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dog-day-morning · 3 years

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THE TRUTH AND SHAKA ZULU WILL KILL YOU

In a once-popular commercial for Calgon detergent in the 1970s, a curious housewife probes the Chinese owner of the local laundry for the answer to one of the world’s eternal mysteries: “How do you get shirts so clean, Mr. Lee?” After peering over his shoulder (so as to be sure that his not-so-discreet wife isn’t standing near) the man turns back around, raises a finger to his lips and says through a smile, “Ancient Chinese secret!”

While the answer to the question posed to the laundry owner by the woman was a closely guarded secret — one that his sweet, no-nonsense wife happily ruined — it was neither ancient nor even Chinese in origin. But the TV spot famously tapped into one of the most enduring legends about the country whose Ming Dynasty rulers had a 16-to-26 foot wall built around it: the age-old traditions of secrecy.

And, like Vegas, what happened in China very often stayed in China, just get the hell out of Alkebulan!!! But if you insist on staying, you and your barbarian invader horde of Ghengis Khan, wannabe warlords can take that beatdown like Hirihito of Japan. You can indulge in Alkebulan's rich resources for a season or get on a junk boat and go back to China and rebuild your own country. If you stay in the Motherland you'll perish🖕🏿🖕🏿🖕🏿🖕🏿. As the saying goes, s**t happens. Wash ya ass. Please, continue reading… my screwed up mind !!!

Take the Black Chinese [Moabites] who once made up the entire population of China prior to Esau's attempt at reclaiming the birthright God decreed would be Jacob's while in the womb through forced miscegenation "Raping of indigenous women." Do not be confused or mislead by this post. My research was sketchy to say the least. The portion of the population before China’s modern era does not register any indigenous Moabites, for example. The fact that you’ve never heard of them proves the point. Here comes the BS. But don’t worry. You’re not alone. China has some 1.3 billion people and nearly all are just as in the dark about them. Well, either that or a billion people all swore to never-ever-never air any [ahem] ‘clean laundry’ about black folks formerly having a place in China’s allegedly homogeneous society. That's a bunch of made up monkey s**t. Frankly, even an ancient culture with the bragging rights to the longest continually recorded history, another myth, is bound to miss a few things like a heart, and some effing genomes. The former presence — up until sometime in the 20th century — of Black people in pre-modern China is one of them. Fortunately, though, old photos taken throughout China around the advent of photography can help us to fill in today some of what the historians missed on purpose. I can't believe I'm posting this. 👎🏿👎🏿👎🏿👎🏿 China’s Qing Dynasty, established by the Manchu people who ruled from 1644–1912, is described as having been a vast multicultural empire. But it appears multicultural could also be a more pleasant euphemism for multiracial. You people are like dogs, stop eating them?! Nothing illustrates this better than the Black and white photos taken by visitors from Europe in the mid-to-late 1800s. Really?!! John Thomson, an Irish photographer was one of the first to capture images that reveal a surprisingly more diverse makeup of then-contemporary China. In one of the most stunning photos taken by Thomson displayed above, six women dine together in a courtyard. Captioned “Manchu ladies at a meal,” the picture was taken in 1869 in the city of Peking (now Beijing). Seated at the center of the photo are two women: on the right sits a typical high class Manchu and on the left sits a smiling Black woman — who could easily pass as the mother of the RZA, the GZA, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, or any other member of the Wu-Tang Clan.

Apart from the physical differences in the women (including the two who were likely seated, but stood for the picture), what’s also remarkable is that when Thomson writes about them, he makes no distinctions — though there were both racial and class differences; some of them were most assuredly attendants or maids. But in the view of Thomson, they were all simply Manchu ladies sharing a meal on a day when he sought interesting subjects to photograph. I saw the photographs. The darker ones were inherently claimed to be lower case workers or servants, while the ones who looked like Lucy Liu were considered affluent, and well off. These racial disparities that evolved from hell are a sad reminder to a wound that won't stop bleeding because of man's inability to stop giving in to his base emotions. I plead cray cray, and insanity. Jacob, they would rather burn in hell for an eternity than let us live in peace for a day. God is coming back for Israel not the Christian Church that has been corrupted by the Evangelical, right wing, nut jobs.

1 Maccabees 3:48

And laid open the book of the law, wherein the heathen had sought to paint the likeness of their images.

If you study history, and read the Bible, you'll see how religion has been used to divide God's people which they're not. Some gentiles will walk into New Jerusalem, the vast majority of them won't. The Bible has been tampered with by people who are shepherds for the Devil. The Catholic Church is Satanic no matter how you cut it. The cathedral of Notre Dame had gargoyles mounted atop the edifice looking over the city of Paris, France. Do you find this to be a bit of a double minded mentality or a slap of defiance in God's face. What god do you worship? We want to know the truth from God. This world can't be trusted with an anorexic T-Rex. You'd call it a crackhead and dump him in the Labrea tar pits unless it was a female, at that point you would attempt to crossbreed it with a Chihuahua, and hope to domesticate this new animal which has disaster written all over his I'm shaking cause I need a fix quick, petrified ass. When Vatican City is destroyed let that be a warning from God to those who still have a sliver of faith in God, get a relationship with Him. Jacob, this writing piece reveals their unwillingness, and froward hearted, lack of sensibility by not telling the whole truth. Instead they give us a revised version of history that wasn't. They have been our teachers for the last 500yrs when we were there's previous. Either you learn from your mistakes or continue to repeat them.

Zechariah 8:23

Thus saith the Lord of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.

If you hate being rebuked by a Black professor with a tenure ship, you'll hate being corrected by a Black child who has 5 degrees including a specialist in biochemical, ecological science, and psychology. You're ashamed because you're proud. There were great African kingdoms that educated the anglo European that's been shrouded in history. The book of Maccabees says the people who have mislead, and lied to us are as knowledgeable as a 13yr old using crib notes. I'm nuttier than a can of Planters, the truth is in you Jacob. Utilize the authority given to you. You will have to teach them as it was in the past. Everything from Bible scriptures, to aerospace, science engineering. The educational system is designed to hold back Black children, but the 3 people with the highest IQs in the world at the time was a 10yr old Black male, an 2 Black females under the age of 8. They were the youngest members of Mensa ever. This was about 4yrs ago. You can't stop God's anointing from glowing and glorifying Him and His people. Read the rest of this article and lose your mind. Its a nauseating and frustrating read. The truth will set you free. It ain't in these hood boogers

Written accounts by early Chinese historians tell us that the Tonkin region and its adjacent areas were once a hotbed of various non-Han Chinese peoples, including those from whom the Lao Cai girl descends. But with the southward advance of the Han Chinese, such groups were pushed even further south, or gradually assimilated into the dominant population. Historian Thant Myint-U writes in “Where China Meets India” that during the 9th century, the Chinese ethnographer Fan Cho compiled the Man Shu, or “Book of the Southern Barbarians.” Fan Cho describes there the varied peoples living in and around Yunnan. Included among them were the Wu-man or ‘Black southern barbarians,’ so-called for their dark complexions. And ironically, the French author of the Lao Cai photo had the image annotated with the Chinese word “Man,” and — sadly — with the Vietnamese “Xa” (or Kha), signifying servant or slave.

With this photo of a mother and her two children by John Thomson, taken on the streets of Peking (now Beijing), something finally clicked. For reasons that won’t be detailed here (as it would take far too long to explain) more than a decade of research into the peopling of Asia seemed to suggest that any black Chinese still living in the age of photography would likely all be found in southernmost China. Black Moabites still coexist in China to this day. This is a class study in you must be dumber than an incubator.

In his 1902 book The Boxer Uprising, American photographer James Ricalton includes this photo of several dozen men, many of them likely to be executed the next day for their part in the Boxer Rebellion. The latter was a bloody, anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising that took place between 1899 and 1901; the 2006 Jet Li film Fearless was inspired by events that took place in the aftermath of the rebellion. The same is also true of the 1971 Bruce Lee film Fist of Fury. No actors in the aforementioned films — nor any other martial arts films set in pre-modern China — ever had actors resembling the non-Han Chinese mixed in above. About them, the racist Ricalton writes:

“This is truly a dusky and unattractive brood. One would scarcely expect to find natives of Borneo or the Fiji Islands more barbarous in appearance; and it is well known that a great proportion of the Boxer organization is of this sort; indeed, how dark-skinned, how ill-clad, how lacking in intelligence, how dull, morose, miserable and vicious they appear!” I'm willing to bet you 5 million in Bitcoin that I don't have, a lifetime supply of opium, and 2 happy ending massages daily that this bougie French bastard is rotting in hell praying to white Jesus that Rumiel won't screw him up the wahoo tonight. Tickle his sack!!! Like Thomas Cromwell the powers that be went to great lengths to cover this history in ChinaTown. You can't hide the truth from a people that's tired of being dictated to, oppressed, lied on, abused and persecuted by everybody, and discredited for the contributions they've made to this damnable planet. As previously stated we don't want crumbs [reparations] we want the whole planet Black before you, and the I hate n**gers brigade showed up, that includes Moo Goo Gai Pan. As soon as his Chicken fried, Bat Man eating, pancaked backside came along, and gained some freedoms, he started emulating his zaddy, he became drunk with xenophobia like the rest. If you hate my commentary tell ya boy Biden or his Amerikkka is not a racist country VP, Kamala Harris. She's next in line to preside as Pontius Pilate over this damnation unless Biden loses his dementia. Its a joke, think or buy a vowel. If that doesn't work, swap some Budha, and kiss Mr. Nasty bye bye.

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letbenfuck2021 · 3 years

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be the thing that buries me (ao3)

For the last four years, Vanya finds herself both prison and prisoner. She doesn’t have super powers. She isn’t physically strong or a tactical genius. But ordinary and helpless as she is, Vanya is determined to find a way to save her brother. She doesn’t want her body to be a cage anymore.

sequel to “inside your head the sound of glass”

rating. explicit. warnings/tags. pseudo/sibling-incest, dub-con, dead dove: do not eat, obsessive behavior, possessive behavior, dark fic.

chapter 1:

It’s cold in the city. Winter came early this year, a brutal cold snap billowing in about a week or so after the Academy turned eighteen and it showed no signs of letting up. And it is this frigid autumn that finds Vanya nearly freezing at the kitchen table, attempting to cut carrots into somewhat bite-sized pieces. She is, so far, mostly failing.

“Vanya darling,” Grace calls from across the room where she is preparing cornish hens for roasting. “Why don’t you head to the drawing room? It’s much warmer up there.”

This was the third time Grace had made this exact suggestion in the past hour. Vanya’s clacking teeth and the precarious way her hands shake as she presses the blade of her knife down is agitating Grace’s programming. Each heavy thunk against the cutting board causes Grace to twitch, an electrical impulse in her software reacting to the quickly climbing probability of injury occurring.

“I’m okay, mom,” Vanya replies under her breath before lifting the butt of the knife once more and wrestling the carrot into place under the blade.

It’s a little past four in the afternoon and already dark, a cold blue light washes the room and leeches all the warmth from the air. A few moments, Grace will reach for the light switch on the far wall and plunge them into the dingy orange light of the fluorescents overhead. But for now, Vanya sits at the kitchen table, shivering under a large sweater, a hoodie and two thermals and narrowly fails to slice open her own hand as she cuts away another jagged, ugly piece of carrot.

“What the fuck? Watch what you’re doing, Al! You almost took my fucking head off!”

“Don’t be a bitch, Diego.”

The echo of Allison and Diego’s bickering wafts in through the open window above the kitchen sink from outside in the courtyard. They’re running drills practically in the dark and it is only growing darker, but her siblings still have another thirty minutes to go before they can venture indoors. When their father took Ben, Luther, and Five on mission three week ago, Reginald had given strict instructions for all of those left behind. Her own orders had been sparse but from what she could tell, her siblings’ regimen was rigorous and immensely detailed. When they aren’t training, they are out patrolling and running other smaller missions. in the last ten days much to her dismay. Vanya sees her siblings more in the paper than in person, but she’s been waiting, planning for her moment and now, it’s almost here. So, despite the cold, despite the blade that veers too close for comfort to her left hand and the damn carrot that rolls once again beneath her knife, Vanya is determined to wait.

“Yeah! Duuun’t be a beeotch, Deeeeee-yego!” Klaus calls from somewhere else in the courtyard before bursting into a shriek of laughter.

Even his laugh sounds slurred. His voice is quite a bit more muffled than either Allison or Diego’s, as though he’d tucked himself into the far corner of the yard and it was really a miracle that he was awake at all. The night before, Klaus had slipped out sometime around midnight and hadn’t returned until that afternoon. No one said a thing when he’d stumbled into the dining room in the middle of lunch and draped himself casually across his seat across from Diego. These days, no one saw virtue in commenting on Klaus’ perpetual lack of sobriety. In the same way that no one said anything about what was going on between her and Five or the horizontal scars littering Ben’s forearms. They’ve all quietly decided that it’s easier to turn a blind eye to all these things. They’ve all agreed that Klaus’ slurred speech sounds better than his screams in the middle of the night.

“Let’s go again, Diego,” Allison called out. “Start from the top.”

If Diego had any reservations about running through another set in the dark freezing cold, he made no audible dispute. Instead, the courtyard went silent again except for the occasional grunt or shout from either of her siblings. Though it didn’t always seem like it, Diego and Allison were a pretty dynamic duo in hand to hand, at least that’s what she’d heard from Five. When he ran missions, Five would often pair them together despite Allison’s protests. Keeping Allison and Luther apart was perhaps a petty move on Five’s part but it was also a strategic one. Five often talked about their siblings to Vanya, his dissatisfaction with them, his begrudging affection all tied up in his keen observation. It’s a little like listening to a story, a novel on audiobook about people in a far away land. After what happened to Five, the line in the sand that was between Vanya and her siblings was now drawn in concrete. Reginald had always done his best to keep her separated from the others. She wasn’t a complete fool. Having her hold blank clipboards, blow whistles, and stand beside him during training were all his not-so-subtle ways of indicating to them all that Vanya was not like them. And if that message wasn’t clear enough then the slow building resentment towards her would surely do the job. Though her mundanity had damned her, it had saved her as well from the brutal, violent reality that her siblings inhabited. They all begrudged her, her normal and therefore privileged existence. What happened to Five was just the final nail in the coffin. Not even Ben would acknowledge her these days.

“Ah!”

The knife slips in her grasp too far for her to recover in time before the blade cuts a line across her thumb, from the edge of her nail to the first knuckle. The wound looks, at first, completely innocuous. Bright red across her pale, clammy skin but thin and strangely static as though someone had drawn on her in red ink. Then, the wound unfolds. Her skin unfurling like a curtain as the blood begins to pour and the sting turns into intense pain.

“Oh dear,” Grace suddenly at Vanya’s side.

Before she bleeds all over the table, Grace reaches out and grips Vanya’s thumb with a kitchen towel. Her mother squeezes tightly, the pressure stopping the sharp pain but it’s replaced with a throbbing ache that is just as intense and leaves Vanya breathless.

“Sorry, mom,” Vanya murmurs, finding the words difficult to form.

Grace crouches down, her other hand deftly fishing a small tin box from the pocket of her apron. She releases Vanya’s wounded thumb for a second to open the little box. The aching pressure on her thumb releases for just a second before a sharp burning pain floods her senses. The world seems to shrink to her bleeding digit and Vanya blanches when she sees something white peeking out of the mess of blood and tissue. As soon as the box is opened and placed on the table, Grace’s hand moves to cover her thumb again, her steady fingers putting an uncomfortable amount of pressure over the wound.

"Is it bad?”

“It’s alright, sweetheart,“ she says though Grace has yet to actually inspect the injury.

They wait like that for a few moments. The pain in her hand is making Vanya’s head spin while Grace begins to hum. Vanya looks up from her finger and finds her mother’s face turned towards the open window over the sink.

"Your brothers and sister should be coming in soon. They’ve been playing all day. I hope they won’t be too tired for dinner.”

She still spoke about them all as though they were children. Breakfasts were still happy faces made of fried eggs and bacon, pancakes with shapes made of chocolate chips. What she must think of them all, her children. Though she made no comment on it, Grace left Vanya’s clean and folded clothes in Five’s room now and left her daily meds there as well. After another moment of looking out into the dark, Grace turns her attention back to Vanya’s thumb and uncovers it. Her face is a portrait of bland concern.

“Hm, we may need stitches,” she says, pinching at the wound and pushing the disparate edges together and letting them fall apart again. “Why don’t we just patch it up for now and we’ll see from there?”

Grace smiles and it’s beautiful. Of course it is, she’d been made to be that way. Vanya often wondered if her mother had once been a real woman, someone with real feelings, with thoughts and desires that existed beyond whatever Reginald had coded into her. Grace stands from her crouched position, easily keeping her balance despite her tasteful, four-inch pumps. She instructs Vanya to replace the towel and put pressure on the wound while she goes to wash her hands at the sink.

“Your brothers and sister should be coming in soon,” she says with her back turned to Vanya. “They’ve been playing all day. I hope they won’t be too tired for dinner.”

The old pipes groan as the faucet sputters, at first there’s barely a trickle but Grace’s hands are poised and moving as though through a steady stream.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine, mom.”

This earns Vanya another wide, blank-eyed smile when Grace turns around wiping her hands on her apron. It takes a few minutes for Grace to clean and bandage Vanya’s thumb. The sharpness of the initial pain has faded and is replaced by deeper ache that makes her head spin and stomach turn ever so slightly. Grace admires her handy work then lets out a small gasp as though she’s just realized something.

“Vanya darling,” she says standing to her full height. “Why don’t you head to the drawing room? It’s much warmer up there.”

Vanya shakes her head, eyes still glued to her injured thumb trying but failing to will the pain away.

“It’s okay,” Vanya implores.

Grace tilts her head to the side, the large curls in her blonde hair shift like water sloshing. She looks troubled, her programming stumped. The girl is clearly half-freezing and now injured as well. She should be someplace warmer, perhaps even in bed. Vanya is fragile, ordinary, and largely incapable of contributing to the household. This all information that has been coded into Grace as truths. Vanya should be out of the way as much as possible but heavily supervised. Quickly, her mechanics run through the options and settle on this.

A wide smile and “maybe some hot chocolate instead. Warm you up a little.”

Before Vanya can decline, Grace sets to work. First she covers the Cornish hens in foil, they’ll need to sit for another half an hour before they’ll be ready for roasting and the stove will need at least half that time to finish rising to temperature. The air in the kitchen is cold enough that she doesn’t need to put birds back in the refrigerator. Instead, she leaves them sitting on the counter when she goes to fetch milk and a saucepan.

“Why don’t you sit closer to the stove, dear? It’s much warmer there.”

Vanya glances out at the window over the sink. She thinks she can just make out the sounds of labored breathing but all she can see is darkness. They’ll be finished soon and she doesn’t want to miss her chance but Vanya is also freezing and the painful throbbing in her thumb is making her dizzy so she relents and slinks across the room to the stove. She bypasses the chair at the end of the table and opts instead to squat down beside the old rusting appliance. Grace had been right; it’s infinitely warmer in her new location, though Vanya already knew it would be. This isn’t the first winter evening that she’s spent crouched at Grace’s feet beside the stove waiting just to catch a glimpse of her siblings.

“Did you remember to take your vitamins today?” Grace says from above her.

Vanya nods, doing her best to balance on her heels and stay clear of the heated metal beside her. How could she ever forget? Her “vitamins” are actually a cocktail of different medications that she takes on a daily basis. Recently, she’d noticed the arrival of a new pill, round, pale and though she’d been given no explanation for its sudden appearance the timing of its addition suggests that it was some kind of contraceptive. It had been Five who offered that particular hypothesis about the new pill’s purpose. And despite being somewhat relieved that she had one less thing to worry about, Vanya had been downright scandalized and denied even the possibility. Instead she had insisted that there must have been a new development in her condition.

The smell of milk heating wafts through the air, cutting through the cold and making Vanya’s stomach churn. Her thumb still hurts, the pain seems to be growing as more time passes but she tries not to think about it. Instead, she focuses on Grace humming a song that sounds simultaneously familiar and alien as the warm smell of milk and chocolate hangs in the air.

Vanya considers asking Grace now about the new pill. It isn’t uncommon for pills to appear and disappear according to what her condition required. When she was four, Vanya had contracted a highly contagious illness and had to be quarantined away from the rest of her siblings for months. She’d undergone multiple treatments and a couple surgeries, and even now she required vigilance and a strict adherence to a daily chemical regimen prescribed by her father.

Vanya could remember practically nothing of her illness and the resulting treatments. Most of early childhood is a vague smudge for Vanya and what she knows of her condition is a patchwork of bits and pieces she’s overheard or been told. Nothing from that time of her life feels real, except for Five of course. He’s the only thing that she can remember with any sort of clarity from her childhood. There is of course the rejection, the loneliness, the utter desolation of being an ordinary child in a clutch of extraordinary ones, but those things are more like a murky lake of misery. Five stands out like a raging flame. She remembers him dogging her relentlessly, always seeking her company, rooting out her little hiding spots in the house. At first, it had been painfully awkward to be under the weight of his attention but it wasn’t long before painful awkwardness became desperate craving. Now, Vanya can’t imagine who she could possibly be without Five.

The stove steadily grows hotter and Grace’s humming begins to skew atonal. Five and the others are scheduled to return that night though. Reginald had called earlier in the day but, according to Pogo, he didn’t give a specific time. The thought of Five’s impending return sets Vanya’s teeth on edge, with both eagerness and apprehension. Pogo had been tight lipped about the progress of their mission and so she had no ability to tell what mood her brother would be in when he returned. Every mission took a toll on him, truthfully on all her siblings and Vanya worries what state Five will return to her in but she wants Five home, whatever state he’s in.

“Oh my dears! You’re practically popsicles!”

Grace’s exclamation jostles Vanya awake. At some point, she’d managed to drift off with her back pressed against the wall and balanced on her heels. She’s sweating beneath her layers, the stove’s oven is nearly to temperature.

“We’re fine, mom,“ Diego replies, his voice is labored and when Vanya peeks up over the table, she notices that he has Klaus on his back.

“Why don’t you all have a seat, you’re just in time for hot chocolate!”

There’s a shuffle of feet and the sound of a chair legs screeching across the floor. Vanya rises to her feet just in time to watch Diego dump Klaus unceremoniously into an empty chair.

”Ow, Didi,“ Klaus whines. "Try a little tenderness wouldya? I’m precious cargo.”

His speech is still slurred but there’s a clarity to his words that wasn’t quite there earlier when Vanya had overheard him in the courtyard. Besides his griping, the room falls silent as soon as Diego and Allison spot Vanya. They both tense up as though they’ve seen a wild animal.

“What the fuck is she doing here?” Diego snarls.

His animosity is nothing new but Vanya winces regardless and tries to focus her attention on her sister.

“She lives here, genius,” Allison retorts glibly but the tension doesn’t leave her body.

Grace, seemingly unaware of the uncomfortable strain between her children, moves throughout the kitchen gathering mugs and setting them out on the table.With a mechanical poise, she divides up the hot chocolate into four perfectly even portions. Klaus doesn’t seem to notice what’s happening either. He’s opted to bury his face into his crossed arms resting on the table in front of him and doze off.

“I need to talk to you,” Vanya says, trying her best not to look at her brother.

“Like hell you do,“ Diego barks.

Vanya almost loses her nerve. Of all her siblings, Diego despises her the most or it may just be that he has the hardest time hiding it.

“Relax, Two. Drink your cocoa.”

Despite being Number Three, Allison is the unquestionable superior. Diego could never quite convince himself that he was or could ever be better than his sister. Allison easily outdid all her brothers in almost all things and where she was found lacking, she found ways to make up the difference. Diego respected Allison and so he usually deferred to her and this time is no different. He doesn’t stop glaring at Vanya but he takes a seat beside Klaus.

“Let’s talk upstairs, Vanya,” Allison says evenly. “It’ll be warmer up there.”

Vanya nods in reply and follows her sister out of the kitchen. Diego watches her leave with a hostile glare and kicks Klaus’ chair so hard that it jostles him awake. Behind her, Vanya hears them bicker.

"Get up asshole and drink your cocoa.”

“It’s hot chocolate.”

“Same thing.”

“What? No it’s not!”

Their voices grow vague as Vanya and Allison ascend. Vanya’s heart is fluttering in her chest and her stomach, which has been in knots all day, only gets worse. Vanya is afraid of Allison. Not in the way she fears Luther. She still has nightmares of the sound of her own fingers snapping, joints popping out of place and searing pain of skin ripping. She isn’t scared of Allison like she’s scared of Diego who took every opportunity to verbally berate her. Vanya has no memory of Allison ever being especially cruel to her or physically harming her but she knows what Allison can do and that’s more than enough reason to fear her.

“H-how was training?” Vanya asks hesitantly.

As much as she fears her sister, Vanya admires her more. Allison was everything that Vanya wishes she could be. Beautiful, strong, confident and most importantly, Allison is special. She’s extraordinary. And even if she’s scared of her, Vanya wants so badly for Allison to like her.

“It was like negative twenty out there,” Allison replies without turning around. “It sucked.”

Vanya nods even though Allison can’t see her. She doesn’t know how to reply to that. It had been years since she’s been allowed to participate, even in a spectator position, in training.

Allison leads her to the main parlor where a fire’s been lit. It’s exponentially warmer here and Vanya finally feels as though she can think straight. She watches as Allison makes a beeline for one of the ornate couches and lays herself out with a huff. Vanya opts to stand off to the side, nearer to the fireplace.

“Um..thanks fo-

“Just tell me what you want.”

Vanya’s throat suddenly feels dry. She can’t see Allison’s face from where she’s standing but she can hear the cold annoyance in her voice. It makes her feel small but she shoves the feeling down.

“I…I want you to undo the rumor you used on Five.”

Allison sighs heavily from her lounging position.

“Vanya. Really? This shit again?”

“Please, Allison. If you could just try, I know yo-“”

“I’ve already told you. I’m not doing that,“ she says sitting up. "Why don’t you just accept that he’s obsessed with you and take the win?”

“It’s not a win!” Vanya shouts, her voice cracks.

Allison looks genuinely startled by the outburst and it emboldens Vanya. She takes a step closer and continues.

“It hurts him. He’s not even himself anymore and he’s trapped here because of it. Because of me .”

What Vanya isn’t saying is, because of you. Allison hears it anyway.

“You can do it,” Vanya implores. “If you would just try.”

“I can’t,“ Allison says, punctuating her assertion by standing.

Allison is fairly tall for a girl her age and she certainly dwarfs Vanya’s miniscule five feet. She’s an intimidating figure but Vanya won’t back down.

"Yes you can. You’re the only one who can help us.”

“This is getting old. And a little pathetic. Enough already.”

With that, Allison turns and makes for the door but Vanya rushes forward. Before she can stop herself, Vanya reaches out and grabs Allison by the wrist.

“I’m just trying to help our brother! Why won’t you help me?”

As soon as Vanya touches her skin, Allison recoils pulling her wrist from her sister’s grasp. The force causes Vanya to stumble and Allison feels sorry for it. In all honesty, she has nothing personal against her sister. She doesn’t particularly like Vanya but she doesn’t hate her the way Diego does and she isn’t scared of her like Klaus and Ben seem to be. Truthfully, Allison doesn’t know Vanya. They’d lived practically their entire lives under the same roof, grew up together, shared meals, slept in rooms barely twenty feet apart but Allison had never felt any closer to Vanya than she felt to any given stranger off the street.

“Stop, Vanya. Just stop. You’re not helping, you’re just trying to make me feel guilty.”

“I’m no-”

“Yes. You are. And you know what? I am guilty. I made the rumor. I agreed to say it. I’m guilty. But that hasn’t changed anything for the last four years. It isn’t gonna change anything now. If you really wanna help Five, maybe you should stop blaming everyone else and figure out how to do it on your own.“

"Well you let Dad treat Luther like a tool all he wants,” Vanya says and she knows she should stop but the bitter words spilling out of her like vomit. “I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that you won’t help us.”

Vanya knows she made a mistake. Allison watches as her sister’s expression changes from resentful anger to utter fear and she wants to laugh. Allison had always pitied Vanya for her weakness and they both knew it. But for the first time, Allison is beginning to realize that she doesn’t just pity Vanya, she resents her. She had never once in her life been allowed to even seem weak but her sister wallowed in her frailty, relied on it even. Some dark, nasty part of Allison wonders if that’s why Five was attracted to Vanya so much in the first place. Five like little else more than feeling superior.

“I-I’m sorry,” Vanya stuttered, her eyes wide with fear. “I didn’t mean…”

Her trembling lip, Vanya’s little body shrinking away with anticipation. Terror slinks off of her like a rotten stench. Allison takes it all in and she feels terribly powerful. This isn’t a new experience for her. Allison had often stood above opponents, criminals, vandals, sometimes even her own brothers, and she loved being above them. She liked to savor the intoxicating feeling of being the winner, the victor because that was the Hargreeves way. Do whatever it takes to get on top and stay there. Even if you have to cheat and Allison had no qualms about playing dirty and yet, for some reason, the sight of her sister, trembling before doesn’t make her feel triumphant, it makes her feel sick.

“I’m sorry, Allison. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Vanya barely manages to choke the words out, her teeth are nearly chattering with how sacred she is. Looking at her makes Allison feel sick. Her shoulders suddenly feel too heavy, they slump as she sighs. She’s so tired that it nearly brings her to tears. But she doesn’t cry. Allison doesn’t get to cry, no matter how much she wants to.

"You’re right. You shouldn’t say that. Even if I wanted to, I don’t know if I could undo the rumor. They just have to run their course.”

\\\\

She wakes into the dark with a crick in her neck. She’d fallen asleep with her head at the foot of Five’s bed again, staring out at the snow falling against the darkness. It’s a bad habit but she’d always liked Five’s windows. Vanya isn’t sure when she’d fallen asleep but after her encounter with Allison, she’d dragged herself up to Five’s room, buried herself under his comforter and tried to find some solace in the snowfall outside his window. She must have succeeded because when she wakes, it’s nearly midnight and there’s someone with her in the dark.

“When did you get back?” she murmurs apologetically.

It’s become an unspoken ritual that Vanya waits up for Five when he comes back from a longer mission. It wasn’t always possible, but Vanya tried her best to be there for him whenever he got back. She attempts to turn her head to see his face but the muscles in her neck spasm. She can hear the sound of her own groan entering into the cold silence, jostling the air and she thinks she also hears a laugh. Just a small huff of air really, beside her ear all warm and soft in a way that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand.

His thumb finds the tight muscle in her neck, massaging circles into her flesh. It hurts at first, the sudden pressure makes her gasp and the flush of blood back into the area makes her a little dizzy. He curls his fingers under her neck, arching it upward so that he can suck hickeys into the skin he’d just massaged. She’ll be peppered with purple marks, too high above her collar and plentiful to cover but even so, she cranes her neck and lifts her chin exposing more skin for him to mark. Ever since the Paris job, they had settled into a kind of uneasy armistice. There had been no explicit discussion, no bargaining or clear transaction but something of a conclusion had been reached.

"Fi-ah!”

His teeth find the sensitive spot where her neck curves into her shoulder. Five bites down, hard enough to make her jump but not enough to break the skin. It’s both agonizing and thrilling the way it hurts.

“I missed you,” he mumbles, it’s the first words he’s spoken to her in almost three weeks.

He, Ben, and Luther had been running some kind of reconnaissance mission where secrecy was of the utmost importance and there had been no chance for the odd phone call home. His mouth is hot and wet over her skin as he trails languid kisses along her collar bone then back up to where he’s no doubt left teeth marks in her skin. His breath is warm, ghosting over the sensitive skin.

“Did you miss me?” Five murmurs, hovering over her aching skin.

At first, Vanya can only manage a sigh. He feels good, there’s no denying it. As much effort she puts into keeping the lines drawn between what is real and what is the rumor, Vanya can’t lie about how he makes her feel. Five would have been a talented lover under any circumstance. Vanya is certain of that though she tries not to think of it much. Even if she believes that had he been given the vast wealth of opportunity that freedom would have afforded him, Five would never have chosen her, it still stings to think of him with others.

Before she manages to answer him in any sort of comprehensible way, Five laves his tongue, wide and flat, over his bite mark. Vanya lets loose a sound that is half whimper and half moan but entirely mortifying. But Five seems to appreciate it, an appreciative hum rumbles across her skin as she tries to catch her breath. It could feel humiliating sometimes, the level of intimacy he demands from her. Five is always struggling closer, ripping through the carefully constructed barriers she’s set between them for their own protection. He wants everything from her, every sound, every reaction and sensation. And had she been more of a fool, Vanya would give it to him freely but she knows that had it not been for the rumor, he would have never wanted it any of this. He may want every single bit of her now, but Vanya knows that when the rumor wears off, he’ll resent for every little inch she gives.

“Five, maybe we shouldn’t-” she begins to say, her nerves outweighing her desires.

But before she can finish her phrase, he bites down again. This time is harder than before, not enough to break the skin but enough to make Vanya yelps. Desperate to find anything to hang on to, she reaches for him, her fingers desperately scrambling across his face, over the shell of his ear, before settling and tangling into his hair. Though her nails are short and dull, there is no doubt that in her frenzy she left behind some damage but Five doesn’t seem to notice or care.

The pain only lasts a moment before he drags his tongue over the new bite dissolving the tension and rendering her a shivering mess. She lets out a low, guttural moan as he continues to mouth at her neck, sucking hickeys into her skin. Something stirs in her belly, a searing, aching need unfurls as his kisses shift downward. The comforter slides off of her body as he draws the middle line of her body. The frigid air is an assault on her body but it only makes her lean into him. Her shoulders rise from the mattress and the hand that had been at her neck trails down between her shoulder blades, propping her up.

She wants to put her arms around him, feel him closer. As terrified as Vanya is of the day when this all comes crashing down, it doesn’t change that she wants Five. Ever since they were kids, Vanya has ached and longed for him, even when he was right beside her. Wanting Five, wanting to be with him, wanting to love him in every way that has, does and will exist is not a new desire for Vanya. Sometimes, she thinks she was born that way. But despite all this, she hesitates as Vanya always does. So cautious, so careful, Vanya loves like a kicked dog. She flinches back before a fist is ever even raised, before he can even think of rejecting her, Vanya has already bowed out in repose.

Vanya is lost to herself, the torrent of desire and fear inside her when she feels the sudden shifting of weight as Five leans back. His hands are gone, the cold crowds in and she loses him in the dark. Turning on to her side, the weight of her raised torso resting on one elbow, Vanya squints into the darkness before her and finds her brother all cast in shadow. He’s not that far from her, his face still level with her own. There’s just enough distance, a few feet maybe, that the darkness leaves his face almost completely obscured. She can make out the curve of his ears, the corners of his jaw but his eyes are lost. He is just a shape, the suggestion of a man but not one entirely. He is some spectre made of stuff darker than the pitch darkness around them. For a second, she’s afraid. She doesn’t recognize him, even when she sits up on her knees, leans in closer. She can’t see him. Her blood pounds in her ears as the fear twists into something else, something more.

“Five?”

“I always forget,” he mumbles but she cannot see his mouth moving. “When I’m away, I always forget. Just how good this feels.”

His voice shakes as he says this, like he’s scared too. Five and Vanya had always shared so much, sweets, sweaters, kisses, why not share their fear as well? Vanya is aware of the phenomenon he’s referring to. It was Diego who had been so kind as to inform her that when Five is far enough away from her, the effects of the rumor lessen and what’s left in its place is a dull ache. A week, maybe a little more and Five starts to act like his old self again.

Hey, Seven. What do you think would happen if you just fucked off for good?

Though it hurt when Diego spit that particular possibility at her, she had to admit, it’s a fair question. Five always espoused how much he missed her while he was away, how desperately he craved her the whole time but she wonders how much of that was actually true. What if he’d been happy while he was away? What if he’d been free? Or at least close enough.

“Did you miss me, Vanya?” he asks once again, this time he sounds unsteady, unsure.

It breaks her heart to hear her brother so degraded, but she can’t answer him. The words just won’t come as she stares back at him across the darkness, his features bleeding into view as her eyes adjust. He looks young. In the dark, he looks like her brother. The brother that had held her fevered hand when they were all ten and a bout of the flu had ripped through the entire academy but had settled on Vanya for nearly a month. This was her brother, who had kissed her on the mouth with sugar glazed lips and fed her so many doughnuts that she thought she would puke.

This is her brother. And she can’t even bring herself to tell him that she misses him. So Vanya takes off her shirt instead. Five waits in the darkness, watching her strip down to her bra. Vanya can feel his eyes on her as she slides her sweater and shirt off together. Her skin is a shock of goosebumps as her hands, already shaking with the cold, reach back to undo the hooks.

“Let me,” she hears him murmur.

He shuffles forward, even on his knees, he’s still level with her eye line. His long arms reach up and close the distance between them as finds the center of the band. It will only take him a few seconds to undo the hooks. Embarrassingly, Five is better at undressing her than she is but for these scant seconds, Vanya allows herself to rest her cheek upon his chest. It’s a small sin, to give herself this bit of comfort but she still feels the weight of it when Five’s hands slowly trail down her arms, taking the straps of her bra with them. She hears Five take a breath, holds it for a few seconds as he drinks in her body.

“You have no idea, Vanya,” he murmurs. “You can’t even imagine what it’s like for me to miss you.”

It’s true and the guilt she feels because of that makes her want to disappear. He skates his hands up her sides, sighing with relief at just being able to touch her skin. He puts his face into the crook of her neck to breathe in deeply.

“You smell like home,” he says into her skin. “You’re everything to me, Vanya. You know that don’t you? I need you with me.”

She nods slowly. It’s true. It’s all true but none of it’s real. His hands drop down to the waistband of her jeans, undoing the button as he places kisses along her shoulder, then her clavicle. The click of her zipper coming undone is loud in the silent, dark room. Five pushes them over her hips and down to her knees. Vanya sinks down, laying herself out on her back so that he can free her from her pants completely. He moves quickly from there. His fingers are already curling at the elastic band of her underwear when she stops him.

“Wait,” Vanya says, her hands falling over his own to stop their movement.

Five flinches as though she’s burned him. Under her breath, she murmurs an apology. It’s easy to forget just how brittle the rumor has made him. Her brother has always been such a large, looming figure in her mind, confident, strong, intelligent. Even after four years, Vanya forgets just how easily he breaks. With one hand, she laces her fingers through his own, an act meant to reassure him though he doesn’t seem moved. His eyes are hard as he watches her rise from his bed.

“What are y-” he begins to ask when she detangles her hand from his.

But he falls silent as soon as she turns her back to him, falling to her elbows and knees on his mattress. Behind her, Five takes in a sharp breath.

Then she hears, “fuck.”

Her heart is a sharp staccato in her ears as she feels him lay his hands over her hips, slowly, with near reverence. His hands are cold on her skin, colder even than the air around them. And not for the first time, Vanya wonders where he’s been. Part of her wants to ask him, wants to ask him what he’s done and what he’s given up to be here with her again. He pulls her back, pressing his hips into her ass. Through the fabric of their clothes, she can feel the hardness of his cock and it sends a shiver down her spine. He moans as he rocks his hips and Vanya gasps as he squeezes her buttocks. He leans back just far enough to slide his thumb down and press up against her pussy, feeling her through the fabric. Embarrassingly she can feel the cool dampness that’s spread into the fabric.

“You’re so wet, sis. You must have missed me.”

He nudges into her further, the fabric feels almost coarse on the sensitive flesh but Vanya leans back. There’s no point in playing coy now. Five hums appreciatively, massaging slow circles into her through the fabric in a way that makes her head spin. She’s panting like a dog in heat by the time she feels him push her damp panties aside.

He pushes into her without preamble. It’s rough and Vanya lets out a low sob as the pleasure of him filling her flushes up her spine like a fever. He loops an arm under her belly to hold her in place as he shifts his hips back and thrusts into her again. Five grunts, the heat of his breath fans out across her frigid skin making her shiver. A few more slow, languid strokes before he begins to pick up his pace. Tears bud at the corners of her eyes. Her elbows slide out from under her. The sheets come up to meet her face but his arm is still around her waist, keeping her ass up as he pounds into her so hard that her knees nearly give out.

It’s too much. It’s always too much. She’s all but lost in a haze of pleasure, trying to meet each of his thrusts. It feels good just to be with him, to have him in her and yet, she can’t let go. In the back of her head, she can’t forget that this isn’t real. And the guilt roils in her gut. She suddenly feels sick, her throat tightening until she chokes.

"Fi-Five-ah!” she gasps out.

Her face is pressed into the mattress, fingers grasping at the cotton sheets. The wet slap of flesh against flesh becomes erratic and behind she hears Five groan. His fingers at her waist dig into her flesh. He’s close. Vanya knows it, with each swing of his hips, he grinds into her harder, deeper. Then with a guttural moan, he thrusts one last time and spills into her.

“Sorry,” he gasps. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

His hips are still pressed up against her ass, rocking slowly into her as he rides out his orgasm. It takes a few moments before his breathing evens out, his cock softening within her. He slides out of her gingerly, careful to keep his arm around her waist. Vanya can feel the warm dribble of his cum sliding down her thigh as he gently lowers her to the bed. Sluggishly, she turns over onto her back.

“Lemme finish you,” he mumbles, dropping to his knees and spreading her thighs.

“It’s okay, Five,” she says dazedly. “You’re tired.”

He laughs a little into her skin as he plants kisses up the length of her inner thigh. Five sometimes jokes that she’s a little too polite, especially considering the things they’d done together. It’s cute though, he’d usually say with that too-wide grin of his and she’d blush and try to remember how to breathe. But tonight Five seems unwilling to indulge her impulsive niceties.

It’s still a little uncomfortable for Vanya to let Five eat her out. It’s embarrassing, of course but it’s all a little embarrassing. Sex is a mortifying, uncomfortable ordeal but what isn’t for Vanya? She’s lived her life feeling like an exposed nerve, both acutely vivid and devastatingly deadening. Mostly, it’s the intensity that scares her when he climbs between her thighs with greedy mouth and fingers and extracts from her a feeling that goes beyond pleasure or pain. She can feel it building now as he slides two fingers into her cunt.

He lifts one of her thighs and rests it on his shoulder, the other he pushes back, opening her wider for him. His free arm wraps up under her thigh, looping around and across her hip bone. Sufficiently locking her in place, Five puts his mouth to the top of her pussy. His tongue finds the sensitive spot to the right of her clit, pressing into it, hesitant at first, and when she begins to squirm, he goes harder. He knows her too well, knows that he needs to build up to her clit. The little engorged nub is far too sensitive, so he works around it.

He’s set a languid pace inside her, straying so very close to that erogenous spot. When gets close, brushing just shy of her g spot, it sends a jolt through her and Vanya yelps. She’s so dazed, her body is so warm, unbearably warm but also freezing. The room seems to have gotten colder and it makes every sensation that much sharper. Her nipples are so tight now that it’s almost painful. Five suddenly wraps his lips around her clit and sucks, not hard but it earns him a grunt. Her pleasure crests so suddenly that it leaves her literally breathless. For a second, everything stops, she loses track of herself as she hangs in the balance.

Then, she comes crashing down. Distantly, she feels him inside her, his mouth still on her clit. It takes her a few moments to hear her own squealing, feel her own body scrambling against Five’s grip on her hips. There’s a wet pop and suddenly there’s Five, grinning up at her from between her own thighs. She realizes she’s still breathing as he draws a line of wet, sloppy kisses up her body, to place a sweet peck on the corner of her mouth.

“Sorry,” he says again, then stands.

Vanya dizzily notes that he is still mostly dressed while she lies a complete mess and naked as the day she was born. It somehow always comes to that and Vanya cannot quite make any heads or tails of it. She feels both wound up and completely undone as she watches him undress and toss his clothes on the floor.

“We can go again in a bit,” he maneuvers her body easily, ushering her further on to the bed.

There’s a kind of wired energy to his words but even through hooded, heavy eyes, Vanya can see the sluggishness in him. He climbs in besides her, pulling his comforter over them in one fluid motion. Under the covers, he entangles their bodies, nudging her knees apart and hooking his leg through. He wraps her up in a tight embrace, he’s so much larger than her and she feels completely enveloped, the cold melting away with the heat of his body. Vanya is still too dazed to try to put up any kind of fight. She lets the pleasure of his kisses, peppered erratically over her face, wash over her. His hands wander and grope at her body as he pulls her even closer. Five has a habit of becoming hyper just before he crashes, one last burst of energy before the sudden stop like he’s on a sugar rush.

“I just…I need so-ome shut eye…” he trails off.

His hands still, his mouth is at her hairline, murmuring what sounds like nonsense. As he’s pulled under by exhaustion, Vanya feels herself returning to the surface. She feels both comfortable and uneasy in his arms. Nothing ever feels as good as being with Five but nothing hurts as much either. She’s caught between memorizing this exact moment, locking it away in the deepest, most secret part of her mind and guarding herself against it. It isn’t real. No matter how good it feels, no matter how much she wants it, it isn’t real. She chants this in her head even as she presses her nose into his chest and breathes in deeply. The salt and musky of his damp skin mingles with the brand of mild soap they use at the Academy. She doesn’t know how long she lingers awake, listening to the twin sounds of his heart beating and his slow, even breathing.

None of it can ever be real, she reminds herself. It isn’t her, it isn’t love. It’s the rumor and she can’t ever let herself want more than that. And yet. She feels the words well up inside her, a truth too big to hide in her throat.

"I missed you,” she whispers hoarsely. “I miss you so much it’s killing me.”

#fiveya #fiveya fanfic #pls read the tags before reading

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cheri-translates · 3 years

Text

[CN] 100 Days - Victor (Day 51 - 100)

🍒 Warning: This post contains detailed spoilers for e-mails which have not been released in English servers! 🍒

What’s the 100 Days Companionship Event?

Day 1 - 3: here

Day 4 - 30: here

Day 31 - 50: here

Day 51

Tonight, we’ll watch that musical you like. Don’t be late, and dress formally.

Day 52

I’ve seen your report. Its contents aren’t comparable to the supper takeout list from last night. Redo it.

Day 53

A pink apron? You think it suits me?

Day 54

Today, let’s visit that Internet cafe you mentioned - to take a look at what you’ve been pining after.

Day 55

The equestrian facility we went to before has recently opened again. If you’re interested, we can have a look together.

Day 56

There isn’t as disparate a connection between dreams and reality as you think. Dreaming about lions means that you shouldn’t watch animal documentaries before sleeping.

Day 57

It’s okay to use my voice as an alarm clock. But why did you set five of them?

Day 58

I saw you coughing a little during the meeting yesterday. The difference in temperature between day and night has been very large lately. If you have time, come over and have some snow pear soup.

Day 59

The black cat brooch you were wearing isn’t bad. It’s much more suitable than those incomprehensible sports shoes you’re wearing.

Day 60

You’ve been doing well recently. Do you have any plans over the weekend? Or should I plan them?

Day 61

The look you have when you crinkle your eyes to eat pudding - it’s even more Pudding than Pudding.

Day 62

The dogwood perfume sachet is already on the table. The chrysanthemum liquor needs a few more hours. There’s no need to be so impatient.

Day 63

The next time you can’t sleep, there’s no need to leave so many messages of you talking to yourself. Just call me directly.

Day 64

In this weather, don’t even think of having a cold beverage. Pick a hot beverage you want to drink, and I’ll make it for you.

Day 65

You concluded that the reason for your hair loss was work. So staying up late to use your phone is not to blame?

Day 66

If you want to eat something, just say it directly. There’s no need to post hints like “When the weather is cold, one should eat cream stew” on Moments.

Day 67

There are only two more months left to the year. Looks like the proposals you haven’t finished will be delayed till next year.

Day 68 (Halloween)

Title: Masquerade

If you want me to participate in the masquerade with you, just say so directly. There’s no need to beat around the bush. I’ve already received the entrance tickets, and will pick you up tonight.

Day 69

You were clamouring about playing the part of a Rose Witch, but you’ve become a Caught-a-Cold Witch today.

Day 70

The hoarser your voice, the more it expresses want. You have a lot of such worrying habits.

Day 71

It’s not that time doesn’t want to wait for you, but you spend too much time on useless hobbies.

Day 72

Managing your emotions is to allow yourself to mediate your emotions smoothly, not for you to hold everything in, dummy.

Day 73

That winter mountain villa you’ve been hinting at for a long time has started business. There are some themed suites - pick one.

Day 74

Someone usually doesn’t have a large appetite, but when it comes to her favourite foods, she always leaves me awed.

Day 75

Like many other things, there’s a limit to drinking. Being slightly tipsy is best. Don’t get drunk, especially if it’s you.

Day 76

There was a cat sleeping in the claw machine in the market. Even after getting the staff to open the claw machine, it still didn’t wake up. It’s just as nitwitted as you are.

Day 77

Not going to your own place, and even taking up other people’s territory… Looks like Pudding learnt it from you.

Day 78

Don’t buy too many useless items because you’re tempted. Just because there are many discounted items doesn’t mean you need them.

Day 79 (Single’s Day)

If I receive another meaningless message from you such as “Help me slash the price”, the thing that will be slashed could be the funds for your next program.

Day 80

If you have time to reminisce the past, why don’t we do the things you find worth remembering together once more?

Day 81

Refreshing the notifications for your deliveries a hundred times each day won’t make them arrive earlier. But the scheduled sumptuous meal can be brought forward by an hour.

Day 82

I don’t do meaningless hypothesis. If I had never met you? I won’t allow for such ‘if’s to happen..

Day 83

Things that I have decided upon have some leeway of changing. It depends on what you have that is worth exchanging it with.

Day 84

Chanced on the photograph you took with Pudding. Both the person and the cat haven’t changed much. It’s pretty good.

Day 85

Instead of imagining how we’d be like next year, why not spare some time to write a Year 2021 work plan to turn your ideal into reality.

Day 86

You weren’t around when I passed by your office yesterday. But the mess on your office desk surpassed my imagination.

Day 87

The coffee beans you felt were pretty good in terms of taste the last time - I’ve asked someone to bring some back again. Remember to collect it tonight.

Day 88

There’s a new special product in Souvenir today. Are you sure you’re going to keep saying that you haven’t had an appetite these two days?

Day 89

All I did was pinch the nape of your neck. Why are you staring at me like Pudding?

Day 90

It’s the first time I realised that reading comics during working hours can also be termed “gathering source material”. So is chatting with me termed “discussing a collaborative project?”

Day 91

A certain person has been signing in at increasingly later times. The closer one is to the end, the more one can’t slack off.

Day 92

Someone who has only won “one free bottle” a few times is always thinking of trying the lottery - truly indulging in the wildest fantasies.

Day 93

…I just mentioned it yesterday and you’ve won the fifth prize today. It’s truly a dummy’s luck.

Day 94

I might have believed your nonsense of being able to find inspiration while lying down, had you not fallen asleep on the sofa last night.

Day 95

If you have time to write a lengthy plan, why not put the plan to action immediately?

Day 96

Sometimes, I’d take a look at previous sign-ins and recollect the things a dummy has done.

Day 97

You’re usually too tired to even move after exercising for a while. Yet, you run faster than anyone else when collecting take-out.

Day 98

Every one of your so-called surprises tests a person’s psychological tolerance.

Day 99

There’s no need feel troubled that the signing in is about to end. As long as you want to, I can continue this childish game with you.

Day 100

It’s the last day. The next round of company doesn’t require signing in. I’ll always be here.

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doomedandstoned · 3 years

Text

Scarecrow Ups the Wow Factor with Frenetic, Bluesy ‘II’

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

Album art by Igor Odincov

The last time we encountered Russian doom-rockers extraordinaire SCARECROW, they'd just wowed us all by appearing from out of nowhere with a self-titled full-length year before last, which grabbed a foothold on the Doom Charts, premiering at no. 9 and held on tight. Subsequently, they contributed "Madman" to the breakthrough overview of the contemporary Russian heavy music scene, Doomed & Stoned in Russia (Volume 1), which came out earlier in 2021 and is slated for a sequel next month.

In October, the mighty Scarecrow once again spreads its wings over the planet, as the soulful three-piece -- raised in the region of snow leopards and Amur tigers -- takes flight with eight new songs nestled in the inauspiciously titled LP, 'II' (2021). Fans will be elated when they hear just how contagious the vibe of the new record is. If you're a newcomer to their sound, don't worry! You could start here and work your way back to Scarecrow's eponymous debut and lose none of the impact. The first two singles alone are a marvelous introduction to the band's groovy balance of powerful Ozzyesque vocals with proto-metal blues, all situated in a monster retrofitted sound machine of doom. Their bio says it best:

Instead of forming in post-war England like the first wave of British heavy rock, Scarecrow’s members grew up in the hopeless chaos of 1990s Russia. Their new album II uses those experiences to transport listeners to wastelands of earth and mind. Like their contemporaries in Graveyard, Uncle Acid, and Witchcraft, Scarecrow imbues proto-metal and classic rock with dusky occult doom and heavy electric blues.

It is said that Scarecrow could pass as one of the heaviest bands of 1969. Nay, I say heavier still. Think Sir Lord Baltimore or better still, the big dogs themselves, Led Zeppelin. What if Sabbath came first, then Zep hatched from that egg? Now you're coming closer to conceptualizing the stylistic proclivities of Scarecrow. But you shouldn't stop by drawing vintage parallels, for the music on II continues to surprise us as the record spins along. Dig the epic wall of sound that opens "The Moors," shifting us back to the realm of Candlemass following several up-tempo hard rock footstompers. We find ourselves falling into a psychedelic timewarp between past, present, and the uncertain future.

There's a whole lot of "wow" on II, for sure. Throughout the record, frontman Artyom "Artimus" Nikitins expresses a vocal range that is nothing shy of impressive, reaching high notes effortlessly and with power to boot (see: "Blizzard"). You get the sense that he might even be holding back on some more "umph," but he's doubtless holding that back for just the right occasion. Artimus gives us some background on how Scarecrow's disparate influences fuse with the band's own songwriting proclivities and creative hunches.

"I would refer to predominantly English classical rock bands - Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Budgie, Leaf Hound, Steel Mill, Black Widow etc. I can go on forever. They are very close to us in spirit, because they were all ordinary guys from the provincial cities of England destroyed by the bombing. When they started their journey, they did not believe that they would become great, and did not hope for it. They just did the best they could, despite the circumstances and the hostile environment surrounding them. And this is what makes us related to them."

"Frenzied stubbornness against the background of a complete lack of hope for the best is the same fuel on which we grew up. And this is what is very well heard in our music. You know, I'm sure - the audience will not be fooled. It's one thing when you compose your music in the sampler on a brand new MacBook, between eating a muffin and drinking a smoothie in a trendy corner restaurant, and quite another thing when you are on sleepless dank nights, when 30 outside the window, sitting in your tiny room and torment your a cheap instrument, grinding riffs and passages hunched over the notes, trying to create something really worthwhile, turning your soul inside out, pouring out all your pain, fear, anxiety, despair, hopelessness, anger and hatred through your music. Only then do you get the right to sing about love, faith and hope. Only then does the music become "honest." And this essence is always heard.

Look for the new album 'II' (2021) to drop October 22nd on Wise Blood Records (pre-order here), which will also be reissuing 'Scarecrow' (2019). A must-spin for fans of Black Sabbath, Early Man, Purple Hill Witch, Goatsnake, and Electric Citizen (to name a just a few bands top-of mind) and a welcome companion to such genre-defying bands as Mr. Bungle and Boss Keloid. II will knock a lot of folks right off their high horses. Must-listen fare to break through the haze and apathy of pandemic delirium. And because we love you so much, Doomers & Stoners, we're giving you a first listen to the new single, "Magic Flower," which Doomed & Stoned is premiering today!

Give ear...

Scarecrow II by Scarecrow

Some Buzz

The Russian city of Perm is surrounded by impenetrable forests, cold swamps, and the ruins of prison labor camps. The region has a bloody history of close supervision and surveillance that started during the second World War. While the members of doom rockers Scarecrow grew up in the ‘90s, they acknowledge a “haunted prison mentality” endures in Perm to this day.

“[The ‘90s are] associated with widespread lawlessness, the dominance of crime, widespread poverty and lack of confidence in the future,” shares Scarecrow vocalist Artemis. “The country was simply divided among themselves by numerous criminal groups. The corruption in the government was monstrous, people were literally robbed and killed right on the streets, and wars were constantly going on in the periphery. The ‘90s ended long ago, but their traces do not disappear anywhere to this day. Of course, the generation that grew up in such conditions was doomed.”

While Scarecrow are part of that doomed generation, their music feels like it was pulled from the age of unrest in the late 1960s and early ‘70s. Picture Led Zeppelin if they had a doom phase, or if Leaf Hound got into occult rock and Black Sabbath instead of shrooms. Contemporary bands like Graveyard, Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, and Witchcraft have explored their own versions of heavy and haunted electric blues. Scarecrow embodies the first wave of English heavy rock, and their new record sounds like one of the heaviest albums of 1969.

“[English proto-metal] is very close to us in spirit, because they were all ordinary guys from the provincial cities of England destroyed by the bombing,” Artemis explains. “When they started their journey, they did not believe that they would become great, and did not hope for it. They just did the best they could, despite the circumstances and the hostile environment surrounding them.”

Scarecrow II by Scarecrow

Scarecrow’s second full length—simply titled II—elevates the band’s skill and songwriting even beyond their impressive 2019 debut. The songs are familiar but fresh. Artemis wails with power and purpose. The riffs conjure treacherous weather but can radiate warmth at will. Scarecrow’s rock ‘n’ roll majesty indulges excess without losing compositional strength. The epic scale of II begins with the rumble of waves and leads the listener on a journey to wastelands of earth and mind while ruminating on the motif of time.

“[Time] does not just flow away from us like water,” Artemis writes, “it crushes us like ocean waves crash ships.”

Scarecrow’s doom rock will lure you to the ocean when Wise Blood Records releases II digitally and on Digipak CD within the United States on October 22nd. Scarecrow’s debut will also finally be available in the states. Make time and listen to Scarecrow summon the sunset.

Follow The Band

Get Their Music

#D&S Debuts #Scarcrow #Perm #Russia #doom metal #Wise Blood Records #D&S Reviews #HeavyBest2021 #Doomed and Stoned

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angelaiswriting · 3 years

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The Contest (2 of 7) | some R6s guys x fem!reader

✏️ Pairing: Blitz x fem!reader

✏️ Summary: Dominic Brunsmeier can’t keep his goddamn mouth shut when it comes to eating pussy, and that’s how Y/N finds herself being drafted to be the judge of this pussy-eating contest. Elias is the first to go. (Straight out of a dream @kind-wolf had)

✏️ A/N: I'm a bundle of nerves, but enjoy :’) the next part should be up on Sunday if my internet doesn’t die again.

✏️ Warnings: 18+ only (oral f/r, fingering)

✏️ Word-count: 2,868

✏️ The links to the other parts are in the masterlist linked in my bio.

<< part one: the contest << | PART TWO: ELIAS | >> part three: timur >>

The boys had given her a full day to lucidly think things through and quit the contest if she so felt like, but the truth was, it was almost exhilarating to find herself in such a position. Dom had talked her through her doubts and when she had gone to bed the night after the agreement was made, she had felt a sort of relief she couldn’t exactly explain. They were all friends and while they were about to meet her in such an intimate situation, she knew they respected her enough not to bring the topic up again if that was what she wanted.

The first to go would be Elias and while, really, Y/N should have expected it, his warning message had come as a surprise last night. He hadn’t told her over the pizzas they had all shared in front of the huge flat screen of the common area, and she was grateful for that: she knew she would have spent the rest of the dinner thinking about inappropriate things or too lost in her own mind, and part of her thought he knew that, too.

But when morning finally came, the hours bled slowly one into the other as she waited for the afternoon to come. She had some papers to finish revising from tests Jäger had run over her gear and while she had tried to give them her best and focus all the attention she could muster into doing things right, the thought that she had somewhere to be later that day and the fact that her fuck buddy — as he had so politely reminded her — had put all his energies into teasing her had made the wait excruciating.

By the time Elias came to pick her up, she was staring at the file in her hands without actually seeing it, her mind worlds away from being in the present. It was just black symbols on white sheets of paper and she couldn’t seem to be able to decipher them for the life of her.

“Y/N?” Her name being called by him made her jolt in her seat and the pen she had balanced between her index and middle finger fell onto the table and almost rolled down to the floor. “If you’re still busy, I can wait,” he said, eyeing the scattered sheets of paper in front of her. She had taken up most of the table’s surface without even realizing so.

But she was quick at complaining, “No!” And while she didn’t say I’ve been waiting enough all day, he must have still read it in her eyes and in the abruptness of her movements as she stood up and quickly gathered her things. “I’m ready. I’m done here anyway,” she lied.

His room was strangely tidy when he led her inside. She had seen it a few times already — and not because she had ever slept with him, be it clear, although she had thought about it once or twice, before things had started moving between her and Dominic — and she knew how messy it could get in there, with clothes strewn over the back of a chair and pieces of equipment lying pretty much in all the most disparate places. And whether or not that stupid pussy-eating contest had given him the excuse he was waiting for to put everything in order and clean his dorm for once, she didn’t know but the squeeze in her heart could have been the right sign of how touched and how grateful she was for that.

“The guys and I thought our dorms would be the best place to, you know, do it,” he said as he quietly closed the door behind his back. “Or yours, if you wanna do it there. I didn’t think of asking…”

She shook her head and smiled at him. For some odd reason, the only man she’d bring up to her room for sex was Dominic, and even though she didn’t say that, there was this lingering feeling in her guts that they knew — whether because Dom had told them, or threatened them, or neither of those options. “Your rooms are fine. What you should do, though,” she smiled as she took a step closer to him, “is stop worrying and warm me up for it instead. I’ve never…”

“Yeah, it’s the first time for me as well,” he chuckled when her voice trailed off. He picked her up from behind her thighs and quickly moved over to his bed before kneeling on it. Her laughter ringed in his ear as her lips brushed right against his skin. “You said kissing and touching were okay. Is that rule still up?”

He had laid her down on the mattress, and her head seemed to sink for an inch into his pillows as she stared up at him, her legs still wrapped around his waist. She contemplated giving him an actual answer, but what better way than just cupping his face and bringing his lips to hers?

She had expected him to be hungry and playful, the way he had been once during one of the games they had all played, but he started off unhurriedly, with kisses that slowly transitioned from light to breathtaking, and before long, she felt him grinding against her. At first, she didn’t even fully realize it, lost as she was in the feel of his lips moving down her jaw and then her neck. His hands moved underneath her shirt, his thumbs pushing under the wire of her bra and teasing the underside of her breasts, and the unexpected coolness of his fingers made goosebumps erupt on her skin. It wasn’t the same tingling sensation she had when it was Dominic touching her like that, but it was still pleasant as it seemed to awaken her body for what was to come next.

But then she unexpectedly moaned, and he groaned in the crook of her neck, his hips pressing down harder against her. She tugged on his hair and pulled him up, and as they both found themselves panting for air, she stared him in the eye and, almost reluctantly, warned him to follow the rules, Elias: no cocks involved.

There was something mockingly sheepish in the smile that stretched across his lips, something that tugged at the corners of her lips as his rebellious idea burned bright in his playful eyes. But he still pushed up on all fours before his fingers came down to the buttons of her jeans. His actions were quick and as she watched him with her heart in her throat, her heartbeat pulsing there and in her stomach alike, her gaze moved lower down his body and noticed the obvious tent in his sweatpants.

She was throbbing, and breathing suddenly felt like a hard and unusual task as she tried to remind herself why she was in that position in the first place. But the contest felt a billion miles away now and as she had the time to realize that Dominic had spent the day teasing and building her up to possibly make things easier for her, Elias had already dragged her pants down her legs and was now fighting with her sneakers that had been caught in the way.

“Slow down,” she chuckled. Her breath was short and her cheeks burning under his gaze. “We have all the time you need. Don’t rush it if you wanna win.”

She watched him stop for a moment as he took a deep breath. His antsy fingers had finally managed to untie her shoelaces — to which she made a silent note in her head to not be found wearing them next time — and he grinned when her shoes came off, followed swiftly by her pants and underwear.

“I just don’t want to be caught in the middle of my meal by that angry troglodyte if he were to suddenly change his mind about this,” was his joke.

“Why do you worry about him? We’re just friends.” And, to answer the ironic look he gave her, “with benefits, okay. I haven’t changed my mind about this anyway,” she reassured him.

That seemed to ease his worries, even if for just a moment.

He pointed a finger at her shirt, then, almost as if he were silently asking for permission to take it off for her. She hadn’t discussed herself being naked the night of the agreement, she had just assumed it was a given, but it still felt almost sweet of him to wonder. Then, when she sat up to help him in the process, the coolness of his bedsheets would have made her squeeze her thighs together hadn’t he been in the way of her movements.

Her shirt came off without problems but in his excitement to get down to business between her legs, his fingers seemed to almost stiffen when they reached the clasp of her bra and it took him a moment to sort it out.

“Relax,” she murmured in his ear, hands sliding up his arms, left bare by his t-shirt, before planting a kiss on his cheek. “There’s no need to rush it, I told you.”

He seemed to relax at that, and his fingers trailed down along her spine and then back up before he pulled back and she removed her bra. It caused her to shiver, and goosebumps broke out again when he pressed a kiss right under her ear.

“Ignore the hickeys,” she groaned when she laid back down and his gaze settled on the lovebites Dominic had made sure to leave on the skin of her chest a couple of nights before.

“You two are animals,” was the chuckle he left on the side of her right breast before his lips moved over to her nipple.

It was sloppy and slow, different in a way, but surely not an unwelcome feeling. And although he followed the rules and didn’t spend too much time paying attention to her chest, but decided instead to let his kisses trail downward, for a moment a part of her wished she could will her brain to ask him to keep going. By the time he moved down her abdomen, she was already tingling.

Her breath was cut short, however, when he unexpectedly licked a stripe between her folds up to her clit and he groaned. She barely had the time to gasp out an I’m sure you’ve done worse things to answer the look he had given her, that he had already moved her legs so that her calves could rest on his shoulders.

“I would’ve never guessed you’d be this ecstatic to play this game,” he chuckled half a minute later, when he tilted his head up and his tongue was replaced by two of his fingers that made her toes curl. “Look at how wet you are.”

She had had that wet and almost uncomfortable feeling between her legs for a good part of the day, and Dominic had made sure things would go that way — from the way he had woken her up that morning with his lazy kisses on her neck, to all the dirty things he had spent his day moaning in her ears and that had made blood rush to her cheeks — and literally everywhere else in her body. It had kept her stomach in a grip up until this moment, as she tried to shift the focus of her attention onto something else, without success.

Elias hummed against her inner thigh just as the pad of one of his fingers brushed against that sweet spot inside her and the walls of her vagina clenched around them. Her head tilted back on the pillow and her back arched, and as her left hand came down to rest on his head in the attempt to push him back closer to her, she managed to gather her wits enough to speak. “Fingers are okay, but this is a pussy eating contest,” she moaned, back slightly arching as she tried to keep her eyes open enough to look down at him. “Don’t dumbly lose points this way, Kötz. But if you win, you’ll be free to finger me however long you like.”

When he answered back in German, she felt the vibrations of his chuckle right against her core — and probably even inside her, because when his tongue flicked her clit and it then replaced his fingers to dip inside her and scoop up her wetness, her senses seemed to zero in on the sound and the feel of his moaning.

The rhythm he set was slow, but the way he was literally eating her out was breathtaking. It made her lungs squeeze, in a way, and when he gave her clit a harsh suck, she jolted with a gasped-out whine falling from her lips, something halfway between a moan and a groan, a plea not to stop.

When he repositioned himself to lie down better, one of his arms wrapped itself underneath her thigh and two of his fingers were added back into the mix. Pads thick and slightly calloused, she felt herself stretch around them just enough for it to feel just right. Before she could pick up with her body, though, her hips bucked in an attempt to grind against his hand and face, and before long, her eyelids were drooping closed as she allowed herself to fully relax and enjoy the moment.

His tongue was hot against her, almost burning. Or maybe it was just her body as she tried to wrap her mind around the way he was suckling on her clit as his free hand came down on her abdomen to keep her from moving too much.

He didn’t come up for air once, almost taking Dominic’s joke from the other night to heart, and as the raging drumming of her heart and that pull she felt in her lungs seemed to expand until that was all she could focus on, she barely had the time to think that he was eating her out with a fervor that left her breathless, that his fingers brushed against that spot again and she lost it, came hard against his hand and his face.

Her eyes squeezed closed and her back arched — in the attempt to pull back or to push herself closer to his face, she truly didn’t know and she certainly didn’t care. His ministrations didn’t slow down: he kept on eating her out just as his fingers kept on lazily moving inside her.

She tried not to gasp for air, but when he flicked her clit and curled his fingers inside her teasingly, she couldn’t help it. She could feel the muscles in her inner thighs quiver and it took her a few moments to pick up on the fact that he was trying to pry her legs open to come up and sit back on his heels.

Lost as she was in the pleasure that had sparks going off behind her closed eyelids, she didn’t see the smug smile that stretched on his lips. She lay on his bed like a doll, barely even aware of the fact that she still had limbs attached and that she wasn’t just floating in the void of space, with her heart thundering in her ears and pulsing between her legs.

Her mind was still swimming in the haze of her orgasm when he settled between her legs — just to lick her once more this time, before he kissed his way up her body until he was eye-level with her.

“Will you open your eyes?” he wondered, planting a kiss on her lips as he kept the weight of his body off of hers by pushing into his elbows on either side of her head.

She hummed, but she was so breathless that the only sound she made was a low hmpf as her lips stretched lightly into a content smile. “In a bit, I’m too relaxed to move now.”

His chuckle made her smile turn a bit brighter, a bit more lively as she breathed out of her nose. “Was it good?”

Her “What a dumb question!” made him laugh as he plopped down beside her and his fingers traced absentminded patterns on the skin of her belly.

“This was a good start,” she said some ten minutes later, when her brain started working properly again and her head turned to the side on his pillow so that she could stare at him and at the proud grin he still had on his face. “I know I didn’t say it the other day, but the additional rule you should tell the others is, don’t boast about your attempt to among each other, okay? I don’t want horny dudes trying to outdo themselves just to win.”

His lower lip pushed out into a pout and his Partypooper made her chuckle for a moment. “At least I did good,” he smiled back a moment later and his almost childish happiness made her laugh as she managed out a Yeah, that you did.

Feedback is always welcome if you want to drop old me a line 💛

Original pic used: https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-clouds-and-blue-sky-4870972/

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Everything: @idhrenniel @saibh29 @fuckthatfeeling @aya-fay @pebblesz892 @mblaqgi @becs-bunker

#angelaiswriting #rainbow six #rainbow six siege smut #rainbow six siege #rainbow six fanfic #r6s blitz #r6s blitz x reader #r6s blitz smut #r6s blits fanfic #elias kötz #elias kötz x reader #elias kötz smut #elias kötz fanfic #n*fw

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kelyon · 3 years

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Golden Rings 7: A Salad

The Storybrooke Sequel to Golden Cuffs

Rumple makes dinner for Mrs. Gold

Read on AO3

Cooking was a skill Rumpelstiltskin shared with Gold. In the old world, the women who’d raised him had shown him all their tricks of brewing and baking and making the most of anything on hand. They told him that a boy needed to be able to do for himself just as much as a girl would. When he’d married Millah, he’d known more recipes than she had. They’d laughed about that--during the brief time when there had been any laughter between them. Even before she left him and Bae, the task of feeding them had often fallen on him.

Once he’d gained the powers of the Dark One, Rumpelstiltskin had been able to conjure up feasts beyond imagining. He’d delighted in pulling food out of the air, grand dishes he would never have tasted as a poor spinner. But Bae had insisted that he liked the old meals better, the food his papa had made with his hands. So he had tried not to use magic for a while. For Baelfire’s sake, he had tried.

For Gold, cooking had been a necessary art. There weren’t many restaurants in Storybrooke, and their menus quickly grew tiresome. Though he could easily afford a private chef, Gold disliked the invasion of allowing another person into his home. Why should he trust some stranger in his kitchen, handling his food? Gold took pride in the self-sufficiency inherent in creating his own menus. Cooking required patience, preparation, and a deft hand--all traits he valued in himself.

And, as with most things, it was a way to flaunt his wealth. Not everyone had the time and resources to master the art of haute cuisine. Gold could spend hundreds of dollars on a set of copper crepe pans or custom-forged knives. And he would only bother with the rarest ingredients--the freshest vegetables, the leanest cuts of meat. The style of this world was to present individual bites of food on plates large enough to hold a whole dinner. At fine restaurants, a three-bite portion could cost more than a family’s weekly grocery bill.

Disparities like that amused Gold to no end. His cruel, spiteful nature liked wasting money as much as he liked having it. He would season his food with costly saffron and white truffles--and then throw half of it away, uneaten. No one in Storybrooke knew about that, of course. But Gold knew. It gave him a twisted satisfaction to compare his own extravagant asceticism with the panicked thrift of every working-class parent who looked with grateful eyes at the 99 cent kid’s meal at Chicken Little’s.

Because of course Gold had no actual appreciation for fine foods. Bastard didn’t take joy in any of his possessions or his privileges. He just liked having things that other people couldn’t afford. Things that other people wanted, and envied him for having.

Mrs. Gold came into the kitchen through the door that led out from the patio. Relying on his cane, Rumpelstiltskin had only been able to carry the box that held his dagger and the chipped cup. But his wife held a bag of groceries in each arm.

“I’ll set these down and go get the rest!”

She flounced off, an impressive feat considering the height of her heels. Belle had had difficulty the first time she’d worn shoes like that. It had been his task to teach her how to walk, how to dance. They had come to love dancing together in the ballroom of his castle. On the day of their wedding, they had danced for hours.

But in this world he was crippled again. On the night Mr. and Mrs. Gold had wed, she had danced with every man in Storybrooke except him.

Small as she was, even hobbled by her footwear, Mrs. Gold was capable of mundane tasks that would cause him agony. Whether Gold liked it or not, his life was easier with her around.

Perhaps that was why Gold liked to make her life so difficult.

When she came back to the kitchen, Mrs. Gold busied herself with the groceries and Rumpelstiltskin began to make dinner. Without thinking about it, he pulled out a drawer for a cup into which he could measure out chicken stock and wine and something called arborio rice. Gold had already planned to make risotto, and Rumpelstiltskin had no reason to object. He let Gold’s knowledge guide him through the process. On his own, he didn’t know where ingredients were or how to operate the massive hearth--no. Gold’s kitchen had no hearth, just a stove. It was powered by something called natural gas.

A twist of a knob, and Rumpelstiltskin summoned up a circle of blue flame. On top of the flame, he placed a heavy, enamel-coated saute pan. It was so clean it looked like it had never been used. But he knew it had been. This pan was one of Gold’s favorites.

Into the pan, he drizzled a stream of oil. The bottle said it was imported from Italy. Rumpelstiltskin assumed that was a marker of quality, or at least expense. He felt Gold in the back of his mind, offering up exactly how much the best extra virgin olive oil cost per ounce, not to mention the price of shipping directly from Tuscany.

Rumpelstiltskin pushed Gold away with memories of a time when even butter was an unspeakable luxury. From the time he was a boy he had learned to pour off grease and lard and meat drippings into a clay crock so it could be used again when needed. Fat had been a precious commodity in the old world. Animals didn’t have much on their flesh and people had even less. The idea of being choosy about what the grease tasted like--or even if it had gone rancid--was ludicrous.

Behind him, Mrs. Gold had the refrigerator door open and was putting away the food she had bought earlier.

“Can you hand me the chopped leeks?” Meticulous as a machine, Gold did the preparation for his meals days ahead of time. Half the glass containers in the refrigerator were full vegetables he had minced to a paste or diced into perfect uniformity.

“Yes, Mr. Gold!”

She bent at the waist to search for the container he requested. With obvious intent, she hollowed her back and stuck out her pert, round, arse. His hands itched to touch her. He wanted to squeeze that soft flesh or deliver a sharp smack against her pretty skirt. Nothing too severe. Just enough to make his wife yelp. Just enough to let her know that he was looking.

Instead, Rumpelstiltskin looked away.

Surprisingly quiet in her heels, Mrs. Gold set some food on the counter beside him.

“I got out the butterflied chicken breasts as well, Mr. Gold. Was that correct?”

“It was.” He said what Gold would say, made the menu Gold had planned. “And you’ll serve the same sauvignon blanc I’m using to make the sauce. It should all be ready in less than twenty minutes.”

“Wonderful!” She smiled like he had given her a gift. “After I put away the groceries, may I set the table for both of us?”

He heard the question inside her question. Every night, Mrs. Gold set a place for her husband at the head of the dining room table. Where she ate depended on how he felt about her on any given day.

“Yes, dear.” Rumpelstiltskin unwrapped the chicken from the butcher paper and added it to the sizzling leeks. “I want my wife close to me tonight.”

****

While Gold had control of the actual preparation of food, part of their routine was that Mrs. Gold had to plate the food and bring it to him in the dining room. It stroked Gold’s ego to be served by a beautiful woman, to have his wife at his beck and call. He got to use his power. Pretend that he was some kind of lord of the manor.

A sad little king of a sad little hill.

Rumpelstiltskin sighed as he sank into the carved wooden chair at the head of the table. Like everything else in this house, the table was an antique masterpiece, stately and dark. A red damask table runner spanned the length of it, breaking up the shine of the polished oak. Two thin tapers burned in crystal candle holders on either side of a centerpiece of silk flowers. Even with the candles, the room was an ocean of darkness.

They were soy candles. Rumpelstiltskin hated knowing that. Soy melted at a lower temperature than beeswax, so these candles were relatively cooler, more tolerable on bare skin. By the time the meal had ended, quite a pool would have melted down. Hot wax, ready to pour over a naked body, if that was what Gold decided he wanted for dessert.

He looked to his left, to the chair where Mrs. Gold would sit. Both places at the table were set with polished silver and gold-rimmed crystal goblets. Linen napkins were wrapped neatly into engraved napkin rings. The bone china plates were currently in the kitchen. Most people in Storybrooke only saw this level of grandeur at black-tie events. Like weddings.

“Here we are!” Mrs. Gold burst into the dining room with a plate in each hand. She was still wearing her high-heeled shoes. She had been wearing them all day. Didn’t her feet hurt?

Rumpelstiltskin almost stood to help her. But the second he put weight on his ankle he winced and sank back into the chair. His cane was leaning against the table’s edge. By the time he thought to grab it and stand up properly, Mrs. Gold was already placing a plate in front of him.

“Thank you for permitting me to join you, Mr. Gold. I hope you’ll find me pleasant company.” She poured some chilled white wine into his glass. Her voice wasn’t quite as bubbly as it had been earlier. She seemed more subdued, like she was trying to be seductive.

Rumpelstiltskin took a drink.

It was only when he set his wine glass down again that he noticed that Mrs. Gold’s glass was empty. She hadn’t poured anything for herself. Though she sat in a chair, her hands were placed palms-down on the table top, on either side of her plate.

Oh yes, that was a rule. She wasn’t allowed to start eating until Gold did.

“Well, then.” Rumpelstiltskin shook out his napkin and placed it in his lap before he cut into the chicken and leeks.

In the silent dining room, he heard the half-sigh that came out of Mrs. Gold. She was relieved, wasn’t she? Grateful that her husband hadn’t changed his mind about tolerating her presence.

Swallowing his first bite, Rumpelstiltskin opened his mouth to speak. But what could he say? What could he offer this woman? How could he undo the damage of twenty-eight years of living like this?

But he had to try.

He looked up at his wife. And for the first time, he paid attention to what was on her plate. There was nothing but green leaves. No chicken in white wine sauce. No pan-fried leeks. Not a single grain of risotto.

“What are you eating?”

He heard his own voice come out in a thin, deadly whisper. He gripped his fork, too tightly to be natural.

Mrs. Gold saw that. She dropped her own fork onto her plate and looked over at him with wide eyes. “I--it’s a salad, Mr. Gold.” She lowered her gaze and sat with her hands in her lap. If he concentrated, he could see her trembling.

A salad.

Of course it was. He had seen her bring it in with the other groceries, a plastic tub of pre-washed baby spinach. Cheap and easy, just like her. It was part of their routine, one of Gold’s rules. Every night for dinner, all Mrs. Gold was allowed to take for herself was a plateful of salad greens, with no dressing. Anything else she ate, he would have to expressly permit or give her himself.

Sometimes Gold liked to make her beg for every bite until she cried.

He took a breath. He didn’t speak. He willed his pulse to slow down to a reasonable pace. He kept his voice controlled. He couldn’t frighten this poor woman any more than she already was.

“I cooked two portions of chicken,” he said carefully. “I wanted you to have some as well.”

“I-I-I’m sorry, Mr. Gold.” She kept her head bowed, her whole body tense. She expected an attack, verbal if not physical. “I thought you wanted the other piece for your lunch tomorrow.”

“I want to provide for my wife.” He tried to explain, tried to keep calm, tried to keep from crying. Buried memories crashed into his head and he had to raise his voice to hear his own thoughts. “I want you to have more than just fucking leaves!”

In one instant, a thousand memories assaulted him all at once. Year after year--first as a child, then as a young man on his own, then with his son beside him. When the hungry months came upon the land and winters wore on and on. The stores left over from harvest grew smaller and smaller. And Rumpelstiltskin never had much to store away even in good times. Year upon year, he waited as the winter ebbed, but the hunger remained. Waited as they days grew longer, but the trees stayed bare. Waited until the first hints of green began to bud and grow, signalling that spring was coming and there would be something to eat again.

He had shown Bae what his father had shown him. He had taught him the ways of the woods. They had so little land for a garden, but there was always something in the Duke’s forest. He had bundled up Bae in his shawl and his cap, to go out in search of food. And every year they had found mushrooms and ramsons and Jack-by-the-hedge--anything to flavor water enough so they could call it soup. Anything to keep them going for one more day.

Bae being who he was, he had thought it a grand adventure. He had wanted to know what else in the forest could be eaten. And Rumpelstiltskin had shown him violets and wood sorrel and taught him to boil stinging nettle. But Bae was a growing boy and all the adventure in the world couldn’t fill his gnawing belly. He began to eat anything that was green, any leaf, except for those he knew were poisonous.

One day, Rumpelstiltskin had found his son in the pasture with the sheep, his mouth stained green from eating grass and clover.

To his shame, he hadn’t stopped him. He hadn’t said a word. Because Rumpelstiltskin--spinner, cripple, coward--had nothing better to give him. Because Rumpelstiltskin--useless, penniless, worthless--could not fill the belly of the child he would give his life for. The person he loved most in the world had nothing to eat except fucking leaves!

Taking his cane, he stood up quickly. Mrs. Gold flinched at the sudden movement. Rumpelstiltskin bit back a curse that would have burned down the house around them if he had any magic at all.

She started to rise, but he hobbled over to her. Plate in one hand, cane in the other, Rumpelstiltskin slid his dinner onto Mrs. Gold’s raw spinach.

“Sit down,” he ordered through clenched teeth. “Stay here. Eat that.”

“Yes, Mr. Gold,” She answered like an automaton. What was the word in this world? A robot. A toy programmed to have the same responses no matter what the owner said or did to it. Mrs. Gold was nothing but a thing. And not even a thing Gold valued enough to care for.

“Thank you, Mr. Gold.”

He went back into the kitchen without a word. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

It took the last straining threads of his self-control to keep from throwing Gold’s fine china plate against Gold’s state-of-the-art refrigerator. He should take this wretched cane and smash in the glass-fronted cabinets, destroy everything inside. All of Gold’s crystal and porcelain and the plates so thin you could see light through them--he should shatter them into splinters and shards. Rumpelstiltskin should destroy all the things Gold held so dear. Objects that mattered to him more than the woman he had married. It would feel so good to reduce his wealth to nothing and his prized possessions into rubble.

But that wouldn’t bring Belle back.

It wouldn’t undo what had already been done.

With a single breath, all the rage escaped from Rumpelstiltskin’s body. He leaned against a wall and felt himself crumple into a heap. He had just enough presence of mind to cover his mouth with his left hand. Stifle the sobs so she wouldn’t hear.

That bastard! That monster! How dare Gold do these things to Belle! Rumpelstiltskin knew his share of evil, but he still had enough humanity to be appalled that Gold would treat her this way. His most precise cruelties were reserved not for his enemies or his debtors, but his own wife! The woman he had chosen to marry, the woman whose hand he had held as he vowed to cherish and protect and love her!

But instead Gold made her starve herself. The richest man in Storybrooke took it as a point of pride that his wife barely ate. In this palace of a house, he begrudged her every inch of space. He made her feel like an intruder in the only home she had. He degraded her and insulted her and treated her like she was less than human. Worst of all, he made her think that was how he showed affection.

“Gods.” He rasped out a prayer to powers he had never believed in, deities who didn’t exist in this world. “Gods, Belle. What did I do to you?”

Because as much as he blamed Gold, as much as he hated Gold, the truth of the matter was that this was Rumpelstiltskin’s fault. He had created the curse. He had wanted to come to this horrible world. He had planned and manipulated and twisted the path of fate to his will. He had worked so hard, for centuries, to get to where he was now. He thought he had arranged it all, so that the price of this magic wouldn’t fall on him.

But the very existence of this town was a punishment. According to the one who had cast the curse, Rumpelstiltskin was due the suffering he had lived under for twenty-eight years. Being Gold was a bleak and miserable existence. And he had taken out his anger on the one person who would never leave him.

He looked down at his hands, at his wedding ring, at the scar on his palm. He had made vows to Belle. He had promised to protect her, to belong to her, to trust her with the best and the worst of himself. Like Mrs. Gold, she had a mind-boggling capacity for loving even the most vile of men. And unlike Gold, Rumpelstiltskin could not punish a woman for loving him.

It wasn’t Belle’s fault, and it wasn’t Mrs. Gold’s. The persona of Gold didn’t exist anymore. As satisfying as it was to rage at a dead man, there was no way to take Gold to task for how he had treated his wife.

And Belle would say it wasn’t his fault either. He had come to her so many times, full of worries and guilt.

Sweetheart, how can you still love me? Knowing what I’ve done and what I’ll do?

Rumple, she had assured him. This curse is a powerful weapon, but it is not in your hands anymore. You are no more culpable for what happens than a swordsmith is responsible for a duel.

Part of him didn’t believe her. He could never look at himself with the grace and mercy of Belle’s kind heart. He had created the curse, he had wanted this weapon to be used. He had placed it in the hands of a madwoman, knowing it would destroy her, knowing it would bring misery to everyone--including himself and the woman he loved.

Still, perhaps Belle was right. And perhaps, somehow, he could find a way to redeem himself for his past. Even if he could never be good enough, perhaps he could use his evil for a good purpose.

Perhaps.

When he was ready, Rumpelstiltskin pulled himself to his feet, dusted off Gold’s fancy suit, and went back into the dining room.

Mrs. Gold was still at the table, her posture rigid but her plate empty. She looked up when he came through the door. For a moment, he saw her eyes--the perfect blue rimmed with red--and then she looked away.

“I finished everything, Mr. Gold. It was delicious.”

His heart broke anew at her voice. Belle was so strong, so sure of herself, even when she faced insurmountable obstacles. Always, she would stay brave. Always, she would do the best she could with the knowledge and tools she had. In that moment, Mrs. Gold seemed just like her.

“I’m glad you liked it.” Rumpelstiltskin stayed in the doorway, both hands braced on his cane. “From now on, when I make a meal, I expect you to eat your share.”

She nodded, still an obedient creature. “Yes, Mr. Gold.”

They were silent for a moment, then Rumpelstiltskin spoke. “I want to apologize, for earlier. I should have been more direct in my desires. And I shouldn’t have let my temper get the better of me. I’m sorry.”

Mrs. Gold blinked, several times, before she spoke. “I--W--You have nothing to apologize for, Mr. Gold. You can do whatever you like.”

“I know.” Rumpelstiltskin swallowed back the bile in his throat. “And what I would like is to have a wife who is well-nourished and who doesn’t fear her husband.”

She twisted her wedding ring around her finger. “I don’t fear you, Mr. Gold. I just hate the thought of disappointing you. I never want to be less than what you deserve.”

From the beginning, Belle had always been more than he deserved. He had stopped a war to acquire her, and he would never fully pay for all the love and goodness she had given him.

But he couldn’t tell any of that to Mrs. Gold.

“I’m going for a walk,” he announced. “I need to clear my head.”

Mrs. Gold nodded and stood up. “Where should I go, while you’re out?”

In spite of himself, Rumpelstiltskin clenched his jaw. “You are allowed to stay in this house when I’m not here.”

“I--Really?” She looked more confused than pleased. “Even when I’m not tied up or anything?”

He let out a long, heavy sigh. Yes, he remembered. Gold had regularly left the house while his wife was restrained with no way to get out. There was also a dog cage in the basement where Gold would leave her on work days when he didn’t want her in the shop. It was a miracle the bastard hadn’t killed her.

“Yes,” he answered. “In fact, it’s high time you got your own key to this place. It is your home, after all.”

Slowly as the dawn, a smile lit up her face. Gods, she was so beautiful.

“Thank you, Mr. Gold!” She stood up from the table and moved to embrace him. But Rumpelstiltskin held up one hand and she stopped in her tracks.

“You can clear the table whenever you like. I’ll wash the dishes when I return.”

That was another part of Gold’s arrangement. He didn’t allow his wife to clean, because he didn’t trust her with his precious antiques. For Rumpelstiltskin, the thought of submerging Belle’s hands in dishwater like a scullery maid was an insult. Far from the worst thing she had ever been subjected to, but the principle stood. He would gladly do drudgework if it would spare his wife the labor.

“What should I do until you get back?”

He shrugged. “Something you like,” he suggested. “Something to pamper yourself.” Something to make up for the hell you’ve lived in for twenty-eight years. “You could have some of that ice cream you bought today.”

Mrs. Gold chewed at her bottom lip as she thought. “I could… take a bubble bath, maybe?”

She was asking for his permission, his approval. He gave it to her. “That’s a very good idea,” he said gently.

He pushed away the thought of his wife’s legs sticking over the edge of a bathtub. Her head leaning back as she relaxed in the steaming water. Her lovely body hidden under piles of white bubbles until she emerged like a goddess from the sea, warm and soft and scented with roses.

Rumpelstiltskin shook his head. This wasn’t his wife in front of him. Belle was gone, and it was time to confront the person who was really responsible for that.

He had to see the Queen.

#golden rings #rumbelle fic #rumbelle #ouat

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cowperviolet · 3 years

Text

SEX AND THE COUNTRY HOUSE: ADULTERY IN THE EDWARDIAN ERA

We tend to imagine the Edwardian period in the pastel colours of a Downton Abbey set: white gloves, cricket, young ladies who have the haziest notions of how heirs are made.

While the highborn ladies in question were still on the marriage market, they would have done well to give no one a reason to suspect otherwise about this last part. Violet Manners, the Duchess of Rutland, went so far as to forbid her daughter Diana to hold hands with any young man not her brother (not that it prevented Diana from going on boat excursions with Oxford students when living with her less strait-laced relatives). However, once the wedding bells rang out – more often than not after a match of convenience rather than romance, although not exclusively – the rules of the game changed.

For a beautiful married woman in the Upper Ten Thousand, as the crust of the richest and most influential families in Britain was dubbed, to have a lover was almost always tolerated – provided, of course, all proprieties were observed.

It was whispered often and loudly, for instance, that the Duchess of Rutland’s two daughters, Diana and Letty, were in fact conceived not by her husband, but by two different lovers. Nonetheless, the girls were officially recognized as the Duke’s children, and nothing threatened their inheritance during their lifetime. Admittedly, the fact that they were indeed girls, and thus unable to inherit the dukedom itself, must have helped.

This web of relationship could be surprisingly amicable: Diana herself later affectionately wrote in her memoirs about the way her father’s mistress, a great American actress Maxine Elliot, introduced her to the world of theatre. During the First World War, the Duchess even asked Maxine to help persuade the Duke to turn their house on Arlington Street into a hospital for wounded officers. Maxine agreed.

Many extramarital liaisons were ignited during country house parties. These Saturday-to-Mondays (no one called them weekends for the fear of being mistaken for the kind of people who have workdays) had scores of men and women gather in their friends’ country houses for several days of shooting, cocktails, and bridge. A good hostess knew her guests well – and that included the sacred knowledge of who is sleeping with who. This information ruled what Vita Sackville-West later delicately termed ‘the disposition of bedrooms’. As she wrote in her novel, The Edwardians,

‘…the name of each guest would be neatly written on a card slipped into a tiny brass frame on the bedroom door … Lord Robert Gore was in the Red Silk Room; Mrs Levison just across the passage. That was as it should be’.

The world of fashion assisted these pastimes as much as any private effort could. The French designer Paul Poiret’s creations took Edwardian England by storm for more reason than one. Their use of brassiere instead of a traditional corset made clothes more comfortable for the wearer, of course; however, it was also much easier to take off or to put on again in the case of an emergency, if someone was to almost discover the lovers. Paul Poiret himself seemed to understand his target audience well: he noted once that ‘undressing a [corseted] woman is an undertaking similar to the capture of a fortress’.

Of course, both the woman and the one who was doing the undressing had to exercise caution regardless of what they were wearing: poor Lady Londonderry’s story is a good example of that. She had a misfortune to get onto the bad side of Gladys, Marchioness of Ripon, a patron of the opera and a woman of fearsome elegance. When the latter discovered love letters from Lady Londonderry in the house of her lover, Harry Cust, she pinched the correspondence in question without many qualms. Reading it later, she realized with delight that, apart from being shockingly indiscreet, the letters also contained a multitude of disparaging remarks about Lady Londonderry’s own lawful husband. Another person might have thought publication or even blackmail – however, Gladys had a longer game in mind. Besides, Lady Londonderry had nothing she might have wanted – apart, of course, from their common lover.

During her next meeting with her friends over a game of bridge, beneath the warm glow of a silken lamp, Gladys dramatically produced a packet of letters and offered to give a little dramatic reading, since the game came to a standstill anyway. Exchanging bewildered looks, her guests agreed. Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been boring – not coming from Gladys, who made everyone else appear dull and, according to the contemporary writer E.F. Benson, ‘a shade shabby’. The result didn’t disappoint: she read the steamy lines with hilariously exaggerated passion, and had her friends in stitches.

The ‘private readings’ continued for several months, until the last instalment was finished. Then Gladys had the letters delivered to Londonderry House in Park Lane. The bundle, tidily tied with a ribbon, was given to Lord Londonderry. The revelation didn’t lead to divorce – after all, such a thing would have been not so much prohibitively expensive as prohibitively scandalous. The relationship between the couple has cooled somewhat, though.

If this frankly tabloid-like story could be placed on the more salacious end of the Edwardian adultery scale, then the opposite, respectable one, was firmly occupied by Mrs. Keppel. This lovely woman with creamy skin and chestnut hair became one of the last representatives of the fading tradition of royal mistresses, despite being firmly married. She had been the sole companion of the Prince of Wales, a.k.a. future Edward VII, a.k.a. Bertie, from 1898 and until his death. When their relationship began, he was fifty-eight and she twenty-nine. There were other drawbacks apart from this rather obvious one: Bertie also had an impressive girth – probably stemming from his habit to eat five meals a day and have a whole cake served at tea instead of the traditional light sandwiches and scones – and a past that included a lot of French dancing girls.

However, this liaison – although such a frivolous word is scarcely suitable for the position that lasted for years, and established Mrs. Keppel as the uncrowned queen of the high society – had its upsides. Admittedly, most of them were monetary. Whatever Bertie spent on her out of his yearly income of £470,000, his financier Sir Ernest Cassel helped her to multiply. When Mrs. Keppel had just met the Prince of Wales, her lifestyle could be described as, at most, respectable. When he died twelve years later, she had shares in the Argentine Great Western railway, the Cordoba Central, the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, the Transvaal Diamond Mining Company, and others; she travelled by a private train and was a beloved guest at the casinos at Biarritz and Monte Carlo. Despite this long affair and its very visible dividends, Mrs. Keppel managed to avoid greasy whispers and attentions of ill-wishers – mostly by retaining an aura of the utmost propriety. ‘She knew’, said Consuelo Vanderbilt later, ‘how to choose her friends with shrewd appraisal’.

Friends, perhaps; but what about her husband? Well, his private thoughts on the matter remained unknown. What is known, however, is that he vacated the marital bedroom obediently when confronted with the royal desire for his wife. Perhaps, he shared her views that extramarital affairs could be a sound business practice rather than a diversion it was for Lady Londonderry and the others. Mrs. Keppel had once tried to impress this opinion on the young Clementine Churchill. During a Spanish holiday in 1914, she advised Clementine to help her husband’s political career by finding herself a powerful lover. She was dismayed by Clementine’s refusal, and opined that it to be, if anything, selfish.

It must be noted that few extramarital romances among the Upper Ten Thousand featured such disparity of power and wealth as Mrs. Keppel’s did. Indeed, when they did, quite often the sponsorship, financial and political, went in the other direction. This tendency did not remain in the Edwardian age – a generation later, Oswald Mosley derived quite a part of his funding for his young fascist party from his mistresses’ money. However, that is a tale of another time, and for another time.

Sources:

Diana Cooper, A Rainbow Comes and Goes.

Juliet Nicholson, The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm.

Diana Souhami, Mrs Keppel and Her Daughter.

#writing reference #writing ref #writing help #writing resources #edwardian #edwardian era #edwardian age #1910s #1900s #british history #history #downton abbey #writeblr #writing community

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demonicdiligence · 3 years

Text

Shivers

Your claws are alight with inspiration once again. Sharpened digits take to work with a natural rhythm. The charm in your hands is intended for one of those far-off universes, sitting on the tipping point between desolation and normalcy. You saw things again, Aamon. And you will never stop seeing them. Every world is a pinprick in your pores, making your hair stand on end. When the space between atoms sings to you, it vibrates in your skin.

The multiverse talks to you in shivers. And here it comes, clawing at your spine once more...

You stop working. It’s as sudden as a car crash. Your skin is clammy and your hair stands on end. Goosebumps raise, and your extremities shudder. But this has happened before. Sometimes you make these visions happen, and other times, they happen to you. Sometimes you convince the universe to sing to you, and other times it rips your maw asunder and screams down your throat.

It screams all truths, all states of all matter in all worlds, all in cacophony. Filter the noise. Ride the sensation.

[What is above me?]

[How about ‘above me’ in a metaphysical way?]

Your skin is slick with sweat. The cold takes you. You feel the expanse of nothingness all around you and under your skin. You smell the primordial soup bubble in a million-million worlds. It smells like rancid takeout and cheap perfume. You exhale and focus again.

[And the ones that carry life?]

[Nevermind that. What do we feel there?]

[What will happen to them?]

[And what can I do? Show me that.]

[But a small change could fix all of that...]

All the sudden, one of the scientists has a revelation.

If the brass gets worried about the risks of the device, they could always host their experiments on one of the newly annexed islands they’ve obtained during the war effort. Somewhere safe and private to hold experiments, and if the experiments go poorly, their research could easily be scuttled.

<Outraged, a member of the top brass will visit in seven year’s time, to “inspect” the operation for himself. This is a fabrication. He wants to look them in the eyes as he tells the science team that the station is to be abandoned. And yet things are too far gone. The war effort has turned. This one project has turned from a war-ender into a Hail Mary to get back in the game. It just needs a few small tweaks, and it will be ready for military deployment, they promise...>

Years of funding wasted. A weakness that can be capitalized on. Terrible violence, followed by hard-won peace. It’s surprising how often war is decided by mere paperwork.

You do not enjoy this death, Aamon. War is many things, but its primary purpose is the cessation of life. Even if you did not swing a blade nor feel your clawtip twitch on a hair trigger, having a hand in death-dealing at all turns your stomach.

Even knowing that more would have died had you done nothing is a paltry recompense, in the moment you nudge this world down a brighter path.

But in time you will feel their breath again. Two-billion voices sighing in disparate relief as this decades long, torturous brawl comes to a blistering end. The cold will settle, and the breath of new life will fill the world again.

And with their breath, echoing across infinity, the shivers will return.

...

You come back with a thud, slamming your head into a bookshelf behind you as your legs give out. The magical trinket you had been hammering away at falls to the ground. It clinks and clatters, rolling away into the inky blackness of your workshop - poorly lit as it is. Your form, half-propped against the wall, sinks slowly to the marble floor beneath you.

The burning starts in your stomach. Your throat tightens, trying to hold it down as you pull your hair back. Liquid heat pools behind your eyes, in tears, as you try to pull yourself through the doorway and outside.

Falling over yourself in a clump, you begin to retch. Pained sounds leap from your maw as you vomit up an acidic, bright-white bile that burns through the ground like acid. The deafening sizzling sound, as it melts anything too unfortunate to touch it, is muted by the pain ringing in your ears.

Trying to tap in to your powers in this body always does this. Searing pain rushes down your spine and you fall to the ground, on your side, vision hazy.

You need to rest. You feel your body begin to pass out, despite your resolve to push forward. Every part of you hurts. As you begin to phase out into blissful unconsciousness, a thought crosses your mind.

Despite the blistering pain in your ears, mouth, eyes, stomach, and soul - you feel sublime.

At least one world will be a better place now, and the shivers are gone.

#drabble ;;;#vomit cw ;;;#emetophobia cw ;;;#anyways here's a post-plot aamon drabble! Him being able to do this doesn't apply to all RP's by default #but there are enough people i know who are interested (and this is from another blog of mine anyways) so here!#also yes it is very heavily inspired by a certain video game i've been playing recently #so maybe not 100% canon with what Aamon calls it? But still.

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cryoculus · 4 years

Note

More love for Semi please? Anything will do, your writing is exquisite in any form anyway :D

» Word Count: 1,857 wordsCross-posted on AO3

SORRY THIS IS SO LATE :(( I actually wrote three chapters’ worth of content for him already and you can read the whole thing on the ao3 link.(NOTE: This is based on the current events of the final arc of the Haikyuu manga. I tagged it as a spoiler but I won’t really go into the specifics of what’s going on. Semi is our main focus here ^__^)

—

“Please?”

“No,” was your flat reply.

Semi heaved a long sigh, mouth twitching into an irritated grimace. You returned his reaction with a sassy look of your own—one, finely penciled brow quirked as bright, red lips rivalled the adamance that Semi brought about. While you were in no position to tell him to just go back to his cubicle and get today’s work done (you, sadly, held the same position in office), you at least had the right to turn him down. Your department had a monthly financial report coming up. Why on Earth did he want your help writing a song?

“Come on,” he groaned. “You know I’d eat my fist first before asking for your help, but our manager really digs your old pieces from college.”

Your eye twitched.

“Way to beg for someone’s aid in a time of dire need,” you bit back sarcastically. “Go do it then.”

“What?”

“Eat your whole fist.” You gave him a pointed look, even making a show of paying attention by putting your pen down.

Your co-worker let out a frustrated groan, fingers carding through his messy, ashen hair. The gesture made the tattoos on his chest visible for a second, before disappearing again behind his barely done button-up. It was a mystery, how a man like him made it as a public servant—with his flamboyant piercings and tip-dyed hair—but you supposed you should learn to look past physical appearances. The agency allowed it, so why should you make a fuss?

Ah, right. Semi Eita was the most hot-headed man in your department, and he had a knack for picking fights with you.

“If you get the balance sheet done by five o'clock, I might reconsider,” you told him, not really meaning the words, as you directed your attention back at the paperwork on your desk. Balance sheets are the toughest to fill out, since the data needed had to be collated from different sectors of the city. You highly doubted that Semi, with his thinner-than-a-strand-of-hair patience, could finish it in one sitting.

“Deal.”

Your gaze hardened as you looked back up at him. “Come again?”

“Are you deaf?” he asked, folding lean arms across his chest. “I said it’s a deal.”

You couldn’t help the snort that made its way past your lips. Whatever his reasons may be, it was painfully obvious that he was desperate. But still. You knew that he wouldn’t be able to carry out the deed in your given deadline, but instead of talking him out of his own agreement, you merely shook your head in acceptance.

Semi eventually stalked off to his cubicle; the one just in front of yours. There was a divider that separated each employee’s workspace from the others, and it at least granted some semblance of privacy from outside gazes. You’ve been to Semi’s cubicle a couple of times—more to coordinate paperwork than engage in conversation, really—and he decorated his personal space exactly how a part-time rock band vocalist would. Though he didn’t exactly put up posters and painted the walls black, he added his own flair to his desk with guitar figurines, neon stickers on his desktop, and a photo of his bandmates enclosed in a sparkly picture frame.

The only reason you bothered looking so closely was the fact that you also went to the same university together (under the same degree, too!) You’ve always been keen around him, with his loud way of living, as opposed to you, who’s always chosen to live simply and without pretentiousness. Sure, the disparity between your lifestyles had caused you to be at each other’s throats since freshman year, but it was still a surprise that your synergy was top notch. You would, as Semi put it so delicately, eat your fist first before admitting to the fact, but it’s a given that you preferred to work with him instead of other, unfamiliar people.

You sighed, brandishing a bored look at the bleak document in front of you. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to help him out…

But when you recalled every time he’s talked over you during board meetings, sneered at you when he got a higher score during exams, and his distateful behavior in general, you steeled your resolve.

Either he’s going to get that balance sheet over with or he’ll keel over. If he wanted your help, he’s going to have to work for it.

—

You were in the middle of fixing your belongings when the sound of a stack of papers hitting your desk rang in your ears.

“There,” Semi said breathlessly, making you look up at him in surprise. He even tossed a flash drive on top of the papers he deposited, where you saw the city hall’s heading printed in full color. You reluctantly checked your phone for the time. 16:57, it said, in a mockingly bold typeface before shoving it in your pocket.

The damn guy really did get it done before five.

“The electronic document is saved in there, in case you lose the print.” He was panting at this point, and you had a vague idea as to why he looked like he just ran a marathon. The one printer in your department (this year’s budget was cut) broke down a few days ago, and the nearest functional one was at the Logistics office three floors down.

Still refusing to believe it, you peered at the documents he just brought in. You scanned each of the entries printed on each page. That’s when you realized that Sendai City’s expenses have skyrocketed since the new year because the list of expenses occupied a whole page alone. A worried sigh made its way past your lips, but at least the liabilities were cut down to a minimum. You heard that the governor of Miyagi was going to pledge a few hundred thousand yen for the city’s founding anniversary, too.

You paused. Blinking, you rearranged the papers neatly back into its pile—biting back the urge to clutch your wounded pride. Semi was looking at you expectantly, like he wanted you to praise his flawless bookkeeping.

In actuality, his determination was beginning to freak you out.

“Why do you want me to help you so badly?” you asked, voice almost trembling. “Seriously, dude. I thought we hated each other. Quit acting out of character.”

“I told you, our manager really liked the songs you composed back in senior year,” he drawled, tired of having to repeat himself.

Your face twisted in confusion. “Who even is this manager of yours?”

There was a half-second delay in his response, but before you could paint a reason for his hesitation, he immediately replied with, “Saito. Saito Makoto.”

You stiffened, gaze going rigid at the mention of that name. “Oh.”

“Yeah. If I manage to give him a piece by the end of the month, he’ll help us sign a contract with a big-shot record label,” Semi explained, oblivious to your discomfort.

“But haven’t you been writing songs since high school?” you wondered aloud. “That’s what you said during our Pol-Gov class ice breaker.”

He frowned. “You still remember that?”

Okay. You kept forgetting that your sharp memory wasn’t always a praiseworthy thing. You gulped, feeling the heat creep up your face. “Um, anyway, the point still stands. You’ve been writing songs for God-knows-how-long, and while I’m not one to dish out compliments especially to you, I’m pretty sure they’re okay if you managed to gather a decent fanbase.”

He rolled his eyes, leaning against the divider of your cubicle. “We’re a rock band. I write rock songs, but Saito wants me to write a goddamn love song.”

Typical Saito. Though he looked like a rugged high school delinquent, he was awfully sentimental when it came to music. He was the one who inspired you to write the songs Semi was pestering you about all day after all…

“Fine,” you relented. “I never go back on my word and since you did a…good job with this, I’ll help you out.”

His light brown eyes lit up for a moment, but Semi managed to mask his relief in a split second—containing his excitement in a single nod. “Are you free this Saturday? You can come by my place and we could start getting to work.”

Well, that was forward of him. You expected to work on the song in a coffee shop or something, but he went on ahead and invited you to his own humble abode anyway. You parsed through your weekend plans in your mind, and once you confirmed that you were free, you scribbled down your phone number on a sticky note. Almost five years of acquaintance and you’d never bothered giving it to him. Huh.

“Just text me the time and place,” you told him, pocketing the flash drive as you slipped the balance sheet in one of the empty folders in your organizer. “You better not pull anything funny and lead me to a secluded alley or something.”

Semi scoffed, folding the piece of paper and sticking it inside his trousers. “As if.”

You then slung your bag across your shoulders, grinning insincerely. “Glad we’re on the same page, then.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

With that, Semi exited your cubicle, leaving you no room to wonder why he didn’t even spare a quick ‘thank you’.

Just as you were smoothing out the creases on your pencil skirt, your phone began buzzing in the pocket of your blazer. Brows raised, you fished it out and unlocked it.

From: Makohey, wanna grab some dinner? its on me :3

Speak of the devil. You swallowed the lump in your throat, fingers shakily managing to type a coherent reply.

To: MakoYeah sure. Where to tho

From: Makocan we get some italian? ik u love the udon place across the street but akane’s having dinner w her friends there

From: Makocant have her seeing us together now do we

The way he put that so casually made your chest constrict with a too-familiar sensation. You heaved a deep breath, pursing your lips into a thin line as you sent a quick “Ok” text to end your conversation. Saito replied with those iffy heart-eyed emojis that he only ever used when he wanted something from you, and you had to compose yourself so you wouldn’t burst into tears right there.

“Oi.”

You almost jumped at the sound of Semi’s voice as he peered inside your cubicle once more. He clutched his suitcase in one hand, eyeing you curiously.

“What do you want?”

“You’re headed uptown, too, right?” he asked, and you nodded reluctantly. “Thought you’d want a lift.”

“Semi, just because I’m helping you achieve your dreams, doesn’t mean you have to be nice to me.” You laughed softly, tension easing from his uncalled for kindness.

He, however, looked unconvinced. “Do you want a ride or not?”

You raised your hands in defeat, managing a genuine smile. “Alright, fine. It’ll be a hellish commute anyway.”

You liked to think that that’s how you started becoming friends with your odd, hot-headed co-worker.

#haikyuu!!#semi eita #semi eita x reader #shiratorizawa #hqscenario #haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu fanfiction #haikyuu spoilers #hq headcanons #hq!! headcanons

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slnewman · 4 years

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Special Olympics

For my practicum I have been working with Special Olympics North Carolina (SONC) to execute their Wellness Wednesday sessions. SONC has implemented a new virtual at-home ten-week program called Partner Up Power Up. This Program was designed for athletes to be able to continue with bettering their health, despite the fact that they cannot meet in person. The program is set up to offer something for the athletes to do regarding their health every single day of the week. There are Mindfulness Mondays, Training Tuesdays/Thursdays, Wellness Wednesdays, Free Fridays, Strength Saturdays, and Endurance Sundays. Each week is focused on a specific health topic and the athletes have different power-up activities related to the topic. All of the athletes that signed up to participate received a playbook that outlines the entire program. The playbook includes the activity they will do each day, exercise tutorials, health tips, check off boxes, and goal trackers. This playbook can be completed and submitted to their coach at the end of the program.

For the past 6 weeks my group and I have been specifically in charge of executing the Wellness Wednesday sessions. These sessions are focused on total well-being and incorporate many aspects of health. So far, we have had sessions on healthy eating, hydration, healthy cooking, mental health, and oral health. Each of these sessions have a health professional to guide the session and teach the athletes the topic for the week. Even though these sessions are primarily educational, we always have an exercise warm up at the beginning so that the athletes are working on their physical health, too. These sessions have been amazing to watch and be a part of the activities. My group and I have been able to present in some of the Wellness Wednesdays. We have been able to run the logistics for the sessions as well as collect important data that we can use to evaluate our impact.

When we were first introduced to the task of creating the Wellness Wednesday sessions, I didn’t think that we would have a very good turnout. I thought that we may start off strong and that the numbers would start to fade week after week, like many long programs do. I have been quite amazed that my group and I have kept the numbers over 100 athletes every week. This has been very inspiring and shows us that our work is meaningful. The days leading up to a Wellness Wednesday event can be stressful at times, but whenever the session starts at 7pm on Wednesday nights, everything falls into place and the athletes make it all worth it with their smiles and engagement.

Over the past 6 weeks I have learned so much and have grown immensely more than I ever thought I would during a practicum experience. I have had internships before but working with SONC has been very impactful, not only for the IDD population but for me and my group, as well. I have been in charge of all of the communication pieces between my group, our preceptor, unified partners, athletes, and other volunteers. During this experience I have met many new people, developed new professional skills and have further fueled my passion of working with this vulnerable and amazing population.

Having the opportunity to work with this population has taught me a lot about public health and how underserved people with intellectual disabilities are. Individuals with intellectual disabilities are often at a higher risk for health-related issues not only because of their disability but because of the lack of proper education and health resources that are accessible to them. Some of the health disparities that this population face are: lack of specific need based health education, lack of inclusive health care professionals, transportation issues, and limited resources specifically for individuals with IDD. The Partner Up Power Up program is working to help mitigate those disparities by creating a program that can be done completely at home. Even though this program features virtual live sessions the athletes have all of the materials send directly to them and are able to complete everything without having access to technology. This program also works to give you information to help educate the athletes on healthy practices and encourages them to reach their health goals.

My group and I are also working on creating a toolkit for the athletes to educate them on how to be advocates for their own health. This tool kit will include sections on, what it means to be a healthy athlete, strong minds, fitness, social media, and how to be an advocate for yourself and others. We are very excited for this toolkit and we hope it will help to mitigate the lack of education barrier that some of the athletes experience.

Working with Special Olympics North Carolina has been an incredible experience and I cannot wait for the remaining Wellness Wednesday and I am incredibly excited and honored to be able to work with them more in the upcoming weeks and next semester.

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sciencenewsforstudents · 4 years

Link

An ancient ape that was larger than a full-grown male gorilla has now revealed molecular clues to its evolutionary roots.

Proteins extracted from a roughly 1.9-million-year-old tooth of the aptly named Gigantopithecus blacki peg it as a close relative of modern orangutans and their direct ancestors, say bioarchaeologist Frido Welker of the University of Copenhagen and his colleagues.

Protein comparisons among living and fossil apes suggest that Gigantopithecus and orangutan forerunners diverged from a common ancestor between around 10 million and 12 million years ago, Welker’s group reports November 13 in Nature.

Since it was first described in 1935, based on a molar purchased from a traditional Chinese drugstore in Hong Kong, G. blacki has stimulated debate over its evolutionary links to other ancient apes. Almost 2,000 isolated teeth and four partial jaws of G. blacki have since been found in southern China and nearby parts of Southeast Asia. G. blacki fossils date from around 2 million to almost 300,000 years ago. The sizes of individual teeth and jaws indicate that G. blacki weighed between 200 and 300 kilograms.

Proteins preserve better in teeth and bones than DNA does, but both molecular forms break down quickly in hot, humid settings. “We were surprised to find any proteins this old at all, especially in a fossil from a subtropical environment,” Welker says. Proteins consisting of chains of amino acids can be used to sort out living and fossil species of various animals, including hominids (SN: 5/1/19).

Researchers generally regard G. blacki as an orangutan relative that evolved to live in forests and eat fruits, leaves, stems and possibly tubers. But that assumption has rested on thin evidence, says biological anthropologist Terry Harrison of New York University.

“This new [protein] analysis provides the first compelling evidence that Gigantopithecus was more closely related to the orangutan than to any other ape,” Harrison says.

In this illustration, the ancient Asian ape Gigantopithecus looks much like an orangutan. Proteins from a Gigantopithecus tooth point to a close evolutionary link between the extinct ape and orangutan ancestors.

CREDIT: IKUMI KAYAMA/STUDIO KAYAMA LLC

Welker’s team retrieved amino acid sequences from six proteins in a G. blacki molar previously found in southern China’s Chuifeng Cave. Five of those proteins are commonly found in living chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans and humans, enabling comparisons of accumulated differences in the amino acid arrangements between G. blacki and those five present-day primates. Orangutans displayed the fewest protein disparities with G. blacki, signaling a particularly close evolutionary link between living red apes and the ancient Asian ape. Using those protein comparisons, the age of the G. blacki tooth and previous estimates of when various living apes diverged from common ancestors, Welker’s group calculated the timing of a common ancestor for orangutans and G. blacki.

The sixth protein has been linked to a process by which minerals are produced to harden bones and teeth. That protein may have contributed to the formation of especially thick tooth enamel in G. blacki, the researchers speculate.

No attempt was made to remove DNA from the ancient ape tooth. Even in colder regions than southern China, only much younger fossils have yielded DNA (SN: 3/14/16).

Ancient proteins from other Asian fossil apes dating to between around 12 million and 6 million years ago are needed to further clarify the evolutionary position of G. blacki, says paleoanthropologist Russell Ciochon of the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Ciochon suspects that Indopithecus giganteus, a fossil ape that inhabited what’s now northern India and Pakistan during that period, was a potential ancestor of G. blacki.

Protein analyses of fossil orangutans that lived in Southeast Asia at the same time as G. blacki may also help untangle how and why red apes died out in China after approximately 126,000 years ago, but still live on two Indonesian islands, Ciochon says. Such research could provide insights into how best to save endangered orangutans today (SN: 2/15/18).

#science #scied #sciblr #animals #fossils #apes #anthropology #evolution

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imdoingthismspaintadventure · 4 years

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Worm 2.5 - In which Taylor makes a questionable decision

When we last read Worm, the trio were being horrible and Taylor NOPE’d out of school. possibly to consider Tt’s offer. I guess we’ll see how that goes

If you looked at Brockton Bay as a patchwork of stellar and squalor, upper class and lower class with no middle ground, then downtown was one of the nice areas. The streets and sidewalks were wide, and that meant that even with skyscrapers in every other lot, there was a great deal of blue overhead.

So BB is a city with huge class disparity where the difference in wealth between districts is vast. It sounds more Gotham than Metropolis. (Even if Gotham is probably unmatched in how much of a shithole it is. Holy shit that place is cursed)

Following my retreat from school grounds, I hadn’t been sure what to do. My dad worked an unreliable schedule, so I couldn’t spend the rest of the afternoon at home unless I wanted to risk having to explain what I was doing home on a school day. I didn’t want to hang around the general area of my school, so that had left me the options of the half-hour walk to downtown or a trip to the Boardwalk. Between my morning runs and the previous night’s escapades, I had seen enough of the Boardwalk, so I’d decided to head downtown.

Yeah that seems sensible. Going to the boardwalk seems like it risks an encounter from one of Lung’s subordinates, which were apparently seeking revenge. Although that shouldn’t be a problem given than Armsmaster took both the credit and the blame.

Poor Danny, he’s totally lost control of this situation.

I didn’t want to dwell on the subject of school or Emma, so I turned my focus to the recent message from Tattletale. She wanted to meet, presumably to repay the favor she felt she owed me. I considered the possibility that it was a trap, but I couldn’t imagine any angle where it would be. She just didn’t have any reason to go after me. The worst case scenario was that it wasn’t Tattletale, but that wasn’t the impression I’d had. What she said in the message seemed to flow with what I had seen of her last night. I would be careful, nonetheless.

Yeah I can’t think of any reason they would have to go after her besides being cartoonishly villanous, and they didn’t seem like the type.

That it is a trap from someone else (like one of the flunkies who were in the fight and saw the bugs) is more believable, but that is also unlikely, I think.

I think it’s genuinely Tattletale wanting to meet, which is also the most narratively interesting situation.

It was perplexing. These guys were, in large part, virtual unknowns. From what I knew of Grue and Hellhound, they were both marginally successful B-list villains who had been barely scraping by. Now both were on a team that was pulling high profile heists and confounding even the likes of Armsmaster. The two of them seemed totally different in methodology and style, and if I was remembering right, both Grue and Hellhound had lived in different cities prior to teaming up and setting roots in Brockton Bay. That raised the question: who or what had drawn these four very different individuals together?

Damn, seems like they leveled up! They got much more organized and competent! And are pulling larger scale heists!

They do seem pretty different! A darkness-generator seems more stealth based, as opposed to the feral monster dogs. But they seem to have good synergy!

Maybe Tt organized them and brought them together? We know so little of both her and Regent...

It was possible that Tattletale or Regent were the uniting factors, but I couldn’t really imagine it, having seen what I did of their group dynamic. Grue had poked fun at Regent rather than treat him like a leader, and while I couldn’t put my finger on it, the more I imagined Tattletale uniting that group of unconnected people with powers, the harder I found it to picture. In fact, when I thought about it, hadn’t Grue said they had fought for a considerable amount of time over how to deal with Lung? It didn’t really sound like they had any leadership worth speaking about.

So they seem to be competently organized while also having no organization at all and frequently bickering. Hmm.

Maybe there’s a shadow leader, or another group behind them? Or maybe they just work like that, in some weird way.

It wasn’t hard to sympathize with Armsmaster. The whole scenario there was just bizarre, and it was made worse by the fact that there were practically no details as far as Tattletale or Regent went. Information, it seemed, was a major factor when dealing with capes.

Knowledge is power. If you know somebody’s weakpoints or full extent of abilities, it makes things a lot easier

Information is often underestimated in series that are all about powerlevels and strength, but I love it when it makes a difference.

The streets were busy with people on their lunch break. Businessmen and businesswomen were heading to restaurants and fast food places. My stomach growled as I passed a line of people waiting their turn at a street vendor. I checked my pockets and winced at the realization that I didn’t have enough for even a hot dog. My lunch had been in my backpack.

Have I mentioned that Taylor’s daily life sucks hard? Because it does.

I stopped myself before I could finish that train of thought and put myself into a worse mood by dwelling on what had happened at school. Still, as I thought back to the circle of villains and Tattletale’s message, the amusing thought crossed my mind that I could ask them to repay the favor by buying me lunch. It wasn’t a serious thought, but the ridiculousness of the mental image – me eating a burger with a group of supervillains – put a dumb smirk on my face. I was pretty sure I looked like a moron to anyone on the street who happened to glance at me.

Hehehe

That sounds awesome.

Supervillain burger time!

As I thought on it, though, the notion that I might actually consider taking Tattletale up on her offer of a meeting nagged at me. The more I thought on it, the scarier the idea got, and the more it seemed to make sense.

Uh oh, I can feel the incresingly more likely villainous path for Taylor creeping closer

What if I did take them up on the offer? I could meet them, talk with them, see what they had to offer, and all the while, fish for information. If I got anything worth sharing, I could turn around and give it to Armsmaster so he could use it against them. Just going by what Armsmaster had said about these guys and the scarcity of information on them, it would be a pretty major coup for the good guys.

Uhhh that sounds shaky at best and a horrible idea at worst.

You would have to get close to them and then betray their trust. Which is both rough, cause you tend to form emotional ties with people, especially for someone as isolated as Taylor; and it is also dangerous, as you make very dangerous enemies in the process who know a lot about you

Okay, so they would likely see my ploy as a monumental betrayal if and when I pulled it off. I would be making enemies. That said, I suspected that when it came out that I was a hero and not a villain, they would count it as such regardless. Didn’t it make sense to leverage as much information as I could from them before they caught on, as far as their misconception went?

What the?

Someone finding out their assumptions about you were wrong and someone finding out you personally betrayed them and screwed them after getting close to them are two very different things

I feel like we are in a very high speed bad decision train of thought.

I turned around and headed in the direction of the public library. It was only a few blocks away.

The library was busy, which made sense, given the number of offices and businesses around, the number of people wanting some quiet during their lunch hour, and people doing research or casual browsing they couldn’t do at their workplaces. I would have included Brockton Bay’s biggest and fanciest high school, the nearby Arcadia High, in that generalization, but I doubted many students were spending their lunch breaks at the library.

Going to the library to clear your mind and think about all of this?

The Central Library looked almost more like a museum or art gallery than anything else, with tall ceilings, pillars and massive pieces of artwork hung to frame the hallways between the major sections of the building. I headed up to the second floor, where there were about twenty computers and a line of people waiting their turn to use them. I anticipated a fifteen or twenty minute wait, but as the clock approached one o’clock, people headed back to work and the line rapidly thinned out. A free computer came up within a few minutes of my joining the line. I let the person behind me go on ahead, waiting a bit longer so I could get a station with a little more privacy.

Oh is she heading to the library computer to avoid being traced as she responds? Smart!

Also I would love to be in that library. All of the yes.

By the time I sat down, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to write. I found the message with the search function and clicked on the username ‘Tt’. A drop down menu appeared, and I chose ‘send private message’. It gave me the option of making an account, signing in with an already existing account, or sending the message as an anonymous guest. I chose the last option, then typed:

Subject: Re:Bug

Bug here. Would like to meet, but want proof you are Tt. I’ll reciprocate if needed.

Welp we put the plan in motion it seems! A very dangerous plan at that!

Going to the library, using an anonnymous identity, asking for proof...Taylor is being very smart in doing something that seems very dumb

I didn’t send it right away, taking a moment to consider. Getting decent proof would prevent any potential problems like the message turning out to be a trap laid by, say, Bakuda. Leaving the burden of proof on Tattletale and leaving it up to her to decide if she wanted verification I was indeed ‘Bug’ meant I didn’t have to worry about coming up with exactly how one might prove their identity. I reread it twice over, then sent the message.

I don’t think it would be Bakuda, especially now that you commented on the possibility.

The reply came only two or three minutes later. It was fast enough that I couldn’t imagine Tattletale taking the time to check and double check every aspect of her message the way I had mine. Was that recklessness on her part, or just the benefit of experience?

Maybe she has a knack for these things? Or has done this before?

I closed the tabs I had opened in the meantime and checked to see what she had written. It was a private message, from her to me, and it set my fight or flight instincts in high gear:

Subject: re:Bug

Proof? Last night you didn’t say anything until I asked your name. Big guy had a mess of nasty bites and you pepper sprayed him and I told my pal G that when he asked. Good enough?

G R and me will meet you at the same spot we crossed paths last night, k? Don’t have to get gussied up if you catch my drift. Rest of us will be in casual wear.

If we meet at 3 will that give you enough time to get there from library with everything you need? let me know

Ta ta

Oh what the fuck

Tattletale knows you are in the library? That is concerning

Is that her power? Is she able to know where people are and what they are doing? Therefore knowing their “secrets”, hence the nickname? That seems very powerfull

Let’s hope her mental-type power doesn’t also include reading minds, cause if it does, you are already extremely fucked.

Remember what I said before about this being a bad idea? With the possibility of a mental power in their group, multiply that ten times.

My heart pounded. She knew where I was, and she was letting me know. Why? More to the point, how? Had I unwittingly entered an online exchange with a savvy hacker? I knew my way around computers, my mom had made sure I had one since before I could read and write, but I would be lying if I said I could tell if I was being hacked or do anything about it.

She could have just seen your library IP, I guess. Powers seems more interesting though.

I would have interpreted the casual mention of my location as a veiled threat if it didn’t run contrary to everything else in her messages to me. Besides – Tattletale was talking about meeting me in casual clothes. I took that to mean they wouldn’t be in costume. I couldn’t understand why, but at the same time, it was hard to imagine her threatening me with one breath just a sentence after she’d offered to meet me in a way that made her totally vulnerable.

I would say her mentioning it was more of a power flex, than it was a threat.

And that move not only makes her vulnerable, it makes you vulnerable, It means that they both know your identity, and you know theirs. Which both sound really bad

Tattletale had unwittingly raised the stakes for my scheme. My primary goal was to gather information on them, and here I was getting a chance to see them with their masks off. It was too good to be true, which made me wonder what kind of safeguards they had in place to protect themselves.

I think the stakes were already higher than you realized. This is an insanely risky move. There is a reason why only trained professionals are double agents.

I just had no idea what I would be getting into.

That is an understatement.

The screensaver came up while I stared at the monitor with thoughts racing through my head. The words ‘BROCKTON BAY CENTRAL LIBRARY’ scrolled across the screen in varying colors.

I bet it never hits the corner.

If I went, best case scenario, I could get enough information to turn them in. I’d get mucho cred from the good guys and respect from an international celebrity. If I’d judged Armsmaster right, I’d get even more brownie points if I gave him the info and let him – or helped him – make the bust. On the flip side of the coin, the worst case scenario was that it was a trap, or they’d figure out what I was doing. It would mean a fight, maybe a beating. There was an outside possibility I could get killed, but somehow that didn’t concern me as much as it maybe should have. Part of the reason for my lack of concern, I think, was that the possibility existed any time I went out in costume. That, and from my interactions with them last night, I didn’t get a ‘killer’ vibe from them.

They are still villains! Villains you would royally piss off!!

Also I can’t help but feel that the “mucho cred” you would get from the heroes and the world is slighly idealized. The Risk/Reward ratio on this one is not good

On the topic of the status quo… if I didn’t go, what would happen? This particular window of opportunity would likely pass, as far as being able to get the dirt on Tattletale and her gang. That was okay, as I thought on it. It was a high risk, high reward venture anyways. Taking that path would mean turning down the meet, then killing time for the rest of the afternoon, trying to avoid dwelling on the fact that I had missed two straight afternoons of classes and might, maybe, miss more. It was depressing to think about.

Is she subsconsciously putting herself in very dangerous situations as a form of escapism ? That doesn’t seem healthy

“Excuse me?”

Startled, I looked up. A middle aged woman in a red jacket stood just behind me. As I met her eyes she asked, “Are you done?” She gestured at the computer, where the screensaver was still scrolling.

“Excuse me, ma’am, I was in the process of making a mistake”

Heady with the relief that she hadn’t been, irrationally enough, Tattletale, I smiled and told her, “Give me thirty seconds.”

Subject: Re:Bug

See you at three.

Well, we’re all in now. Let’s see how this goes.

#Worm #Worm liveblog #parahumans liveblog #worm parahumans #wildbow #parahumans #Taylor what are you doing #arc 2 #worm 2.5

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