists who’d like to remodel the New York City skyline, but the threats they usually tackle are of the “preventing the launch” variety. The CIRG team has 32 minutes before impact to try to minimize casualties. They immediately mobilize, sending teams out to halt incoming traffic into the city and get people into shelters.

Fortunately, our team isn’t easily fooled. Patterson discovers that the launch coordinates point to a US Navy submarine, just as Weller informs them that the Navy says all of their warheads are accounted for. Rich immediately figures out that NORAD has been hacked, their sensors tricked into detecting a missile that isn’t there and sending out an all-too-real emergency alert. (I love the callback to episode 2.07 and Rich’s fascination with the movie War Games. Also I love that the writers of this show apparently grew up on the same movies I did.) Rich goes looking for the source of the hack, but instead of being sent on the wild IP goose chase he expects, he finds a single device, at a location inside the FBI. In short order, he finds the disguised ethernet cable that Boston had Remi install, which he recognizes as his own invention.

Working backwards from the device, Rich identifies two locations that used it to access the FBI network: Boston’s safe house and the warehouse where Weller tracked Remi. They realize that Remi intended the attack as a diversion. Looking at the files that Boston pulled off the FBI servers, they discover he retrieved the locations of CIA black sites, although not the specific individuals held at each one, as well as CIA protocol in case of an emergency such as a nuclear attack. Weller calls the CIA to warn them that they are about to ambushed, but without sharing Remi’s involvement in the scheme. The CIA, of course, doesn’t need the FBI’s help (aside from our tiny joint task force, do any federal agencies on this show ever play nicely?) and go ahead with their plan to move Shepherd.

Boston is missing, so they figure correctly that Remi still needs him for something... like turning the traffic lights green so they can escape the traffic gridlock in the city. (Although the color of the traffic lights doesn’t usually seem to have much impact on real New York City gridlock.) The team finds a line of traffic lights that have been turned to green and then left at blinking yellow. Following “the yellow brick road,” Weller sets out to intercept them. He’s too late to stop Remi and Violet from freeing Shepherd (and it’s very convenient that although both Remi and Violet shoot at the CIA agents, Violet is the only one who actually hits one, while Remi just knocks the other one unconscious—thus keeping her “no killing of federal agents” record clean). Remi shoots out one of the tires in the car Weller’s driving and sends it tumbling down a hill before she heads off with Shepherd.

Boston convincingly plays possum and gets left behind when Remi departs. He is concerned about Kurt, but this is the same guy who was mildly annoyed by an explosion that punctured his jugular, so a car crash/head wound barely rates “minor inconvenience” on the Weller injury scale when Jane’s safety is at risk. Boston tells Kurt that Remi is hallucinating Roman, and they realize that time is running out to find a cure for Remi’s ZIP poisoning. Rich uses his “Deep Fake” software to create a video of Roman telling Remi that he has something she needs and sends it to the encrypted email address she was using to communicate with Boston. And fortunately for them, Remi is so lost in her hallucinatory reality that she doesn’t stop to wonder exactly how her dead brother is Skyping her from the great beyond.

Weller and Remi face off and then run at each other in what the entire internet immediately agreed appears to be the lead-in to the iconic dance lift from Dirty Dancing. (We’ll have to withhold judgment until January 11th to see if it surpasses Eli Manning and Odell Beckham’s NFL version.) But I think it’s pretty clear that putting Baby, I mean Remi, in a corner (or a cell with four corners) isn’t going to be an easy task for anyone, no matter how good your dance moves are.

So another draw for our team this week. They sort of stopped a nuclear attack that wasn’t really happening, but not in time to prevent widespread panic (and a few confessions of undying love, so hey, it’s not all bad news). They are unable to prevent Remi from freeing Shepherd, who is now on the loose. And they still don’t have a real cure for Remi’s ZIP poisoning. So basically, everything is going to hell in a handbasket (and we haven’t even gotten to Reade and Tasha holding each other at gunpoint yet), which is how we know this is the mid-season finale, right? Bring on the second half of the season. I’m ready!!

Interesting side note: With Reade suspended (and Weitz out of the office for unspecified reasons), Weller has apparently resumed the mantle of AD of the NYO. He is the one directing the tactical teams before they leave SIOC and updating the governor on the situation. But as much as we like looking at him in a suit, he has kind of a lot on his plate right now, what with both stopping and saving his wife, as well as concealing everything from the FBI, CIA, NORAD, and everyone else. The last thing he needs right now are the pressures and time commitment of the AD job. I told you, they should have put Patterson in charge. We know she is more than capable of bossing around the people in her lab, and I’m thinking she’s ready for the larger stage.

Y: I honestly do not know what they are waiting for. Appointing Patterson as boss seems so obvious. I think the suits upstairs are just worried she might be a little too good for the job. But seriously, can you imagine her as the boss? I need that. I desperately need that!

Although I am also secretly hoping this position would eventually be Tasha’s. I’ve been holding on to that since her scene with Mayfair in 1.21, and I know we’ve come a long since then and Tasha has been through so much, but I really think she’d own that position and make Mayfair so proud.

But back to our episode, it’s been a while since we’ve had a nuclear threat case of the week. And even though this was a fake one it was just as exciting watching the team solve it and get to the bottom of it as it would have been watching them stop it. I mean, we’ve already done that and we know they can pull it off—although seeing the two NASA reps again would’ve been nice. I miss Eileen.

I think my favorite thing in all this is that it took a real nuclear threat to lock Shepherd up and a fake one to get her out. I also loved that Shepherd’s initial getaway/nuclear vehicle was an ambulance in season two and her actual escape vehicle was also an ambulance. Kind of poetic in a terrifying way of you ask me.

To be honest, I never really expected them to go through with the Remi getting Shepherd out plan. I thought somehow she would get close but never be able to get it done. And now that it has happened, I won’t lie, I don’t know how I feel about it. On the one hand, I don’t want the rest of the season to become a repeat of the second season with Shepherd as the villain and the team trying to stop her again. But then again, Shepherd is one of the most interesting and compelling characters that has ever been on this show and getting her back would be incredible. And, I mean, Michelle Hurd is a rock star and having her on the show only makes it so much better. So the question is, will Shepherd be playing a big role this season? Is she the new villain? Will she somehow cross paths with Mad Maddie? And how can we have her back in a new and refreshing way that is not a repeat of the second season?

Poor Boston finds out the hard way that you can’t trust everything a non-FBI-agent noncommittally hints at to you. How does his bad day go from worse to worst?

L: I have to admit, I’ve been low-key worried about Boston ever since Remi recruited him. The odds seemed pretty evenly divided between Remi killing him to shut him up and the FBI throwing him back into supermax for the rest of his natural life. So I might be almost as happy as Rich that Boston escaped both of these fates.

Y: Oh yes, absolutely! The moment Remi showed up at his door step, I was almost 100% certain things were going to end up extremely terribly for Boston so you can say I am insanely beyond relieved that he survived all this. All the signs were pointing towards a terrible fate for Boston but I guess he was lucky that Weller is so blinded by love for his wife and the need to protect her that he somehow got under that blanket of protection. I just hope this also serves as a gateway for him to be more involved in the future somehow. I think he proved his usefulness, not just in this episode, and we do need more snarky, wise-ass, former criminals on this team, don’t we?

L: Always!

Boston has apparently moved from his narwhal period into his kiwi period. The greatest threat to the narwhal is their isolation, but the greatest threat to the flightless kiwi is apparently invasive mammalian predators. So if the greatest threat to Remi is her isolation, the greatest threat to the under house arrest and therefore (in theory) flightless Boston is the very predatory Remi. As Picasso said, “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.” Unfortunately for Boston, his art didn’t make him realize that he’d been played just a little while sooner.

But he is a survivor (just like Rich is, which might explain their mutual attraction). He does whatever he has to do in order to survive, whether it’s playing dead or immediately letting go of his anger at being played by Remi in order to try to curry favor with Remi and Violet and finding ways to show them how useful he can be. Roman warns Remi, “He will rat you out the first chance he gets,” which is pretty much exactly what Boston does when he ends up in FBI custody. And to be honest, I did kind of wonder if Boston was playing on Rich’s sympathies there at the end. The little smirk on his face could mean that he’s happy about being free, that he’s happy about Rich, or that he got his way. Like Rich, he’s just a little bit ambiguous in the morality department. I hope we see more of him this season!

And I’m not gonna deny it, Boston and Rich may be individually a mess and possibly even worse together, but the parallel of the two of them torturing love confessions out of each other (Rich when Boston faked the missile attack and Boston when Rich lied to him about his fate) is kind of precious, and I am really invested in the two of them getting some heavy-duty counseling and working things out between them. I mean, how often do you go from “I love you” to “You are a horrible human being. You’re a monster. You’re a garbage person” in just a matter of moments? Those are some strong, deep emotions there. How can you not ship it??

Y: Patterson was not wrong when she called their relationship toxic and she is very much right in so many ways but I think they can also be so good to each other. Just like Rich and Boston themselves, there is always a comedic element to how their relationship will be represented but it will always carry a layer of true, honest emotion. And there’s also something very real about the relationship between those two and something very true to who they are. I mean, doesn’t every relationship go turbulently between I love you’s and I hate you’s? I loved how those two take their competitiveness everywhere they go, from wanting to be the best hackers to competing for the FBI job and in who can give the best love speeches and who can trick the other into confessing their feelings. It’s different and it’s fresh and it’s fun and it keeps adding layers to these characters and make us want more and more of them.

Meanwhile, Patterson hooks Weitz and Reade up with fake passports for their trip to Mexico City. Does this dubiously dynamic duo have any success in their hunt to bring in Zapata?

L: Weitz and Reade continue to be the oddest couple of all, although we sadly don’t get to spend as much time this week with the buddy cop show. Patterson pretty much sums it up for us: “You and Weitz? Weird.” And she shares our reservations about Weitz’s abilities as a backup. He does carry a gun in this episode, but we don’t see him fire it. (I’m just gonna go out on a limb and guess that he’s not nearly as accurate a shot as Madeline is.) But nonetheless, our good cop/bad cop team is off to Mexico.

Y: This definitely is the strangest pairing we have ever had on the show, more even than when Rich and Kurt ended up as a married couple in a creepy sex-crazed underground college cult, but that’s what I love about the show. The richness of these characters gives us all these fun possibilities of pairings and they are always an opportunity for something new and fresh and to send these characters on exciting journeys and new and challenging tests to add to their journey.

I kind of expected we would see slightly more of the two than just them finally ending up crossing paths with Tasha but we don’t. And yet somehow they end up in the exact right corner of the market where she is. I am not doubting Reade’s abilities and skills to track her down but the investigation must have been fun with Weitz as his partner. I just rue the missed opportunity of Weitz sitting there watching Reade do all the hard work while he undoubtedly used every chance he got to enjoy the new toy he’s been issued.

L: I wish we could have seen a little more of the two of them tracking Tasha down, too. But whatever they are doing seems to be working, as not only do they find Tasha, they manage to neatly corner her. And frankly, if I were Weitz, I’d probably be a little nervous. Because, as Patterson would say, Tasha is for sure a better shot than he is. (Although he does appear to at least be holding his gun correctly.) And she hasn’t been a big fan of his since he manipulated her into digging up dirt on Mayfair. Then again, killing/injuring the Director of the FBI might make it hard for Tasha to get her job back, once she makes it through this mess, so maybe that’s a point in his favor? Either way, he definitely must seem like less of a threat than Reade, because Tasha immediately turns her back on him to point her gun at Reade.

To be fair, shooting the AD of the NYO isn’t a much better plan, career-wise. And even though Tasha might have been quick to shoot Jane, I’m betting that she’s not quite as eager to shoot the man she loves. But for all his tough words (“This ends with you in cuffs or one of us dead”), I don’t think Reade is any more eager to shoot Tasha than she is to shoot him.

But honestly, I’m rooting for Reade right now. If anyone can save Tasha from herself (whether she’s deep undercover or just turning to a life of crime), it’s Reade. No matter how angry he is at her right now, he’s still the person who cares about her the most.

Y: I don’t think I have ever rooted for anyone on this show like I am rooting for Reade at the moment to be able to pull Tasha out of this—regardless of what this is. And honestly, she’s saved his ass so many times before over the years that he owes her big time and it’s about time someone had Tasha’s back like she’s had everyone else’s all this time.

And even if he’s driven by anger and betrayal at this point, we know behind all this is love and friendship and a connection and partnership that goes deeper than anything. I have faith in Reade, almost as much as I’m terrified for the both of them right now of how all this is going to unfold. And no matter how things end, there are only more obstacles along the way. Let’s not forget who else is also in the picture here, whether it’s Madeline and her new bestie or Larren over at the CIA who’s probably out there measuring body bags for Zapata’s homecoming.

Speaking of Zapata, she and her new “partner” politely request a meeting with a Mexican crime lord. Are they able to convince him to let them borrow his ace hacker?

Y: Before we get into how dark and sinister and scary their little trip south was, can we please just take a moment to appreciate Tasha/Audrey speaking Spanish. Look, don’t judge me but that was insanely hot, okay? I need more of that, please.

Okay now, let’s focus on the other things that happened...

L: If Reade and Weitz are an odd couple, I don’t even know what to call Tasha and Madeline. The minute Tasha sees the alert about the missile heading toward New York City, she assumes it’s Mad Maddie’s doing. And really, that does seem like a logical conclusion; with the casual disregard for human life that Madeline has demonstrated thus far, nuking New York City doesn’t seem too far out of the range of possibility. I’m not sure which of them seems crazier: Mad Maddie or the woman who is determined to make all her crazy plans become reality??

I can’t decide if I am impressed by Madeline’s resilience or terrified by how blithely unconcerned Madeline is about the attack. I’m going to go with door number two, because as Tasha points out, HCI Global headquarters is in New York, so if the city is destroyed, HCI will take a huge blow as well. If the success of HCI was truly Madeline’s goal, this news should concern her. But it doesn’t. Like Remi, Madeline’s madness is showing. (Although unlike Remi, this isn’t exactly a new development.)

Y: I think the one thing we can say we have learned in this first half of the season is that Madeline’s brand of crazy is a whole new level for Blindspot and that we should always—always—be terrified by everything she does and says. We’re maybe starting to get some indication as to what is driving her, but whatever it is, it has pushed her to a point of complete disregard for human life, no matter who it is, and made her so blindly focused on it that she does not care what else happens around her as long as her to-do list is on track. We’re still not crystal clear on her endgame or why she’s even doing all this, but we at least know that we should be scared. Very, very scared.

And mostly for Tasha, who, the longer she spends time with Maddie, will find herself surrounded more and more by crazier and more terrifying people and find herself falling deeper and deeper into this dark pit.

L: Crazy Train, Inc. finds Franco Cortez’s accountant and politely ask him at gunpoint to arrange a nice luncheon with Franco. Unsurprisingly, this approach isn’t successful, but then very surprisingly, Tasha turns her back on him. That seems like a really out-of-character mistake for her to make, but then again, she was standing with her back to Madeline, which was probably even more unnerving. Miguel goes for a gun hidden under his desk, but Madeline neatly puts a bullet in his shooting arm. I feel like we’re supposed to be surprised that Madeline is a good shot, but I’m not. She’s clearly spent the past thirty years working on her doctoral thesis on “how to kill people who piss you off.” Marksmanship seems like an intro class in that program.

Team Bad Girls get their lunch with Franco and sit down for an awkward chat at gunpoint. Madeline tells him that they can help him with a rival cartel in Bartoba. Franco is unconvinced until Madeline asks him to check his phone, where there is a news blurb about a non-fatal hit on the president of Bartoba (right below the nuke heading for New York), which she tells him is a “proof of concept.” “You’re crazy, you know? I love it,” Franco tells her. Oh Franco, you don’t know the half of it. Crazy doesn’t begin to cover her. Franco offers to swap Del Toro for Tasha. And I don’t know, but part of me is sorry that deal didn’t go through. I feel like Tasha would be safer pretty much anywhere other than beside Madeline, even in the custody of a Mexican crime lord. Franco agrees, and Madeline sends Tasha off to fetch Del Toro in Canada.

Y: Oh, I also wanted that swap deal to go through only to see how Tasha will handle this one. She just finds herself going from one terrible situation to another and it has been amazing watching Tasha handle it all and watching Audrey being given all these amazing opportunities to shine.

Also, working with Franco would have meant more Spanish speaking moments from Tasha and I am shallow like that.

But back to that lunch—how amazing was that scene? The back and forth between Madeline and Franco was so incredibly written and so chillingly evilly played by both actors. Hats off to everyone in that scene, seriously, I was blown away. Seeing someone like Franco comment on Madeline’s crazy but also be in awe of it was great, especially considering that that someone is a feared drug lord himself, so I am sure he has his own brains of crazy. When one crazy is left in awe of another, you know things are about to get very interesting.

L: There is nothing about this partnership that is remotely comforting. I wonder if this will be a one-shot deal, or if we have to worry about Franco too now in the back half of the season?

I do have to say that Madeline avoiding Canada, the land of the most apologetically polite people on earth, cracks me up. I guess it shouldn’t surprise us that she’s allergic to the words, “I’m sorry.” But Madeline opting out of a trip to the frozen north means that Tasha is on her own now. I love the way they filmed the chase scene: Tasha looking up to see Reade and then taking off through the market before being cornered by Weitz and Reade. Weitz does manage to point the business end of his gun at her in a convincing fashion, but there is no way he’s as good a shot as Madeline, so it’s fortunate for Weitz and Reade that she’s already departed. But it’s unfortunate for Tasha, as there is no one to help rescue her from this predicament.

Which brings us to Tasha. My husband turned to me at the end of this episode and said, “She’s not convincing as a bad guy. She just looks like she’s about to cry all the time.” And I have to admit, I don’t disagree. I know they are walking a fine line with this character (just as they are with Jane/Remi), trying to make her evil enough to convince you that she’s turned to the Dark Side, yet still leave the door open for some sort of redemption later. But if I’m honest, it’s not quite working. Even Madeline doesn’t buy it, telling Tasha, “If you’re getting cold feet, I can handle it.” Tasha is obviously not embracing the Super Villain lifestyle. As with Madeline, the problem here is motivation. We’re currently assuming that the CIA set up the phone theft to frame Tasha, then offered her this undercover gig as a way to clear her name and restore her career. And yes, that’s a powerful motivator for Tasha, but ultimately, it’s just a job. Yes, she’s dedicated herself to a career in law enforcement, but there are other things she could be doing to earn a buck. Things that don’t entail killing fellow agents and pointing guns at the man you love. What is keeping her from walking away from this madness? I need to know that it’s something bigger than just her job. Did they threaten Reade’s job too? His life? Her family? The team’s safety?

I am actually hoping that Reade wins this round. One, Tasha won the last round, so it’s his turn. But two, I think Tasha needs an intervention. Whatever trouble she is in, it doesn’t seem to be something that she is willing or able to get herself out of. The longer this goes on, the bigger the hole she digs for herself. She’s already killed a fellow intelligence agent and terrorized a poor tech geek. Next on her agenda is crashing an airplane with who knows how many innocent people aboard. Someone needs to stop her, and Reade might be the only person who can.

Kurt was dealt a pretty massive blow last week, when he discovered that Jane had reverted to Remi. But the news just keeps getting worse for our favorite special agent, doesn’t it?

Y: Kurt Weller isn’t having a great week, is he? This poor boy just goes from one horrible week into another without catching a break.

There is so much to unpack with Kurt in this episode, for starters he has to deal with the Remi running off and how to handle that first situation, and then there’s that inconvenient nuclear threat, on top of that Remi is trying to get Shepherd out of CIA custody, then there’s the revelation that Remi/Jane’s condition is getting worse and finally the information about the potential cure. I don’t know about you, but that is enough to keep me busy for about two years and Kurt has to handle it all in one day.

L: Kurt makes some interesting decisions in this episode. First, to conceal Jane’s reversion to Remi from everyone but Rich and Patterson. We can’t fault his motivation: He knows that working with the team is important to Jane, and he wants her on his team, at work and at home. If the powers that be get wind of her realigned loyalties, I’m not sure they’d be willing to accept the ZIP poisoning explanation, even if she can be “cured.” There is no way they would permit Jane to continue working as an FBI asset and part of their premiere CRIG team. But on the flip side, that’s a lot of secrets to be keeping, from everyone at the FBI, and by the end of the episode, NORAD and the CIA too. Which means that I’m not just worried about Jane’s career now, but Weller is putting his own on the line as well as Patterson and Rich. I am sure that Weller would give up his career in a heartbeat to have his wife back, but there is a good chance that he ends up with neither his wife nor his career at this rate.

But that decision is eclipsed by an even more questionable one he makes later. Patterson uses Roman’s research and enlists the help of a neurobiologist to design a treatment that might re-awaken Remi’s Jane memories. But an earlier trial of the treatment was shut down because a patient died, and Patterson doesn’t hold back when she tells Weller about the risks: There is a good chance that this procedure could kill Remi. Weller doesn’t hesitate. “If there’s even a 1% chance that we can get Jane back, we have to do it,” whether Remi is willing or not. And this is a very interesting parallel to the conversation that Remi has with Shepherd about the risks of the ZIP she was injected with. Shepherd admits that she knew that the ZIP might be fatal. Remi tells her, “If you had told me the truth, I still would’ve gone through with it on my terms. But you robbed me of the chance to make that decision for myself.” Just like Shepherd, Weller wants to rob her of the chance to make this decision for herself. And it also contradicts what he told Remi in the previous episode: “Jane has exactly what you don’t. That’s the choice to be whoever she wants to be.” Choice is supposedly the difference between Jane and Remi. But if Weller takes this choice away from her, the choice to live as Remi or as Jane, then he’s no better than Shepherd in the end. It might be different if this procedure could cure Remi’s ZIP poisoning and save her life, but Patterson makes it clear that it will not. Jane took choice away from Roman when she injected him with ZIP, and ultimately destroyed any chance of having a loving relationship with her brother again. By going ahead with this plan, Weller might be able to bring back Jane’s memories, but he would do so at the expense of her trust and probably his marriage. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

I also want to talk about how calm and collected Kurt is about the whole imminent-death-by-nuclear-bomb thing. I mean, maybe he’s just used up all his stress on Jane, but he has no reason to doubt the intel he’s received, and he still takes charge of the situation and takes a few precious minutes to calm Rich down. And then immediately calls Jane to tell her he loves her—just in case he doesn’t survive. (And I’m gonna feel some kind of cheated if Jane doesn’t listen to that message at some point, either as Jane or Remi.) And it’s moments like this that remind us why he was the head of the CIRG group at the NYO. He’s a natural leader and completely cool under fire. His wife is dying and has run off to resume her former terrorist lifestyle, he’s facing imminent death from an incoming nuclear warhead, and he’s all, “Take a minute, Rich, and pull yourself together.”

And also, this may be why he’s Remi/Jane’s soulmate. I mean, who else is going to take all the bombs (both literal and figurative) that she lobs at him in stride and just keep going?

Y: Shepherd was not wrong when she said that Jane was tailor-made for Kurt. Honestly, it’s not just Jane as Jane. I think no matter what version of her she is, ultimately those two will always be perfect for each other. I think Shepherd may have always known it somehow and now it’s time for the two of them to realize it.

Back to Kurt’s laundry list of things he had to do this week—one of which by the way, was tumble down a cliff in a car, let’s not forget—I just need to talk about Kurt Weller as acting AD for a moment. How awesome was watching him take charge again? It was so good to see him stand there and lead the FBI, to give out orders and be a leader once again. There was something about that scene that gave me flashbacks to the Pilot episode and also to season two. Kurt has grown so much since then, both as an agent and as a person, and it reflects in how he talks to the team and to his agents. I love Reade as AD, but there is just something special about Kurt Weller in that position. And I do realize that at this point in this review I have voiced my support for four different people taking this position.

But speaking of how much Kurt has changed—thanks mostly to Jane coming into his life—the fact that he takes a moment to tell the team to be careful and then to help Rich calm down just goes to show what a great arc this character has been through and just how he’s a natural leader. His scene with Rich was absolutely precious, especially that it led to that voicemail that, let’s all come clean right now, we’ve all watched over fifty times already and cried every single time. And yes, I will feel cheated if Jane doesn’t hear—whether as Jane or as Remi, I don’t care.

I don’t know how and when this will happen exactly, considering the episode had those two running towards each other with every intention to not embrace, kiss, and make up. So, we’ll wait to see how this plays out—I am so torn between seeing another epic fight between the two or something completely unexpected.

My main concern with Kurt this week is, like L pointed out, the whole “give Jane/Remi the cure no matter what.” That raises so many flags for me, and I was worried they might not address it, but I am glad they did and I am glad that it was Rich who brought it up. Choice has been a huge theme in this show from day one, and we have seen them tackle it repeatedly and in various ways, and especially in this episode and the last. I can understand Kurt’s point of view. No one can fault him for wanting to cure his wife, to save her from dying, to do whatever needs to be done to get her back. And I think at this point, it doesn’t matter if getting her Jane’s memories is an option. Her body and her mind are failing. We need to save her from that before anything else, right? What’s the point of getting her Jane memories back if she only has hours to live anyway? I honestly cannot blame Kurt and I understand his desperation at this point. But this does not mean it will be okay to do any of this without her consent—and once again, thank you Rich for mentioning it.

Kurt said it in the previous episode, the difference between Remi and Jane has been Jane having the freedom to choose, so I really hope that he will not rob Remi of her choice. The parallels with Jane taking Roman’s choice away and Shepherd taking Remi’s choice away and the repercussions are absolutely perfect here, and I want more than anything for them to handle this properly when the time comes.

Remi’s plans to free Shepherd have been all that’s been keeping her going since she got the ZIP poisoning diagnosis. But you know what they say about being careful what you wish for... How does their mother/daughter reunion go?

L: There is no question that Remi’s health takes a turn for the decidedly worse this week. Her headaches are back with a vengeance, as are her hallucinations of Roman. She begins to talk to him in front of other people, unable to remember that he isn’t really there. But her subconscious mind just won’t stop, pointing out that Weller was right, she did fail in her plan.

Y: I loved how they played the deterioration of Remi’s health and how it was portrayed on screen both physically and mentally and how it reflected on her emotionally. She kept getting weaker physically as the episode progressed but more interesting was how her grasp on reality similarly started to fade away. Roman’s return is clearly the strongest evidence of that and watching how she completely crossed the line between what is real and what is not was done really well. And through all that, Remi knows one thing is certain, she is dying, and that she has only thing left to do.

L: She has one final hope of redemption: Freeing Shepherd. But as Remi quickly discovers, sometimes getting what you want doesn’t actually give you what you need. She has been clinging to the thought that “Shepherd will have a plan. She’ll know exactly what to do.” Only Shepherd doesn’t. And that is the worst outcome that Remi could possibly have imagined. She has no one left to take up the cause for which she is literally giving her life, inch by painful inch. Even her paid muscle, Violet, is dead, yet another victim of association with Remi.

Y: That mother-daughter reunion was just awesome and the impact of certain revelations only helped worsen Remi’s condition. Shepherd is not the driven revolutionary she expected her to be. She’s broken and tired and hopeless. She also admitted that she was aware of the fact that the ZIP was going to eventually kill Remi and all the promises in the world about how she had hoped Remi would have returned to her by then could not make things better for Remi. Not only is this another instant in her life characterized by someone taking her choice away from her but in more ways than one, this is a form of abandonment, something that has been a constant in Remi’s life.

L: This is another situation where not having access to Jane’s memories puts Remi at a disadvantage. Remi was trained to resist interrogation, but she has no memory of being held by the CIA. She doesn’t remember what it was like to go through that. And even if she did... Jane was tortured for three months. Shepherd has been in CIA custody for more than two years by now. She is not the same person she was when the FBI arrested her. What we see instead is a broken woman who has given up, the righteous fire that drove her extinguished by prolonged abuse. Even though she’s been rescued, her only ally is someone who might be her daughter or might be the enemy who locked her up, but either way, is definitely losing her mind. I can’t blame Shepherd for wanting to just get away from all of this, find a little of the peace she’s been denied for so long.

I must admit that I am still mildly amused that death metal is part of CIA torture. Although maybe that depends on the prisoner? Do other prisoners get elevator music? Or static-y hold music, interrupted by advertisements?

Y: Well, I would have voted for elevator music, or maybe the endless holiday mall jingles? Don’t get me wrong, they’re great, but why do they now start in October? Isn’t that slightly overkill?

L: October? They’ve got decorations on display by the start of September! But I think you might be on to something. It must be a CIA plot. I’ll tell them anything to make them stop!

I am excited to have Shepherd back again. She was such a satisfying villain because she was so calculating and rational about achieving her goals. It is interesting to compare her to Madeline, who is almost her polar opposite, crazy where Shepherd was sane, over the top where Shepherd was pragmatic, driven by revenge versus driven by a misguided sense of protecting the public. It will be interesting to see what Shepherd does next. She seems to rally and get with the program after Remi’s little tough love talk, but she still seems a far cry from the ultra-villain we saw in season two. (And that scene was amazing. Jaimie Alexander has done an incredible job portraying the Remi/Jane dichotomy this season, but this scene might be her best yet.) Somehow I doubt that Shepherd is going to become the leader that Remi expects her to. I can’t help but wonder if Shepherd will ultimately die this season, too, effectively destroying Remi’s last tie to her past.

I really love the role reversal we see between Shepherd and Remi in this scene. In the scenes we saw from earlier in Remi’s life, she was a little more than a tool wielded by Shepherd. Shepherd had a goal, and Remi was simply a piece of that plan. Shepherd used her, expected Remi to do what was asked of her, regardless of what Remi might really have wanted. So instead of marrying her fiancé, Remi had her memory erased and was delivered to another man. But in this scene, we see a tired, faded Shepherd who just wants to run away and find somewhere she can live in peace, and a Remi with no sympathy for her, totally focused only on what she wants to accomplish. She is her mother’s daughter, as Kurt said, exactly what her mother made her to be.

Shepherd tells Remi that Roman was looking into the work of someone named Kallisto. But the last time Shepherd saw Roman was in the brief window between retrieving him from the FBI lockup and her arrest in the wake of Phase Two, more than two years ago. Long before Roman launched his plans to punish Jane and bring down Crawford, probably before Roman even showed any signs of ZIP poisoning himself. In other words, this is seriously old intel, almost certainly superseded by whatever information was on the drives Roman hid. If Remi has to choose between whatever information she and Shepherd can dig up and whatever the FBI can find, she is clearly choosing the harder path by sticking with Shepherd.

Y: But back to Remi/Jane, I have a confession to make here. You’d think since it has taken us so long to get this review done—which I admit is 93% my fault—that we’d have some deep analysis to share with you, but the longer it has taken me to get this done, the harder it has become to put my thoughts on Remi/Jane down. There is just so much here to discuss and to talk about. The seven episodes leading up to this have been huge, monumental even, in Remi/Jane’s journey. It has put her through so much, unraveled so much for her and for us, and given us so much to work with and unwrap about her journey, her mental state, her emotional state, etc.…

We have touched upon so many themes and topics that have been an integral part of Jane’s story from day one in the first half of the season and I just feel like to truly grasp it and give it justice we need to take a step back and dissect it one by one. There has just been so much to take in, it sometimes feels a little overwhelming. We’ve seen Remi confront demons from her past such as abandonment, being dispensable and having her free will taken from her. We have seen her have to confront the life Jane has been living in which she has everything that Remi never had. We’ve seen her have to face her own mortality, to stand face to face with people who represents two completely opposite sides of any spectrum in Shepherd and Kurt, and we have seen her have to confess to her own failures.

Honestly, looking back, I just cannot believe it has only been eight episodes and all this has happened. I don’t know how things will go forward from here but I think this has been the most exciting stretch of episodes for Remi/Jane, the most challenging, the most telling and the most revealing. Whatever happens from here on, one thing is for sure, nothing is ever going to be the same for her and she is never going to be the same again. She can’t go back to being the old Remi, and she can’t go back to being the old Jane. Whoever comes out of this ordeal is going to have to be a new person who rises like a phoenix from the ashes of both women.

And I cannot wait to see Jaimie Alexander shine as she portrays all of this.

And finally... Jeller. For a couple that doesn’t even talk to each other until the final moments of the episode, they still manage to have a massive impact on one another. Is there any hope left for our favorite couple?

L: Well, Tasha and Reade are pointing guns at each other, so Kurt and Remi running toward each other for hand-to-hand combat is maybe slightly better? I’m not going to lie, I loved the fight scene between Kurt and Jane at the start of season two, so I am kind of excited about this development. And I think it’s going to be a pretty even match: Remi has an advantage because Kurt won’t want to hurt her, but as we saw in this episode, Remi’s health is declining rapidly, which gives Kurt an advantage.

But as we’ve seen both Kurt and Remi acknowledge, this fight isn’t really Remi versus Kurt. It’s really more Remi versus her Jane self. Kurt merely represents everything that Remi is fighting: Her failed mission that took away everyone she cared about; a government that betrayed her; and a life as Jane that gave her all the things she wasn’t supposed to want out of life. Remi gave up her chance at a marriage, a family, a normal life, even a normal life expectancy when she was injected with ZIP. Jane had all of those things: A loving husband, a family with a daughter and a step-daughter, an extended family of close friends, a rewarding career that gave her purpose. Remi has just begun to realize everything that she had as Jane, and part of her is angry that she would want it. But she does want it. That’s why she couldn’t kill Weller. If her ZIP poisoning hadn’t given her the urgency to set her plans in motion, she might have been tempted to stay in that pretend life for even longer. And the fact that Jane’s life was tempting to her is what makes her so angry.

I’m excited to see what happens next, especially how Remi deals with a Weller who still refuses to see her as his enemy.

Y: One thing we’ve learned on this show is never ever give up on Jeller. And that every time we find ourselves in a place where things cannot look more bleak, we come out of it stronger and eventually realize that part of the journey was necessary to take them to this next level of their relationship where they are better and closer. Watching Remi hate Jane’s life but also envy it at the same time has been great but more so has been watching how these two, no matter what they are going through or what version of her identity Jane is, that they will always gravitate towards one another, how they will blindly trust each other and how they will always protect and save one another. That is why Remi could not take Kurt out even though she has had many opportunities to do so and she might not admit it yet, but she has grown to care for him, not just as a residual of Jane’s feelings for him, but as Remi. If she had enough time, she would definitely have fallen for him as hard as Jane fell for Kurt.

I’m just as excited to see what happens next. I’m confident that these two are endgame and will always end up back together, but what makes them fun and one of the most exciting ships I’ve ever shipped is that every season is a new journey and a new adventure to find their way back to each other. Because that’s just the way they are. They’re inevitable.

How are you holding up after that massive cliffhanger ending? Did you have enough chocolate? Do you have any advice for surviving the next two weeks without Blindspot? Please, share your secrets with us! We’ll be here, probably curled up in the fetal position, until then!

—Laura & Yas

#blindspot #blindspot: episode review #character: kurt weller #character: jane doe #character: edgar reade #character: tasha zapata #character: patterson #character: rich dotcom #character: boston arliss crab #character: matthew weitz #character: madeline burke #character: Shepherd #ship: Jane/Kurt #ship: tasha/reade