#well. the porpoising is almost gone so | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

selfcare-or-procrastination · 2 years

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STORY TIME:

Y/N, Toto's wife of 3 years, comes to visit him at the ____ GP. (they have an age gap)

Toto hates to show any kind of PDA and non of them are really active on social media. AND this means that nobody knows to who he is married too.

Sadly people are known to be mean and disrespectful to others who they actually dont know. *cought Horner*🤫

And Toto the gentelman he is, shows Y/N that everything they said about her are false accusations. 😉🥵

Cold Coffee | Toto Wolff x Reader

Summary: After an unfortunate run in with Christian Horner, you and Toto spend some private time together to disprove Horner’s words.

Warnings: 18+, oral (m receiving), praise?, biggest warning is that Christian H*rner is in it

Words: 1.1k

a/n: I put a slightly different spin on this than requested but hopefully you still like it ☺️

Toto had invited you to the Canadian Grand Prix with him which despite you both having been married for almost 2 years, was rare. He liked to keep you out of the spotlight so he could have a private personal life and you didn’t mind at all. You weren’t the most confident so the thought of having cameras in your face all the time and people speculating about your relationship didn’t appeal to you. Toto had given you a Mercedes pass so that you could get around the paddock but you had taken your wedding and engagement rings off and gone for a fairly plain black outfit with a Mercedes polo so you looked more like a staff member than Toto’s wife.

When you and Toto were in private, he was incredibly affectionate, always holding your hand, placing a hand on your back, kissing you but in public he was more cautious. Neither of you really used social media except for some very small scale private accounts that only your immediate family followed. You were also quite a bit younger than Toto so all in all, you didn’t think anyone would notice who you were.

You wondered around the paddock, taking in the atmosphere, it was all still quite exciting to you as you didn’t come very often. As you walked back into the Mercedes building you accidentally knocked shoulders with none other than Christian Horner who had been in Toto’s office to discuss the regulation changes over the porpoising.

“I’m sorry,” you apologised politely for bumping into him.

Christian looked you up and down, taking in the Mercedes polo shirt and pass, looking as if he was trying to place who you were.

“Just be more careful in future,” he responded sharply.

You knew Toto wasn’t fond of Horner and his tone towards you made it very clear why.

“Hang on, didn’t I ask you for a coffee when I came in?”

You looked at him blankly, he had clearly mistaken you for someone else, obviously not having cared enough to remember anyone’s face.

“Well I thought Mercedes normally employed slightly more hardworking people, no wonder the team is struggling at the moment if they’re relying on people like you.”

You could only assume the meeting hadn’t gone his way, surely people weren’t generally this rude. You look up, still so taken aback that you don’t know what to say. Your eyes meet Toto’s who is now stood a few steps behind Christian.

“Christian, I see you’ve met my wife,” Toto sounds angry.

His words only add to your shock, having both been so careful to not let people know who you were and then he has just announced it to someone very untrustworthy. Horner’s face dropped, realising how unpopular he would have just made himself by insulting Toto’s wife.

You composed yourself enough to extend your hand for a hand shake, “nice to meet you.”

He shook your hand and weakly excused himself from the building and walked quickly back out into the paddock. Toto slid his arm around you and placed a kiss to your forehead.

“Are you okay my love?”

You nod quickly, “I can see why you never liked him.”

Toto laughs at your words and leads you back to his office so you can have some more privacy. You walk in and sit yourself at his desk chair, spinning round in it. Toto wouldn’t normally let anyone do that but it was you and he thought you looked hot sat at the desk. He sits himself down on the edge of the desk facing you and pulls you towards him using the arms of the chair.

He places a firm but loving kiss to your lips that you immediately return.

“Ignore Christian, he is a prick,” Toto sounds angry still but then his tone softens, “your face is unforgettable,” he places gentle kisses on your forehead, your cheeks, your nose and then your lips again.

You liked this protective side of Toto, you didn’t get to see it very often as you led such private lives but the way he had introduced you as his wife in such a commanding way had you weak at the knees.

“How private is your office?” you ask, suggestively running a hand up Toto’s muscular thigh.

It didn’t take much for Toto to get the hint as he reached for a controller that lowered blinds on all the windows.

“Let me show you how hardworking I can be,” you winked at him. With him on the desk and you in the chair, your head was perfectly in line with his lap.

Toto groaned at your words as you undid his belt buckle and zipper, palming him through the fabric of his boxers. You pull down the waistband, exposing his hardened cock to you. You push Toto’s thighs further apart so you can situate yourself comfortably between his legs. You take the tip of him into your mouth, sucking gently on it, making Toto’s breath catch in his throat.

Your tongue gathers up the salty pre-cum and smears it up and down his length as you lick from base to tip, holding his cock steady with your hand. You move your head down, taking about half of him into your mouth before moving back up to the head again.

“Hard workers don’t tease Schatz,” Toto warns as his hand settles itself on the back of your head, gently guiding you down his length.

Your nose brushes up against his pubic bone and you desperately focus on breathing and not gagging as he hits the back of your throat. His hand helps you set a pace as you move your mouth up and down his cock.

You can see the muscles in his abdomen tightening as he uses his free hand to grip the edge of the desk.

A string of mumbled profanities leave Toto’s lips as you continue your movements, your hands steadying yourself on his thighs.

“How could anyone forget a face that looks so pretty with a mouthful of cock,” Toto groans, taking in the sight beneath him.

You moan at Toto’s words, the vibrations against his dick have the muscles in his thighs contracting under your hands.

“I’m close,” he warns and you hum in response to signal that it’s okay for him to cum in your mouth.

Soon enough you feel his hot cum painting the back of your throat as you swallow it down, taking in his expression. His head is tilted back and lips parted as he breathes heavily, holding your head down.

You lick him clean and release him from your mouth with a ‘pop’. You smile up at your husband, pleased you can still make him feel this good.

Toto takes a couple more moments to regain his composure.

“You would certainly be employee of the month after that if you worked here.”

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racingliners · 1 year

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F1 Re-Watch 2022: Round 8 - Azerbaijan

alternatively titled: F1 Liveblog - Well Done Baku edition

Very much no memories head empty on this one, truly going into it blind. oh boy.

I really hope Seb did well bc idk if I can handle watching this for 2 hours for nothing 😭

at least he looks very pretty in the intro

I was very briefly on the F1 tv comms and Ben Edwards my beloved I had no idea he worked for F1 now.

Alas I still switched to international. For Ted crumbs ✊

SEB IN THE TOP 10

oh christ he started next to Fernando

2012 called they want their quali results back

Ah. Charles on pole. So he’s not winning then?

(I know I’ve seen this film before, and we all know the ending)

[Start/Lap 1]: Aaaaaaand Perez takes the lead at the start

all clean into turn one though??? Well done Baku

...so far all clean on the first lap??? You mean everyone had their braincells???

ayyyyyy Seb up into P8.

[Lap 2]: Perez with over a second gap already. oof.

also. a completely clean first lap. I am astounded.

oh nvm Nicky got a stop go penalty for a starting grid infringement. ouch.

[Lap 3]: ahhhh Seb’s behind Lewis

besties that race together thrive together

even though Seb’s 1.4 back bc AMR22 gonna tractor

[Lap 4]: “Red Bull is quick” yeah no shit Carlos

[Lap 6]: Charles probably has jaws music playing in his head rn. I feel it’s inevitable that Verstappen’s going to pass him.

[Lap 8]: There has been zero Ted crumbs. Was he not at Baku???

These are the things I think about bc not much has really happened.

[Lap 9]: and as I say that Sainz has stopped at the turn 4 run off

ouch mechanical failure

VSC!

[Lap 10]: Two seconds of Seb before cutting to Leclerc in the pits.

Can I at least get a Bono or Antti sighting to make up for it?

oh Seb jumped Lewis at the stop!!

The Ferrari mechanics kicking the tyre after the slow stop is a mood.

and VSC gone

[Lap 12]: Seb onboard!! chasing Ocon for P9

Lewis following behind munching on some popcorn

Seb was second fastest in the speedtrap in quali?? that’s my boy!!!

[Lap 13]: And he was in P9 for two seconds before binning it into the run off 😭

the spin he did to rejoin was sexy though

Livery watch!! Italian flag Alfa Romeo v stunning

[Lap 15]: oh. Red Bull on Red Bull violence-ish

“No fighting”

....if I speak

[Lap 16]: ANYWAY back to Esteban v Lewis

[Lap 17]: Ouch Perez with a 5.7 stop. Just to rub salt in the wound.

[Lap 18]: ooooh nice pass from Lewis on Ocon for P9

[Lap 19]: and Leclerc into the lead. How long will this last? 😬

[Lap 20]: ayyyy Seb sighting!!

also Baku alert the McLaren’s are thinking about fighting

aaaaaand Ferrari engine go poof. Again.

Clowneria Ferrari strikes again

[Lap 21]: Dan and Pierre are fighting

Cut to Mattia looking dead inside. Sums up Ferrari’s 2022 tbh.

[Lap 22]: And Gasly passes Dan like it was nothing 😶

“The big battle now is in the midfield” The battles is almost always in the midfield that’s where is spice is in races

oof the Alpha Tauri’s are racy rn, Yuki just got past Ocon.

[Lap 23]: AND SEB BACK INTO P9 LET’S GO

Esteban v Seb v Guanyu for P8 👀

pls don’t mess it up again Seb

aw no Zhou has some kind of mechanical problem 😔

[Lap 24]: Esteban v Seb 2 electric boogaloo

Livery Watch (you know the drill): AM preeeeeeetty

[Lap 25]: AND HE GETS P8 THAT’S MY BOYYYYYYY!!!!!

that was a v pretty pass. We love to see it.

(Unrelated, I miss Ted)

[Lap 26]: And Lewis also gets past Dan like it’s nothing for P5

“We know that Alpine was slippier than an eel on steroids in the straight line” Crofty?????

I mean tbf he was overtaking a Haas

[Lap 27]: And Alonso gets past Esteban

I do not know if I can take a Seb v Fernando battle at half past 10 on a Tuesday evening

Shoutout to the midfield for once again carrying the entertainment levels of a race

[Lap 29]: Yikes, I have never heard Lewis sound in pain over radio before. The whole porpoising stuff was a mess

You can actually hear the car skidding over the sound of the engine. BIG yikes.

[Lap 32]: Pretty sure Esteban is going for Perez’s Minister of Defence title, he’s like a mobile blue and pink brick wall.

[Lap 33]: And a very slow Haas. And another Ferrari engine going poof.

Ferrari PUs clearly not Baku fans.

and another VSC

[Lap 34]: ...McLaren are going to pit Dan right? He still needs to stop

oh phew they did.

Seb up into P7 😏

Though he is once again behind Lewis.

[Lap 35]: And we’re green!

and a Seb sighting!!!

[Lap 36]: Lewis did indeed have a tyre advantage he got past Yuki like cutting through butter

15 laps left, and this race has felt both long and short at the same time.

[Lap 37]: Somewhat distressed Toto sighting

oh shit Yuki’s DRS is split down the middle, that’s not fun.

Yup, black and orange flag, that’s such rotten luck. Although I have never seen DRS break like that ever

[Lap 39]: I love it when they just slap duct tape on things. Peak motorsport.

[Lap 40]: And Seb up into P6, once again behind Lewis, they clearly had some magnetic pull going on in Baku.

[Lap 41]: And suddenly Verstappen can’t use DRS???

Red Bull branded teams not being besties with DRS it seems

[Lap 43]: Lewis really catching Gasly 👀

[Lap 44]: And he gets the move done into turn 4. noice.

Ouch. Cut to Ferrari starting to pack up the garage and pitwall. Cue distant Italian sobbing.

[Lap 46]: Anyway Seb’s still holding in P6!!!!! We really do love to fucking see it!!!!!

[Lap 47]: Lewis’ seat has gone cold???? W13 gonna W13 I guess.

and Lance mechanical DNF

Also trying not to think about Verstappen breaking Seb’s Red Bull podium record.

[Lap 49]: Shoutout to Gasly dragging the Alpha Tauri into P5. We love the midfield continuing to smash it.

oop the McLaren’s are thinking about fighting

[Lap 51/Finish]: Aaaand Red Bull 1-2.

Granted the Ferrari’s both DNFing helped Merc, but shoutout to George and Lewis dragging the W13 into third and fourth. I could never.

SEB IN P6 YABADABADEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Well... honestly idk how I felt about that race. Stuff happened, and there were some medium spice battles but it felt more of a race by strategy than anything else, with the mechanical failure induced VSCs. Though Seb did get his season-best result so we’ll always stan that.

6 and a half front wings out of 10.

Next Race: Canada

#F1 Re watch #F1 2022 re watch #F1 LIveblog #Azerbaijan edition

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forelsketparadise · 2 years

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#BahrainGP FP3 Highlights

Kevin is the first car out followed by the Alfa Romeo cars.

Kevin and Mick are doing out laps run. They have no recorded time yet.

The Mercedes cars came out to do a out lap and returned to the pits.

Only Alfa Romeo cars have recorded time with 50 minutes to go.

Rest of the teams are yet to leave the pit.

Lando’s radio- “The wind direction similar to P2,a little bit gustier’

Nico and lando, ferrari mercedes and alfa Romeo cars are the only cars on track at the moment with 45 mins to go.

Nico’s radio-” Any Porpoising from your side?” “nope don’t think so”

McLaren just finished the repairs on Daniel’s car 17 mins into the session.

Carlos gets fastest sector 1 and 2.

Charles Gets the fastest sector 1, 2 and 3 to go faster overall to P1 on his first lap. He has soft tyres.

Perez radio- ‘Break pedal is long has a bit of travel, quite of a bit of travel” “okay, we got some used material on”

Perez is now the fastest in sector 3.

Pierre goes P10 on his first lap. He is on medium tyres.

Yellow flag briefly as Charles into the gravels after spinning badly at turn 11.

Pierre goes P13 now.

Yuki is not yet they are working on car hydraulic issue. He can’t come out this session.

George’s radio “still not feeling massively comfortable with the car. so much understeer apex low speed”

Half time top 5 are Max, Charles, Carlos, Perez and Lewis.

Pierre is p13 at half time

Haas, Alfa Romeo are faster today as well. Even Williams is doing better than McLaren, Aston Martin, Alpha Tauri and Alpine.

Yuki radio “i cannot turn the steering there is something wrong” “Yuki er are checking the car” “some thing smells like oil”

Alex radio “the front were gone after 4 corners, the fronts were gone,”

Lewis goes P2 now.

Radio between Lewis and Bono about the performace of the car.

Carlos goes p2 now with fastest in sector 2.

George goes P1 with fastest sector 2 and 3.

Bottas goes P5

Charles goes P1 fastest in sector 2 again. He is on soft tyres.

Pierre goes P10. He is on soft tyres.

Lando also break into top 10 with P7 on soft.

Charles radio “lap isn’t isnt great especially last sector i think we will be missing quite a bit compared to the others,”

Lance breaks into top 10 with P9.

Alpine cars have been very slow in the whole session. they are among the bottom lot today.

Fernando radio “That was nice”

Carlos almost runs into Fernando in the pits as he was released. The incident is noted

Kevin gets back in top 10 with P7.

Mick goes fastest in sector 2. He stays P14.

Mick goes fastest sector 2 again. Stays P14.

Top 5 after the session Max, Charles, Perex George and Carlos.

Lewis and Pierre finish the session at P6 and P13 respectively.

Average laps done 17-19 laps.

Least laps (13) Lance and Nicky followed by Max, Kevin, Lewis, Alonso and Alex who all have 14 laps.

Most laps- Valtteri Bottas (20) followed by Perez, Carlos and Daniel (19)

Pierre and Charles did 17 and 15 laps respectively.

Ferrari gets a team reprimand for the Carlos and Fernando incident. Unsafe release.

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lunewell · 3 years

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The Norwegian Mermaid Association - Part 2

Part 1 can be found here

Word Count: 1688 words

Written for MerMay

CW: Attempted Drowning

Can also be read on Wattpad

This is Part 2 of The Norwegian Mermaid Association, and follows Morten, who after his discovery of mermaids, goes to find a mermaid of his own.

For someone who’s entire world view had just been shattered, Morten was coping surprisingly well with it. It had been about a month since the mermaid incident, and only a brief breakdown later he was already alright.

Well, actually, more than alright. This discovery had awakened Mortens childhood love and curiosity of the supernatural, and he often found himself wandering through mossy forests or enthralled in the depths of the sea, wondering what was hidden around him. Some might consider it a problem, the way he seemed to find it harder and harder to focus on the fishing, more and more caught in the ripples of the waves, but Morten found it nothing short of delightful.

His co-workers, however, were not quite as happy as himself. They couldn’t bring themselves to be angry at him, as they had all at one point or another experienced the shock, but they were rather annoyed. Morten couldn’t blame them, not really. He was well aware of how much of a nuisance he was being right now.

Which is why, it came to him as little surprise, when Thomas approached him with an offer; “why don’t you take a little break from work?” he asked one day, leaning on the rail of the small fishing boat next to him, “you’ve been awfully distracted lately, and I think you need some time to think.”

Morten started into the waves, biting his lips. Truth be told, he didn’t want to leave the waves hiding so many secrets, even if he was slowly getting on everyone’s nerves. He twiddled his thumbs, stiff and quite tense. After a while had passed in silence, he heard a sigh next to him. “If it helps,” Thomas began, voice lowered, “you could always take a break at a more… tempting spot. There’s a mermaid hotspot not too far from here, it’s where we met our wives.”

Morten eyes lit up at that. He himself had little interest in the wife part, but even the idea that he would be able to communicate with one or the creatures was more than enticing. Thomas smirked, clearly having picked up on his excitement; “I’ll give you the directions when we get back to shore.”

———————————-

Though he considered himself rather mature, Morten was vibrating like a sugar-high child. The spruce trees around the large lake and river mouth stood tall and proud in the slightly overcast sky, and though he had yet to even see a singular mermaid, he could hear their chattering and laughing flowing through the wind.

Following the voices through soft grass and over sun-bleached rocks, it wasn’t long before he was but branches away from his desired destination. Quite literally, in fact, as the only thing obscuring the creatures was a few branches of an oak tree.

With a deep breath, he reached out to the soft leaves hanging off the solid tree, and pulled it to one side.

It was not the first time Morten saw mermaids, his breath still caught like rock in his throat. Spread all around the shore, there were five mermaids with brightly coloured tails in hues of purple, blue, red, and green that scales sparkled majestically, all having flowing hair and distinctly non-human traits that were so awe-inspiring that he couldn’t stop himself starring. They were joking playfully between themselves, an odd language that sounded reminiscent of an odd dialect of Old Norse.

One of them- the one with night-coloured curls and a spotty, grey, rainbow-hued tail, saw him gaping and gave a playful, but undoubtedly mischievous smile. She turned around to the group speaking rapidly, before hushed voices giggling, before all eyes and tails turned to him.

“Hello,” he whispered a bit unsure of himself, “I was wondering if you would be willing to, uh, tell me a little bit more about your species.”

Another round of looks were exchanged between the girls, before the spotty one looked up with a grin, and answered him not in Old Norse but in perfect Norwegian; “why, of course. Why don’t you come with us into the water, and we can discuss it in full…”

A feeling of fear, a gut deep feeling carved from years of reading about the spirits in the water, coursed through him. And yet, there was something in her voice- safe, trusting, melodic, and lulling like the waves, that made him instantly comply and step towards the high waves.

His feet stumbled closer, while his sub-conscious screamed that something was deeply wrong, and his heart began to race. It wasn’t long before he felt the first drop of water wet the tip of his shoes that he had been too unaware to take off, and it was an even shorter amount of time before he felt it spill over and onto his socks.

The shock of the icy water against his skin snapped him out of the trance just in time to see a series of sharp claws lunging out toward him. He tried to leap away, heart hammering, but ten hands had already grappled and dug deep into his skin, the water around him turning a light red, and submerged him underwater. His nostrils burned from the water as he wiggled desperately, lashing and thrashing hopelessly as the mermaids kept ripping his clothes and skin.

He was going to die here, in this watery grave, shredded by hostile mermaids. He could already see the vision blackening at the edges, and as a sharp claw gripped tightly around his throat, he closed his wet eyes and prayed that his death was not too far away.

Then, like a prayer answered, everything stopped.

For a good second, he’d thought he’d died. He no longer felt cold- in fact he was surprisingly warm, and though he was sore, he was surrounded by an odd sense of tranquility that could only be explained by a fading soul.

“Are you alright?” a soft, mellow voice asked gently, and Morten realised for the first time that the hammering around him was not the grasps of hands but his own, very alive, beating heart. He hesitantly pried his eyes open, fully expecting to stare at death. In all fairness, based on the way his heart leaped at the sight in front of him, it might as well have been death.

A blonde man- no- merman, with warm brown eyes which looked at him in a way that made his heart melt, had pushed him safely on the shore and was now cradling his body. Half the creatures cheat was covered by not scales, but inhuman skin that connected to a tail which he immediately recognised as one of a porpoise harbour.

He was the most beautiful thing Morten had ever seen.

“Sorry about them,” the stranger said, in a tone that sounded completely genuine, “not all of us respect your species, and I promise we’re not all like that.” He trailed off, giving another blinding smile that made Morten’s pulse go on cocaine, before finally reaching out a blue skinned hand; “I’m Kjell, and you my darling human are?”

“M-m- Morten,” he mumbled, mind still caught at darling human, “I uh, yeah. My name is Morten.”

“Morten. That’s a gorgeous name,” Kjell said with a little wink that’s sheer charisma could kill a man. “So, what brings someone like you out here?”

A pang of uncertainty hit him, unsure of whether to tell this merman- the same species that had violently attacked him earlier- the reasons for his visit. However, looking at the violent hues of caramel and chocolate in Kjell's eyes, he could see nothing but genuine curiosity and a playful and friendly twinkle.

Plus, he honestly didn’t know if he had the resilience to deny that face.

“I’m actually here to learn more about your kind and other potential folklore creatures,” Morten explained, “I only found out about the existence of otherworldly creatures- or, uh, people, I suppose, so there’s a lot I want to learn.”

He was rewarded for his honesty, by Kjell lighting up like a Bonfire. “Oh!” he exclaimed, grabbing Morten’s cold hands in his own warm ones, “you should have told me earlier! I love heaving humans about my culture, and I have an entire cave of artefacts and cultural items! It’s under the water- don’t worry, there’s air- and I could take you down if you want.”

Morten, far too occupied by his companions stupid grin and his warm hands, was about to reply the quickest yes of his life, before Kjell interrupted him with a gasp. “I’m sorry,” the merman apologised, letting go of his hands, “I completely forgot that my kind tried to drown you. You probably don’t want to go right back after such a traumatic experience, and certainly not with someone like…” he gestured to his tail, “me.”

A part of him- the one who had gone for the safe choice of a fisherman in a largely fish centered city- wanted to agree with Kjell, and forget this day ever happened. After all, even if he truly admired Kjell, they were both still men, and it was probably safest for the both of them if they just forgot meeting.

However, a much more selfish, and deep part of him already knew what he wanted. Meeting Kjell’s eyes- and with warm cheeks- he gave his answer; “please, take me down there. I trust you.”

That was all Kjell needed, before he dragged them both back into the water. Unlike the mermaids, Kjell was not so much gripping as holding him- tight enough to be led but loose enough as to be easy to escape, the fingers stroking up and down his wrist in a repetitive motion. And as they dived deeper, Kjell leading him along in what was almost a gentle waltz in the water, occasionally shooting a reassuring smile, Morten understood why all the seamen dated mermaids, and got the feeling that he might be seeing Kjell a whole lot more in the future.

#mermay #mermaid #writeblr #writing #writers on tumblr #mlm

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justaboveyoursunrise · 4 years

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A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I wrote this little one-shot, and happened to come across it in my saved emails just this weekend. Considering the Chiefs just won the Superbowl, it felt serendipitous that I came across it. Pretty sure it was supposed to be a series I never continued. Anyway, here we go, enjoy this untitled Dean teaching newly-human Cas the joys of football (and buffalo chicken) and being bros short fic.

—————–

“Dean, I still don’t-”

“For the last time, Cas, we’re doing this. Now shut your face and sit down.”

There is a long silence. Blue and green clash in defiance of one another, the soundless war that stretches between them. They have talked about this already. More importantly, Dean Winchester has planned this day. No amount of Castiel’s self-doubt or apathy is going to change these plans. Dean, exasperated with his friend and this argument, throws his arms out with impatience, brows raised with expectation, daring the man – the man – staring back at him to try and put up another challenge. Castiel instead drops his eyes and frowns in resignation, a muttered “fine” declaring his surrender. Dean, with a roll of his eyes, disappears, taking with him the plastic bags of Styrofoam containers full of aromatics; something special, he has promised Castiel.

Castiel sits as directed, frown still etched into the corners of his mouth as he regards the muted computer screen before him. An elaborate stage sees five men sitting behind an elongated desk, polished and lit up with all manner of colored lights. Most of the men are older, a few portly, and they all seem to be doing nothing more than engaging in heated debates as images appear on the screen in small boxes superimposed below them: a blue star, a golden ram’s horn, an oddly colored dolphin – albeit the most aggressive and cartoonish dolphin that Castiel has ever seen. Certainly they don’t believe porpoises really look that way, he thinks. More symbols as the men pantomime: a crimson cardinal, a blue buffalo, a horse snout and orange mane, which he will soon learn is really meant to be a Bronco. In spite of himself, Castiel is intrigued. What are all these symbols and why do these men continue to argue over them? An eagle, a raven, a fleur de lis, a Norseman outlined in royal purple.

By the time Dean returns, Castiel finds himself brimming with far too many questions. “These experts seem unable to agree on anything,” he states, his blue eyes lighting upon Dean.

“That’s because they aren’t really experts,” Dean tells him, matter-of-fact. His hands are full with the Styrofoam containers from the bags, and as Dean sits, he sets one in front of each of them. “I hope you’re ready for this,” he says, clearly pleased, rubbing his hands together with what Castiel knows to be a sign of enthusiasm.

Pulling the top away, Castiel finds his container full of what seem to be pieces of meat covered in a bright orange sauce. Despite the questionable coloring, though, they smell like nothing Castiel has ever before known. There is a spice that reaches in through the aroma, stinging in his nose, causing an autonomic and undeniable reaction in his mouth. It is, in every literal sense of the word, watering. Each strange, alien impulse pushing through Castiel begs him to dig in, to grab a handful of these oddly shaped, oddly colored pieces of meat and simply shove them all into his mouth at once. Was this how humans felt about food all the time? Suddenly, it seemed no wonder that they enjoyed the act of dining so frequently. Even his experiments with peanut butter and jelly had never resulted in this overwhelming need to eat.

Beside him, Dean watches, green gold burning into Castiel, waiting for a reaction. There is an expectation here, a necessitation of response for the introduction of something brand new, and Castiel obliges. “This smells delicious. Though I’m afraid it does look somewhat… unappealing.”

Dean chuckles, pleasing Castiel that he has not seemed to overstep a boundary. “Looks ain’t everything, Cas.”

“So the saying seems to go,” Castiel agrees. He notices for the first time that Dean has changed since returning to the bunker with the food, shed from his jacket and plaid, opting instead now for a simple t-shirt that the angel – the human – had never seen before. It must have been red at one point, but it was threadbare now, fading almost into a pastel with age and wash. Worn. Certainly worn well by Dean. Square in the middle of Dean’s chest rests a once-proud symbol, one Castiel cannot recall passing on the silent screen earlier. An eggshell white arrowhead, lightly lined in charcoal and housing an intertwined K and C, as near-pink as the rest of the shirt. It is a relic, Castiel thinks, from another life. He returns his attention back to the odd stack of meat and bones in front of him. “So, what exactly is this?”

“You, Cas, are about to partake in the age-old American tradition of Sunday football and buffalo wi—” Dean stops cold and pales. The only color is in his dingy, timeworn shirt.

Castiel furrows a brow at Dean’s abruptly unfinished word, searching Dean’s eyes for an answer, a frown once again perching on his lips.

“Buffalo chicken.” Dean finally recovers, weakly, unconvincing. He can no longer meet Castiel’s probing, worried gaze, choosing an indiscriminate spot somewhere through the laptop’s screen to focus. He waits, on edge, for the fallout to come from Castiel, for his ageless, newly human friend to understand just what he was about to say. How callous of him, how shameful, bringing this food to their table. He has quite unceremoniously mucked a well-intentioned day of introducing Castiel to hot-blooded American life through the country’s most lucrative pastime.

“Buffalo chicken?” Castiel repeats, clearly unsure of how exactly a buffalo like the blue one that had flashed onto the screen only minutes ago could be chicken. “That’s absurd. A buffalo cannot be chicken.”

Dean exhales, a wet, warbled laugh, the knot in his stomach loosening, but only just, insulting relief returning the flow of blood to his extremities, the color to his face. “It’s chicken, it’s dropped in a fryer then it’s covered in buffalo sauce.”

Castiel nods, poking uncertainly at a drumstick, the personification of curiosity and distrust. “So, then is the sauce made of buffalo?” he asks. “I’m not sure how well that would pair together.”

Dean sighs, beginning to realize just how massive an undertaking it was going to be to introduce his friend to the normalcies of human, mortal existence. Not that Dean could truly claim knowledge of anything resembling normalcy. Or mortality, for that matter. Still, he was Castiel’s best chance at becoming passably human, if his humble opinion counted for anything.

“Cas, it’s deep-fried meat in a spicy sauce, it originated in Buffalo, New York, and if you don’t shut up and eat, I’m going to shove that plated into your face and make you. And believe me, buddy, you get that sauce in your eye, it’s going to burn for the rest of your damn life.”

Castiel thinks to ask how associating pain with a food Dean is clearly so intent on making him try would cause it to become more appealing, but Dean’s lips are pursed, the lines are showing at the corners of spring green eyes. Once more, he is daring Castiel to buck against his better wisdom - again. Castiel thinks better of it then, and reaches for the drumstick he’d been prodding earlier, studying it with some obvious trepidation, the visible bone, the warm flesh, the unnaturally bright orange coloring that unevenly covers it all.

Satisfied, Dean grabs a drumstick from his own container and bites into the meat. It elicits a moan of gratification from him and he regards the drumstick with a tender reverence he seems to reserve only for food. He chews loudly, a pleasured praise of “ohh, yeah” slipping past his greasy, sauce-covered lips.

Taking his cue, Castiel bites into his own piece of chicken with the same abandon, the flavors of oil-crisped skin and soft, tender meat exploding against his tongue. It is almost the most exquisite thing he’s ever experienced in his short time as a true-blue human, but then the spice that had caused the salty, uncontrollable salivation of his mouth sets in. He wants nothing more than to make it stop immediately and does the only thing he thinks will help; he opens his mouth and lets the meat fall back into the container, a half-chewed, stringy, mess of poultry. He sticks out his tongue, waving his hand frantically in effort to eliminate the fire a simple orange sauce has ignited on it.

Dean, mouth full with the rest of his drumstick, laughs at Castiel’s furious motions and obvious predicament. With no deliberate rush, he drops the bone he’d already sucked clean onto the lid of his own container and makes his way to the kitchen, licking his fingertips clean as he goes. There’s a half-gallon of milk in the fridge, mostly gone now, and Dean doesn’t even bother with a glass. He brings the whole bottle to Castiel, who is still engaged in his attempt to wave his tongue cool again. “Drink,” Dean tells him, holding the bottle out.

Castiel, blue eyes shining with tears he has no intention of crying over something spicy, grabs the bottle, greasy fingers fumbling at first with the cap. When he’s finally able to twist it off, he drinks as instructed. The relief is so instant that Castiel does cry, the cold white liquid extinguishing the heat and ferrying the pain away from the point of impact and disposing of it safely down his throat and into his stomach. He empties the bottle and he looks up at a bemused Dean appreciatively. “Thank you,” he says, wiping his temples against his shirt. “How did you know it would help?”

“Experience,” Dean shrugs.

Castiel nods, wiping at the cooling beads of sweat that have prickled at his hairline. “So does bovine lactation help with all burns?”

From above, Dean just gives a thin-lipped smile, swelling with affection for his friend. Here Castiel was, fallen from Heaven, Graceless, a hell Dean imagines is far worse than any Purgatory, than the former angel’s multiple trips to Hell, admiring how a simple drink of milk had saved him from the possibility of burning away the entirety of his tongue. Poor, sweet, socially-inept Cas, working through the myriad of human emotions he was unwittingly plunged into. If there was any one thing about human, that was it – no one had asked for this.

Castiel sets the empty plastic bottle on the table and reaches for a paper towel. His first (and he hoped only) experience had been enough, and he was certainly not going to follow Dean’s example again and lick his fingers clean. “I suppose this means that spicy food will not be a part of my diet.”

Dean snorts a laugh as he sits back down again, reaching for Castiel’s container and sliding it closer to his own. “You just have to get used to it. Embrace the spice, Cas. Clears your sinus and your colon. Double whammy.”

“Double whammy,” Castiel repeats, trying the new phrase on his recovering tongue, reaching for the context to imitate.

“Double whammy,” Dean agrees, going in for another win- another piece of buffalo chicken, this time dredging it through a smaller plastic container full of a thick, off-white paste dotted with what Castiel thinks must be moldy cheese. “Could you turn the volume back up?” Dean asks out of the side of his mouth.

Castiel sets the used napkin on the table beside the empty bottle of milk and hits the volume button on the keyboard until it’s loud enough for them to hear. The constantly-bickering men behind the desk have given way by this point to a green field nestled on the lowest level of a large outdoor stadium, thousands of red plastic chairs occupied by thousands of people in matching colors, red and white and gold. In the middle of the field rests the very same logo as the one on Dean’s shirt, vibrant and distinct.

“KC Spears?” Castiel ventures with no hesitation, and receives exactly the response he expects in Dean’s patient laugh.

“Kansas City Chiefs,” Dean corrects. “The logo is an arrowhead-“

“Like on weapons used by the natives of the Americas,” Castiel finishes for him.

Surprised, Dean nods slowly, the wind taken out of his sails. “I forget you’ve been around since time began.” It is Castiel who laughs now, pleased. Perhaps football would prove a more fortuitous endeavor than buffalo chicken.

“There’s no local team in Kansas,” Dean continues. “It’s a family tradition, so to speak, being a fan of the Chiefs. No one really knows why. They were the closest team by proximity, I guess. Some Sundays, if it was a good day, Dad would watch a game with Sammy and me. We’d all just sit around and eat wings and drink soda and yell at the TV.” Dean smiles from somewhere far away, soft and wistful, a single warm memory over the thousands of cold, a slice of apple pie in his dystopian world, of the Midwestern Americana that should have been his birthright. “The shirt is even Dad’s.” Dean picks, unaware, at the hem of the shirt, the team logo emblazoned on his breast all that’s left of his home. “I’m glad it has a reason to see the light of day again.”

Castiel is transfixed, noting the way the old shirt hugs the curve of Dean’s bicep, drapes snugly over his broad shoulders, curves along the length of his torso. Where earlier there had been watering and spice, only one of which had been remotely pleasing, now there was nothing. Castiel’s mouth has gone completely dry, his tongue now sandpaper as it slips over the ridged upper palette, each inhale agonizingly sharp against the back of his throat. “And I am glad that you have it,” he manages, hoarse. “For the light of day, of course.”

Dean hardly seems to have registered the straggled words, managing to stare through the computer screen again, still absently picking at the fraying hem, 13 years old in his father’s shirt, another disappointing Sunday gone by with no sign of Dad to speak of, moments away from the opening kickoff of yet another game.

“Dean?” Castiel tries, pulling Dean from his reverie and back into the present, at least some of his family with him to watch a football game for the first time in years. “Dean, I heard one of these men call someone a tight end. Was that just aesthetic commentary?” The question seems absurd, but Castiel is so genuine, his features fret with confusion. “Some of these men on the field do seem to be wearing very tight pants.”

Dean can’t help the sound that escapes him, not quite a giggle but certainly not a laugh, coaxing a wan, curious smile out of his companion. “It’s a position,” Dean explains. “Every player on a team has a position. Like, linebacker, quarterback, wide receiver, tight end.” It makes both men laugh this time, the ridiculous terminology niggling that latent immaturity still hiding Dean, and sounding simply preposterous to Castiel. “A tight end plays offense, when a team has the ball. He’s a multi-functional player. He can play like a receiver, who will catch a ball thrown by the quarterback, or he can play like a lineman and help block the other team from getting to his quarterback. Some plays, he will even do both."

Castiel nods, but in a way Dean understands to mean that his friend cannot begin to fathom the idea in practice. Never having seen a game before, of course, no one could really blame Castiel’s confusion.

“When the game starts, you’ll see,” Dean tells him, offering a reassuring pat to Castiel’s knee.

–

It has taken two and a half hours and almost 3 of the 4 fifteen-minute quarters, but Castiel think he’s beginning to understand the barbaric sport. It seems simple enough at the start - crush the opposing player with the ball. But there is far more nuance than huge, grown men simply running into one another as hard as they can and wrestling to the ground. There are running plays and passing plays, nickel defenses and empty back fields, red zones and end zones, spread offenses and read options. It is dizzying, but the action and attraction is undeniable.

There is one point when the quarterback of the team in white jerseys (the snout and mane Broncos) throws the ball, but it is caught by a defensive player in red.

“YEAH!” Dean bellows, suddenly jumping to his feet, arms raised above his head in a celebratory fashion. “I-N-T, baby!”

“Int?” Castiel asks.

“Interception,” Dean offers, and his smile is so brilliant one might be inclined to believe Dean had caught this so-called interception himself. “Get up, get up,” he urges, motioning for Castiel to stand.

Castiel does, regarding Dean curiously, wondering if he was about to be welcomed into this celebratory moment and hoping so, if only to share such a wide, careless smile for the sake of a swine hide being caught by a player on a team from a different state that Dean just so happens to like.

“Chest bump,” Dean tells Castiel, beating the palm of his hand against the arrowhead logo once, twice.

Castiel mimics the motion, unsure of why he and Dean are hitting themselves. “Dean, I’m not sure I follow.”

Dean, for all his patience in this matter of educating Castiel in the finer points of football, shakes his head. “No, Cas, like they do on the TV. You know, when two players literally bump chests.”

“Oh,” Castiel starts, then, “oh.” The chest bump seems a common form of congratulations after a meaningful play, much like the slapping of helmets and, for some reason, rear ends. Castiel equates it as football’s version of the high-five. “I see. Okay. Yes, chest bump.”

Dean seems pleased until the first attempt ends with his beer on the floor and his chin sore from having collided with Castiel’s forehead. Where Dean had jumped, Castiel had only stood, jutting his chest out as best he could.

“That was pathetic,” Dean laments, rubbing at his chin, a day’s worth of stubble scratching against the pads of his fingers. “This time, you jump, too.” Castiel, worrying at his forehead, nods in response. “All right, ready? One… two… three.”

This time, Castiel jumps, finding it much more difficult to jut his chest out in the air, but he seems to have it right. The two men collide, chest-to-chest, Kansas City crest shared between them. Arms out at their sides for balance, the two fall back to the floor and Dean whoops with a tactile joy Castiel is surprised to see. “Much better,” Dean asserts, a large hand patting Castiel’s shoulder.

“But I’m still not quite sure why we do this,” Castiel concedes, his dark features drawn as they have been since tight end, a constant state of perplexity.

Dean shrugs. “Because it was a great play that ended well for us. Well, for our team.”

“Exuberance does seem to be a defining factor of this sport.”

Dean wonders if a time will ever come when Castiel does not so consistently vex him.

–

The game turns into what the announcers coin a “real nailbiter.” The Chiefs hold on to a precarious 3-point lead, but the Broncos have the ball and are advancing down the field. Castiel has learned that a field goal, not taken after a touch down, results in 3 points when the ball is kicked between two upright posts, connected on the bottom by a horizontal post that the ball must also clear. The announcers, who haven’t proven to be anywhere near as helpful as Dean in explaining the game, make it clear that Denver, the Broncos, the team in white, is nearing their field goal kicker’s range. Another ten yards, another first down, and the Broncos have a chance to tie the game.

Castiel and Dean sit on the edge of their seats, hunched over, eyes glued to the action on the screen. The team in red, these Chiefs from Kansas City, have exhilarated Castiel, caused him concern and buoyance, incomprehension and pure elation, often doing so on consecutive plays. Now, he waits riddled with anxiety to see if the defense, their defense, can stand up to the test of Peyton Manning and his offense’s aerial attack. On the screen, Manning is calling out “Omaha, Omaha,” a signal Dean taught Castiel to mean that Manning was changing the play his team was set to run.

“Watch for the screen,” Dean warns no one in particular, because these are things Dean simply understands about the game, this terminology of play calls and penalties. Castiel has come to accept that even though the players cannot actually hear him, Dean will continue to talk, or more likely yell, at them anyway. Formation warnings, congratulations, taunts, obscenities, using player’s names, sometimes in full, as if they are old friends.

The ball is hiked. Dean and Castiel lean forward to the point of no longer sitting, breaths held as the play develops right front of them from a field in a stadium somewhere in Missouri. There is chaos at the line of scrimmage (one of many new terms Castiel has come to know), huge men shoving at one another to get to or get away from the quarterback. Receivers run their routes. Manning stutter-steps around in the pocket. A Chiefs player breaks free of his defender, prompting Dean to yell, “get after him!” but Manning deftly avoids the charging defensive end, plants his foot and releases the ball. It slices through the air, a perfect spiral, far enough now that a reception could spell disaster. The receiver reaches for the ball, juggles it off his fingertips, and into the arms of the safety defending him.

It is instantaneous. The two men jump up from their seats along with thousands of people hundreds of miles away, their respective shouts of “yeah!” bouncing off the walls and echoing through the bunker.

“I-N-T!” Castiel cheers, he and Dean requiring only one attempt now to pull off a successful chest bump that ends in a revelatory embrace.

They exist solely together in this moment, in the afterglow of an outcome they had no influence over, all smiles and flushed cheeks and adrenalin, abounding in high-fives, call-and-return “Go Chiefs!”

“So it’s over then?” Castiel asks. “There’s still time left.”

With a nod, Dean slaps Castiel’s arm, stepping back. “Not enough. The Chiefs can just kneel down for the next few plays and run the rest of the time out. They call it running out the clock.”

As they settle back into their chairs to watch the Chiefs run out the clock, finally able to relax knowing that victory is at hand, Castiel gives Dean a playful shove to the shoulder. “I do believe you’ve made a fan of me,” he says.

Dean raises his bottle of beer, tips it toward Castiel before draining the remnants, a celebration of his very own victory. Castiel returns to his beer, somehow a victor as well. A victor and a football fan. A Kansas City Chiefs fan.

“So this is what families do on Sundays then,” Castiel states, for no reason other than to seek clarification, to rid himself of the jumble of nerves the game has left him to try and deal with.

Dean smiles, all teeth and unbridled joy. “This is what our family does on Sundays.”

------------ ( @wanderingcas - ty!!)

#destiel #deancas #fic #ficlet #lee writes #human!cas #football #supernatural #spn

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antics-pedantic · 3 years

Text

DYNAURA!!: PILOT PART 2

A documentary by Ciro Spirale and Tapes, the Recordobot.

Rex apologized for yesterday and obliged our request to follow him, encouraging a team-up. Nothing permanent: Rex was soured on full-time groups. But he did still enjoy meeting up with friends and allies from time-to-time. Which is why we found ourselves by the docks.

“Yeah just wait, two other super heroes are over here.”

After a moment, we caught sight of a figure dressed in black, with a pointy domino mask and short scarf. Jet black hair and outfit, with purple trim, looking off into the distance. She did not address us until someone else arrived from the sea, and more openly so.

“Hiii~!”

There was another: Resembling a golden brown-skinned Samoan woman, with a heavyset build. She was currently climbing the edge to stand on dry land with the rest of us, and she held up a small toy porpoise.

“Hey Taria. Where’d ya get that?”

�� “I was cleaning up some junk on the beach when someone offered me money for all the cans I collected. So I bought this from a boardwalk gift shop. I love it SO much!”

“…” the shadow warrior between the three leaned over slightly. Up close her form was rather gangly and awkward. She spoke in a low voice: “… ‘s cute.”

“I’m Taria, a warrior-mage from a community descended from Atlantis!” the aquatic woman introduced herself in a very bubbly manner. “Did you wanna hold the porpoise? Her name is Neptunia Petunia.”

Taria held up Neptunia Petunia. I studied the toy porpoise for a time—just about right for a gift shop item, or some carnival prize. When Tapes held the toy, he held it high and even gave it an affectionate stroke along its back before returning it. Taria seemed to like the moxie.

“Me and Rex have been friends as loooong as I can remember.” Said Taria, extending her arms out wide, almost as if for a hug. “But I was so busy looking out for my undersea home and studying hydro-magic we never got to play very long. But now we’re both super heroes and we can do anything!”

“Has he always been this depressed?”

“No, he used to be really vibrant. That’s why we got along! Did something happen again?”

“Ah, it’s fine. We were just worried.”

“Me too. I hope we can help answer your questions!”

Tapes and I looked to the ninja woman. She looked over at Taria and Rex, as if miffed that they put her on the spot like this. It was a few minutes of dead air before she finally spoke up.

“Hello. I am the Curious Kunoichi. No, you may not know my secret identity so please… respect that.”

“That’s—that’s okay, we’re actually here to ask about your hero work and nothing else. How did you get started? Did you lose someone and become this… brooding vigilante? Dedicated yourself to training and put on a mask, standing against those with awesome powers anyway? Do you come from a ninja clan?”

“Well I did become a brooding vigilante, but it was more like… I was really hyped to work with nonprofit organizations, government aid agencies... But growing up, some things did slip through the cracks: How these programs weren’t always doing as much as they could. Being undermined and embezzled. And as far as I know I don’t come from a ninja clan, I just like being stealthy so I trained in that. Now I fight street level baddies and corruption. And every now and then I help out with bigger problems. And then Taria and Rex help me out with the street stuff too. It’s really supportive and like, nice.”

“That’s fair. Do you find your field of expertise is in high demand, or?”

“For the most part. But some days it can be slow.”

We eventually found ourselves outside a café. Not at a table, but the three super heroes were squatting outside of the building like delinquents, poring over their phones. Looking for trouble to tackle, places and people to help. As well as googling dictionary definitions of words, plus twitter feeds. And there Tapes and I were, taking this photo in time of three casual do-gooders who weren’t really in the limelight. Waiting for various flavors of coffee and doughnuts, all fresh. That is, after they managed to pull together exact change. They wanted to save their larger bills just in case they’d need them later.

“Later tonight we might just hang out at my place or Kunoichi’s.” explained Rex, with a mouthful of chocolate doughnut, and sipping a fruity flavored milk tea after. “Usually we just sit inside a restaurant booth, but we’re not feeling it this time. Meanwhile if you’re like one of the… the Enforcers, you can go hang out in a skyscraper penthouse or a mansion. And not just here in Multiplex City, they got ‘em by Hollywood too. So… I guess, $ Cha-ching~? $”

The three finished off their breakfast before running into an explosion: Rex and Taria kicked forward. Rex quick to crack open some fire hydrants so Taria could get at the water. She naturally had an affinity for the element, and her mystical training reinforced it with magical power and her own life force alike. After that, Rex focused on blasting debris and carrying people to a safe zone. The two zigzagged across the street, through the air and bounced off of buildings in their attempts to reach every flame.

That left us with the Curious Kunoichi. She had us stay close: Her job was to try and find the source of all this, or at the very least some clue. Our journey took us indoors. Tapes had to stand close to shield me just to be safe. All the while Kunoichi mostly redirected people out of the buildings and away from the danger. But there was one straggler that didn’t run right away: A little girl, bawling her eyes out.

Kunoichi approached. The little girl backed up, before Kunoichi knelt down to meet her at eye level. Appear less imposing.

“It’s okay.” said Kunoichi. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Scary.” The child sobbed. More at Tapes and I than addressing Kunoichi. The little girl couldn’t have been older than six or seven years old.

“Only to bad people.” promised Kunoichi. “Someone must be looking for you.”

“Can’t find my nana.” the child finally sniffled. “Wanted to buy cookies and ran away again. Now everything’s bad and it’s all my fault. What if Nana’s gone forever? That happened to mommy and daddy.”

The white lenses of Kunoichi’s mask seemed to widen a little, before narrowing.

“No, that’s not true. You didn’t cause anything that happened outside. And your Nana is fine, we’ll find her.”

“I don’t wanna find out!”

I wanted to try and say something too. But Tapes put a hand on my shoulder, and whispered:

“PERCEPTIFY.”

Kunoichi glanced out the window to see that the danger was still raging outside. The source was clearly elsewhere. But she could leave it to her friends. There was something here she had to do.

“Some people I know—people that I cared about, disappeared too.”

“… And it hurts a lot.”

“Of course. But do you know what you can do about it?”

The little girl nodded her head no.

“Even if our favorite people disappear, they--” Kunoichi’s voice cracked a moment, as she searched for the words. “… They want us to keep playing and learning and all of that. And we can do that together: Be there for the people that are still around. And then nobody has to be afraid anymore.”

“Are you scared too?”

“Little bit.”

The kid gave Kunoichi a hug and didn’t let go.

“I’ll help you get outta here.” said the little girl.

Smoke in my eyes for a second. Tapes broke down a door and got us outside. Kunoichi was swift in her movements, leading us just outside where the fire department had begun setting up. We were there about ten minutes before the little girl’s grandmother was reunited with her. Tapes and I could hear them:

“Terry! Oh pumpkin, I’ve missed you!”

“Me too Nana! Don’t be scared anymore.”

“But how did you get here? Did one of those firefighters help you?”

“No, it was this nice shadow lady. She’s right here.”

But when they turned to see, there was a wisp from a fresh smoke bomb. The Curious Kunoichi had left as quickly as she’d arrived. We found Taria, who was helping to put out the flames.

“We spotted a giant monster up ahead!” Taria exclaimed. “Rex went ahead to slow it down. C’mon!”

Taria splashed ahead on a tidal wave she conjured. But as she did, police sirens and the heavy tread of tanks were ahead of us. And the firepower they laid down wasn’t far off either. But what was most astonishing was the fact that the kaiju ahead of us was scuttling away. And there was Rex, stumbling—and then diving forward to lash out at the armed force attacking.

We could hear commanding officers barking out orders, and a damning dialogue:

“ALL UNITS, OPEN FIRE ON THE ALIEN FREAK!”

Their machine guns had fifty caliber rounds. Tougher to brace against than a .45 handgun like before. And their explosive ordinance meant a hail of grenades and missiles. Just one soldier after another pouring on a storm of hammering violence. And still yet, they were assembling weapons I’d never even seen up close, including one that appeared to be a large truck carrying a long mechanical arm that extended outwards a satellite dish.

“THEY ARE EQUIPPING A MASER CANNON.”

As Tapes had informed me, Masers were for zapping giant monsters. The ordinance was beyond excessive. And instead of going after the monster, Rex was busy attacking the army, who seemed all too familiar with him. Tapes and Taria pulled me along. After the kaiju.

“Poor thing.” Taria muttered, looking up at the monster.

“But it set that street ablaze.” I pointed out. Taria actually frowned for once.

“Ciro, that’s not some size-changing supervillain. Many kaiju are just wild beasts. This one might be lost and confused. Maybe some have to be fought off, but that should only be if there’s no alternative.”

“And there is one now?”

“I think so… There’s no reason why we can’t help it and the people around here. C’mon!”

Taria moved ahead, dragging me and Tapes along. Careful to avoid antagonizing the giant monster as we tried to search for… whatever it was looking for. But we eventually did, because there were still a mass of people still within a bakery.

“What’s happening here? Don’t you know to evacuate?” I asked.

“I think you should see for yourself.” someone said. We three entered, found a pile of debris. And under it, at about the size of a motorcycle, was a creature. It resembled the one outside, albeit smaller and less developed. It cried out to its parent, while the people around it struggled to remove debris. Taria gestured for everyone to run while she dug out the baby kaiju.

“It wandered in, whimpering so I let it eat some cakes.” explained the baker who owned the place. “The big one—it showed up just after. A tank round or a missile-- grazed part of my building and trapped it. For crying out loud, it was just lost and hungry!”

“WE UNDERSTAND. WE CANNOT DO MUCH TO REPAIR YOUR BUSINESS, BUT MY HUMAN COMPANION IS CREATING A DOCUMENTARY AT THE MOMENT. WE WOULD GLADLY FEATURE YOU AND YOUR STORE—YOUR STORY, IF YOU WILL ALLOW US.”

“Of course. Thank you for the publicity—and people need to know what happened here. Will the baby be okay?”

“I BELIEVE SO. TARIA HAS BEEN VERY GENTLE ABOUT THE SITUATION THUS FAR.”

It was not long after that Taria was able to convince the kaiju to stop attacking. Tapes and I watched from a distance, but not far enough that we couldn’t see the baby kaiju ecstatic to have found its parent. The parent kaiju brought the child in close at the sound of nearby explosions, intending to shield it from further harm. The parent and child followed Taria’s path out towards the sea, wading away. The parent licking at the wounds of its young before becoming distant shapes and eventually disappearing.

We reunited with Rex after he served as a shield against one last silo of missiles. The barrage ended, the present military forces retreating for the time being. Rex was still on both feet. But Rex was leaning over, with his hands on his knees as he huffed fiercely. Out of a mix of tremendous anger and exhaustion alike.

“Have you often fought the army?” I asked, after Rex had begun clearing some debris before he’d leave again.

“Plenty. They got it out for me, worst of it was after my secret identity got out.”

“Why is that? They don’t want to work with you?”

“They don’t wanna work with anybody or anything they can’t control. Least of all an alien who might potentially be an invasion scout or something.”

“But you’re not here to invade.”

“No, but that’s the lie that got spread around after I was unmasked.”

Before we could get in more questions, Rex just rocketed off towards the skies. Tapes informed me that once Rex was over the city he’d broken the sound barrier and was currently climbing in speed until he’d cleared orbit and was on the surface of the moon.

“Why would he go up to the moon like that?” I found myself asking Taria. She and Kunoichi’s efforts to clean up were concluded and the city sanctioned services would have to pick up the rest.

“Favorite place to go when he needs to think, or he’s feeling down.” said Taria. “Sits on the edge of a crater. Sometimes Tugboat joins him.”

“Did he… go up there after his secret identity was outed too? After he was branded an invader in disguise?”

“Probably yeah. And for the longest time. But I don’t know much about that period… You should ask Kunoichi.”

“She knew him then? Were they on the same team?”

“Suffering south seas, no! Those guys were jerks.”

“I was something of a jerk myself.” said Kunoichi when we’d caught up to her and Taria had left to do other things. “I mean, I say I’m a brooding vigilante now but back then. I still shudder at all the dorky, and sometimes downright cynical stuff I used to do. Like, I may try to be a lone wolf now but back then I didn’t even want to be near anybody. Just wanted to stamp out corruption and focus on that so I wouldn’t have to think about anything else.”

“And how did you know Rex back then?”

“We’d actually had to team-up even if we didn’t want to. Well, I didn’t want to. He was really excited back then. Naïve, but… welcoming. It wasn’t just about saving people, he wanted them to see the best parts of themselves. Come together to make the world a better place and all that. It was hard for me to believe in then, but I didn’t want to shoot it down either. Not like his old team did.”

“Tell me about them?”

Kunoichi must have been rolling her eyes under the mask.

“Those greasy clowns? They made me look like a sunny day by comparison. Violent, impulsive, manipulative. But they also just hung out? Like: They played video games, watched TV, just hung out. When you’re a teen who doesn’t have many friends, you might jump at the chance to be part of something. Part of a group. That’s what made it so easy for them to control their underlings.”

“But they still struck Rex down.”

“They did. Rex was too idealistic to fully give in. Maybe they could pressure him into doing things or keeping his mouth shut, push him around. But eventually enough was enough and Rex tried to stop them. Of course they outnumbered him, and weren’t afraid to play dirty. That’s why he’s regarded so poorly. And why I wish I’d done something more back then.”

“SHE HAS GROWN FROM HER EXPERIENCE.” noted Tapes.

“What?” I asked, my train of thought briefly derailed.

“He’s right.” said the Curious Kunoichi, after a moment to process Tapes’s evaluation of herself. “Ever since then I’ve been trying to make my mission more than just wasting scumbags and breaking up racketeering rings. Rex and Taria, friends like them and more that I’ve gotten to know now. They helped me realize we should be ready to stand up and fight for the right thing. But also, there has to be something after the battle worth looking forward to. Something nice.”

And she vanished before our very eyes. It was a while before we received a phone call. And not one from Rex or his friends thus far. We didn’t even know if they’d met up to hang out tonight like they planned. And after we heard the message, were wishing it was just some late night prank call.

“Hello. I’m calling on behalf of Mr. Quark, owner and CEO of Quark Industries, AKA Shootsuit, head of the Enforcers. He’s heard about your work and would like to extend an invitation to join some of his Enforcers for a firsthand interview.”

“Oh. Well, I’m not really sure—”

“Both sides of the story, Spirale. See you tomorrow morning. I’ll text you the address and hour.”

Tapes and I looked over the text. We were slated to continue our documentary with members of the Enforcers, America’s premiere superhero team. Led by the celebrity’s celebrity, industrialist Tommy Quark. But what could he or any of his people have to offer us themselves? As intriguing as this was getting, there was a terrible feeling in my gut.

#Web Fiction

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beakami · 4 years

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The Force and Love Series (02/04): There Is Nothing Wrong With You (Obi Wan x Reader, no y/n)

Hello! I hope you liked chapter one and that you enjoy number two. I have written up to chapter 4 now, and even though I pretended it to be a lower burn I...might have gotten excited, though the smut chapter is still a little far away (will be doing a oneshot to calm myself, though xD) Hope my muse for what comes next doesn’t abandon me, and I also have to think on when and how to finish the series, we’ll see, we’ll see <3

Summary: Reader is rescued from a life of servitude when Obi Wan and Master Joda find her while on a very important mission. Her connection with the Force is deep and quite different from the one the Order is used to. She is now free but, what will it be of her life? Will she follow the path of the Jedi? Will feeling get in the way?

Warnings: Will change in furute chapters but for now just some angst and mention of slavery. If there is anything else you see and think I should add here, please, do tell me and I will do so gladly. Enjoy

Word Count: 2711

Chapter Two: There Is Nothing Wrong With You

>>You couldn’t help but cry for a couple of minutes still there on the grass before finally being able to recompose yourself and just walk back to your quarters in silence. What you didn’t know was that the Jedi Masters had felt your discomfort, even more confused when it did…nothing. Your feelings were so overwhelming and yet not one window trembled, the ground didn’t quake under them and for a moment the Council fell silent. How was that even possible? For that, you had to be in complete sync with the Force in a way it escaped even Master Yoda, but funny enough, he was the only one not really that surprised, the one that used that to push further his idea of you learning, or of at least, you talking to them so they could asses the idea better.

>>While you waited in your room, freshening yourself and trying to read one of the beautiful books they had lent you, the Council went into a short intermission, after which they would meet again to make a decision regarding the following day. That moment was the one Obi Wan chose to go and talk to Master Yoda and Master Windu, explaining his idea, that he thought they should listen to you.

-You should at least let her speak, explain herself. I trust it would be very enlightening of her nature, and she most probably will surprise you. -said the brown haired, thick bearded Jedi, while Master Yoda smiled with a nod-.

-Right you might be. Sensed her struggle we have, and yet there was peace. Very interesting it is, don’t you think?

>>Master Windu was still not really convinced about you, but in the end, he thought that just listening to what you had to say would do no harm, and might help bring some light into this whole matter. You would learn later from Obi Wan the decision they took on the resumed meeting, and that they would call you the following day to speak before them.

>>But meanwhile you kept rummaging the idea in your mind, the word “home” turning and rolling and just making you have to reread the same paragraph at least five times until you decided to set the book aside. You carefully placed it back on the vanity of your room, for you such things were precious to you, even more because it was someone else’s and they had entrusted it to you so you could enjoy it. To others it might be nonsense, it was just a book, but you cherished such things as you were never allowed to read from your master’s library. The soft smile directed at the book quickly disappeared as you walked to the window, peering outside and seeing the young padawans train with one of the Masters.

>>They were holding sticks in their hands and you guessed they were practicing their fighting skills with a not so dangerous mockup of a lightsaber. It brought another smile back to your face, and you truly believed in your chest that they would all be wonderful Jedis. You tried hard to contain your mind so it would not go to what they would have to give up for it, and then it came to you like a whip…they knew what they were getting into, they knew what they would have to leave behind. But…did they? Could such young souls know what they were actually saying goodbye to? You weren’t sure but…it was their choice, you told yourself; and you had to make one too, even if it was just for the unlikely possibility they actually accepted you as a padawan. Would you give up on love just to…have a family? That was the only question that should roam your mind, the only thing that should have mattered to you, the possibility of love…or a place where you belong?

>>Your smile grew sadder, almost heartbreakingly so, as you closed your eyes and sighed deeply and slowly, trying to bring peace to your trembling mind, you would have to decide but…also them. You opened your eyes as you were still waiting for Obi Wan to make his appearance as he told you before. Maybe he would know something. And as if on cue, a knock on the door made you turn around, though you didn’t jump in surprise, you knew it was him as you felt his Force signature behind the door. Not wanting to make him wait when he had taken the time to come see you, you went and quickly opened the door for him. Your eyes were still a bit red, but you only thought so when his smile turned into a frown as he put a hand on the frame of the door.

-What did I tell you about worrying, Beatrice? -He wasn’t really scolding you, you were a woman, not a child, not one of his students, but he could only imagine how it all must be after all those years as a slave-.

-I’m sorry Master Kenobi but…there is just too much in my mind, it is not as easy as just not…worrying. Not an easy choice, none of the ones that run around in my head are.

>>You confessed slightly ashamed, even if you didn’t really know why you felt that way. Maybe because you saw him as an example, a good and honorable man, and believed that you could easily disappoint him. But you moved aside and gestured towards the inside of your room.

-¿Would you like to come in? I…could prepare tea, I feel there is something you’d like to tell me.

>>He raised a brow, you felt? How? Wasn’t he masking his Force signature well enough? because if he was…no, he must have slipped, maybe it showed a little when he got preoccupied at noticing you had been crying. Yes, he told himself that must have been it. Once those thoughts had run quickly through his mind, he gave you a nod and smiled again, walking inside and then going to sit on the chair you signaled. When you saw he was there comfortably, you circled the little peninsula that separated the tiny kitchen from the rest of your living quarters and put a kettle to heat, preparing to cups and the tea leaves. You soon had a perfectly neat tray with everything on it, poured the boiling water inside the teapot with the leaves and went back with Obi Wan. You set down the tray and were going to serve him when his hand gently held your wrist and you looked at him a little confused.

-Don’t you want the tea?

-I do, but sit down. I’ll serve it, you have prepared it all, so it is just fair that I serve it.

>>You blinked again, in this occasion you did it two, three, four and even five times before answering, your voice low and filled with doubt.

-I…guess it is… -it sounded more like a question than an affirmation, basically because it was. You don’t remember a time where you didn’t do everything, it was expected of you, and they left you at peace the most when they didn’t have to be telling you what to do. As such, you had learnt to just never stop working, that way your masters were happy and would let you be without bothering you. And so, these two weeks here had felt so tranquil, but also so strange.

>>Yet, as he kept looking at you, you gave in and sat down. Only then did he release your wrist and started to serve the tea. Your answer to how much sugar you wanted went out as a weak whisper, and you were surprised he even heard you. It went on in silence until he was sitting again, holding the cup elegantly and clearing his throat to speak. You made sure to be looking intently at him so he knew you were listening, even if you were still a little baffled by how gentle he was.

-The Council wants to talk to you tomorrow. -he saw the fear in your eyes rise again, the sheer panic shining through them, and he left the cup on the table to put that warm hand over yours, which was trembling softly- Only if you want, this is not an order but…if you mind my opinion, I think you should do it.

-O-of course I care about your opinion…did Master Yoda thought it was a good idea too? -you asked and he smiled warmly, nodding once- I just…What if I offend them? What if they…if I just…

>>You closed your eyes as the tears stung at them again, and you felt stupid, so small and just lost in this world that made you so afraid of losing something you didn’t have yet, and didn’t even know if you wanted. Obi Wan felt his chest hurt, what must have you gone through to think and feel like that? He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know, but he felt the need to help you calm down.

-You won’t offend them, you will just tell them what you told me, and they’ll understand. Master Yoda will be there and…so will I.

>>At the mention of his presence you opened your watery eyes to look at him, touched by his kind gesture.

-You will?

>>Your voice came out like a plead more than a question, and he nodded again, a reassuring smile on his lips. And you smiled back, you couldn’t help it, and he could feel the happiness even if there was still fear and specially a lot of tension in your aura. It amazed him again, your Force was vibrating of pure joy and he knew you didn’t even do it on porpoise when you Force signature touched his and made that happiness contagious so easily.

-Remarkable. -he murmured and this time you heard him and raised one brow with curiosity-.

-Remarkable? What is remarkable Master Kenobi? -you really had no clue that word was meant for you, and as soon as he noticed he chuckled softly, still feeling that joy you had just shared-.

-You, your control over the Force like it’s nothing. You do things without noticing that most of us can only manage through huge amounts of concentration and years of practice.

-I what? -You could hardly believe his words and it showed as clearly in your face as it did in your aura, which wavered and changed color as your cheeks flushed just one shade darker, not used in the slightest to anything close to praise.

-You heard me right, Beatrice. That is why they are taking so long to decide. Because they have never met someone like you, and that is why Master Yoda and I think they should do just that, get to know you, and what better way than talking for a while? Take it like that, just a chat so they get to know you.

-A chat? Master Kenobi…It is not just a chat… -your voice breaks ever so softly and he swears it hurts, someone as good as you shouldn’t suffer like that- They are…so many, all Master Jedis and…afraid of me. It’s almost funny… -but your voice couldn’t be farther from laughter- People from my planet feared me because they knew nothing of the Force…and now here…they fear me because they know more than me and…it seems like there is something wrong with me and…I am the freak again.

>>You tightened you jaw and closed your eyes for a second, ordering the tears to go back inside, then quickly opened them again just to find Obi Wan observing you with a serious yet gentle stare that made you go completely silent, not knowing what to say, the atmosphere becoming thicker and thicker by the second until he dissolved it when he finally uttered an answer.

-There is absolutely nothing wrong with you, never even think that. -His voice was still soft but gave no room for an argument- And it is just a chat. Am I not a Master Jedi? And you had no problem speaking with me, telling me your ideas. -he waited for an answer and you nodded softly- And Master Yoda, don’t you feel comfortable around him? He is the wisest and most respected of Master Jedis, and he wants to get to know you.

>>You swallowed thick, overwhelmed by the whole situation and the trust that man seemed to have on you. He squished your hand softly just to reassure you of his words and you looked deep into his eyes. For the first time with you he felt exposed in a strange way, as if you could see through him, even if he knew you weren’t trying to read his mind. You were just looking for a sign of doubt from him but…nothing, you only sensed that unwavering gentleness and tranquility he always seemed to emanate, so you relaxed, little by little. Your shoulders dropped until they were resting languidly, and you only kept in your body a subtle nervousness on the prospect of all that would unravel the following day and the decisions that you would have to make.

-Better… -he murmured as he felt your body and aura relax. You smiled softly at him and he held your hand for just a moment longer before slowly setting it free and taking it to the tea cup-.

-Thank you, really. I think I will never be able to repay all your kindness, Master Kenobi.

-You have nothing to repay, and you can call me Obi Wan if you please, especially if we are just having tea.

-Are you sure? -you asked as if he had asked you to call him sweetheart. You weren’t always like this, not when you were a child, not before all you lived and suffered, but now…now it was so impossible for you to just be yourself, never joking, always trying hard not to bother anyone, to be correct, that your true self had long been forgotten.

-You are not my student or padawan, and even if younger than me you are not a child, am I wrong? -he asked that with half an amused smile and you shook your head softly.

-N-no, you are not wrong. You…you can call me Tris if you want. -you said, a soft flush covering your cheeks as you gave him a sincere smile. It was so earnest and pure he would have never guessed you had been through so much in your life if he didn’t already know.

-It would be my pleasure. -he assured you and kept drinking his tea.

>>From there the rest of your time together was calm and pleasant as you chatted about things of little importance. He asked about your former planet, your life, what you used to do for your masters, and it didn’t really surprise him when you told him an endless list of chores. And it even felt right when you explained that there was one task you actually enjoyed far more than any other, and that was teaching and taking care of the young ones of the family. He could imagine you being a natural at it, easing a crying baby with a caress of the Force, teaching with endless patience to others less young…the part that surprised him was how the images made him smile and his chest swell a little.

>>As the sun started to get down, he said his goodbyes, promising to come back in the morning to guide you to the Council.

-You will receive a more formal gown for the meeting early in the morning. Master Yoda might have mentioned that our guest deserved to dress appropriately.

>>He smirked as you blushed softly and nod.

-I will do my best, Obi Wan.

-I know you will, Tris. Now rest, good night.

>>With that, a smile and a soft nod, he turned on his hills and left. You took a moment there, taking in all of this new…friendliness of others towards you, because it still felt unreal. Just after a couple of minutes you closed the door and went to bed, reading until you fell asleep. For once, no nightmare chased you, instead, a tranquil light, sky blue, almost arctic, lulled you in your dreams.

_______________________

Next Chapter (3)

#star wars #obi wan kenobi #obi wan x reader #owk fanfic #fanfic #fan fiction #The Force And Love Series #star wars fanfic

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generalkenobi22 · 4 years

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Fic: as iron sharpens iron - Chapter 2 (Burn Notice) - 9k+ words

SUMMARY: Somewhere along the way, at one point or another, Madeline tells them, “You need to stick together.”

And that, more or less, is what they do.

Nearly a year and a half later, here’s chapter two! I’m blaming a lethal combination of a global pandemic and grad school.

Here’s Part One. Also: both chapters can be found on AO3.

——————

He knows it's coming. Has known since the very beginning.

(You left, Michael. You had a choice to make, and you made it.)

He knows all the reasons they can't be together—has them memorized, front and back, reverse alphabetical order, ascending and descending order of importance. Hell, he could even recite them in English, Russian, and Farsi if asked. He used to mentally run them on a loop all the time, but that's—it's not enough anymore. Because the truth of the matter is that he has wavered on the subject with an alarming amount of frequency over the last year with her here in Miami, further demonstrating—in his mind—that his judgment has become too clouded to be objective anymore.

(I'll always care about you, Michael. I'll still help you with your thing, and you'll still help me with mine, but we can't be together.)

It doesn't change the fact that, no matter how prepared he is, no matter how many times he's been briefed on all the terrible consequences they could incur as a direct result of their...liaison, it's difficult to hear her say it out loud.

It doesn't truly become painful until the sound of her words echoes off the empty walls of the loft, and without so much as a glance back, she walks out the door.

—

"Fi, what do you think of these?"

She turns and takes in the floral print blouse and matching hoop earrings (with little, plastic flamingoes on them) Madeline is holding up. They're hideous.

"They're, uh—" She goes back to scanning the department store for visible security threats. There's a particularly suspicious character seated over by the food court in the adjoining mall. "—they're really something."

She tracks the food court guy until a woman and small child approach him, and the three head off toward the New York & Company at the south end of the mall. Satisfied, she glances back, then does a double-take at the deeply unamused look on Madeline's face.

"What?"

"Fiona," she says dryly, stashing the blouse and earrings onto the circular rack beside them, "I'm not an idiot. I know you're only here because Michael asked you to babysit me."

Fi looks down at her nails and swallows. "Well, I think his exact phrasing was 'protect her'..."

"You say 'tomato,' I say 'condescending eldest son.'"

Fi peruses through the clearance rack, nose wrinkling at all the tacky prints. "Michael's helping Sam protect a client—some ex-convict turned dedicated family man—from some bad men in Little Havana. He just—" She shrugs. "—wanted to keep you safe. He cares about you."

Madeline snorts at that. "Yeah? Well, he's got a funny way of showing it."

Fi somehow manages to keep her thoughts on that particular subject to herself. She comes across the tackiest shirt of all. "What about this one?"

It's a t-shirt with Hot Mama emblazoned across the front. Even by both of their style standards, it's awful.

Madeline doesn't even bat an eye. "Only," she says, pulling a shirt of her own off the rack, "if you agree to get this one."

More subtle, but no less awful, hers reads Trouble. They exchange matching grins as they swap shirts.

"You know, Fiona, honey," Madeline begins uncertainly, avoiding Fi's gaze as she holds up her shirt to make sure it's the right size, "Michael's been mum about this whole break up, but I'm sure it...well, I'm sure it hasn't been easy—"

"We were never together," she automatically corrects, ignoring the way her heart twists painfully at the denial.

Madeline's expression turns suspicious, but she keeps her opinions to herself. "Of course. I just mean, if you can't come to poker games, or come visit as frequently because seeing him is too difficult, I...I understand."

It's such a thoughtful sentiment, and one that fills her with an alarming amount of anguish, that Fi feels the need to correct her immediately. Just the idea that Madeline thinks she doesn't want to be her friend anymore because of her son's emotional incompetence is...is...

"Absolutely not." Her voice squeaks out an octave or two higher than normal, but she plays it off like she doesn't even notice. "That's a preposterous idea, Madeline, and I'll hear none of it. Now, go try that on."

The small smile that Madeline flashes her on the way to the changing room is both grateful and doting in equal measure.

—

Even in Afghanistan, the early morning brings some kind of reprieve from the heat, but Miami is its own kind of animal. Sure, it's marginally less humid, but as Michael's sneakers pound against the dirt running trail and his lungs (heavy and unmistakably saturated with the moisture in the air) swell in his chest, he forgets what an absolute hell hole this place is—an insult, probably, to Hell since it can't possibly be this humid there.

(Home sweet home.)

"Mikey—h-hold up!"

Sam's voice barely registers with him as he presses forward, ignoring each coinciding jolt that shoots up his legs and makes his teeth rattle. He deliberately tunes out the internal voice that reminds him thirteen miles was a hell of a lot easier back in his Army Ranger days, at the age of 23, than it is at the age of 41. Still...Langley never had this view—sun cresting over the ocean, streaks of muted pink and orange stretched across the early morning sky.

(Langley also didn't have frozen bank accounts and deleted job histories, that same internal voice reminds him, which...fair).

They bypass a park bench, which Michael figures is as good a spot as any to take a break, just as he gets a side cramp. Apparently, his own body has a truly wicked sense of humor. He presses his palm to just below his rib cage as he watches Sam collapse onto the other end of the bench, legs sprawled.

"Aw, c'mon, Sam," Michael says to him in between labored breaths. He attempts a smile but winces when he gets another sticker. "Don't tell me you've gone soft in retirement. I thought SEALs were supposed to have better stamina than this."

Sam's own breathing is erratic as his chest rises and falls unevenly. He wipes an arm across his forehead. "Uh, for the record: If we were in water right now, we wouldn't even be having this conversation."

"Why?" Michael looks up from the ground, hands planted on his knees. "Because you would have drowned?"

Sam's responding look says everything a rude, single-fingered gesture could. "Oh-ho! That's real funny, Mike." He lets his head rest on the back of the bench a moment, eyes jammed shut, trying to regain a steady pace of breathing again. "I'll let it slide, though, 'cause I know you're all messed up about this break up with Fiona—"

"We were never together."

"That's just the denial, brother. Veronica says it's the second stage of the grieving process, and—"

Michael lets his head fall, chin to chest, and holds out his hand. "If I buy breakfast, can we please drop this?"

Sam takes his proffered hand and uses the leverage to spring from the bench. "Throw in lunch, and I'll forget I ever met the broad."

Despite himself, Michael grins at that. When they finally make it back to the Charger—drenched and completely exhausted—Sam beats his personal best time by about a second and a half, which he claims—in addition to both meals—is worth at least two drinks of his choosing.

"It's certainly worth at least a drink and a half," Michael ultimately decides, and Sam's responding laughter is contagious.

—

The instructor is too...peppy for this early in the day. At least, that's what Maddie thinks.

All she says, however, cigarette hanging limply from the corner of her mouth is: "I hate her."

Sam rolls his eyes, careful not to lose his grip on the pool noodle she's balancing on as she does half-assed flutter kicks. The other ladies in the aquaerobics class keep covertly (and some not so covertly) shooting them dirty looks. He manages to keep them at bay with a few disarming smiles. Apparently, Sammy's still got charm to spare.

Of course, it probably helps that he's easily the youngest one in attendance, but when your best buddy asks you to keep an eye on his Ma, what can you do?

All he says to her, however, is, "Now, now, Maddie. My shrink from back in the service would say you're projecting."

"Projecting?"

"Mm-hmm. It means you're not really mad at the instructor, you're just upset because—"

"I know what it means, Sam. I'm not an idiot."

"—Fiona and Mike broke up."

"Fiona said they were never together."

Sam snorts. "Yeah, Mike said the same thing."

"Oh, please," she spits out with enough force that her cigarette drops from her mouth into the pool. "They were 'never together' in the same way you date 'age-appropriate women'."

"Hey, now," he bristles, sounding almost hurt.

Maddie doesn't apologize, but her tone doesn't carry the same kind of bite when she adds: "I suppose that's why Michael put you in charge of surveillance this morning? So the two of them don't have to spend more time together?"

He relinquishes the pool noodle to her when the instructor holds her own noodle above her head. Maddie mirrors the movement. "Or, maybe I just like scoping out all the eligible broads in Miami-Dade County who are raking in those sweet social security checks."

She barks a singular, "Ha!" over her shoulders, which of course earns them a few more disgusted looks.

Up front, the instructor begins doing some kind of modified jumping jacks. Her teeth gleam as she smiles widely and says, "Okay, ladies! Let's move with porpoise and try to have some dol-fun with this one!"

The two of them exchange looks. "I hate her," Sam finally decides, frowning.

Maddie turns back around, a self-satisfied smirk on her face. "Now who's projecting?"

—

She could flag down someone at the Cuban café down the block, but—ugh, no. Horrible idea. Untrained civilians would be more trouble than help. The cops? Not unless she wants Michael and Sam to get pinched—and as tempting as the latter may be...There!

Fi makes a hasty approach to the EMT station just down the block. This was supposed to be a two-man job (of which she had no part, thank-you-very-much) until her pedicure was interrupted by a call from Michael, who practically begged her for reinforcements. So even before her gels have a chance to set, she finds herself in Hialeah trying to find a suitable enough commotion to allow Michael and Sam the chance to escape from...well, whatever it is they've got themselves involved with.

He owes me big time, she thinks sourly before hiking her dress up just the tiniest bit and fanning air into her eyes to make them water before she makes her entrance.

"E-Excuse me? Somebody! Can-Can anybody help me?" she cries, really turning up the dramatics—truly, if anyone should be teaching an acting master class, it should be her.

There are a couple of ambulances and a group of EMTs playing cards. Or, at least they were playing cards before they all turn to look at the hysterical woman standing in their station.

One of the men—a genuine look of sincerity and concern on his face—approaches her. "What seems to be the trouble, ma'am?"

"It's my father," she tells him, voice cracking. "He's feeble, and—and the dementia? It's only getting worse. He was supposed to meet me at the jai alai court on seventh, but he never showed." She brings her hand to her mouth as if suddenly overcome with emotion rather than trying not to break at the thought of Sam being described this way. "I think—I think it might be gang-related?!"

The man places a comforting hand on her shoulder, which normally would be a bit forward, but Fi's having trouble getting upset over the whole ordeal—especially when that hand belongs to someone with such a cute face.

A very cute face.

"Don't worry, ma'am," he reassures her earnestly—it's only further endearing, "we'll send someone out to make sure he returns home safely."

He gestures behind him to two of the men playing cards, who immediately stand to attention. With his back turned, Fi quickly shoots out a text to let Michael know the cavalry's on its way. The sound of the ambulance's siren as it turns out of the garage startles her, and just as she slips her mobile back in her hip bag, the man redirects his attention back to her.

"Oh, thank you!" she gushes, making a show of dabbing at her eyes. "Thank you, Mr....?"

"Uh, Campbell. Just—Campbell."

"Thank you, Campbell. I'm—" She hesitates, only slightly, with every intention of offering up a fake name (Millicent, maybe?). But it's like she said: he's very cute. "—I'm Fiona."

Eventually, he asks for her number, blushing and backtracking at her raised eyebrows as he explains they want to make sure they have a point of contact in case Bryce and Jeff (the two guys in the ambulance) find her father.

They never do, obviously. But Fi does receive a text from an unknown number later that night inviting her to stop by the garage any time tomorrow.

...for an update on her father, of course.

(He doesn't actually ask her out until the following week, and by that point, she updates the contact listing in her phone from Cute EMT to Just Campbell).

—

Their question doesn't make sense. Especially because they're at Carlito's, and their brunch order hasn't even arrived yet.

"I like Campbell," Michael says, his smile not really all there. "He's...great."

Sam and Barry exchange glances, as if they somehow know something he doesn't. Michael hates it. He flags down the waitress for another mimosa—maybe two?

The whole thing's an ambush, all things considered.

—

"You said what?" Fi practically shrieks.

A few women on the yoga mats in front of them turn around to glare at the interruption. She offers up a hasty apology.

Sam, who is finally dressed appropriately in a baggy t-shirt and athletic shorts, looks duly chastised. Whether from her outburst or the fact that he can't seem to maintain his balance for boat pose, she's uncertain. "I told her that I've traveled all over the world, seen a lot of women, and that..." He hesitates when he catches her glaring. "...that she's one in a million?"

Fi lets out an exasperated yelp. "How did you possibly make it through SEAL training when you are clearly suffering from such advanced levels of brain damage?" she hisses, careful to keep her volume in check.

Sam falls back against his yoga mat gracelessly as they mimic the instructor's transition into corpse pose. "Hey!"

An older woman on the other side of Sam looks at him, disappointed. "Veronica has every right to be upset," she says. "You tell her she's something special and then can't even honor her with a response when she proposes?"

Sam tries to catch his breath, arms splayed at his side. He glares at her. "Uh, no offense, but you're not exactly a relationship expert here. You've only been with Anthony, what? Two weeks?"

"No, Donna's right," Fi assures him, closing her eyes to hopefully re-establish some form of equilibrium.

Another girl, Natalie—with bangs and a University of Miami t-shirt—chimes in from behind them. "Sam, my guy. It's completely understandable that you would have some reservations, or whatever, given everything that went down with Amanda. But you can't just, like, project all of your emotional baggage onto Veronica. It's not fair to her."

Sam looks between the three of them as they transition into bound angle pose. His hips creak painfully in the process. "Okay, let's assume that some—"

"—all—" Fi corrects.

"—Fine, let's assume all of that is true. What do you guys think I should do?"

"Have you called her since?" Donna wants to know.

Sam looks uncomfortable—and not just because his body hasn't moved like this since before the Soviet Union dissolved. "Well, no, not exactly, but—"

"Sam!"

This time, Fi doesn't bother watching her volume. She stands abruptly, slinging her yoga mat over her shoulder, and grabs Sam by his ear. His protests combined with her antics are enough to disturb the whole class. The instructor scowls at them both.

"Don't worry, we're leaving," she calls out, dragging a sniveling Sam behind her. He barely protests when she informs him they're driving over to Veronica's, so he can explain to her in person why he's an emotionally stunted idiot man child (her words).

—

"Now, you can hit me all you want," Sam growls at him, breathing wild and uneven, "but I'm gonna stand here 'til you get your head back in the game."

All Michael can see is red (although, some of that may be courtesy of Sam, who apparently still packs a hell of a right hook) as his options for saving the sick boy, Jack, vanish right in front of him. To him, it's just tactical reevaluation: Rachel is no longer an option, so the next logical step is Carla, who has the cash they need. But to Sam, it's apparently a breach of conscience.

It's been so long since Michael took his conscience into consideration—seared and mangled beyond repair, as it is. But Sam, apparently, views it not only as something worth saving but as something capable of being saved.

So he retreats, equal parts livid and grateful toward the guy blocking his front door.

A good friend supports you, both tactically and personally, he thinks, but an even better friend knows when to draw the line.

—

"You're lucky I like you so much," Fi says through a barely concealed yawn as they walk into Milam's. "Otherwise, you would never find me up this early on a Sunday."

Campbell smiles and pulls her into his side. "Good thing I'm so convincing then."

She has every intention of keeping up her pouting act and drawing the whole thing out a little while longer, but when she looks up at him and sees how...happy he looks, she finds it difficult to stay annoyed at him. Especially because she finally has the chance to wear the romper she snagged from the outlet mall two weeks ago for a fraction of its original cost.

(Michael would have complained about heading out to Dolphin Mall on a weekend, but Campbell was more than game. He even offered to drive—)

She cuts off that thought and instead focuses on how warm his fingers feel through the thin material of her romper. "And charming," she adds without really meaning to, but as soon as she sees his smile widen, she's glad she does. "However, I believe there were promises made regarding a homemade breakfast of some kind?"

She wiggles out of his grasp to pull a hastily made grocery list out of her pocket (half-off and pockets? Be still, her heart!). She hesitates a moment when she sees two of the cashiers looking intently in their direction (it's always the same girls who stare at her every time she's in here). They go back to busying themselves with the registers as soon as they see her looking their way.

"An egg white omelet with spinach?" Campbell suggests, then after a moment of doubt, he adds, "Right?"

It's adorable—as is everything he does. She nods in reassurance, and his shoulders sink in relief.

"Now," she says, redirecting the conversation to the task at hand, "produce is on the other side of the store, but the eggs are lumped in with poultry here, so if we hit up this side first, then make a straight shot through to—"

Campbell releases her and instead clasps one of her hands in his. "We have nowhere else to be today. Why don't we go up and down the aisles and pick up anything else we might need?"

She hesitates. Tactically, his plan is an absolute disaster—why would you divert from the objective for non-essential food items? But, a small voice reminds her, not everyone is as tactically minded as him.

Campbell frowns as her smile presumably falters, but she shakes her head like an Etch-A-Sketch and hooks her arm in his. She makes a big show of sighing and rolling her eyes as she relents. "Fine, but you owe me a yogurt now."

He plants a kiss on her head. "Blueberry, right?"

She spends the rest of the day pointedly ignoring the voice that won't stop reminding her he's not Michael.

—

Crouched behind their registers, Olivia turns to Maricruz. "Oh, my God—that's the supermodel wife slash girlfriend!"

"The one with the yogurt guy?"

She nods. "Yeah, but that's definitely not him."

Covertly, the two peer over their registers to get a better look. Not long after, Supermodel Wife Slash Girlfriend looks in their direction, and they quickly disappear again.

"Uh, excuse me, but who the heck is generically handsome white dude?" Maricruz demands, sounding almost offended.

Olivia's shoulders sink. "Do you think she's cheating on him? Poor yogurt guy."

"I mean, it could be her brother?"

"Yeah, right. He had his arm wrapped around her waist. That's, like, Boyfriend 101."

Maricruz puts her foot down. Metaphorically. "No. No way. I—"

"Excuse me." An elderly woman peers over Maricruz's conveyor belt, her mouth pressed into a hard line. "Could I please get some assistance?"

The two girls pop up from their crouched positions and brush themselves off. Maricruz offers the woman a conciliatory smile. "So sorry, ma'am. I'm happy to help you out."

After Maricruz rings up her order—a tube of Sensodyne and a bag of Werther's Originals—the elderly woman walks off in a huff. They both wave after her, wide smiles plastered on with professional ease, until Maricruz turns back to Olivia.

"No, look. I have a cousin who runs a kind of sketch auto body shop in Little Haiti, and he says yogurt guy was in just last week buying a new windshield, and supermodel wife slash girlfriend was with him."

Olivia looks somewhat impressed. "You looped your cousin into this?"

"...Yes. I'm not proud of it," Maricruz laments. "According to Diego, yogurt guy is in there a lot, always showing up with his car busted up. One time, Diego swears he saw bullet holes on the side, hand to God."

Olivia takes this in with some difficulty. "But he...he owns so many polo shirts! I just—what does that guy do?"

Maricruz crosses her fingers, nodding in Supermodel Wife Slash Girlfriend's direction. "Hopefully, not her. My money is still on super hot sister."

—

"Now, did Shawn deliver, or did he deliver?"

Michael turns just in time to see the giddy smile stretch across Sam's face as he makes his return to their seats, his arms delicately balancing chili cheese fries and plastic cups of beer. Before Sam can reclaim his seat between them, Fi makes a grab for the fries, while Michael takes one of the proffered beers. When Sam settles in, he tries to snag one of Fi's fries, but she slaps his hand away.

"Fifty-yard line, third row back," Michael recalls, unable to help the grin from spreading on his own face. "I've gotta admit—these seats are real nice, Sam."

Of the three of them, he's the only one in an orange polo shirt. The other two are decked out, head to toe, in Dolphins' colors—including jerseys (Sam, of course, in an old Marino one) and in Fi's case, an orange bandana. She even has eye black under each eye.

"Nice?" Sam demands with a hearty laugh. "Mikey, these seats are more than nice. They're phenomenal. I can practically see the whites of Ricky Williams' eyes!"

Fi sighs dramatically. "Get back to me when we're talking about real football," she says, popping a fry into her mouth.

"Real football?" Sam gestures toward the whole field. "This is as real and American as apple pie, lady."

She rolls her eyes. "Michael, can you please inform Sam that I am not an American?"

"Mikey, can you please inform Fiona that I didn't serve in the Navy for over a decade to listen to the good name of American football be besmirched?"

"Kids, kids," Michael says dryly. "Let's try not to kill each other before half time even begins."

Arms crossed, Sam and Fi glare at each other. "Fine," they spit out simultaneously.

Michael smiles from behind his sunglasses as an announcement filters in through the speaker system that they're clearing the field to honor a group of local World War II veterans. Sam springs up from his chair just as a steady stream of other people migrate toward the restrooms and concession stands.

"Those beers shot right through me," he informs them just as Fi makes a point of dramatically shuddering. "I'm gonna try to beat the lines."

As soon as he leaves, Michael is acutely aware that he and Fi are alone together for the first time since...well, a while. Without Sam as a buffer between them, she seems much closer than before. Which is...inconvenient because she said they can't be together, and she's still—well, the whole thing is still—a lot.

And...maybe she called Campbell before the start of the game, and Michael realized he hadn't been able to make her smile or laugh like that in a long time.

"I never got a chance to thank you, Michael."

He looks up at the sound of Fi's voice, but when he turns to her, she has her feet propped up on the seat below her, gaze straight ahead. He copies her stance, settles into the cheap plastic seat. "Thank me for what?"

"For taking this job and putting Felix away for good. He was a monster. Corey and Tanya deserved more than living their lives in constant fear."

Michael has a brief flash to his father, but he reflexively pushes that back. Instead, he watches as a group of elderly veterans make their way onto the field. "Well, you said you felt strongly about it."

"I did," she says, then quickly corrects, "I do. Tanya is just a kid, and when I—"

Abruptly, she cuts herself off, and it takes everything in him to keep his gaze straightforward. Fi could never stomach his pity, and he has a feeling now would be no different. There's something there, but he won't press her. Instead, he tries a different tactic. "You did good work, Fi. They were lucky to have someone who lets her emotions run the show on their side."

He feels eyes on him, and instinctually, when he turns to look at her, she's looking right back, an appreciative smile on her face. He looks away just as she makes the decision to climb over and into the seat next to him. She plucks a fry from Sam's abandoned pile and settles in before saying, "Sam will simply lose it when I tell him I submitted his name as one of these elderly veterans."

It's enough for both of them to share matching grins and clink plastic cups as the concept of colleagues who are just friends seems more attenable.

(In the spirit of colleagues who are just friends, he may need to tell Sam to stop calling Campbell "Soup" behind his back.)

—

Even from his spot behind the police line, Michael can feel the stifling heat blazing from the explosion site. He's not actually breathing in any of the smoke or the smell of charred plastic, but he may as well be, the way his chest constricts, the way bile comes up and burns his throat on its way back down.

He spends the next few hours scouring what seems like every freeway, every back road, and every alley that make up Miami-Dade County looking for her. He mentally compiles every safehouse, every evacuation measure, every weapons stockpile she has littered throughout the city. All the while he tries calling her ("This is Fi. Leave a message.") again ("This is Fi. Leave a message.") and again ("This is Fi. Leave a message.") and again ("This is Fi. Leave a message."). It's only when the rain turns into a torrential downpour, reducing his visibility to practically nonexistent, that he's forced to make the retreat back to the loft. The click that accompanies the closed door carries with it a finality that Michael refuses to—can't—accept.

But then her voice somehow filtrates through his waning adrenaline and utter exhaustion ("You have got to get a landline in here."), and suddenly, he can't focus on anything other than remembering how to breathe.

There's no Campbell, there's no job, there's no sleazy, retired ex-SEAL making not-so-subtle comments, or a well-meaning-but-intrusive mother demanding to know how he ever let a girl like her go—

There's just them.

And suddenly his chest constricts, and he's drowning for another reason entirely when she sinks into his embrace—warm, and solid, and alive.

—

Sam keeps asking, keeps pressing, keeps...being Sam about the whole thing, but she is quite adamant on the subject.

She doesn't want to talk about it.

"Are you sure?" he tries again, breathing heavy. They're outside the loft, where the Charger usually is, sparring (Michael's off with—other Sam). She can't recall who had the idea first, but she's dismayed it took this long to figure out that hitting Sam is...well, it's phenomenally cathartic.

"Because it seems like—" He ducks, narrowly avoiding being kicked in the head. When he comes back up again, he fixes her with an indignant glare. "—it kind of seems like you might wanna talk about it."

"There's nothin' to talk about." Fi's next punch lands squarely on the beat-up couch cushion he's using as a strike shield. If her native accent slips through the haze of her own outrage, then so be it.

"Nothing at all?" This time her foot connects with the cushion, but he holds his ground. For an octogenarian (she assumes, anyway), he's still surprisingly spry. "You're telling me," he continues, as she blocks his counter, "that you have absolutely nothing to say about the fact that Mike—our Mike—was once engaged?"

Fi lets out an enraged shriek before she lands a roundhouse kick that makes Sam lose his footing and stagger backward. While he recovers, Fi paces—hands on her hips, breathing erratic, head and chest pounding in tandem.

"Of course, I do!" she cries, coming to an abrupt halt. "Do you know what he said to me? What he told me that first night we were in Miami?" When Sam shakes his head, she tells him: "He said—" She swallows past the lump in her throat with some difficulty. "—He said I was the 'closest he ever got.' And then this—this Sam woman just shows up, out of the blue, and she's just like him—"

Sam stands fully and looks at her with not quite empathy—he's not nearly evolved enough to pull that one off if she's being honest (and she almost always is)—but with pity. It's positively grotesque.

"Fi..." he trails off, his expression totally lost.

She can't tell if it's said out of genuine concern, or out of embarrassment by her outrageous emotional display, and he's just too much of a gentleman to address it forthright—but either way, she decides, she has spent far too much time wallowing to be of much use to anyone. (The fact that she just compared Sam to a gentleman is merely further evidence of her fraught emotional state, as far as she's concerned).

"Sam, I'm fine." She wipes her hair out of her eyes and brings her fists back up to fighting stance. "Like I said," she reminds him, "I don't want to talk about it."

Sam takes a moment to determine if she really is fine, but she doesn't budge. Satisfied, he clears his throat and holds the couch cushion back up. "Fine by me, sister. But this time," he advises her with an annoyingly smug smirk, "try leaning your whole body into it. Your last kick was pretty weak."

Later, after Fi leaves and Sam drives over to the clinic in Coconut Grove to tell his medical buddy about the whole ordeal, Sam's buddy takes one look at his x-rays and tells him he has three cracked ribs.

—

I left her because you don't marry someone when you love somebody else.

Madeline can't see Fiona's expression from her place in Michael's bed (pretending to be asleep limits her line of sight), but she can't help the small smile that blooms on her own face at her son's admission.

She hasn't known Fi long, but she has come to think of her as...family. Like the daughter she never had (the one she miscarried all those years ago). Sometimes she thinks about it—about what would happen if her fool son would start prioritizing the people he cared about over his job and what that would look like. How he would finally decide whether Fiona was officially his girlfriend or not, and how she would finally have the big family get-togethers during the holidays with all of them (her sons, and Fiona and Sam) like she always wanted, and maybe—eventually, somewhere down the line—how she might even get grandchildren out of the deal. She snuggles down into Michael's god-awful mattress, hopeful.

Her son certainly picked the right girl, but so help her, if he thinks Fiona—coming from an Irish Catholic family like that—would ever be caught dead proposing instead of him, then he clearly inherited all of his common sense from Frank, who was—at his best—a complete idiot.

#burn notice #burnnoticeedit #my writing #my fic #burn notice fic #michael westen #fiona glenanne #sam axe #madeline westen #fiona x michael

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Text

DARING DO and the Gryphon’s Quest! : MLP Fan Fiction : Part 4 of 19

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to MLP Fan Fiction

DARING DO

and

THE GRYPHON’S QUEST!

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

and

Carmen Pondiego

Cover art by Aranel the Cyborg, now Wind the Mama Cat

29584 words

Writing begun 03/29/16

This is a Fan Fiction based on My Little Pony. Canterlot, Princess Luna and the name Daring Do are owned by Hasboro Inc.

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

Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights. They may reblog the story. They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions, provided that such things are done without charge. I will allow those who do commission art works to charge for their images.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fictions is actively encouraged.

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

Chapter 4. A V.I.L.E. Family Dinner

Daring Do, her eyes adjusting to the bright sunlight, saw the famous statue of CELESTIA IN VICTORY. That brought her up short because she knew that it had been stolen from Victory Park in mid Canterlot about three years ago. Nopony was sure of exactly when it was taken. Park workers going to clean it of pigeon droppings discovered that it had been replaced by a Styrofoam copy!

Staring about, she saw a plunge. It had four so-called “Wu Dogs”, one at each corner. Daring Do knew that those “dogs” were actually lions carved from descriptions in written texts that were given to stone carvers who had never seen a lion. She knew that those “dogs” and the swimming pool that they were a part of was once inside the palace of the Golden Emperor of the Chineighese Empire. Discovering that it was gone had created a huge scandal.

The cause of that scandal was lounging at the far end of the pool. A khaki colored unicorn mare in a fire engine red bikini hit the water in a near perfect dive. She made almost no splash and shot underwater like a living torpedo to the near end of the plunge.

Surfacing at the pool’s rim like a leaping porpoise, she put both forehooves on the pool edge and pushed, turning as she did so. The infamous and NEVER caught master thief Carmen Pondiego sat only a fraction of a second before rolling to her hooves and sprinting joyfully to them.

She called out, “Adora! Blendin said that he was bringing you and two other guests to dinner! I was not sure whether to believe him or not! We are having enchiladas! I made up enough for all of us.”

Daring Do could not dodge her mother’s hug with the Gryphons watching. Truthfully, she really did not want to. As she felt Carmen’s arms about her, she felt paradoxically safe and about to panic at the same moment.

She compromised by asking archly, “Enough for ALL of us? Where did you manage to steal that much?”

Stepping back but keeping her hooves on Daring Do’s shoulders, Carmen said with mock severity, “Adora, you wound me! This was a dinner for YOU. I did not steal the ingredients.”

Blendin pulled a wry face as he revealed, “Uncle Marehem stole them. We have not seen the headlines yet, so we don’t know where he got them.

“Want to join the betting pool, Sis? The pot is up to 800 golden bits!”

While Daring Do was thinking about it, Grata and Rahak, crests up and fluttering in Gryphon laughter asked, “Is that a family betting pool or can we join it?”

Blendin instantly replied, “It is open to anypony on the island. That includes you two.”

“Right. Who do we register our guess and place our bets with?”

Blendin snickered, “Me.”

“Five golden bits each, on the northwestern region of Mexipone.” They cheerfully gave Blendin their bits.

Daring Do, squinted her eyes in deep thought and hoofed over ten gold bits herself. “Ten. I am going for the Mexi-Queso Warehouse. Uncle M always likes getting the very best!”

Letting go of Daring Do, Carmen put a hoof over her eyes. “I am shamed by my own daughter. I should have thought of that!”

Blendin suggested, “Face saving by face stuffing? It is dinner time on the Island!”

Carmen nodded and led them through corridors hung with priceless art and past pedestals with small statuary and rare porcelains. They emerged into a dining room with a table of simple, elegant design.

It was Rahak who drew a breath of admiration. “A Chipenwood table. I never thought to see a real one in my lifetime.”

Grata’s eye was drawn to a smallish porcelain vase of white, blue and green with characters of the ancient X'ibian language decorating its surface. Awed, she turned to Carmen and asked, “The Heart of Discord? It is real after all?”

Carmen smiled broadly. “Yes, the Heart of Discord. No, it is not real. Yes, that is the only one in the whole world. My daughter’s last expedition to X'ibia created it by copying the true Heart of Wisdom to mislead some tomb robbers. Eris, the female form of Discord, came when it was used but she was not bound by it. I am very proud of this deception by my sweet Adora.”

Carmen disappeared into an adjoining room. There was an encouraging clatter of dishes from the room. Carmen emerged, having managed the trick of changing into her near trademark form fitting red dress and tinted glasses. She was carrying a big silver platter piled high with enchiladas. She set it onto hot pads on the table and returned with a second tray, only a little smaller than the first. This one got placed between Rahak and Grata.

The other guests entered the dining room. As they sat, Daring Do realized that her biological father, the alicorn Baron Von Nighthoof and Carmen were presently getting along well. He was at Carmen’s right hoof, but not before he had seated her like royalty. The glint of gold at her neck showed that she was wearing their copy of the Golden Necklace of Pharow Underrock that the Baron had given her.

Daring Do was seated at Carmen’s left hoof. Grata and Rahak were down table from Daring Do. Blendin and Kiros, the odd looking wolf hybrid with his black hair, horns and dragon like wings and tail, sat opposite them. At the foot of the table, in his usual place, was Daring Do’s uncle Marehem, a blue Misfortune Changeling with orange hair.

As soon as all were seated, Carmen tapped the side of her glass (a rare Stuborn glass, Daring Do noticed) to get attention. “Marehem, my dear, the betting pool is all here. Where did you obtain the ingredients for our dinner?”

He ran a blue hoof through his pumpkin colored hair. “Um, could I have the guesses?”

Blendin nodded and pulled out his list. “To make things easiest, they are all in Mexipone.

“Baron Von Nighthoof thought that you went to Mexipone City because the place is such hodgepodge that nopony would miss them.

“Carmen guessed Ox-Huaca valley somewhere.

“Kiros thought perhaps, Casa Nquesa.

“Our two Gryphon guests suggested northwestern Mexipone.

“Adora was specific. She said the Mexi-Queso warehouse because you wanted the best.”

Marehem smiled wickedly. “Adora, you should put aside all of your problems with Carmen. You would make a fantastic agent! You hit it on the head. Technically, I did not take it from their warehouse. I got it from their aging cave about an hour before it was due to go to the warehouse to be packaged and labeled.”

Grata’s eyes were darting from object to object in the room. She ventured, “I have seen some of these in the Imperial Museum. The reproductions are excellent.”

With considerable pride, Carmen replied, “Indeed they are. That is why the originals have not been missed! These are the originals.”

Grata paused in deep thought. “Then it is not a coincidence of names. You are Carmen Pondiego, reputed to be a Master Thief unexcelled in history. Since Daring Do is your daughter, so we have been hearing, then the origin of her astounding skill at locating and recovering ancient artifacts is well explained.”

Carmen nodded sadly. “That is true. I wish that she could see it that way.”

Acidly, Daring Do retorted, “I do. Don’t worry about that!”

Marehem, seeing the enchiladas getting cold, as a family battle heated up, called cheerfully, “Food! Now that I have your attention, there is a huge pile of enchiladas here, just waiting to be eaten! The bet has been settled. ANYTHING else can wait!”

Grabbing serving tongs he snagged FOUR of the big enchiladas and a healthy serving of salad. Blendin got the message and joined in. For a moment, the serving tray resembled the main course at shark feeding frenzy as they all dived in!

When all of the plates were loaded, Carmen looked at the tray with satisfaction. “Looks like there will be plenty for seconds or more. I thought that I made enough.”

Rahak was whispering to Grata. She retorted, “If the Imperial Museum hasn’t noticed, why should WE tell them? Besides, the originals are perfectly safe here. Use your eyes. This whole place is a museum in its own right. I will bet that every item here is perfectly documented.”

Blendin nodded emphatically. Swallowing a bite of enchilada in haste, he agreed. “Keeping the catalog of mom’s acquisitions keeps me hopping!”

Grata raised her cup and toasted, “To Carmen Pondiego! A mare of discernment and taste!”

Daring Do only thought for a second before joining in. After all, it was perfectly true! “To Carmen Pondiego!”

At the last, there was only one lonely enchilada left on the silver platter, now easily seen to be a priceless Pony Revere.

Blendin spoke up, “Part of the reason that I brought the Gryphons here was to see if you could put them near the site where the Gryphons originated, Uncle M.”

Marehem shook his head, “No, I am afraid not, Blendin. The time span is no problem. There is no way to use the equipment safely anywhere near to the mangled spells and random magic fallout from the Circle and Crescent Lake blasts at the end of the second Nightmare War. That whole area is deadly for a fifty year span.”

Blendin inquired, “Deadly, M? How so?”

Dryly M pointed out, “If you can not get back, the effect is the same. If we try to use our temporal displacement engine anywhere near that magical fallout region, all connection to the present will be severed.

“For you, the effect is the obliteration of your timeline. You cease to exist the instant that you land anywhere in that danger zone.”

Rahak, crest up, turned to Blendin and said, “We thank you for at least checking on a possibility for us to see what happened. It appears that we will have to track that weather and see if we can find the proper place where our kind originated.”

Daring Do observed, “Your legends actually do offer a lot of help. Your place of origin is set with the TWIN FIRES OF CREATION east of the eagles.

“Assuming that the Twin Fires of Creation are the Mage blasts that created Circle Lake and Crescent Lake, that would indicate a place in the Sunset Mountains on the western edge of Equestria. Add in the tactical weather data and we should be able to get pretty close to it.”

With a slightly predatory look, Carmen inquired far to innocently, “What do you hope to find, Adora?”

Daring Do looked up alertly, “Nothing of real value in any monetary or aesthetic sense, Mother. We hope to find physical remains of some of the earliest Gryphons. If their legends are to be believed, they started as hippogriffs and became the Gryphons that we know now.”

Kiros, a hybrid himself, suggested, “That makes perfect sense. Gryphons could not have come from an unforced mating of lions and eagles. Both are competitive carnivores and the size disparity is against it too.

“Eagles and pegassi are a lot closer, a better mating size match. The intelligence would have come from the pegasus but so would an herbivore digestive tract. Normally, that would doom the cross from malnutrition. With a lot random spell recombination in the fallout, some of the fallout might have caused survivors that hatched to force morph to a carnivore diet and hindquarters.”

Daring Do stared at him in surprise. “I did not know that you were interested in Gryphon origins, Kiros.”

Laconicly, he pointed to his horns, dragon like wings and tail along with his wolf like features. “I am not. I am interested in Hybridization. Any guesses as to WHY?”

Daring Do nodded as she helped herself to the last enchilada, “I see. Thanks for the dinner, mom. I am afraid that we have to be going, now though.”

Blendin nodded, “Might as well, the food is all gone! I’ll see you to Mom’s door to the Great Library. We will just connect it straight across to the Canterlot Main Door.”

As they were strolling through the halls and colonnades to the massive steel doors of the Great Library, Carmen caught up to them. “Blendin, dear, I need to dig up a bunch of clues for the Green Ruby of Cashin. Is it OK if I tag along?”

“Sure, Mom. No problem.”

Daring Do looked surprised. “The Green Ruby is your next target?”

Carmen managed to look both affronted and amused at the same time. “Of course not! All those clues I give the Gumshoes? I am NEVER after that thing. If I get it, great! If not, who cares? I ALWAYS get the thing that I AM after.”

Rahak’s crest shot up, rippling laughter. “Misdirection! I love it.”

Grata nodded, her own crest showing the ripples of amusement.

They came to the massive steel doors of the Great Library. Blendin inserted his ID into a spell reader and said, “Daring Do party to exit at the Canterlot main doors. Carmen Pondiego and I to research room nine.”

Carmen said, as the steel faded to mist, “Do come back, Adora. It was lovely to finally let you see our home.”

Walking through the steel mist, Daring Do and her companions emerged inside the Royal Library. As they strolled toward the street, shaking her head, Daring Do said, “Carmen Pondiego has her OWN door to the Great Library? That explains SO O O much!”

<==PREVIOUS NEXT==>

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to MLP Fan Fiction

#DARING DO AND THE GRYPHON'S QUEST!#Part 4 of 19 #MLP Fan Fiction #Written by De Writer and Carmen Pondiego

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natysadventureblog · 4 years

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Day Seventeen [Internship at Mingan Island Cetacean study]

22-Aug-2017

A very early day! And I was so anxious about it that I woke up 5 times or so in the middle of the night, thinking it was time to get up (the first one was before 1h, I think! Haha)!!

One of the interns is leaving, and she's taking the bus (which is what I'm gonna have to do when I leave), so I wanted to go with her to see where it was, and how it worked. But the only bus leaves very early, so I woke up at 5h20, and we left just before 5h30.

The bus stop is in front of the market, so it's a 5-minute-walk… it's pretty close, but it's not easy when you have a lot/heavy luggage, or it's raining.

The sun had risen 15 minutes earlier, so it still looked very nice, especially with the fog… oh, yeah… there was fog… I was pretty sure I would go back to sleep, at 6h.

She thought the bus was at 5h50, but it turned out it was at 5h55, and it was about 5 minutes late, but I could only wait with her until 5h55, because I had to be back at the motel at 6h, to radio the house to confirm that we were not going out because of the fog.

Oh!! I found a dead frog in the middle of the street!! I hadn't seen or heard any amphibians here… too bad it was dead (and pretty squooshed)!

When I got back, the other intern had already radioed them (because she was supposed to go on the boat I went last time) and, as expected, they said it was too foggy, but for us to call again at 8h15.

So yeah, back to bed until 7h30. Then I got up, got dressed, checked out what the girl had left behind in her room (I took the table lamp she had taken from the other room, because, since there are no windows, it's pitch black when you turn off the light). When I went up to the kitchen, I could see the beach, which meant that the fog was gone, so I was optimistic! By the time I finished breakfast, we called them again, and they told us they weren't sure yet, because there was still some fog, but for us to try and go to the house around 9h.

I had prepped most of my stuff last night, so I just made myself a sandwich to go, took a banana and a granola bar, finished getting ready and we left around 8h50.

At the house, no one was in a hurry because they weren't really hopeful… but we were gonna try. I mean the other boat should be fine, because it stays by the shore, and they wouldn't be looking for whales anyways. Our boat was taking a session, so if we couldn't go where we were meant to go, we would try and go around the islands. Plan B sounded pretty good to me as well, since I haven't been to the islands and I REALLY wanted to see puffins (they don't come to the continent and they are leaving for Newfoundland)!!

As I was looking out the window, waiting for them, I finally saw the fog they were talking about… because I could see the sea, and it was cloudy, it looked like it was just water and sky… but then I realized that the island in front of us was pretty much gone!

We left for Mingan at 9h30, and then left the harbor just after 10h. The sea was very calm at first, but in about 10 minutes it was already very different! It wasn't bad; it was what we consider “sea state 2”, but considering that “1” is very flat, when you're on a speeding zodiac, you can definitely feel the difference!

Once again I forgot to put my gloves on, so my fingers were freezing, but I was gonna wait until we stopped to go to my backpack and get them.

I saw a few puffins!!! But it was all too fast, and the lighting was bad, so they looked almost all black, even though I was seeing their ventral side… but I could see their shape, as they quickly flew away from the boat… I need to photograph a puffin!!

The sea had calmed down again just before 11h, but less than half an hour later, it was at 3!! You can definitely feel that!! I hit my knee so many times that I was sure I would have some bruises!!

And then… we finally spotted a spout!! It was a fin whale!! My first fin whale!! The second largest animal that has ever lived!! Just… wow!! Because you only see a very small portion of them, it's hard to imagine their actual size… but it was amazing!! But the lighting was too bad for photos, so we left…

I was the one who saw the next one!! Another spout… this time from a humpback whale!! My first humpback whale!! They were able to ID him while we were taking photos, and his name is Adiego.

The whales have a breathing pattern; when they come up to breathe, they surface a few times before actually diving. During those, we get to take photos of their dorsal fins, or the chevron, in the fin whale's case (those are markings on the right anterior side, which we can use to differentiate them); then, as they dive, we can take photos of the peduncle and the fluke, in the humpback's case. That means that we can stay with the same whale for quite some time, because after it dives, it takes a good 10 minutes or so to surface again, and by then, it's somewhere else, so we need to wait to hear/see the spout again, and approach them again.

Oh! We had a few porpoises swimming around the boat on one of those moments when we weren't moving!! They're too fast though, so I still don't have a good photo of them!

We found a couple more fin whales, then stopped for lunch at 13h. But then we saw a humpback, and started recording again… and it turns out that this is one I recognize! It's a new one, that it's not in the catalog yet, so the girls hadn't been able to match it last week, and I was able to match, and then I saw that it was the same whale… it's a pretty small animal… It must be a young one!

And then one of the fin whales decided to join us, and it was awesome to have lunch with them around!!

Oh, something I never thought I would do was pee out of a boat, but days at sea are very long, so it's really hard to hold it in… and once we stopped for lunch, we all took turns going to the back of the boat to pee… and it was actually not nearly as bad as I thought it would be (at least on this boat), cause there's a perfect place for you to sit and hold on to, so you won't fall in the water.

We then saw other 2 humpbacks with the one I know, but when they surfaced again, after diving, it was just the 2 new ones.

Half an hour later we found 2 more, and once again I was able to recognize one! Another one that has no match, but has a very distinctive fluke, completely black, but with many white scars, and a rounded edge… and we needed to take a biopsy from it!!

The arrows have modified tips with a foam to make them not go deeper than 3 cm, which is enough to get both skin and blubber sample. The skin is used for DNA test, so we can tell the sex, and who is related to; the blubber is used to measure hormones (so it's possible to tell if a female is pregnant) and contaminants, which get accumulated in the fat.

It took 3 attempts to actually hit the whale and get the samples, and during those, I was responsible for taking photos (so we can see where the arrow hit). The camera is very big, and heavy, so that weight around my neck, plus looking through the camera and such, made me sea sick. But I wasn't feeling it in my stomach, but in my head, so I didn't need to throw up, I was just feeling blah.

We found another humpback, then the same fin whale from before, but I wasn't turning my head too much; just taking the notes… then, as moved for a while, I started feeling better, and the sea went back to “1”, so my head finally went back to normal, after almost two hours.

We found another fin whale and decided to call it a day, because it was already 17h30 and the lighting was bad, and there was fog on one side… but then, 10 minutes later, we found 3 new humpbacks, one of them being a calf!! Unfortunately, the calf never fluked though.

By then, the sea looked just like a lake! There was total silence, and we could clearly hear the blows! At one point, there were those 3 whales, 2 more on the other side, then one more, and another one… mostly humpbacks, but also that same fin whale from before; others we weren't able to get to, and there were porpoises and a seal… and we had just seen a minke!! It was fantastic!!

We approached the 2 humpbacks, took photos, then went back to the 3, to try and get better shots. We then went back to the 2, because one of them needed to be biopsied. Thankfully we got that sample on the first attempt!

We went back to the 3 whales for the last time, then called it day, once again, at 18h30.

We arrived in Mingan at a quarter to 20h, and the captain took the session back, so she could have dinner, while we unloaded and refueled the boat. It was already 20h30 when we finally left.

I helped them unload everything at the house and got to the motel around 21h. I met the new intern (a girl from Belgium), had dinner, took a shower, and was barely able to do anything else!!

I'm dead tired!! It was a veeeery long day!! But definitely worth it!! =)

#biologist #internship #conservation #marine biology #Canada #MICS

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7deadlycinderellas · 5 years

Text

At the End they formed, a true lover’s knot

AO3 Link

(Why yes, this was entirely inspired by an image I had in my head of Bran as the Ice King)

The three-eyed Raven had said that Brandon Stark was gone.

Gone, that seemed a good enough way to put it at the time.

It was easier than pushing through from the labyrinth inside his mind.

The last thing he remembered seeing before he touched the weirwood tree had been Meera. The next thing he sees is her again, staring at him with contempt.

What did I do? What did I say? Bran thinks, deep within his own mind. He knew that if he searched, swam within the sea of memories, his own, and the memories of the Raven and the visions, that he could find it.

He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to know what he had said to make her look at him like that.

One moment he was a child again, climbing the walls of Winterfell. The next he was in the head of the Raven, soaring above the forest, and before he could try and figure it out, he was in the stands at the tourney at Harrenhall, and before the strike of the gong, he had returned to the age of heroes.

When his mind touches the Long Night, he doesn’t know what to do. With the Raven’s eyes, he doesn’t know if what he saw was real. If the memories overwhelmed him, seeing the night leaves him catatonic.

Sometimes when he’s lucky, he’ll be back north of the wall. Back before, before the Raven taught him the secrets buried in the ice and snow. Summer would still be be his side, sleeping cuddled roughly by Hodor, as though she were a toy. He’ll be when Meera pressed her face into his chest in a vain attempt to shield herself from the cold. He feels his own heart thrum uncontrollably, and he relishes the feeling, desperate for it to last, before he’s pulled away.

“Your Grace?” he hears. He opens his eyes, and Tyrion Lannister is offering him a handkerchief.

“Sorry Your Grace,” the man who he himself had once called the Imp says again. “You were crying.”

The visions take the most out of him. He only dimly is even aware of the passage of time, much less the difference between past and present, without adding future into the mix. Much like the Long Night, the visions of the future are so incredibly chaotic that Bran is uncertain as if anything in them could be real. And so, when they come, Brandon Stark retreats even further into the labyrinth.

The only time Bran Stark got any power over his own mind was in his dreams. Though they had once led him on his way to the Children, now Bran’s dreams were again his own.

In his dreams, he could walk again. He could dance and ride, and fly. Fly in a way that the Raven could never let him.

In his dreams, he can be beside his siblings again. Arya dreams of the sea, and the canals. Bran rows for her, wondering why they’ve turned back to Westeros already. He’s with Jon, again beyond the wall, in a beyond-the-wall that was new and open for life. When Sansa rides beside him in the cold of the North, he wonders if all these dreams are simply his.

Sometimes in his dreams, he reaches out and touches them. He wonders if they could feel it.

But then again, he has no control over his dreams. He was simply brought along for the ride, as welcome as the ride was. Or at least he thought.

One night, asleep in his chambers the new, much smaller and more modest than before, Red Keep, Bran dreams that he’s drowning.

The water isn’t like the pools in the Godswood back in Winterfell. It’s brackish and wild, and dragging him under. He fights and flails, but it brings him no closer to the surface.

Then he feels something underneath him shoving him roughly. The surface rushes to him, bright light through the green-gray water. His hands reach for it grasping for anything. Grasping seemingly forever, until his hand found the rope. He grabs on and pulls, pulls with all his strength, and finally, with enough strength to pull himself above the water.

With a splash from the water, Meera is beside him, pulling the rope from his hands and then pulling him the rest of the way from the water.

“You forgot your tether.”

With an unusual amount of control, Bran reaches out and touches her, as he had times before with his siblings. He brushes one of her dark curls, still wet from the water, behind her ear. His fingers linger as long as they can.

“But you brought it to me,” is what he says.

He fights waking, fights it harder than near anything he’s fought in recent memory.

When he does wake, the feeling of her skin lingers under his fingers.

When awake, he goes to the time on the road North to the wall. Jojen tells him of the time Meera pulled him out of the water when he tumbled off one of the crannogs before he could swim well. The grey water had gotten into his lungs then, and she had chided him for playing so close to the edge without being tied to the shore.

The next night, he wonders if he could try and seek her out again in his dreams. But the next night, he is with Arya.

She is on a ship, a small one, not like the one she left on. She steers it all herself, from the crow’s nest. She’s steering it towards the shore, towards a gathering storm.

“I told him I’d come back,” she says, with trepidation, “Eight moons ago I did. “

Dimly, Bran realizes he is not himself, but a porpoise. His smooth skin slipping easily through the water.

When he says, “Then you should,” he still has Brandon Stark’s voice.

“What if I can’t stop myself from leaving again?”

“Don’t make promises, and remember to bring gifts.”

He takes a deep dive under the sea, and when he rises, expels the water forcefully from his blowhole before waking.

The next night, he is climbing a staircase. Sansa is in front of him. The stairs rise and spiral, the way some of the stairs in Winterfell did. The steps are wood though, not stone, and he’s pretty sure all the staircases in Winterfell stopped at some point, instead of merely going higher and higher.

At some point, Sansa has become Lady. The pale gray pup, still as small as she had been when Bran saw her last. Not that she’d had any time to grow into her full size.

Bran gives her a scratch on the ear, and she says,

“You’re lonely and you shouldn’t be. Isn’t that what you told me?”

And then he wakes.

“You’re lonely and you shouldn’t be.”

It’s the next day,

“That sounds like what you wrote your sister last week. Shame she feels loneliness is part of her duty,” Tyrion comments from across the table.

Bran fixes on the words, he tries to so hard, but then he’s gone again.

The breadth of the Raven’s knowledge is so great that some days Bran barely even touches the years he was born in. He could spend a lifetime following the lives of the people in a Westeros that bears no resemblance at all to the one he knows.

He doesn’t want to. It may be a fight, but Bran wants his own life back.

In the night, there are storms. There are more boats, but they are not Arya’s. Some of them appear to be toys, carved from rock or driftwood, awash on the waves.

All of the Starks are here, though they are children again. Arya and Sansa are swimming amidst the waves, as if half fish themselves. Jon is beside him on the stone barge, munching on a loaf of bread.

“I’m going to go over,” Bran says, peeking overboard.

“That’s okay,” Jon insists casually.

He again peers over into the sea, afraid.

He feels a hand slip a rope around his waist and tie a knot to hold it. He doesn’t even have to look.

“If you’re going to sit so close to the edge, you’re going to need a tether,” Meera tells him, in the same tone she must have used years ago on Jojen.

A tether. He wraps his hands in the rope. And then he reaches out to Meera, desperate to touch her again.

But just like the nights when he wakes thinking their still north of the wall, he reaches and keeps reaching.

A tether.

His mind reaches, pulls on that rope as hard as he can, hoping the memory of her will help him pull himself out.

It almost works.

At breakfast, he asks Tyrion,

“What do you know about asking for forgiveness?”

“From a person? Or do you feel you have somehow displeased the Gods?”

“A person. A woman.”

He tries so hard to hold onto Tyrion’s explanation, and his suggestions, and tries not to think too much about his pitying gaze, before being pulled away and sinking again.

The words come out of his haphazardly, a few at a time, the ink smearing, his handwriting occasionally unrecognizable. He apologizes, with every bit of his being. He puts in words, for the first time, the way she used to make him feel, the way she still does. Every few minutes, his mind will try to retreat again, and he will grab his wrist and squeeze, pinching the skin violently in an attempt to stop it.

He can’t send it right away. He has to look.

The last memory, the one Bran lets himself go to before he retires. He has to make himself see.

Meera’s words hurt, especially now that he understands. She’d lost her brother, and all she wanted was to be with what remained of her family before the end came. He stares at the look in her eyes, when the words his own mouth produces are so cold.

He’s angry, so angry that he’d allowed himself to become that. To have let go so completely of the one person who had been with him through the thick and thin. To have cast her off. To have become the person who did that.

It’s just luck, so he thinks, that the memory follows him into his dreamspace.

“All I wanted was for you to ask me to stay. I don’t know if I would have, but I wanted you to ask.”

The dream words cut deeply. The setting is the same as the memory, though she is sitting beside him. This is one of the few dreams where Bran finds he still cannot feel his legs, as if this were life. He tries not to notice that she’s naked, as is he. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had a dream get sidetracked like so.

“If I asked you now?” His voice quietly seeks.

She ducks her head, paying no mind to the rope in her hands. He reaches and grabs it, wrapping it around his wrists loosely.

And then he leans forward to kiss her, with a certainty he would have never even dreamed of having in waking life. The noise she makes hurts him deep inside. She’s warm, and tastes of summer rain. Then she shudders.

“It isn’t fair, “ she whispers, barely a breath away from his lips “It isn’t fair that this is just me dreaming something that could never be.”

Overcome, he reaches out with one hand to embrace her, running the fingers of his hand through her thick hair. When he pulls back, he only does so far enough so that he can wrap both of their wrists with the length of rope and ties the ends together in two intertwining overhand knots.

Meera lifts her wrist and examines it.

“You know what the fishermen call this right?”

Those are the last words before he wakes, and Bran clings to them desperately. Her words are his tether.

Without even leaving bed, he reaches and rereads the words he’d written the night before. They are true, and honest, but feel so stilted. Before he can send it, he has to.

Bran’s not much of an artist, but the lines are easy enough, two overhand knots interlocking, and below it written.

I know what the fishermen call it, and I forgot my tether.

Gods above, if he hadn’t actually managed to reach out and touch her he was going to sound like double the madman he feels.

After he sends the letter off with the messenger, it takes all of Bran’s strength not to look. He’s resisted anyway, put off by his last memory of Meera, but now he feels that looking might make his attempts to stay grounded worse. He cannot let the Three-Eyed Raven stay in control.

He resists every single urge to peek into the future. The glimpses has made his rule easier, to be sure, but it’s also the easiest way to lose himself.

It seems people notice too. Tyrion asks him one day during petitions if he’s beginning to feel more like himself.

“I can’t say I knew you before, but-”

“I’m trying. Me before was just a child, but I’m trying.”

His attempts are aided by Arya’s reappearance in King’s Landing. Her formal welcome is brief,

“This place looks much better than when I left,” she says, “It seems you’re doing a good enough job.”

“The fire gave us a chance to start anew, and I’ve got plenty of help.”

Arya still moves nervously, as if she is unsure of her next moves. But she is happy, happy to see him, happy to be back with stories. When he has their dinner brought to his solar so they can eat in peace, she notices the ropes tied around his wrist. He’d put them there the night he sent the message to Greywater Watch, and touching it seems to help center him.

“You remembered something I showed you.” Her eyes are wide. She’d practiced her knots quite a bit before she’d set out for her voyage, and in his more lucid moments, she’d shows him several and taught him their names. He could have figured it out himself, but her teaching him felt important to her. She looks touched, and Bran is again grasped by guilt for what he had let himself become.

Breaking the reverie, she adds,

“I still think the name is overdramatic.”

“Sailors and fishermen spend so much time away from their loved ones, “ Bran tells her, hoping to nudge her heart, “It’s not surprising that they might be romantic in their naming. I’m surprised you don’t like the symbolism.”

Arya wrinkles her nose,

“What do you mean?”

Bran tugs at the loose tips under the bend.

“The two lines can still be moved independently of each other, even though they can’t be separated unless the knot is undone. “

Arya looks mollified by his words. Her eyes are shining. She jumps forward to hug him gleefully.

“I’m so glad you seem more like you again. Magic be damned, I missed my little brother.”

“I’m still a little lost,” he admits, “But I think I can find my anchor again. At least I hope.”

The messenger doesn’t return until a week after Arya’s departed, making her way to Storm’s End. And he doesn’t return alone.

Meera looks much the same as he remembers. Her hair, having grown a bit longer during their journey, has been trimmed back above her collar. Her cheeks are pinker, and she looks better fed. She carries her net on one hip, her knife on the other. He’s grateful she did not bring her spear.

She truly does not look like someone who had been summoned by royalty. But who did anymore? Bran himself has never ha a taste for dressing richly, and only wears his crown when the ceremony would demand it.

Her face is equal parts confusion, hope and a guarded facade.

Tyrion greets her when she arrives with a similar look on his face. Though he really should know better by now, it would be a lie to say he hadn’t become attached to his young king.

When Tyrion leads her into throne room, Bran asks him to leave them. It takes all his nerves not to retreat back into himself, to hide.

Meera takes a seat, and glances up at the Iron Throne. One of the first things Bran had done in the Red Keep was to set up a table and chairs instead, to hear petitions. Even if he had been able to handle the stairs, he finds the thing ugly and abhorrent, and a reminder of all the blood that had been spilled because of it.

“For all the fighting over it, it looks terribly uncomfortable,” is how she breaks the silence.

“However you think it, it’s worse, I think I might order it melted down,” he responds.

There’s another long pause. Meera shifts uncomfortably in her chair, knowing exactly why she came, but unsure still if she should hope.

“Why did you write me that letter?” she cuts through to the point.

Bran nearly chokes himself getting the words out.

“Because I played too close to the edge, and went overboard. I didn’t have my tether.”

Her face transforms, through the steps of disbelief, nervousness, recognition and powerfully uncertain joy.

“Can -can we please dispense with the metaphors?”

“I don’t want to hide anymore,” he says with more power in his voice than he really intends. “I want to be Bran Stark again, but I get so lost, if I’m not careful, my mind becomes a maze that I can’t find my way out of.”

He reaches out across the table to take her hand. He stumbles and nearly loses his breath when he notices she’s got a rope tied around her own wrist just like he does. From the way she jumps, she’s apparently noticed too.

“I’m so, so sorry for the way I treated you before. I could try and say it wasn’t me, but it’s my fault either way. I let this happen to me, I let myself be dragged off into the world of the Three-Eyed Raven, and but now I just want to be Bran again. Ever since the dreams started, grounding myself has been easier, and I think it’s because of you. You make me want to be a person again.”

In a single smooth movement, Meera stands and moves to the other side of the table, seating herself on the edge.

“How can I know that you’re not just going to disappear again?”

Bran looks up at her. He’s used to people, women too, standing over him. It hadn’t been so bad with Meera, she wasn’t especially tall, but now she really feels like she’s looking down at him.

“I can’t promise anything. But if I leave again, if you can’t pull me back? Feel free to do exactly what you did before. All I’m asking is that you try and keep me here, now.”

If he loses himself again, he doesn’t think there would be anything he could do. He would be gone, truly.

She slips down off the table and takes both of his hands in hers. He only has a half second to react before she kisses him. He tries to meet her halfway, and bumps her nose with his, making her giggle against his mouth. She doesn’t taste of anything but her.

She pulls back ever so slightly, and cocks an eyebrow at him.

“So did you know I was going to do that?”

He laughs then, a deep belly laugh. He hasn’t done that in a while.

“I hoped.”

She laughs too, a beautiful sound. And then kisses him again. One of his hands comes free and touches the side of her face.

When they come up for air, Meera giggles again.

“Well I suppose I have just one more question.”

Bran is confused. Elated, but confused. Elated, giddy, light-headed, all those good words. His blood is rushing in his veins, in a way it hasn’t since the North.

She tilts her head, to whisper conspiratorially in his ear.

“That last dream, did it start as yours or mine?”

Bran feels his cheeks go red. He used to hate blushing, but now it’s something else to make him feel human. He fingers the rope at her wrist gently.

“Does it matter?”

“Not really, it can be ours.”

#game of thrones #a song of ice and fire #breera #bran x meera #fic

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csnews · 5 years

Photo

Third of all dolphin and porpoise killed in Cornwall had contact with fishing nets

Graeme Wilkinson - April 14, 2019

Around a third of all dolphins and porpoises which wash up dead on Cornwall’s beaches have been in contact with fishing nets. While the exact causes of deaths vary, the remains show cuts to the fins, severed tails and marks from entanglement in nets. The data comes from the Marine Strandings Network, whose volunteers record details of marine wildlife off the coast of Cornwall.

Network manager Ruth Williams said: “Generally, 30 per cent of the animals show evidence of by-catch, that is contact with fishing nets. It is shocking. “There are various fishing fleets that are responsible for that and there’s no one sector, so it’s not an easy fix. The fishermen don’t want to catch them and we have looked at changes in fishing activity as a possible cause, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. We’re doing a lot of work at the moment to try and find solutions to reduce that figure.”

She said the other top two principle causes of death were disease and parasites or starvation.

The Marine Strandings Network

The Marine Strandings Network is run by Cornwall Wildlife Trust and has a 24-hour hotline for people to report stranded or dead animals on 0345 201 2626. The network has more than 120 trained volunteers, who are poised to head out in all weathers to beaches and coastal areas to record and document everything from sharks to seagulls. The operation is overseen by Ruth, 46, from her office at the wildlife trust’s headquarters, on a nature reserve at Allet near Truro.

“There is nowhere else in the country that has the same volunteer network as Cornwall,” she said. “The Marine Strandings Network has been running for 27 years now and we are unique having that volunteer network.

“To see the body of any animal inshore is upsetting and sad, but the opportunity is there for us to examine that animal and collect scientifically robust evidence. We can’t conserve those animals or address any of the threats they face unless we know and have that evidence.”

She said the data allows them to plot populations and identify the major threats to wildlife – and in Cornwall that is fishing, climate change and pollution.

Dolphins and porpoises

Ruth said it was hard to gauge the numbers of dolphin and porpoises, because they are part of much wider populations, but the numbers of strandings in Cornwall have increased significantly in recent years.

“We’ve had a couple of really peak years for sightings,” Ruth said. “It’s not down to effort to record deaths on our part. That did increase in the 1990s but since then that effort has been very steady. Numbers have increased but the reason is harder to say.”

She said 2017 had the second highest number of dead dolphins and porpoise, at 250, since the network’s records began 27 years ago. She added: “We’re also seeing a lot of feed-fish close in shore and that’s probably responsible for a lot of animals coming close in. They are all feeding on the mackerel and herring.”

While most of the animals migrate, Cornwall also has its own resident bottlenose dolphins. There are 28 identified animals in one group, which live around the south coast and St Ives.

Humpback whales

One of the rare treats of recent years have been the sight of humpback whales, notably off in the bays of St Ives and Falmouth.

“In the last three to four years, we’ve been seeing them fairly regularly,” Ruth said. “We are really lucky and because of where Cornwall sits, we get a lot of animals coming in. We know of at least two humpback whales this year, seen on the north and south coasts on the same day – so they must be individual animals.

“Humpbacks are just incredible. They are a huge migratory species, generally seen feeding up in the Arctic but they come down to warmer waters to give birth and to breed. They’ve been really close in this year so you can see them from the cliff tops.”

Sharks

Sharks are typically difficult to spot, not having to come to the surface, but again reports have increased in recent years.

“The last few years have been almost ‘seas of plenty’ where sharks are concerned,” Ruth said. “We’ve had a lot of blue sharks as well as porbeagles and thresher being sighted.

“It’s not been such a great few years for basking sharks, although because they are a fish, they don’t have to come to the surface. It may be they’re still there feeding but we just don’t see them.

She said April to June were the prime months for basking sharks to visit Cornish waters.

Blue-fin tuna

Perhaps one of the most remarkable increases in wildlife has been from tuna, which have recently been spotted off Mousehole and Penzance.

“In my 20 years at the trust, getting blue fin tuna was nearly unheard of until the last three years,” Ruth said. They seem to be coming up from their southern waters and replenishing our seas.

“They are an amazing sight if you see them feeding – just their speed through the water. It’s a Blue Planet feeding frenzy off our south coast.”

Other notable species

Ruth said the thousands of Portuguese man o’ war, which inundated beaches in 2017, was exceptional.

“We’ve never had that influx before,” she said. “We suppose that was down to weather patterns. They are very limited swimmers and they generally live in the middle of the Atlantic.”

Other notable species sightings each year include turtles, which are common and generally sighted when there are a lot of jellyfish off Cornwall, and the huge sunfish. In her time at the network, Ruth said other incredible visitors include the massive fin whales, which can grow up to 60 feet in length and are seen passing between Land’s End and the Isles of Scilly. Much rarer and not sighted recently are orca, commonly known as killer whales, although they have been sighted off Cornwall in the past.

“Many years ago, I once saw two orcas feeding on basking sharks off Porthcurno. It was an incredible sight,” she added.

Plastics

Ruth said she welcomed the huge interest and awareness over the problems with plastic in the seas. However, she said they should not distract from the major issues of pollution. She said examination of stranded seabirds has revealed they all have plastic in the stomachs, although dolphins and porpoises tend to be intelligent enough to avoid eating plastics.

“It’s great that it’s getting the attention and people are so aware of it,” she said. “I think it’s a great thing to see that momentum but we need to make sure it’s put in perspective. Plastics are a threat but it is one of many threats. The biggest threats are climate change and pollution. We are very lucky in the south west where we still have diversity of species. A lot of other areas have lost that diversity and gone down to very reduced species of fish because of habitat change. Predominately, that’s down to the fishing industry. We’ve still got the diversity here in Cornwall, but the overall numbers are way down on what they were say a century ago.”

#news #wild #cetacean #marine life #dolphin #death #entanglement

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marmolady · 5 years

Text

Milestones and Memories

Book/Series: Endless Summer

Main Pairings: Estela x MC/Taylor (f)

Summary: Post-ending. Snippets of a life on La Huerta and beyond, the trials of a world collapsing around them now far in the past. And Taylor and Estela have company on this road they travel... their little girl, Liv.

Read this one first! Livita

Warnings: Coarse language. Mentions of homophobia.

Word Count: 4956

Reviews and reblogs are hugely appreciated!

Tagging: @brightpinkpeppercorn @sceptilemasterr @bbaba-yagaa@edgydepressedchoicesthot@blightarts@princessstellaris@acidsugar0@taramitch96 @sapphovonchat @strangerofbraidwood @noeschoices @queerchoicesblog @mrsmontoya

Taylor stirred at the sound of a sharp cry which grew louder as she tried to adjust her eyes to the darkened room. She felt Estela move beside her, barely awake.

“’s okay,” she mumbled, groggy, “I’ve got her.”

In the little sidecar crib beside their bed, baby Liv was hungry and intent on making everyone know about it. Taylor sat up, and leaned across Estela to pick up the crying infant. As she gathered Liv to her chest, pushing her singlet up out the way, she glanced at the clock. Almost quarter-past-five. Not too bad. Only two wake-up calls during the night was nothing to sniff at.

Estela emitted a soft, rumbling groan as she rolled onto her side. She huddled closer, spooning her wife, and gazed up at her and the baby with tired eyes. Her hand reached out, resting tenderly on Liv’s back as Taylor tried to settle her. “…Shhhh… Livita…”

“Oh, sweetness…” Taylor murmured, rocking the child ever so gently, “it’s okay. Mommy’s got you.”

The cries became quiet grumbles, and within a couple of minutes, Liv settled to nurse. Taylor heaved a grateful sigh and grinned.

“Well, it’s getting easier. We’re practically pros at this.”

Through the two months since her birth, baby Liv had been the light of her mothers’ lives. Secluded in their home outside Elyys’tel, the initial bonding period had been idyllic, which was just as well, for sleep could be elusive.

“Hey?”

“Mmmhmm?”

“I might take her for a walk, watch the sun come up. It’s not as if she’ll go back to sleep now.”

Taylor instinctively snuggled in, defiant at the thought of leaving her lovely bed. She pointedly ignored her wife sniggering at her. “God, you are a maniac.”

“Are you coming?”

“Ugh. Fine. But I’ll be talking Liv into sleeping in tomorrow morning.”

Estela laughed, reaching for the sling she used to tie the baby against her chest, before pecking Taylor’s lips with a kiss. “Good luck with that. But, honest, you’ll feel better for getting up.”

The gentle breeze was cool, the stifling heat that was so synonymous with La Huerta’s tropical zones having retreated with the previous day. Even after just a few steps outside, Taylor knew that Estela had been completely right; this really felt nice. She took her hand and let herself be led up the lush hills beyond their home. From the highest point, they could look over Elyys’tel and across the sea to Sharktooth Isle. For a beautiful sunrise, there were few more impressive spots on the island.

Estela sat down carefully, cradling Liv with one arm. The baby squirmed against her chest, eyes wide and curious in response to the light of day slowly spilling into her world. Estela unwrapped her and held her up in her arms. “See, Mama Taylor? It’s a beautiful morning.”

With a giggle, Taylor nuzzled in and tickled Liv’s belly with kisses. She heard a sudden gasp, and looked up. “What?”

“Do that again!

“What is it?

“She just smiled! Oh my god, Taylor; it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen…”

“What? No! You do it- I wanna see!”

Having passed Liv to Taylor, Estela blew raspberries against the baby’s stomach. In no time at all, Liv’s small, rounded face was lit up with a wide smile- one that made Taylor’s heart race.

“Oh, my Livi! My happy girl! Is that funny? Is Mama ‘Stel funny?” she babbled in wonderment. “Oh, my girl, you have just the prettiest smile in the whole wide world!”

They tickled and played peekaboo, completely enraptured in the totally new feeling of connection with their little one. When they finally looked up from a beaming Liv, the sun had already emerged over the horizon.

“And you wanted to just stay in bed…” Estela couldn’t help but smirk.

“I’ll give you this one,” Taylor conceded, scooting closer and resting her head on her wife’s shoulder. “I don’t even mind that we missed the sunrise.”

Estela inhaled blissfully as she pressed a gentle kiss into Liv’s wispy hair, and then turned to Taylor. She whispered against her lips. “...I’m so happy…”

Taylor smiled into a sweet kiss. “Guess that makes all three of us, hey? All these milestones… moments that we’ll never get back… I don’t wanna miss a single one…”

________________________________

“Can the birthday girl do her trick?”

“Please, she is not a performing poodle!”

Diego pouted, but caught Taylor’s eye. She grinned discreetly and brought Liv over to him.

“If you don’t mind death glares from uptight Uncle Al, go ahead,” she said.

With a happy squeal, Diego leaned in close and started singing under his breath. “Na na na na na na na na…”

“Batman!” Liv squeaked, her hands flying up in the air.

“Yaaaas, queen!”

Aleister rolled his eyes, amid cheers from everyone else.

“Na na na na na…”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” he grumbled, as the whole group got in on the act.

“Na na na na na na na na na na na…”

A pause. All eyes on baby Liv.

“Baaaatmaaaan!”

“Chyeah boi!”

Taylor giggled and kissed Liv’s beaming face. “You’re so clever, babygirl! Mama’s gonna go and get a special cake, just for Livi… can you say ‘cake’? ‘Ca-ake?”

The infant’s face was a picture of bewilderment.

“Okay, that one was a bit tricky. But I know you know this one…” She pointed towards Estela. “Who’s that? Is that Mama?”

Recognition lit up Liv’s eyes. “Ma-ma,” she said, flailing an arm out in the direction of her other mom, who caught it gently and kissed her fingers. Liv gave a happy chortle. She looked up at Taylor. “Mama!”

“That’s right, also Mama…”

“Mama… Mama… Mama… Mama… Batman…?” Liv babbled.

Aleister, walking by, scoffed. “Didn’t I say you would confuse her with this nonsense?”

Estela just laughed, light and utterly carefree, and tickled her baby under the chin. “Oh, Livita! He’s just grumpy because you said ‘Mama’ before ‘Uncle Al’.”

Then came the cake, lit with a single glowing candle that seemed to hold Liv in a trance, only broken as her mothers simultaneously leaned in to gently kiss her head.

Taylor whispered through the other voices that began to raise in song. “Happy birthday, angel…”

__________________________________

Squealing as she went, Liv paddled wildly, her tiny arms sending splashes in all directions.

“You’re doing it, Liv!” Taylor cried, arms outstretched, ready to scoop up her happy toddler. The child reached for her, a look of satisfaction on her cherubic face, and Taylor wrapped her into a hug. “Yay, Livi! Such a clever girl!”

A couple of feet away, Estela watched, beaming with pride. “No fear at all. Figures.”

She ducked under the calm sea waters, and Taylor pulled an exaggerated face of feigned confusion.

“Oh no! Where’s Mommy gone, Liv? Where’s Mommy?”

“Oh no!” Liv mimicked, turning her head this way and that. “She gone!” Boldly, she put her head under the water and paddled forward, secure in the knowledge that her mothers would let no harm come to her. Some two years old, she spent her waking hours exploring the big wide world, and testing the boundaries of her wriggly little body. The seas around La Huerta were just another playground to her. Confidently, she swam down and wrapped her arms around Estela’s shoulders, hugging tight as they surfaced together.

“Found Mommy!” she hollered.

With effortless strokes, Estela swam out further, unable to stop herself from grinning as Liv babbled contentedly from her safe perch on her back. She felt the toddler let go, endlessly trusting, tiny arms reaching gleefully skywards.

Taylor streaked forward until she was just about keeping up. She was a strong swimmer, but Estela was basically a porpoise.

“You be careful, Miss Liv!” And, of course, the toddler just laughed.

As Estela slowed to tread water, Liv fell forwards, hugging around her head and getting a face-full of wet hair. She nuzzled her face in.

“… Wuv you Mama…”

Estela’s mouth fell open, her eyes grew wide and then scrunched shut, teary. “Livi…” she gasped. “I love you too. I love you so much.”

“Woah, did she just…? Oh my god!” Taylor swam over and put her arms around her wife and daughter.

Giggling over her mothers’ excitement, Liv swung her arms back and forward around the back of Estela’s head and kissed her, before reaching out to Taylor. More confidently, she cried, “Wuv ‘ou Mama!”, and echoed Taylor’s delighted squeal.

“And I love you, Liv! Lovely, lovely Livi!” And Taylor kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her some more, while Liv shouted with laughter, the whole time bouncing up and down on Estela’s shoulders.

“Wuv ‘ou! Wuv ‘ou! “Wuv ‘ou!”

_________________________________

Liv yanked her arm away from her mother’s grasp, her fierce glare never faltering. “I hate you!”

As if slapped across the face, Estela recoiled. She tried to steady herself, but her voice trembled as she spoke. “Liv, go to your room right now. Don’t you dare make me tell you again.”

The small child’s breath was an angry pant. She stormed into her room and slammed the door. “I hate you; I wish you weren’t my mom!”

Estela shuddered and buried her face in her hands, still crouched on the floor beside the front door, where she’d been restraining her daughter. And then she felt Taylor’s arms around her shoulders, and the gentlest of kisses against her temple.

“She’s upset… she didn’t mean it…” It seemed inevitable that one of them would cop those three words, the ones that stung like barbs in a parent’s heart. But on Mother’s Day of all things… Shit, thought Taylor. “Estela…” she whispered, “love, what happened?”

Staggering to her feet, Estela let herself be led to the couch, and she wrapped her wife in a hug. Damn, she needed that hug. Indignant shouts and screams rang out from Liv’s room. Out of the corner of Estela’s eye, she spotted the card that Liv had given her that very morning, the first she’d ever made all on her own, and could no longer hold back from weeping.

Taylor rubbed Estela’s back. “Deep breaths…”

“She kept running away from me,” Estela said with a sigh. “It’s simple and it’s stupid, but that’s all it was. She wanted to go after Taari and those other kids who thought they’d spotted the new sea guardian, and she wouldn’t hear ‘no’. I turned and she was gone… I caught her trying to hide away in one of their boats.” She roughly wiped her eyes. “And I… and I yelled at her. I grabbed her by her arm and dragged her all the way home.” A pause, and then her voice shook when she spoke again. “I… I think I scared her, Taylor… God, I’m used to people looking at me like that, but her…” Tears came anew. It was all new and frightening. She’d never lost her temper with Liv, no matter how hard the small child pushed her. And push she did; Liv was sweet and affectionate, but she had a will of iron.

“…Hey… when she’s calmed down, we’ll talk it out together. Look at me, baby… she knows you love her, that you’d never hurt her. Livi loves the bones of you. She looks at you like you’re her hero.” Taylor kept up her gentle caressing, kneading her wife’s shoulders, so tight and tense. Mother’s Day was always hard. “I guess we skipped through the terrible twos and got the terrible fours instead. She did go too far. Maybe we’ve gotta be stricter; it’s just been so nice to feel like we can have a loose rein on her.” She shook her head, lost in thoughts for a few moments. Their little Liv led a carefree life, oblivious to just how dangerous the world could be. They’d tried to give her that. Estela had been adamant that they give their daughter at least a few years before shattering the illusion. La Huerta these days was paradise, but even in their safe haven, the shadows remained. “Estela? Maybe it’s time we really talk to her about your mom? I know she’s still little, but she’d understand why today is hard for you.”

Estela’s eyes squeezed shut. Her mom would have been better at this. She’d have known how to handle Liv- she’d survived her own headstrong daughter after all. She’d know exactly what to say. Since her own child’s birth -really, since the pregnancy began- the aching feeling of missing her mom had taken a new depth for Estela. For all those years, grief had been anger, but it was only after that passed that the hollow sadness could take its place. For however much she felt herself moving on and letting go, there were some days when all that emotion returned with a vengeance… and with it, the fear of losing someone else dear to her heart. Liv could not have known why she’d overreacted as she did…

“Maybe…” she whispered. It occurred to her that the cries had quietened. Her own anger had fizzled out, and more than anything, she wanted to hold her little girl. “But right now, I just need to talk to her about what just happened.”

As her wife rose to her feet, Taylor looked at her with admiration. “Do you want me to come with you?” she asked.

Having considered for a moment, Estela nodded her head. “Yeah… yeah, I do. We’re a family, and we’re in this together. She needs to see that we’ve both got her back, and each other’s.” Hand-in-hand with Taylor, she approached Liv’s bedroom, her heart pounding. Here goes nothing…

_________________________________

The banging of a small fist on the door woke Taylor from her slumber. A glance to the clock beside the bed told her that it was six on the dot; the earliest agreed wake-up time for special occasions. From behind, Estela nuzzled against her neck, and even sleepy as she was, Taylor’s lips curved into a smile.

“Happy birthday, mi amor. Thirty-three…”

Taylor rolled over with a low ‘hmmph’, facing her partner. “Bullshit,” she murmured. “Technically, I’m only eleven.”

“If you say so. Not too old for being jumped on by a small bribona?”

Liv bashed more forcefully on the door, and Taylor laughed.

“All right then, Livi!” she called, “Bring it, girl.”

The door flew open and Liv vaulted onto the bed, one arm outstretched, reaching to hug Taylor, the other in plaster and a sling. In her hand was a colourful piece of folded card.

“Haaaappy birthday, Mommy!”

“Oof!” Taylor grunted. Jesus, that child always seemed to find a way of sticking her knee into tender organs… “Thank you, sweet pea.” She wrapped her arms around Liv and found herself the recipient of a clumsy and rather wet kiss. “Just be careful of your arm… and my kidneys…”

After a few affectionate bounces on Taylor’s midsection, Liv tumbled sideways so that she was sandwiched between both of her moms. She hugged Estela’s arm with her left, and with her plastered right hand she offered the card to the birthday girl.

“For you.”

“Oh, thank you! Did you make this?” Taylor admired the messy illustration of a smiling sun looking down on a family of two women -one of whom wearing a party hat-, a little girl, two dogs and a purple cat. “Or was some clever artist spying on our family?”

Liv giggled. “It was me, silly! And, uh, Mama Estela helped.”

“I just held your hand steady, mija. This was all you, Liv. You might actually be better with your left hand now.”

“Olivia Andromeda Montoya, you are such a talented artist!” Taylor gushed. “See, I can tell it’s you, because you’ve even drawn your blonde streak in your hair.”

The ‘blonde streak’ was a lock of Taylor’s hair that had been woven into Liv’s. The recently adopted fashion statement had come about on the day of her aunt and uncle’s wedding, at which the small girl had briefly dabbled in hairdressing. Inspired by her cousin Reggie’s dissatisfaction with his recent neat-and-tidy haircut, Liv had decided to help him out, utilising scissors, Jake -dead to the world after a long string of flights and several whiskeys-, and a big pot of glue. Her hair styling debut had been met with mixed reviews, but before her antics were found out by any of the attending adults, she’d managed to scissor off a great chunk from the back of an unknowing Taylor’s head. In her childlike naivete, it had been a compliment; she wanted to look like both her mothers. There had been some amount of shouting, a little bit of horrified screaming… but in the end, good humour prevailed. As far as Estela was concerned, that her daughter had such ingenuity was something to be proud of, especially as her actions had been made only out of love. After the initial shock and a much-needed discussion about haircuts and consent, Taylor -who now wore a pixie cut- found herself touched by the gesture. When she looked at the lock of blonde hair hanging by her daughter’s face, she saw an honest and loving tribute to their bond.

She opened up the card and read ‘Dear Mama Tay, have a day with hugs and kisses, you are 33, love from Liv, Ps I love you lots’.

“Honey, that’s really special.” Taylor leaned in to give Liv a great big kiss on the forehead. “I must be the luckiest person in the world.”

_________________________________

A deep frown across her face, Taylor emerged from the Principal’s office. Of course, there was a first time for everything, but the first phone call to pick up her daughter from school after she’d slugged some other kid in the nose… that wouldn’t be one for the albums. Liv sat in the chair, just outside the door, her legs swinging nervously. Six years old, perhaps small for her age; even faced with an unavoidable reprimand, her dark eyes shone with defiance.

Taylor held out a hand. “Come on, Livi. We’ll talk in the car.”

With the little girl not forthcoming with details as she sat strapped into the car seat, it fell to Taylor to break the silence. Damn, she hated this. Their little angel had an attitude on her, but she’d never before been in real trouble. There had to be a good explanation for her to suddenly be lashing out.

“Why did you hit Jamie, Olivia? Did he do something to upset you?”

Liv scowled. “He’s a butthead. That’s why I hit him.”

The venom in the tiny child’s words took Taylor aback. It wasn’t exactly surprising that there might be something of an aggressive streak in her, but it certainly hadn’t surfaced before. “You broke his nose. That’s very bad.”

“I know how to hit good. Mama ‘Stel showed me.”

Fucking great, thought Taylor. “Hmmm…” she said instead, “I think when she showed you that, it was so you could protect yourself in an emergency. You only hit when there’s nothing else you can do to stay safe. We don’t just punch people because we’re mad. I know you know that.”

Liv was quiet, looking pointedly out the window.

“I’m gonna need you to give a real apology to this boy when you go back to school…”

“No.”

“Olivia…”

“Mommy, I hit him ‘cause he deserved it. I’m not sorry.”

Taylor bit her lip. She didn’t like the attitude, but her instincts told her there was something beneath it. “Honey, what happened? Whatever this kid said or did, we can work out together how to fix it- without hitting.”

Liv’s brown eyes welled with tears as she looked down into her lap. Through the mirror, Taylor saw her daughter’s distress and immediately felt an aching desperation to wrap her arms around her.

“Hey, Liv… it’s okay. You can tell me what happened when we get home. It’s okay, sweetness; we’ll work this out over a cuddle.”

Mother and daughter sat side by side on the couch, Liv huddling up close, her head hanging. Taylor pecked a kiss to the child’s forehead and waited for her to open up.

“Mom, Jamie was being really mean. For, like, a long time. He says that I’m a lez-bean because I have two mommies, and we are all gonna go to hell for being disgusting. I don’t even know what that means, but he says it like its bad.”

Taylor sighed heavily. This was something she’d expected they’d encounter at some point, but certainly not this early on. She put an arm around Liv, giving her a gentle squeeze.

“That must have made you sad. Some people don’t understand that families can be made up of any combination of mommies, or daddies, or grandparents, or friends, or aunts… or… you get it, yeah? What matters is that we love each other.”

“So… we won’t go somewhere bad?”

“Darling, no. People who think things like that are too busy being angry at the world to remember what really matters. I don’t believe hell is a real thing, but I know that if it was, you definitely wouldn’t go there for loving another person.”

Liv finally looked up to her mother’s face, beseeching. “And, uh, he said more mean things.” She winced. “About Mama Estela.”

“Oh.” Taylor felt her heart sink further. Of course, standing up for her loved ones would be what would get Liv into hot water. Like mother, like daughter.

“He started saying that her beauty stripe makes her look like an ugly monster, and then all the other kids started saying it too. And pretending to run and hide at pick-up time.”

“Oh, Liv, I’m sorry.”

Liv sniffled and wiped her nose. “Today he drew a stripe on his eye and chased everyone around. So I hit him in the face.” She tugged on Taylor’s sleeve, her wet eyes pleading. “Please don’t tell her. I don’t want her to be sad.”

Taylor bundled the child into her lap and snuggled her close as she cried, stroking her silky hair. “I promise I won’t. But I need you to do something for me, okay?” She held Liv out, and gently tipped her chin so that their eyes met. “Next time someone’s being horrible like that, I need you to walk away. You’ve gotta walk away, ‘cause you deserve better than to have to listen to that kind of talk. And then I need you to tell a teacher what’s happening, ‘cause kids like that need to be dealt with. By a grown-up. Not by you and those flying fists of yours. Do we have a deal?”

“Deal.” Liv flung her arms around Taylor’s neck and hugged her with all her diminutive might.

Just then, the front door creaked open.

“Livita, are you okay, mija?”

“Mommy!” Liv jumped up and ran into Estela’s arms and nuzzled against her chest. “I’m okay.”

Taylor joined them. “Our little lady has been putting bullies to rights. Apparently, she’s inherited your strong right hook. But we’ve had a talk. It’s all fine.”

“God, Livi, I thought I told you- emergencies only?” Estela left several fierce kisses on the top of her daughter’s head. Getting a call that her beloved Liv had been sent to the office for fighting, protective instincts had flared up in an instant. If she’d have been hurt…

Looking up, Liv looked sheepish for the first time. “I’m sorry. It felt like an emergency. I know what to do next time, I promise.” She reached and softly kissed Estela’s long facial scar. Some dumb bully couldn’t stop her from seeing something beautiful. “I love you…”

“I love you too. My brave girl.”

“And Mama Tay?”

Estela chuckled and tugged Taylor closer so that Liv could impart the requisite sloppy kiss on her face. “And Mama Tay.”

“And Batman?”

“Well at least I got a mention before Batman…” Taylor rolled her eyes, laughing. It looked like Liv would be all right. She’d have another talk with the Principal when the suspension was over, but for the time being, it was hard to deny that having a few extra days with their daughter at home felt like a special treat. Taylor had made a promise to herself a long time ago that she’d cherish each moment, each memory made together. It wasn’t always easy, but feeling the arms of the two loves of her life around her… Liv’s suspension wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

______________________________

Liv was biting her nails as the car pulled up at the gymnasium, her nerves plain to see. Now seven years old, she had grown but remained petite. Her dark hair, so long that she could sit on it, had been lovingly braided into a bun. Almost constantly overflowing with bravado, her apprehension could not go unnoticed; her eyes gave it all away at a glance.

“Livita… it’s okay to be nervous.” Estela sat down in the seat beside her daughter and took her hand. The big brown eyes that looked up to her were desperately seeking something… reassurance? “You can do this. But if you really don’t want to, no one’s gonna push.” She paused, her thumb stroking Liv’s hand. “Why don’t you tell us what you’re most worried about… maybe we can help?”

With a shuddering exhale, Liv started to speak, breaking the silence she’d held since they’d started the drive to her very first gymnastics showcase evening. “I don’t like people staring at me. When people stare at me… it’s never ‘cause they’re thinking nice things. It’s ‘cause they think I’m weird. If I screw up, they’ll laugh at me more.”

Taylor reached out from the front seat, and stroked the little girl’s knee. “That’s not what’s happening tonight, honey. I’m here, we’re both here; and Uncle Diego, and Uncle Al, Auntie Grace and Reggie, -and Tio Abuelo came all the way from San Trobida- we’re here to support you. We’re going to be watching you because we’re proud of you. And because we love you.”

Liv’s bottom lip trembled.

“Olivia,” Estela spoke more firmly now. “Forget about everyone else. No one who talks garbage about you is worth caring about, you hear? When you’re up, look out and find me. I’ll be there, on your side. Always.”

At those words, Liv looked up. Her eyes met with Estela’s, gaze suddenly steely and determined as she nodded. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Sometime later, Liv’s family had gathered in the stands, ready to cheer her on. She had indeed drawn quite the little crowd of supporters, including her cousin and best friend, Reggie, who had come straight from school. As Liv stepped shakily out onto the floor, her caught her eye and poked out his tongue.

“Reginald!” Grace reprimanded lightly, unable to keep the laugh from her voice. Manners be damned, the grin that flashed across her niece’s face made it clear that Reggie had done exactly the right thing.

Uncertainty still in her eyes as she took to the balance beam, Liv searched the stands for her mothers. As she knew they would be, there they were, hand in hand, pride in her written all over their faces. She met Estela’s gaze, sending back a look of fierce confidence. A slight wobble, but then she caught herself with a deep breath. And then Liv turned a perfect cartwheel, finishing to the sound of applause with the broadest of grins across her face.

Now brimming with confidence, Liv seemed to fly through the showcase, and all the while she could feel the loving eyes of her family on her through every movement. She finished with a back handspring- pulling it off for only the third time ever- and skipped off the floor, triumphant, straight into Estela’s arms.

“Mom, did you see me? I did it!”

“You killed it out there, Livita.”

Taylor joined in the tight hug, feeling the elation that shone out from her beloved child. “Hon, you looked incredible! Give me five, girl!”

Their hands met, and they were united. Together, and loved, and unafraid.

______________________________

Sunlight brought colour into the hills over Elyys’tel, though for the time being, it was all too distant for the baby in Estela’s lap to make out. All baby Liv knew were the two people who stayed close to her, tickling, cuddling, kissing her.

Taylor reached for her phone and took a quick photograph. “I know some things are best not experienced through a camera lens, but she is not gonna stay like this for long. If that little smile isn’t worth capturing for forever, I honestly don’t know what is.”

Sucking contentedly on Estela’s fingers, Liv soothed herself after what was almost too much excitement. She kept glancing around, seeking eye contact with her mothers. When Taylor leaned in for yet another kiss, her smile returned, wide and gummy. She cooed, reaching out to touch and tipping over onto the dewy grass, guided by two pairs of hands until she was wriggling on her belly.

Estela scooched up against Taylor and looked out over their home, her head resting on her wife’s shoulder. She found herself grinning like an idiot at the feeling of her little Liv grasping at her feet. How much more perfect could life even get? “So, uh, you ready to keep going? There’s a whole lot of beautiful morning left for us to take in.”

Gently, Taylor took her wife’s face in her hands, touched by her easy radiance. Being absolutely blissed out on their family life could do that. And she kissed her, long and sweet. When she came away, she lingered with her face but a breath from Estela’s.

“That sounds wonderful,” she said, and then she couldn’t resist pecking one more kiss to her beloved’s lips, and another to Liv’s head as she bundled the infant into her arms. “What do you say, Livi? How about we go make some memories…”

#endless summer #estela x mc #estela x taylor #estela montoya #liv montoya #playchoices #choices fanfiction #wlw #choices wlw

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trickstersantana · 5 years

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[Para] Vertedero de ilusiones

Who: Santana Location: Santana’s mind, Sciron Square 207 Time: 24 October 2018 Summary: Santana sleeps next to Quinn and something UNEXPECTED happens no one knew this was going to happend guys no one. Triggers/Notes: Ok GUYS there are so parts in spanish so hover for the translation. Thanks to @gotmattitude for checking it’s proper mexican sounding spanish instead of spain sounding spanish bless u. TW: Violence, blood, dead, animal harm, dead animal

Santana has always been the Mistress of her own dreams. The Goddess of Lucid Dreams. She has her ways of knowing what’s a dream and what’s not. She just checked the time and battery of her phone and it’s not there. She illusions a book and checks the writing shifts around the page, blurry around the corners.

A dream she can’t control, shaped like a dream.

“Queenie, I’m trapped on a trickster deal. I can’t hear you or anything. Make me a favor and try to not let me go out of my room.” She says out loud, looking at a discolored door of an old red car in front of her. She assumed if she tried to open the door of the car, she would just get out of her room and do weird shit in front of people. She looks where the car is headed upon, a huge downhill, like a huge ass slide for cars who finished on a sea of spikes. But above the sea of spikes there was a giant ring of blue fire, and then a huge open door written EXIT HERE above. So you are trying to tell me that for ‘exiting’ I have to get in the car, go super fast for the slide so it jumps through the circle of fire and gets in the door. God damn it that’s so fucking extra. Who designed this bullshit. Like, she loved it as much as she knew it was super over the top, but she wasn’t going to fall for that crap.

She looked around, searching for clues or the style of the illusion, to know who did this. At first glance it looked like a dump full of...things. But it wasn’t garbage. It was just disorganized illusions. An illusion dump. She could recognize most of those things where stuff she illusioned. There was a lot of blue fire around, spears and other weapons. The scene was a mix of her past illusions too, overlapping on each other, sky included, being day or night or completely white in some parts. There was no people, animals or monster around. Geez, I know deals can leave something to the imagination of the creator, but this is too much, too specifically me. I can see shit from before NYADA that anyone who wasn’t my ‘family’ won’t know, and shit from NYADA my ‘family’ couldn’t possibly know with so many detail. Maybe they reached High Level Trickster power. God I bet it’s Darling. Darling, also know as her ‘mom’, just got her fucking Hamlet book. She probably was mendling in her life over that. God, what if the Hamlet book had the keys to do this level on illusion but I didn’t read that part yet because I was reading the other parts? That book had a lot on info on it, but she wanted even more information on it before reading it all. And now, she didn’t have access to it. What if the exit is actually the exit but Darling knew I wouldn’t go for such an obvious exit? what if THAT’S WHAT SHE WANTS ME TO THINK? Oh, maybe it’s a Darling and Zombie collab. Then it should be a solvable puzzle.

“Nah, fuck it. I’m just going to lay in the floor and binge watch illusion Xena while waiting 24 hours until this pass.” She said out loud for Quinn to hear, and lied on the floor, carefully, and illusioned a TV floating in the air, for her to see.

Many episode later, Santana stands up. “What the fuck? Where am I? Why am I watching Xena?” She groans. She saw the clear exit trap and ignored it, trying to search in illusion world, walking far away from the car. “Geez there is so much garbage in here” She says, kicking some huge chainsaw (the part that doesn’t cut, obviously). She keeps on walking until she ends up seeing a wishing well. She doesn’t remember illusioning this particular wishing well, so she runs too look at it. She looks down the well, in search of clues in the bottom of it. There is something that looks like the corpse of a woman. “Ew.” Santana said. “What the fuck. Creepy.” She keep looking, though. There was what looked like if you skinned a human alive and left it there like a fucked up costume. When she tried to look what the other things in there were, the corpse started to move. Crawling through the well. As Santana stepped down searching for a weapon, the corpse was already out the well. Long black hair, a weird decorated knife stuck on a side of her abdomen, full of blood. “¡Hola, Capi Tana!The corpse says, cheerfully, taking the knife out and throwing it away. “Ya tiene mucho tiempo que ni me llamas ni nada.” She says, fake pouting. Santana recognized the woman in front of her. Someone she didn’t see on a long time.

“Fuck. Elise.”

“But also fuck Elise ¿no?” Elise said, playfully winking. “Pero ya sabes, cogiendo. Sin stabity stab.”

Santana sighs. This wasn’t real, so whatever. “Geez, are you trying to teach me a lesson?”

“Why are you talking in english? El español se siente más personal.” Elise said, no blood on her anymore. “Oooh, es precisamente por eso.” Elise realizes. “¿Y cómo que Elise? ¿Qué pasa con tus millones de apodos?”

Santana sits on the well, looking down again. Maybe if she threw more things on it, it would be full. Then her wish comes true, right? Was that how wishing wells worked? She keeps thinking, touching her hair, straight and long. Wait, shouldn’t be an afro? I don’t have my hair like this anymore. “Elise am I looking like I always look to you?”

“Igualita.” It shouldn’t be like this. She should look different to Elise, right? She just took that stupid human potion like last week. Last week? Or months ago? Santana walks away from the well, stepping over guns and big lamps and cars and catapults. Elise follows her.

“I wasn’t planning to kill you.” She said, while walking. Not even looking at Elise’s direction.

“No. Teníamos un plan buenísimo para tu quedarte con uno de mis riñones sin matarme. En plan, me apuñalas, lo tomas, haces tu ritual y ¡boom! Adiós problemas. Ya eres humana. ”

“Alright. It was a shit plan! It would had probably kill you. But I was hoping it didn’t!!” She admits. She didn’t like to even think about this. But it was time. “Like, I was hoping as you trusted me, and I kind-of-trusted you, that in the moment I tried to stab you it’s like, test passed!! A light will appear and I will become human, no actual stabbing necessary you know? A la binding of Isaac.” She didn’t like to think about this because she knew it was fucking ridiculous. “But then I was like...well. You know, I thought you were a slayer, you said some...really weird shit suddenly and…” She steps on a big box that she doesn’t recognize. She opens it to find some nice decorated knives. “Alright, to be honest, deep down, I was hoping me freaking out and blowing the whole thing was the tiny part of me who… didn’t want to hurt you, in case I wasn’t stopped by magic, I rather stop myself and lie to myself too saying it was because I got paranoid.” She looked at the knives in the box, some knives had so many decorations, even in the blade, it would be super hard to cut anything with them. Like they had pins, if knives could have pins. She will have to cut the decorations on it too and it didn’t seem easy. She picked the most decorated ones, one raspberry pink, gentleman-thief like knife,with handcuffs, letters, hearts, and a lot of more shit Santana didn’t stop to look, and another porpoise grey shadow push knife, with handshakes, socks, and more shit. She didn’t usually like grey, but she liked this specific grey.

“But that’s not what really happened.” She left the decorated knives in the box, and picket other, merigold yellow handle, simple. No decorations, just a cat draw in the blade, but as soon as she picks it up, it turns into ashes. What a shame, it was a decent knife. It had to be sharpened more but it looked like it could be used. Gone. Unused. “I didn’t stop myself. Someone else stopped me. Someone called the Cardines. Someone… God. Someone made me...ugh” No. she wasn’t going to say it. She was just looking at knives now. She picks a dark plum purple with a gothic handle, and one light blue and taffy pink that opened like a lipstick, with a heel shoe in the blade. Both broken by the handle. Useless. But there is a simple one, with a little full moon carved on the blade, and a wolf on the end of the handle. Sharpened. Usable. She was going to carry this one. She sees there is a gap for a knife that isn’t there anymore. “Elise, was this your kni- oh FUCK!” She turns around but Elise isn’t there anymore. There is that old bastard man with his sunglasses on. “Ugh. ‘Dad’. Where is Elis-where is the… there was a girl here before.”

“Estamos aquí solos, Niebla, no tienes que hablar en inglés.” Her ‘dad’ says, with his annoying grin like he is planning something, and everything goes as he plans. She know it’s fake.

“Look, dad, I’m almost going to be an adult soon and I’m going to do whatever the fuck I wa- wait, no. I’m an adult.” She wasn’t 17. She was older. But she looks 17. “Fuck. I’m older than 17 and I’m still a fucking animal. I just have 3 years left. No, I have more years.” More years suffering. She stands up, confused at where the fuck she is. There is full of things that feels familiar but she just feels in the middle of nowhere. She runs. Somewhere.

“¿Dónde vas?” Her ‘dad’ asks, and she can hear him walking slowly behind her. She wasn’t going to wait for him.

“I’m fucking going backwards in the middle of nowhere. Fuck!”

“You never did a good thing in your life, and the world would be a better place without you.”

She steps on something and falls, she hears the sound of a recorded voice and tries to find where it comes from. She stands up and walk around, but she just hears more voices instead.

“You think everything is funny, and you answer me with irony just because you don't have anything real to say. I believed in you, I thought you were really trying to change things around.”

“Oh, shut up. Where does this come from?”

“I wouldn't have to fight you. I already know that I've won the most important part of living. And if you don't know what it is, well -- it shows.” Another voice. “You created the situation that caused you to be the victim!” She knew all of these different voices. “Who is doing this? Ugh, it doesn’t matter, I don’t give a single shit of what anyone dares to say about me!”“Do you feel that way too? Do you think you are just some kind of animal?”

But the recorded voices continued. “If you are what you are, and you are a trickster spirit, why do you never present as an animal? You are one, aren’t you. An animal.”

“You’re lucky some even refer to you as people, instead of Lusus.” She was getting annoyed. “But one day you´re going to realize that you´ll need friends by your side to back you up, and it´ll be sad when you turn around and realize there´s no one there.” She hears slow footsteps behind, clashing with the sound of stepping over metal. “I know what your most afraid of is never getting to be a real life girl ain’t it? Spoiler alert: You won’t. Ever.”

His ‘father’ gets closer to her, laughing. “Ugh, you’re the worst!” Santana says, pointing at him with her knife.

“You're seriously the worst trickster ever. Any trickster who scorns their birth is owned by humans. Go away, nothing.”

“I can’t be the worst if you are.” Her ‘dad’ answers.

“Your life is a series of seemingly unconnected episodes of deception for deception’s sake. In the end, your existence will be of no consequence.” Santana keeps searching where the record comes from. “I’m done bothering to try explaining anything to you.”She localizes the place where she hears it best. “It is not my fault that you got caught by the Cardines, Santana. Maybe the fact that you got caught means that you aren't as good as you think you are and do need to be here.” It’s buried behind a lot of illusory crap. Mostly weapons. “I don’t call you by your animal species, do I?” She starts to unbury and search. “Humans are capable of remorse. Do you feel remorse, Santana?” Her dad keeps laughing. “Remorse, you?” Like it was the funniest joke. “Evil for the sake of being evil. That's how I see a real monster to be.” A monster isn’t so bad, then. “You can sit there, and talk a big game about how my relationship is fake and all my friends are gone, and my parents don’t love me, but at the end of the day, Santana, I have my fake girlfriend and my cryptic parents and my fake friends, and you have nothing, and no one. Because you can’t. Ever. Not really. Not like the rest of us.” She keeps caving. “You’re following illogical sense. A fire witch isn’t a chimney. Just like your human form isn’t really a human body.” She sees an old tape recorder. “You are so full of shit. I find it funny that you are trying to be sarcastic with me right now when I'm actually one of the few who actually is trying to understand you around here.” She picks it up. “We wouldn't have been faced with the obligation to kick someone out if you hadn't acted the way you did.” And throws it to the ground. She steps on it, again and again.

“I'm sorry, Santana, but either way, you are still you, that's not gonna chang-” It’s the last thing the tape recorder says before being completely broken. She is satisfied. “I’m not even going to think about this ever again.” She says, while burying the old broken tape recorder back, putting even more things she founds around on top of it. But as she tries to bury something, she is getting things that weren’t on surface before. She isn’t looking what she picks, and sees she has in hand a dead rabbit. She throws it to the ground. It looks like a car hit it. “Ew ew ew ew” She complains, trying to clean her hands on her ‘dad’ shirt. “¡Mira!” Her dad laughs ”El conejo muerto que nos encontramos un día en la carretera y te dije, te dijee... que así estaríamos cuando nos muramos. Un animal muerto más, la gente nos mirará un segundo con cara de pena y luego seguirán con sus vidas sin volver a pensar en nosotros.” He says, like remembering a fond ‘father-daughter’ moment.

“Yeah, one of your depressive days when you don’t stop saying sad bullshit.” Where he complains about everything that also affects them all. She picks some joke t-shirt she founds on and hides the death rabbit with it. She tried to hide it with more things, but she will just find more creepy shit she didn’t want to find. So she just left the place, walking away, not knowing where she is going. She hears the sound of recorded voices.

“-the mighty and proud Santana Lopez.”

“Ugh, again?” She gets close to where the sounds come from, to destroy it too.

“I talk to you about shit because I want to. You’re a good friend, y'know” A voice she knows says.

“However what I've learned from all of our adventures, discussions, and friendship together is that when it comes to something important and serious, we have each other's backs and each other's stories.” She is getting closer. “You’re nice too, hah. Very surprisingly. More than that I guess if I had to be forced to compliment you by some sort of curse, I like that you’re real.” This one is not in the surface either. “Suffice it to say I know you care more than you let on. About us, about me. Don't go.” She tries to unbury it. “I have time for the people that matter.” She hears footsteps behind, over the sound of the recorder. “Santana you are a cool friend.” She keeps unburying. “I thought that mirror monster was beautiful and honest.” It’s buried deeper down than the other. “You aren't a condition that needs fixing. You've already proven to be fiercely loyal and a keeper of secrets without the aura potion. You’re super sweet when you’re nice, anyway. And same on the mutual respect thing. You’re my trusted friend.” She notices those phrases weren’t said at the same time, even when it was by the same person. But the order didn’t matter. “What do I think you are? You are my friend, and I love you and I care about you. There are things I'm afraid of, there are things that affect me more than others, but that's not a judgment towards you. Those are things I have to work out myself.” She is getting closer. “You challenge me, which I appreciate.” She sees the recorder. “They care about you, too. We might not die, but we'll be sad. We'll miss you. More so if you go off and get yourself killed.” She keeps staring at it, in silence. “We can be so much more than that. We shouldn't have to be just ‘monsters’ or not even that just a label that they want to put on us.” She takes the recorder with her. “Thanks for this, inviting me over. Not being weird. I've missed you.” Still knife in hand. “She told me that she thought I was always thoughtful, even though I thought you were a monster. Santana, I don't believe that you are anymore. You've shown me there is more to you than tricks and illusions.” She gets out of the hole where the recorder was buried in. “However I don't want to leave you behind if that's what turning my back means.”

She throws it to the ground. And stabs it with the kife. “Shut up shut up shut up shut up!” She shouts, crying, still stabbing the recorder. “Shut up! This just makes me feel worse! Shut up! I would leave everyone of you behind. I’m just tricks and illusions. I was using you! Monster is the highest status I can fucking reach!” She keeps stabbing the recorder even when it stopped working already. “No one will miss me. Shut up! I thought I wanted this, but the more they care, the more far away I fucking feel. The closer they are, the easiest is to notice there is nothing here.” She grabs her own tshirt and keeps crying. “I fucking hate it... I can’t… I can’t pretend anymore to be a person. People are telling me they care about me? And I fucking feel so empty when they do.” Someone sits next to her.

“¿Que hay debajo de toda esta basura, niña?” Her mom asks.

“Nothing! There’s nothing!” She feels so little. She looks up to her mom and she is not even going to use the quotation marks. “Mom, help me! When is this over? When do I start enjoying life?”

“¿Por qué estás aqui?”

“I don’t need a fucking reason to be here, in the world! What? I don’t have to contribute ANYTHING to a world that only give me pain! Fucking answer me! I’m just like 10 and I’m already so fucking tired of everything” No. She is not 10. She looks like a 10 year old but she is 24. “No, no, no, fuck. 14 years more of this? When am I going to become human, mom? Mom, please, I just want to enjoy life and I can’t as a trickster!”

“¿Tienes miedo? ¿De que tampoco podrás como humana?” Her mom asks. Santana blinks and she is alone again. She keeps crying. “It’s ok, it’s ok. Soon I will be human and happy.” She never was, but she could be. Right? “And I will connect with my friends for real, and I will care for real. I will be real.” She stands up, and walks alone, trying to remember the way back to where she was at the start. She is going back in age too. She is getting younger and younger. “Oh, no.” She will reach the moment when she couldn’t even turn into a human. She sees herself as the unglamoured kid, hidding her monstrous features under gloves, coats, hat and sunglasses. “No no no no.” She runs, she runs until she sees the red car. “I can’t end as I started! Without accomplishing anything!” She stops running when she reaches the car, she tries to open the door. It’s locked. “I don’t want to die as an animal! What was all the effort I did for? Nothing?” She keeps crying, desperately trying to open the door. If she was older, she could had open it. She knew how to unlock cars locks when she was older. She didn’t knew it now. “No! Help me!” The little girl uses the knife in her hand to try to open the car, as if stabbing the lock would work.

“Someone! Anyone! Please!”

#tw: violence #tw: blood #tw: dead #tw: animal harm #tw: dead animals #nimshadows #//also TO BE CONTINUED

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ciathyzareposts · 6 years

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The Sierra Discovery Adventures

Among the most rewarding hidden gems in Sierra’s voluminous catalog must be the games of the Discovery Series, the company’s brief-lived educational line of the early 1990s. Doubtless because of that dreaded educational label, these games are little-remembered today even by many hardcore Sierra fans, and, unlike most of the better-known Sierra games, have never been reissued in digital-download editions.

In my book, that’s a real shame. For reasons I’ve described at exhaustive length by now in other articles, I’m not a big fan of Sierra’s usual careless approach to adventure-game design, but the games of the Discovery Series stand out for their lack of such staple Sierra traits as dead ends, illogical puzzles, and instant deaths, despite the fact that they were designed and implemented by the very same people who were responsible for the “adult” adventure games. These design teams were, it seems, motivated to show children the mercy they couldn’t be bothered to bestow upon their adult players. While it’s true that even the Discovery games weren’t, as we’ll see, entirely free of regrettable design choices, these forgotten stepchildren ironically hold up far better today than most of their more popular siblings. For that reason, they’re well worth highlighting as part of this ongoing history.

I’ve already written about the Discovery Series’s two Dr. Brain games, creative and often deceptively challenging puzzle collections that can be enjoyed by adults as easily as children. Today, then, I’d like to complete my coverage. Although some of the other Discovery games were aimed at younger children, and are thus outside the scope of our usual software interests, three others could almost have been sold as regular Sierra adventure games. So, I’ll use this article to look at this trio more closely — the first of which in particular is a true classic, in my opinion the best Sierra adventure of any stripe released during 1992.

Gano Haine and Jane Jensen

One of the ways in which Sierra stood out in a positive way from their peers was their willingness to employ women in the roles of writer and designer. At a time when almost no one else in the computer-games industry had any women in prominent creative roles, Sierra’s gender balance approached fifty-fifty at times.

Gano Haine, one of these female designers, was also a fine example of what we might call a second-generation adventure designer — someone who had seen the genre evolve from the perspective of a player in the 1980s, and was now ready to make her own mark on it in the 1990s. She took a roundabout route into the industry. A mother and junior-high teacher of fifteen years standing, hers was a prominent voice in the Gamers Forum on CompuServe in the latter 1980s. She wrote extensively there about the good and bad of each game she played. “I don’t think it’s something you do to yourself on purpose,” she said of her adventure-game addiction. “I soon realized that I needed to find a way to make it a profession or I’d starve.” Luckily, Sierra hired her, albeit initially only as an informal consultant. Soon, though, she moved to Oakhurst, California, to become a full-time Sierra game designer. That happened in 1991, just as the Discovery Series was being born.

Everyone among the designers, whether a wizened veteran or a fresh-faced recruit, was given an opportunity to pitch an idea for the new line. The stakes were high because those whose pitches were not accepted would quite probably wind up working in subservient roles on those projects which had been given the green light. Yet Haine was motivated by more than personal ambition when she offered up her idea. One teenage memory that had never left her came to the fore.

I worked a lot in children’s summer camps. There was a beach where we took the children every Wednesday, a beautiful beach, with rocks and glittering sand. I remember once we sat on the rocks and watched a whole school of porpoises jumping in the waves.

Anyway, the next season when we went there, the whole beach was covered with litter. As I walked down to the water with the kids, I looked down, and there was human sewage running across the sand and into the ocean. To see that beautiful place trashed was tremendously painful to me.

Thus was born EcoQuest: an adventure game meant to teach its young players about our precious, fragile natural heritage. After her idea was accepted, Haine was assigned Jane Jensen, a former Hewlett Packard programmer and frustrated novelist who had been hired at almost the same time as her, to work with her as co-designer. This meant that EcoQuest would not only have a female lead designer, but would become the first computer game in history that was the product of an all-female design team.

Thinking, as Sierra always encouraged their designers to do, in terms of an all-new game’s series potential, Haine and Jensen created a young protagonist named Adam. Adam’s father is an ecologist who spends his life traveling the globe dealing with various environment catastrophes, and his lonely son tags along, finding his friends among the animals living in the places they visit.

In light of the disturbing memory that had spawned the series, the first game had always been destined to take place in the ocean. Adam gets recruited by one of his anthropomorphic animal friends, a dolphin named Delphineus, to search for Cetus, the great sperm whale whom all of the other undersea creatures look to for guidance, but who’s now gone missing. (One guess which species of bipedal mammal is responsible…) The game was therefore given the subtitle of The Search for Cetus to join the EcoQuest series badge.

Sierra was by no means immune to the allure of the trendy, and certainly there was a whiff of just that to making this game at this time. The first international Earth Day had taken place on April 22, 1990, accompanied by a well-orchestrated media campaign that turned a spotlight — arguably a brighter spotlight than at any earlier moment in history — onto the many environmental catastrophes that were facing our planet even then. This new EcoQuest series was very much of a piece with Earth Day and the many other media initiatives it spawned. Still, the environmental message of EcoQuest isn’t just a gimmick; anthropomorphic sea creatures aside, it’s very much in scientific earnest. Haine and Jensen worked with the Marine Mammal Center of Sausalito, California, to get the science right, and Sierra even agreed to donate a portion of the profits to the same organization.

There’s a refreshing sweetness to the game that some might call naivete, an assumption that the most important single factor contributing to the pollution of our oceans is simple ignorance. For example, Adam meets a fishing boat at one point whose propeller lacks a protective cage to prevent it from injuring manatees and other ocean life. He devises a way of making such a cage and explains its importance to the fisherman, who’s horrified to learn the damage his naked propeller had been causing and more than happy to be given this solution. The only glaring exception to the rule of human ignorance rather than malice is the whaling ship that, it turns out, has harpooned poor Cetus.

The message of The Search for Cetus would thus seem to be that, while there are a few bad apples among us, most people want to keep our oceans as pristine as possible and want the enormous variety of species which live in them to be able to survive and thrive. Is this really so very naive? From my experience, at any rate, most people would react just the same as the fisherman in an isolated circumstance like his. It’s the political and financial interests that keep getting in the way, preventing large-scale change by inflaming passions that have little bearing on the practicalities at hand. Said interests are obviously outside the scope of this children’s adventure game, but the same game does serve as a reminder that many things in this world aren’t really so complicated in themselves; they’re complicated only because some among us insist on making them so, often for disingenuous purposes.

Yet The Search for Cetus is never as preachy as the paragraph I’ve just written. Jane Jensen would later go on to become one of the most famed adventure designers in history through her trilogy of supernatural mysteries starring the reluctant hero Gabriel Knight. The talent for characterization that would make those games so beloved is also present, at least in a nascent form, in The Search for Cetus. From an hysterical hermit crab to a French artiste of a blowfish, the personalities are all a lot of fun. “The characters’ voices and personalities are used to humanize their plight,” said Jensen, “giving a voice to the faceless victims of our carelessness.” Most critically, the characters all feel honestly cute or comic or both; The Search for Cetus never condescends to its audience. This is vitally important to the goal of getting the game’s environmental message across because children can smell adult condescension from a mile away, and it’s guaranteed to make them run screaming.

The techniques the game uses to educate in a natural-feeling interactive context are still worthy of study today. For example, a new verb is added to the standard Sierra control panel: “recycle.” This comes to function as a little hidden-object game-within-the-game, as you scan each screen for trash, getting a point for every piece that you recycle. Along the way, you’ll be astonished both by the sheer variety of junk that makes its way into our oceans and the damage it causes: plastic bags suffocate blowfish, organic waste causes algae to grow out of control, plastic six-pack rings entangle swordfish and dolphins, balloons get eaten by turtles, bleach poisons the water, tar and oil kill coral. In the non-linear middle section of the game, you solve a whole series of such problems for the ocean’s inhabitants, learning a great deal about them in the process. You even mark a major chemical spill for cleanup. The game refuses to throw up its hands at the scale of the damage humanity has done; it’s lesson is that, yes, the damage is immense, but we — and even you, working at the individual level — can do something about it. This may be the most important message of all to take away from The Search for Cetus.

The game isn’t hard by any means, but nor is it trivial. Jane Jensen:

Gano and I are both Sierra players, so when we started to design our first Sierra game, we designed a game that we would want to play. The puzzles in EcoQuest are traditional Sierra adventure-game puzzles, with an ecological and educational slant. You can’t die in the game, but other than that, it’s a real Sierra adventure. Because it is aimed at an older audience, the gameplay isn’t simplified like Mixed-Up Mother Goose or Fairy Tales. The puzzles are challenging, and lots of fun.

Thus the concessions to the children that were expected to become the primary audience take the form not of complete infantilization, but rather a lack of pointless deaths, a lack of of unwinnable states, and a number of optional puzzles which score points but aren’t required to finish the game. Many outside Sierra’s rather insular circle of designers, of course, would call all of these things — especially the first two — simply good design, full stop.

Released in early 1992, The Search for Cetus did well enough that Sierra funded a CD-ROM version with voice acting to supplement the original floppy-based version about a year later. And they funded a further adventure of young Adam as well, which was also released in early 1993. In Lost Secret of the Rainforest, he and his father head for the Amazon, where they confront the bureaucrats, poachers, and clear-cutters that threaten another vital ecosystem’s existence.

With this second game in the series, Sierra clearly opted for not fixing what isn’t broken: all of the educational approaches and program features we remember from the original, from the anthropomorphic animals to the recycling icon, make a return. There’s even a clever new minigame this time around, involving an “ecorder,” a handheld scanner that identifies plants and animals and other things you encounter and provides a bit of information about them. So, in addition to hunting for toxic trash, you’re encouraged to try to find everything in the ecorder’s database as you explore the jungle.

Unfortunately, though, it just doesn’t all come together as well as it did the first time around. Jane Jensen didn’t work on Lost Secret, leaving the entirety of the game in the hands of Gano Haine, who lacked her talent for engaging characters and dialog. She obviously strove mightily, but the results too often come across as labored, unfunny, and/or leaden. (Haine did mention in an interview that, responding to complaints from some quarters that the text in Search for Cetus was too advanced for some children, she made a conscious attempt to simplify the writing in the sequel; this may also have contributed to the effect I’m describing.)

The puzzle design as well is unbalanced, being fairly straightforward until a scene in the middle which seems to have been beamed in from another game entirely. This scene, in which Adam has been captured by a group of poachers and needs to escape, all but requires a walkthrough to complete for players of any age, combining read-the-author’s mind puzzles with the necessity for fiddly, pinpoint-precise clicking and timing. And then, after you clear that hurtle, the game settles back down into the old routine, running on to the end in its old straightforward manner, as if it nothing out of the way had ever happened. It’s deeply strange, and all by itself makes Lost Secret difficult to recommend with anything like the same enthusiasm as its predecessor. It’s not really a bad game on the whole — especially if you go into it forewarned about its one truly bad sequence — but it’s not a great one either.

The poacher named Slaughter has a pink-river dolphin carcass hanging over his door, book stands made from exotic horns, a jaguar-skin rug on his floor, and a footstool made from an elephant’s foot. Laying it on just a bit thick, perhaps?

And on that somewhat disappointing note, the EcoQuest series ended. The science behind the two games still holds up, and the messages they impart about environmental stewardship are more vital than ever. From the modern perspective, the infelicities in the games’ depiction of environmental issues mostly come in their lack of attention to another threat that has become all too clear in the years since they were made: the impact global warming is having on both our oceans and our rain forests. This lack doesn’t, however, invalidate anything that EcoQuest does say about ecological issues. The second game in particular definitely has its flaws, but together the two stand as noble efforts to use the magic of interactivity as a means of engagement with pressing real-world issues — the sort of thing that the games industry, fixated as it always has been on escapist entertainment, hasn��t attempted as much as it perhaps ought to. “Environmental issues are very emotional,” acknowledges Gano Haine, “and you inevitably contact people who have very deep disagreements about those issues.” Yet the EcoQuest series dares to present, in a commonsense but scientifically rigorous way, the impact some of our worst practices are having on our planet, and dares to ask whether we all couldn’t just set politics aside and try to do that little bit more to make the situation better.

In that spirit, I have to note that some of the most inspiring aspects of the EcoQuest story are only tangentially related to the actual games. A proud moment for everyone involved with the series came when Sierra received a letter from a group of kids in faraway Finland, who had played The Search for Cetus and been motivated to organize a cleanup effort at a polluted lake in their neighborhood. Meanwhile the research that went into making the games caused the entire company of Sierra Online to begin taking issues of sustainability more seriously. They started printing everything from game boxes to pay stubs on recycled paper; started reusing their shipping pallets; started using recycled disks; started sorting their trash and sending it to the recycler. They also started investigating the use of water-based instead of chemical-based coatings for their boxes, soybean ink for printing, and fully biodegradable materials for packing. No, they didn’t hesitate to pat themselves on the back for all this in their newsletter (which, for the record, was also printed on recycled paper after EcoQuest) — but, what the hell, they’d earned it.

The words they wrote in their newsletter apply more than ever today: “It’s not always easy, but it’s worth it. Saving the planet isn’t a passing fad. It’s critical, for our own future and for the future of our children.” One can only hope that the games brought some others around to the same point of view — and may even continue to do so today, for those few who discover them moldering away in some archive or other.

Pepper’s Adventures in Time, the third and final adventure game released as part of the Discovery Series, was a very different proposition from EcoQuest. Its original proposer wasn’t one of Sierra’s regular designers, but rather Bill Davis, the veteran television and film animator who had been brought in at the end of the 1980s to systematize the company’s production processes to suit a new era of greater audiovisual fidelity and exploding budgets. His proposal was for a series called Twisty History, which would teach children about the subject by asking them to protect history as we know it from the depredations wrought by the evil inventor of a time machine. Because Davis wasn’t himself a designer, the first game in the planned series became something of a community effort, a collaboration that included Gano Haine and Jane Jensen as well as Lorelei Shannon and Josh Mandel. (That is, for those tracking gender equality in real time, three female designers and one male.)

Lockjaw has been captured by a spoiled brat of a Royalist!

The star of the series, as sketched by Bill Davis and filled in by the design team, is a girl named Pepper Pumpernickel, a spunky little thing who doesn’t take kindly to the opposite sex telling her what she can and can’t do. Her costar is Lockjaw, her pet dog. Davis:

We’d recently lost a dog to leukemia, had gone through an extended period of mourning, and had decided it was time to adopt. So my wife and son headed for our favorite adoption agency, the local animal shelter. They came home with a German shepherd/terrier mix. The terrier turned out to be Staffordshire terrier. For those in the dark, as we were, Staffordshire terrier is synonymous with “pit bull.” Anyway, she turned out to be a lovable little mutt with a bit of an attitude. Thirty pounds of attitude, to be precise. Well, as I was sitting at the drawing board designing characters for Twisty, she shoved her attitude up my behind and into the game proposal.

Lockjaw threatens at times to steal the game from Pepper — as, one senses, he was intended to. The player even gets to control him rather than Pepper from time to time, using his own unique set of doggie verbs, like a nose icon for sniffing, a paw icon for digging, and a mouth icon for eating — or biting. It’s clear that the designers really, really want you to be charmed by their fierce but lovable pooch, but for the most part he is indeed as cute as they want him to be, getting himself and Pepper into all kinds of trouble, only to save the day when the plot calls for it.

Ben Franklin’s doctrine of sober industriousness has been corrupted into hippie indolence. It’s up to Pepper to right the course of history as we know it.

Otherwise, the theme of this first — and, as it would turn out, only — game in the series is fairly predictable for a work of children’s history written in this one’s time and place. Pepper travels back to “Colonial” times, that semi-mythical pre-Revolutionary War period familiar to every American grade-school student, when Ben Franklin was flying his kite around, Thomas Paine was writing about the rights of the citizen, and the evil British were placing absurd levies on the colonists’ tea supply. (Perish the thought!)

While its cozily traditional depiction of such a well-worn era of history doesn’t feel as urgent or relevant as the environmental issues presented by EcoQuest, the game itself is a lot of fun. The script follows the time-tested cartoon strategy of mixing broad slapstick humor aimed at children with subtler jokes for any adults who might be playing along: referencing Monty Python, poking fun at the tedious professors we’ve all had to endure. Josh Mandel had worked as a standup comedian before coming to Sierra, and his instinct for the punchline combined with Jane Jensen’s talent for memorable characterization can’t help but charm.

The puzzle design too is pretty solid, with just a couple of places that could have used a bit more guidance for the player and/or a bit more practical thinking-through on the part of the designers. (Someone really should have told the designers that fresh tomatoes and ketchup aren’t remotely the same thing when it comes to making fake blood…) And, once again, the games does a good job of blending the educational elements organically into the whole. This time around, you have a “truth” icon you can use to find out what is cartoon invention and what is historically accurate; the same icon provides more background on the latter. You use what you have (hopefully) learned in this way to try to pass a quiz that’s presented at the end of each chapter, thus turning the study of history into a sort of scavenger hunt that’s more entertaining than one might expect, even for us jaded adults.

What had been planned as the beginning of the Twisty History series was re-badged as the one-off Pepper’s Adventures in Time just before its release in the spring of 1993. This development coincided with the end of the Discovery Series as a whole, only two years after it had begun. Sierra had just acquired a Seattle software house known as Bright Star Technology, who were henceforward to constitute their official educational division. Bright Star appropriated the character of Dr. Brain, but the rest of the budding collection of series and characters that constituted the Discovery lineup were quietly retired, and the designers who had made them returned to games meant strictly to entertain. And so passed into history one of the most refreshing groups of games ever released by Sierra.

(Sources: the book Jane Jensen: Gabriel Knight, Adventure Games, and Hidden Objects by Anastasia Salter; Sierra’s newsletter InterAction of Spring 1992, Fall 1992, Winter 1992, and June 1993; Compute! of January 1993; Questbusters of March 1992; materials in the Sierra archive at the Strong Museum of Play. And my thanks go to Corey Cole, who took the time to answer some questions about this period of Sierra’s history from his perspective as a developer there.

Feel free to download EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus, EcoQuest: Lost Secret of the Rainforest, and Pepper’s Adventures in Time from this site, in a format that will make them as easy as possible to get running using your platform’s version of DOSBox.)

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-sierra-discovery-adventures/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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callmeakumatized · 6 years

Text

My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend - Ch 10

[[ SURPRISE!!! Another Chapter! :D ]]

Ao3 ff.net previous chapter

Marinette had never responded to Adrien's message from Friday night, and she didn't try to call him, despite her threat to do so. Adrien both liked and disliked this development. While he hated not hearing about how she was feeling – because, really, he loved her, dang it – he desperately needed the time to quell his own feelings and decide what to do from here. Because he knew he needed to make the next move. He just didn't know if he was brave enough to do it, especially without the loving support he had come to rely on so heavily from Ladybug – Marinette…Maribug?

So he ignored Nino's small-talk texts. And Alya's Ladyblog update messages. Instead, he focused on what he could do for his Lady.

So far? He had a big dollop of Nuttin' atop a sundae of Diddly-Squat.

What could he say that he hadn't already said? 'Purr-pose' instead of 'Porpoise'?

(Yeah, he didn't think so either.)

Needless to say, the main sounds he heard throughout his weekend were cheese-eating (normal), Ladyblog update blips (normal), and a lot – a lot – of (maybe melodramatic, to a degree) sighing (not as normal).

When Monday came around, Adrien seriously considered telling Nathalie he was sick. Or running away. Or joining the circus. Anything to be anywhere but there was a viable option in his arsenal of excuses at this point. The Saturday evening Akuma was still fresh on his mind, and it had been especially nasty. It wasn't hard, per se, but Ladybug, while playing up a scary version of "Nothing's wrong why would anything be wrong!?" had taken turns roughly vaulting him toward the danger (grinning wickedly while she did so) and getting ridiculously close to him in very intimate ways (trying to maintain appearances, maybe, but running her fingers through his hair while there were explosions was toying with his brain and totally on purr-pose, don't try to tell him otherwise).

And he was pretty sure the "mistake" where they went for a fist bump and she broke his nose was totally not the accident she had pretended it was. Especially because she had insisted on the fist bump before the Miraculous cure, which would, admittedly, fix it, but not completely. Which she, of course, knew.

Even thinking about it now, Adrien could feel the bruising.

The unexpected sloppy kiss she had planted on him and the desperate look in her eyes afterward did nothing – N-O-T-H-I-N-G – to help his hurting heart. Or his reeling emotions.

So when Adrien pulled up to the school, he already had expectations of what he would see, what he would find. A girl crushed under the weight of a broken heart? Maybe. A woman angry over her lover's quarrel? More likely. What Adrien expected to see when he walked into the school building was, perhaps, based on his own feelings. He felt down, and he felt confused, and he felt anxious, so maybe he assumed Marinette would feel the same way too.

He was SO. WRONG.

What he saw was Ladybug in fleshy form. A girl with a planned plan planned to planny precision. It was disgusting. And Adrien had to pick his school stuff and his jaw off the floor when he first saw her.

She looked gorgeous. Just enough make-up to keep it subtle. Just enough hairs coming loose from her up-do to keep it casual. Sneaker heels and a cute skirt instead of flats and pants. The girl was siphoning the oxygen straight out of his lungs, using it to fuel her full laughs and playful jabs at her classmates.

He first spotted her in the locker room where she was putting on red lipstick in the mirror of her locker, giggling with Alya, Rose, and Alix about something. As he gazed at the back of her head, he could have sworn she saw him reflected there. He definitely saw the flash of hard blue eyes before she leaned over, grabbing Alya's head and planting a puckering kiss onto her best friend's cheek. The girls all giggled, and she turned right to him and winked. Adrien gulped in response, reaching down to pick up the books he had dropped. He rubbed his still-sore nose self-consciously.

When he looked back up, Nino had joined Alya, and Marinette had put on his headphones to listen in on the music he were talking about.

The girls walked by a few minutes later, passing a statue-like Adrien who had frozen when Marinette had shown him how adorable she looked with red lipstick and headphones.

He was captivated by visions of dark lashes and red lips.

He was jealous of Alya's kissed cheek.

He was jealous of Nino, Alix, and Rose's close proximity.

He was terrified of Marinette.

As the girl walked up to him, Adrien tried to tighten his grip on his bag and his books, trying to not repeat the action for a third time that morning, but to no avail. They clattered everywhere, only accentuated by his efforts to keep himself upright. The familiar warmth of embarrassment manifested itself in his cheeks, neck, and ears, and Adrien concentrated heavily on picking up his stuff and not looking up. Until Marinette's shoes paused in front of him.

When he had finished with his books, a hand shot out in front of his face. Adrien still didn't raise his eyes, but he was not one to turn away a hand offered to him…especially when this was the girl of your dreams (and maybe his nightmares the night before, but he didn't want to think about that). Marinette's grip was strong, and she pulled him up with ease. Then she paused for a moment before lifting up on of his hands and kissing his palm. Adrien might have made a whimpering sound at this.

Marinette only smiled, their eyes finally meeting…and then purposefully flicking him on the nose before sauntering off.

"Do you deserve it?"

"Huh?" Adrien's reply was about an octave higher than normal. He was too busy rubbing his throbbing nose and blinking the sudden tears of pain from his eyes.

Adrien's blurry vision finally started to focus. His best friend stood there looking at him, lips pursed but eyes twinkling.

"Do you deserve it?" the DJ repeated, slower this time.

Nino's voice was usually a welcomed anchor to this sea of chaos that was his life (though it was slowly turning into a hurricane of madness, a sharknado, a flippin' Bermuda triangle centered around him). The question, however, was not welcomed.

"Uh…" Adrien easily understood the meaning of the simple question. He just didn't know where to start.

"Just answer me, bro."

"Yes…?"

"That's the first step. How you gonna fix it?"

"I – what? How do you even know – ?"

Nino closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head and placing a hand on Adrien's shoulder.

"Dude, you are just lucky that it was me you sent that message to and not her."

…Wut.

"The girl is shooting daggers at you already. Have you talked to her since Friday at all?"

Talked with? Nah, not really. Fought with? Yeah, absolutely. And in more ways than one.

"No? What message?"

"You seriously thought that that girl – that girl – would cheat on you?"

Oh. That message. How had he…? Nevermind. Whatever. WHAT. EVER.

"Nino…I…I don't know how to explain. But, yes?"

"You know that that girl has been in love with you since you started public school, right?"

"WHAT?"

"The girl has your schedule memorized." Nino chuckled for a second before sobering instantly. "Do not tell her I told you that. Cause honestly, I do not want that," – he motioned toward the direction Marinette had gone – "after me. And you better figure this out soon. Mari is seriously ticked."

"I…but…"

Nino only shook his head and walked away, a salute and a smile his only departing graces.

Adrien blinked stupidly at nothing. Then he lost control of his books again. He couldn't help but see it as an awful metaphor for what his life was: a mess.

qpqpqpqpqp

Adrien could handle the cutesy gushing over hat designs with Myléne and the discussion of the new Jagged Stone/Zombie Skullcrushers duet with Ivan. Heck, he could even deal with hearing Marinette gush about LadyNoir with Alya, the conversation so close it was almost in his flippin' ear. But this? Ah nah. He drew the line at the "gun show" she started participating in with Kim and Alix during their lunch hour. Particularly when Kim started feeling her gorgeous, glittery (how is that possible?) muscles.

Not to sound like he was a masochist, or that he owned Maribug or anything attached to her, but…those muscles were his.

Without warning, Adrien unceremoniously grabbed Marinette by the arm and dragged her away from the group of classmates, giving Kim the stink eye. They only made it a couple tables away before Marinette slipped her arm out from his grasp.

"Excuse you!" she shot out, placing a hand on her hip and popping it out in such an adorablewayshewasgoingtokillhim.

"Excuse me?" Adrien shot back, matching her quiet tone. "Excuse you! Letting him feel you up like that…"

"He was not feeling me up!"

"He might as well have been."

She snorted.

Adrien walked a step away, grabbing at his hair before going back to her and pointing a finger just passed her face. "Stop flirting with everyone! It's – It's killing me, Marinette! If you're going to touch anyone, or kiss anyone, or for goodness' sake share headphones with anyone, it should be with me!"

Marinette stared blankly at him for a moment. "Huh. You'd think I would have seen this coming or something. I mean, you do tend to get jealous over the silliest things…like yourself."

Adrien sat on the nearest table, covering his face with his hands and groaning loudly. This day didn't turn out how he imagined; it was worse. Removing one hand from his face he reached out and caught hold of an escaping Marinette, pulling her to him again, but more gently. She came willingly and he pulled her into some semblance of an embrace. Mostly so he could continue the conversation through whispers in her ear. Mostly.

"I thought you didn't know, Mari."

"And I thought you did know."

This was something he had sorta figured out, but it still left questions.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Uh, er…well, you see…" Marinette pulled away a bit and Adrien saw the crack in her confident façade for the first time that day. It almost gave him confidence. But, since he didn't know why she was hesitating to answer, courage quickly dissolved into nervousness.

"You asked me out!" she finally whisper-yelled at him.

"You said 'yes'! Why – Why would you say 'yes' to that!?"

Marinette flushed before suddenly grabbing both sides of his face. "You just…you have that – that face! You shouldn't just walk around with th-that face and expect unsuspecting females to be able to answer, uh, logically!"

Adrien couldn't help it. He knew he was in deep trouble, but…he snickered. Marinette immediately let go of him and flicked his nose again. With a cry, his hands grabbed her wrists to block off anymore attacks. She struggled against him, gritting her teeth.

"And you came to my house, and you called me MY NICKNAME!" Her voice was getting louder. "Or do you go to everyone's house and call them 'M'Lady' and say 'See you tomorrow' and KISS THEIR HAND!?"

Adrien froze. When had he…?

Oh. Oh gosh.

He…he had done that, hadn't he?

"Well, I-I-I, I mean, you're not wrong…" his voice drifted with his gaze as he thought back to that time with Marinette, poking around her room and flirting – teasing – her. Marinette stopped struggling, the lack of movement bringing Adrien's eyes back to his partner's. He was shocked to see them a little watery, and when she spoke, her voice was very small.

"You do do that to everyone?"

"WHAT? No! NO, Marinette, that's not –"

"I thought that that was just for me…"

"It IS! What I meant was that you're right, I did do that, but I don't do that to anyone else! I've never done that to anyone else!"

"Just to me? And well…me?"

There was a mixture of skepticism with hopefulness in her eyes. It was a fear for both of them: Marinette fearing Adrien's disloyalty, and Adrien facing the fear of letting her down. Again.

"Yes," Adrien said firmly, letting go of her wrists finally and placing them tentatively on either side of her face. "And I just, I didn't mean to those times with you-you either, it must have j-just slipped out, I-I mean, I didn't…" His face felt warm. Why…why had he done that? It had flowed so easily. Had he…but no, he couldn't have…?

He had had a crush on Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

And Marinette seemed to have simultaneously reached this same conclusion.

"Oh my gosh, you filthy hypocrite!" she spat at him, pushing his hands away. "You were hitting on me!"

"WHAT! I was not – not – hitting on you!"

He was totally hitting on her.

"Oh, 'Princess'," Marinette pulled away before adorning what he assumed was supposed to be a fake Chat Noir voice and a fake Chat Noir walk, twirling around and fluttering her lashes at him (even in pretend, Chat Noir still had swag). "Oh, it's raining! Please, please let me in! EVEN THOUGH I LIVE A BLOCK AWAY."

"I wasn't hitting on you! I was flirting, and that is not the same!"

HE WAS TOTALLY HITTING ON HER.

"You had a crush on me! ADMIT IT!"

"Says the girl who has more posters on her wall of me than La Mode magazine!"

Several gasps sounded throughout the cafeteria. One of them was Marinette's. One of them was also Adrien's.

That was a low blow, and they all knew it, even those in the unwitting audience.

The next thing Adrien knew, he was sprawled across one of the long lunch tables, Marinette shoving a thick slab of pudding into his face.

All he could do for a moment was blink stupidly at the ceiling. That is, until he heard the "Oooo's" coming from the kids around them. When he sat up, he saw a smug, red, and angry Marinette. But he was done playing around.

Adrien made a show of licking off what he could before looking around and making a grab for whatever was around him – mashed potatoes, perfect – and flicking it into her own face.

Or, he would have.

But she was Ladybug. The blithe girl deftly dodged the potato slop easily. Instead, the wad of starchy goodness landed in a young girl's hair. The young lady yelped at the surprising impact.

A stillness broke over the cafeteria…until a voice that sounded suspicious like Alya's yelled, "FOOD FIGHT!"

"DETENTION!" a stronger voice rang out, bringing the lunch room into another quiet lull. Adrien and Marinette's gazes snapped to each other. Both their hands had more globs of food in them, aimed toward each other. Audible gulps sounded. They then looked to the person whose heels now clicked against the tiled floor in a heavy rhythm.

Ah. It looks like Principal Damocles decided to join them all for lunch today.

Great.

#miraculous ladybug #ml fanfic #ml fanfiction #ladynoir #ladybug #chat noir #adrien agreste #marinette dupain-cheng #adrienette #alya cesaire #nino lahiffe #ladrien #marichat #My Girlfriend's Boyfriend

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