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istumpysk · 3 years

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Operation Stumpy Re-Read

AGOT: Bran IV (Chapter 24)

Focus, this is an important one.

In the yard below, Rickon ran with the wolves.

Bran watched from his window seat. Wherever the boy went, Grey Wind was there first, loping ahead to cut him off, until Rickon saw him, screamed in delight, and went pelting off in another direction. Shaggydog ran at his heels, spinning and snapping if the other wolves came too close. His fur had darkened until he was all black, and his eyes were green fire.

Someone de-code this for me! There’s vital information hidden here, I can feel it.

+.+

Bran's Summer came last. He was silver and smoke, with eyes of yellow gold that saw all there was to see. Smaller than Grey Wind, and more wary. Bran thought he was the smartest of the litter.

See, I told you!

+.+

Whenever he was away more than a day, Rickon would cry and ask Bran if Robb was ever coming back.

NO. WHY. :(

+.+

"Oh, my sweet summer child," Old Nan said quietly, "what do you know of fear? Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north.

Howling.

+.+

Old Nan nodded. "In that darkness, the Others came for the first time," she said as her needles went click click click. "They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins. They swept over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms, felled heroes and armies by the score, riding their pale dead horses and leading hosts of the slain. All the swords of men could not stay their advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found no pity in them. They hunted the maids through frozen forests, and fed their dead servants on the flesh of human children."

This might be about the Others, but I generally don’t enjoy any references to maidens being hunted in frozen forests. Especially when it’s accompanied by mention of human flesh.

+.+

Theon Greyjoy had once commented that Hodor did not know much, but no one could doubt that he knew his name.

Yeah, about that Reek...

+.+

No one knew where "Hodor" had come from, she said, but when he started saying it, they started calling him by it. It was the only word he had.

+.+

Robb was seated in Father's high seat, wearing ringmail and boiled leather and the stern face of Robb the Lord.

(...)

His sword was across his knees, the steel bare for all the world to see. Even Bran knew what it meant to greet a guest with an unsheathed sword.

Silly Bran, you don’t know what it means at all.

By ancient custom an iron longsword had been laid across the lap of each who had been Lord of Winterfell, to keep the vengeful spirits in their crypts. - Eddard I, AGOT

+.+

"Hodor," Hodor said, and he trotted forward smiling and set Bran in the high seat of the Starks, where the Lords of Winterfell had sat since the days when they called themselves the Kings in the North. The seat was cold stone, polished smooth by countless bottoms; the carved heads of direwolves snarled on the ends of its massive arms. Bran clasped them as he sat, his useless legs dangling. The great seat made him feel half a baby.

Robb was sitting in the high seat of the Starks.

Robb stood.

Bran is then set down in that seat.

The seat where Kings once sat.

+.+

Bran was uncomfortably aware of Tyrion Lannister's eyes. One was black and one was green, and both were looking at him, studying him, weighing him.

Oh, hello there. I just realized something.

Tyrion has one green eye, and one black eye.

Dance of Dragons, the greens vs the blacks.

Tyland Lannister, the hated disfigured Hand of the King, played on both sides.

+.+

"Perhaps it's time I took my leave," Tyrion said. He took a step backward … and Shaggydog came out of the shadows behind him, snarling. Lannister recoiled, and Summer lunged at him from the other side. He reeled away, unsteady on his feet, and Grey Wind snapped at his arm, teeth ripping at his sleeve and tearing loose a scrap of cloth.

It’s such a mystery! If the scholars of Reddit can’t figure this out, what hope do I have?!

+.+

So as cold and death filled the earth, the last hero determined to seek out the children, in the hopes that their ancient magics could win back what the armies of men had lost. He set out into the dead lands with a sword, a horse, a dog, and a dozen companions. For years he searched, until he despaired of ever finding the children of the forest in their secret cities. One by one his friends died, and his horse, and finally even his dog, and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped when he tried to use it. And the Others smelled the hot blood in him, and came silent on his trail, stalking him with packs of pale white spiders big as hounds—"

All Bran could think of was Old Nan's story of the Others and the last hero, hounded through the white woods by dead men and spiders big as hounds. He was afraid for a moment, until he remembered how that story ended. "The children will help him," he blurted, "the children of the forest!"

Boy, all of this seems so irrelevant.

Personally, I can’t wait to find more clues that tell us how Daenerys and her dragons will save the world.

+.+

"Yes," Robb said with such hope in his voice that Bran knew he was hearing his brother and not just Robb the Lord. "Mother will be home soon. Maybe we can ride out to meet her when she comes. Wouldn't that surprise her, to see you ahorse?" Even in the dark room, Bran could feel his brother's smile. "And afterward, we'll ride north to see the Wall. We won't even tell Jon we're coming, we'll just be there one day, you and me. It will be an adventure."

"An adventure," Bran repeated wistfully. He heard his brother sob. The room was so dark he could not see the tears on Robb's face, so he reached out and found his hand. Their fingers twined together.

🥺

Final thoughts:

The foreshadowing in this chapter is something else. Bran’s POVs are on another level.

Also, unrelated, I love Old Nan. We all need an Old Nan in our lives.

-> return to menu <-

#operation stumpy re-read #agot #bran iv

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bethagain · 3 years

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I love the bath snippets! How about... Grogu with Peli's little robots? Or Greef giving Grogu little presents/spoiling him? Or Din trying different foods for Grogu because they can't always have fresh frog.

Thank you @calluna-cuprea for the prompt and sorry it took so long to get to it! I loved all your ideas but I ended up going with the one about Greef and presents. Although, as usual, it went off in its own direction.

Karga's version of babysitting is this: He asks to hold the child, and when Din hands Grogu over he swoops him up and starts walking away.

"Where are you going?" Din always protests, but he knows what the answer is going to be.

"Go run some errands, Mando. Polish your armor. We'll be back."

"When?"

"You know he's safe with me."

Ask the man to babysit, and he'll say no every time.

He comes back, always, a few hours later. He hands over a smiling child who waves back at him and then promptly falls asleep in Din's arms.

We checked out the new market, he says. We visited a goap farm. We watched ships take off and land. We tried all the flavors at the sweet-ice shop.

Din hadn't known there were so many things to do on Nevarro.

The child's usually clutching some new thing, too, at least until he conks out. Din has to take it from his hands before he drops it.

One time it's a soft grey blanket, just the right size for the child's bed. "Sometimes children get scared in the night," Karga says, handing over a larger bundle. Soft grey cloth pokes out from a tear in the wrapping. "Now he'll be comfortable if he wants to sleep with you."

Another time it's a pair of warm slippers, sized and sewn to fit the child's feet. "I didn't know if he'd wear them," Karga says, placing another package in Din's hand. "These are your size. You'll have to show him how."

Once, it's a packet of ground leafpepper, sharp-smelling from a meter away. "I've heard this is popular in your Mandalorian dishes," Karga says. "I thought he might like to try it."

"He'd never buy those things for himself," Karga says to Dune.

They're sharing the last of the Tathan firewine that Din dropped off on his last visit, shrugging that he didn't drink the stuff and maybe Karga would want it.

Din couldn't possibly know that he'd been a young man on Tath IV, could he? Karga paid good credits to get that erased from his chain code, long ago.

He turns his glass, watching the last few bright-green drops slide along the bottom.

"What else does a child need?" he asks Dune.

"No idea," she says. "But I'm sure you'll think of something Mando doesn't have yet."

#the mandalorian #din djarin #greef karga #fanfiction #mini-fic #my fic #prompt fill

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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How would you describe the relationship between each respective goggleboy and 'rival'? Ive seen different interpretations but im curious what you think! Not to mention that the fans are sometimes arguing over who the 'rival' actually is, like with Daisuke where some people say its Ken and others say its Takeru. (I dont think there are actual rivals in the show, except for maybe Manga!Kiriha who outright says he will be just that with Taiki.)

One thing to keep in mind is that the word "rival" has kind of integrated itself into anime lingo as a full-on English loanword, so it comes from expectations of anime tropes more than anything. While even official staff has used that word in talking about Digimon, as you say, it never really fit to begin with, because not only has Digimon TV anime never been a particularly conventional shounen series in many ways, that term was also mostly coined in light of series where that term made a lot more sense. As in, they were more likely to be actually competing over something (in sports, or something tournament-based like card games); in that sense, a "rival" would be someone who might be antagonistic by being on the other side of the field, but would have a mutually positive relationship with the other person overall because the competitiveness would keep both of them on their toes and allow both of them to improve together. Digimon is not the first time this term has started getting overapplied to contexts where it doesn't really fit at all (it's been going on in Super Sentai for years), so people generally have a greater perception of it broadly meaning "two characters who have differing opinions on how something should be done due to their differing personalities, and sometimes fight over it", but in Digimon especially, it really does seem like trying to smash a square peg into a round hole.

The short answer: Xros Wars is probably the only one you can make a real argument for.

The long answer, in detail:

Adventure: I cannot emphasize enough that Adventure, being a series that was really big on that whole trope subversion thing, is a series that casts the trope of "rivalry" as "getting in a lot of fights" as a bad thing -- it's actually pretty unsubtle about it, because the word "rival" itself is explicitly used in Adventure episode 44, by Jureimon trying to manipulate Yamato. Or, in other words, "hey, if you saw someone who's supposed to be your supportive friend as someone you had to constantly compete against for no good reason, wouldn't that be really messed up?" Adventure does not even bother with or remotely believe in the idea that fighting somehow is a sign of how good friends you are, at least, not as long as that fighting is a sign of genuine hostility and refusal to communicate (which is why Yamato punching Taichi in 02 doesn't count). Every time Taichi and Yamato got in a fight back in Adventure, it was heated and ugly, and everyone in their presence was horrified, and once they sorted out their issues in Adventure, their appearances in 02 and Kizuna involved properly talking things out and making an active attempt to understand each other's feelings. There's a bit of bickering between them due to said opposing personalities, but it's never over anything serious (see the contrast in Kizuna between them having a bit of a minor row at the beginning, but high-fiving right after and spending the rest of the movie practically counseling each other).

02: Straight-up does not exist. Daisuke may have seen Takeru in that way due to the Hikari issue at first, but he was really running in circles getting absolutely nowhere about it, Takeru was mostly like "okay, you have fun with that," their only major argument about anything was the very serious issue in 02 episode 11, and it still resulted in Daisuke trying to understand Takeru's feelings. I think all of it boils down to Daisuke himself just not having that kind of personality to begin with, because he's friendly and supportive before anything else, and the whole thing with Takeru became a non-issue after a fashion (way before we even get into Kizuna, at that). Ken has the word "rival" sometimes applied to him in official franchise media, but nobody ever believes it. Sure, Daisuke and Ken have fairly complementary personalities, but they seem to both be aware of this fact and actively using it to help each other. It's very, very, very hard to imagine them ever getting into any kind of fight the way Taichi and Yamato used to in Adventure. It's just not happening! They're "best friends" who enjoy each other's company and actively hang out, and...yeah, that's it.

Tamers: Also does not exist! I know a lot of people really try to say it's Ruki because she's the one with the lone-wolf attitude and aggravated Takato at first, but my impression of Takato's attitude with her wasn't out of any competition but more that he'd like it if she didn't try to pick fights with him. Which she does actually stop after a while, mind you, and you could even make an argument that she's more of a foil to Jian than Takato, because Jian's the one who was completely pacifist at first, with Takato caught in the middle. In the end, Ruki never actually attains a particularly close relationship with Takato compared to Jian, nor does she really keep up a particular competitive streak with Takato; she kind of pops in and out at her leisure because of her more independent streak, and Jian ends up more of Takato's right-hand man (which is why the franchise presumably picks him as the secondary character to feature whenever they do "secondary characters"), but neither Takato nor Jian are prone to conflict and the entire trope is just fundamentally absent. The Tamers trio, is, ultimately, a trio.

Frontier: Takuya and Kouji are probably the first pair to really look like a proper execution of the trope, and at the very least they align pretty perfectly to how it's known in Sentai: a more hot-headed, aggressive lead with a more cool-headed and cynical right-hand man, where they end up often prone to conflict over dispute on how to best lead the team. However, while it's much more of a conventional execution than Adventure (since Adventure had Yamato actually be more prone to being an emotional fuse bomb whereas Taichi was often too chill more than anything), there being any conflict isn’t gone into that deeply beyond just "their personalities are complementary", and in that sense it's not far off from Adventure itself.

Savers: The series kind of baits you into thinking it might go this way when Nanami taunts Tohma about how he had to resort to a Masaru-esque tactic to beat her (it's one of its early red herrings about Tohma supposedly betraying the group), and it does have traces at the start because of how blatant of a foil Tohma is to Masaru, but one thing important to consider is that while the "rivalry" of what's being competed over is barely even relevant in most Digimon series to begin with, Masaru and Tohma don't even have a "group" to lead -- they're the employees under DATS who are being given orders from above, and are dealing with situations as they come. Masaru ends up leading the charge a bit, but he's not actually a leader in any shape or form, and Savers is more of a story of Masaru's coming-of-age than anything else, so while the series mostly has to do with his personal philosophy more than Tohma's, it ultimately lets the two of them pursue their lives their own ways. Masaru's worst bout of infamous anger is at being hurt over Tohma's apparent betrayal, not against him personally.

Xros Wars: I would say this is the only series to date where the term "rivals" properly applies, and it's because they're fighting over something concrete: the Code Crowns, and eventually Digital World territory. So in this case, for the first two parts, the answer is obviously Kiriha; Nene was a rival at first, but after various events happened she allied with Xros Heart early into Death Generals, and while Taiki and Kiriha had a relationship of mutual respect, Kiriha still considered him an opponent over what they were competing for until eventually the Xros Heart United Army fully came into formation. In the manga version, Kiriha does invoke the word "rival" in the above sense of competing to polish one's skills, but ironically, its version of the Death Generals arc involves them being much more in-tune with the same goals, so it might actually apply less because Taiki kind of responds with "uh, sure...?" since he's not nearly as interested in self-improvement. In Hunters, while it initially seems like it might be Yuu, the answer is really Ryouma, and note that Ryouma never really forms a particularly close relationship with Tagiru; it's just that he's the person most at the forefront for competing with Tagiru in the Hunt, to the point he's the first person chosen to wield the Brave Snatcher and turns out to be a bit of a foil for Tagiru in terms of actually having admired Taiki this whole time.

Appmon: Also does not exist. Rei tried to do the whole schtick in terms of competing for the Seven Code Appmon at first, but Haru was having none of that and immediately reached out to him emotionally, worrying about his welfare, and although Rei had a bit of a detached relationship with the other Appli Drivers thereafter, it really was friendly more than anything, just a bit awkward. Haru and Yuujin aren't even on the table, since their relationship is "best friends" akin to Daisuke and Ken.

Adventure: reboot: Also does not exist, considering that Taichi and Yamato bickering over the best way to approach things is limited to the very beginning of the series (and one of those times was with Yamato and Sora, not Yamato and Taichi, at that). In fact, I think most of these kids have been acting separately for most of the series anyway...?

#digimon #shiha's ask box #timelessanimo #digimon multi series talk

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 4 years

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Humans are Space Orcs, “I Have Seen.”

Wrote something easy and more similar to my original stories today. I hope you like it.

I have been thinking about taking a couple days off from writing these stories, since I have been working non stop on this and the book for over a year now, so I am considering taking a break for about a week so I don’t burn out. I haven’t decided yet, so we shall see, but I hope you all have a great day.

I have a job no one knows about.

I don’t think anyone would be surprised if they heard about my job. I don’t even think they would care all that much.

None of this explains why my work station is in the basement of a nondescript government bunker on a death planet…. A!36. I can’t explain why I need three codes to get into my office, or why I go through five locked doors, or why I am not allowed to tell anyone what I do on pain of termination and imprisonment.

You would assume, perhaps that I am a spy, and involved in some covert cloak and dagger espionage against other species and nations: you would be wrong.

You might assume I am a weapons developer, but you would also be wrong.

Perhaps you think I spend my time wire-tapping on important calls between species and recording important information.

None of this is really the case.

In fact, what I do is quite safe and relatively simple, plenty of other non-humans are doing it of their own accord and plenty more humans do it on a regular basis. What I do is not illegal, it is not espionage, it wouldn’t even phase you.

If that is the case.

Why do so many of my coworkers go missing?

Why are there absent desks every few months?

Why can I not make any lasting friends?

Management always give excuses to those of us who are left.

They left for mental health reasons.

THey moved on to a different job.

They are moving up in the company.

They had to be let go.

All things generic and all things that wouldn’t generally raise suspicion… unless they happen so frequently as us.

You may be wondering at this point, what it is I do for a job.

Perhaps, you think, it is very boring and unfulfilling that I would go insane from sheer boredom.

No, I actually find my job quite interesting.

Perhaps you think my job forces me to watch very disturbing and violent things…. And I suppose that could be close to the truth, though no one forces us to watch the videos if we don’t want, and no one makes us read the material if we cannot handle it. In fact, there are those of us who specialize in that sort of thing.

I do.

I am a specialist in historical xenopsychology.

I study human history.

When I say that I study human history, I do not mean as in a passing fancy. I do not simply read their school children’s textbooks and accept everything I see as truth, no, every day , I come into work and it is my job, to learn about everything that has ever happened in human history, to the best of my ability.

It is my job to know the good, the bad, the ugly, and the monstrous.

I work from day to night, cataloguing and filling my brain with all the information I can before recording it as a lecture on aura drives, which are then stored away for future use in a deep backup system under the surface of this planet.

I have followed human history since the beginning of time.

And I have marveled at it.

Much of my research is flawed, I know. Human history has always been biased, history being shaped and molded by the winners of conflict. Much of what else I know stems primarily from scholarly work humans have done on their own species, looking back the centuries and making assumptions about what they were doing.

While this is a good insite -- humans trying to explain the behavior of other humans-- it isn’t necessarily correct.

For this reason, it is my job to study every piece of information that comes across my desk.

Due to a government agreement between the galactic assembly and the United Nations of Earth, I was given access to the rebuilt library of Alexandria and all of its electronic files which include photos and information on the original documents that they keep in sealed vaults below the library.

I have read every account of human history, and every second hand interpretation of human history that I could possibly find in my time working here.

I have read Darwin and his early theory regarding evolution. I have examined his evidence, which include images and diagrams of the human body spanning centuries. My determinations were made just the same as the rest of them. Humanity was a tree-living species that found its evolutionary niche through walking and the use of opposable thumbs.

This ability to walk, in tandem with the use of hands eventually gave rise to the slow swelling of the brain in comparison to other animals. Human evolved primitive tools, and even more primitive religions, societies and rules.

They developed art early on, painting on the walls of their caves, in the darkness of night surrounded by their fires.

I have read about their befriending of animals in that same darkness. Man’s slow molding of the wolf into the dog - a species designed specifically for the needs of man.

I have attempted to read every account of every atrocity ever inflicted on humanity.

I have read of wars, and battles, Marathon, Thermopylae, Kadesh, D-day, Vietnam, Korea, Russo-Japanese, World wars I, II, III, and IV and the Panasian War.

I have witnessed in images and first hand accounts the chilling discoveries of natural disasters gone back thousands of years. Pompeii, Mt. St Helens, Katrina, Tsunamis, earthquakes, the fire of london, 1887 yellow river flood, the 3130 California earthquake, and Haiti earthquakes.

And I have studied and witnessed every atrocity man has ever committed on its own people. The Mongol hordes, the crusades, Mayan and Aztec sacrifices, The Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, mustard gas, 9/11, slavery in the America, the Trail of Tears, The Bataan Death March, the Berlin wall, Civil war, the French revolution, Nanjing, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I tore a hole in humanity and looked inside to see your rot.

I study the maggots that crawl under your skin.

Don’t confuse me with someone who fears you, or is even disgusted by you. You have committed thousands of horrors, yes this is true. But humanity is not a polished gem, it is an uncut stone marred by dirt and debris, but beautiful in a way that can hardly be explained.

You scrub away the rot only to find more underneath, yet you continue to scrub, in a futile attempt to better yourselves.

It is a beautiful thing if not in vain.

I do not judge you for your crimes because I have also seen your achievements. I watched you survive the dark ages, I learned your philosophy from the greek world which brought the beauty of democracy and equity in later forms. I watched the enlightenment of the Renaissance, and have seen your beautiful artwork from each period of time.

I have witnessed your great nations and empires rise and fall, Assyria, Byzantine, Rome, Britain, Egypt, Mongole, Aztek, Soviet Union, The chinese Dynasties and the Communist parties. The United States, and the Asian Co-Prosperity Collective

I have seen your bravery and your loss.

I have learned about the good that walks your earth.

Humans who stood up to tyrants.

I have even examined your stories of creation, of deities who molded humans from clay or dust, watched your world come into form in seven days, or ride on the backs of giant animals. I have seen the gods gift you with fire and learned the teaching of your martyrs over the centuries. Men and women slain and stoned or pulled away by spirits. I have learned of crucifixion, death and rebirth as well as reincarnation and a return to the very fabric of the universe itself.

I see everything.

I see everything. I see it all in my dreams laid out before me like a tapestry following each woven thread through the ages. I thought if I looked back, I could know as much as I possibly could. If I dug deep enough, I would be able to see your secrets.

And I have discovered you.

I see you hiding in there.

I know what you are.

Come out, come out.

And I won’t stop until it is all over and your cities crumbled into dust and bone.

…

I am being called into my manager’s office. Perhaps I too am ready to go up in the company.

...

I will be back soon…

Deus

#humans are insane #humans are space orcs #humans are space australians #HUMANS ARE WERID #humans are space oddities #earth is a deathworld #Earth is space Ausralia

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shepherds-of-haven · 3 years

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Did you name your novels or were they just ShoH 1, ShoH 2, ShoH 3, etc.? (If yes, can you also tell their names please?)

Hi there, thanks for the question! In my head they were Volumes 1-20-something--actually, if you’ll believe it, in my head for a long time I named the books after colors, and somehow kept track... but at some point I did put a formal list of potential titles together. I never used the “real” titles mentally, except for The Bridge of Bones, Fortress of the Dead, and the books in Series II and III: I still remember thinking of the first book in Series I as “red” and the second book as “orange”... 😬 And the files/scenes in each book were labelled “aaa”, “bb”, “++”. The more letters there were, the number of times the scene had been rewritten (so “a” was a first draft of the first scene in the book, and “aaa” was the same scene, but more polished... what was I thinking?)

Anyway, I had to go digging to remember my ideas for the titles of some of the earlier books, so please forgive any cringyness lol, I was pretty young when I wrote Series I! I also don’t know if these are all of the ShoH novels--these are just the main chronological ones, but there were some spin-offs and AUs that I don’t name here!

Series I: World Without End

The Witching Wheel

Blood and Fire

Gunpowder Magic

Battle Mage

The Knife That Spoke

Oathbreaker

Shadowsight

The Code of War

The City of Midnight

The Foundling’s Soul

The Silver Covenant

The Gates of the Earth

Child of the Stars

Series II: The Storm of the Worlds

The Thunder March

The Lightning War

The Conquered Sky

Series III: The Land of the Gods

The Eternal Sea

The Country Cloaked in Moon

Bridge Series:

Fortress of the Dead

The Bridge of Bones

The Razor Crown

The God-King’s Sun

Series IV: The Naming of All Things

Harlequin

Valkyrie

Jeremiad

The Council of Kingmakers

Canticle of the Namer

The Blessed Isles

Read below if you want as concise of an explanation for these titles as I can provide!

In case you’re curious, Series I up until Battle Mage follows the protagonist, Arainia, as a young girl (I think 11 or 13) after the death of her mother, being sent to Solhadur amidst family conflict with her father and older sister, her various adventures there at school (meeting Red, Pan, Neon, etc.), graduating, attempting to join the Ket army (it’s complicated), and then deciding to join the Shepherds at around 18 or 19. She undergoes training in the academy, joins her squad (this is where Trouble, Riel, Chase, Halek, and the rest come in), and becomes a Shepherd officer alongside her childhood best friend Blade in Battle Mage. The Knife that Spoke and onward details various missions, investigations, battles, recruitments, and adventures that they all embark on as young adults into their twenties, with some books following different perspectives in the squad (Blade, Riel, Trouble, Chase, Halek, Red, Wintry, and Junoth [the last two not in the game] all get their turn narrating a book or at least a large part of one), with Shery, Ayla, Mimir, Lavinet, Tallys, Neon, Croelle, and many other characters featuring heavily. Around this time, civil war is brewing between the Elves, Ket, and certain factions of Mages, and Endarkened attacks soon begin to rise as the Order struggles to keep the peace.

Series II details the outbreak of total world war that is essentially the Castigation in the game, with Western Norm kingdoms and territories suddenly and unexpectedly marching on the East--except in the novels, demons and demon armies are also involved, and the war is ultimately averted/ended in a truce as both sides finally unite to confront the Endarkened. It’s during this time period that Riel defects and seemingly betrays the group in favor of “the other side.” Blade is also seemingly killed at the end of the first book of this series and doesn’t reappear again until the third book, Arainia is captured and held as a prisoner of war all while thinking her best friend is dead, and it’s an upsetting time for everybody. Junoth also actually dies. RIP. Croelle pops in to save the day!

Series III details the aftermath of the war and a mission to find unoccupied land for displaced factions of soldiers, diplomats, traders, and civilians from the Norm territories (led by Riel), leading to a voyage across the Mirror Sea to explore the vast continent to the south of Blest, called colloquially “the Land of the Gods.” The second book in this series is also when Blade and Arainia FINALLY confess their feelings for each other and get together, and the big love triangle in the series is finally mostly settled. Oh, but things also aren’t perfect because the Order forbids relationships between officers (like they’ll actually be fired, not Blade’s lame rule in the game lmao), so they live in fear of being discovered because neither wants to quit being a Shepherd! Their hope is that Blade will be named Commander when the current one resigns, and then he can just... change the rule LOL.

The Bridge Series has some companion novels that take place in between Series III and IV; Fortress of the Dead is Croelle-centric (this is when he informally joins the Order in the books) and The Bridge of Bones details some political bullshit and coups and conspiracies within the Order when its Commander dies unexpectedly and seemingly names a shady outsider (Edric) as the new Commander instead of Blade. The group is placed on different squads to split them up and prevent rebellion from brewing (it happens anyway), and it’s all very crazy. This is also when Lavinet sort of becomes a good guy, Shery becomes a badass, Shyf Cian first appears as the HR rep everyone hates, and this book is also pretty Chase-centric (he pretty much saves the day) and features a Mage serial killer, a psychopathic criminal syndicate leader, and an evil Changeling! I think it’s my favorite novel of the series. From what I remember, The Razor Crown and The God-King’s Sun are just super angsty for no good reason other than I guess I felt like writing a lot of angst--though the God-King’s Sun is also the first appearance of a true Autarch in the series.

By the time we get to Series IV, the characters are in their thirties, settling into adulthood and their respective roles in life. Blade finally assumes command of the Order, Blade and Arainia get married, Halek and Wintry have a baby (Kana!), Halek turns 33 and has a life crisis, Arainia gets pregnant (and then kidnapped for a large part of her pregnancy lolll), Riel and Chase finally make reluctant peace, some other stuff happens, uh there’s some Mimir stuff in there, Red successfully makes a trip to another world, and Arainia gives birth to a Ket-Mage son in... I think it was either The Canticle of the Namer or The Blessed Isles.

So... yeah! 28+ main novels, and I’m still going, just for me! 😂 I tend to write a lot of AUs of the series in my off-time, though sometimes the AUs are just “what if this took place in the same world but things are totally different--like what if they were politicians instead of Shepherds, what if the Shepherds functioned differently due to a different historical event occurring, what if the Castigation happened but it was Mages who instigated it, what if they were soldiers in a war 5000 years before the main series takes place, etc.”; or they take place in totally different worlds, like the characters as cops in a modern world that has cell phones and cars but also still has the Diminished races and magic somehow!

Thanks for your question, and for reading this long talk! 😅

#...#damn #that's a lot when you list it out lol i just usually hazily think of it as a handful of books but it's like 30 D:#some of these are novellas though!#most of the bridge series except for the bridge of bones are #Shepherds of Haven #ironically 'shepherds of haven' was never used as a title #novel #novels #original novel #original novels #titles #long #long post #anon

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creepyalienghost · 3 years

Text

Reunited

Deep down in the studio the ink creatures know only pain and struggle. The dreaded Alice Angel sacrifices all who she could get her hands on to fix her scars and her former beauty. The poor prophet sacrificed anyone he could find to please his lord. The projectionist struggled to remember anything other then his loop. Many lost souls struggle to even remember who they were anymore. All they could do is hear the voices swirling in there heads. With others not in the hive mind they either fight to keep themselves alive or hide in their spots, hoping to never run into the ink demon or the Angel.

The prophet was wondering the halls looking for my soup cans when suddenly it dawn on him that creatures were few and far between. Unlike before when you can’t turn the corner without running into one of the Butcher Gangs or seeing a Boris hiding. He found that strange and decided to take a look around though the walls.

He looked through holes, peaked in rooms and even going deep down below and sure enough so maybe we’re missing. All the butcher gang seen to have disappeared. The projectionist was no where to be found and even that new comer Sammy almost sacrificed wasn’t seen. Something was going on. Could this have been his lords doing? Or worst, that wicked angel’s? Sammy wanted to find out but he was also wondering of angering his lord. If it was his doing then maybe his lord would do the same to him...

He was caught up in his thoughts while walking that he didn’t notice the footsteps rushing up behind him until it was to late. The prophet was bagged over the head and tripped. He struggled and yelled for his lord for help as several creatures held him down or sat on top of him. They managed to tie his hands behind his back right before he felt a sharp pain in his neck. He screamed and cursed them out until the drug they infected him with started to work. His body went heavy. His hearing muffled. His sight started to fade. The prophet feared he was dying and had failed his lord. Hell, maybe this was his lords doing. Maybe this was what happened to the rest of them. He thought of this until his mind was even talking from him and soon after that the darkness of ink took over everything.

——-

It all felt like a dream. The sacrifices. The ink. Bendy and Alice. Everything for the pass so many years felt like a long band dream. But Sammy new it wasn’t a dream when his eyes flickered open and vision cleared. The first thing he noticed was that he was laying in hospital bed, hooked up to many Wires going to many different machines. There was one for his heartbeat. Another for monitoring his brain waves. A Machine pumping in blood inside him and the casual iv needle.

Sammy slowly sat up on the bed with Extreme exhaustion to looked around the room he was in. The walls were painted a pale blue and the floors were your typical white polished floor. It looked like any hospital but one from a sci fi movie. There was Technology Sammy has never seen before and has no idea what it is or how it’s use. Ones with big screens and buttons.

Just then a knock came from the door, making Sammy jump a bit and a nurse opened the door with a small smile, walking in. “Hello Mr. Lawrence. I’m glad to see your awake.” She held out hand as she introduced herself. “I’m nurse Beth. I’ll be taking care of you in here.”

Sammy took hold of her hand and shook it. “Thank you.” He replied. “I uh...I’m confused...what happened? How did we get out?...what ...what year is it” he asked as more and more questions start to form.

The nurse sat beside him and sat her clipboard next to her. “We’re not supposed to tell you guys everything right when you come to. It’s going to be broken in parts but I promise you. All your questions will be answered.” She relieved him. “But I am allowed to say you and your friends our at a government base and you guys are all free. Your old coworker Henry Stein came to us and told what Joey drew was doing. You are all safe now.”

Henry stein? Joey drew? His friends. Sammy hadn’t thought about them in so long and now his heart acted. He remembers Norman and the amazing guy he was. But he also remembered Joey. Joey was also a great guy before he lost his mind to the darkness. He missed both of them and badly wants to see them. “Can I see m-my friends?” He asked the nurse.

Nurse Beth nodded her head. “Yes. You may in a bit. I need to give you your daily check up first.”

Through out his check up, nurse Ann explained they would be here for a few weeks to watch and see how they would respond after being ink creatures for so long

and will be helped getting back into civilization with a new job and a home. She told him there be daily health checks in the morning and classes to understand the would now days.

After the check up, nurse Beth lead Sammy down the hallway to the wing where he and his friends would be staying at. “There’s access to a cafeteria for y’all and a tv room with games and books so y’all don’t get bored.” She informed him as she punches the code in for the wing.” Your room is Numble 20.”

“Thank you.” Sammy replied as he walked in. She nodded and closed it behind him. Sammy was on his own know.

There was chatter from down the hall. Some of the voices he recognized. Like Susie’s Jack’s and Norman’s he couldn’t wait to meet them again. He hoped they didn’t have no hard feelings from his role he unwillingly played in all this. However when he rounded the corner they all went silent pretty fast when they one by one noticed him. Sammy could see ether hatred or disappointment in each of their eyes. Norman’s hurt the worst. Sammy quickly got the hint we wasn’t welcome and left to find his room.

He sat in his bed staring at the green wall for some hours before a few security guards came to checked their wing. Sammy overheard one of them talking about Joey to his partner as they passed his room. “The psycho was placed in wing E.” Sammy Heard.

It got Sammy thinking again of their good times before. Joey was such a funny and sweet guy back then, handsome too. He spoiled Sammy with fancy dinners and parties as well as taught Sammy the wonders of magic and occult. It was fun and safe at first, but once Joey got the taste of the darkness is when everything changed. The abuse started, madness and control took over his mind and by then it was far to late to leave everything.

He wondered if Joey was still like that or like the way he use to be. He wanted to take the chance and see him. He stopped the security guard before they left the wing. “Can I see Joey Drew. Just once.” The guard didn’t laugh but looked at him like he was insane. “I know it’s crazy. But please just one time.”

The guard signed in hopelessness for the lost man. “I’ll ask and see if you two can meet.” With that the guard left though the wing doors.

———-

After receiving his check up the next morning, the same guard as before meet him out in the hallway. “Come with me.” He said right as Sammy stepped out. Sammy did so. They walked out the doors to the wing and down hallways, went further down an elevator and came to a new wing. The E wing.

This one was more Secure. The door here was metal and had an automatic lock that would lock it self if an alarm went off.

There was two guards station at the door to in case something went wrong. His guard had his ID checked and a minute later they both were though and heading down that hallway. The guard stopped at one of the meetings rooms and unlocked it. “You two have an hour.” Sammy nodded stepping though. His heart skipped a beat when he saw Joey sitting at one of the tables. One where their breakfast sat waiting.

He was much older unlike them. Of course he was he had been out in the real world growing older. Sammy could see the exhaustion in his face when he looked up at him. He was old and tired. Hair turned gray and wrinkly skin. Sammy realizes he doesn’t have much time left on this earth and this was likely the last time he would see him.

“It’s uh..nice to see you again.” Joey said to fill the silence between them. “ please...have a seat.” He offered and Sammy took it.

“Why?” Sammy ask, ignoring joeys attempt at welcoming. “Why did you ever let yourself get this mad? To start abusing me? To force me to hurt the others and putting us all in that hell?” He ask.

Joeys face turned to guilt and shame then. “I...I had a dream.” He answered Sammy’s question and continued. “That dream lead to magic so I could bring that dream to life which that lead to dark magic which corrupted me.” He sighed, disappointing in himself. “I shouldn’t had let it took me to a dark path, Sammy I am so sorry. If I could go back and changed everything I would.” He buried his head in his hands. “None of y’all deserved that. And you didn’t deserve the abuse I did. I’m really an sorry and I hope you can forgive me enough to enjoy one meal together?”

Sammy thought of this for a moment. He does seem genuine sorry and Is in his last days. He also missed these things they did together as well. Sammy nodded and smiled at Joey. “Let’s share one last meal together.” He replied and switched seats next to Joey. “And. It’s good to see you to”

#bendy and the ink machine #sammy lawrence #joey drew

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torishasupremacy · 3 years

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hey, as high school juniors start looking into colleges, here are some major tips I learned during my process under the cut because it got pretty long. this is really for anyone wanting to learn tips for the college admissions process!!

1) make sure the school you’re applying to has the specific major you want to do (if you know what you want to major in) so that you’re not halfway through a supplemental essay before you realize you don’t actually want to go to that school.

2) if you’re interested in colleges, go to virtual events. there are campus tours, faculty panels, student q&as, and department specific stuff. a lot of it is useful information, and even if you find it boring, you’ve demonstrated interest in the school which helps your chances at getting in. right after you’ve finished the event send a thank you email to the person running it (when in doubt, send it to the admission office) saying how you enjoyed the event and are interested in applying to that school. keep it enthusiastic, professional, and short.

3) application fees suck. for a lot of colleges you’ll have to pay $50-80 to apply which is bullshit and adds up quickly. ive gotten fee waiver codes by attending virtual events and emailing admission officers questions about my application. this is obviously not a guarantee, but again, demonstrated interest will give you a higher chance of saving money and getting in. make sure to tally up all the fees of schools you're applying to before you start the application. I applied to several no-fee schools, and had fee waivers for others, and still was looking at paying $1,000+ just to apply to the rest of my list, which got shortened pretty quickly after that little calculation

4) apply to a reasonable amount of colleges. the more colleges you apply to, the more extra essays you have to write, and the more money you have to pay. a model you can try and use is applying to safety schools, match schools, and reach schools. safety schools are schools that you are very likely to get into. match schools are schools that you have a decent chance of getting into. reach schools are schools that you have a slim, but possible chance of getting into. i would say apply to 2-6 of each type of school

5) you’re gonna have to write supplemental essays, and it’s gonna suck. so get started early. there was one girl in my grade who did all of her college apps in the summer of her junior year. i was stupid and didn't do that but I sure as hell wish I did because I went into the first semester of senior year with a lot of unnecessary stress. try spending 30 min-1 hour per school day working on college things, and you’ll get so much done by the end of the summer. you will thank your past self SO much

6) again, supplemental essays. you want to have a base pool of writing that you start off with. I applied to some UCs (university of californias) which have four insight questions you have to answer. I spent several weeks writing those and polishing them with my college counselor until they were really good. I ended up recycling them into my common app essay, supplemental essays for multiple schools, I put in the effort in the front end and it really paid off

7) seek out all the information on the specific application process for each school multiple times. if you’re applying for any kind of visual or performing art- including directing, stage managing, playwriting, comedy, etc- chances are you will need some combination of an interview/audition/portfolio, and you’re gonna wanna make sure you know the requirements before you put a bunch of time into something. if you're gonna be applying for visual arts, you really want to start building up your portfolio as soon as possible, and noting all the different requirements for each school, because there is no uniform portfolio that you can use to apply to all art programs. I personally didn't apply for visual arts but my poor friend had a real rough time with it so please learn from their mistakes

8) schedule interviews as soon as you can!! they can really help your chances at getting in- ive gone to virtual events about interviews and college admission officers say that 99% of the time interviews turn out really well! but there are never enough slots for everyone so get those applications in early because a lot of the time you can only get an appointment after you apply. I applied to one of my top schools two months early and got one of the five remaining interview slots. but remember time zones when you schedule interviews so you dont have to wake up at 6 or stay up til 12

9) fuck deadlines. dont kill yourself trying to get your app turned in three months early, and dont sacrifice quality, but really, the sooner you can submit an application, the less stress you have to deal with. deadlines are the LAST day you can submit an application, not the only day. and if your application is a few days late, send it anyways. they can’t do anything but reject you, and as long as you dont have an app sent in, you're already not getting in

10) colleges care a lot about extracurriculars. it’s like their 2nd most important thing besides grades/test scores (which are becoming more and more irrelevant). but it looks way better to have concentrated and held leadership positions, so don’t make yourself miserable not doing what you want to do/doing what you don’t want to do, but keep in mind how colleges will view it. when you're writing about your activities for your application, try to sound as impressive as possible while still sounding truthful

11) if you're a good writer, this process is gonna be a lot easier for you. if you're not, im sorry. I fall into the former category and wrote my common app essay a day before it was due, which is something I dont recommend, even if you are a good writer. its just stressful. if you're a good writer, your first drafts will still not be polished enough. get feedback and edit. if you’re not a good writer, start your essays early, and get a fuck ton of feedback and do a lot of editing. im serious, my college counselor said that from his experience, mediocre writers who frequently met with him to revise their work and good writers who didn't meet with him much often ended up having writing that was around the same quality. it will take more time and effort, but you can produce good work. meet with your counselors. meet with your english teachers. meet with your parents if that makes sense, or any good writers you know.

12) if you're a boy/girl scout, GET YOUR EAGLE SCOUT/GOLD AWARD!!! im not kidding that thing can get you tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in merit aid!! I was a girl scout for several years and hated it, but I did my gold award on something I was passionate about, it didn’t suck as much as I thought it would, and it literally paid off. get it done as soon as you can before the admission process because I pretty much finished mine right before the admission deadlines and it was hell

13) there will be days where you just have to sit down and grind out a bunch of admissions stuff. that’s just a reality, not matter how well you schedule your time. try to make a calendar with deadlines for each app/essay and have a plan for when you’ll work on each thing. you may not follow it to the letter but it will help guide you and keep you on track

14) im so serious, finish your apps during summer before senior year and you will feel so light while the rest of your peers are being dragged into hell. please please get your apps in early. please

15) if you really dont want to live in a certain place (its way too cold, its way too populated, its too far away, etc), just dont apply. there are a gazillion different schools that can give you great experiences without subjecting yourself to environmental misery. for example, my anxiety levels spike when I leave large cities, so I only applied to schools in major cities. if anything, it definitely helps you narrow down the list

16) apply to several schools that you would be happy going to instead of pinning all your hopes on One Dream School. admissions processes can be the most arbitrary decisions and there is ALWAYS a chance you won't get into a school that you thought would be a cinch. there is not one sole school that is your perfect fit, there are hundreds of schools that you would have fulfilling experiences at, so make sure you apply to a few of those. it’s like my dad says, don’t close any doors until you know which one you’re going to walk through

17) apply for financial aid, even if you don’t think you’ll get it. the same goes for merit aid. apply for as much aid as you can. college is expensive as fuck, and the majority of people are gonna come away from it with some form of debt. but debt WILL drag you down, so you want to try and get as little as possible. apply for scholarships, not necessarily the big $100,000 lotteries that a billion people apply to, but to several $1000 ones that require you to write 500-800 words. if you wrack up several of those it can seriously help you out. there are a lot of interesting ones you can find, and you'll probably come across a prompt that you're passionate about. and remember, there’s no shame in going to community college if everything else is going to put you in too much debt to climb out of. remember, there’s interest to that debt, so you can spend your whole life paying off the interest and not the debt, and end up paying more than you took out in debt without actually paying off the debt

18) the college process SUCKS. its classist as hell, and inherently designed to make it hard as fuck to apply so that the more persistent people get in. you're just gonna have to accept that, get started early, work hard, and make sure you're passionate about what you’re writing about/applying to. make spreadsheets or lists or whatever helps you organize. do your research. START EARLY, you’ll hate the world a little less. good luck!!

#college #college app tips #college app #college applications #college tips #application #university #university application #university application tips #school #admisssion #studybrl #long post

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kiatheinsomniac · 4 years

Text

Huntress III

[ I ] [ II ] [ III ] [ IV ]

(Y/n) groggily arose from her bed, the sunlight of a late morning pouring in through the leaded windows, covering her in a blanket of diamond-shaped shadows. Beside her was the book which she had fallen asleep while reading. The thick pillar candle resting on the bedside had melted down three inches, wax pouring down its sides and melting in little dribbles, some of it pooling on the wood of the table.

Licking her thumb and index finger, (Y/n) quickly squeezed the wick to extinguish the flame that had been dancing all night, illuminating the room while she had slept.

She rubbed her (e/c) eyes and pushed back the locks of hair that had escaped her twin faux braids. Sitting up and dangling her legs off the side of the bed, she reached back to begin unweaving her hair, letting the river of (h/c) locks cascade behind her. She dropped all the little pins and bands onto the crumpled crimson sheets under her as she took her hair and began weaving it into dutch braids and winding it around the back of her neck, creating a crown from her own hair.

She stood to discard her clothes, folding them and placing them neatly into the trunk at the end of the bed before pulling out a black pair of trousers, a white blouse and some arm guards.

(Y/n) slid the blouse on first. It had billowing sleeves and turned to lace over the top of her chest, the woven pattern climbing up high on her neck, secured with a bow at her nape. Next, she tugged on the leg-hugging black trousers, tucking the blouse in as she tied up the front of the trousers, pulling the crisscrossing cords into a tight double bow. The (e/c)-eyed female then used her teeth to tighten her ebony arm guards. They made the lace cuffs of the blouse stand out more while the rest of the shirt puffed out against her upper arms. She then pulled on her boots and slung a bag over her shoulder.

Her eyes drifted back to the book.

In her profession, the knew better than to doubt the powers which she had read about on those pages. A previous civilisation, more advanced than our own, sounded ridiculous yet. . . The vampire wouldn't have taken the pages if he didn't believe in it himself or if he hadn't been exposed to one of those 'Pieces of Eden' at some point in his immortal life.

She picked it up and tossed it into her bag. She knew that she couldn't ask the Doge about it because she had stolen it from him and it was something which he was clearly trying to cover up. Her mind wandered for answers. Who in Venice would be about to help her decipher the coded parts of the text without the Doge knowing? The culture was changing, there were so many beautiful and bright minds nowadays.

An alchemist perhaps? A poet? An artist? An engineer? Of course! She knew exactly who to find as she turned the key in the lock and ran out of the mansion in search of the man whom she had just recalled. All she had was a name but with enough asking, she would be able to find him.

♰♰♰

It was a few hours later and (Y/n) found herself rather hungry, having left her room in the Doge's mansion without anything to eat. But eventually, she found herself knocking on the sheltered door of a studio. She pummelled her first insistently against the thick wood until a fairly young boy opened it.

"Hello, I'm looking for Leonardo? Da Vinci?" She peeked inside, attempting to get a better look into the building in order to spot the man himself.

"What for?" The young boy, clearly an apprentice, asked.

"I was told that he could help me to decode an old book that I found." She replied.

"Send her in!" A man called from somewhere inside. The young boy stood aside to allow (Y/n) to enter.

When she walked inside, there were odd contraptions hanging from the ceiling. Architectural drawings were sprawled out across tables and pinned to walls. There were half-finished paintings on easels and jars of murky paint water on stools. Sketches of anatomy were all pinned to the wall above a desk with very detailed charcoal drawings on it. Though, the windows were covered by sheets and it was oddly dark, candles lighting the place.

She was met by a blonde man with blue eyes who was rather short and wore a large hat.

But he wasn't the only person in the room.

Instantly, (Y/n) knew what this other man was. Whether he was the vampire she was searching for or a much more discreet one whom she didn't know of, she was unsure.

He was gorgeous. Flawless olive skin, glimmering brown eyes like polished smokey quartz, dark hair that shone healthily and was tied back. His odd white and red robes hugged his muscular arms, leading you to the conclusion that the rest of his body was very toned too.

When their eyes met, there was a mutual understanding that she knew what he was and he knew that she was the witch hunter.

He seemed caught off guard for a moment before his brows furrowed as he examined her, eyes widening with surprise when he picked up something about her — the last thing he ever would have expected from such a woman.

"Hello Leonardo," she turned to the artist, "My name's (Y/n) (L/n). I know that you don't know me but I've been told that you could help me decipher this book and I could really do with some help. It's for a case I'm working on and it would mean a lot to me. I can pay you however much you want." It was a risk to work right in front of the creature whom she needed to hunt down but she simply had to understand what was going on.

"Leonardo," Ezio spoke up, "Could you leave us alone for a moment please?"

The artist shot a glance of confusion in the direction of his friend. What was he playing at? Was it to do with the brotherhood? Or was he simply trying to charm the woman? Either way, he nodded and made his way to the garden.

(Y/n)'s hand snaked to the dagger at her hip. She was poorly prepared for a vampire attack, she had not been expecting him to be there — in broad daylight no less!

"You're in over your head." The vampire spoke simply, "I have work I need to do and I don't want you getting in the way. You don't need to die in this. Leave now. Go home and find work elsewhere." He truly did want peace. After all, his goal was to stop the unnecessary killing. He didn't want to kill her but he couldn't have her in the way of his plans either.

"You're right. There are people in this world who don't have to get caught in the crossfire. There are graves belonging to the people who didn't have to die." She lunged towards him and unsheathed her blade, though it was quickly deflected with his hidden blade which shot out from his sleeve. The point of her blade was poised at his chest, hovering over his heart. "And those people will only be avenged once blood has been paid for with blood." Her (e/c) eyes were a maelstrom of anguish and rage, tearing apart cliffs and commanding tidal waves.

"Who hurt you?" The vampire spoke with a gentle voice. But she knew better than to trust the creature's charms. She pulled back and held her dagger in a tight grip, ready to strike at the best moment.

"You. Your kind. Every single one of you." Her brows hung low over her eyes and she shook with adrenaline. "And I won't stop. Not until the price has been paid."

The olive-skinned man let out a sigh as his blade retracted and he raised a hand into the air. (Y/n) suddenly found herself unable to move, frozen in place. The panic was evident on her face.

"Don't worry. I won't hurt you." He spoke in a soothing tone, his voice was like thick honey and blackberries with a sweet, fruity wine. But she knew that all those luxuries in his tone were laced with cantarella.

"You haven't hypnotised me. Why can't I move?"

"It's my unique ability — I can control living things' ability to move. I thought I could control objects at first but it turned out that what I can control is muscle tissue. I could make you do whatever I wanted right now but I think I need you to stay still so that you don't try to kill me." There was a hint of humour in his tone at the end. "I want to understand you. Tell me: why is a witch hunting the supernatural?" His hand caressed the side of her face, brushing the stray lock of hair behind her ear as her body was moved to a more neutral position where she was not poised with a dagger in her clutch.

"Lower your voice!" She hissed. She scrunched her eyes shut as he ran a hand down the artery of her neck. She didn't feel safe. He said that he needed her out of the way earlier and he could very well just drink her blood there and have it over with.

She had never encountered a vampire with such a dangerous ability before. Fire and reading thoughts were worrisome, yes, but to control another person's body? That was deadly on an entirely new level. At the back of her mind, she willed for a spirit to protect her, to wrap its arms around her and repel the vampire who caressed her cheek ever so softly. But no spirit nor fae rushed to her aid.

"There's no need for that." He spoke up, knowing full well what she was trying to do, "Even they know that I won't hurt you." He retracted this hand to let it fall to his side. "Who was taken from you? Why do you blame my kind? Why must this blood price be paid?"

Silence.

"(Y/n), come on, carissima, I won't let you go until I have answers. Are you a solitary witch?"

"I wasn't always solitary." She replied, her walls fracturing, the thought of finally being able to speak too irresistible, "I. . . I lost my sisters. All twelve." His lips parted in sorrow and he reached up to brush a tear that rolled down her cheek. The witch hunter would have pushed his hand away if only she had control over her body. Ezio knew what witches meant by 'sisters'.

"Your coven. . . I know what that's like. I watched my father and brothers be hanged. They didn't deserve it either, they were innocents. My father fought for freedom and my brothers were still boys. I was still a boy. . ." His natural charms were working on her, luring her into safety without him even needing to try.

"I watched them burn and I hid. I was the only one who made it out and I watched every single one of them go up in flames." A sob shook her chest, "And it's the vampires' fault! If they had only kept away from the town then witchcraft would not have been suspected! We never hurt the people! Never! And they turned on us all because a vampire had taken to killing men in the village! They were all innocent! I was innocent!" A long silence followed. ". . . They didn't need to die. . ."

She felt herself crumple to the floor, Ezio no longer needing to control her into their unspoken truce. Instead, he crouched down beside her and held her as she cried. She cried out all of the pain that she had pent up over six years until she dissolved to a hiccuping mess.

All the while, Ezio ran his hand up and down her back and let her press her face into his shoulder. Every part of her screamed to get away from him and yet. . .

She had never felt so right.

No one - no one - had given her any affection in years; no one could hear her story lest she be burned too; no one had held her and told her it was ok and that she didn't need to fight anymore; no one had touched her in so long and, gods, she was so touch-starved that it made her light up and feel alive, like a warm blanket of magma was slipping over her (s/t) skin that had been encased in a glacier for far too long.

She had kept such intense emotions secret for so many years. They were never spoken aloud, never put to paper. Perhaps it was because she was so close to the end of this long journey that she had put herself on. Perhaps she was just so vulnerable in that respect that she fell right into the arms of the creature who she swore she would kill.

Ezio's hand cradled the back of her neck while she calmed down, fingers caressing her silky (h/c) hair while she gripped onto his robes. He hadn't expected it to be quite this easy, hadn't expected their views to be quite so aligned. His lips pressed against the side of her head where her hairline began, pointed canines running over the skin there as his lips went to hover over her ear.

"We're a lot more alike than you think." He whispered, "I want to stop people from dying in other people's battles just as much as you do. I want freedom for people like you — how frustrating must it be to be human and told you're not? To be made to think you're the supernatural because you're gifted? To fear execution for merely existing?" She sniffled and nuzzled her head into his shoulder where his robes were now tear-stained.

"But if we both want to get what we want, you have to stop helping the Doge. He is a Templar: a man who will stop at nothing for absolute control, slavery of the human race and for freedom of will to be stripped from each and every individual. I am an Assassin: a man who protects freedom, no matter how chaotic it may seem. People like you and I will disappear if the Templars get their way. People like your sisters will die for a cause that they do not know of. People like my family will be killed for standing up for what's right. They will all be killed without a second thought."

(Y/n), beginning to quickly pile up her cold walls again, drew back from him, moving to sit on the floor a little distance from him instead.

"How do I know you're telling the truth?" She narrowed her eyes at him, eyeing up all the various weapons that were strapped all over his body.

"Because if I truly wanted you dead, I would have just killed you. You are a witch, no? Why not consult your cards and your spirits then decide?" She thought over his story once more.

"If you don't want innocents to die then why did you kill Elizabetta?" She interrogated, what she knew didn't seem to match with what he was telling her.

"She was a Templar also. Did they take down the red cross in her room before you arrived or not?"

"Red cross? Is that the insignia of the Templars?" She furrowed her brows, getting a much clearer view of what was at play.

"Yes. The one of the assassins is the symbol on my belt." (Y/n) found her eyes wandering down at this, seeing what Lucia had described as an arrow.

"So. . . What happens if I go back to the Doge and I interrogate him about all this?" She pressed.

"Most likely: he'd kill you. They don't like their secrets getting out." Ezio explained.

"And how. . . How do I know I'm safe with you?" She pressed, leaning forwards slightly.

"Because I see so much of myself in you. We're like-minded people, (Y/n). We want freedom, to feel safe in this world and to know that we won't be enslaved or killed for our differences. I know that justice is important to you and in the world the Templars want, justice will cease to exist." He paused, "You're tired of travelling and killing and not having a home, I can tell. You're tired of feeling like you shouldn't have been the one to survive and you have to pay for that privilege with blood. You can rest now. Come with me and you'll have everything you want and so much more." He was so close.

He couldn't tell if he was manipulating her anymore. When she walked in the room, he expected to have to jump into action and fight for his life, to reveal himself to his friend and his friend's apprentices who stood by outside. But when he sensed what she truly was — a witch —, he knew that there was so much more to her cold reputation.

She looked up at him with big glassy eyes, shimmering and dancing with tears that were just about to overspill.

"I just want my life back." She whispered, face crumpling in pain.

"I can't give you your old life back but I can make you a new one. One with a home and no more guilt. One where you can sleep knowing your people will never be wronged again."

She bit down on her lip as she thought over the tough decision. How did he know exactly what she wanted? Exactly what to say? Why had she opened up to a creature that she despised? She stopped thinking about it. All she wanted was an easy life and someone to care for her.

She looked up and nodded her head.

"What do I need to do?"

#huntress #ezio auditore da firenze #ezio auditore #young ezio auditore #ezio auditore x reader #ezio auditore da firenze x reader #ezio auditore/reader #ezio auditore da firenze/reader #vampire au #assassins creed 2 #assassins creed II #ac 2 #ac II

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kk095 · 6 years

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Amanda's amniotic fluid embolism

Warning: this story features blood and other potentially sensitive subjects. Besides that, I hope everyone likes the story!

******

Amniotic fluid emboli (AFE) are a rare, but often fatal complication associated with childbirth. AFE's occur when amniotic fluid from the mother’s reproductive system enters her bloodstream, causing complications with pulmonary circulation, disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), and bleeding/hemorrhage. The risk factors for AFE’s are very debatable, but the 2 that we know of are: advanced maternal age (35 or older) and a maternal weight of 220lbs or more. However, our patient Amanda didn’t fit into either of these categories. Amanda was a 28 year old white woman with straight brown hair, chocolate brown eyes, was 5'4, average build, and had a “girl next door” sort of look.

As with most cases of AFE, the onset was totally unexpected; Amanda’s case was no exception. Amanda was carrying twin boys and the pregnancy was uneventful until 2 days before her due date. Amanda complained of severe abdominal pain as well as difficulty breathing. Her fiancée Greg decided to call 911 due to Amanda's symptoms. Greg was a 29 year old white guy who was tall, thin, had blue eyes, longish brown hair, and fair skin. Greg and Amanda were together for 3 years, but decided to hold off on getting married for a little while due to Amanda becoming unexpectedly pregnant with twins.

After Greg's 911 call, EMS arrived approximately 5 minutes later. The paramedics set up 2 large bore IVs, got Amanda on an oxygen mask, removed her clothes, and got her hooked up to a portable heart monitor. On scene, it was noted that Amanda's pulse ox was 94, her BP was 150/100, and her heart rate was 108. Her stats were a bit off, but not to the point of raising a red flag. After these findings, a fetal heart monitor was placed on Amanda’s belly, revealing a fetal heart rate of 154 in one child and a heart rate of 158 in the second child. Although those numbers are within normal limits for fetal heart rates, they’re very close to the upper limits. Shortly following these findings, Amanda was brought out of the house and into an ambulance, while Greg was instructed by paramedics to drive to the hospital.

On the way to the hospital, Amanda’s pulse oxygenation didn’t improve. Her blood pressure started to decrease and she developed a dry cough while continuing to struggle with dyspnea. A few minutes into the trip, Amanda started to bleed vaginally. The bleeding was relatively minor, but it didn’t appear to go away despite paramedics’ efforts.

When Amanda arrived at the emergency department, she was gasping for air, crying, complaining of being cold, and increased vaginal bleeding. Amanda shivered and cried while the trauma team tried to figure out what exactly was wrong with her and her unborn children. Amanda was very scared at the time; she said things like “am I gonna die?” “are my babies ok?!” And “if you can’t save me, save my babies.” The trauma team tried to reassure her, but they still didn’t know what was wrong with her.

The attending physician in the ER ordered a battery of blood tests, along with an echocardiogram and an abdominal ultrasound. The echocardiogram didn’t reveal anything abnormal, but the abdominal ultrasound showed bleeding from an unknown location.

After a few minutes of unsuccessful attempts at replenishing Amanda's blood loss, she started coughing up sputum with a reddish pink color in it. Amanda also started to look rather pale and sickly at that point. Her blood pressure was decreasing and her o2 saturation was continuously going downhill. Because of that, it was decided Amanda would be taken up to the operating room for a c-section and emergency laparotomy to locate the source of the bleeding. Amanda seemed very frightened by the idea of surgery. “surgery?! Is there something else you can do?” she shouted out to us while continuing to gasp for air.

Once in the operating room, Amanda was sedated and intubated. The first order of business was to perform a cesarean section and deliver the 2 boys. Betadine was squirted onto Amanda’s large, protruding belly shortly before a pfannenstiel incision was made. Once her lower abdomen/pelvic cavity were exposed, the uterus was incised. The first child was quickly removed as its cries temporarily relieved the mounting tension in the operating room.

The uterus had to be opened a bit more in order to deliver the 2nd child, and prophylactic antibiotics were also administered to limit the chance of post-operative infection. 2 and a half minutes later, the 2nd child was brought into the world. Thankfully, both children were healthy and in stable condition; the same couldn't be said about Amanda.

After the c-section site was closed with double layer suturing, the exploratory laparotomy began. The surgical site was was sterilized so a midline laparotomy could be performed. A midline laparotomy is a clean cut in the center of Amanda’s abdomen starting below the xiphoid process/diaphragm, curved to the right around the belly button, and continues to the bottom of the pelvis. It’s a large cut that’ll leave a nasty scar, but it’s the most efficient method in regards to overall technique and access to structures in the abdominal and pelvic cavity. Midline laparotomies are also the quickest incision to make, which was important in Amanda’s case.

Amanda’s blood pressure and o2 saturation continued to decrease incrementally throughout the procedure while also continuing to bleed vaginally. Multiple units of blood and FFP were already used, but didn’t appear to correct Amanda’s hemorrhaging. After poking around in Amanda’s abdomen for 25 minutes, the source was still unknown. Eventually, Amanda's hemodynamic instability exacerbated and converted to V-Fib. The surgery was paused to perform resuscitation efforts.

An OR nurse pumped Amanda’s chest as hard as she could while she was switched over to an ambu bag. The defibrillator pads were charged and placed onto her chest while a round of epinephrine was injected into her IV. After several seconds, shock #1 was delivered. Amanda’s feet jumped into the air and slammed back down seconds later, showing off a few thick, prominent wrinkles in her soft, size 6 soles.

The monitors showed v-fib once again so CPR was resumed as the defibrillator pads were recharged. Amanda’s breasts bounced around from the force of each individual compression. Her arms jerked around on the table slightly as the OR nurse continued deep, rapid chest compressions.

After that cycle of CPR and ambu bagging, shock #2 was delivered. Amanda’s body quickly flopped on the table, making a wet squishing sound since she was essentially laying in a pool of her own blood. The monitors displayed coarse V-Fib so another cycle of CPR and ambu bagging was performed before the next shock.

Shock #3 was also unsuccessful. Amanda’s body jolted sharply on the table. The heart monitors displayed pulseless electrical activity (PEA), a deterioration from the previous rhythm. A round of epinephrine was injected as frantic resuscitation efforts continued on the cute, new mother of 2.

Unsuccessful resuscitation efforts went on for another 3 minutes. Another round of epinephrine was pushed, causing Amanda to convert back to V-Fib. The defibrillator pads were charged yet again, forcing everyone to back off of the table in anticipation of the next shock.

Amanda’s back arched before crashing back onto the table a second or two later. The monitors displayed no change whatsoever so the same cycle of CPR and ambu bagging went on as the defib pads were recharged.

Amanda’s lifeless body twitched violently on the table as another unsuccessful shock sent a dose of electricity through her limp body. This shock sent Amanda back into PEA.

Deep, violent chest compressions were resumed. Amanda’s abdomen bounced outward from the compressions while her head bobbed. The situation appeared to be grim, but the OR team continued their valiant efforts on the young mother.

After 4 more minutes of uneventful efforts and epinephrine injections, Amanda converted to V-Fib once again. Just like before, everyone backed off as the next shock was delivered. Amanda’s toes scrunched, showing off large wrinkles in her soft soles. Amanda’s nail polish on her toes was red, almost matching the small amounts of blood on the heels of her feet.

The OR team continued ACLS efforts since the monitors continued displaying V-Fib, or a variation of it. Amanda was shocked unsuccessfully 4 more times, and coded for another 7 minutes. Unfortunately, the surgical team couldn’t shock Amanda out of V-Fib and called time of death at 9:26pm after a 23 minute battle to save her life.

All equipment was removed from Amanda’s body, except for the detached ET tube in an ET tube holder and detached EKG electrodes on her chest. Because of DIC, there was blood in Amanda's ET tube, IV sites, and leaking from each nostril.

The laparotomy was then closed up and the bloody mess of an operating room was cleaned up. Once that was done, Amanda’s body was covered up, only leaving her cute, wrinkly soles exposed. A toe tag was placed on the big toe of her left foot with a vague cause of death listed since nobody knew what happened to Amanda at the time.

After the surgery, Greg was told the news by the doctors. He didn’t exactly know how to feel; on 1 hand, he’s happy both of his kids were alive and well, but on the other hand, he was upset his fiancée died in surgery. Since the cause of death was relatively unknown, Amanda’s family gave the pathologist permission to perform an autopsy.

Amanda’s autopsy revealed that she died from an amniotic fluid embolism. The amniotic fluid ended up in her venous system, went to her heart, and was pumped into her pulmonary arteries, explaining why she had trouble breathing. The body doesn’t know exactly how to fight an AFE, so it attempted to clot the blood in her body, but she quickly ran out of her natural clotting factors, explaining the vaginal bleeding, which turned out to be DIC.

Even though Amanda’s cause of death was discovered, it’s still a tough loss considering she was a young woman who’s leaving a fiancée and 2 children who won’t know their mother.

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katiesspatialjournal · 2 years

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Ripple Effect- Sophia Collier

https://artstormer.com/2013/05/02/ripple-effect-acrylic-sculptures-by-sophia-collier/

Ripple Effect by Sophia Collier

Sophie Collier’s acrylic sculptures are made to resemble water, and held off of the wall to allow the light to permeate the acrylic and create a reflection much like water has. I am absolutely entranced with the colours of the acrylic, the perfect translucency and polish and the reflection they give off. In a video on the website ive linked we see Sophie creating a program for one of those big drill machines that we have in the labs at AUT (I can't think of the name of it), which in of itself looks very difficult. Once she has coded the pathways for the drill, she applies the sheet of acrylic which is much much bigger than it looks. After the drill machine has followed all of Sophia's directions, it leaves the acrylic very matte, which means she has to sand and buff the entire sheet until it is shiny again. Before I watched the video I assumed the rippling surface had been created by a heat gun and molding, so I was very confused and interested with how it was actually made. I am considering making my figure/s out of acrylic, and potentially a fluid looking material like this. I’m not sure if its possible for me to do, but I would like to talk to the technicians about whether something like this would be possible for my project and level of understanding.

It could be cool to experiment with solid structures looking fluid, especially with me going in the direction of my person being a girl, and the fluidity we have to have to fit into all of societies different sized boxes, kind of leaving us with no shape or solid form, just clay to be molded or a shape to be filled.

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zachbarrancearcade · 3 years

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Setting Up The AI

This part I was probably most worried about because I didn’t know what to do, but with the help of the video I have been using for the past few posts, that can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI1KcW3mjAA&t=4882s, I was able to get it done very easily, and I now know how to set it up, and how to do it again if I need to.

I began by Creating a DetourCrowdAIController, which I gave a PawnSensing component, and a view around it of 180 degrees. I then set the Base Enemy blueprint to be possessed by this AIController when it is spawned or placed in the world.

Next I went into the AI’s blueprint, and told it to on the event of possessing the Enemy, it was going to cast to it and set that character it was possessing as a variable, which I called enemy.

I then went into the Base Enemy Blueprint, and created a custom event called GoAfterPlayer, and set up the target in the inputs section, which appeared under the event.

After that I gave the ThirdPersonCharacter the tag Pablo, and returned to the AI’s blueprint, creating an ‘On See Pawn’ event, telling it to check if the actor it sees has the tag Pablo, and then if it does, its going to promote that pawn to a variable, and I’ve called it player target, to make sure it doesn't do this multple times, Ive dragged in a get PlayerTarget node, and converted it to a validated get, so it only runs the branch if it doesn't already exist. After this has all run, if it has located a pawn with the tag ‘Pablo’, it will trigger the custom GoAfterPlayer Event, where the enemy is thing being controlled, and the Player Target is the target.

Upon triggering the GoAfterPlayer event in the Enemy Base blueprint, it will activate an AI Move To, where the target on the GoAfterPlayer event, will be the player/Pablo. What I’ve set up from this point, wasn't influenced by the video, cause I had already learned this from an earlier part in the video, and from that point it went off into something that wasn't relevant to what I wanted in my game, so I made it that on success of reaching the Player, it would trigger another event in the EnemyBase blueprint called Attack, where it would apply damage to the player, stay still (stunned) for 2 seconds to give the player a chance to get away, and then it would retrigger the GoAfterPlayer event, and this will loop between the two events forever until either the player dies, or the enemy dies.

I had to redesign the players death code a little to be compatible with this new code I had added, which I excpected, so I added in the ‘Event AnyDamage’ node, and set up a new health system that connects back into the death screen and things I had set up before, and also just for debugging purposes and development for now I have also told it to print the players health every time they take damage.

After this, I will be setting up a wave spawning system, and polishing some other parts of my game, and once all the mechanics are done, I will begin to make and add the art to replace the blocked out version of my game its currently in

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lightshadowverisimilitude · 7 years

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Star Trek Sentinel AU 2/?

Still with no title

Part one

USS Brighton, star date 2245.04

“Happy fucken’ birthday to me,” Jim muttered. His breath fogged up the viewing port and he doodled a vector equation in the condensation. He had the navigation from Earth to Tarsus IV all plotted out on his PADD, and had re-plotted the course several times with imagined variables. An attack from a Klingon warbird sending them off course, navigating around a previously uncharted spatial anomaly, a failure in the ship’s computer sending them 20 light years off course, 200 light years, 200,000 light years. And that was just in the first week of their trip. Since then, Jim had first broken into his PADD’s code and rewritten it, and then he’d disassembled the thing and put it back together with a few upgrades he’d acquired from engineering so it could run his software.

He had a personal comm waiting on the terminal in the passenger lounge. He’d only looked at it long enough to see it was from Sam before logging out of his account. It wasn’t like he’d expected anything from his mom, and even if she had sent anything, she probably would have been drunk. Or crying. Or both. Jim’s birthday was never a happy occasion, and thanks to the whole Starfleet Hero coverage, Jim knew down to the second how long he’d been alive before his dad died. He could see his mom counting the seconds every year, looking at him and adding up in her head how many more seconds he’d been alive than George Kirk.

Birthdays sucked on the cosmic level of a singularity.

In 32 days, the USS Brighton would enter orbit over Tarsus IV and shove all her passengers out along with her cargo, pick up a bunch of the same, and head back to Earth. Jim had been trying to get the captain to make him a midshipman, but so far no dice. She was a tough nut to crack, and had about as much sense of humor as a Vulcan at a funeral. After the fourth time she’d told him that no, she was not going to take on a juvenile delinquent as a midshipman, she’d warned him that if he tried to stowaway on her ship, she’d send him back to Tarsus IV in a life pod. Jim believed her. Captain Hathaway was not a woman he wanted to go to toe-to-toe with, not least of all because she was 6’4” and looked like she could pick him up – life pod and all – and throw him a few light years.

Jim smudged his sleeve across the viewport and then breathed on the surface again. He tried to calculate the amount of energy that would theoretically be necessary to create a wormhole from Earth to Tarsus IV, but he couldn’t create enough space with his breath on the window, and the equation kept fading before he’d finished it.

“You could always use a PADD,” Captain Hathaway said from behind him.

Jim had seen her reflection in the glass just a heartbeat before she’d spoken, so he didn’t jump. He wiped his sleeve over the last of the fading equation and crossed his arms over his chest. She watched him for a moment, and then took a seat at the table behind him.

The observation lounge had been empty for hours, and it wasn’t used much anyways – the ship’s designers had obviously put it in as an afterthought, as the only way to get to it was to squeeze past the coolant tanks in Engineering and take the service corridor. It was a weirdly shaped room, like someone had taken a slice off of a tear drop. One wall was curved so severely that Jim could have used it for ricochet practice. The opposite side of the room narrowed down into a point so narrow that the best use of the space had been a rack of pool cues. A smaller-than-standard pool table had a folded board under it that could convert it into a holotable, and the deck of cards and case of plasisteel chips on a nearby shelf proved it was also used for poker as well. Otherwise, the lounge boasted one round table with three chairs, and a couch that looked like it was used for a lot of naps.

“We don’t often see passengers back here,” Hathaway said after a long moment of quiet where Jim just stared at the stars sliding slowly past the viewport.

“Probably don’t get captains back here a lot either,” Jim mumbled. Maybe it hadn’t been an afterthought – maybe it hadn’t even been designed in, but instead retrofitted by the engineering staff.

Hathaway didn’t respond. After a breath she said, “Pretty advanced math you’re doodling on my window.”

Jim shrugged again. He liked math. Might not be able tell from his transcript, but that was just because he never did his assigned homework – and why should he? He could plot out an astronavigation course to describe the dancing he could do around 7th Grade math homework.

(read more)

“No ship will take on a midshipman under the age of fifteen,” Hathaway announced. “It’s against regulation. When you’re fifteen, with your guardian’s consent, fill out the application paperwork and I’ll consider taking you on. Not a day before that,” she warned sternly, “and you better not forge anyone’s consent. I’ll know.”

“That doesn’t help me now,” Jim pointed out. He was twelve, and three years on a backwater dust bucket like Tarsus IV was a long damn time. At least in Iowa he always had the option of sneaking off to the spaceport and conning his way onto a freighter. Tarsus IV got one scheduled delivery of supplies and a Fed check up every five years. Even he was accepted as a midshipman, he won’t be able to leave the planet until a ship could be diverted to pick him up.

Hathaway snorted. “It’s the best I got, kid. Take it or leave it. Midshipman for a year and then you can apply to Starfleet Academy’s early entry program at sixteen. With a year’s experience already under your belt, and math like that –” She gestured to the viewport, even though the math like that had already been wiped away. “I guarantee they’ll take you.”

Jim snorted. “Sign up like the old man? Go die in space for a noble cause? No thanks.” He probably still wouldn’t measure up. He’d manage to get out there and die saving only 799 lives. On his memorial plaque, his mom would write ‘Still not as good as his father.’

She tilted her head. “You’re the one who’s been begging me to take you on.”

“I just don’t want to go Tarsus, Jesus. Do you know what there is to do on a brand new ag colony? You’d think the answer couldn’t possibly be ‘less than in bumfuck Iowa,’ but it is.”

Jim went back to staring at the window, trying to determine how big the stars were based on their luminosity, but being at warp made it hard to make even an educated guess. Hathaway sat for a moment longer, staring at the side of his face while he pretended not to notice. She had eyes like polished river stones, a sort of gray-blue that should have been dull, but against her olive skin and the deep midnight blue of her hair, they were almost unsettlingly bright.

She stood abruptly. “One of my engineer’s mates didn’t report for duty before we left space dock, and my chief engineer has been complaining incessantly about being understaffed. Report to engineering at 0530 if you’re bored enough and he’ll put you to work.”

Jim looked up at her sharply, not sure how to interpret her tone or the unexpected offer.

“You’re not a midshipman, you’re not in any way connected to Starfleet. You’re a civilian observer. Understood?”

Jim nodded quickly. “I understand.”

“If you don’t show up at 0530 tomorrow, don’t bother showing up any later. One time offer, Kirk.” She didn’t wait for his response, just turned on her heel and ducked down to get through the hatch.

“Happy fucken birthday to me after all,” Jim said into the silence after she’d left. He pulled his PADD out from under his legs and groaned after clicking the display on. It was already 0240, and now he had work in less than three hours. She thought he wasn’t going to show – she’d given him a crazy reporting time because she knew it was too late for him to get any real sleep, and she thought he’d sleep in.

“Just watch me,” Jim told the door, narrowing his eyes.

The next morning, he stood outside of engineering for fifteen minutes, so he could walk in at exactly 0530.

#ladyshadowdrake writes #spirk #star trek fanfiction #sentinel au #bb jim

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thomaswarren · 7 years

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♢ ( @vivbarnes ) The drive had passed far too quickly for the driver’s preference. Strained white knuckles, dishevelled windblown hair, and a seat-belt wrinkled shirt may have said differently --- but inwardly, it felt as if barely a half hour had passed since Tom had breached NYC’s limits. Even after triple checking the GPS co-ordinates, the bright green destination sign marked with a (too close for comfort) 10 attached to Lanford’s name was still surreal to read. But what else could be expected when, since the moment the engine started, he’d been constantly pushing speed limits and allotted himself no unnecessary stops whatsoever? There was just one reason to be visiting Lanford. Technically two, but both existed within one person. Surprisingly, no one else had seemed eager to make the trip --- deemed unnecessarily time consuming and solvable over email. That is, until Tom intervened with evidence highlighting how crucial Viv’s role had been to the budding business’ current state of existence. Stepped out of the picture or not, she deserved to make the final call on her status. Legally, it was un-ignorable. To solve the matter via satellite was too impersonal. And so heads were convinced to turn; opinions reformed; and Tom elected the guy for the job. The trip had been set up to be just as any other professional venture. This was just a way to get loose ends tied; accomplishing three simple steps was all there was to it. Ask a question, get an answer, take an exit --- that was the proposed retrieval outline to uphold when Tom had volunteered himself for the task, and it was one he would attempt to follow as accurately as possible. Certainly, attempts would be made. Tom’s colleagues trusted in his efficiency with the blind faith that strangers often did, but these feelings towards Tom’s abilities were not unanimous on all fronts. There were a handful of exceptions in the close friends who’d long ago witnessed the origin story of the budding beer business; when brewery plans amounted to no more than a drunken idea between two heart eyed roommates. The same friends who’s witnessed the defining shift in motivation the leftovers underwent when one part of the equation vanished. They knew, better than perhaps even Tom, that reaching the desired outcome smoothly relied on the flawed assumption that everything laying between the lines would go off with out a hitch --- in that nothing unpredictable would go off at all. Suffice it to say, Tom had thought through every possible direction things could go with Viv about as well as he’d done so before any other plan he’d ever carried out. Not at all. Accompanying his pint-sized plan was an equally small bag of essentials that had been thrown into the back of the car last minute, much like his departure, which had technically been scheduled to happen a day later. To say it had been an impulsive decision to take an early leave was a colossal understatement. Rewind to just a fresh few hours ago; he had just arrived outside the office building where his usual weekend meeting took place when he’d received the call that something unexpected had come up and it would need to be rescheduled. A day off should have been a relief. A day off meant free time (a near extinct commodity in recent times) and relaxation --- alas, even the word was something he struggled to know what to do with nowadays, let alone the act of participating in it. The first thing he should have done was call home and let Jay know he would be relieved of bottling duty, to pass the good news on to roommate-turned-fiancée... Indeed, there was a plethora of things that should have been prioritized instead of the unlisted option he chose. If it had been wrong to do so then it shouldn’t have been so easy to conveniently skip taking his usual turn off for home and merge onto the highway instead. Evidence of his unpreparedness for travel was obvious in the uncharacteristic choice of casual attire he still wore. An expensive suit ensemble had more or less become his everyday dress code with how often he was summoned to lead the way into rooms where first impressions were everything. No matter how hippy dippy the independent brewery concept sounded on paper, a billionaire investor’s office naturally commanded a very particular type of presence. The only act of rebellion Tom had engaged in against the polished presentation guise was insisting on having the top buttons of dress shirt undone to his liking, sans tie, as well as the inch longer he’d let his hair grow. The stubble shadowing his jaw had less to do with a consciously made decision than it had to do with losing his razor earlier in the week and forgetting to make time to go out and get a new one. Prolonged self-employment had set his pacing and concept of time askew, to say the least. A job that could be done in an hour, but with the freedom of an entire day, would be needlessly drawn out. Such habits bled into the fibres of his personal life as well; everything done slowly purely because it could. Only one thing was reliably fixed in place. Appointments. However, thanks to technology even that was a non-issue now. ‘Take as long as you need,’ he’d been told inbetween firm handshakes with contractors and CEOs. ‘Get it over with. This has already taken too long,’ she had muttered afterwards, tucked close by Tom’s side and out of others’ earshot. She was one of the rare originals of the bunch who had veritable sway over what was going on, yet her word hadn’t been enough for him to sign on that expensive dotted line that suddenly loomed over every conversation. She was tactical in all the ways that he wasn’t, seeing no use in digging up old relations or tackling obstacles that weren’t already in their direct path. Business and pleasure were best served exclusive of the other, and that was that. Part of him wondered if the journey to Lanford would have been better suited to being assigned to her. Hadn’t they been best friends once? He'd been trying to forget that. You have reached your destination. Not long after passing the blink-and-you-miss it welcome sign, Tom’s foot stiffly shifted to hover over the brake pedal until the flow of traffic gave way to a more densely populated area. Parking in what he presumed was the central part of town, relieved to be liberated from spending a minute more crammed into a vehicle, he barely spared a moment to breathe easy before he headed determinedly onwards. Ducking in and out of businesses with one name on his lips, at first the request had sounded as robotic as the GPS that had been his sole company during the ride over. So unaccustomed to forming those three syllables, thankfully the extra focus it took to do it casually didn’t allow for him to pause and think about what asking around for Vivian meant. That sooner or later, he’d locate the vanisher herself and finally have to form a plan of action. Despite the timeline that had been extended to him, there was no sense of urgency or anxiety in his searching. Phone stored in his pocket as usual, he predicted he had at least another free hour or so before it would go off when it was officially discovered he wasn’t running late at the offices or sidetracked somewhere in between. A particular pet clinic became the common thread between the helpful few who had known who he was referencing to, always after corrective clarifications were made (‘Vivian? Do you mean Viv?’) then accompanied by fingers pointing to the aforementioned business, located --- of course --- just across the parking lot. Only after the fourth pet clinic recommendation did he feel convinced to no longer put off following the instruction. Weaving his way between moving and stationary cars alike, he approached the establishment with decidedly downcast eyes. Afternoon sunlight reflected off of the clinic’s storefront windows, making it impossible to catch a glimpse inside until he was nearly directly in front of it, having stepped into the shadow of the building. Oh, how inexplicably interesting the concrete underfoot seemed to stare down at all of a sudden. Grasping onto the clinic’s door handle, a lesser entertained thought dawned on him as he gave it a hesitant tug it toward him --- what if Viv wasn’t here? The thought was swiftly followed by an even more uncertain notion; would her absence be a relief, or a disappointment? Once upon a time, Tom might have mulled a little longer on such things; perhaps even stopped altogether and retraced his footsteps until he was tucked back inside his car. Unfortunately, neither was a feasible option so long as he had someone to report back to in a city many miles away. It was precisely for this reason that Tom’s soft sense of childlike curiosity and unconditional tenderness had been heavily under construction since left to his own devices. Esteemed distributors and business execs alike had slowly by surely chiseled a new shape out of the rambunctious figure he’d been his mid twenties. Forcibly trained to adapt beneath suffocating ounce after ounce of feedback, Tom soon learned to differentiate between the valuable and time-wasting unrealistic ideas before enthusiastically leaping forth to make a suggestion. He’d learned to stay quiet, to listen more, to be prepared have a lengthly mature explanations for every damn thing, and a back up plan no matter how certain he was plan A was bulletproof. Harnessing what action would yield the best reaction was all that could and would be considered in the long term, always. Time was money, after all. Making calls with less emotional investment wasn’t so impossible to do anymore. Without hardened edges to forge the way, no progress would be made at all. Bearing the thought in mind, he summoned a deep breath of resignation and brushed any uprising of sentimental non-necessities off into a pile at the back of his mind where they belonged. Heading purposefully forwards, he stepped over the threshold of the pet clinic where Viv supposedly worked, eyes adjusting to the differently lit interior after a brief disinterested sweep of the room. There were only three impersonal things he should feel motivated to accomplish here, and that was final.

#viv #[ closed ]#/ *takes deep breaths into a paper bag*#ignore the length just tryna set up some stuff #also im just a mess so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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seokmins-thighs · 7 years

Text

[scenario] coffee shop!au pt. iv

Pairing: reader x Mingyu, Wonwoo is here!! Jihoon pops up too

Genre: coffee shop!au, garbage fluff, college!au...now...i guess

Word Count: 1699w

Warning(s): i wrote this and edited this in one go

pt. i | pt. ii | pt. iii

a/n: for the anon who asked about a part four for this scenario after so long that i had to reread the last part to remember what happened lmaoo

enjoy this song as you read the scenario! :D

____

His thumb stops running over the back of your hand and with the absence of the soothing action, you almost tell him to keep doing it. With a tug of your hand, you start slipping past the edge of the mattress and you yell a prayer in your mind that you won't break a bone, even though the top of the mattress isn't that high off the floor. He stops and pushes you back up with a ring of a laugh to break the morning silence.

"Good morning," he says, low, quiet, sleep still clinging onto the syllables like a lifeline.

You're about to greet him back when you hear a knock from the front door and he lets your hand go to sit up. A small band of his hair pokes from his scalp and sways left and right.

"Who's that?" you ask him instead as you shuffle deeper into the bed.

Mingyu pauses, glances at everything and focuses at nothing in his room. He clears his throat, cutting the tie of sleep from his voice. "I don't know." He throws the sheets from his lap and onto the side and stands up. "Stay here."

His footsteps echo down the hall until they fade into the placid quiet. You shift yourself closer to the edge of the bed to get up, but your hand slips against loose covers and your body tumbles flat on its back, dragging Mingyu's blanket from the bed and onto the floor with you. Morning still hasn't stretched your muscles well enough for the fall that you don't think about fixing the mess you made. You grab his blankets and pull them over your shoulders. Warmth of Mingyu's body lingers on the pillows and sheets and presses into your own, heating you up better than the blanket ever can.

The sound of another male's voice slices a chill down your spine.

"I thought you were coming back tomorrow," you hear Mingyu's voice, muffled through weaves of walls and doors.

The male's voice is deeper than Mingyu's, but there's a light ease at his words. "When did I say that?"

"You didn't even tell me you were going somewhere."

Mingyu and the man laugh into the apartment and you're starting to think Mingyu forgot you're in his room and wearing his shirt. You tug the covers and hide under them, stealing a whiff of Mingyu's cologne somewhere lost in fabrics.

After a click of the closing door and a few weighted steps inside, "Oh yeah, I have y/n over."

At that, you shoot off the floor and stumble towards the mirror on Mingyu's sliding closet door. You run a hand through your hair and through webs of a good night's sleep. You even flatten palms down Mingyu's shirt and over your clothed thighs to undo some wrinkles. You drag your fingers across your face to wake the sleep in your eyes.

A couple of knocks from the door and Mingyu's head peeks inside.

"My roommate wants to formally meet you," he says, eyes slowly dragging up and down your less-disheveled figure in front of his mirror. You wonder if his eyes are taking their time because they're still clinging onto sleep or if it’s something else. A grin graces up his lips as a blush settles on your cheeks and he slips back out into the hallway.

An awkward handshake. Futile attempts to keep the polite smile on your face.

"I hope his room is clean," Wonwoo mutters, deep and languid, as if sleep is still resting in his own voice, like yours and Mingyu's.

You recognize Wonwoo as Mingyu's friend from last night, silently watching the fireworks and letting colorful explosions wash on the curves of his face like neon water. You wonder where his glasses were the last time you saw him, if he really does need glasses. Either way, you think he looks nice in them.

"It's clean enough," you tease, just to watch Mingyu frown from behind the kitchen counter.

Wonwoo leans closer to you and whispers, "I bet his room is a mess."

"If I make breakfast," Mingyu sighs, defeated, "will both of you stop? My room is clean."

Wonwoo disappears from your side without a sound of a hurried shuffle, but a second later, his voice is all you hear. "Your room is definitely messy, Mingyu."

Mingyu points a spatula towards the hallway, the opposite direction of Mingyu's room. "Shut up and fix your own bed."

Wonwoo returns with a playful smirk and his eyes soften on yours. "It was really nice to meet you. I hope Mingyu isn't much trouble or you."

"Not at all."

Wonwoo gestures a palm to his room and says something about unpacking, that he'll just be in his room, but you don't catch everything because Mingyu starts impatiently tapping the spatula on the pan to get Wonwoo going.

----

You wish winter break reaches across the calendar a lot longer than a couple of weeks because your brain still aches from last semester's notes. After the first week back from vacation and adjusting your feet to a new map of classes and jogs to the restroom, Mingyu catches up to you with the apron sitting on top of the textbooks he's carrying.

"I'm going to work right now. Want to come?" He places a hand flat on the textbook you're holding, stopping you from taking another step in case he does take it away from you. You don't want to dent your bank account any further by having to buy another book if Mingyu does something to it.

"Sure." You're about to grab your phone to tell your friends to meet up at the coffee shop when you notice his fingers grabbing the binding.

You pull the textbook closer to you, but his grip tightens and lets the hardcover flatten his apron. "Let me bring it, y/n. I need to iron my apron, anyway."

Your friend picks up Mingyu's textbook from your side of the table and flips through the pages, organized letters and color-coded boxes and even sketches of cylinders. "How does he have time to write all of these notes?"

"The best part of working at a coffee shop," Mingyu's voice shoots from behind you and almost rips a scream from your throat. He was behind the counter just a second ago, you think, "is the free coffee I get to drink to keep me studying." He places a few mugs down on coasters, a gradient of descending brown lining down polished wood, and a couple of your friends flutter their eyes at Mingyu.

"Hey," you look up at him and he leans over to you, so close that you notice a growing shade of pink on his cheeks. He doesn't turn to look at you, instead bringing his ear closer to hear you. "What if I keep your notes with me while you work?"

"Deal." Your friend hands you back Mingyu's textbook when he asks for you to find this one page in his notes. He heads back to the counter after glancing at his notes, mouthing textbook definitions and formulas on his way back.

----

"When did you start dating the cute barista?" your best friend asks as she takes out a notebook and a few pens, despite having a pile of them already in front of her.

"And why didn't you tell us?" another breaks in.

"I-I'm not dating him," you stutter, at the thought of Mingyu becoming more than this, whatever you both have.

"Lies," your best friend yells, nearly cutting the noise from the shop.

"It's so obvious."

Your best friend points a finger at a barista wiping the mugs with a small towel, chatting with Mingyu as he loads and shakes a new canister of whipped cream, and back at Mingyu's notes tucked in your own textbook like a new home. "We don't even do that, yet we're dating."

----

Instead of letting Mingyu give you a different mug of coffee today, you wait in line and order something for yourself while your friends eat the fresh cupcakes Mingyu baked for the shop and for this study session.

Wonwoo greets you with a smile, wider and kinder than he would to other random customers, and ask what would you like for today. When you ask for a hot cafe latte, he asks if you want latte art on it.

You open your mouth to answer, but nothing manages to spark your brain and come out. You don't know what to say; you just want to drink it.

"I'll let Jihoon surprise you, then," Wonwoo saves you on the spot.

After you thank him for this one time, you wait near the counter because you catch Mingyu away from the rack of empty mugs and coffee machine, holding a mug and a small metal pitcher.

Wonwoo walks up behind Mingyu and watches him slowly pour milk into the brown rimming in porcelain. "Since when did you make latte art?"

"Now," Mingyu answers, straight and firm, not even bothering to glance back at Wonwoo. His eyebrows furrow and his teeth sink into his bottom lip.

"Why now?"

Mingyu's voice is louder this time, almost as if he's declaring an obvious fact. "It's for y/n."

Wonwoo looks up from the mug in Mingyu's hand and back to you, a grin spreading and you guessing what he'll do this time. "I'm telling Jihoon you're trying to steal his position as the latte artist in this shop."

Mingyu places the mug and pitcher carefully on the counter and you notice a white wave of hearts lilting stark against light brown of your drink. "Wait, Wonwoo-no, don't-"

It takes a minute or two before Mingyu is satisfied with his creation and before you can get your drink, with the heart still welcoming you to a first sip. You thank Mingyu for such a pretty drink before heading back to your table.

"Hey," Wonwoo elbows Mingyu's rib, "your latte art is pretty good." You watch Mingyu almost grab for Wonwoo's shirt until someone opens the door to the back and glares at Mingyu.

"Jihoon, wait-" Mingyu holds his hands up in surrender.

____

a/n 2: i thought of mingyu as a mechanical engineering major and now i can’t stop

update nov 26, 2017: pt. v

#i have another part planned bc it would've been way too long if i added to his one #so if anyone wants me to continue this i will #seventeen #mingyu #seventeen scenarios #tabi writing #i wrote this before i have to go to work #now i have like 15 minutes before igotta go lmAO

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anghraine · 7 years

Text

“per ardua ad astra” - chapter three

I STILL LOVE JYN. A LOT.

And in case anyone’s wondering: yes, Starfleet was originally the name for the Imperial navy, and you will take it from my dead cold fingers.

last chapter:

She hadn’t forgotten. But just for a moment, Cassian had meant the cool-headed spy, somewhere out there glowering at the unworthy, not the man who carved up his own body getting to her.

Soon, she promised herself. He’d be himself again, preaching about the cause, and she, well, she’d figure out what she was. Maybe a Rebel. Definitely free.

this chapter:

“She’s the daughter of Queen Breha of Alderaan,” he said. “And Senator Organa, though she’s had his seat in the Senate for a couple of years. By the way, there’s no Senate any more.”

“No Sen—” She’d think about that later. If she had to. “This Princess Leia is a traitor?”

“A Rebel spy,” he affirmed.

chapters: one, two

Jyn didn’t know what it said about her that she could recall Cassian’s measurements from a glance at his Alliance profile two weeks ago, but had no idea of her own.

Didn’t matter, anyway. The assistant sighed and sent her to an adjoining chamber, where hovering, ball-shaped droids measured some half-dozen men and one other woman, all in various stages of undress. Ten minutes of pokes and prods later, a slightly more human-shaped droid handed her a provisional uniform, and she escaped back to the requisition center.

Then she had to wait for the assistant again.

Adjusting her grip on Kaytoo’s head, she imagined what he’d say, were he—what he’d say. If there was anyone who would find it as ridiculous that she stood there in lines while Cassian fought for his life and Bodhi tried to escape torture, it had to be Kaytoo. An excellent use of your time, Jyn Erso. There’s a seventy-eight percent chance of your being caught and killed or blown into smithereens in the meanwhile. Just so you know.

At last, the assistant looked at her again. In a bored voice, he said, “Are you requesting a new K2 unit, as well?”

“Absolutely not,” said Jyn. She caught herself. “Not yet. We’re hoping to extract valuable data from this one.”

“Measurements, then?”

She didn’t feel seven inches shorter than Cassian. She gave them anyway, the assistant sent in the order, and she was free.

In a trapped-in-the-Empire sort of way.

It took her an hour of vague advice, wrong turns, and wandering identical halls to figure out the way to Room F1813. It took another hour just to get there, by which point she felt like her spine might collapse on itself. She typed Cassian’s code into the key panel and stumbled inside.

Like everything else in the Death Star, Cassian’s quarters were a sea of stark grey metal, bleak, severely regular, and devoid of anything like character. She had no doubt that a thousand other chambers looked just like this one.

A square room with two hard beds on either side. Two metal dressers and narrow closets. Two short lockboxes. Bright, steady lighting. And a refresher.

A refresher. Her mouth nearly watered. If a Starfleet captain didn’t rate luxury, he at least got decent amenities. And for Jyn, it was the closest thing to luxury she’d had in a long, long time.

All because they were caught in the Death Star, she reminded herself, and dread welled up in her again. This was a nightmare. They’d be dead in an instant if anyone guessed the truth, or anything remotely approximating the truth. She’d give just about anything to escape, if she could be sure of taking Cassian and Bodhi with her.

Still, she might as well enjoy this while she had it. Jyn set Kaytoo’s head in one of the boxes and headed to the fresher. There, she found a sink, mirror, toilet, and—Force, a shower. A tiny one, but with real water and soap. She could almost have cried.

Jyn set down the Imperial uniform and started peeling off her own gear, so caked with sweat and dirt that they stuck to her. Never mind that. Wincing, she tore the cloth and leather off her skin as fast as she could. In the mirror, she could see whole streaks of bruises—not like Cassian’s, but bad even for her.

She was alive. Nothing else mattered.

Jyn stepped into the shower. When hot water poured over her, she—maybe she did cry. Just a little. At her feet, the water swirled brownish-grey, even before she began relentlessly scrubbing herself. The soap suds in her hand darkened, too, but she could actually see her skin. Jyn blew stands of clean hair out of her face and smiled.

Force be with you, she thought at Quartermaster Brakas, then remembered what he was. Oh, well.

Now the water poured clear and clean down her body. Jyn lathered up her hands one last time and washed her necklace clean, polishing the crystal as well as she could. She didn’t think it had saved the mission, saved her. Cassian had done that, and Bodhi, and Jyn herself. But still, she thought of breezing through regulations, Bodhi slipping under the radar, Cassian in bacta, and closed her hand over it.

Thank you, Mama.

Ten minutes later, Sergeant Lyr stared back at her from the mirror. At her breast, the crystal shone bright.

She hadn’t come this far to turn back now. Lyra, wherever she was, would understand.

With a sigh, Jyn untied her necklace, sliding it into one of the pockets of her trousers. Then, last of all, she picked up her cap and set it on her neatly parted hair.

Jyn saluted Lyr and strode out.

This time, she managed to find her way in a mere eighty minutes. Bolstered by her uniform, she just marched up to a stormtrooper and asked for directions to the bay on the seventh floor of Quadrant G Northeast. Like most, he obeyed without question.

As she approached the medbay itself, though, her sense of achievement faded. It had been six, nearly seven hours. And she’d heard nothing of Cassian or Bodhi in that time. Nothing of the plans. Nothing at all.

The same medic as before stood at attention in front of the doors.

“Oh,” he said to Jyn. “It’s you again.”

“And you’re still here,” she replied. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Corporal Pralit.” He covered a yawn. “You missed my off-shift. I just started again.”

“Ah,” said Jyn. “Well, as you can see, I’ve been disinfected. May I see my commander now?”

“Let me check his status. Willix, right?”

She nodded, and he tapped into his datapad. After a moment, he swiped across the screen, as lazily as he did everything else. Jyn suppressed the urge to throttle him.

Cassian would be … he wouldn’t be …

She forced herself to even breaths. There was nothing that Jyn, herself, could have done for him. She’d handed him over to—yes, the Empire, but it had been the only way! They all would have died otherwise, or worse. And leaving him alone, well, she had left him to the best care the galaxy offered. It would have been suspicious to stick around like a fretful wife or sister; he’d be the first to say so.

“Alive,” said Pralit.

Jyn closed her eyes, then opened them. To her horror, her legs felt weak and unsteady, almost gelatinous. She hadn’t been off them since before Scarif.

“And?” she demanded.

“He’s been in and out of bacta all day,” he said. His eyes scanned the screen in front of him. “They’ve scheduled another treatment in an hour. Looks like the bones are healing well, so it’s got to be the lung.” Pralit scrolled down. “Oh, sepsis. That explains it.”

“Explains what?” she said.

“Blaster wound must be infected.” He gave her a patronizing look. “It’s shock to the immune system. Usually from bacteria. Even if he’s awake right now, he won’t be able to string two sentences together. But if you insist on seeing him, I can give you access.”

“I insist,” said Jyn.

“Figured.” The datapad beeped. “There you go.”

Walking into the med-bay, she hardly saw anything or anyone in front of her. She just repeated Bed Thirty-One until someone led her to a room with two female medics, a droid, and a man in a raised bed. Behind her, the door slid closed, and the roar of the bay disappeared into the hums and gentle beeps of the machinery.

“You’ll be Sergeant Lyr?” said the smaller of the medics.

“Yes.”

Jyn stepped forward to look down at the man. Cassian, of course—unmistakably Cassian. At the same time, she could hardly see Cassian in the person lying there, weak and pallid and silent. At least a dozen different wires connected him to the machines, as if he were the droid instead of Kaytoo. Liquid slid down the tubes, most of it clear, some bright red.

Cassian himself didn’t so much as stir at her approach. She had seen him sleep before, of course, in snatches between Yavin IV and Jedha and Eadu. But if anything, he’d seemed more off-putting asleep than awake. Still tense, still indifferent, just devoid of any sort of animating spirit, with neither his usual concentrated zeal nor his occasional half-smiles. Now, though, he lay peacefully, the premature lines on his face smoothed out, eyelashes motionless on his cheek.

“He’s still unconscious,” said Jyn. “Why?”

“Induced coma,” the medic said. “It’s preferred to anaesthesia for prolonged bacta treatment.”

“Good idea.” As long as it didn’t mean anything in itself, it might be for the best. Force knew what Cassian could say under anaesthesia.

Dryly, the medic replied, “Thank you for your input.”

Jyn would have prickled at another time. As it was, she only half-heard. She kept her eyes fixed on Cassian’s chest, the slow, even rise and fall of his breath. Her pulse slowed, as if somehow constrained by his.

With an effort, she remembered where she was, who she must be. She turned to the medics.

“He reacts poorly to anaesthesia, doctor. You are Doctor …?”

“Esten,” the medic said. She didn’t bother to introduce the taller medic, who remained silent and exuded an air of deference.

“Dr Esten, what is the captain’s overall condition?”

“Stable,” said Esten. “He’s lucky—”

“Oh, clearly.”

Esten rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Lucky that he didn’t completely shatter the impacted bones. Apart from the ribs, comparatively few were broken, and all have responded well to treatment. The fractures in the tibiae are still healing, but the kneecaps, femura, and so on are in good shape. He’ll walk like it never happened.”

“Apart from the ribs,” Jyn said. She looked back at Esten, whose pale, shrewd eyes peered out from beneath an uneven fringe of greying black hair. She could have been almost any age between forty and sixty, but certainly gave the impression of the latter.

“The ribs are a concern,” Esten acknowledged, “chiefly for the sake of his lungs, though they are healing at a typical pace. We have no reason to expect any unusual degree of trouble.”

There was always reason to expect trouble. Especially now.

“The blaster wound is a greater concern,” Esten went on, “thanks to septic infection. It has been treated and I believe is now controlled, but we’ll be keeping him under observation to make sure there are no recurrences. If it heals improperly, there could be permanent damage to the surrounding tissues and nerves.”

“Right.” At this rate, she’d have to break him out of med-bay. But at this rate, he wasn’t going anywhere soon at all. Brusquely, she added, “What sort of timeline are we looking at?”

Esten regarded her with palpable distaste, which Jyn considered promising. Sympathy would be dangerous—recognition of a deeper attachment, or a different one, than might be expected to exist between a mid-range captain and his aide. And if she disliked Jyn for the sake of an unknown patient, presumably she was a dedicated physician.

“Anything from a few days to a few weeks,” she said. “It depends on his response to the bacta.”

They certainly didn’t have a few weeks.

“Very well,” said Jyn. “When do you expect him to come out of the coma, doctor? I do not mean to waste time watching him sleep.”

Esten’s jaw twitched. “Hopefully tomorrow afternoon, Sergeant. But he will not be equipped for any serious demands on his attention.”

“Of course,” said Jyn. “I will return tomorrow, then.”

She turned on her heel and stalked out of Cassian’s hospital room, through the med-bay, and then out the main entrance, beating back the hot pricking of her eyes all the way. She felt faintly soiled. More than faintly. Did it feel the same to Cassian?

Everything I did, I did for the Rebellion. Not the words of a man who enjoyed the choices he made. Not even the words of a man who believed them right, except as necessary sacrifices for a greater moral end. Perhaps he hated this near as much as Jyn. But Cassian had the cause to live by, even his darkest paths lit by that clear, shining purpose. Jyn—she didn’t quite know what she had, even if she managed to claw their way out of this place. She believed, she hoped, she cared about the fight. She did now. And she wouldn’t give up, ever. She just … she couldn’t see herself existing in Cassian’s stark simplicities, everything bleak or brilliant.

In any case, she felt as if she walked backwards, back to Lianna. None of this for the cause, for some great end, just survival. But not hers alone, she reminded herself. Cassian’s and Bodhi’s. They needed her. That was a cause in itself.

“Lyr!”

Lost in her thoughts, Jyn had been paying little more attention on the way out of the med-bay than the way in. Now her head jerked up.

“Pralit,” she returned, and glanced past him. A chill raced over her skin.

A stormtrooper, heavy blaster in hand, stood waiting.

“This trooper insists on speaking to Captain Willix,” Pralit told her. “Some sort of official message.”

Jyn squinted at him. “Captain Willix is not in any condition to receive visitors, official or not. I am Sergeant Lyr, his aide-de-camp.”

The trooper saluted her and stood at attention. “RK-1301, Sergeant. I have an urgent message for the captain with regard to his last post.”

She’d know that voice to her death.

Bodhi.

Jyn and Bodhi walked purposefully towards nothing in particular. Nobody paid the slightest attention; audacity, she thought, once more carried the day.

But she had only rarely seen lone stormtroopers. Even in costume—in uniform—vigilance gnawed at her.

In a clear voice, she said, “The message, trooper?”

“Uh,” said Bodhi. “It’s with regard to his previous post, at the Scarif facility. Confidential.”

“Of course it is,” she said impatiently, and headed towards a random elevator.

The moment its door closed behind them, Bodhi took off the helmet and rubbed sweat from his face. “So I’ve—”

“Put it back on,” ordered Jyn. “You can never be too careful, trooper.”

Bodhi stared at her, then peered up at the ceiling. “There’s no—right, right. Sergeant.” He put the helmet back. “Well, there’s good news and bad news.”

“Bad news first.” She punched in the numbers for her floor. The elevator just beeped at her.

“Captain Willix feared that the Rebel attack on the Citadel had a … uh, a more specific aim than crippling the facility. He was right.”

“Oh?” This elevator must not even be on the same system. Not that it mattered. She chose Floor Q13(G) and hoped it wasn’t busy.

“The Rebels definitely took something from the Citadel. The brass are furious, so it doesn’t seem like it’s been recovered. That’s what my commander says.”

His commander? Jyn wished she dared ask what on earth he’d gotten himself into. And how. Instead, she said,

“A file from the archives, I imagine. And what’s the good news?”

Bodhi shifted his weight from one foot to the other, head dipped as he adjusted his grip on his blaster. Jyn swallowed.

“Well?”

“We managed to track the file, or whatever it was, to the ship that received it. I wasn’t told the name, but apparently it was some sort of consular vessel en route to Alderaan.” His voice wavered. “We tracked the ship and captured the passengers.”

Abruptly, she felt very far away, cut off from her own body, or some temporary occupant of it. The plans had got out. They really had. And then the Imperials had retrieved them anyway. It was all for nothing. Chirrut and Baze. Kaytoo. All those soldiers who had followed her and Cassian to horrific deaths—all of it, every sacrifice, every moment of it, for nothing!

She laid a hand on the wall of the elevator, steadying the body that trapped her. A very ordinary, clean hand, she saw. No filth, no blood. Not even under the nails. Callused skin over functional bones.

Some small, remote part of her could think of nothing but clenching the hand into a fist and beating it against the walls until it bled, until the bones all broke and—and—

Doesn’t seem like it’s been recovered, he’d said. Even if it had been, of course, a random stormtrooper wouldn’t be told. But stormtroopers might well be told if the higher-ups were enraged over something. They’d be the ones sent to recover the plans, wouldn’t they?

Jyn lived again, the pulse at her throat entirely her own.

“All the passengers?”

Bodhi paused, then nodded. “Yes. Darth Vader himself captured Princess Leia and is bringing her here.”

“Princess Leia,” said Jyn, trying to think of who the hell that was. The Rebellion had a princess?

Of course it did.

“She’s the daughter of Queen Breha of Alderaan,” he said. “And Senator Organa, though she’s had his seat in the Senate for a couple of years.”

“This Princess Leia is a traitor?”

“A Rebel spy,” he affirmed.

Like Cassian. Soon there would be another Rebel on this very … well, on this moon-sized base. She might end up hundreds of miles off, or not. But nevertheless, here.

And a captive.

“I was transferred to this quadrant only today,” Bodhi said carefully. “I had no trouble, since Princess Leia and all the rest of it has everything in an uproar. That tells you how chaotic it is right now.”

Through a veil of horror, she replied, “Her capture is … is certainly good news. I am surprised that I hadn’t heard it yet.”

“Nobody knows the details,” he said, “but my commander says that she’s still managing to cause trouble.”

“I can believe it,” said Jyn. Despite her best intentions, her voice shook, either from fear or that sliver of hope. She herself couldn’t have said. But she thought: if they’d gone after this princess to seize the plans, and captured her, and she continued to cause them trouble … she must have done something with them.

Probably.

And whatever it was, if the Empire captured everyone onboard, then—what? Were the plans hidden? Lost with the ship? Or somehow passed on before the capture?

Jyn sent the elevator back to the med-bay’s floor. As they walked out, towards the correct one, she said,

“That doesn’t seem particularly confidential.”

“It’s all the transfers,” said Bodhi. “And the excitement, I think. Things have a way of getting out.”

Jyn thought of her father, and her voice trembled again. “I suppose so.”

During the hour it took them to reach Cassian’s quarters, Jyn either barked orders at Bodhi or closely questioned him, ignoring his nonsense answers. With anyone else, she might have enjoyed it. With Bodhi, she just felt like slime.

Yet again, she wondered how someone as fundamentally decent as Cassian did it. And this was just making someone feel bad, maybe. Not sabotage and assassinations and who knew what else.

Sabotage. She didn’t think anything they might manage could seriously harm the Death Star. But maybe something—plans or no plans, maybe they could make some use of their presence here. Secret cards up the sleeve for the Rebellion, even though the Rebellion itself could have no idea.

At the door, Bodhi said uncertainly, “Sergeant?”

“What?” she snapped.

“Are you … inviting me into your quarters?”

Despite everything, she had to repress a smile. He sounded profoundly unenthusiastic. A good wrinkle if anyone happened to be observing, and hopefully genuine if they weren’t.

“Don’t be absurd,” said Jyn. “I just need your comlink code in the extremely unlikely case that Captain Willix wants to hear you personally. It’ll only be a few minutes.”

She typed in the passcode and marched inside, pretending not to care whether he followed her or not. After a pause, he marched through just before the door snapped back into the wall.

Jyn sat down on the nearest bed, exhaling a quick breath. “Thank the Force.”

Voice still muffled, Bodhi said, “Have you checked for—?”

Bugs. With all her paranoia, she hadn’t thought of that. The privacy of the captain’s quarters had seemed like a sanctuary, or the closest thing they had to it.

“No,” said Jyn, and they spent the next several minutes combing the quarters for any sort of surveillance devices. They found nothing, which might or might not mean they existed.

“Never mind,” she decided. “I’ll risk it. We have to be able to talk openly somewhere.”

Bodhi, helmet in his arms, heaved a sigh of relief. “And there have got to be hundreds of thousands of people on this thing. They won’t be watching every random stormtrooper or NCO.”

That made sense. But her nerves still buzzed. She sat down before her legs could buckle.

“I can’t believe we did this,” Bodhi went on, and flopped onto one of the beds, armour and all, staring at his helmet. “I mean, I didn’t really think we could, even when I was trying.”

“You know what they say,” said Jyn. “Fear’s a great motivator.”

“Fear? You?” He turned his head to look at her, brows lifted in almost comical surprise.

She had always been afraid. Afraid of capture, death, loss, betrayal. Always something. The fearless didn’t live for survival alone, as she had. It made for a small, desperate life, but it had been hers. She didn’t even realize how miserable it was, until—

“Yes, me,” she said, meeting Bodhi’s eyes. The fearful didn’t always live for survival, either. “Maybe you noticed that I’ve been a bit over-cautious here.”

He gave an uncertain smile. “I’m not sure we can be over-cautious here. Not if we’re going to survive.”

“We have to do more than survive,” Jyn said. She desperately wanted to lie down, as well, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, she leaned her elbows against her thighs, chin against her curled hands. “They’re one princess away from getting the plans back. We’ve got to figure out a way of stopping them.”

“Or none of it mattered.” She could hear his gulp from across the room. “But what can we do?”

“I don’t know.” Jyn didn’t think she’d ever been so exhausted in her life, even with Saw. Her head felt like a patchwork of a thousand different bruises, every muscle ached, and she hadn’t eaten for hours. Still, she forced herself to think.

Break Princess Leia out, Jyn’s instinct said, but they’d never get away with it. Not with no path of escape. Track down the princess, maybe, see what she’d done with the plans. They could figure out their next move from there.

And there couldn’t be a next move until Cassian got better. Squeezing her eyes shut, Jyn pressed the heel of her hand against the jabs of pain in her forehead. She couldn’t help Cassian. Not now; she’d done all she could for him.

“You saw Cassian in the hospital, didn’t you?” said Bodhi. He was no Jedi, nor Temple monk either, but she still eyed him. “He’s the spy, not us. He must have some ideas.”

“He hasn’t woken up yet,” Jyn replied. If she could, she’d wipe the memory of Cassian limp in that bed from her mind. Forever. “They’re keeping him under until the worst is over. So not many ideas, no.”

She regretted the harshness in her voice as soon as she spoke—regretted it with Bodhi, if few others. Rather to her surprise, however, he didn’t flinch or even look that somber.

“How is he?”

“Alive,” said Jyn grimly. But no need to make things worse than they already were. She managed a tight smile. “The doctor thinks he’ll make a complete recovery. It’s just a question of when.”

“When,” he repeated. Sitting up, he set the stormtrooper helmet aside. “No way we’ll get away with this for very long.”

She honestly didn’t know.

“The Willix thing is real,” she said at last. “I mean, what goes for real with Cassian. He gave me his code while you were shouting for help. It’s how I got all this.” Jyn waved at the quarters.

“So we might make it.”

If the Rebellion doesn’t have the plans. She didn’t feel the need to say it aloud. “It’s possible.”

“I can keep my head down,” said Bodhi. “Is that all we do now?”

“No.” Jyn’s hands balled even tighter. “We need to find out everything we can about what’s going on. Listen to the troops’ gossip, that commander of yours, anything you can hear. But don’t risk your cover. I’ll do the same thing.”

With a heavy breath, Bodhi nodded. “All right.” He rose, his face strained as his armour jangled against him.

“And Bodhi?”

He blinked over at her.

Her thoughts felt sluggish, but they latched onto one thing. With a final effort, she managed to get to her own feet and walk over to him.

“If your unit gets deployed, go. It’ll be your best chance at escape.”

Bodhi did flinch that time. “But you and Cassian—”

“Go,” repeated Jyn. Setting her fists on her hips, she scowled up at him. “One of us living is better than none.”

He hesitated, turning the helmet over in his hands.

“You can try and get word to the Rebellion, let them know we’re stuck in here.” She didn’t think they could seriously do anything, but you never knew. Either way, if Bodhi got out, it’d be—worthwhile, in its way. Even if she and Cassian died the way she’d started out, stuck in an Imperial prison.

Finally, he nodded. “I will. But I don’t think it’s very likely for this unit. It’s a mess. Anyway, while I’m here, how am I supposed to get information to you or Cassian? If someone notices that we keep meeting up, then …”

“We can’t meet,” she agreed. For once, though, it was a problem with an easy answer: the very pretense on which she’d led him inside. “Give me your comlink code. I’ll sync ours up as soon as we have them.”

A bit sheepish, he read off the string of letters and numbers, readily accepting that she’d remember. She would, of course, but the easy faith touched her nonetheless. She didn’t even wince when Bodhi suddenly wrapped his arms around her, the panels of his armour biting into her bruises.

“We’ll make it,” he whispered. “Somehow.”

“The same way we’ve done everything else,” said Jyn. Awkwardly, she returned the hug. “May the Force be with you, Bodhi.”

With a determined smile, he put the helmet on his head and headed to the door.

“And with you, Jyn.”

#anghraine's fic #jyn erso #bodhi rook #death star au #/#//#///#////#star wars #otp: welcome home #per ardua ad astra #pralit #cassian andor #(mostly in spirit but. technically.)#i had sort of vaguely assumed that 'lyr' would be agreeable and pleasant #but when i sat down to write i was like......no #jyn the fake imperial would be obnoxious as fuck #<3

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