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meaningofmischief · 3 years ago

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Evil, Lying Scourge

Set immediately after the battle in the Timekeepers’ chamber. Loki and Renslayer go toe-to-toe as Loki creates the ultimately confronting conditions to force the truth of Sylvie’s Nexus Event from Renslayer.

The truth is devastating - can Loki and Sylvie survive it?

Loki and Sylvie were traumatized - that was near the only way to put it.

Hours ago they had resigned themselves to die together on an exploding moon.

They had been forcibly yanked into the clutches of the TVA at the last possible minute, restrained, separated, each subject to individual psychological tortures as all their remaining tatters of stability and freedom and friendship were ripped away from them one by one. Both prepared to meet their ends together again, and now even their impossible escape was ice cold comfort as they both examined in horror the head of the mindless android they had taken to be one of the three all-powerful Timekeepers.

Not to mention the barely suppressed passion each felt for the other that roiled away like a wildfire between them - burning both the longer it went unacknowledged.

‘Then who,’ Loki’s voice broke for stress, ‘created the TVA?’. Sylvie felt choked by a sudden rage. Hurling the head of the android viciously across the floor of the chamber, she spat: ‘I thought this was it.’ They both had, of course.

A low moan startled them and they whipped around, mirrors of defense for the next attack, but the despised Ravonna Renslayer still lay passed out cold from the hefty blow Sylvie had dealt her not a minute before.

B-15, the undisputed saviour of the pair of them, had finally regained consciousness after the massive strike to the head she had received at the hands of one of the Timekeepers’ specialist defense team. They had not treated her mercifully while she was down either, delivering unnecessarily cruel, wounding kicks to the woman they saw as the traitor in their midst.

Sylvie reacted as if by instinct and rushed straight to B-15’s side, running practiced hands down the Hunter’s limbs to assess for fractures or broken bones. Loki could only marvel - for all her uncompromising toughness, Sylvie’s unconscious impulse was to compassion, a quality that he found at times miserably difficult to access, which frustrated him to no end, especially when he considered how yet more painful Sylvie’s past had been to his own.

‘Nothing broken.’ Sylvie’s soft reassurance to B-15 snapped Loki out of his reverie. ‘But those arseholes didn’t go easy on you by any means. Do you think you can walk?’ There was a flash of fire in the resilient Hunter’s eyes and she opened her mouth to deliver a stinging retort before Sylvie broke out into a warm smile and there was a brief moment of kinship between these two fearsome warriors.

‘Still,’ continued Sylvie bluntly, ‘I’m not having you risk your life to save us only to pass out in one of these obscure corridors where no-one’ll find you for the next week. I’m gonna see you to the infirmary and you can’t stop me.’ She was busy helping B-15 struggle painfully to her feet when Loki murmured, gravelly, ‘Sylvie. Is that wise?’

Sylvie glowered. Whatever difficult feelings she had for this man, he was not about to tell her what to do. Luckily B-15 interceded, voice tight with pain, but determined nonetheless: ‘I know how we can do this. Variant -’, she checked herself, ‘L-Loki. Take out Ravonna’s Tempad from her jacket.’

Loki’s skin crawled but he nevertheless did as she commanded, crouching down to where Ravonna still lay knocked out, reaching inside her jacket to retrieve the rectangular Tempad, surprisingly heavy in his palm. He handed it uncertainly to B-15 who snapped it open and began pressing buttons with a confident ease that seemed to indicate she knew exactly what she was doing. ‘There,’ she said smugly after 30 seconds or so, ‘the warrant for my capture has been deleted. And don’t worry,’ her gaze flitted over to Loki and in that brief glance Loki knew that B-15 had perceptively ascertained the depth of his attachment to Sylvie, ‘nothing is going to happen to that Variant on my watch. The store cupboard for this unit is right next to the infirmary, so we’ll get her a uniform to act as a disguise on the way back.’ B-15’s eyes narrowed, and Loki knew she was fighting hard what must be a tremendous amount of pain. She handed the Tempad back to Loki and he felt incredibly humbled by the action. Sylvie helped her very gently to the elevator door. ‘Promise me,’ B-15 whispered through gritted teeth as she turned to face Loki one last time, ‘that you’ll bring this place to the ground.’ Loki nodded once, slow and solemn - forcing himself to believe that such a thing was possible when so much lay still unknown. He and Sylvie locked gazes, and Loki longed to cross to the elevator doors in a handful of strides, hold her so close to him, take her face in his hands… Stop. He forced himself to focus right now, for all of their sakes. He only held her gaze as the elevator doors closed, and then they were gone.

Loki exhaled, and it came out mostly as a sob. He closed his eyes to withhold the tears which he felt welling in their sea-green depths. He had held himself together all this while for Sylvie, but now, standing alone in the cold, misty chamber - he felt assaulted by uncertainty and fear. And sorrow. He so wished for Mobius, for his friend, who was always so grounded and strong - a master of strategy. Loki’s gift for style and verbal artistry were rendered useless in a situation such as this and he felt utterly incompetent and broken.

‘You can be whatever - whoever - you wanna be. Even someone good. I mean just in case anyone ever told you different.’

Loki’s eyes snapped open, shining with salt water and yet never so determined as now.

No.

He had the ability to stand up and make his own choices, and that started now. Not his first act of defiance against whatever cruel authority had created this suffocating institution of control, and certainly not his last.

He knew what he needed to do, and he needed to do it for Sylvie - while he had this rapidly diminishing window and before they set about trying to achieve the impossible in burning this place to the ground.

And before he told her that he loved her.

Loki stooped and grimly retrieved his Time Collar where it lay on the floor after B-15 had freed him of it. He was going to need it, unfortunately. He opened the Tempad and after a short while as he got to grips with its functions, a Time Door with a subtle magenta sheen opened up next to him.

Panicked breathing behind him.

Good, she was awake.

Loki wasted no time, seizing Renslayer none too gently by the lapel of her jacket. She foggily tried to resist him, but before her blurry vision had even cleared, she felt the Time Collar wrap constrictingly around her neck, felt Loki haul her to her feet and unceremoniously push her through the Time Door ahead of him.

The Asgardian bedchamber was light and airy and warm - a stark contrast to the cool, damp darkness of the place they had emerged from. Loki looked around briefly, instantly wistful, recognising the arch of the ceiling, the pristine white marble floor, even smelling the heady summer scents of his old home. It made his heart ache even more - if that was possible at this stage. He was quickly distracted, however, by Ravonna’s wild sprint away from his side. She had regained her full mental capacity now, but was seized by terror at the situation - at the mercy of the Variant and whatever tortures he could concuct for her.

Loki fiercely loathed to play the jailor - even to someone as worthy of harsh treatment as Renslayer - but he needed her attention. He turned the dial of the Time Twister and in an instant Renslayer was back at his side. Though the logical part of Ravonna’s brain knew it was fruitless, she tried to break away from him several more times, just as Loki had tried upon his capture. Eventually Loki seized her by the arm and made her turn to look at the scene before them.

Throughout the chaos the little girl seated on the floor had payed them no heed. Not that she could. This was what the TVA quaintly referred to as an ‘Observant Loop Cell’ - of course obnoxiously abbreviated to OLC. An OLC was designed not to punish prisoners into submission but rather to force them to reflect on situations they had experienced - made to watch those situations over and over and unable to help, hinder or manipulate any of the figures within it.

Loki himself had had no idea what to expect when he had found Variant L1129’s file on Renslayer’s Tempad, and created an OLC of the Variant’s apprehension. He had briefly had a vision of the young, out-of-control Goddess of Mischief, terrorizing Asgard - effecting pain and suffering, destruction and death so devastating that there was no choice but to send up a smoke flare, a Nexus Event. It did not fit in the slightest with what he perceived of Sylvie’s true character, but he could think of no other reasonable explanation. He did certainly not expect this angelic child, playing as any child would, with her toys. Loki felt a pang of unhappiness as he remembered his own childhood days, he never could play nicely. It was all borne of resentment and jealousy: Father would always ensure Thor had the most luxurious selection of toys, and he was anyway keen that both of his sons stopped messing around with playthings as early as possible and go out for battle training with the young sons of Asgardian nobility instead. Where Thor thrived in the competitive, loud environment of the training ground, Loki shrank into himself. Self-conscious, anxious, lacking the warrior’s bulk that all the other boys seemed to possess, the young prince found himself more often than not in a corner with a few books and some of the toys his father scorned - to make up his own stories in his own time. The other boys mocked him endlessly, tore pages out of the books, stole the miniature figurines of Valkyrie and other great warriors. Loki had eventually learned to be as harsh and cruel as they - only his power to hurt came from his intelligence rather than brawn.

This little girl was anything but harsh and cruel, hurt and isolated. Yes, she was alone, but she seemed to relish that independence - making her own stories up in her own time. ‘Dragon swoops towards the palace, but Valkyrie flies over, defeats the dragon and saves Asgard!’ she crowed, face alit at the conclusion of what had evidently been an epic story. Loki couldn’t suppress a small smile, though he knew that any moment there must be some great catastrophe which would set off the Nexus Event. Ravonna seemed to have frozen at his side - both were caught up in their individual perception of the events unfolding before their eyes.

When the golden Time Door opened mere seconds later, Loki gasped in disbelief, gaze flitting around the room and then back to Sylvie as he tried to ascertain what could have caused the Nexus and finding no evidence at all. Ravonna stiffened next to him as they both saw none other than Ravonna Renslayer - or more precisely Hunter A-20 - in clear command of the two Minutemen flanking her, hold out her Tempad before her and certify in a cold, triumphant voice: ‘There’s our variant.’ Sylvie’s eyes were huge and frightened as Renslayer continued without pause: ‘On the authority of the Timekeepers, I hereby arrest you for crimes against the sacred timeline’, as though she were addressing some notorious criminal and not a terrified little girl.

‘Where’s the Nexus?!’ Loki thought, increasingly desperate and distressed as the OLC Renslayer seized Sylvie by her skinny arm and wrenched her towards the Time Door. It all happened very quickly then. The Minutemen set their Reset Charge which immediately began its task of disintegrating Sylvie’s possessions - anything and everything that indicated that she had ever been in this room. Sylvie screamed, high-pitched, shaking in Renslayer’s grasp: ‘Wait!!!’. Loki resisted the urge to run to her aid, knowing it would be completely useless. Then Sylvie and Renslayer gone, followed by the Minutemen, the Time Door snapped shut and Loki and his Renslayer stood facing one another in a deafening silence in the handful of seconds of respite prisoners would receive before the loop started again.

Tears were clouding Loki’s vision, but he blinked them away angrily. ‘Why?’ was the only thing he said - in a voice several octaves below his usual speaking voice. Renslayer shook her head and pressed her lips together, though her chest heaved at the fraught situation. Loki growled softly and resisted the urge to hurt her - to make her talk.

No.

That was what he would have done in the past, he would not descend to such base measures now.

He didn’t need to, the loop was already starting again. Loki felt as though his heart would fairly break in two as he watched the young Sylvie skip into her bedroom, arms full of her toys, setting them out, beginning to play. ‘You’re going,’ he spat at Renslayer ‘to stand here with me and watch this as many times as it takes for you to tell me what the Nexus event was that made you rip an innocent young girl’s life away from her and force her on the run for her entire life. I don’t care how long it takes. You’re going to tell me.’

In reality that wasn’t exactly true - Sylvie and B-15 had almost certainly reached the infirmary by now and if Sylvie made it back to the Timekeepers’ chamber to find it empty, to think that she had been abandoned by her one companion (and perhaps more than that) in the universe… It nearly had Loki sending them both back to the TVA instantly. But Renslayer was breaking already, he could see it, as he forced her to watch the abject cruelty, cruelty at her hands, again and again. By the third viewing, Renslayer’s eyes brimmed with tears and Loki would gladly have wept openly. By the fifth, she started to hyperventilate, made to move away. Loki turned the Time Twister’s dial and she was jarred back into place. On the sixth viewing, just as the OLC Renslayer was about to seize Sylvie, she abruptly screamed: ‘Enough! I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you.’

Both breathed out in relief, when Loki pressed the button on the Tempad that cut the loop and everyone in the scene disintegrated immediately. He turned to face her and forced out between his teeth: ‘Do not try to lie to the God of Mischief. You have no idea how acutely I am attuned to falsehoods. You will tell me in every horrifying detail about this Nexus Event, or I will leave you in this Time Cell and bury this Tempad in the deepest crevice of the TVA where no one will ever, ever find it. Now TELL ME.’

Renslayer took a deep breath to steady herself, closed her eyes and spoke with a surprisingly steady voice: ‘The Variant was deviating from her role on the Sacred Timeline.’ Loki snarled: ‘Obviously! What was the deviation?’. Renslayer opened her eyes and locked her chocolate brown eyes with his green ones. ‘A Loki,’ she said, slowly, as though choosing her words carefully, ‘does not get to travel the kind of path that that Variant was on.’ Loki rushed to intercede, but Renslayer narrowed her eyes, warning him not to interrupt her.

‘It was a mistake that she ever got as far as she did. Our technology advances every day - it’s now so accurate that we can nip burgeoning Nexus events like this one in the bud.’ Loki was amazed that she could speak in such clinical terms about the organisation that had only very recently been revealed to have three mindless robots as its figureheads. But Renslayer’s voice ran with conviction which only strengthened as she continued: ‘Lokis are so very tricky. It’s an incredible rarity that any being is allowed so much leeway as they have been, and we have all had to suffer the consequences of that. You see, due to your natures as shapeshifters, this Variant being born the Goddess rather than the God of Mischief was no cause for a Nexus flare. But of course in the archaic society that you are raised in, the ridiculous difference in gender is of massive significance. Recall that only male heirs are permitted to succeed the throne of Asgard. In your case, informing you of your adoption would have caused colossal problems for King Odin - that would have had ramifications across Asgard, not to mention potential rebellion from you yourself. Odin was under no illusions of how much more intelligent you were than his legitimate son, and how that would have fused with the arrogance of princehood to create the ultimate cuckoo within the sparrow’s nest - an utterly unacceptable scenario. Far better to keep that knowledge from you, even if it did mean that you grew up confused and resentful - emotions Odin could easily ignore. Far better to have you treated as the bastard son, who he would insidiously try to manipulate to his own ideals, who might possibly one, highly unlikely day, be fit for the throne should Thor be killed in battle before his heir was old enough to succeed the throne.’

‘Of course, for a girl, Odin had no such concerns. He took the child from Jotunheim out of some scrap of pity, and because she could prove useful in negotiating with the Jotuns at a later date. A princess had no chance of succeeding the throne, not to mention an illegitimate one, who would likely be married off to some lowborn noble as soon as she had come of age. So Odin told the Variant of her adoption. And somehow, ludicrously, that knowledge failed to break the Variant, it only made her stronger. She took pride in her differences from her family and the rest of Asgard, her inclination to independence rather than company, her delight of mischief. Where she should have been enraged, embittered and vengeful, she was courageous, compassionate and creative.’

‘Excuse me,’ Loki hissed, interrupting Renslayer’s monologue, ‘where she SHOULD have been?’. Despite the fact that she had found herself at his mercy, Renslayer sneered at him. ‘Of course-’ she continued, seeming to try to gain the upper hand over him with the knowledge she was revealing, ‘a Loki is an evil, lying scourge, like you. Where would be the heroes of the Timeline without the villains? That Variant had a role to play, same as you, same as all of us, and she went off the path. Whoever heard of a heroic Goddess of Mischief?’. Ravonna’s voice cracked slightly on the last sentence as she bore witness to Loki’s murderous expression. ‘So what you’re saying,’ he replied with devastating calm ‘is that Sylvie lost her home, her family, her life, because she would one day grow up to be kind and just, to be her own person? Oh, no one is truly good or truly bad, but the TVA decrees that not to be so.’ His voice grew more intense and Renslayer shrank before him. ‘Because whatever devil puppetmaster is controlling the TVA, they like to have their play made interesting - with villains to cause destruction and heroes to save the day?’. Renslayer was at a loss for words, but Loki had heard enough. He pressed a button on the Time Twister he held and Ravonna sank ungraciously to the floor, unconscious once more. One of the functions the delightful Twister could enact was to reverse the prisoner’s physiological state - mainly meant for various exotic creatures the TVA brought in, that could effect all sorts of trouble as a result of their innate biology, but in this case merely necessary to give Loki a moment to take in what he had just experienced. He couldn’t quite do it.

Only concern for Sylvie forced Loki to action, and he opened up the door back to the Timekeepers’ chamber using the Tempad, dragging the unconscious Ravonna back through with him. Despite what he had said, he would never consign anyone to spend their life trapped in one of the hideous Time Cells. He removed her Time Collar too, and flung it to a far corner of the chamber, repulsed that it had had to come to him using one of the TVA’s disgusting methods of control to get the information he needed.

His thoughts left Renslayer entirely behind as the elevator doors opened and Sylvie emerged not a moment too soon, yanking off the breastplate and trousers of the TVA Minutemen she had worn as a disguise over her usual black top and trousers. Now that Sylvie’s purpose had been achieved, she too seemed utterly spent as she staggered over to where Loki stood staring at her. Both failed to speak for several moments and then Loki rasped, with a voice that sounded unused for days, ‘Sylvie. Sylvie, I need to tell you something.’

Sylvie’s deep blue eyes widened, her heart began to pound like a wild drum in her chest. ‘What?’ she could only say as Loki struggled to find the words for what he had just learned.

When it was over, they both started to cry.

Loki and Sylvie had never been ones for excessive, histrionic displays of emotion. They had had to armour themselves in toughness and charm and mischief and wit all their lives despite the turbulence that roared inside of them.

And now here the both of them stood, silent but for the ragged intake of breath as they struggled to bring themselves under some semblance of control.

Eventually they stopped. Each observed the other’s tear-streaked face.

‘Sylvie...’ Loki said again. The word seemed to ground him and her at the same time.

‘Not another pep talk please.’ Sylvie uttered with a weak attempt at humour, that fell flat instantly with the sheer desperation in her tone.

‘No. I have to tell you something else.’

Sylvie wasn’t sure that she could handle anything else.

Loki stepped closer to her, and avoided her gaze, his breathing picking up again.

Sylvie felt herself instinctively mirroring him, and forced herself to focus.

Loki looked her in the eyes.

‘We will figure this out.’

It really was too much.

‘How do you know that?’ How was there any certainty about anything anymore?

‘Because, uh -’ Loki’s near-gasping for air cut him off and he twisted his sweaty hands together.

‘Well, back on Lamentis…’ It was all too impossible to explain. Loki gestured helplessly, trying to find the beginnings of some clever story that had never failed to come to him with infinite ease before and now completely failed him.

He gave up. His arms dropped to his sides.

‘This is new for me. Um -’ Loki’s heart raced in his chest and the sound seemed amplified, obliterating his thoughts. They were a tangle of grief and passion and...and love - a tangle that was impossible to reconcile.

Loki turned his hands towards his heart, as though it could speak for him.

‘What?’ Sylvie breathed, hardly daring to speak, her own heart pulsing just as intensely.

They would figure this out. They would. Some very deep and very soulful part in both of them, inextricably linking one to the other, knew it. Loki clasped her upper arms, barely believing himself.

I love you Sylvie. Sylvie I love you. Sylvie I will always love you - you beautiful spirit of mischief. Sylvie, we are free and we will figure this out. I love you Sylvie, I love you.

‘If it were now to die, ‘twere now to be most happy.’ thought Loki, even as he felt the icy touch of Ravonna Renslayer’s weapon seize his heart and rip its chill through his body, as Sylvie watched him disintegrate right before her eyes which never left his - as he was transported to some realm of chaos where the God of Mischief would navigate the labyrinth back to his Goddess so that he could speak those words unsung softly in her ear before bending down to her lips and watching the TVA burn.

- Inspired by a fantastic suggestion from asgardian1112! More suggestions for future stories gladly welcome!

#loki #lokiseries #sylki #sylvie x loki #sylvie laufeydottir

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nikkoliferous · 6 years ago

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Now, About That Sceptre

Based on hair growth, if nothing else, it seems that a fair amount of time must have passed between Loki's appearance in the post-credits of Thor (2011) and his dramatic entrance via the Tesseract in Avengers Assemble. Despite the apparent time jump, Loki's physical well-being is still clearly... not great. His appearance has improved in some ways from the horror show above (the burns have healed, his mouth isn't full of blood), but he shows a number of signs of heat exhaustion, at a minimum (something especially relevant because, remember, Loki's a Frost Giant). He's visibly exhausted and disoriented, he nearly collapses on multiple occasions, he's sweaty and pale with dark and sunken eyes. This is not a healthy man. And while there was maybe an argument to be made for his prior physical distress being contributable to the effects of the wormhole, whatever's happening here is all Thanos.

Beyond his immediate physical state, he comes across as paranoid, afraid—desperately fighting to get through just this one moment, and then the next, and then the next. If he just holds it together a little bit longer, he'll be safe. He'll be able to rest. Watch how he stumbles. Observe his deathgrip on the sceptre and on the truck rail. Look at his desperate facial expression and body language. He's trembling.

Now we're getting into psychology, and well... Loki says some odd things throughout this film. The Loki of Thor (2011) was clearly dealing with a mental health crisis, but the Loki of Avengers Assemble seems—not to put too fine a point on it—crazy. And he's not just crazy. His words and his body seem to, at times, be in direct conflict with one another. He may talk down to the humans, but he appears to take little pleasure in actually hurting them. And yet he summons an army of aliens with the expressed purpose of doing just that. He's sassy and grandstanding while facing the Avengers, but on the occasions where he's violent with civilians, as well as whenever he's alone, he appears to dissociate from himself. Look at his face. This is not remotely fun for him. He looks dead inside.

Overall, Loki's body language and facial expressions often betray a Loki who is struggling to justify his actions. He seems, at times, almost as though he is speaking to himself as much as he is taunting the Avengers or humanity. Here are some quotes/scenes that grab my attention.

For a start, there are these exchanges with Fury shortly after he first arrives via the power of the Tesseract:

Fury: "This doesn't have to get any messier." Loki: "Of course it does. I've come too far for anything else."

"I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose."

Loki: "I come with glad tidings of a world made free." Fury: "Free from what?" Loki: "Freedom. Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart, you will know peace."

He goes on to reiterate his bizarre speech about "freedom" again in Stuttgart.

"The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."

This all sounds a lot like indoctrination to me, and it's worth noting that the Black Order—for whom Loki is ‘working’ in this movie—is literally a cult. In fact, they use very similar rhetoric at the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War. Compare this to Loki's rhetoric on the nature of freedom:

"Hear me... and rejoice. You have had the privilege of being saved by the Great Titan. You may think this is suffering. No. It is salvation. Universal scales tipped toward balance because of your sacrifice. Smile, for even in death you have become Children of Thanos."

And then there's Loki's outburst directed at Natasha after the Avengers have taken him prisoner for the first time and she's trying to get information out of him:

"You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you and they will never go away!"

Before this moment, he seems relatively calm and in control. Something changes here; he becomes disgusted and aggressive. His words could easily be applied to himself as well. Here Loki is on Midgard, pretending to have his own agenda. "Something that makes up for the horrors". Yet as much as Loki claims to be free of sentimentality, we as the audience know better. We can see it in his microexpressions and his body language. We know of his being psychically linked to The Other. We see the nature of Loki's interactions with them: the tears in his eyes, the threats and his attempts to suppress and hide his fear, the pain they're able to inflict on him with just a touch.

"If you fail, if the Tesseract is kept from us, there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he cannot find you. You think you know pain? He will make you long for something as sweet as pain."

There are also subtle indicators that Loki's memories might have been tampered with, such as his initial conversation with Thor.

"Our father—" "YOUR father. He did tell you of my true parentage, did he not?" "We were raised together! We played together, we fought together. Do you remember none of that?" "I remember a shadow. Living in the shade of your greatness. I remember you tossing me into an abyss."

Yes, of course, it's possible that this is hyperbole on Loki's part. Regardless, it's worth noting as part of a pattern of bizarre, cult-like behaviours that Loki displays throughout the movie. It becomes even more noteworthy in light of the revelation that Loki was being influenced by the mind stone all the while. The specific phrasing Marvel uses is, "fueling his hatred over his brother." Does that include distorting his perception of what's happened between them? It's not conclusive, but it's certainly possible.

Now, Loki does at times appear to be genuinely enjoying himself. I'm not denying that or sweeping it under the rug. But look at the context. Notice when he seems to be the most amused. It's when he's grandstanding. It's when he's the center of attention. When people run screaming from him. When he's being interrogated. It's not the violence that pleases him; it's the recognition. For the first time in his life, he's center stage. He feels powerful. And Loki will always take negative attention over no attention at all.

Simmer down there, you lovable maniac.

At the other end of the spectrum, however, we have moments like just before he stabs Thor, in which he looks at the destruction around him with legitimate panic and horror written on his face. As though he's awoken from a haze and is only just realising the extent of what he's done. (Side note: for the life of me, I'll never understand people who call Loki a psychopath. Every single time we've seen Loki hurt Thor, he does it literally with tears in his eyes. And yet Ragnarok would have us believe he's done so all throughout their childhood just for funsies).

Surely this isn't the expression of a man who wants all this death and destruction—who's carrying out his own will. And why should he? Even if he truly meant to/cared about ruling Midgard, there's little reward in ruling a world of corpses.

Which brings us to our ultimate conclusion. As mentioned above, there have long been theories—now confirmed canon—that Loki was under the influence of the sceptre AKA the mind stone throughout Avengers Assemble. An observation I had missed initially is that some fans desperate to cling to Loki's identity as a Villain™ have differentiated between the total mind control of Barton and Selvig and the 'influencing' of Loki's behaviour via the sceptre. But note that the same language is used for both instances:

"Gifted with a sceptre that acted as a mind control device, Loki would be able to influence others. Unbeknownst to him, the sceptre was also influencing him."

I do believe that the mind control over Loki was less effective; he clearly maintained some measure of autonomy, despite the sceptre's influence. But I still think it's important to note the consistency of language used. And in fact, it’s worth noting that his control over Barton and Selvig wasn’t absolute either. Barton admits he may have failed to kill Fury because of his connection to him; Selvig installs a failsafe for shutting down the portal.

We also know—thanks to yet another stupidly discarded deleted scene—that The Other can hear and communicate with Loki at all times. Look at the longing on Loki's face when Thor tries to reason with him. He wishes so badly that he could accept Thor's offer. But this is still a hostage situation. He's on permanent speakerphone, and he knows there's no safe escape route for him.

↩️ back to the compendium

#the big damn ragnarok sucks compendium #avengers assemble #loki meta #loki #topic: the chitauri sceptre/mind stone #thanos #the black order #mcu #topic: loki was tortured

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lets-get-better · 4 years ago

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Empty: A Memoir by Susan Burton

So I just finished this incredible book, and I have a lot of thoughts to dump out about it.

It’s different from other binge eating books that I’ve read in that it does not focus on recovery—Burton is upfront about that, and it’s basically in the title (it’s a memoir, not a guide or explanation). And, a good chunk of it is about her restrictive eating phases before and after her bingeing phase. But it really, really resonated. It’s kind of incredible how experiences that you think are unique to you, are in fact common experiences.

Even if this book didn’t provide a clear path forward for myself, it made me feel less alone. To quote Burton, who also dove into books about eating disorders while in the midst of her own: “I wasn’t interested in the end, the part where she came out okay. I wanted to stay in the part where she was wrecked. I wanted to feel less alone, because isolation had become the primary consequence of what I did, separating myself from the regular people who lived in the regular way” (Burton 189). Burton voiced thoughts that I didn’t know I had until I read them, and she articulated feelings I’ve struggled with.

Here are some quotes that I felt in my soul, in case they help anyone else:

Describing bingeing as “a way to temporarily shut everything out and exist in an altered reality defined by the loosening of restraint. But bingeing deadened feeling and was incompatible with human connection” (Burton 101).

Later describing binge eating as “a ‘short-term escape from an aversive awareness of self’” (Burton 214).

I had never conceived of bingeing in that way in particular, but when I read it, it felt right. In the moments of bingeing, it’s almost freeing—I’m in a different world where it doesn’t matter what I eat, I’m just free to eat and exist and nothing else matters aside from that freedom. But it’s not a “freedom” to actively avoid reality and everything it brings. It’s caging, it’s isolating, and it prevents living my life. I’m actively avoiding existing as myself—my mind, my body, my life feels too uncomfortable (even if that discomfort might just be the uncomfortable “urges to binge” that Kathryn Hanson describes in Brain Over Binge) and I turn to bingeing.

Describing her mother calling out her anger: “My anger had been talked about before. And, yes, I had plenty of it, but it was all at myself. I was angry at myself for all the wrong ways I was. I wouldn’t be angry if I were better! If I could just fix myself, this would all end” (Burton 107).

God, the anger and self-loathing is so real. On days I binge, or even think about the consequences of previous binges, I just feel like absolute shit, and I’m teetering on the edge of lashing out at everyone around me. But part of me wants to scream that I’m not angry at them, I’m angry at me. And I’ve convinced myself I just need to “fix myself” and stop bingeing, and then I’ll be the perfect bubbly person I want to me. Is this true? Probably not.

“Ten minutes was enough to ruin everything. How was it that in such a small unit of time you could make an entire day into a total wreck?” (Burton 125).

Simply put, this quote was just relatable. It feels impossible some days to ever be a “normal eater” when an entire day can be ruined with ten minutes of bingeing. I know that black-and-white thinking is a problem that needs to be addressed, and days can’t truly be “ruined,” but it was refreshing to see this account written by someone else—a professional! a writer! a perfectionist, over-achiever like me!—who felt the same way I do.

“Other girls just had their bodies and put food into them and didn’t think. Or they did think but in a normal way. I could tell by the way they said it: ‘I am getting so fat.’ They weren’t wrecked by food in the way I was; it didn’t define them” (Burton 136).

I felt this one so strongly. Even when I was mostly “recovered” in college, I still envied the girls who could talk about their food or bodies without feeling deeply uncomfortable or shameful in the way that eating disorders mess up your cognitive associations. And I know that’s unfair of me; I never know what other people are going through, including with food, and Burton addresses her own experiences with having to challenge her preconceived notions of others and her own self-centered perception of eating disorders. It adds to the guilty and shame, I think—to hate yourself, and to project that anger onto others who seem more “normal,” and then to hate yourself even more for doing so.

“My eating had worsened in distinct stages. Beginning each new level, I’d felt horror that this is the worst it’s ever been. Now the worst felt medical. There were times I ate so much food I worried something bad could happen to my body. A line had been crossed: The fear of the harm I was doing was now worse than the humiliation of continuing to expand” (Burton 163).

So much about this book had me yelling internally, “This is me! This is me!”. I can point to specific times when it felt like I’d crossed a bingeing threshold. For example, I would previously never eat at night—not because I was actively avoiding eating at night, but just because it had never really occurred to me to do so, and I didn’t have the desire to. Until I did once during a binge, and suddenly it became a new norm. The number of time’s I’ve said to myself, “This is the worst it’s been...” Yikes. And Burton specifically discussing the medical fears—I have felt genuinely afraid of the damage I was doing, of the heart palpitations and the stomach discomfort and the severe bloating. I’d imagine how embarrassing it would be to die from bingeing so hard that my stomach bursts, and I get so anxious about the possibility. B.E.D is truly horrible.

Discussing how the life milestone of leaving for college couldn’t even feel like an important milestone because of the bingeing: “I could not even contemplate what I felt about leaving home. The only exit I cared about was from the eating. Until I left that, nothing else would matter” (Burton 178).

Bingeing takes over your life. I feel like I cannot live fully, I cannot do anything, until I get my eating under control. It just fills my mind constantly: thoughts of food, eating, weight, body, meals. Nothing else seems to matter, and nothing else can matter, until I clear some of the mental space that is currently taken up by bingeing.

Reflecting on her post-binge rituals of writing and setting new never-again goals each time: “It was the first moment I realized that I was getting something from this. That I liked something about this. I liked the possibility inherent in the act. I liked getting as low as you could and then every day the moment of begin-again. I liked the calm that followed an episode. Something quieted, the need met. Ah, yes, here I am in the place where I make resolutions and start afresh” (Burton 219).

“And it was true that I would miss the cycle of destruction and renewal, so regular that it was circadian” (Burton 219).

This really caused me to reflect on my own “destruction and renewal” cycles. It’s true—after a binge, there’s something ridiculously empowering about setting new goals and resolutions and feeling convinced that it will never happen again because in that moment, it truly feels like a fresh start and a new beginning. Is that part of what keeps the habit engrained? That part of me thrives on the fleeting sense of control, even though I am never able to follow through with those resolutions? Some of my most productive moments have been post-binge, once I get past the self-loathing stage and move on to the resolution, future-oriented stage. I had just never before considered this to be an inherent part of the bingeing cycle...

Describing her constant food thoughts as a sound engineering metaphor: “The eating stuff was a track that ran in my brain under all the other tracks. Sometimes it would get so loud that it would drown out all the other tracks; sometimes I could lower the volume, but I was never able to remove the track from the session. Deleting the track was the wrong idea, [my therapist] said; lowering the volume was good, but the main thing was to boost the other tracks. Boost the other tracks. Develop other strengths and ways to cope; raise the signal on all I’d neglected” (Burton 269).

I absolutely loved this metaphor. Food takes up so much of my brain energy and thoughts, and I have been so desperate to clear up that space for other things. But if I find ways to focus on other strengths and cope with life in new ways, the space will clear itself to make room for the new focuses. It’s kind of intuitive, so it’s not particularly new information, but I wanted to print out this quote and wallpaper my room in it. It gives me hope.

#bed #b.e.d.#binge eating #binge eating disorder #eating disorder recovery #books #reading #memoir #ed thoughts #eating disorder thoughts #health #reflection #personal #overeating #self-help

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vintersang · 22 days ago

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I am so close to 100 followers??? And I’ve only been established since August? I feel so emotional. 😭

#❛ ✧ ┊ can you face what the river knows. ooc.#❛ ✧ ┊ bringing destruction to the stage. delete.

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chemtrailsovertheclub · 4 years ago

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old poems v1.

here you go. dated august-september 2019 or so.

my brain is a conglomeration of suffering it is everything it's all in my head though. by the time it shows on the physical, the damage is done, the war has been won and i am not victorious, maybe i won a few battles but ultimately i gave more than i gained from all the agonizing pain it's all in my head though.

i don't have a sense of identity and i don't have very much empathy because i feel so much to begin with how am i supposed to take on your problems too? i don't want to hurt you that's the last thing i ever wanted to do but so i push you far away and i don't say the things that haunt me because i know you feel so much empathy i can't have your hurt be because of me so i push you away

it's all in my head though. it's not a real problem. i'm perfectly fine. and i live a lie.

you make my heart beat go faster and the time goes slower and i feel my heart get closer and it melds into yours for hours that seem like years so when you go and i'm left alone my heart craves you my mind misses you my body is cold our love grows old and i worry it'll never be renewed

you are my drug, my medicine, my addiction my confliction of interest, of distress, of wondering what will come next my love, my joy, my shining light, my star so bright, those lakeside nights, those neck side bites, those streetside lights, those endless nights, those endless nights

i don't know what you want from me i don't have any sympathy for your self made misery

i don't know what world you live inside, all you seem to do is hide maybe you should step outside

into the light i promise it's not too bright i promise it's not a fight i promise if you'd just try you'd see just why life isn't just suffering until you die.

it's fine, pretending you're divine, that life is great, you feel no hate, there's no need to do a thing did i mention life is great?

it's a shame there's no one to blame for all the ways you bleed from your very own knives what a surprise! you take so many lives, why not your own? when you're finally all alone, when everyone you ever cared for is gone, when you've pushed them all away, i promise i won't say i told you so don't you know?

it's fine, pretending you're divine, that life is great, you feel no hate, there's no need to do a thing did i mention life is great?

black like mold the staleness you bring to the air gets old darkness and decay only leave so many words to say statements of agony proof you're not okay, proof that there's no way, you're ever going to change

i like the way you make feel at home like i do when i'm all alone i like the way you love me with all of your fragile heart like it won't get broke, like what all i said was a joke i knew it from the start, and every, day and night, it tears me a-part

i like the way you make me wanna run, away, never to be seen again by anyone of any concern, it's like i never learn, but they're my bridges to burn, it's my turn

it's not too hard to disappear, if you live your life running in fear if all you ever wanted was right there

i like the way i sing this song so soft and distraught when i let out my thoughts

i can't maintain my composure it's over exposure it's vulnerability it's me showing me for all the world to see and i can't take criticism very well and i didn't think this would go so well go so well can't you tell can't you tell? i burn my bridges before anyone can cross them but you must have swam, you must have swam because you made it across and what happens now? all my defenses are down. fire at will.

i want to bleed out every single ounce of my soul let it leak out of my body through each and every pore i crave liberation from my whole i would much rather be a piece of the puzzle than the whole fucking picture but here we are and the light, the light is blinding, and the darkness is consuming and the love is gone the love is gone. i am not at home in the one vessel i have for my spirit. can i get a replacement? is there a warranty on the carrier of my essence? dance with me and sing with me and drink with me and smoke with me and numb your feelings numb your pain numbness is satisfaction and as a matter of fact, satisfaction smells like worms in the rain.

i am a person for equality i am of a nationality that presents me with an easier way across the street, a paved path to walk on, the white privilege meant i could easily defeat, anyones suspicions, all your nonsense superstitions, all your tired inquisitions, all your conniving accusations, declarations, the satisfying sensations that you leave dripping down my throat

i feel everytime i forget to wear a winter coat, it is a message from you, a dream in the way it is afloat, it will never actually be perceived as more than glasses that need to be cleaned but no one told me the world wasn't this messy, i grew up in a world that's so numb to their feelings it's depressing. and the weather, it gets colder than i planned for, my jacket still probably lying on the kitchen floor, i am getting older and the blasphemous ones wear sheep's clothing, my mom is in the basement crying in the basement cause she's insecure, she's not sure she's worth anything, not a price at a bargain store, please close the door, oh please no more, i do implore have some sympathy for my dystopian society it's not predicted (but it is) it leaves me conflicted (i start to hiss) it leaves me afflicted (with all your sins) and i will not repent, for the message is best sent through a "i'm disappointed" by your closest parent.

i will not listen nor will i give in, when the chorus comes in, when the guards come in, when the cops come in, when the lights go out, when the last bit of tension building inside my cranium as your fingers instrument a destruction of the last thing you have finally learned to call home, for when you are alone who is there to judge you for not conforming when you are the whole, you are 100% of whatever you want to be and if one day you can wake up and finally see the reflection that stares back at me from the awkward first compliments to the snarky half-assed arguments that ended with my sticking out my tongue at you and kissing you and forgiving you because no one is perfect and i am sorry, i am sorry i created a pedestal for you in my head, you know some days i'd rather be dead, or at least just in a coma something to give me a moment i got my highschool diploma like you said i was supposed to you said, nothing.

i didn't really plan to live this long. how could the world have done me so wrong? trying to teach me a lesson? but here i am just stressin? my fight or flight reactions actin up, i think i'm coming up, i think i've had enough, i think i'm kinda fucked up, someone get me off this ride i can't decide for the life of me why i get no sympathy, like the simple fact of my humanity, negates my value as a human being. i am seething, soon no newborn babies will be teething because the majority of people i ask on the street, seem to agree that this world ain't so organized and neat, and the people here all be trying to compete, trying to delete, any trace of their origins or else how are they supposed to make their fortune releasing an autobiography with insights the one and only, the prized show pony, the don't leave me i'll be lonely, the if you could see me maybe you'd tread slowly, maybe you'd consider the possibility that you are not everything a human can be, sure it is possible, but you sir are making me rethink making me wonder making me more aware, more scared, more fear, more here, less beer, more liquor and it's getting quicker to take a shot or two or three down my throat and the warmth has finally become an expected gift, it's not something i try to shift away from my body, it's not naughty to want to feel comfortable in your own flesh, you are some combination of all your physical features but most importantly you are a culmination of your choices, of every single one of the voices that you decide were worthy of being heard for a change, i know they may sound strange when they first start on the stage, but look at them, they are acting their age they are being vulnerable they are feeling satisfied without eating till they're beyond the limits of full, they are complete before you two even meet and if you refuse to give her the heat, the intensity, the devotion, the endless flowing fountains of emotion, she gives you all of hers if you just would pick her a pretty flower.

so what if, we were to develop a place where the motif, the reason for the season, the blinding sheet in which they are not told they are a project, no for once, they are not simply something someone has likely forgot, can't you see how i'm falling, desperate and distraught death is sometimes a thought, quite a lot. but instead i make a scrapbook, i get a pretty one, i make it fun, i try to make unburdening all the weights others put on my back a thing i do everyday but it's so much easier to say, to delay, to just offer "how much do i need to pay", what feminine figure of weakness do i need to portray so you can save her? every page has effort and time put into it and just because you're not as into it as that little girl fantasizing about that imaginary world doesn't mean you can't for one second for one, humble, moment, for one silent showing of hands, of all those who have demands from the dead, they must be read, we do not judge nor hold any grudge for the ending will be the same, no matter what personality we choose to play the game today.

#mine #for you know who #content... is heavy

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skin--slave · 5 years ago

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Got tagged by the wonderful @strangememegoth , so we're gonna make a movie!! 😁

The last song you listened to is the title of the movie: Slutgarden (oh hell yeah now we have to do this)

Last celebrity pic you saved is your love interest: (collective gasps of shock)

The last meme you saved is how the relationship will turn out: (uhhhh...)

The 2nd last celebrity picture is your best friend: (ok, assuming this isn't a twin movie, that would be Johnny. Nice way to meet.)

The 3rd last celebrity picture is also your friend: (Am I connected to Hollywood Vampires?)

The 4th last celebrity picture is the antagonist: (Deleted this on accident and had to get it back. Also... Trent? How is he the bad guy? Maybe he's in love with one of us and doesn't want us to be together?)

Soundtrack: put your playlist on shuffle three times and list the songs in this order. If the song which is the title of the movie appears, highlight it.

Opening title: Sober by Tool (It must open on one of us burning an ex's belongings but also still wanting them back, prob me bc I'm a moody bitch, and it sets the stage for a "fuck no I'm not catching feelings" thing. Bonus if Mar is going through something similar.)

Romantic scene: Where is my Mind by The Pixies (Yeah, ok, I buy that.)

Badass walk scene: Dried Up, Tied and Dead to the World by Marilyn Manson (Don't you want some of this? Don't you need some of this?)

Sad/ emotional scene: The World That I Know by Collective Soul (Trent sitting on the rooftop, big boots hanging over the edge, digging his fingernails into his palms, and just as a single tear rolls down his cheek, it starts raining, and he just sits there with his bottom lip shaking, I'm not crying, you're crying)

Montage scene: Fine Again by Seether (montage of me, Mar, Alice, Johnny and Trent working on the big project. Mar and I are business-like and angry, trying not to get soft, but we start to and Trent is just dying inside.)

Action sequence: Hey Man Nice Shot by Filter (Wait, wtf is happening? Is someone shooting? Are we robbing someone? Breaking into a government installation? Is that the project? We're criminals!! Woohoo!!!)

Falling in love scene: Come as You Are by Nirvana (ok I can't actually visualize this. Thoughts?)

Protagonist Theme: Duality by Slipknot (hmmmm I guess I'm a wounded badass who seeks out self-destruction as a way to cope and protect myself? Aight. Just act natural.)

Romantic lead theme: Happiness in Slavery by NIN (Not even one of his own songs? Really? Wait, is he disgraced military or something? Hates authority while craving order? Can field strip his pistol and reassemble with his eyes closed? That's kinda hot.)

Antagonist theme: Bring Me to Life by Evanescence (Why not a NIN song? Idk, but it does have that lovesick vibe, so I guess I can't fault it. Makes me wonder if he's surrounded by death too. Like everyone he's ever loved is dead. Heavy.)

Best friend theme: Living Dead Girl by Rob Zombie (Ok, so Johnny has a thing for old horror movies and women. Should we intro him in a strip club getting a lap dance from a goth babe? Also, he feels like a melee combat type. Knives.)

Best friend 2 theme: Pink Cadillac by Natalie Cole (Ok I really did not expect that. Likes nice things, maybe the one who hotwires everything? Pickpocket? Locksmith? Good fingers. I'mma stop now.)

Party scene: The Bright Young Things by Marilyn Manson (Booze and bullets, just in case the suicide mission really is suicide, Mar double-checking his weapons while Alice cuts lines of coke and Johnny makes out with some contact of his, just trying to live a little before we die.)

Death scene: Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls (😩😩😩 Trent coming clean while bleeding out. "It's not that bad. You're gonna be ok." "Shut up. You need to know... It was me. I just... wanted to be with you." "We're gonna get you to a doctor." *shakes head and smiles, bloody teeth* "I'm right where I wanna be.")

Big Kiss scene: Tattooed in Reverse by Marilyn Manson (Hard and passionate. Nuff said.)

Big action sequence: Possum Kingdom by Toadies (That could be fun contrast. Elevator opens on "I'll not be a gentleman," Mar steps out and the bloodshed starts. Facility staff cowering behind a terminal on "Do you wanna die?" 😂)

Group scene: Loser by Beck (What even is a "group scene," like what are we doing? Being losers, apparently. I can live with that.)

credits: Slo-Mo-Tion by Marilyn Manson (Incredibly charming!!)

What I can make of this?

Ok, so apparently me, Marilyn, Johnny, Trent and Alice are a crew of mercenaries planning to get someone or something out of a well-fortified facility. Mar and I are hardened leader-types and butt heads but have to learn to make it work. Doesn't help that Trent (who's in love with one or both of us and is a tortured soul who just wants out) sabotages something to turn us against one another. Meanwhile, Johnny and Alice are in it for the women and money, respectively, and are probably hilarious. Phase one goes terribly wrong and we lose Trent. Phase two lets us work off our grief and rage and by the end we're ready to try. If he can keep his mouth shut, that is. You know what...

This was super fun and if you wanna try, I hereby tag you. 😁

#thanks for the tag!#this was fun #movie #tag game

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fmdtaeyongarchive · 4 years ago

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↬ killing me softly.

date: march 2020 - september 2020.

location: ash’s apartment studio.

word count: 2,018 words, excluding lyrics.

summary: ash: i am so sad, i am so lonely, i want someone to love me, my mental health is terrible. there, that’s the whole solo. no need to read it.

triggers: mentions of nightmares, death, and alcohol. blink and you’ll miss it suicidal ideation.

notes: creative claims verification.

march 2020.

the escaping memories of a nightmare shake ash awake in the middle of the night and by the time he’s regained his senses, he’s sitting up ramrod straight in his bed, the darkness of his room closing in around him like death.

the remnants of the dream are thin and wispy, like the thinnest clouds covering the moon and he grasps at what remains, only to come up with a few images that don’t connect to each other.

a dark street, cold metal.

time twisting in on itself and breaking down. the meeting of eyes and the flashing omen of years of torment.

his body crumpled on the hard black ground. the looming sense of death he’d had the chance to outrun and had only asked to come to him faster.

his heart cracking like a shattered television screen and his mind going white for the rest of time like some undiscovered stage of intoxication.

screaming.

howling.

back to the beginning and through the flames of hell all over again.

he nearly topples off the edge of his bed reaching for the light on his nightstand and only when its light shines its halo does his heart begin to calm its beating.

before it can ease completely, ash takes a pen out of his drawer, forgoing the paper he also keeps there to write two lines on the skin of the inside of his right arm in a sleepy scrawl:

i’d be howling for you before the shadows drag me under.

nightmares come to haunt him nearly every time he closes his eyes for days after that and the feeling he awakes with is always eerily similar.

it’s the fear of falling and the pain of every bone in his body shattering on impact upon hitting the ground.

he’d heard once on the playground in elementary school that you can’t die in your dreams. it’s a defense mechanism by your brain, they’d claimed with all the haughtiness of a know-it-all fifth grader.

ash knows now they’d been wrong. his mind is only at its most destructive when left unattended.

august 2020.

the nightmare only comes once a month or so now and it’s not something he’d have thought to raise in therapy if there hadn’t been a particularly bad episode where his manager had nearly been driven to swerving off the road by ash gasping awake in the back of the van on a way to a schedule.

she suggests writing down what plagues his mind at night when he can’t sleep, so he records a stream of consciousness that very night.

- did i lock the door?

- i hope those girls waiting outside of the building today didn’t find a way to get in.

- this apartment is too big.

- i’m lonely.

- should i call

- why am i doing this?

he stops.

early september 2020.

he’s so tired. it’s a shot to his ego to admit, but he’s on the verge of tears when the nightmare wakes him again and he’s not sure if it’s because of how much it had rattled him or because he’s been damned to another sleepless night.

ten minutes later, he’s in his kitchen with a glass of water in one hand and his phone in the other, scrolling through his contacts.

he passes by his mom’s number, his dad, hyoyeon’s, miyeon’s, jaewon’s.

he stops at youngjoo’s.

she can’t give him what he needs either, but, god, is he good at shaping her into the illusion of what he wants.

is he, though?

if he is, then why does he feel so lonely all of the time? why does his apartment feel too big and the emptiness inside of his body only grow, despite the fighting to put out the music he wants and taking the leap to go to therapy again and the success he’s seen in his professional life this year?

he’s so tired of searching for coping mechanisms in those who never asked to be used. should he call her and tell her that instead? or would he wake her? interrupt her night with someone who means more to her than he does? would she care at all if he said he can’t do this anymore?

this.

pretending sex means something it can’t? bringing her back between his sheets like a drug he’s sickly accepted his reliance on?

fighting for meaning in a life he can’t shake the feeling doesn’t have much to it at all?

the pain of his teeth presses into his lip and he keeps scrolling to the very end of his contacts where only one character identifies a number he should have deleted a year ago.

if he called, would he take him back? if ash begged and pleaded and apologized and swore he wanted to run away tonight and spend the rest of their lives together and never look back, would he take him back?

if he did, would the emptiness inside of ash finally go away?

it wouldn’t.

ash doesn’t love him anymore. he can’t see forever with him and that’s how he’d gotten here in the first place.

but it’d once been something real, something good, something that made him feel like he had purpose and a chance at happiness and that light in the distant gets fainter and fainter by the day now and he’s trying so damn hard to be better to the world and to himself and to feed that light so he can become one himself, but nights like this, it all feels so useless.

yeah, it's true, true, i'm stuck in the loop losing control, i can't get over in the void, i can't be sober

he switches his glass of water out for drinking vodka straight out of the bottle.

early september 2020.

the song doesn’t get out of his head, even as he tries to beat it back and in a few weeks, he has a rough draft of a track he hadn’t planned on making.

it’s a weird song for him.

it’s not that he’s questioning whether the chord progression is too cliche or if the samples he’s used sound amateur. it’s the entire song, its musical lean and the lyrics that lean more conceptual than he’s used to, that he’s doubting now. they’re open to interpretation, more of a poem than a story, and it reflects the nightmares he’s been having, but he can’t imagine showing the song to himself three years ago and having any idea it was a song he’d written.

he listens nervously to the same track on repeat over and over again, finding small details to change as an excuse to avoid thinking too much about if he’ll have to scrap the song altogether, or worse, send it out and risk the rejection that could come. he’s been rejected time and time again before, but there are only two fates he can see this song meeting: a release in the exact form he sees it having or being resigned to the depths of his computer files forever, never heard by anyone but him.

it’s different from what he normally does, but not different enough at the same time and that’s what makes him so nervous. he thinks he likes the work he’s done, musically at least, but it’s more experimental than what he’s done before. he hasn’t even had anyone else’s help on crafting the track that he can pass off responsibility to if it’s dubbed entirely amateur, and he doesn’t want to give into the help of anyone else either. this isn’t a song anyone else can touch. it’s his and his alone, and that’s an inflexible fact as set as the rotation of earth or the existence of gravity.

the questions run around in his head as the hi-hats and the dark instrumental rolls into his mind through the dull black headset over his ears while the screen slowly traces farther and farther right on the visual representation of his composition. he’s muted the vocal track so he doesn’t have to pay as much attention to his own voice crooning back at him with a delivery and lyrics he can’t let himself get caught up in if he ever wants to song to have a finished state, and he’s pleased with the instrumental alone.

it’s a little like something he’d create in order to sell it off to someone else who has a more experimental sound, and for a while, he considers the option of never bringing it forth as a possibility for himself. he can try to pass it off to someone else who’s more secure in displaying themselves as a part of this song than ash feels at the moment. no matter how he turns it over in his head, though, for some reason, he can’t bear to do that. this isn’t a song he wants to strip of its personality and give away.

it’s a great piece, honestly. he’s proud of all of the layers to it and how it includes new elements he doesn’t have much experience working with. on the surface, it’s far from the limited acoustic composition and production he’d been so attached to when he’d put out his first album. this is something that he would have never even considered back then, when he was twenty-one and desperate and the music he was releasing was a mirror of twenty-one year-old ash. ash is three years older now—years that have shaped him into a person more in tune with the sound he has in front of him: something a little more unique and a lot darker, jaded and pained and raw. it feels exactly like what he wants to make even beyond the surface changes. it strikes him that even if he stripped the entire instrumental back to a guitar and his voice like he’d been so fond of two years ago, it’d still sound like the ash of today and not the ash of years past, years that feel like whole lifetimes to him—and, in a way, this feels just like twenty-four year old ash. in all the worst ways, perhaps, but twenty-four year old ash nonetheless.

as he considers that idea, a few of the butterflies in his stomach flutter away and leave him with a slightly more peaceful feeling under his skin. he can’t try to shove himself into the safe bubble twenty-one year-old ash had crafted around himself for protection, a thin plastic veneer of false innocence and abject victimhood, doe-eyed, romantic, and lovestruck. ash can still be doe-eyed. he can still be romantic and maybe, with time, he’ll be able to fall back into the vulnerability of being lovestricken, but those don’t need to be the only characteristics with which he defines himself.

if he feels hopeless and broken and dirty, what’s so wrong with putting that into a song? why does it need to be sugar-coated and rose-colored and always, always relatable to everyone and not just himself?

the track loops around.

ash stops it halfway through to unmute the vocal lines of the song and listen to the full track this time, deciding he can’t tear the instrumental alone apart anymore.

listening back, ash finds himself over-analyzing how well-constructed it is in the eyes of critics. should he soften it? harden it? completely rewrite every word? his own exhale of resignation is blocked out by the dark headset over his ears, but with it comes a contrasting feeling of decisiveness in his chest.

he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. it could very well be too dramatic, too self-indulgent, too ‘sadboi trap’. for so long, he’s let himself get caught up in the question of what others want from his writing. always, it’s about who he’s writing for. for someone he wants to woo with pretty words of infatuation or executives he wants to please or other producers he wants to impress.

this one is therapy.

this one is for him.

late september 2020.

“are you still having nightmares?”

his therapist asks the question as if she’s wondering what he’d had for dinner last night.

“it’s been a month now. i’m not sure if they’ve decided not to come back or if i never let them leave in the first place.”

#fmdverification #&& when you're screaming but they only hear you whisper | self para #&& bring color to my skies | character development #&& queued

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kerbaldevteam · 5 years ago

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Kerbal Space Program 1.8: “Moar Boosters!!!” is now available!

Hello everyone!

New gadgets are coming from the Research and Development facility, the kind that will get Kerbals screaming: MOAR BOOSTERS!!! A brand new update is here and with it comes better performance, fresh new features, improved visuals, and new parts being added to our players’ creative repertoire!

Kerbal Space Program 1.8: Moar Boosters!!! is an update focused on making the game perform and look better, all while introducing more quality of life features that will improve the overall player experience. We’re also bringing some new solid rocket boosters to the VAB, as well as introducing some exclusive treats for owners of the Breaking Ground Expansion.

Let’s go through some of the update’s highlights below:

Unity Upgrade

Moar Boosters!!! brings an upgrade to the underlying engine of the game to Unity 2019.2, which helped us implement performance and graphics improvements, as well as better rendering performance and a reduction of frame rate stutters. With the new tools that this upgrade provides, we’ll be able to continue refining the game in upcoming updates.

Celestial Body Visual Improvements

Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, Eve and Gilly have new high-quality texture maps & graphic shaders, and now look sharper and more realistic! You will also be able to select the celestial bodies’ shader quality in the settings and set them to low (legacy), medium or high, with improvements being visible across the board. These are just part of the first batch of celestial bodies being overhauled, slowly but surely we will continue this endeavor.

Map Mode improvements

Map mode received some adjustments too! Now you can use docking mode and stage your craft whilst in map mode. The stage display button (formerly stage mode) now serves as a toggle to show and hide the stage stack, whether you’re in flight or map view, and selected map labels will now persist when going back and forth between map and flight mode.

New SRBs!

A range of new solid rocket boosters have been added to the game. From the tiny .625m stack size Mite to the titanic 2.5m wide, 144ton Clydesdale, these new boosters will offer a range of versatile solid-fuel options. Making History owners get an extra bonus here too with the “Pollux” and a 1.875m nose cone to fit on top of it.

Breaking Ground Exclusives

Kerbal Space Program 1.8: Moar Boosters!!! also includes some exclusive content for owners of the Breaking Ground Expansion. A new set of fan blades and shrouds will continue to push the creativity of KSP players even further. Use them to create drones, ducted fan jets, or anything you can imagine.

Improvements to the helicopter blades and the robotic part resource consumption have also been included. The latter will now have better info on consumption and improved options for power-out situations.

And more!

To learn more you can read the full Changelog here:

=============================v1.8.0=========================== 1.8.0 Changelog - BaseGame ONLY (see below for MH and BG changelog)

+++ Improvements

* Upgrade KSP to Unity 2019.2.2f1 version. * Standalone Windows build now uses DX11 Graphics API. Many visual improvements to shaders and FX. * Implement Unity Incremental Garbage Collection. * Implement new celestial body shaders and textures for Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, Eve, Gilly. * Update Main Menu Mun terrain shader. * Add Terrain Shader Quality graphics setting. * Improve the TrackingStation load time. * Implement ability to edit Action Groups in flight. * Performance improvements to the VAB/SPH scenes. * Performance improvements in the flight scene. * Performance improvements in the Tracking Station scene. * Add ability to edit resource values in PAWs using the key input. * Add Warp to node button on dV readout in NavBall display. * Add enable/disable wheel motor Actions to all wheels. * Add ability to limit the maximum size of PAWs via settings.cfg. * Improve the Action Groups/Sets UI. * Add PAW_PREFERRED_HEIGHT to settings.cfg for players to set a prefered max height. * Made staging and docking UI available in map view * Pinned labels in map view now persist pinned even when leaving and re-entering map view * "Delete All" functionality for messages app has been implemented. * Improve the KSC grass and asphalt texture and shader to reduce tilling. * Improve textures for the VAB building on level one. * Model revamp for the level one and level two Research and Development nissen huts. * Increased precision for eccentricity in advanced orbit info display. * Upgrade VPP and improve wheel and landing leg function. * Expose global kerbal EVA Physics material via setting. * Add do not show again option to re-runnable science experiments. * Add actions for same vessel interactions functionality. * Implement per-frame damage threshold on destructible buildings. * Add vessel name title to flag PAWs. * Add a confirm dialog with the option of “Don’t display again” when a kerbal removes a science experiment data. * Disable Pixelperfect on UI Canvases to improve performance - available to configure via settings.cfg. * Increase precision for numerical editing of maneuver nodes. * Kerbal position on ladders and command pods improved. * Add ability for users to add their own loading screen pictures to the game. Folder is KSP/UserLoadingScreens

+++ Localization

* Fix incorrect naming of The Sun. * Fix Action Sets text in VAB/SPH for some languages. * Fix Text in dV KSPedia pages in Japanese. * Fix Chinese Localizations. * Fix dV readout for Chinese language.

+++ Parts

New Parts: * S2-33 “Clydesdale” Solid Fuel Booster. * S2-17 “Thoroughbred” Solid Fuel Booster. * F3S0 “Shrimp” Solid Fuel Booster. * FM1 “Mite” Solid Fuel Booster. * Protective Rocket Nosecone Mk5A (“Black and White” and “Gray and Orange”). * Add rock/dirt debris FX to the Drill-O-Matic and Drill-O-Matic Junior.

Updated Parts (reskinned): * Service Bay (1.25m). * Service Bay (2.5m).

Color Variants: * Protective Rocket Nose Cone Mk7 (New “Orange” color variant) * Protective Rocket Nose Cone Mk12 (New “Orange” color variant)

+++ Bugfixes

* #bringbackthesandcastle - Fix the Mun sandcastle easter egg from not appearing. * Fix Maneuver editor so that the mouse wheel adjusts the node now in the contrary direction (same behavior as dragging down/up). * Fix a null reference error when player threw away a vessel with fuel flow overlay turned on in the editor. * Fix an input lock when switching between Editing the vessel and the Action groups menu. * Fix user created vessels disappearing from the vessel spawn dialog. * Fix the random selection of Mun vs Orbit scene when returning to Main Menu. * Fix input field rounding on Maneuver Node editor fields. * Fix a Null reference in the Editor when selecting a part and opening the Action Part Menu. * Fix pressing Enter key confirms the game quick save dialog. * Fix PAWs will now scale downwards from the header keeping more consistency on the fields. * Fix an input lock issue where some PAW buttons disappeared when editing a numeric slider field. * Fix Menu Navigation was missing in the quicksave dialog. * Fix Mini Settings had some items that would be skipped when navigating with the arrow keys. * Fix for remove from symmetry causing NRE in flight scene. * Fix the FL-A10 collider no longer mismatching its geometry. * Fix Control Surface and Aero Toggle Deploy Action not working in all situations. * Joysticks and gamepads on Linux are again recognized and usable. * Fix Action Groups UI and Color issues. * Fix the LV-T30 Reliant Liquid Fuel Engine ́s bottom attach node. * Fix a texture seam on the Probodobodyne Stayputnik. * Fix a z-fighting issue on the destroyed VAB at level 3. * Fix the Z-4K Rechargeable Battery Bank ́s bottom attach node. * Fix the concrete tiling texture of the SPH at level 3. * Fix a grass texture seam in front of the VAB at level 3. * Fix missing texture and animation on the level one Administration Building flag. * Smoothened Kerbal IVA expression transitions to avoid strange twitching. * Make the LV-TX87 Bobcat exhaust FX more appropriate. * Fix kerbal portraits when launching vessel with multiple kerbals in external command chairs. * Fix drills operating when not in contact with the ground. * Fix thrust center on the Mainsale engine. * Add bulkhead profile to LV-T91 Cheetah, LV-TX87 Bobcat, RK-7 Kodiak and RE-I12 Skiff. * Fix re-rooting of surface attach nodes. * Fix kerbal IVA expression animations transitions. * Fix shadows at KSC and in flight. * Fix “sinker” warning during game load. * Fix lengthy Map Transition when lots of vessels in the save. * Fix overlap in vessel type information window. * Fix a Null Reference when copying parts with alternative colours. * Fix an error where the custom crafts were not loaded in the Load Craft dialog after navigating the tabs. * Fix a null reference when clicking the Remove Symmetry button on some parts. * Motorized wheels no longer keep generating torque even when the motor is set to ‘Disabled’ * Re-centered an off center scrollbar in the mini settings dialog. * Rebalance decoupler, MK1-3, MK1 lander can, MK2 lander can, separators costs, crash tolerances, weight.

+++ Mods

* Target framework now .NET 4.x. * DXT3 DDS formatted textures are not supported by Unity or KSP any more. You must convert to DXT5. * Added UIPartActionWindow.UpdateWindowHeight to allow mods to dynamically set the PAW max height * MapviewCanvasUtil.GetNodeCanvasContainer created as more performant method than MapViewCanvasUtil.ResetNodeCanvasContainer. Use the rest one only when you need to force a scale reset * ModuleResourceAutoShiftState added that can be used for startup/restart of parts based on resource availability. * VesselValues are now cached per frame. Can use ResetValueCache() to reset the cache.

1.8.0 Changelog - Making History DLC ONLY

+++ Improvements

* User can now click and drag and release to connect two nodes in the mission builder.

+++ Parts

New Parts: * THK “Pollux” Solid Fuel Booster

Updated Parts (reskinned): * Kerbodyne S3-14400 Tank * Kerbodyne S3-7200 Tank * Kerbodyne S3-3600 Tank

+++ Bugfixes

* Craft Thumbnails are not shown/generated for stock missions. * Fix Kerbals spawning on EVA in missions spawning on their sides (very briefly). * Fix Intermediate and Advanced Tutorial becoming stuck. * Fix Typos in some part descriptions. * Fix vessel width and height restrictions on Woomerang and Dessert in career games. * Fix camera becoming stuck if in IVA mode when a vessel spawns in a mission set to change focus to that vessel. * Fix hatch entry colliders on the M.E.M. lander can.

+++ Missions

+++Miscellaneous

+++ Mods

1.8.0 Changelog - Breaking Ground DLC ONLY

+++ Improvements

* Add renaming of Deployed Science Stations. * Add alternators (producing electric charge) on LiquidFuel Robotic Rotors. * Add propeller blade AoA, lift and airspeed readouts to their PAWs. * Add Reset to built position button in PAWs of Robotic parts which causes them to reset their Angle, RPM or Extension. * Add shutdown/restart function to robotics parts based on resource availability. * Add preset curves functionality to the KAL controller. * Add part highlighting on mouseover in KAL. * Improve Robotic Part Resource usage info in editor. * Add interact button to open PAW for Deployable Science parts. * Added new KSPedia slides for Grip Pads, Propellers and Track Editor. * Improve Robotics Parts Resource usage to use less resources when moving slower. * The PAW button “Reset to Launch Position” for robotic parts now reads as, “Reset to build:” + Angle, RPM or Extension depending on the robotic part to avoid confusion.

+++ Localization

* Fix description text on R7000 Turboshaft Engine in English. * Fix localization of resource name in robotic part PAWs. * Fix KAL help texts.

+++ Parts

New Parts with Variants: * S-062 Fan Shroud * S-12 Fan Shroud * S-25 Fan Shroud * R-062 Ducted Fan Blade * R-12 Ducted Fan Blade * R-25 Ducted Fan Blade * Readjusted the liftCurve, liftMachCurve and dragCurve values on the propellers and helicopter blades.

Rebalanced Robotic Resource Consumption values: * G-00 Hinge * G-L01 Alligator Hinge * G-11 Hinge * G-L12 Alligator Hinge * G-W32 Hinge * Rotation Servo M-06 * Rotation Servo M-12 * Rotation Servo M-25 * Rotation Servo F-12 * EM-16 Light Duty Rotor * EM-32 Standard Rotor * EM-64 Heavy Rotor * EM-16S Light Duty * Rotor, EM-32S Standard Rotor * EM-64S Heavy Rotor * 1P4 Telescoping Hydraulic Cylinder * 3P6 Hydraulic Cylinder * 3PT Telescoping Hydraulic Cylinder * R121 Turboshaft Engine * R7000 Turboshaft Engine

+++ Bugfixes

* Fix Deployed Science Log and Message system spam. * Fix Deployed Science parts sometimes exploding when coming off rails if in contact with another part (kerbal, etc). * Fix Deployed science parts being visible during the astronaut complex when opening that scene from the Editor. * Fix Robotic Parts using EC when moving to initially set position on launch. * Fix slider numeric values in some PAW fields could go out of range. * Fix autostrut processing for some use cases regarding root part being robotic part. * Fix autostrut delay when vessel comes off rails for vessel with robotic parts. * Fix Actions at the end of KAL track not firing in Play Once mode. * Fix separation of the blades when attached to an active rotor. * Fix rotation of cargo parts in extended tooltips. * Fix cargo part icons appearing in Astronaut Complex when pinned. * Fix drag on pistons. * Fix cargo parts now rotate at the same speed as in the Editor on the inventory grid during Flight. * Fix mirroring of hinges and rotation servos. * Fix KAL Window not closing when vessel goes outta range. * Fix incorrect naming of the Sun in science experiments. * Fix mirrored attaching to rotor side nodes.

+++ Miscellaneous

+++ Modding

Kerbal Space Program 1.8: Moar Boosters!!! is now available on Steam and will soon be available on GOG and other third-party resellers. You will also be able to download it from the KSP Store if you already own the game.

Click here to enter the Grand Discussion Thread for this release.

Happy launchings!

By the way, you can download the new wallpapers of the Moar Boosters!!! art here:

1080x1920p (Most Phones)

1080x2048p (Galaxy S9)

1440x2560p (iPhone X)

Desktop 1920x1080p

Desktop 2048x1080p

Desktop 2560x1440p

#Kerbal Space Program #Update 1.8 #Moar Boosters #Breaking Gorund Expansion #making history expansion #annoucement #changelog #Release Notes

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recentanimenews · 4 years ago

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Sword Art Online: Alicization – War of Underworld – 22 – The Work Goes On

Last Week, Alice’s lightcube was successfully ejected. This week we find her walking and talking in the real world, in an artificial body. She and new Rath chief Koujirou Rinko hold a press conference to announce her arrival. Kikuoka is publically declared KOA, but remains alive in hopes of keeping Ocean Turtle and the Underworld safe.

As one would expect, most reporters ask tough, pointed questions about Alice. She hilariously agrees to open her skull and show one of them her brain—provided he does it first! She also declares her love for a real-worlder we know to be Kirito. Rinko declares that Artificial Fluctlights are human beings, not a resource that either can or should be mass produced for what would amount to slavery.

Rinko also makes clear that there is only one condition under which the AFs might rise up and destroy their creators: if those creators tried attacked them first. There are monumentally huge questions posed by the mere existence of Alice and the tech that created her, which challenge organic human exceptionalism itself.

The road ahead will not be straight or smooth, but ass with the humans and machines in The Matrix, only way forward is together. Pandora’s Box is open, and without peaceful coexistence there is only mutual destruction.

That unity and coexistence has already been tested and proven by Kirito, Asuna and their friends who fought in the War to protect Alice and the Underworld. Alice abruptly leaves the press conference when she senses that Kirito is about to wake up, and is the first person he sees when he opens his eyes for the first time in a month (in the real world) and far longer in hers.

Both that powerful moment and the quieter, lived-in, love-filled moments between Kirito and Asuna in the hospital brought tears to my eyes, just as Asuna’s reconciliation with her mom did back in SAO II. Turns out Asuna ruled as Queen of the Underworld for all two hundred years, with Kirito either co-ruling as King or serving as her knight and consort.

After waking up and informing Alice her sister Selka is in deep freeze ready to be revived, he quickly urges Kikuoka and Higa to delete those two hundred years of memories. His voice is noticeably lower and more gravelly, which at first I thought was because his real body was so parched. However, in order to return to being the Kirito he was before the rapid acceleration, those memories, and the evolution of his self that resulted, had to go.

The not-dead Kikuoka tells Kirito and Asuna the current situation. Ocean Turtle, Rath, and even Alice are all in danger of being seized by the government and then poked and prodded into oblivion or perverted into military weaponry. Their only weapon is P.R., and Alice and Rinko’s press conference was the first shot fired.

From here, they must bring public opinion to their side that Artificial Fluctlight tech is not a commodoty, but the next stage of human evolution, and as such subject to the same rights. But then we learn that Higa didn’t delete the 200-year-old Kirito after all, but copied him when Kikuoka and Rinko weren’t looking.

After briefly deliberating over whether to open this newest can of worms, he activates the Kirito copy, who being 200 years old naturally predicted “something like this” might happen. Indeed, he and Queen Asuna assumed one of three scenarios involving one or both of them being copied. In the case only Kirito were copied, he vowed to devote all his energies to the protection of the Underworld.

While the satellite linking them to Ocean Turtle and Underworld has been seized by the government, Kirito believes the copy of Heathcliff AKA Kayaba Akihiko still lives. He’s the key to regaining access and beginning the important work that must be done. I for one am glad Higa didn’t delete the old, grizzled Kirito, and looking back at his and Queen Asuna’s two centuries of rule could surely fill another two seasons, if not more.

Meanwhile, Kirigaya Kazuto returns to his home and lies down in his own bed, after a month at Rath and a week of rehab that was, to him, a hell of a lot longer. As soon as his eyes open, he hears the voice of his dear Eugeo as clearly as if he were in the room. Kirito begins to sob, wishing all of his Underworld memories could have been wiped to spare him all this grief.

However, Suguha comes into his room, sits on the bed, and gently pats Kirito’s head, asking him to tell her everything about his time in the Underworld, starting from the beginning. And so he tells her about Eugeo, Rulid Village, and the three-centuries-long quest to chop down a single cedar tree.

Finally, at one of what is surely an interminable string of tedious public events nevertheless vital to Rath and the Underworld’s survival (not to mention her own freedom), Alice gloomily gazes out the window at the cityscape beyond, reaching out to Kirito, telling him she feels like she might “wither away”.

Being the first true artificial human adjusting to the physical world is hard enough…doing it while knowing the man you love is already spoken for…that’s just not fair!

By: braverade

#Anime #News #RABUJOI – An Anime Blog

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medu-nefer · 5 years ago

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Delirium - Ulaz

'We're here! No, no, no. We're everywhere!'

Ulaz’s eyes narrowed when he watched the video feed from one of the padded rooms. His ears were twitching slightly and he was mauling the inside of his cheek with his teeth beneath the technician mask covering the lower part of his face.

Rarely did he question his position as a Blade, but it was one of those very few times.

(read it on ao3)

Kryva was an amazing undercover operative, he was a perfect actor who, as far as Ulaz knew, had never been suspected of anything. Not that other agents had - he simply had never stumbled upon a sentry patrol while recovering sensitive information, never caused anyone to question him, even his ascent in the hierarchy.

He was an old Galra, pure-blooded and respected by every other Commander. Every now and then, he would be stationed at the Central Command, before being deployed elsewhere.

Unfortunately, he had suffered from a brain injury obtained in one of the many battles he had managed to sabotage. Once he woke up from the coma, he was delirious and it had taken a lot of effort to get him sorted out again. However, he still had episodic attacks that had made everyone question his return to the service.

When his attacks occured, he was unpredictable. Fortunately, they were extremely short, barely a couple of ticks. It was the only reason why Kolivan unwillingly agreed to let him go back to his undercover duties. In such a short time he would be unable to babble about the Blade of Marmora.

But now Ulaz had been assigned (he might or might not have hacked the system to ensure his selection) to watch him while the delirium settled in again. For three full quintants and still counting.

Ulaz bit his lip, his canines piercing the soft skin easily in his absentminded state.

He remembered perfectly well what he was supposed to do in such a situation - and the order had been given by Kryva himself, in person.

Still, he simply couldn't bring himself to push the button and fill the room with sedative mixed with a neurotoxin. Its effect would be similar to an aneurysm, and his death would be peaceful. He would start feeling sleepy, get to lie on the bed, fall asleep - and never wake up again.

Kolivan's order had come in just two vargas ago, urging him to fulfil his duty.

Every breath Kryva took could reveal the presence of rebels, and at the highest levels, no less.

To the void, the "we" he was currently yelling and murmuring about by turns was actually the Blade of Marmora.

Ulaz couldn't risk everything.

He shoved the pad into his pocket and stalked closer to the room. He opened the peephole and peered inside.

Kryva backed into the far corner, glaring at him and snarling. No recognition.

'Kryva?' Ulaz called out, knowing full well it was futile.

The old Galra's entire body tensed and suspicion gnawed at him. Suddenly, his head flopped to the side and he barred his teeth, eyes focused on empty air.

'So not come any closer, abomination,' he spat out. 'Your witch won't be able to help you once I'm done with you.' His hands slashed in front of him, his claws connecting with nothing.

Just like that, Ulaz was forgotten and Kryva engaged in a fight with a non-existent Druid.

With a final growl, Ulaz snapped the peephole closed and stalked over to the console controlling the ventilating system of the cell.

He steeled himself for what he had to do and took one final look at Kolivan's message, before deleting it. It would self-destruct but the action helped him ground himself.

He pressed the button, heard a hiss of the hydraulics overhead, and kept his breathing even.

Behind him, Kryva's agitated voice slowly calmed down and quietened, until he went silent and Ulaz could hear only a faint creak of his bed, just once.

'Knowledge or death.'

Ulaz gritted his teeth and set to staging the scene and faking an autopsy report.

#whumptober2019 #no.3 #ulaz #voltron #vld #blade of marmora #this one really sucks #but oh well

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scratchface · 6 years ago

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Down For Maintenance

The full one-shot is finally here! Check it out on Ao3 or under the cut!

Summary: Revolver is certain of three things about their current situation: 1. They, and hundreds of others, are trapped in VRAINS, 2. Their only option is to wait for outside rescue, 3. It’s been days, but Playmaker has not been sleeping. One of these somehow seems more important than the others.

Admittedly, things had not gone according to plan. Rarely anything did anymore, not since their prey of five years was snatched from right under their noses. Ryoken did not intend to get trapped in the network with the rest. But one miscalculation led to another, a few misjudgments of priorities, and he found himself unable to log out alongside the hundreds of other players. A mild inconvenience, at worst: by their calculations, the same program that trapped their minds here induced a dream-like state. What felt like days, even weeks, would be mere hours in reality.

Every duelist stuck in unconsciousness would be fine, but that didn’t keep the fools from panicking. There was chaos in the streets and skies, at first, until someone decided to take charge. Go Onizuka had gathered most of the victims together in the main plaza, where they wandered around and demanded answers from each other. What’s happening? Are we going to die? Who did this?

Various Charisma Duelists were gathered on the stage, struggling to catch the crowd’s attention. They wanted to take charge clearly, but what they actually planned to do with it was a mystery. There was little they could do, as the full repercussions of whatever had happened to the server were still unknown. With little other recourse, their only option was to wait for outside rescue.

Ryoken kept to himself, watching the crowds from above on a skyscraper. For the most part, the gathered duelists were too panicked to look up, and were instead entirely dedicated to the essential task of flipping out. The few that noticed him watched with terror-stricken eyes and then scrambled off into the milling horde. Some, the pathetic, simpering ones, probably even thought he was the culprit behind their current situation.

Ryoken snorted in derision. He hadn’t even come to cause an incident; his only interest was in observation. All he wanted to know was how he would handle this.

Right on cue, there was a collective gasp rippling through the crowd, duelists pointing and yelling at the sky. Ryoken followed the disturbance to its source.

There you are.

“It’s Playmaker!”

“Playmaker came!”

Playmaker hovered over the crowd on an altered board, carefully keeping his distance from the enraptured masses. Their excited voices echoed all the way up, but as he descended, they started to hush. It was odd enough for Playmaker to appear before such a large group of people that the crowd was reminded of their earlier unease. Playmaker didn’t usually bode well for anyone, even if he was solely focused on Ryoken’s Knights. As an online vigilante, he only ever appeared where trouble was brewing, and semantics aside, that was all too much like being a harbinger of doom. The results were always the same: deleted accounts, lost data, server maintenance.

Ryoken narrowed his eyes and made his own way down, gaze set unwaveringly on the lines of Playmaker’s svelte back.

“You all need to leave.” Playmaker’s voice was sharp and demanding, cutting through the nervous muttering of the crowd with ease. “This area isn’t safe.”

Following such a grim declaration, the anxious questions that erupted were inevitable. Even Ryoken was taken aback.

Even they knew little of what was going on, but there had been no signs of any imminent dangers yet. The network was unstable, all reports claimed, but not to the point that they were expecting anything dangerous.

But even if it was contrary to his own knowledge, Ryoken was inclined to believe it. Playmaker must have known something the rest of them didn’t.

Both unnerved by the command and frustrated by the shift in the crowd’s attention, the Charisma Duelists onstage began to act out. Playmaker landed among them, a serious look darkening his features. The Charisma Duelists looked back with equal levels of distaste, but mostly held back and immediately quieted, like herbivores recognizing the presence of an apex predator at the watering hole.

Blue Angel was bold enough to step forward, her lips forced up in an artificial smile, but GO Onizuka cut her off before she could even open her mouth.

“Why? What’s going on?”

Ryoken wanted the answers to those questions too. It was possible that Playmaker had a better idea of what had gone so wrong with the network and the VR technology than them, but the idea had him frowning.

He hated being one-upped.

Playmaker did not even say a word, merely lifting a hand and pointing into the distance. At first glance, there was nothing unusual, but looking closer, the problem became apparent. A data storm was brewing, the winds picking up and the baleful streams of data thickening into solid masses of whirling blues and purples.

There was no telling what would happen to someone if they were caught up in a storm now, because they couldn’t log out. In all likelihood, anyone unlucky enough to be caught by those winds would be torn to pieces, their data scattered beyond retrieval: not entirely unlike what his father theorized the Tower would be capable of in its final stages.

His point made, Playmaker promptly tried to make his exit. GO Onizuka seized him by the arm before he could leave, and the legendary duelist tensed like an aggravated animal. Watching carefully, Ryoken carefully stifled the age-old protective, entirely unnecessary instinct rising in his chest. GO didn’t seem to have realized that there was a dangerous ferocity in the slant of Playmaker’s brow. Everyone else had gone quiet and still, sensing the sudden tension. “Give us a hand,” the top Charisma Duelist said, motioning out towards the milling herd of frightened duelists. “They’ll all listen to you, and you know it.” Scoffing to himself, Ryoken watched Playmaker’s face twitch. Admittedly, GO had a point; bizarre as it may have seemed: within Vrains, Playmaker was the highest authority. The worship the sheep duelists of virtual reality lay at his feet elevated his every word (however few there actually were) and his every action.

Ryoken, of course, knew better. Playmaker was just as easily misled as the rest of them; his misguided partnership with the Dark Ignis was evidence enough of that. But for the moment, his influence may very well have been their only recourse, as the only thing that could bring the terrified masses together.

Forcefully shrugging GO Onizuka’s arm off, Playmaker snarled. “Not interested.”

And just like that, he was gone in a flurry of pixels, reappearing half a block down on his board and taking his leave. Snapping out of the stupor, the crowd rushed to follow his lead, chasing his disappearing silhouette away from the rising winds.

By the third day, Playmaker had ditched the skintight catsuit, to Ryoken’s slight dismay, for something more comfortable for daily life in a virtual reality. And to Playmaker, comfortable apparently meant a sweatshirt two sizes too big and dark jeans that were shredded at the knees.

The fans were devastated, of course, because Playmaker wearing anything that didn’t show everything was apparently a national tragedy on par with thousands of people getting trapped inside a video game.

Ryoken couldn’t say he wasn’t a little disappointed as well, but the casual look certainly had its own appeal. After all, it did technically show more skin, and there was something tempting about how the oversized sweater hung from Playmaker’s slim frame.

He possibly spent too much time debating the pros and cons of each look, but there was quite literally nothing better to do. Contemplating the theoretical existence of Playmaker’s collarbones passed the time in something other than excruciating boredom, at the very least.

(Searching futilely for the Cyberse had gotten tiresome after the first two days.)

But that wasn’t the only change in Playmaker. The normally unrelentingly focused duelist had been almost lethargic, lingering in what few unpopulated places of the city he could find with dull eyes and tight shoulders. Apparently even Playmaker lost his intensity after more than twenty-four hours of the same soundtrack on repeat.

Ryoken suspected that it was because nowhere Playmaker went stayed unpopulated for long. Crowds gravitated towards him, despite his best efforts to avoid them, begging for duels, conversation, comfort, and other things that had Ryoken’s mouth twisting in disgust. But the masses flocked to him for another, more practical reason too, one Playmaker didn’t seem to have the heart to deny them: his uncanny sense for the wandering datastorms. The wayward whirlwinds of data and destruction had only been increasing in size, power, and unpredictability the longer they remained trapped, and were starting to become a considerable threat to the safety of the unobservant duelist. Nights were particularly risky; settling down in the wrong place too long could mean death.

Playmaker had been reduced to something of an early warning system.

By the end of the first stress-filled week, the cleverer duelists quietly inducted themselves into the Knights of Hanoi and found refuge in the Headquarters, which no datastorm would ever be able to touch. With SOL to blame for their current state, and frustrated by the persisting lack of rescue, the sheep were primed for recruitment. The longer things went on, the more duelists flocked in. Even those that were too stubborn to join negotiated for safety with their best cards. All gave up their account data, trading everything for the promise of escaping this digital nightmare.

Ryoken welcomed their surrender, watching the Headquarters’ spare rooms fill with tired and strained duelists. As VRAINS continued to fill with rampaging whirlwinds, he was the only safe haven for the stranded.

On the tenth day, even Playmaker’s flock abandoned him and threw themselves at his feet. But Playmaker wasn’t among them, obviously. He was still out there.

Watching a storm carve its way through the Coliseum Area, reducing intricate code to scrambled flecks of data, Ryoken couldn’t put that knowledge out of his mind. His feet were moving of their own accord, towards the exit.

“Where are you going?” His father asked, stopping Ryoken in his tracks.

“To search.” He doesn’t specify for what, and let his father draw his own conclusions as he made his way out of the Headquarters.

“Be careful.” His father’s voice warns him as he steps onto his board. Normally, Ryoken would appreciate the sentiment, but he wasn’t exactly heading anywhere dangerous. The others could handle the matter of the Cyberse for a little while, and in the meantime, he had his own matters to attend to.

It wasn’t easy to find Playmaker, even in the empty, collapsing city, but it could only be called a trifle in comparison to five years of hopeless scouring. It was harder to track him without the trail of fans, but with so little of the city left standing and the rest well on its way to collapsing in on itself, it didn’t take many leaps of logic to determine where he couldn’t be.

Though Ryoken certainly didn’t expect to find his rival about to climb into a manhole. “Are you going to hide in the sewers?”

Playmaker turned to face him, posture oddly reluctant, and a strange feeling of worry curled unpleasantly in his stomach. It was not that Playmaker looked tired, because the avatar was the same as ever: sharp angles, perfect eyeliner, and tousled, fiery hair. But the way he stood, the unsteadiness of his gait, the way he blinked slowly, as if his eyelids were almost too heavy to lift...

It was not obvious, but it disturbed Ryoken on a level he didn’t fully understand. He supposed it seemed too familiar: those green eyes dull with exhaustion, that skin pallid, all coupled with such shaky posture.

“What’s wrong with you?” He blurted out, before his mind could catch up with his mouth, and Playmaker winced slightly, curling in on himself defensively.

“Nothing.” Playmaker muttered, and his voice was rough and strained in a way that was completely unfamiliar but had Ryoken’s stomach twisting. “Go away, Revolver.”

Behind his avatar’s mocking smile, Ryoken frowned. “What, not even going to challenge me? What happened to your revenge?” Playmaker threw him an aggravated look, but only turned away, back to his stupid manhole. Which was just wrong, because Playmaker always faced everything head-on. Strangely agitated, Ryoken circled around his side and stepped in between him and sewers. “You’re oddly subdued.”

“Shouldn’t you be off terrorizing something?” Playmaker drawled back, his voice uncharacteristically tight. His shoulders were rising up to his ears, matching the aggravated glower settling on his face.

“VRAINS seems to be doing that job for me right now.” With the network happily tearing itself to shreds, most of their plans had become practically obsolete. “So, lucky you. I’m free.”

Playmaker held his gaze for a moment, like he was deeply exasperated but also very accustomed to the feeling. Then he looked away, towards the hurricane of data filling the sky in the distance. The rising winds caught his hair and it rippled around his face like a flickering candle.

Behind the wayward sweep of yellow and pink, Playmaker’s vibrant eyes looked dull. As the wind pressed against them, roaring in their ears, Playmaker curled into himself like he was too tired to put up a fight.

“Have you been sleeping?”

The silence that followed his question, solemn and heavy, was telling enough.

Frankly, he should have recognized the problem sooner. The anxious duelists that had been plaguing Playmaker’s footsteps probably hadn’t relented at night. And considering Playmaker’s personal history, that was likely a problem in and of itself.

“Do you have nightmares?” Ryoken asked, already knowing the answer. Some part of him thought of Spectre, and how he haunted the mansion halls at night, a restlessness so deeply set in his bones that not even the passing years could cut it out of him. The rest of him struggled to not think of a little boy that had cried himself to sleep at night, only to find that not even dreams could offer him reprieve from the horrors of his reality.

Being followed around was already probably wrecking hell on Playmaker’s nerves but being responsible for the safety of so many was a different sort of stress. Even Ryoken had been hearing the whispers in his own halls, refugee duelists placing their hopes on the only hero they knew. Playmaker will get us out of this, right? For most, their only comfort in this collapsing world was the knowledge that Playmaker was there with them. What would they do, knowing their great hero was nothing more than a scared little kid inside?

And as standoffish as Playmaker was, he couldn’t put them at risk by chasing them off. Pushed to the end of his rope, Playmaker had finally been left alone, but it was too late. There was nowhere left to go.

Green eyes glared balefully into his own, and Ryoken resisted the urge to sigh. Nothing was ever easy with Playmaker—with the sixth test subject. So many years had passed them by, and yet he still couldn’t abandon those eyes.

“Come stay with me.” It was, by far, the worst idea Ryoken had ever had. “I have private rooms. No one else even needs to know.” It was snitching-on-his-father levels of stupid, and just as risky. “Not even my Knights.”

But Ryoken had wanted to shelter this person once, had wanted more than anything to be the shield and comfort in his time of need.

Ryoken wanted to be a hero—his hero. And though that had already become completely impossible, the temptation of it dangled before him once more. It could very well be their last chance to change their fate.

And something worse than any storm, something more damning than any confession, was lurking in those sewers.

“Like hell.” Playmaker snarled, coiled like a bristling wildcat, as expected. Playmaker had an infinite number of reasons to doubt him, and none at all to trust him. Ryoken knew, on some level, that with just a few words he could change that. All he need to say was three things, but none came. His tongue dried in his mouth, some pathetic part of him terrified of tainting the savior in Playmaker’s cherished memories with the ruthless, black-hearted man he had become.

His coat whipped against his ankles. Not even Playmaker would be able to ride winds like these.

“Do you really have any other choice?” He extended a hand mockingly, and then snapped his fist shut. “Better take my offer while I’m still playing nice. Waste any more of my time, and I won’t be so accommodating when you’re forced to my doorstep later.”

Playmaker’s face dipped into a murderous scowl, his pretty features contorting as the VR system struggled to process the intensity of his hatred. Shrapnel shot between them, just barely scraping past Playmaker’s shoulder.

Out of time and out of options, Playmaker stepped towards him. Not wasting a moment more, Ryoken seized him and manifested his board. Gripping Playmaker by the wrist as the fierce wind buffeted them, he dragged Playmaker up onto his D-Board. “Hold on tight.”

Playmaker glared, snatching his hand back and maintaining a careful distance between them. Ryoken intended to fix that, coaxing the board into a lurching, sharp takeoff. Playmaker shifted expertly along with the sudden tilt, but Ryoken had more tricks than that. All it took was a mental nudge to the data sweeping around them, and the storm hit them with a gust powerful enough to have them both teetering. Playmaker’s fingers scrambled for purchase at the back of his jacket, struggling to grip the sleek fabric. Another fierce gust and Playmaker’s slender arms were forced around his abdomen, clinging for dear life as the board struggled against the wind.

Satisfaction curling in his gut, Ryoken couldn’t stop a chuckle from leaving his lips.

Playmaker hissed in his ear, his cheek pressed against Ryoken’s shoulder. “Shut up.”

“You need to change your avatar for a bit.” Ryoken said as they approached the Headquarters, pressing a data-card in between Playmaker’s clenched fingers.

“Why?” Playmaker’s voice was a resentful murmur, his hot breath tickling his nape. A little helplessly, Ryoken shivered.

“Because a masked Knight following me through the base will raise a lot less questions than Playmaker will.” He could all but feel Playmaker’s suspicious gaze, but the card activated with a soft hum. Playmaker’s form vanished in a cloud of static and pixels, temporarily overwritten.

He had considered, for a wistful moment, using Playmaker’s real appearance. No one would recognize it him as Playmaker, at the very least, but that was not a card he wanted to play yet.

Instead, the standard Knight avatar took over as they landed on a balcony, the Headquarters’ defenses splitting open for him. The Knight stood stiffly, staring down at his gloved fingers with what Ryoken imagined was horror.

“Say nothing, do nothing. Just follow me, got it?”

Jaw clenched shut, the Knight gave a reluctant nod.

It was… weird. Disconcerting, on a psychological level, he supposed, to have his greatest enemy in the form of his average subordinate. Something about it made him deeply uncomfortable, which was not at all how he expected to feel.

He really hoped his father didn’t notice. Or Spectre, for that matter.

Tension filled the air of the hall as they walked, almost like electricity prickling Ryoken’s skin. But by some miracle, they make it to his quarters unhindered. Playmaker followed him in, dropping the disguise the moment the door slid shut behind them. He peers around warily, but even that seems like more strain than he can handle.

The rooms are sparse and, until they got trapped, almost entirely unused. But over the week Ryoken had killed a few hours by programming himself some decent furniture, including a comfortable couch and a large bed. Though the room was bereft of windows, he had taken the time to program some natural lighting that shifted with the hours. It had been a whimsical trifle; he did not need to wake to the gold of dawn and didn’t need Stardust Road blazing in the distance when he closed his eyes at night.

He wasn’t a child anymore. He didn’t need any stupid nightlights.

But the flight of fancy bore fruit. The hazy blue of twilight softened Playmaker’s features, his silhouette of sharp angles and fierce lines turned indistinct and round. For a moment, with his red hair tinted with the cool light, Ryoken could see a more delicate face under the avatar’s mask, gentle and innocent.

It was nothing more than a trick of the light, but it brought him to a standstill all the same. He knew better than to look for the ghost of his lost ingénue in Playmaker’s shell, to chase the same visions that led him astray before. And yet, so treacherously, his heart seemed too big for his chest, and something heavy settled deep within his gut.

Just what hell was he doing?

The first night, Playmaker took his couch. The atmosphere between them wasn’t comfortable in the least, awkward and charged, but Playmaker was too exhausted to remain awake for long. Sitting on the bed, pretending to read the displays set before his eyes, Ryoken saw the tension drain out of Playmaker’s still form, muscle by muscle.

Ryoken intended to watch over him as he slept, for old times’ sake. A sort of vigil, maybe, for the people they used to be, for the two naive children they had carved out of their hearts and abandoned somewhere along the way. He hoped, in some way, that in doing so he could maybe, just maybe, finally lay those memories to rest and move on. The ties of fate that bound them together had held Ryoken back for more than long enough.

A harsh sound cut through the air, somewhere between a gasp and a shout even as Playmaker’s teeth snapped shut around it, choking it back down. He thrashed, briefly, and then went still, the rigid lines of his body jagged against the soft give of the couch.

Ryoken was on his feet, standing over him in an instant. He stalled there, lingering uncertainty over the back of the couch, and wondered if he should wake Playmaker up. It would defeat the purpose of bringing him back to Headquarters if Ryoken interrupted his rest now. And better Playmaker had his nightmares in Ryoken’s room, where it was safe and the walls were sound-proofed, than anywhere else.

But Playmaker’s face was twisted with a familiar agony, an expression Ryoken had hoped he’d only have to witness again in his own night terrors. He couldn’t bear to look at it, the familiar taste of his own guilt rising up his throat. He choked on it.

Ten years had gone by, and yet he was still so useless. More useless, because at least back then he’d found the backbone to do something, even if it was wrong. How had he even had the courage to make the mistake he didn’t know, because the fear of ruining everything all over again froze him solid.

When morning arrived, he still had not slept. He just stared at the ceiling, unable to process the muffled cries and gasping breaths that filled the room.

He came to a decision, then.

He kept Playmaker in his rooms. Or rather, the storm that roared around the Headquarters and ravaged the rest of VRAINS did. With nowhere else to go, Playmaker was stuck in his quarters for the foreseeable future.

It wasn’t as awkward as Ryoken feared. A bit like keeping a bristly, bad-tempered stray cat. Playmaker was very quiet, and when he did speak, it was with barbs. But that was fine, almost pleasant, even.

Meanwhile, Ryoken tried to maintain his normal schedule. Even though there wasn’t much for him to do, making token appearances around the base was better than anyone coming looking for him and finding the unfriendly vigilante he was hiding.

But when evening rolled back around, Ryoken knew he couldn’t go another night without sleep. Playmaker may have been able to function for days without rest, but Ryoken was a normal human being with normal needs.

So, he had to bite the bullet. “Sleep with me, tonight.”

From where he was perched on the couch, Playmaker glared at him, wide-eyed and offended.

“What? No way in hell.” The rejection was immediate. “...Why?”

Because there was a fair chance sleeping on the couch, trapped in a windowless room on enemy territory, was too reminiscent of sleeping on the floor in the similar, but far worse circumstances. The bed, and the presence of someone else in it, could very well break some of that association; the children were completely deprived of comforts and company in their forced isolation.

Playmaker would likely never admit it, but Ryoken knew this could help.

But he couldn’t exactly admit that either, so he avoided the question. “That wasn’t a request. Or, would you prefer to sleep outside?”

With a few uncharitable taps on his interface, Ryoken deleted the couch.

Suddenly left hanging mid-air, Playmaker landed on his feet, but only barely. With a fearsome scowl, he glowered. “What’s your angle here?” The question hung between them for a moment, but Ryoken’s only answer was a smirk. Playmaker narrowed his eyes. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“I can delete the floor too, you know.” Ryoken motioned to the luminous interface hanging in the air by his hand. “Relax, I’m not going to try anything.” Playmaker still lingered, his hands buried in his pockets. He never looked so uncomfortable before, not in front of his enemies; Ryoken almost wanted to laugh at him. “Are you afraid?”

“Of you?” Playmaker scoffed, but there was a nervous edge to his voice. Would he be so hesitant if it wasn’t a Knight of Hanoi inviting him in, or was this the reception anyone would get: prickly and skittish?

If he knew the truth, what kind of face would he make, really?

Ryoken changed his avatar, switching to the sleepwear he chose on the first night; sweatpants and a simple tank, not unlike what he would wear at home. The mask dissolved from his face as well, and Playmaker stared. “Like what you see?” Ryoken prompted and got a familiar scowl in return.

“Have you seen your own avatar?” Rude. Ryoken didn’t dislike that.

“You should change too.” The night on the couch, Playmaker slept in jeans. But Ryoken was choosing to assume that that wasn’t normal for him. That would be far too much power in the hands of a single psychologically-damaged teenager.

When Ryoken glanced back, Playmaker was tugging at the hem of a T-shirt, felt pajama bottoms clinging to his narrow hips: blue, like his real hair. The sight did some strange things to his stomach, a warm sensation spreading through his body. It was humanizing, he supposed, to see Playmaker looking so mundane. Soft, even. Like the weird hallucination before, it knocked him off-kilter with a just a single look.

Playmaker approached the bed like a skittish cat, big eyes set on Ryoken and waiting for the first sign of a hidden threat. At the very edge, he stalled for only a moment, before getting on.

The sight of Playmaker crawling onto his bed on his hands and knees was far more powerful than all the others combined. Ryoken’s stomach lurched, anticipation making his heart beat fast. He felt like an overly excited teenager with his first girlfriend.

He was a teenager with his first—first—

Ryoken wasn’t going there. He wasn’t touching those thoughts. There was some dangerous revelation there, and he was much safer just lingering on the cusp of it. It had been a bad idea after all, to needle Playmaker into this. At least losing sleep over the sixth test subject was familiar, but he just had to force them onto uncharted ground.

As if to break the tension suddenly building in Ryoken, Playmaker flopped right onto a pillow and turned away from him. That was for the best, probably, Ryoken decided as he forced himself not to stare at the dip of Playmaker’s waist.

It was terribly quiet, as dusk passed them by. He tried to get work done, too hyper-aware of the weight settled on the other side of the bed to sleep, but only found himself listening to Playmaker’s breaths.

He was expecting tossing, turning, hyperventilating, maybe even a little screaming. He had mentally braced himself for it, shapeless anxiety twisting in his chest, but he also hoped it would be less dramatic than the night before.

But as minutes became hours, Playmaker slept peacefully, silent and still as he curled up on his side. At some point, he rolled over to face Ryoken, and he found himself staring at a peaceful face illuminated by artificial moonlight. There was not so much as a twitch in his curled fingers, just soft breaths in between parted lips.

Ryoken watched him for a long time. It made him feel young again, but differently than before. He suddenly remembered, vividly, the days he watched over the child, both terrified to his very bones and yet so desperate to guard the little moments of peace that eased the pained stress etched into the boy’s face. It brought him back all the way, to the determination that had him going behind his father again and again, because he was going to save that boy no matter what.

So many things were different since their fateful encounter ten years before but the way he slept hadn’t changed at all.

Seeing that, it wasn’t that hard for Ryoken to finally close his eyes and relax.

Yusaku was, in simple terms, completely disorientated. And not just because Revolver, international cyberterrorist, had all but dragged him to the Hanoi Headquarters. Or because Revolver bullied him into sharing the bed, for whatever reasons. It wasn’t because he was trapped in a virtual reality, either.

With an immense amount of effort, Yusaku had been taking all those things well, in his own opinion. It wasn’t easy to put aside the fury that erupted inside him every time he thought about the organization and what it had done to him in the past, nor was it easy to ignore the tightness of his throat every time it registered that he was trapped.

It was just that, in truth, Yusaku couldn’t remember the last time he got a full night’s worth of sleep. He didn’t think he had ever slept so deeply before. Nights were rough, so he caught up with naps during the day, when the presence of people eased some of his paranoia. Fatigue had become something of a staple in his life; he didn’t quite know how to feel without it.

When he woke that morning without his heart pounding in his chest, it had been too bizarre for words.

But there were more important things to think about.

Yusaku had accepted Revolver’s absurd offer for three reasons:

To obtain all of Hanoi’s information regarding their current situation.

To investigate Hanoi’s upper echelon.

To find any available information regarding his savior.

For that, the avatar skin Revolver had lent him was useful. Though, in all likelihood, it wasn’t intended to be. From its coding, it was supposed to be one-time use, but it had been simple enough to copy and alter the disguise program.

But while the first two were straight-forward enough, the third was so far a dead end. It didn’t take long to realize that Hanoi knew even less than Ai did, and the artificial intelligence was simply monitoring the situation from Kusanagi’s servers. The mysterious generals he’d heard conspicuously little about were absent. They had probably not been logged in when the data material was corrupted and the networks connecting VRAINS to thousands of individuals crashed simultaneously, and could no longer risk it.

There was someone else, some higher-up that simple grunts didn’t have clearance to meet. Someone that Revolver notably avoided mentioning or alluding to in their few, stilted conversations.

Could they be the person he was looking for?

He had little to go on, but not nothing.

The person he was looking for had to have been related to the Hanoi Project ten years ago, and old enough to speak eloquently. They had not been among the five other victims released.

But the child he met that day, the boy with the white hair, hadn’t been either.

Were they one and the same? It was possible. That boy had to have been either a child of one of the kidnappers, or an unreported victim, who had been used to lure in other children. But if he was also the one who spoke to him back then, then he could not have been kept imprisoned like Yusaku was. A subject of a different experiment, or a particularly young accomplice?

His savior hadn’t ever sounded strained, or terrified—mournful, and burdened, his voice tight with urgency and expectation—but never brittle. Yusaku wanted to believe he wasn’t being tortured, not like they were.

There was no guarantee that his savior was even still with Hanoi. But—

But Revolver.

Revolver knew about the Hanoi Project. He knew exactly what Yusaku was referring to when he brought up the incident, and even accidentally revealed SOL’s own part in it. That information had led Yusaku directly to the perpetrator, Kogami Kiyoshi. Revolver had already known who was responsible, and in hindsight, it seemed like he even knew something had happened to Kogami afterwards.

Kogami couldn’t have done it alone. He must have had assistants and accomplices, and he had the boy. Any of them could know that information.

Revolver, and his savior, could be any of them. There was no reason to think that they were one and the same.

But Yusaku had slept so easily, in his presence. More easily than when he was on his own, more dreamless than when he dozed in class or in the truck. As if he didn’t need a dream of the voice to comfort him or remind him.

As if the person he was looking for had been found.

Was it his imagination? Wishful thinking?

Did he want Revolver to be the one he’d been searching for?

Or had there been something familiar about Revolver from the start? Something he recognized behind those alien eyes, lingering under layers of disdain and condescension? The way he spoke, each word coated in the expectation of obedience, freely given or not. The way he equated thought with life, directly borne of Descartes.

The way his face fell at a list of three.

Yusaku never felt safe around anyone so quickly, so easily.

For months, he had struggled to relax in Kusanagi’s presence, always keeping on his feet with his hands warily tucked away. A year had passed before he felt secure enough to doze off there, and even then, trust was a word he’d hesitate to apply to it. It was confidence, the gradual certainty that he could handle anything that could happen, not faith that nothing would.

Revolver was honorable, for a terrorist. He preferred to settle with matches, even if those matches weren’t always fair, than with other means. Their first duel had made that evident, and after it, anything less than an honest one-on-one would just be like surrendering: admitting that he couldn’t take Yusaku on.

Revolver was too proud for that.

Knowing that, Yusaku knew why he felt secure in his decision to risk taking shelter in the Hanoi base: it was simply logical.

But logic didn’t dictate the subconscious. And Yusaku’s subconscious seemed to have some questionable ideas.

The doubts plagued him for hours, until he had to return to the rooms to beat Revolver back. Even then, his mind ran in circles as he leaned against the back wall.

The door slid open, and Revolver returned.

Yusaku forced any lingering turmoil out of his expression, settling his face into a scowl as yellow eyes turned his direction.

“The storms seemed calmer today.” Revolver reported, something like satisfaction curling his lips. Whether he was pleased by the virtual weather or Playmaker’s seeming obedience, Yusaku could only guess. “SOL seems to be getting control of things again. It’ll probably be safe outside soon.”

The sooner the mess outside cleared up, the sooner Yusaku could leave—and go back to not sleeping.

But that meant leaving the matter, the mystery that had haunted him for a decade, behind again. He’d have to leave, without knowing.

Just ask.

He’d always been a direct person after all. Revolver already knew he was looking for someone, so what could it hurt? Even exposing that kind of weakness was a moot point; Hanoi had used a hostage against him before, and he suspected they would again. He would handle it, like he always did.

“Were you there, ten years ago?”

Revolver went still, the confident smile sliding off his face.

Silence.

Someone who wasn’t there would just say so.

“Three things. Three things to live. Three things to go home. Three things to win.” Years later, that mantra was still carved into him. They were important to him, but to others they wouldn’t mean much. Not enough to make Revolver’s shoulders tense, to make his fists clench. “Are those your words?”

“What will you do if they are?” It was a question that may as well have been a confession.

“I don’t know,” He said, honestly. But the tension bled out of him. It didn’t matter that he was alone in enemy territory, or that they were trapped in a virtual reality. What mattered was that he was finally alone with the person he always wanted to meet.

Yusaku felt himself go soft. In a few steps, the careful distance he kept between them closed. Revolver wasn’t looking at him, his flat yellow eyes settled on something in the distance, but Yusaku stepped in front of him. He peered through the glass mask and tried to imagine the person underneath.

The boy with the white hair came to mind.

Slowly, he lifted his hands to Revolver’s face. Revolver made no move to stop him, his hands kept clenched at his sides, statue still. The mask came off easily, only to dissolve into pixels in his hands.

“There are many things I want to say.” He admitted, but Revolver still wasn’t looking at him, eyes stubbornly set anywhere but his face. “And many things I want to ask about.”

He took a white gloved hand in his own and steered Revolver back, towards the bed. Revolver allowed it, reluctance making each step stiff, but Yusaku did not stop until they were settled there.

“I…” Revolver’s voice was shakier than he expected, but Revolver steadied it quickly. He swallowed, and finally, his eyes met Yusaku’s. “You deserve answers.” He admitted, with the air of a man confessing his sins.

“The boy I met back then…” The boy who lured him to the van, who took him by the hand and led him to the worst moment of his life.

“Was me.”

“And the one who made the anonymous call…?”

“Me, again.” Both revelations settled within him surprisingly easily, like he always knew. But Revolver kept talking. “You were supposed to leave it all behind.” His hand, still clutched loosely in Yusaku’s own, slid out of his grip and fell on his shoulder. Revolver shook him, roughly, as the desolate, calm expression on his face cracked open. Underneath was something pained and raw. “You weren’t supposed to come back.”

“I couldn’t…” He hesitated for the first time, uncertain if the next words wouldn’t break something. But it was the truth, and he wanted to say it. “I couldn’t leave you behind. I wanted to find you again.”

The words did seem to hurt something. Revolver’s eyes slid shut, his brow furrowing. He looked like he didn’t know what to do.

Yusaku did. He closed the space between them, until they were nose to nose, and let his own hand slide up to Revolver’s throat. Underneath it, Revolver shuddered, and lurched all the closer.

Their lips met in the middle, soft and warm. He didn’t know what else to do but press closer, chasing the give of Revolver’s lips and the firm pressure of his body. A hand slipped up his back, leaving behind a trail of heat like nothing else he’d ever felt before, and curved over his neck. The gloved fingers were rough but tender on his chin, tilting his face to the side and back. It was easier like that, he discovered, more comfortable: like pieces fitting together. Revolver’s lips began to move, slowly for the first electrifying moment and then fiercely, intensity rising like the cresting tide. In its wake his thoughts seemed to be swept away, tumbling over one another, and stunned beyond his own belief, he parted his lips.

Revolver’s arms caged around him, firm but unsteady. As the wet heat of his mouth crashed into Yusaku’s own, his hand squeezed too tightly at Yusaku’s waist. The near bruising force wretched a protest from Yusaku’s throat, only for it to be devoured greedily between them. Still, Revolver’s grip seemed to flinch, and even just the few centimeters that opened between them were too much.

He could barely believe the raw edge to his own voice as he all but snarled, dragging Revolver back with fingers clawing at his back, in his hair. They met again, too hard and too fast, but the dull pain of teeth biting at his lips was nothing compared to that desperate lurch of his stomach when Revolver tried to pull away. The next time Revolver’s hands clenched punishingly around him, he gripped back just as savagely.

But despite the intensity of the sensations, the crescendo of emotion and heat and touch, he knew none of it was real. Revolver was nothing but an avatar, and Yusaku felt that difference keenly, like a word on the tip of his tongue: surely there but entirely impalpable. The person he was searching for wasn’t any closer than before. Even as they wound tighter and tighter around each other, the distance between them in reality couldn’t change at all.

It was the first time Yusaku ever resented how fake life in virtual reality was. It had never bothered him before, because VRAINS was nothing more than a mean to an end, the ideal battlefield for his last tumultuous death throes. He had barely dared to dream of such a moment like this, at the end of what could very well be a suicide mission.

But this was still nothing but a dream, even as Revolver’s lips stole his breath out of his lungs and snatched the moisture from his breath. It was just a taste of the future he’d been living solely to catch a glimpse of. And here that glimpse was, and he was finding it wasn’t enough, couldn’t possibly be enough.

He wanted so much more than this, but still Revolver’s lips left his. Suddenly bereft of the scalding heat that had scorched all the way through him, he was left teetering on the bed as Revolver withdrew.

Blank yellow eyes, no eyebrows, a sharp alien face—it was impossible to get a read on Revolver’s mood as they hovered in each other's space. The silence between them was agonizing, in a way he’d never known it to be.

But Revolver’s hair was in even further disarray than usual, tousled until it seemed more human. His lips were wet and red, even as he stared seriously into Yusaku’s eyes.

“We should talk.” His voice was gruffer than before, weathered like gravel, and Yusaku’s head spun with all the words he didn’t know how to say. But Revolver was right; this was their chance, maybe their only chance, to talk everything over before anything went too far. There was so much he didn’t understand: why would his savior enthusiastically give his strength to Hanoi, to the same despicable sadists that destroyed their lives before they even had a chance to begin?

When they were children, he knew his silver-haired kidnapper, with that guileless smile and those bright eyes, must have had no other choice. He had dedicated his whole being to rectifying that, to finding and freeing that person from what must have been an inescapable hell.

But Revolver was no victim. Yusaku had spent years following the breadcrumbs, piecing together the truth from hundreds of dead-ends. He knew the crimes of this person better than anyone.

At what point, he wondered, do we become responsible for our actions?

He didn’t know the answer. He was just sixteen, but he had taken his whole life in his own hands. No more facilities, no more caregivers, no more supervision. Every decision he made was entirely his own, and had been for a long time.

It chilled him, because he knew Revolver was the same.

The door opened.

The sound of it made them both freeze in place, but it was Yusaku that looked first. Revolver didn’t look at all.

But as the person in the doorway registered, Yusaku supposed he didn’t need to.

A white coat, a stern face, and grey hair above the coldest eyes he’d ever seen.

“Kogami.”

Yusaku was a hacker, first and foremost. In a world like VRAINS, that meant he made the impossible possible. He could directly bend the very rules of the game they existed within.

It had been a calculated decision, to make VRAINS his battlefield. He chose it because it afforded him the most advantages: a malleable world with the anonymity he needed and all the tools he could create.

For the most part, his deck was all needed. But it wasn’t all he had.

There were programs, for emergencies.

Faced with the man that had tortured him for months on end, the man that had ruined his life before he was even old enough to fight back, Yusaku felt that the moment qualified.

It was almost thoughtless, to activate the program he and Ai had worked on together. He felt numb, maybe, like his consciousness was somewhere between the virtual and reality.

Kogami’s face was almost comical. Blanked over with shock, he stared at them sprawled over the bed. A dead man, casually walking in on his accomplice and his enemy. They were all so still, too taken aback to even speak.

It wasn’t a trap, at least. But it was an opportunity.

Yusaku’s hand turned black, pixel by pixel, as his talon program initiated.

He lunged before anyone else even breathed. His reaction speed had always been good—the best, even. But it was still a whole room to cross.

Kogami stumbled back, not fast enough, but Revolver was faster. His weight caught Yusaku by the middle, and the crashed to the floor in the middle of the room. Kicking Revolver off, Yusaku was back on his feet and charging again, only to jerk to a stop.

“Wait!” A grip like steel around his wrist. Revolver held him back with all his strength, the rubber heels of his boots shrieking against the floor. Yusaku jerked on his arm with a snarl.

One swipe with the talon, and Revolver would no longer be a problem. Kogami was recovering from his shock already, his hand rising to tap out a few commands on the interface that sprung to life around him. Alarms burst to life, wailing and flashing.

It was Yusaku’s only chance, and all it would take was one swipe.

“He’s my father.” Revolver’s voice was ragged, the self-assured tone abandoned. He all but begged, struggling to drag Yusaku back.

You will plead for him. The thought was startlingly clear, even if nothing else was. Lights were flashing, red and white, and distant shouts were fast approaching. Yusaku stared in between Revolver and Kogami, and wondered, did you ever plead for us?

Had Revolver begged his father to let them go, to stop?

Of course, he hadn’t. Revolver had probably never begged for anything before in his life. But Yusaku had. He had begged his invisible captors through the cameras until his voice was hoarse, had begged the paramedics to take him home, had begged the police to tell him what happened.

Nobody had ever listened.

One swipe.

He couldn’t do it.

The program terminated.

What was he supposed to do? Knights were gathering behind Kogami, whose face finally settled back into dull assurance. Was Yusaku imagining the look of triumph in his eyes? Did the bastard even care enough to appreciate the victory he’d just wrenched from Yusaku’s hands?

He...probably wasn’t getting out of this. Took too much of a chance. It was inevitable, probably. One kid against an army.

Three things to live, to go home, to win. Just one of those would be enough.

He glanced back at Revolver, whose face seemed to have glazed over. His mask reappeared, covering his face like a layer of ice. He was steeling himself, Yusaku was sure, for what came next.

Revolver wasn’t going to save him this time.

And it wasn’t like anyone else would, either.

The world shuddered under his feet, and for a moment he thought something had hit him. A virus, a program? But when he looked down the world was shuddering, ripples of empty black data coursing through the floor, the walls. He felt the presence of something, data material but also something else.

Ai?

It wasn’t Ai, but it was similar. Like a punch, something seemed to strike the network itself, the impact vibrating through them, until they were all coming loose like dislodged puzzle pieces.

Everything went black, and suddenly, he realized his eyes were closed. Someone was shaking him, and with a jolt, he was sitting up.

“Yusaku!”

Kusanagi was in front of him, his usual easy-going demeanor almost wild with panic. Ai was staring at them anxiously from the computer consoles. He was back in the truck, logged out.

“You’re awake!” The relief in Kusanagi’s voice was palpable as he rocked back on his heels, releasing Yusaku’s shoulders. “It’s been hours! The whole VR network went haywire—are you okay?” A renewed note of terror in his voice finally broke Yusaku from his stupor.

His cheeks were wet, and his vision was blurred, hot tears filling his eyes. Wiping his face on his sleeve, he pushed away Kusanagi’s fretting hands.

“It’s nothing.” It wasn’t even a lie. The tears had already stopped.

What had he been crying for? He’d been cornered, but Yusaku wasn’t afraid of dying, and he certainly wasn’t afraid of going down fighting. He’d been upset about something, he was sure, before everything had gone dark.

What was it? He couldn’t remember.

“You sure?” Kusanagi asked, doubtful.

“I think it was a side-effect of being in VR so long.” It was an easy assumption to make; there was no telling what unknown complications could arise from such bizarre circumstances.

Kusanagi didn’t seem so sure, but he didn’t question it further. He turned his eyes back to the computers, probably to check the situation in VRAINS. As far as Yusaku could tell, something had forced the whole system to reboot, and all the trapped duelists had suddenly been forced from the network.

Checking his phone, he saw almost twelve hours had passed. No wonder he felt like shit.

Forcing his sore, cramped body out of the chair Kusanagi must have moved him to, he went to fix his rumpled appearance.

He checked the mirror, expecting the edges of his eyes to be red. They were, but something was...off.

Had his eyes always been a little yellow?

#yugioh vrains #vrains #ygo #datastormshipping #datastormdecember #yusaku fujiki #ryoken kogami

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