#(even though they almost certainly did not because they’re all banked up with their daddy’s money)

[k00ldino]

slamming my head against a brick wall WHYYYY WON’T IT LET ME FILL OUT THE FAFSA WHY WHY WHY WHY

[theculturedmarxist]

The New York Times is literally a propaganda outlet and Timothy Egan is a deceitful chode. His every word drips with the anxious desperation of the Democrats who know their goose is cooked.

Watching “Succession,” the HBO show about the most despicable plutocrats to seize the public imagination since the Trumps were forced on us, made me want to tax the ultrarich into a homeless shelter. And it almost made a Bernie Bro of me.

That’s the thing about class loathing: It feels good, a moral high with its own endorphins, but is ultimately self-defeating. A Bernie Sanders rally is a hit from the same pipe: Screw those greedy billionaire bastards!

Sanders has passion going for him. He has authenticity. He certainly has consistency: His bumper-sticker sloganeering hasn’t changed for half a century. He was, “even as a young man, an old man,” as Time magazine said.

But he cannot beat Donald Trump, for the same reason people do not translate their hatred of the odious rich into pitchfork brigades against walled estates.

Because powerful oligarchs that own their government murder them with impunity when they do.

>March 7 was a bitterly cold day in Detroit, and a crowd estimated at between 3,000 and 5,000 gathered near the Dearborn city limits, about a mile from the Ford plant. The Detroit Times called it "one of the coldest days of the winter, with a frigid gale whooping out of the northwest". Marchers carried banners reading "Give Us Work, "We Want Bread Not Crumbs", and "Tax the Rich and Feed the Poor". Albert Goetz gave a speech, asking that the marchers avoid violence. The march proceeded peacefully along the streets of Detroit until it reached the Dearborn city limits.

>There, the Dearborn police attempted to stop the march by firing tear gas into the crowd and began hitting marchers with clubs. One officer fired a gun at the marchers. The unarmed crowd scattered into a field covered with stones, picked them up, and began throwing stones at the police. The angry marchers regrouped and advanced nearly a mile toward the plant. There, two fire engines began spraying cold water onto the marchers from an overpass. The police were joined by Ford security guards and began shooting into the crowd. Marchers Joe York, Coleman Leny and Joe DeBlasio were killed, and at least 22 others were wounded by gunfire.

>The leaders decided to call off the march at that point and began an orderly retreat. Harry Bennett, head of Ford security, drove up in a car, opened a window, and fired a pistol into the crowd. Immediately, the car was pelted with rocks, and Bennett was injured. He got out of the car and continued firing at the retreating marchers. Dearborn police and Ford security men opened fire with machine guns on the retreating marchers. Joe Bussell, 16 years old, was killed, and dozens more men were wounded. Bennett was hospitalized for his injury.

> All of the seriously wounded marchers were arrested, and the police chained many to their hospital beds after they were admitted for treatment. A nationwide search was conducted for William Z. Foster, but he was not arrested. No law enforcement or Ford security officer was arrested, although all reliable reports showed that they had engaged in all the gunfire, resulting in deaths, injuries and property damage. The New York Times reported that "Dearborn streets were stained with blood, streets were littered with broken glass and the wreckage of bullet-riddled automobiles, and nearly every window in the Ford plant's employment building had been broken".

The United States has never been a socialist country, even when it most likely should have been one, during the robber baron tyranny of the Gilded Age or the desperation of the Great Depression, and it never will be. Which isn’t to say that American capitalism is working; it needs Teddy Roosevelt-style trustbusting and restructuring. We’re coming for you, Facebook.

Yeah, just look how well that’s worked out, you fucking idiot.

The next month presents the last chance for serious scrutiny of Sanders, who is leading in both Iowa and New Hampshire. After that, Republicans will rip the bark off him. When they’re done, you will not recognize the aging, mouth-frothing, business-destroying commie from Ben and Jerry’s dystopian dairy. Demagogy is what Republicans do best. And Sanders is ripe for caricature. 

The same Republicans that got their breakfast ate by the dottering windbag cheetoman? The same Republicans that are unpopular with over half the fucking country? The same Republicans which have shown majority support for Sanders’s policies in the past? Those are the Republicans you’re talking about, right, Timothy, you fucking asshole?

I’m not worried about the Russian stuff — Bernie’s self-described “very strange honeymoon” to the totalitarian hell of the Soviet Union in 1988, and his kind words for similar regimes. Compared with a president who is a willing stooge for the Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, a little vodka-induced dancing with the red bear is peanuts.

Nor am I worried about the legitimate questions concerning the candidate’s wife, Jane Sanders, who ran a Vermont college into the ground. Again, Trump’s family of grifters — from Ivanka securing her patents from China while Daddy made other promises to Beijing, to Don Jr.’s using the White House to leverage the family brand — give Democrats more than enough ammunition to return the fire.

This is fun. Due to a complete lack of incriminating conduct, little Timmy has to invent wrongdoing to libel Jane Sanders. I suppose he’s relying on his readers being too stupid to read the article that he himself links, another NYT hitpiece that desperately tries to paint Ms Sanders as a shady character without anything in the way of tangible proof.

>Federal prosecutors have not spoken publicly about their investigation, though late last year, Ms. Sanders’s lead lawyer said he had been told it had been closed. And while doubts remain about the contribution pledges claimed by the college, the lawyer has said that neither Ms. Sanders nor her husband was even questioned by investigators, indicating a lack of significant evidence of a crime.

>After Ms. Sanders’s ouster, the college’s troubles worsened. It abandoned a promising effort she had undertaken to sell some of its new land to improve its finances, interviews show. A few years later, when it did begin selling, it was to a consortium that secretly included at least one member of its board, raising conflict-of-interest questions.

>There is little question that the college’s 2016 demise can be traced to Ms. Sanders’s decision to champion an aggressive — critics say reckless — plan to buy the land. But with potential students put off by the lack of a campus, and with many such colleges struggling at the time, her move was the academic equivalent of a Hail Mary. Her allies said she never had a chance to fulfill her vision.

>“Jane made an audacious gambit to save the college,” said Genevieve Jacobs, a former faculty member. “It seemed to be a moment of ‘change or die.’”

>In interviews and emails, Ms. Sanders expressed frustration at her dismissal and the college’s failure to continue her rescue plan.

>“They went a completely different direction in every way than what we had proposed and decided upon as a board — with the bank, with the diocese, the bonding agency,” she said. “They didn’t carry out any of the plan. It was very confusing and upsetting at the time.”

The TL;DR seems to be: Jane Sanders tried to save a struggling school with an audacious but risky plan that ended up being aborted when she was let go by by a board, some of the members of which may have had a stake in seeing it fail. At the very least, a much more complex situation than the aspersion of “running it into the ground.”

Trump bragged about sexual assault, paid off a porn star and ran a fraudulent university. He sucks up to dictators and tells a half-dozen lies before he puts his socks on in the morning. A weird column about a rape fantasy from 1972 is not going to sink Bernie when Trump has debased all public discourse.

No, what will get the Trump demagogue factory working at full throttle is the central message of the Sanders campaign: that the United States needs a political revolution. It may very well need one. But most people don’t think so, as Barack Obama has argued. And getting two million new progressive votes in the usual area codes is not going to change that.

“Ah jeez, ah fuck, he has no sexual indiscretions that I can dredge up and his Feminist polemic against pornography and the rape culture that it engenders is old news, and if I actually reported on it honestly people might actually read it and support his ideas. Oh, well, you see, despite the incredible groundswell of support for just such a thing, Barack Obama, the man that gave the banks trillions of dollars and then allowed the state apparatus to function as their gestapo-cum-storm troopers, says we don’t need one!”

Timothy Egan wants to dismiss “two million new progressive votes” after doing a little gaslighting. His Democrat masters don’t want people to remember that it was Obama’s promises of Hope and Change after 8 years of Republican tyranny that generated a record breaking voter turnout. They would also like you to forget that 2016 was a 20-year low in voter turnout. Do you think those things are related, Mr Egan? Do you think that there might be some connection between Obama taking advantage of the desperation of millions of people, betraying them, and then those people not fucking showing up next time, causing your party to lose to the dimwit that they themselves boosted to the position?

Give Sanders credit for moving public opinion along on a living wage, higher taxes on the rich and the need for immediate action to stem the immolation of the planet. Most great ideas start on the fringe and move to the middle.

But some of his other ideas are stillborn, or never get beyond the fringe. Socialism, despite its flavor-of-the-month appeal to young people, is not popular with the general public. Just 39 percent of Americans view socialism positively, a bare uptick from 2010, compared with 87 percent who have a positive view of free enterprise, Gallup found last fall.

“Just” 39 percent of Americans, up 4% from 2016. This is ignoring for the moment that due to Americans’ piss-poor education system they have no idea what “Socialism” means aside from “more government.” Looking at the breakdown of results, it seems as though they just asked people off the top of their head what they thought about X, no definition or elaboration given. Unsurprisingly, when you look at the actual numbers on specific issues, you can see exactly why Egan has to play this deceptive bullshit: of respondents 18-34, 52% have a favorable view of “Socialism,” as opposed to 47% supporting “Capitalism.” This is in sharp contrast to the 35-54 and 55+ cohorts. 65% of Democrats have a favorable view of “Socialism.” Those with a “Liberal” ideology are even more in favor at 74%, Timothy Egan, you massive shithead.

What’s more, American confidence in the economy is now at the highest level in nearly two decades. That’s hardly the best condition for overthrowing the system.

"The highest level in nearly two decades.” That’s faint fucking praise right there.

You can see the tremendous fucking crater caused by the crash in 2007/8, a reversal of a whopping -81 points from the previous year. With many economists forecasting recession beginning either this year or the next, we’ll see how long the confidence lasts. 

So-called Medicare for all, once people understand that it involves eliminating all private insurance, polls at barely above 40 percent in some surveys, versus the 70 percent who favor the option of Medicare for all who want it. Other polls show majority support. But cost is a huge concern. And even Sanders cannot give a price tag for nationalizing more than one-sixth of the economy.

A ban on fracking is a poison pill in a must-win state like Pennsylvania, which Democrats lost by just over 44,000 votes in 2016. Eliminating Immigration and Customs Enforcement, another Sanders plan, is hugely unpopular with the general public.

“Medicare for all is really unpopular, except when it isn’t.”

Hmm, you know? Hmmm.

As for fracking, from his own link:

>A November poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Cook Political Report found that only 39 percent of Pennsylvania swing voters saw a fracking ban as a good idea, even as nearly 7 in 10 of those same voters said they supported the idea of a “Green New Deal” for the environment.

Democrats are whinging on the jobs “lost” to a fracking ban as though it exists in isolation. 39% might support a fracking ban, but 70% support the GND, which could potentially offset the “job loss” with industry that has the potential not to leave their state as a fucking environmentally ruined horror show. I haven’t run the numbers on this, but not living in a cesspool of polluted air and water tends to be pretty popular, Timbo.

More shellgames from Mr Egan regarding abolishing ICE.

> Only 1 in 4 voters in the poll, 25 percent, believe the federal government should get rid of ICE. The majority, 54 percent, think the government should keep ICE. Twenty-one percent of voters are undecided. 

That sounds bad. Maybe it’s not such a good ide

>But a plurality of Democratic voters do support abolishing ICE, the poll shows. Among Democrats, 43 percent say the government should get rid of ICE, while only 34 percent say it should keep ICE.

Oh.

Sanders is a rigid man, and he projects grumpy-old-man rigidity, with his policy prescriptions frozen in failed Marxist pipe dreams. He’s unlikely to change. I sort of like that about his character, in the same way I like that he didn’t cave to the politically correct bullies who went after him for accepting the support of the influential podcaster Joe Rogan.

Democrats win with broad-vision optimists who still shake up the system — Franklin Roosevelt, of course, but also Obama. The D’s flipped 40 House seats in 2018 without using any of Sanders’s stringent medicine. If they stick to that elixir they’ll oust Trump, the goal of a majority of Americans.

Democrats lose with fire-and-brimstone fundamentalists. Three times, the party nominated William Jennings Bryan, the quirky progressive with great oratorical pipes, and three times they were trounced. Look him up, kids. Your grandchildren will do a similar search for Bernie Sanders when they wonder how Donald Trump won a second term.

“Failed Marxist pipe dreams.” Aaaaay lmao. You should also have an inkling something is wrong when you have to go all the way back to FDR to find someone that supports your point. Talk about “poison pills,” Obama proved himself to be as much of a snake as the rest, and the effects of that resonated in 2016 when the Dems ran on a platform of “that’s a nice country you have there, you wouldn’t want Trump to get elected, would you?” How did that work out? You ran one of the most unpopular politicians in the country—after very blatantly rigging the primaries against Sanders to do so—against one of the most unpopular capitalists in the country, and lost, dipshit!

Ironically, I think Timbob’s closing statement will prove true, though not in the way his clown ass intends. Shills like Egan are doing everything they can to try and poison public perception against Sanders and his policies, who only proves increasingly popular as time goes on, so much so in fact that the DNC is already biting its nails and muttering to itself about ways it can try and cheat his supporters again.

In conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention. Such a move would increase the influence of DNC members, members of Congress and other top party officials, who now must wait until the second ballot to have their say if the convention is contested.

They deny it in the article, claim that changing the rules would be “bad sportsmanship,” but one would be a fool to believe them. If anything, their ambivalence towards relying on Superdelegates would make me even more nervous at this stage. Politico wants it to seem like the DNC is bent on playing fair, but more likely than not they have no intention of changing the convention rules because they believe there’s no need. With Warren’s flagging support and the luke-warm response to Biden, I doubt they’re overcome with optimism of beating Sanders in an honest primary. With all the shenanigans from last time’s primaries in mind, it’s likely that the machinery to rig the results their way is already in place—the primary could already be over before it even begins.

[virmillion]

Ibytm - T minus 50 seconds

Masterpost - Previous Chapter - Next Chapter - ao3

Words: 1,638

Logan clutches the laser shooter close to his chest, walking as fast as his feet will allow without full-on running to the safety of a blind spot around the corner (running is against the rules). The red pipes of light beaming from his chest do nothing to calm his nerves, which are more frazzled now than they’ve ever been. Worse even than the time a rumor floated around the fifth floor that Mx. Oatmeal was auditioning candidates to be launched into space to check on the jellyfish. (And in case you were wondering, yes, their last name really is Oatmeal. Please hold your shock.) And if his heart leaps into his throat with enough force to knock him of his breath when his foot catches on a loose seam, well, that’s nobody’s business but his own, isn’t it?

He whips himself around the corner and holds his breath, watching the black reflective wall betray the positions of his pursuers. Their shining blue lights bounce with each of their impossibly quiet footfalls as they swing a hard right turn. One turn too early.

Logan exhales as softly as he can manage, pressing the barrel of his shooter to his ribcage to prevent an inhale too deep, too loud. He releases it, one inch at a time, as his heart rate reluctantly slows. Well, as much as it can slow, given the nerve shakedown he’s putting it through by playing laser tag. Why did he let Virgil talk him into this?

Because it was the soonest you’d be able to see each other again in person, his brain unhelpfully supplies. Logan shakes off the thought, daring another glance around the corner. So thorough is his relief at the empty space that he almost doesn’t notice the swarm of faint blue light advancing from the far end of his hall. His heart finds that familiar place around his tonsils once more.

Clutching the scope to his eye, Logan scurries down the corridor and keeps his eyes peeled for an inconspicuous hiding place, but to no avail. Only one way to go—the last fork at the end of the hall. For all the black lights bouncing around in his skull, he’s surprised he hasn’t been completely blinded yet.

He hesitates at the split, torn between retreading the same ground or making a break for the red base, smack dab in the heart of blue territory. Left or right? Familiarity or safety?

The sound of footsteps hammers to his left. Easily five people, maybe more. Not long behind their broadcasted presence is a herd of blue lights, rattling like so many rain clouds along the walls.

He banks a sharp right.

He ventures down the hall on the balls of his feet, uncertain which way to face. If I continue forward, he reasons, I’ll see anyone coming. If I face backward, he counters, I’ll know how much distance I’ve got on those other blues. But I already know they’re there, and I don’t know who’s in the direction I’m heading. If I face forward, though, the other blues might snipe me from behind. So might someone in front of me. Or the people behind me might drop off, and I’ll be evading for no reason, and maybe even putting myself more at risk.

This thought process continues for some time.

He finds himself settling on a weird half-pivot style, spinning back and forth to scope out all directions, rather than, y’know, picking a direction and sticking with it. By the time he reaches the end of the hall, he almost feels optimistic about his chances of not losing any points for his team. This unearned confidence comes mere moments before he rams into someone with the slopes of his shoulder blades.

Logan lets out a yelp, tossing his weapon in the air and scrambling to point it as he whips around to defend himself—or figure out whether he can escape. He hasn’t decided yet.

The gun just about leaps out of his hands again as he locks eyes with Virgil. Where Logan wields an awkwardly large rifle, clunky in his untrained hands, Virgil spins two mini shooters around his thumbs. He likened them to the Splatoon 2 dualies, but Logan wouldn’t know—he’s never played. Supposedly, Virgil’s next mission following this escapade is to be correcting that lifelong mistake.

Virgil, it might interest you to know, is not on the red team. That is, he’s on the blue team. Against Logan. Sorry, might’ve forgotten to mention that.

The correct thing for Logan to do in this situation would be to tag Virgil’s gear with his hand sensors, or just laser the guy point blank. Virgil is much better at thinking on his feet than Logan. Of course, Logan has the detriment of never having played laser tag before, while Virgil apparently has years of experience under his belt, but that’s beside the point.

Aiming his dualies square at Logan’s chest sensor, Virgil cocks his head to the side and levels a grin at him. Overconfident, certainly, but with good reason.

Logan laughs uncomfortably. “What a tangled web, am I right?” His voice cracks on the last word.

“Said the fly to the spider,” Virgil retorts. Luckily for him—or not, as the case may be—Logan is spared from having to come up with a clever remark by the sound of frantic feet. For the briefest of moments, he’s reminded of the ‘...Daddy?’ ‘Do I look like—’ vine, but he shakes it off when he sees the kid rushing up to greet him. His chest glows a proud red to match Logan’s as he barrels closer, evading what looks like a distant swarm of blue fireflies. The rest of Virgil’s team, no doubt.

The next few things happen in very rapid succession, much too fast for Logan to keep up with. It goes something like this: The kid trips over his (probably untied) shoes, crashes into Virgil’s back, and saves himself with a somersault before continuing past Logan, evidently unimpeded. To the best of your ability, do try to keep up, because that in itself was only one event, the fallout of which Logan would never have predicted. At least, not outside of a cheesy romance movie. Virgil pinwheels his arms from the kid’s collision, his eyes waffling between the duealies he doesn’t want to drop and the balance he doesn’t want to lose. At the former, he succeeds expertly. At the latter, he fails spectacularly. Logan, in an understandable display of his inexperience, tosses his gun to the side and thrusts his arms out—to steady Virgil, to save himself, he isn’t sure. His answer doesn’t delay long.

Virgil releases the faintest of yelps—almost like when you accidentally step on a puppy’s foot—as he falls forward. He spreads his arms out to avoid literally punching Logan in the face as his momentum knocks both of them to the ground. It doesn’t really register in Logan’s mind what, exactly, just happened, until his heart decides to start beating again. An ache is rapidly forming along the side of his spine, but he ignores it in favor of wondering just how compromising their position looks.

Each of Virgil’s hands—both of which are still holding their respective dualies—are planted on either side of Logan’s head, his bent elbows keeping their faces mere inches apart. Where Logan’s feet drew up to his thighs in an attempt to curl in on himself, their progress is blocked by Virgil’s legs—one knee pressed to the ground between Logan’s, and the side of his other shoe planted firmly against the outside of Logan’s leg. Logan forces himself to draw a real breath, pleading with his brain to depart from its currently wayward train. It sprints in circles like a child thrown from one of those playground merry-go-rounds, whipping in incomprehensible circles without a care for what Logan would rather be doing—which is literally anything else, mind you. The messiness of this metaphor should offer some inkling as to how hard Logan is working to keep up with his current situation.

Oh my god, is he going to kiss me, is that what this is, I’ve always seen it in movies but never expected it in real life, oh my god, he’s going to kiss me, oh my god, what do I do, oh my god, oh my god, oh my —

Well, you probably get the picture by now. Also some concerns about whether Virgil will take the opportunity to get a point for his team, whether Logan should try to do the same, all that fun stuff.

Logan’s eyes must widen, or maybe his lips part, or something else in his expression betrays the whirlwind of thoughts in his head, because Virgil’s cheeks suddenly turn bright pink, and Logan is pretty sure it isn’t the reflection of the lights on his vest. Well, maybe the lights are helping a little bit, but Virgil’s face certainly wasn’t that red when they first bumped into each other tonight. Logan swallows around a lump in his throat as Virgil freezes, which is at once both better and worse than when he was, you know, existing like a normal human bent over his friend on the opposing team of a laser tag game. What else would be the next most reasonable thing for Virgil to do but jump to his feet, knocking Logan’s gun farther away in the process?

Logan glances behind himself as he props his weight on an elbow, but the kid on his team is long gone. Beyond Virgil, the swarm of blue is still steadily advancing. Virgil spins his dualies around his fingers once more before running to join them.

After he levels a laser shot square at Logan’s chest, of course.

[thatbluegibson]

CH 76

"So where was Travis off to in such a hurry?" Dave asked.

The boys ran ahead of them towards the little playground in the church grounds at the end of the road and Liz reached for Dave's hand. He was keenly aware that Liz hadn't mentioned anything to the boys about their relationship yet and the last thing he wanted to do was step over any boundaries so he would let her be the affectionate one for once.

He had been nursing his hangover while Liz was at the studio when Travis and the boys showed up early, barging into the house like they had lived there all their lives. Dave had been nervous about meeting them and although Owen took an immediate liking to him, Jack seemed a little aloof. He dutifully shook Dave's hand and politely introduced himself, but the moment Travis and Owen were out of earshot, he started asking questions.

*

"You have tattoos like my daddy," Jack said suddenly.

"Yep," Dave crouched to his eye level and rotated his arm to show him the feathers. "And your mommy."

Jack looked him over with the assessing eye of someone three times his age, then nodded sharply. "Uncle T says you're taking care of my mommy, but she doesn't need taking care of."

"Yeah, isn't that the truth...," he laughed, marveling at how much Jack looked like Kyle. Sandy blonde hair, sharp blue eyes, and tall frame, even for his age.

"So what are you doing here?"

"Well...," Dave thought carefully about how he would state this. He didn't want to say too much but he also wasn't about to lie to Jack. "We're really good friends and we like spending time together so-"

"So you're her boyfriend?"

He might look like Kyle, but he was all Liz in the personality department. There would be no bullshitting this kid. "Yep."

Jack considered this a minute, sending Dave's anxiety through the roof before finally cracking a smile and he dug into his pocket to produce a shiny yellow toy car. "Do you like cars, Mr. Dave?"

*

"The Triumph dealer was calling his name," Liz brought him back to the present with a laugh and they dropped onto a park bench next to the play structure.

"How's recording coming along?" he asked. She had offered precious few details about her time in the studio and he knew it was because she didn't want him meddling but he was curious.

Her smile made his heart lift in his chest "I finally got the piano piece down," she said. "I'm going to mix it back in LA once I find a place."

He knew just the place but decided to save the offer of 606 until later. "Any particular reason you're doing this or is it just for fun?"

She sat back against the bench and he reflexively put his arm around her, "Paul took me on a tour of the studio and suggested I start writing another piece, so I went home and did just that. Then I thought about what you had said about the doctorate and ... well, I made a call to U-Dub, dropped a couple names and the address I was at and they got me in the program almost right away."

"There was zero chance of you sitting still here, huh," Dave chuckled.

Liz raised an eyebrow from behind her aviators but smiled. "Did you sit still when you busted your leg?"

He shook his head almost leaned in to kiss her when Jack's whine rang out to them. "Mommy, I'm so hungry!"

"You just ate lunch!" she cried. "If you can convince your brother to leave we can go get something to eat."

Jack skipped away to plead his case with Owen and Liz reached up to hold Dave's hand. "They've certainly taken a shine to you," she said.

He let out a relieved sigh and grinned. "It really could have gone either way."

"Oh, I doubt that," she laughed. "The key to Jack is to talk to him like he's an equal and the key to Owen is food."

"He says yes, Mommy!," Jack yelled from across the playground, making both Liz and Dave laugh.

"See?"

The boys ran ahead again as Dave and Liz followed them to the edge of the church grounds. "Go through the trees, Jack but stop as soon as you reach the pavement!" she called after them when they paused for a moment at a bank of thick trees and shrubs. Her hand found Dave's again and she sighed sadly. "I'm going to miss this place when I get to LA," she lamented.

"Then you'll have to bring me back here when you haven't been maimed by a stage light and I don't have a tour breathing down my neck."

The fact that he could make her laugh so easily was something he hoped he would never get used to. They could hear the boys laughing and playing in the thicket when they reached the edge of the lawn and the narrow pathway that led to the street. Two stone columns stood on either side of the path and an ominous iron archway connected them several feet in the air.

Liz went a few feet down the path but stopped when she realized Dave wasn't beside her. "What's wrong?" He shifted a little on his feet then looked around to find another route. "Oh my god, are you scared?" she teased.

"I'm not scared," he scoffed and glanced at the ancient headstones jutting up from the earth. "I'm terrified."

"Oh, Dave," she giggled and walked back to him, taking his hand to drag him into the cemetery. "They're just boxes of old bones."

"That's what every pretty girl says at the beginning of a horror movie," he insisted, but let her lead him through the gates. "Next thing you know, your brains are being gnawed on by the undead."

She laughed and reached out to push his hair off his shoulder. "They'd have to get through this mop first, so I think you'll be okay."

He smiled and squeezed her hand, idly thinking about how Halloween would go that year. She could bring the boys over and they could all go door to door, or Taylor and Ally could take the kids and they could stay home under the guise of handing out candy, but just leave the bucket on the porch. His mind was immersed in the possibilities when he heard Jack calling them. Thinking something was wrong he looked up and found they were happily playing in a little clearing marked with another set of iron gates, though these were much smaller. Two white marble lambs topped the stone gateway, laying peacefully as if they were asleep and fresh flowers were set carefully next to each little headstone, all in their own little glass vases.

"Look, Mommy! This one says my name!"

Liz made her way over and knelt down next to him, clearing the leaves from the stone and reading the name with him. They spoke quietly while Dave stood with Owen by the gates so they wouldn't interfere. He recognized the flowers on the graves as the ones in the garden back at the house and he felt his stomach drop. She had obviously cleared the headstones and laid the flowers, but her motives were unclear. Shit, had she lost a baby at some point? Owen tugged on his hand and he bent to pick him up, brushing his long auburn hair back out of his eyes. He looked nothing like Kyle and everything like Liz. Green eyes, dark hair, skin that was quick to blush and eyebrows that would knit together when he was thinking about something. He hadn't yet gotten a feel for his personality but he was hoping Owen took after her like Jack had.

Liz stood up and wiped the dirt from her jeans, gently putting her hand on Jack's shoulder when he looked up at her. "It's okay, buddy. I promise," was all she said and Jack nodded, seemingly satisfied with her words.

"Can Owie and I have a race?" he asked.

Dave set Owen back down and Liz rolled her eyes. "Yes, but where are you supposed to stop?"

Jack and Owen were already running down the path when he yelled over his shoulder, "The pavement!"

Dave watched her carefully as she stepped over a grave and back to him. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she looked around, realizing he knew it was all her handiwork and said quietly, "I try not to overthink my motives. Poor little things never got a chance."

He wanted to ask her so many things, but the subject was far too heavy for the middle of the day and he chose to shelve it for another time.

*

The pub they had chosen was fairly empty due to mid-day on the high street and they quickly found a quiet corner to settle into.

"And then Pluto became a dwarf planet because of the classification of...," Jack chattered on, holding up Liz's phone with a NASA image of the planet while Dave listened intently and handed him pieces of chicken strips.

"Those pictures make Pluto look a little like the Death Star," Dave said, squinting at the small photo through his glasses.

Jack furrowed his brow and looked to his mother with concern. "What's a Death Star?"

"It's in Star Wars, bud," Liz muttered, distracted by Owen shoving several fries in his mouth at once.

"What's a Star War?"

Dave's jaw dropped a little and he slowly turned to stare at Elizabeth. She glanced over, looking a little sheepish and shrugged. "Dude, I've never seen Star Wars," she admitted.

"That's it," Dave said firmly, jumping up from the table and lifting Jack into his arms. Liz stifled a laugh as he held Jack upside down and pretended to scold her. "We're going home right now and all of you are watching Star Wars. Get your stuff, let's go."

Jack laughed and squirmed in his arms while Owen looked fearfully at his mother. "Mama! Still hungry!"

"I know, baby," she laughed and handed him one of her brother's chicken strips. "Dave's just kidding."

Dave flipped Jack upright and set him back in his chair, his little face was bright red and he was still giggling hysterically. "Can we have a movie night, Mommy?"

Dave gasped like he had just heard the best idea in years, "Can we?"

They both turned to her with wide eyes and she burst out laughing. "I don't care. Just let me finish my damn beer!"

*

Liz checked the time and smiled to herself. It was way past the boy's bedtime but was willing to let it slide this time. She set her book on the nightstand and wandered down the steps into the dark kitchen, hearing the closing credit music drift from the sitting room where Dave and the boys had made a makeshift couch out of pillows, blankets, and cushions. A white sheet hung from the wall and Dave's phone was plugged into a projector borrowed from Apple Studios, featuring the very first Star Wars movie.

They were all sound asleep, Owen snuggled up under Dave's right arm as he leaned against the chair and Jack under his left. She felt as if a weight had been lifted now that she was with her boys again and that they had acclimated to Dave so well. She had been worried, mostly of Kyle saying something to the boys that could threaten their relationship with Dave before it even started, but they hadn't once brought their father up. The thought made her wonder how rehab was going and made a note to ask Travis in the morning.

She knelt down to pick up Owen but woke Dave in the process. He blinked sleepily, smiling when he focused on her face. "You missed the best part, babe," he said quietly.

"I'm sure we'll watch several times tomorrow, too" she replied and crawled across the blanket to kiss him. "These guys need to get to bed."

Owen didn't wake, just curled into his mother's arms and shoved his thumb in his mouth, but Jack began to mutter still under the haze of a deep sleep when Dave moved him.

"Dave, did they do it? Did they get the Death Star?"

"They sure did, bud," he said softly and lifted him into his arms.

"That's good," Jack nodded against Dave's shoulder and drifted back to sleep.

They got the boys tucked into their beds and tiptoed back to their room. Liz clicked off the lamp on her nightstand and flopped back against her pillows, frowning when Dave continued to scroll through his phone. "What are you doing?"

"Downloading the next movie."

"Nerd," she accused with a laugh. "And now you're indoctrinating my children?"

"Babe, you're lucky I didn't call CPS on you! Jack is seven and he'd never seen Star Wars!" he teased.

"You didn't see it until you were at least, what... eight? And you did just fine," she shot back.

Dave thought back to the Memorial Day weekend when his mom took him and his sister to the movies. His parents had divorced the year prior and Star Wars was the first bright spot in what had been a really shitty year. "Smart ass," he grinned.

He set his phone down and settled into the bed next to her, reaching across the sheets to drag her to him. She relaxed into his arms and brushed the hair out of his face before kissing him.

"Have you thought any more about the Taylor and Allison thing?" he asked suddenly.

"What thing?"

"The whole baby thing..."

She froze for a moment, absorbing his words. "Oh," she nodded. "I didn't realize they wanted a whole baby."

"Smart ass," he repeated.

She smiled and put her hand on his cheek, tracing the line of his beard. "What about it?"

"I've just been thinking a lot about it and if you wanted to do it, I'd be... you know... cool with that," he fumbled over his words, realizing that he had been completely selfish in his reasons to keep her from helping his best friend.

"What changed your mind?" she asked, trying to appear as unaffected as possible. She had been almost too tired to speak, but now she was wide awake.

"Just... I don't know. Seeing you as a mom, I guess."

She was quiet for a long moment, thinking hard about what he was telling her. "I want you to tell Taylor and Ally," she finally said.

He nodded, already thinking of all the ways he needed to apologize to them for how he acted over this. "Yeah, but I want you there to protect me when Taylor tries to put his fist through my face."

[msirinashayk]

When the coronavirus pandemic hit New York in March 2020, Irina Shayk’s mother, Olga, was visiting from Russia, staying with the 35-year-old model and her three-year-old daughter, Lea, in Shayk’s West Village home. Many lockdowns and flight cancellations later, Olga finally left on December 2, 11 months after she had arrived.

“We were together constantly for almost a year, which meant I really built a different relationship with my mother,” says Shayk, who left Russia for Paris aged 20 before moving to New York just over a decade ago. “We had a couple of crazy times when we would get angry about things, but she was able to help with my daughter for all the time the schools were closed.” And it was, she says, enlightening to be living as three generations of women in one house, all speaking Russian (Olga doesn’t speak any English, but Shayk speaks to her daughter only in Russian, so Lea is fluent). “It took me back to my own childhood and living with my parents. I miss her again now that she has gone,” Shayk admits. “And my daughter misses her too.”

I’ve met Shayk twice before, most recently in the summer of 2018, but have always found her something of an enigma. By which I mean impenetrable. Having spent five years dating the most famous footballer in the world, Cristiano Ronaldo, then four years with the Hollywood actor Bradley Cooper, she is no stranger to media attention and has historically been reticent to divulge details of her life.

Today, however, things couldn’t feel more different. And not just because of the optics — I’m interviewing her in SoHo, New York, wearing two masks (double-masking is now officially recommended in America). But even the new protocols pale into insignificance beside the dramatic difference in Shayk’s demeanour. Beside me on the sofa, in a hoodie, leggings and long red socks, this is a warmer, softer, infinitely more open Shayk than I had expected. “In this pandemic we really start to appreciate human communication,” she says in her still idiosyncratic syntax. “We realise who our true friends are and which people have to be out of your life. For a lot of friends of mine it cleared up so many things for them, and so it is for myself.”

It was in June 2019, however, long before lockdown, that she split from Lea’s father, Cooper — a subject about which she has always remained tight-lipped, barely even acknowledging the relationship in interviews. Today, however, she refers to him numerous times. “Lea knows Daddy doesn’t speak Russian, so she translates from Russian to English for him sometimes,” she says. They co-parent equally and “our only priority is her happiness and that she is loved from both sides”.

“It’s really interesting to see the dynamic between her and me, and her and her dad,” she reveals. “It reminds me of when I was a child. Anything that my mum said, I would be, like, ‘Oh, Mama’s talking, whatever.’ And anything my dad would say, I’d be, like, ‘Oh, that’s … ’ ” She pulls a face of awe and admiration. “It’s like having a reflection. She’s a mini-me.”

One big difference, however, as Shayk readily admits, is that “my daughter is being raised in a different environment than I was. She’s never going to know what it is to open the fridge and you don’t have a meal or bread.”

Shayk grew up in the small Russian village of Yemanzhelinsk, and her coal miner father, Valery, died when she was just 14, leaving Olga, a classical pianist turned music teacher, to raise their two daughters alone. “We had to work in the garden all summer and save all the potatoes for winter,” Shayk says. “You got a ticket for milk and you had to stand in line for it. You had no washing machine, no dryer and no nanny, of course — my mum did it all herself.”

Shayk’s experiences of growing up poor and sometimes hungry in Russia were a large part of her motivation, when the effects of the pandemic began to bite in the late spring, to start volunteering at a food bank in the Bronx, where she and a group of friends still spend most weekends. “So many families depend on kids getting meals at school, and with schools closed and so many people losing their jobs it’s a huge problem,” she says. “I really wanted to give something back, especially when we have so much time on our hands.”

Her modelling ambitions were a means to an urgent end at first. After winning a local modelling contest she “worked specifically to get the money”. When she flew to Paris at the age of 20, “all I was thinking about was that I could maybe get some catalogue work and help my family”.

With her outrageously sizzling figure, however, she was soon modelling for lingerie brands including Intimissimi and Victoria’s Secret, and became the first Russian to grace the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. However, she says that specific sort of success can also become a hindrance. “In fashion people put a claim on you — ‘She’s swimsuit, she’s Sports Illustrated.’ And then people don’t want to touch you because they’re, like, ‘Oh, she’s too sexy,’ ” she tells me. “I heard so many people say, ‘You will never do that cover, you will never do that campaign.’ You learn to accept people saying no to you. And to not be discouraged.” She has now walked in 64 shows, had 114 magazine covers and appeared in 146 advertising campaigns over her 15-year career, gracing the catwalk for Versace, Givenchy, Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty, Valentino haute couture and many more.

Despite being a bona fide supermodel these days, mixing in the highest of high-fashion circles — she counts Burberry’s chief creative officer, Riccardo Tisci, as a close friend and recently fronted the brand’s pre-fall 2020 campaign (Lea, she tells me, has regular FaceTime calls with Tisci) and fellow supermodel Joan Smalls as part of her crew — there is little chance of Shayk losing her head to the glamour of it all. She comes from a long line of industrious women, including a grandmother who worked in intelligence for the Red Army at 19. “Women run the world, even though sometimes we’ll let the men think they do,” she says with a laugh. “In a Russian household man is the boss, but behind the boss there is the real boss. We have to be sneaky sometimes.”

I mention I’ve read somewhere that she thinks she might actually scare men. “I don’t even know how to say it in the right way to not discriminate man,” she says. “But there is something about a woman who has her own opinion, who has her own voice and who runs her life and her career. There is something fascinating for man and maybe a little scary.”

That notion doesn’t seem to bother her at all, though. “I never thought I needed a man in my life to be complete as a woman,” she says with a smile. “Maybe it’s something to do with losing my father at a young age and coping. Like, if I can live without my father since I was 14, I can live out there without any guy.” She does, she’s quick to clarify, “truly believe in the tradition of marriage. But do I go out there looking for a husband? Hell, no.” She laughs. “He had better find me on my sofa watching Netflix because I’m not going anywhere looking for him. I think it’s all about right timing and right person. If it’s going to come, I’m open for it.”

Is there any romance in her life right now? She throws back her head and lets out a long laugh. “I don’t know,” she says eventually. “I don’t think so. I just turned 35 and I’m discovering myself being free and really, truly doing what I want to do. And in a relationship, for me, it’s so important that you do things from love, not for love.” That’s very wise, I say. “You don’t have to shape or filter yourself for any guy out there,” she continues. “I had that in a relationship, and now, being single, I can step back and say, ‘This is who I am.’ Don’t change who you are for somebody out there, because that’s not going to work out.”

Maybe it’s the pandemic, maybe it’s motherhood, maybe it’s the transcendental meditation she has been practising for the past 18 months, but Shayk certainly seems in a settled, sorted place. Sometimes, she says, she gets so tired of not being able to see people’s faces in the pandemic that “when I put a mask on, I draw a smiley face on it, so people can see I’m smiling under the mask”.

I feel like drawing one on both of mine, just to let her know that I am too.

@mulkerrins

[pendragonfics]

Weekend At Happy’s

Too Young to Be Super, Too Smart Not to Be: Chapter One | Chapter Two

Paring: Tony Stark & Child!Reader

Tags: female reader, child reader, set during and after Captain America: Civil War, childhood, divorce, feels, angst, fluff. 

Summary: You're the child of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, and everyone is away doing adult things without you. All you want is someone to play dolls with.

Word Count: 1,717

Current Date: 2017-07-12

When your Mommy and Daddy split up, one took you, the other the company. Every day was like Christmas with Dad; even if his facial hair wasn’t white, or long like Santa Claus, he did his best to make you try to forget that your family was different to before. You were seven years old, and certainly not an idiot; after all, your father was Tony Stark, and your mother was the hard-working Pepper Potts. But everything was changing again, but bigger.

But all you wanted to do was have someone play dolls with, and nobody was able to do that.

Since your Dad was an Avenger, and was always zooming around the world in his shiny red and gold suits, he was never home enough to play with your toys and wind-up cars. You might be of age to go to school, but you were yet to go to school with other kids your age, and instead learned with F.R.I.D.A.Y and your long-distance teacher on the computers.

You’d met Steve Rogers before, but he wasn’t able to play with your toys. Neither could Natasha, or Clint, or even Thor. Uncle Happy said that the Avengers were having some troubles, and that they needed to fix them before they came to play with your new doll house. He didn’t mention where Thor was, but you knew the god was probably in his castle playing dolls with his brother. It was okay. Even though you didn’t have a brother, you knew it was important that Thor played with him a while, even if you couldn’t join in.

Maybe who you missed the most was Fun Wanda. She wasn’t like the other Avengers; she was younger, and her eyes lit up like there was fairy magic in her. She had shown you some of her special things – how colours came from her fingers, and made things she didn’t touch do things. She was just like a princess; her hair was long, and her fingers, too. They were good fingers for braiding hair with the flowers she made from her special gift. She had laughed when you had first called her Fun Wanda; her face lit up like something from a story book.

On the eighth day without seeing anyone but Uncle Happy, you packed a bag. Stuffed into your lamp-shaped backpack were a few of your favourite toys, the book you had been reading with Sam (“‘The Story of Doctor Dolittle’ is awesome, you’re going to love it! he’d said, and then only had time to read only half to you) and a pair of spare socks. But before you could sneak out to find someone to play with you, you were stopped. By Uncle Happy.

“Where do you think you’re going?” He asks you, raising a brow.

“Out,” you reply. “To someone who will play with my toys with me.”

He extends a hand to your shoulder, and reroutes you to face inward the apartment. “________, it’s not that I don’t want to play toys with you…I’m busy. I need to make sure you’re safe.” Bulging out from the zipper is your novel, complete with the bookmark Sam left in it. Happy notices it, and adds, “How about you sit down, and I’ll read?”

“No thank you,” you shake your head, defiant, but still polite. “I want Fun Wanda, and Steve, and Clint who makes monkey faces with me over the table,” you feel tears welling in your eyes, and you add, “I miss my Dad, and Mommy.”

Uncle Happy doesn’t say anything while you hiccup through your tears, almost like you’re a little baby again, and wailing to get your way. But you’ve tried crying to bring your parents back together. It hadn’t worked the first time.

The phone in his hand vibrates, and once again, he must take the call. “Sir? Sir – okay. Yes. I’ll send a plane at once. Yeah. All right. yes, stay still.” He takes the phone from his ear, and with a flurry, he’s texting, and tapping at the holo-screen of the modified phone with graphs in big words you haven’t get gotten the hang of. “Okay. One has been dispatched. Sit tight.”

You swallow, watching Uncle Happy. “Was that my Dad?”

He nods, slowly.

“Why didn’t you let me talk to him?” you ask him. “You always let me speak to Dad when he’s on the phone.”

The bodyguard and close friend of Tony Stark took a moment to consider his words. Then, “I know, ________. Your dad just needs to focus on coming home first. It wasn’t a good connection, you wouldn’t have been able to talk long.”

You cross your arms. “Why won’t you let me go find anyone to play with?” you ask him, but before he can speak, you add, “I’m seven, not an idiot. I know there’s something going on.” You point to the TV in the corner, virtually untouched since you’d been left in the apartment with Uncle Happy. “I might not have access to the internet here, but the news last night said something about the Avengers.”

Happy nods. “There’s…a problem.” He admits, and adds, “You remember that time I took you to the supermarket, and we only had enough money to buy one tub of ice cream, but you wanted mint choc chip, and I wanted vanilla?” He asks.

“Yeah, but I had Dad’s bank card. We ended up buying both.” You remind him.

Happy agrees with you, but stroking his chin in thought, he adds, “Uh, how about…pretend we didn’t have the card. And that you had no choice but to have vanilla ice cream even if you didn’t want to, because I said so.” He tells you.

You stick your tongue out. “Bah! It’s yucky.”

He nods. “But I like vanilla, and it wouldn’t bother me that much. See, the Avengers sort of have to all agree on a certain ice cream flavour, otherwise they can’t be Avengers anymore without being thought of as bad guys.”

Your eyebrows skyrocket. “But they’re not bad guys! They’re the good guys!” you protest. “How can they be bad guys just for wanting their own ice cream?”

Happy takes a deep breath. “Um, in real life, it’s not ice cream they have to agree on. It’s a set of rules that mean they must work under the order of the government. Sort of like the police, except they’ve got Thor.” He tells you slowly. “Got it?”

You shake your head, but then nod quickly. “N-yeah. But that’s not right. The Avengers are supposed to be heroes for the people, Happy, not the government! What if the government do bad things, like when the snake-people were inside Mr. Coulson’s house?”

Happy frowns. “Do you mean when HYDRA infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D.?” He asks.

You nod. “If the bad people are in charge of the Avengers, how can they save the day? How can Daddy save the day?” You swallow, looking down. “I don’t want Dad to be a bad guy.”

Happy puts a hand on your shoulder. “He isn’t a bad guy, ________.” Despite focusing on other things, there is still residue of tears in your eyes, and wiping them away, you take your backpack off, kick your sneakers off, and retreat to your bedroom. “________? Are you okay?”

You shake your head. “I want my Dad.”

---

When your Mommy and Daddy split up, Steve had given you a toy rabbit, named Rabbit. At first, it had smelt of Captain America, but after time, it had lost the red, white, and blue scent. Instead, your bunny smelt of bacon (often your rabbit joined you for breakfast and fell into the serving plate. Such a naughty bunny), and was the one thing that helped you to go to sleep.

But tonight, after the day of boredom and a botched-up escape plan, your mind was still buzzing, and the smell of your rabbit wasn’t helping. Instead, in the light of your glow-in-the-dark stars, the buttons on rabbit’s eyes were lit up, full of ideas.

“I wonder when Dad’s going to be home,” you whisper to Rabbit, as quiet as you can be. Uncle Happy is in the next room, reading from his newspaper like a Proper Adult that your Dad really isn’t. “I wish the Avengers weren’t fighting with each other. It makes me think about how Mommy and Dad fight. They’re always loud.”

You lay there, waiting for Rabbit to comfort you. But your stuffed toy doesn’t reply to you. It’s only a toy.

When you wake, there’s a hand on your head, softly parting your hair from your face. You blink slowly, and waking, see whose hand it is who is calmly bringing you to the land of wakefulness. Slowly, a sleepy smile comes over your face, and at once, you sit up, and give him your biggest hug that you can give.

“Dad!” you cry out. “I missed you!” There are cuts and scrapes all over him, like he’s been go-karting without you. But still, he has a big smile, and he’s holding you tight too. “Uncle Happy told me about what happened with the Avengers.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Did he?”

You nod. “Yeah. The whole Avengers had to agree on one ice cream flavour, but not everyone liked what they had to choose,” you tell him, “But it wasn’t about ice cream.”

Your dad hums, looking down at you with his warm brown eyes full of love, “That’s right. But uh, I’m thinking of taking some time off all the superhero stuff, ________. I think I should go into a different business.”

“You won’t be Iron Man anymore?” You frown.

“Yeah, I’ll still be Iron Man,” he tells you. “But I’ll focus on other stuff. How about you, and I have all day to do what you want. Disneyland, or pancakes, or –,”

“Can you play with me?” you ask him.

Your dad, the legendary Tony Stark, the invincible Iron Man nods. “Sure, kiddo. Want to play house, or science, or –,”

“Science!” you shout, and wriggling from his grip, go to get your toys to set up the scene for the pretend laboratory. “You can be my assistant, Daddy. We’re going to make stuff to make people fly!”

He grins. “Woah! Sounds cool!”

>> NEXT CHAPTER

[abutterflyobsession]

We Never Cry: Strange Magic Superhero AU

coauthored by @deluxetrashqueen who basically owns this AU now. Read the previous chapter on Ao3

“Absolutely not.”

Bog folded his arms and set his jaw, looking down his nose at Marianne, resolved to be the victor of this particular encounter, regardless of the odds stacked against him.

“Why not?” Marianne asked, her own arms folded and her head tilted back so she could meet his glare with her own, “It's not bribery, it's not charity, it's not even a gift. It's me replacing something I damaged. I owe you this.”

“Something you damaged? Is this about my bike or my face?”

Bog tucked his arms a little tighter, refusing to give into the temptation of pulling the gleaming new motorcycle upright and checking out its features. The bike sat where Marianne had parked it after she had ridden it around to the loading docks of the supposedly deserted warehouse with a complete lack of discretion.

“What would people think if they saw Marianne Fairwood hanging around empty warehouses?” Bog grumbled, turning the subject away from the motorcycle.

Marianne snorted and leaned on the bike, expression dark. “Marianne Fairwood is a nice young lady who smiles sweetly for the press and poses in front of microscopes in daddy's lab for promotional marketing. Marianne Fairwood does not ride motorcycles into the industrial area of town like some sort of--”

“Nocturnal vigilante?” Bog offered.

“Yeah. People aren't looking for this.” She gestured at her long black coat and heavy boots. “Not to mention I was wearing a helmet like a responsible motorcyclist.”

Bog was forced to unfold his arms to catch the helmet Marianne tossed at him.

“Hey! I said no!”

“Oh, did you? But if you said no, how are you going to make your dramatic exit next time you hit up Fairwood labs or some bank?”

“Isn't that something you should be appreciating? Your father owns Fairwood labs. You're a vigilante. I'm a “supervillain.” Bog made air quotes with his free hand. “One, I might add, who kidnapped your sister not two weeks ago.”

“Please, Dawn thoroughly enjoyed her outing. She's even more of a celebrity now and she's milking the situation for all it's worth. Also, she likes you. 'Boggy'.” Marianne rolled the nickname off her tongue, a smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth.

Bog covered his eyes with one gloved hand and sighed.

After his mother arrived at the alley Bog and Marianne piled in the van so they could leave the area as quickly as possible. Neither of them had been particularly quiet during their fight and who knew what sort of attention might have been attracted.

“What have you done to yourself now?” His mother demanded, seeing the wreckage of his face. She was so busy peering at him in the rear view mirror that she almost hit a car when she merged into traffic. Bog was thankful that she knew better than to delay their departure with questions, and she barely did more than exclaim a few times before they were well away from the alley.

“You came alone?” Bog asked, gripping the headrest of the passenger side seat as he leaned between the seats to talk to his mother. If he weren't so tired and aching he might have ripped his claws right into the headrest, the surge of panic at the thought of his mother being unprotected nearly drowning everything else out.

“Get back there.” Griselda waved one hand at him, “If somebody sees you all banged up like that we might get stopped.”

“You should have at least--”

“Everyone else was tired from the heist. Anyway, who'd pay attention to me? Some old lady in a van. Now, who's the young lady and how did you two end up looking like you came off for the worse in a fight with a blender? I said sit down!”

Griselda snapped and Bog retreated so swiftly that Marianne chuckled. This drew his mother's attention to Marianne and she squinted into the review mirror, studying the young woman's face in the dim interior of the van.

“Aren't you--?”

“This is Marianne Fairwood,” Bog broke in, “Marianne, Griselda. My mother.”

“Your . . . mom?” A spark of true humor lit up Marianne's eyes, the flash of passing street lights catching on glints of amber. “Your mom picked us up?”

“She's not supposed to be here.” Bog growled, hunching over further in his seat.

“It's just . . . it's just,” Marianne bit her lips to try and keep back a grin, “The mighty Bog King, scourge of the authorities, feared by the helpless citizens, on the FBI's most wanted list . . . got picked up by his mom like a kid who got in trouble for fighting.”

“It isn't funny. She's not supposed to be here. You're not supposed to be here, mother. You're one of the few free agents we have at our disposal, for one thing. For another, if anything happened to you I'd--”

“Hush, son, or you're grounded.”

A laugh exploded out of Marianne and she clapped her hand over her mouth too late to stop it.

Bog eyed her, irritated by her amusement and disconcerted by the thought of what trouble his mother might have gotten into, running around by herself. He was greatly displeased by how no one was taking any of this seriously.

“Marianne Fairwood?” Griselda said, “As in Fairwood Industries? From the looks of my boy I'd say you were an unwilling hostage, but from the way you jumped right in the car I'd say you weren't. First aid kit is under your seat, Bog, if anything is bleeding too much to wait until we're back.”

“I'm fine.” Bog snapped. Which was, of course, a lie. He could still feel Marianne's boot printed on his chest and the cracked rib lanced red hot pain over his torso when he breathed too deeply. “And you,” He glared at Marianne, “So pleased with yourself, but you still live at home with daddy, don't you?”

She shrugged off the barb, “Fair point. But I wasn't laughing at you, Bog. Or you, Mrs. King. It's just so . . . mundane. It doesn't seem to fit. Like we got into a scuffle on the playground and the principal called our parents to come pick us up.”

Bog finally gave a snort of laughter. “Yeah,” he said, looking at the petite crime-fighter sitting across from him. She had delicate features that could not be disguised even by her smeared makeup and the crust of dried blood streaked across her skin. The expressions he'd seen play across her face did not seem suited to it. The deep, seething anger, the wild glee of battle . . . now a weary grin that seemed almost companionable, like a friend sharing a joke. There was nothing delicate about those looks. And there was certainly nothing delicate about her fists.

“Yeah,” Bog said again, breath hitching from another stab from his ribs, “Yeah, I guess it really doesn't fit.”

The trip back to the Bog King's base gave Marianne enough time to catch her breath and start appreciating the extent of her own injuries. She was fairly sure she had a hand print on her ankle from when King had grabbed and thrown her off. Barred lines throbbed on her arms from her hasty climb up the fire escape of the building, and she could feel the glass in her hands that had been driven in deeper by her recent activities. Loosened scales were sliding around in the sleeves of her jacket, adding an irritating itch to her aches and pains.

To top it off she was starving. Wistful thoughts of the arrangements of chocolate dipped fruit on the buffet table that she had never gotten to eat, all of it miles away and coated in dirt and glass, danced in the back of her head. They linked arms with the thought that jumping into a car with The Bog King to some unknown destination was a bad idea. Feet planted on the floor, hand resting on a baton concealed in the lining of her coat, she kept a watchful eye on her new ally.

Likewise, he was watching her, eyes glinting from underneath heavy eyebrows that seemed to rest in a default expression of glowering suspicion. His staff was on the floor under his feet, though, and his arms were crossed tightly across his chest. Whenever they hit a pothole—or the occasional curb—Marianne could see him wince.

When he swung himself out of the back of the van he grunted when his feet hit the ground and he was limping when he led Marianne through the loading bay of what was apparently an empty warehouse. A twinge of guilt plucked at her. After the heat of battle passed she always got hit by guilt and a fear she had gone too far. It was worse now because she was seeing the results firsthand instead of reading about another drug dealer being hospitalized by the city's newest vigilante. She tried to console herself with her own bruises, but it didn't help much when they stepped into a lighted area and she could see exactly how wrecked King's face really was.

“Where is everyone?” King seemed to be confused and gestured for her to follow as he strode away in long, unsteady steps, heading toward an area sectioned off by stacks of empty boxes while Griselda bustled off across the warehouse, “They should have been back before me.”

“Where's my sister?” Marianne shot back, quickening her pace to keep up with him, even though her ankle was telling her she ought to find the nearest chair, sit herself down in it, and never move again.

“Yoohoo!” Griselda King called from across the warehouse, “They're all in here!”

“In where—what are they doing in my lab!”

Disregarding his injuries, King shot over to his mother so fast that Marianne was fairly sure she missed most of his journey when she blinked. Jogging over, she jabbed an elbow into his ribs to get him out of the doorway, where he had stopped short and frozen in place, “Thanks for waiting, King. Now where is--”

“Hello!” Dawn's voice ran out, bright and cheerful as ever.

“--my sister,” Marianne finished, trying to process the sight of what appeared to be a cozy little tea party going on in the middle of a room furnished like Frankenstein's laboratory. She was almost disappointed not to see a few Tesla coils scattered around and sparking with unnecessary electricity.

“Marianne!”

Dawn was seated in a folding chair, one of several parked around an uneven card table. The other chairs were occupied by people who must have been King's cohorts. They must have been, because all of them showed signs of mutation, mostly in earthy discoloration of the skin. Dawn was snugly in the middle of things, obviously overseeing the pouring of tea into an assortment of unmatched mugs, and distributing a plate of oreoes and vanilla wafers. Upon seeing Marianne Dawn jumped up from her chair and hurled herself across the room and into her sister's arms.

“Oh, Marianne! You put on your mask and cape and came to get me? You are the sweetest!”

“What is she doing in my lab?” King demanded, regaining his voice, “Who let her in here?”

“Uh.” Said a small, nervous looking man with a beaked nose, “We had to . . . put her somewhere?”

“That is why we prepared a room!” King growled.

“How considerate,” Marianne said, rolling her eyes before checking over her sister. She grabbed Dawn's face and turned her back and forth. “You okay?”

“Oh, I'm fine now,” Dawn laughed, “They put a bag over my head but when I started to cry they took it off and apologized. Have you seen this lab? I can't believe some of the equipment they've got. So outdated, but it's all fixed up to work anyway, it's amazing. Don't tell dad where I am, just let me stay. I live here now.”

“She's fine.” Marianne said, rolling her eyes again.

“She's in my lab,” King repeated, waiting for someone to share his outrage.

“What a tragedy,” Marianne snorted, stepping away from Dawn so she could check where the intense throbbing in her head was coming from exactly.

“What about you?” Dawn pulled her sister back, “You're a total mess! There's blood in your hair—oh, that looks nasty! What happened to you two?” Her eyes darted back and forth between Marianne and King, taking in their battered forms.

“. . . each other?” Marianne shrugged, thinking longingly of a long soak in a hot bath followed by a three course dinner plus dessert and coffee, “We've kind of . . . reached a truce. I'll get you out of here soon.”

“She's in my lab.” Bog repeated.

“Yes, I am!” Dawn agreed, her brightness shadowing over just a touch at the sight of him looming in the doorway, simmering with anger. But when her eyes fell on King's exposed hands her brightness was not only restored, but it increased, “Omigosh, that looks really advanced! Oh! No wonder you wanted the research!”

“I wanted it back.” King quickly tucked his hands out of sight, “And I want you out of my lab! All of you!” The other occupants of the folding chairs rose as one and scurried out of the room, shoving at each other to try and be the first one out the door, “And tell Gus I want to talk to him. Now!”

“Yessir!” Someone yelped, just before the door banged shut behind them.

“Now,” King turned back to Dawn and Marianne, only to find Dawn tugging on his wrist and dragging his hand back into the open, “What—what are you doing?”

“I've never seen this type of mutation before! Is it at all insect-based? We've really got terribly little data on insect mutations and it's making it hard to do thorough research on reversing—um.”

Dawn shut her mouth, pressing pink lips together and shooting Marianne a look.

Marianne scratched at her wrist under her sleeve, picking out a loose scale and flicking it away, “It's okay—we sort of exchanged notes.”

“Get off!” King shook Dawn's hand off, “Don't—don't touch me!”

Marianne guided Dawn back, glaring at Bog, “Watch your tone!”

“Tell that crazy creature to keep her hands to herself!”

“This crazy creature is my sister and practically a self-made expert in the serum and the mutations caused by it!'

“I'm only still in graduate school, actually,” Dawn said, “But daddy let's me play in the company labs. There really ought to be better encryption on the network where they store the data.”

“I don't care. I want my research back so I could put you back where you belong: somewhere far from me! That's the deal.”

“More or less,” Marianne sighed, “But I believe that was some discussion about sharing information.”

“Once you've returned what's rightfully mine . . . then we can hash that out.”

“Okaaay,” Dawn sat back down at the card table and picked up a mug and gestured to the plate, “Cookie?”

“No!” Bog and Marianne snapped at the same time.

“They've got the chocolate cream,” Dawn said, nibbling an oreo.

Marianne's stomach was past the point of growling. It was past the point of registering hunger at all. A woozy, sick feeling had settled over her and it was making it hard to concentrate. “Darn it,” Marianne said, snatched up a cookie and biting into it.

King gave her a look, “Really? Cookies? Now?”

“I have been chasing after you all night,” She said through a mouthful of crumbs, “I am starving.”

“There's water in the fridge,” Dawn pointed, “No, no! The other fridge!”

“Urgh,” Marianne slammed the door on some gristly looking specimens and located bottled water in the correct refrigerator. She held the chilled bottle to the lump on her head and winced at the contact, “Not to mention blood loss,” She hissed.

“Not to mention,” King snorted, leaning by the door, arms folded and eyes alert.

“Yeah,” Marianne looked over at King's face and tried to pretend it wasn't a twinge of guilt that made her pick up a bottle of water for him, “Here!”

King caught the bottle of water Marianne lobbed at him and the plastic crinkled when he squeezed it too tight. He had straightened up, body tensing like he was under attack. He looked at the innocent bottle of water in his hand and then back at Marianne, confusion all over his face.

“Ah . . . what?”

“Say thank you,” King's mother smacked her son's shoulder as she entered the lab carrying a plate of sandwiches.

“Ow! Mom!”

“Thank her and drink your water! Then go wash your face. Actually, show Miss Fairwood where she can tidy up and see if there's a clean shirt for her somewhere. Then you go wash and change and then you will eat something,”

“Mother, I--”

“Go!”

Marianne gratefully accepted a scrounged t-shirt from a red-faced King and went into the bathroom to change. When she pulled her own shirt off a small shower of scales fluttered to the floor, sparkling in the yellow light. Small patches of scales were missing where she'd been bruised the worst, the exposed skin puckered and sickly pale where it wasn't turning purple. She ran her hands down her arms, brushing free the rest of the loose scales and making sure that her arms hadn't suffered anything worse than bruising.

Dabbing a damp hand towel to the back of her head, she became aware of restless shuffling outside the door.

“Keeping an eye on me, King?”

“So to speak,” He grumbled through the door.

“I promise I'm not going to blow out the side of the building and escape,” Marianne rinsed the hand towel until the pink washed out of the water, “You can go patch yourself up.”

“I'm fine.”

Sitting down on the closed toilet, Marianne pulled up the leg of her pants and inspected the dark bruising on her ankle while she kept talking to King, “How many of your ribs did I crack? At least one, right?”

King mumbled something too low for her to make out.

Out of habit, Marianne swept up the shed scales and funneled them into a pocket of her jacket. Donning her jacket again, she zipped up the pocket and opened the door. She shoved the first aide kit at King. “Do you need any help cleaning up the back of your head?”

“No.”

King entered the bathroom and locked himself in and Marianne found herself alone in the hall with two of Bog's cohorts. Neither seemed inclined to conversation, folding their arms and glaring at her, so she leaned back on the door and asked King some questions.

“How'd you get into the party and plant all those explosives?”

“Caterers.” King grunted.

“It's always the caterers,” Marianne sighed, “Early access to the venue for setup, lots of time to get creative with the decorations.”

Further questions were answered with distracted grunts as King shuffled around in the bathroom. When he finally limped out he was wearing a clean shirt under his jacket, a new pair of gloves on his hands, and his usual dark scowl on his face.

When they got back to the lab they found Dawn cooing over a tank of cockroaches. “Aw, look at your little antennae! Yeah, you groom them, little guy!” She had reached in and was letting one scuttle around over her fingers and palm.

King made a pained noise, deep in his throat.

“Oh, hi!” Dawn gently dropped the roach back into its habitat after kissing the air over it's twitching antennae, “Oh!”

King had slammed the lid back onto the tank the second Dawn's hand was out of the way, “Don't touch the specimens!”

“My hands were clean!”

“That's not--” He looked at the earnest little face in front of him, then glanced over at Marianne's warning expression. King ran a hand down his face and took a breath before continuing more calmly, “Please, don't meddle with my lab, thank you. You're not guests, for pity's sake . . . And aren't young--” King's eyes traveled over Dawn's pink face and bright-eyed expression, “--persons supposed to dislike that sort of thing?” He gestured with a freshly gloved hand at the roaches.

“Hm?” Dawn asked, looking up from making kissing noises through the glass at the roaches.

“Never—never mind.”

Swallowing a bite of cookie, Marianne cleared her throat and tried to bring the conversation back to recent events—despite her enjoyment over King's awkwardness, “So, King,”

“Yes, Fairwood?”

With a habitual twitch to pull down the cuffs of her jacket, Marianne pulled out a folding chair and flipped it around, sitting astride and resting her arms on the back of it, “Obviously you have a reason for thinking Fairwood Industries stole your research, and I honestly can't wait to hear what rock solid proof you have that was enough to justify you blowing the building halfway to kingdom come.”

King grunted, “It's complicated.”

“Enlighten me.”

“The thief copied the digital data and wiped the system,” Dawn said helpfully, “I checked but it's all completely gone. The hard copies were taken too, all the file cabinets.”

Marianne and King stared at Dawn.

“. . . we were talking about it while we waited for you guys to come back,” She shrugged and sipped her tea, “The thief tore their uniform getting the file cabinets out of the loading docks—which I guess means he had help—and left behind a patch with the Fairwood logo on it.”

“That's it?” Marianne stood up, knocking her chair over and kicking it out of the way as she advanced on King, “You endangered my family's lives because of a piece of uniform? You don't even know if it was actually an employee wearing that uniform! It's not like they're kept under lock and key and who would be so recklessly stupid to wear their work uniform while committing a robbery?”

“Let go of my coat, Fairwood,” King hissed.

Marianne hadn't realized she had grabbed the front of his coat and pulled him down to her level. She gave his coat another tug and contemplated slamming her forehead into his, grabbing Dawn, and fighting her way out of the warehouse. Drained as she was the thought of fighting made her blood heat up again. All she wanted to do was smash King's face in for daring to threaten her family, for leading her on a wild chase, and just because she really wanted to smash something.

Pain clamped down on her ear and her head was jerked sharply to the side.

“No fighting in the lair!” Griselda said, pinching Marianne's ear, “We're short of furniture as it is without any more of you dummies getting into a brawl in the lab.”

“Ow, mom!” King's tall frame was hunched awkwardly over as he attempted to ease the pressure of his mother's fingers on his ear.

“Hush, both of you!”

Marianne found herself propelled back into her seat. Sitting back down so abruptly shook her enough to remind her of her all too recent injuries. The sharp ache in her head kept her sitting down when she wanted to jump back up and push Griselda out of the way and go for King's throat.

“Look,” Griselda said after shoving her son a safe distance away from Marianne, “There aren't exactly a lot of suspects when it comes to who might even know about this research. And we've got a long list of reasons to think it was Fairwood. Besides, who else is researching this bug juice?”

“Don't call it bug juice,” King growled from his corner.

Griselda's arguments were valid, but Marianne just folded her arms and glared at the room at large. She knew she had lost her temper and acted badly and the embarrassment of losing control—and the twinge of shame when she glanced at King's ripening bruises—made her retreat behind the protection of sullen silence.

“Anyway, I believe it,” Dawn said, “You know how dad has been taking a “whatever it takes” attitude.”

“Dad would never--!” Marianne began to object.

“And,” Dawn interrupted, “he's been very careful not to ask too many questions about the researchers’ methods. He's got half a dozen teams across the country working on this, each team headed up by corporate officials that have been given almost complete freedom in their operations. That's a nice sized pool of suspects to work with.”

“Dawn, you're so calm about all this that I'm starting to think they drugged you.”

King flung his hands up in surrender when Marianne shot him a sharp look, “Didn't give her a thing!”

“He wanted to give her something to knock her out,” Griselda said helpfully, “but we didn't want to overdose her or cause an allergic reaction so we called it quits on the idea.”

“You were going to drug my sister?!”

“I didn't!” King insisted.

“But you would have!”

“Only if I knew it was safe!”

“That doesn't make it better!”

“But he didn't,” Dawn broke in, “And I'm calm because somebody has to be! Deep breaths, Marianne, deep breaths. And you too, Boggy.”

“What did you just call me?” King demanded, a murmur of muffled laughter rising up from around the room.

Laughter exploded out of Marianne.

It only increased when King swung around to level a look of outrage at her.

“Now,” Dawn said, taking advantage of the break in the argument, “It seems to me that the best way to confirm if anyone from our company stole the data is to check out the lab. Everything is funneled into the main lab here in the city. Dad likes to have all the information immediately on hand. If your work was taken it would be put into the system immediately.”

“Oh, and I'm just supposed to sashay up to Fairwood labs and ask to take a look at their computers?” Bog scoffed.

Dawn sipped her tea and smiled her dazzling smile, “Both Marianne and I have access to the labs and computer systems. I'll give you my passcodes and you can slip in the back way. When I go home I can say that you made me give you the codes.”

“Delightful. But I still can't just walk in there. Doubtless there's security.”

“Yes, but Marianne figured out how to loop the cameras remotely.”

“For reasons we won't go into now!” Marianne said quickly.

“It's to give her an alibi when she's off dealing out justice,” Dawn explained, “Now, Boggy--”

Marianne tried not to laugh and started to choke Bog scowled at her to no effect. The situation was out of his control and was at the mercy of the sweet little mad scientist who had easily coaxed the facts out of his mother and his crew, then set herself to constructing a solution to their current problems.

Dawn Fairwood was terrifying.

Dawn waited until her sister stopped choking before continuing with laying out her plan, “Now, Boggy--”

Marianne doubled over, wheezing.

“What do you think?” Marianne had put her mask on and tucked her hair under a black knit cap she had borrowed from one of King's people.

“I think you look daft.”

“I'm trying to go the extra mile with disguise. Most of the staff at the lab know me by sight and a mask might not be enough to fool them up close.”

“I thought the idea was to not let them get close.”

“Yes, but you can't be too careful. And might I say your own disguise is magnificent? The baseball cap is a daring touch.”

King folded his arms, pulling his light jacket tight across his shoulders. Griselda had insisted he wear something less suspicious than his usual billowing gray coat and then attempted to forcibly remove it from his person. King had managed to retain custody of his coat, but only for as long as it took the leave and change in another room. The substitute was much thinner, and when the fabric stretched Marianne could see a patterned outlined on King's shoulders, hard edges poking through the jacket.

She must have been staring, because King unfold his arms and shrugged the jacket loose on his shoulders again. He occupied himself with adjusting his baseball cap, which was embroidered with the mascot of some sports team that Marianne didn't recognize except she thought it might be a football team. She kept her gaze on the mascot, keeping her eyes away from King's wrecked face.

“We're going to have to take the van,” King started walking without waiting to see if Marianne was following, “Since we're both down a motorcycle.”

“Mine wasn't wrecked,” Marianne shrugged, “If the police don't hold it as evidence I'll have a friend get it out of impound. This will be the third time this year that I've had to do that.”

“Lucky you. Let's go. Mom!” King called over to his mother who was brushing off his coat, “If I'm not back in--”

“Just keep your earpiece on, honey,” Griselda waved him off, “We'll be listening. Scream if you need anything.”

“The scope of this operation is breathtaking,” Marianne remarked.

King slung a backpack into the van, saying,“Look, princess, I know the concept of a shoestring budget is foreign to you—hey!”

A gaggle of King's people had been passing, scattering nervously at the sight of their boss. King had apparently spotted something that displeased him, seeing as he slammed his fist against the side of the van, shouting as he rushed at the fleeing crowd.

“Gus! Gus, I see you there!”

The unfortunate Gus was snagged by the collar and dragged into the open. King spun Gus around to face him, grabbing the front of his shirt and giving his victim a vicious shake. Gus was at least as twice as wide as King and almost as tall, but only the very toes of his shoes were touching the ground.

“What were you thinking?” King demanded, “Handing me a weapon at the party? We discussed this at length and yet it doesn't seem to have penetrated your remarkably dense skull!” He gave another shake for emphasis, “I could have killed someone! And then where would we be?”

“I thought—I thought it was for dramatic effect?” Gus offered, too unsettled to form a more comprehensive explanation.

“Dramatic—dramatic effect?” King's face screwed up in confusion over this unexpected response to his violent interrogation, “Why would I--? You know what, don't answer that! Just try not to be so ruddy stupid in the future!”

Gus was thrown to the floor and King swung around in a way that would have made his absent coat billow impressively.

King jumped behind the wheel of the van, twisted the key in the ignition and slammed the car into drive, barely waiting for the garage door to be opened before he stomped on the gas. Marianne waited until they were a few blocks away before saying:

“You're going the wrong way.”

King gnashed his teeth together and swung the van around so fast Marianne could feel the vehicle tipping a little.

“So,” she said slowly, “Gus . . . he's the guy who handed you your staff right before you nearly brained me?”

Silence.

“Is this something that happens a lot? You almost caving people's skulls in? As a potential associate I feel like I should know if this is a regular thing or only for special occasions and particularly annoying princesses.”

The only reply was King adjusting the settings on the air conditioner.

Marianne knew she should drop the subject. But there was something uncomfortably familiar with how he had almost smashed her head. If he really had been out of control, just like . . .

A firm shake of her head sent the train of thought spinning off to the back of her mind and also reminded her that she hurt. A lot.

“I'm sorry,” King said, so abruptly that Marianne almost couldn't make out the words.

“I'm sorry?” she asked stupidly.

“For the party.”

“Oh.”

It was hard to come up with a response to that. King had, after all, threatened all their lives, terrorized Marianne's father, kidnapped her sister, and just generally pulled no punches. Marianne rubbed her arms, feeling scales and bruises through her sleeves.

Did she forgive King?

Some small measure of trust had already been built up between them, yes, but that felt like an entirely separate issue. The circumstances had changed so drastically, so completely, Marianne wasn't sure where she stood anymore. For a glorious hour the world had been painted in stark black and white. King was the villain, Marianne was the hero. But the black and white had run together, turning into muddy grays.

“Don't mention it,” Marianne shrugged.

Getting into the lab was straightforward enough. They parked the car a couple blocks away where Marianne kept a stash of clothing and a spare phone. She always ditched her own phone at the lab and switched it out for a burner. She changed the phone regularly and only Dawn was kept apprised of the latest number in case of emergencies. The burners were also installed with the program necessary to loop the cameras and allow her to come and go unseen.

“Can you do that on other systems?” King asked, looking over her shoulder at the footage from the lab security cameras streaming on her phone.

“I'm not hacking bank security systems for you.”

“I wasn't asking.”

“Good.”

The phone streamed the unlooped footage live to Marianne's phone and helped them navigate around the security guards doing their rounds. Marianne located a computer that would give them direct access to the servers that kept all the data backed up and stored, entered Dawn's passwords, then pushed her swivel chair aside, waving a hand for King to take the keyboard.

“You know what you're looking for, have at it.”

King made a hesitant move toward the keyboard, then stopped, curling his gloved hand into a fist and letting it fall to his side, “I can't.”

“Can't what?”

King's fingers flexed, an involuntary nervous twitch that drew Marianne's eye. The gloves didn't fit right on King's hands and before he clenched his hand shut again she could see that the tip of one claw was already working its way through a hole in the tip of the glove's index finger.

Claws no doubt presented a unique challenge when it came to the use of a keyboard, Marianne realized, and the gloves only made it worse. And he would as soon take off his gloves as she would take off her jacket and expose her arms.

“Oh,” she said, “Oh! Okay. Give me some criteria to go on and I'll start digging. I know these systems almost as well as Dawn. Pull up a chair and tell me when I'm getting warm.”

Marianne scooted her chair back in front of the computer, quickly pulling up the research results she had been going over the weekend previously. King sat down in a chair so far away Marianne would have offered him binoculars if she hadn't seen how he was nervously rubbing his hands together, eyes darting back and forth across the room, keeping an eye on the exits.

They found the stolen research under the heading of “Asset BK: Serum Reversal”.

“They really did steal it. And they actually used your initials,” Marianne skimmed through some of the documents while King pulled a portable hard drive out of his backpack in preparation for retrieving the data, “That's pretty bold.”

“It's not a connection most people would be in a position to make.”

“I guess.”

The transfer of the research to the hard drive didn't take too long, but both of them were tense, locked in the dark room with only the glow of the computer for light. Turning on the lights might alert a passing guard or be seen through the window, even though they had drawn the shades.

“Lucky,” King said, wrapping the drive up in a faded towel and putting it back in his bag, “In a weird way. I had just backed up the most recent results, so the loss of my file cabinets shouldn't be too much of a wrench. I don't suppose we could go looking for those?”

“Not on your life! Even if they're here, if we could find them, I'm not helping you carry them all the way back to the car.”

“Fine,” King sighed in defeat.

Marianne pulled her mask off and rubbed her tired eyes, taking a moment to collect herself.

Someone in Fairwood labs had actually stolen King's research. They'd taken a desperate man's hope. A man who appeared to be supporting a large number of people who had also been exposed to the serum. So many people, when Marianne had thought she was the only one. One was a freak accident, two suspicious, a warehouse full of people reduced to robbing banks to finance a cure? That had all the signs of a conspiracy. Somebody was doing human testing off the books.

Someone in Fairwood was rotten.

Marianne should have been filled with righteous anger, with resolve to get to the bottom of this mess and strangle whoever was responsible. Instead, she was just very tired. It had been a long day and she still had to get her sister home safely and put the police off of King's trail.

“I'm sorry,” She said, putting her mask back on.

“For what?” King asked.

“Oh, for everything, really. Let's get out of here while we can still limp.”

“Seriously,” Marianne patted the motorcycle, “This is yours. I owe it to you. Not just for your bike, but because Fairwood stole your research. And Dawn got you this key chain.”

She tossed Bog the keys.

He caught them, finding they were attached to a bright pink plastic flower. He stood there, helmet in one hand, keys in the other, trying to ignore the tempting metallic gleam of the bike, narrowing his eyes suspiciously at Marianne.

“Is this the only reason you showed up here? Just to give me a bike?”

“Should I have another reason?”

Bog raised his eyebrows.

“Okay, fine,” she waved a hand, “I figured you could use some samples of my blood for your research.”

Bog’s eyebrows remained aloft.

“Maaaybe I had a couple questions about your setup here. And just generally discuss who’s behind this whole research theft mess. Dawn’s been making inquiries, but she can only get so far without raising any red flags in the company.”

Bog’s eyebrows returned to their usual resting place, drawn down over his eyes in a frown.

His immediate instinct was to tell Marianne Fairwood to get lost and take her bike with her. He didn't need a spoiled princess and her corrupt business nosing around and messing up his operation.

But he was still marveling that Marianne had come back.

Once Dawn had been safely returned home he expected never to hear from either of the Fairwood sisters again. After they had left he had spent the rest of the night and most of the next day anxiously prowling the warehouse, waiting to hear police sirens wailing their way to his doorstep. Everything important had been packed up and everyone was on alert to make a run for it on his signal. But the police didn't come and by the next evening Bog called off the alert and let everyone rest.

Then Marianne Fairwood came back, ready to continue the partnership they had hastily formed after they finished beating each other black and blue. Bog was oddly glad to see her and loath to see her leave again.

“I can only offer you coffee,” he said, waving for her to follow him into the warehouse.

“As long as there's sugar then that's perfect,” Marianne followed after him, “You taking the bike, then?”

“I'm thinking about it.”

“I'll tell Dawn you liked the key chain.”

“Hmph.”

[kamen-rider-zed]

The Twelves Dates of Christmas Chapter 2

I don’t care that Christmas was almost three weeks ago. I’m going to finish this, dammit.

AO3

Chapter 2: Day 1

Wanna learn how to believe again Find the innocence in me again Through your young heart Help me find a way, help me try

Chloé blindly swatted at her phone as it buzzed across her night stand. She lifted it to her face and blinked at it. 'Christmas Through Your Eyes' by Gloria Estefan. When had she set that as her alarm tone? It was a good song, just...not one she usually listened to around the holidays. In fact, she wasn't entirely sure she'd downloaded it to her phone, let alone set it as her alarm. She shrugged, thinking maybe there was a new update on her phone that set random Christmas songs as ringtones or alarms. No matter. She had more important things to attend to like...

Like putting her plan into action. As she brushed her hair and applied her make-up for the day, she ran over what she would say to Adrien. Marinette was only using him for his name and once Cheng Fashions (or whatever she was calling it) had flourished, she would dump him like a sack of flour. His only avenue for happiness was to abandon that pigtail-wearing, dough-kneading, soul-sucking trollop and join someone with actual means. Someone who knew Adrien resented his father and could take him away from the world of high fashion and modeling rather than drag him back in.

Chloé sneered in the middle of getting dressed. Marinette. Always so talented. Always so charismatic. So lucky. So loved. And she made it look so easy! It had to be something she'd mixed in with the cookies she brought to class at the beginning of every year. Brainwashed everyone into wanting to be friends with the useless daughter of a baker rather than the glamorous daughter of the mayor. Who wouldn't want to befriend someone of status like her? Who wouldn't want to do her homework and secure a place at her side? Who wouldn't want to garner the favor of the one woman who had the city in her pocket? No one in Mme. Bustier's class, that's for certain. She shrugged. At least she had Sabrina.

Had...

'You are easily the worst person I've ever met!'

...must have been one of those brainwashing cookies.

Chloé tied back her hair with a bit more force than she had intended. The restrained strands tugged at her scalp, but she didn't care. Such were the sacrifices made for beauty. She picked out her most expensive white winter coat and a purse to match, then made her way down the hallway to the elevators. In between the rhythmic beats of her boots tapping against the carpet, she could barely make out the music coming from the speaker overhead. She cocked her head to the side and listened. It was...an instrumental version of the song playing on her phone. She rolled her eyes. Hopefully this was just 'Red Car Syndrome' and that song wouldn't be stalking her throughout the next week.

If one were asked how well André Bourgeois had aged in the past seven years, one would be answered with an emphatic 'meh'. His receding hairline had ordered a full retreat and his already salt and pepper hair was now just as salty as his daughter. The lines on his face had succumbed to gravity's siren song and he looked every bit the fifty-year-old man he was, but he had just as much energy as he ever did. It seemed losing the last election about a year previous had done wonders for his health, and for the well-being of his hotel and the staff. A shame the same couldn't be said of his relationship with his daughter.

He had tried to give Chloé everything, and when she had asked for space to study in America, he had allowed it. He hadn't even fought or argued over why she wanted to continue her education over nine thousand kilometers away with no guarantees that she would visit on holidays (which she hadn't). They had, however, promised to call each other once a week, but once a week became every other week became once a month became holidays and birthdays and nothing more. When Chloé stepped out of the elevator and made her way to the hotel's dining room, she had hoped for a joyous reunion. A warm smile, a hug, maybe even tears. But the look André wore on his face was that of a man who had just seen his only child yesterday and not gone nearly four years without being in the same room as her. He didn't even stand when she approached their table, simply smiled his fake politician's smile and gestured to the vacant chair across from him.

“So good to see you doing well, Chloé,” he said. Chloé sniffed at his assumption that she was 'well', but offered up a smile just as counterfeit as his.

“Of course, Daddy. What did you expect?”

“I certainly didn't expect you to come home for Christmas this year. What made you change your mind?”

'Saving the love of my life from a succubus, nothing new.' “Adrien and Ma–” her tongue swelled in her mouth at the girl's name. She cleared her throat and snapped her fingers at a server to fetch a glass of water. “–Marinette are getting married.”

“Ah, yes!” André's eyes lit up in a way that made Chloé jealous. “I'm well aware of the impending nuptials. They came to me almost a year ago requesting my kitchen staff to cater the event. They even asked for Marlena by name.”

Chloé gritted her teeth at the realization that her father was facilitating this madness. “I received the invitation just last week. A little last minute I know, but classes had just let out for the winter, so I cleared my schedule and made my travel arrangements.” She shrugged and snatched the full glass of water from the server's hand. “It's for Adrien, after all.”

“You haven't finished with classes yet?” André inquired. “I thought with your schedule you would have finished just a few weeks ago.”

“One of my teachers got fired for propositioning a student,” Chloé said before she took a sip of her water. “I have to wait until they can find a suitable replacement before I can finish my degree.”

A half lie. Mr. Browning had indeed been fired for propositioning a student, and that student was currently sitting in a Paris hotel contemplating how best to sabotage a wedding. However, the school had found a replacement teacher immediately, but Chloé wasn't about to tell her father that the issue keeping her away from Le Grand Paris wasn't an unfinished business degree, but the plain and simple fact that she didn't want to run a hotel for the rest of her life.

“They're not expecting me to pay them more, are they?”

'I tell you I got stuck in a class with a sexual deviant and your first concern is your bank account. No, no Daddy, I'm fine. Don't worry about me. I wasn't bothered by the middle-aged loser curious as to whether or not 'blondes have more fun', so you can go ahead and worry about your checkbook. I'm. Just. Peachy.'

Despite her internal rant, her external composure held. “You won't have to spend another cent on my education, Daddy.”

“Splendid!” He must have seen something over Chloé's shoulder because his eyes brightened up. “Ah, breakfast is served! I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of ordering Eggs Benedict for you. I remember you mentioned craving the dish earlier this year.”

'It was early last year, Daddy. And not that I'd ever tell you, but after tongue kissing a bottle of Jose Cuervo and puking up breakfast last Christmas, even the smell of eggs makes me sick.'

“I'm actually not that hungry,” she lied. Something on her stomach would have done her wonders, but she found her skin itching just at her father's presence. “It's been nice catching up with you, Daddy, but if it's all the same to yo–”

As Chloé stood, her chair pushed backwards behind her. She heard the chair legs scuff on the hardwood floor, felt the chair pitch to her left with her legs, and felt something warm and wet spill down her back. Her shoulders hitched upwards, her face froze in a disgusted grimace, and she slowly turned to see a server on her knees staring up at the heiress in abject horror. Chloé noticed her seat was coated in a viscous, pale yellow sauce and knew, just knew, that the same sauce now stained the back of her coat.

“I-I-I'm s-so sorry, Mlle. Bourgeois!” the server stuttered. “I'll have this cleaned up in–”

“Hollandaise!” Chloe shrieked. “You spilled hollandaise on an Agreste original winter coat! You won't have this cleaned up anytime soon, because this jacket is ruined! Y-you! You!” Chloé whipped her head towards her father and jabbed a finger in the now whimpering girl's face. “Fire her!”

“Chloé, dearest,” André attempted to soothe as he rose from his own chair. “It was an accident, I'm sure. And I'll buy you a new coat, I promise.” He began to rest his arm across his daughter's shoulders, but pulled away at the sight of the sauce oozing across her collar. “Call, uh, call it a Christmas present!”

Chloé glared at her father, then snapped her head back to the server. “So long as it comes out of her paycheck.”

“I'll...see what I can arrange,” he said, though Chloé can tell from his voice that he doesn't intend to dock her pay. In just the short year since he lost mayorship or Paris, he's gone soft, lost all ability to command respect. For a second, Chloé contemplated accepting a position at the hotel just to straighten out the staff, but ultimately determined that once she started down that path, she would never be able to turn back.

Her destiny belonged to her.

(#)

It took André scarcely an hour to procure a replacement coat. It came from the same line as Chloé's old coat, but looked more like the coat she wore when she was still in collège, yellow with black lining and white fur around the collar. 'Like a bee,' she mused for a moment, then easily dismissed the thought.

After taking a shower and changing into fresh clothes; thick, white, thermal leggings and a matching high-collared sweater; Chloe's appetite had only deepened, despite what happened, but she was too eager to be out of the hotel and left to walk about the city before the growling of her stomach could become too evident. Was this what her relationship with her father had become? Was she willing to starve herself just to avoid him? No, no she wasn't, which was why she was on the prowl for real food, not that foul, greasy American fast food. Granted, foul greasy American fast food had its merits, and had become somewhat of a guilty pleasure to the girl who had once lived off of salads and sushi. But right now, she craved fresh croissants from the best bakery in Paris.

It truly pained Chloé to admit it, but M. Dupain made the most wondrous croissants in the city. Soft, flaky, buttery, you could taste the hours of preparation that went into them. Usually, Chloé would send one of her servants or a member of the hotel staff to pick up an order so she wouldn't have to deal with...certain people herself, but without such resources, Chloé was forced to tend to her own needs. She prayed she wouldn't encounter Marinette today. She prayed she could walk in, grab a bag of croissants, and walk out without having to deal with the one person she hated more than anyone else.

The bell above the door jingled as Chloé entered and a young woman with long black hair pulled back in a loose ponytail straightened up from behind the counter. “Good morning!” she smiled. “Welcome to the Dupain-Che...Chloé?”

Atheism was starting to sound pretty good, right about now.

“Good morning, M–Marinette,” Chloé forced through her fake smile. It occurred to Chloé that every smile she had worn since landing in Paris not even a twelve hours ago was fake. In fact, she couldn't remember the last time she had genuinely smiled. Not that she'd had a reason to smile recently. “Three croissants, if you please.”

Marinette blinked, as though the order hadn't processed yet. Then she shook her head and smiled again. “Oh, yeah, sure!” She ducked behind the counter and came up with a small bag and a pair of tongs. “So, when did you get back in Paris?”

'Don't try to play things casual with me, you man-stealing wench!' Not that Chloé would say that aloud. This situation called for subtlety. “Last night. It was a little last minute since I only received my invitation last week.” She hoped the emphasis wasn't lost on the poor baker girl.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Marinette apologized. “We sent it out weeks ago with all the others, but you're the only person we invited living out of country, and we must have gotten your address wrong.” She reached into the display case but bypassed the closest pastries in favor of the fresher croissants towards the front. Chloé sneered at the pathetic attempt at bribery. “We got the invite back last week. Return to sender, envelope was chewed up and had all sort of stamps and seals all over it. We had to have Alya print a fresh one for you and send it out priority mail.” She folded the top of the bag over and passed it over the counter. “I'm just glad you got it on time.”

“Ah, lovely,” Chloé muttered. Marinette was taking this too gracefully. She was supposed to feel guilty. “Put these on my father's tab.”

Marinette waved a hand. “On the house as an apology for inconveniencing you.” The beeping of a timer behind her drew her attention away from the front, so she didn't catch Chloé's snort.

'What petty bribery,' she thought. But when she tore off a piece of croissant an popped it in her mouth... 'Sweet, flaky bribery.'

“Enjoying that, are you?”

Chloé snapped back to reality only to realize she had let her eyes roll back and a satisfied moan escape her. She straightened and said, “Americans can't make decent croissants to save their lives.”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “That's depressing. Glad I could give you a proper welcome back.” Another pair of customers strolled in and Marinette quickly greeted them before turning back to Chloé “Hey, um, Chloé, you, uh...”

“Spit it out,” Chloé snapped. “I have places to be.” Another lie.

Marinette didn't seem phased by Chloe's shortness. “Adrien and I were gonna call you later and ask if you wanted to meet us for lunch? My shift ends in about an hour, so...La Belle Rouge at twelve-thirty?”

La Belle Rouge. Not exactly the fanciest restaurant in Paris, but not exactly something one could afford regularly on a baker's salary. No doubt their meal would be courtesy of Adrien.

“Twelve-thirty.” Chloé nodded and turned on her heel. Now that she had something to distract her from the rumbling in her stomach, the cold sting of the winter wind on her face was all the more evident. She looked around her and saw children throwing snowballs at one another, couples walking up and down the sidewalks arm in arm, but it was the statue in the park to her right that caught her eye.

Even while living in America with no reason to do so, she still followed the Ladyblog, so she knew that Ladybug and Chat Noir had added to their team, the additions reflected in the expanded statuary. The original statue had since been retired to make room for an updated work portraying Paris' five heroes as adults.

Ladybug stood in the center with her arms crossed and Chat Noir stood to her right with his fists on his hips. The original pair had really filled out. Muscle definition, longer hair, and slight modifications to their suits that couldn't quite be depicted in bronze. Next to Chat stood Jade Turtle, his hood down and a hand raised in a two finger salute. Volpina stood to the spotted heroine's left, one hand planted on her hip and her lips curved upwards in a wicked grin that exposed her sharpened canines. And on Volpina's left sat the statue of their newest member.

Paon, the peacock hero. Her statue depicted her standing straight with her feet together. Her signature fans sat unfurled in her hands, one held out to the side and the other just barely covering the smirk on her face. Everything about this statue was completely contrary to how she had acted when she first joined the team. Timid, unsure, down on herself. But over time, she became a fierce warrior, unafraid and confident, and it was that Paon that Theo had captured.

Chloé tilted her head as she gazed on Paon's statue. While Chloé had met the other four heroes on multiple occasions, she had never seen the peacock in person. She had joined what the Ladyblog referred to as 'Team Miraculous' shortly before Chloé left for America. Around the same time that...

'I hope I never see you again!'

“No problem there, Sabrina,” Chloé muttered to herself. “I'm just here to stop a wedding and get my–”

“'Scuse me, Mlle,” came a thin, raspy voice from behind her. She turned to see a scraggly man with an unkempt beard and an unwashed face. He wore a threadbare scarf, mismatched coat and trousers, and a ratty knit hat that looked (and smelled) like he'd pulled it out of a dumpster that morning. In fact, he smelled like he'd pulled himself out of a dumpster that morning. He held out a shaky palm and asked, “Can you spare a centimes for a hungry man?”

Chloé made no small show of bringing her hand up to cover her nose. “I have nothing for you. Now leave. You reek.”

“Please, Mlle,” he pleaded, taking a step closer. “Just a little. It's the holidays, after all.”

The heiress backpedaled. “I know what time of year it is.” When he took yet another step closer, she swung at him with her purse and caught him across the face. “Take a hint! Get away from me you...you garbage man!”

She whirled around and stalked off before the homeless man could react, fury in her steps and her eyes. The nerve of some people. Demanding handouts? And using the holiday season to guilt trip people? Christmas is a poor excuse to pick someone's pockets at the end of every year.

...why did that sound familiar?

“RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!”

Chloé flinched at the guttural roar and the subsequent screams of terror. Now that did sound familiar.

“Call me garbage, will you?”

She spun on her heels to face what could only be described as Frankenstein's Monster made of stitched together trash–empty soda cans, newspapers, half-torn plastic bags–with a massive battered trash can mounted on its back. It roared again and leaned forward to aim the overflowing mouth of the trash can right at Chloé, but she wasn't about to stick around to see what he did with it. Old instincts kicked in as she dropped her croissants and bolted out of the park, glad that she had chosen flat heeled snow boots rather than pumps. Another roar echoed from behind her followed by slow, thundering footfalls.

In the back of her mind, she lamented the loss of her free breakfast, but the forefront was preoccupied with a more important matter: 'I get to see Ladybug again!' All she had to do was avoid the Akuma just long enough for the heroes to show up and Chloé would reunite with her old friend! Thankfully, the Akuma (who called himself Éboueur) was more concerned with covering the streets in hot, rancid garbage than with capturing Chloé. That is until he used his trashcannon (Chloé cringed at the Chat-worthy pun) to launch a field of rotten banana peels into her path.

She slipped on the first peel she stepped on and wondered if this was it. This was her downfall. Done in by a cheap cartoon gag. She landed hard on her backside and more banana peels fell onto her, one slapping across her face.

“Now, you little priss,” Éboueur hissed. “You'll be garbage just...like...meooooff!”

Chloé peeled the peel ('I've got to stop it with the puns') from her face and saw the Akuma on his back and a man in an pitch black costume standing between them. He whirled his staff around and posed with it behind his back. Chat Noir. It was as though Chloe's puns had summoned him.

“Easy now, big guy. Let's not make any trash decisioooooooohh!” He raised a hand to cover his nose and let out a string of hard coughs. Shortly after, a woman in orange with a long flowing tail dropped from the rooftops and landed at his side.

“Hey, you alright there, Kitty Caeeeaauuugh!” Volpina clamped both hands over her nose and coughed. “Wha *coughcough* whad dah hell is dat sbell?”

“Ad Akuba,” Chat deadpanned, his nose still plugged. “Lid–*cough*–liderally bade of hod garbage.”

“Oh, gouuuuhp.” The fox clamped her lips shut and her cheeks puffed out. She swallowed, then said, “Guh, thing I'b gudda be sig.”

“Yeah, be too.” He leaned over and braced his hands against his knees.

A third figure, another woman, landed in front of them and waved her azure fans towards Éboueur. He was just struggling back to his feet, but the sudden gust blew him backwards and took the fetid stench with it. She turned and smiled at the pair, her dark teal eyes shining behind her cerulean mask.

“So glad peacocks don't have super smell. Better?”

Chat simply nodded, gave a thumbs up, and then sneezed. Volpina drew a deep breath in through her nose and let it out as a contented sigh. “Much better, Birdy. Thanks.”

Paon shook her head, her bright orange-red braid swaying behind her. “Would it kill you to use my actual name?”

The fox lightly punched the bird on the arm. “You know that's my thing, girl. Buggy, Kitty, Birdy, Shelly...” She raised her head and glanced around. “Speaking of, I haven't heard from Ni...uh, J-Jade all morning.”

“O-oh,” Paon stammered. “Oh, uh he's...”

“Hey!” came a familiar voice from the rooftops. Chloé glanced upwards and her face brightened at the sight of Ladybug standing with her fists on her hips and looking just as brave and confident as ever.. “You can socialize later. We've got a city to protect!” She tossed out her yoyo and swung hard and fast down the street towards the towering garbage man.

“You two go help LB.” Paon said. “I'll clean up the civilian.” Volpina and Chat nodded, then took off down the street, leaving Paon to stride over to Chloé and lean over to offer her hand.

Chloé accepted it and took in the new hero as she rose to her feet. The woman's suit was predominantly blue. Darker at her collar, then growing lighter as it moved down her body before it transitioned to black knee-high boots. Her fans hung loosely at her waist, suspended on a green belt that also bore a half-skirt of peacock feathers trailing over her left leg. Her gloves, dark blue at her hands fading into green, stopped at her upper biceps, leaving her freckle-flecked shoulders exposed. What Chloé could only assume was her Miraculous sat on the side of her green headband, just above her left ear: a bright blue pin that looked like a fanned peacock tail.

Paon helped brush banana peels from Chloe's clothes and let out a hoarse chuckle. “That guy got you good didn...” She paused when she removed a peel from the woman's face, her smile falling, then rising back up in an almost knowing smirk. “Chloé Bourgeois. How did I know?”

“You know who I am?”

“Please,” she shrugged, “everyone in this city knows you. And you haven't changed a bit in the past–how long has it been?” She tilted her head. “Four years?”

It was Chloé's turn to smirk. “It's because I take care of myself. Yoga, well-regulated diet, a rigorous beauty regi–”

“That's not what I meant.” Chloé raised an eyebrow and Paon's smirk disappeared. The hero crossed her arms and continued, “Not even a day back in Paris and you're already causing trouble.”

“Uh, that homeless guy wouldn't leave me alone,” Chloé defended. “He kept coming at me when I clearly told him to go away.”

A wavy green and blue aura manifested around Paon's eyes. She looked Chloé up and down, and when she had finished with her scrutiny, the aura vanished. “Yeah, something tells me that's not quite what happened.” Chloé opened her mouth to retaliate, but Paon held up her hand. “Save it. Just...do us a favor and try not to be a total Akuma-triggering brat tomorrow, alright? It's Christmas.”

Chloé could only gape after the peacock heroine who leapt off to aid her teammates. The nerve. The...nerve! Accusing her of being anything but the victim? That homeless guy wouldn't take no for an answer! He deserved her wrath! And it wasn't as though she was the only person in Paris capable of making people vulnerable to Hawkmoth. Why did they have to single her out? And that useless peacock hadn't even finished cleaning up the smelly, rotten banana peels staining her clothes. Ruining her second Agreste coat of the day.

She groaned and pulled her phone from her purse which she had–of course, of freaking course–fallen on when she slipped. Thin spider web cracks distorted the selfie she'd taken with Melissa and set as her background. The touch screen was unresponsive, so she was left without a map to guide her to La Belle Rouge. At least until Ladybug fixed everything, per usual. Chloé gingerly stepped around the scattered banana peels and glanced around in an attempt to gain her bearings. The Tour Montparnasse lay to her left...and she had ran away from her old collége...so she had run east...maybe?...and La Balle Rouge was in the 15th arrondissement...so that was...west...ish? A poorly judged step left her on her backside again, the screen on her phone now completely shattered.

This was going to be a long week.

(#)

Around twenty minutes later, Ladybug's magic washed through the streets and set everything right. Well, that abomination was still occurring in about a week, but Chloé wouldn't hold that against the heroine. The Akuma attack had delayed Chloé for too long, and though she was meeting Marinette, of all people, she still insisted on punctuality for Adrien's sake. A quick call to a cab company had her strolling into La Belle Rouge a mere five minutes late for her lunch date.

The small corner bistro, which had opened about six years ago and was dedicated to Ladybug in theme and décor, held few patrons this afternoon, despite being in the height of the lunch rush, but among the few occupants, Chloé couldn't find a certain model or baker. A server wearing a Ladybug mask seated her and took her drink order: a strong, hot cup of Café au lait.

Adrien and Marinette ended up speed-walking in almost five minutes later, both red in the face and panting. Marinette mumbled some excuse about the Akuma holding them up and Adrien corroborated the story. Chloé forced yet another smile and shook Marinette's hand, only maintaining contact as long as necessary before throwing her arms around Adrien's neck and embracing him perhaps a little longer than she really needed to. He awkwardly pushed her away with a grimace almost as forced as Chloé's (not that she'd notice) and took his seat beside his–yech!–fiance.

The same server came up and took their orders. Chloé ordered something light and noted that Marinette chose a heavy, hearty sandwich, a large bowl of soup, and the largest hot chocolate they had. Of course she would load up the bill. She was eating on Adrien's centimes, after all. She feigned regret at ordering such a meal, claimed she hadn't eaten since she started her shift at the bakery, but Adrien only smiled and rubbed his nose against hers, claiming 'his Lady' could order whatever she pleased.

Were they trying to make Chloé vomit?

“So good to see you, Chlo,” Adrien said. “I'm glad you could make it. Did Marinette already apologize for getting the invite to you so late?”

'Oh, she's got far more to apologize for than that, Adrikins.' “Yes. She successfully bought me off with free croissants.” Marinette giggled and Chloé scowled. “Which I dropped during the Akuma attack.”

“Don't worry, Chloé.” Marinette reached across the table and took Chloé's hand, giving it a light squeeze. It took every ounce of her willpower and self control not to jerk away and gag. Did she honestly think they were friends? After what she did? What she was going to do? “You can come to the bakery any time. Papa insists my friends eat for free. W-within reason, of course.”

“Friends? Us?” Chloé said before she could bite back her tongue.

Marinette fidgeted in her seat and blushed. “I...know we never really...hung out or talked or anything like that.” She paused and slumped her shoulders. “Okay, we friggin hated each other back in lycée, but Adrien insisted that I put whatever petty squabbles we had behind us and try to at least be civil.” She met Chloé's eyes and gave a sincere smile. “I want to make an honest effort. I want to be your friend, Chloé. Not just for Adrien's sake, but for our sake.”

'Petty? Petty? You call cozying up to someone else's man 'petty'?' However, despite Chloé's utter disgust at the idea of befriending Marinette, this did present a rather interesting opportunity. If Marinette did consider them friends, it would be no trouble to get closer to her, figure out her juiciest secrets, possibly even whatever she was holding over Adrien's head, then use those secrets to take Adrien back. The poor girl was doing Chloé's work for her.

“My only desire is to see Adrien happy,” Chloé smirked. “And if that's what he truly wants...” Her smirk wavered, but she maintained it. “We can bury the hatchet.”

'In your skull. But only as a Plan B. Can't be Adrien's blushing bride if I have a criminal record.'

Adrien opened his mouth to speak, but the server chose that moment to deliver their food. They ate in relative silence, filling the gaps between bites and sips with idle chit-chat about holiday plans, gifts the still needed to buy, friends they needed to visit. Adrien dropped some ridiculous chemistry pun Chloé wasn't entirely paying attention to, but she still found herself laughing along. This felt...nice. It felt warm, welcoming. It felt good to be around people who didn't want anything from her. No expectations, no outrageous demands, no probing questions. Just sit, eat, chat. Chloé felt a smile creep up on her face, but it immediately vanished when Adrien leaned in to sneak a kiss from Marinette. It didn't matter how 'nice' this felt. She was here for a purpose.

“...tonight?”

Chloé blinked herself out of her stupor and refocused on Marinette. “Sorry, my mind was elsewhere.”

Marinette only smiled. “I asked if you had any plans tonight.” Chloé answered with a shake of her head. “Well...there's a friend of mine who said he'd only come to the wedding if he had a date...and I've known him for a really long time and I really want him to be there...so...”

'Oh you have got to be joking.' “Marinette, are you seriously trying to hook me up with a guy?”

“Not hook you up, per se, but just meet with him and see what happens. I think you'll like him.”

“Who is he?”

Marinette almost answered but Adrien pressed a finger to her lips. “I think it would be more fun if it remained a secret, buga-, uh, babe.”

A blind date. They were trying to set her up on a blind date. She almost said no. She almost turned them down, almost demanded to know who they were trying to set her up with, but an idea popped into her head. Marinette said she'd known whoever-he-is for a really long time. That must mean he knew Marinette well. Well enough to get a little dirt on her. Between Marinette offering her friendship and a window into her past, it would be all too easy to convince Adrien his fiance was nothing but bad news.

“I...suppose I could meet him.” That's right, Chloé. Can't seem too eager. “If I could find something to wear, that is.”

“You're not going to dinner at Astrance, Chloé. Just a small, friendly meal, maybe at Chartier.”

Ugh. Poor people food. But still, it stood to reason that anyone who would call Marinette Dupain-Cheng a friend could only afford such. And if it meant figuring out how to ruin Marinette and win back Adrien, it would be well worth it.

After all, it was only one night.

(#)

The cab let Chloé out in front of Chartier just a few minutes before eight, when she had agreed to meet this mystery man. She still wore the coat her father had given her earlier that day, but had traded in her white leggings for black and sweater for a black off the shoulder dress with long sleeves and gold stitched trim. It was the least fancy dress she'd brought with her, and she had brought quite the selection with her just so she could coordinate something particularly special Marinette's wedding and/or funeral.

She stepped into the dining room and waved off the Maître D. She informed him that she was meeting someone and would find him herself. She wandered, examining every man she passed who fit the description Marinette had given her.

'Black shirt, silver tie. Jeez, Cheng, couldn't give me any more than that? Let's see...black shirt, red tie. Nope. Black shirt...turn around...turn around you son of a...grey tie. Maybe. Ooh, that tie is silver...striped. Is that him? Ugh, god I hope not. I'm not going anywhere near that pedo-stache. Come on. He better be here or I will be worlds of pissed off. Oh, I think that's him. Black shirt...silver tie...red hair oh god is that who I think it is?'

“Nathanaël?”

The red head had been absently flicking his straw around the rim of his water glass and jumped a little at the sound of Chloé's voice. He looked her over, opened his mouth, clamped it shut, then opened it again, as though he were trying to either remember her name or figure out why Marinette had set him up on a date with someone as out of his league as Chloé Effing Bourgeois.

“Uh, Ch...Chloé?” Hmm, perhaps a little of both.

She pursed her lips. “Marinette?”

He huffed and flashed a wan smile. “Marinette.”

Chloé slid into the chair opposite Nathanaël's and noted just how cramped the table was. “Honestly, what was she thinking trying to set us up?”

Nathanaël shrugged. “Maybe she's like Rose. You know, a romantic.”

“Yeah, and maybe, also like Rose, she has no sense of compatibility. Remember how Rose swore Alix and Kim would get together, but Kim asked Max out in première?”

“And Alix ended up being ace?”

Before Chloé could realize what was happening, she found herself smiling. She found herself enjoying reminiscing about their school days. “I swear, did Rose get anyone right?”

Nathanaël crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Let's see...she called Nino and Alya getting together, despite that weird phase where they hated each other.”

Chloé propped her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Yeah, I never really understood what was going on with them.”

“Nino hated Volpina and Alya hated Jade Turtle.” He shrugged. “They made up eventually, but for almost a year, it was like Team Edward versus Team Jacob.”

“Ugh, Twilight references?” Her lips curled upwards in disgust. “Couldn't you have said literally anything else? Like Zutara and Kataang?”

Nathanaël's eyebrows shot upward. “You watched Avatar?”

She tilted her head and hitched one shoulder. “Adrien got me hooked, the nerd.”

He snapped his fingers and pointed to Chloé. “Ah! Another couple Rose called right: Adrien and Marinette.”

Chloé banished her smile at the mention of their names. What was she doing? Waxing nostalgic? No, losing track of her objective was more like it. She was here to recapture Adrien's heart and have her happily ever after, not talk about 'the good ole days' with a red-headed loser of an artist. Just look at him. He hasn't changed a bit. News flash: that emo 'hair-over-one-eye' thing is so twenty years ago. Knowing him, he probably still had a huge crush on...

...wait a minute...

...fortune smiles.

“Everything alright, Chloé?”

A slow, broad smile bloomed across Chloé's face. Not a happy smile, either. Conniving, cunning, deceptive. “Oh, I'm fine, Nathanaël. Just...thinking about the wedding.”

“Oh, is that why you're back in Paris?”

“In a way,” Chloe cooed. She laced her fingers together and closed her eyes. “Marinette is getting married. Doesn't that bother you? Didn't you have a crush on her years ago?”

He blushed. “W-well, yeah, but then again, I think most of the class did. Nino, Kim, which makes me think he's bi, or something, I think Alya mentioned–”

“I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about you. Don't you wish you could be the one marrying Marinette next week?”

“Marinette made her choice, Chloé.” His voice took on an edge she'd never heard before. 'Hmm, maybe his balls finally dropped.' “And though I don't think anyone truly gets over their first crush, I'm happy for her. I'm happy for Adrien.”

“Oh, I'm sure you are, but are you happy for yourself?” She opened her eyes and took in the look of bewilderment on his face. He still hadn't answered. “I have a bit of a proposition for you that could prove mutually beneficial for us.”

Nathanaël squinted at her, not sure if he should cut his losses and go home, or hear her out. Against his better judgment, he responded, “Proposition?”

Chloé grinned. “Help me put a stop to this wedding. Adrien deserves someone better than Marinette–”

“Someone like you?” The edge had returned, but Chloé paid it no mind.

“You catch on quick.” She leaned in even closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Help me win Adrien back and I'll help you improve your standing in Marinette's eyes. We both end up with who we want, we both go home happy. So, what do you say?”

He sat with his eyes on Chloé, his brow furrowed. Nearly a minute of silenced passed between them, only broken by the ambient clatter of dishes and chatter of patrons. He was overthinking this. All he had to do was use his connections to Marinette and supply Chloé with whatever information she needed to make Adrien see reason, then when Adrien left Marinette at the alter, Nathanaël could be there to comfort her, and she'd realize just the kind of guy she had overlooked amid her blind, star-struck celebrity worship.

'Come on, Nath. Just say the word and you get to have your princess, just like in those stupid little comics you used to draw.'

“No.”

“...what?”

He hardened his gaze and stood, his chair shrieking against the floor. “I can't believe you. I thought maybe after all these years, you'd changed. Maybe you'd learned to let go and realize that Adrien never loved you, not the way he loves Marinette. And maybe you'd matured enough to be happy for your best friend...” He paused, eyes wide, and poured buckets of sarcasm into his next few words. “Oh, I'm sorry. You're only friend, despite whoever he chose to spend the rest of his life with.”

He gathered up the gray coat that had been hanging from the back of his chair and glared down at Chloé. “You know, I was kinda on the fence about going to the wedding, but I think I will now, if for no other reason than to keep you the hell away from it!” He dug a money clip from his pocket, tossed a couple of euros onto the table and stomped around Chloé towards the door.

Silence reigned in the restaurant, though no longer marred by clatter and chatter. Several eyes were locked on her after Nathanaël's outburst. Chloé simply sat in what may well have been shock. How dare he. How...dare he! She comes up to him with a golden opportunity to have what he admitted he still wanted, and he turns her down? Did...did Marinette really have the entire city brainwashed into accepting this? This was madness! Insanity! She was only using Adrien! She didn't know the first thing about him, not like Chloé did! Chloé would truly appreciate Adrien, give him the life he deserved. And she would do it without that obnoxious artists help.

...right after she gave him a piece of her mind.

She swept upwards out of her chair, paused, then snatched the euros off the table. No service, no tip. She stormed out of the restaurant and whipped her head left and right, blonde hair snapping behind her, until she caught sight of Nathanaël waving down a cab just down the street. He must have heard the rapid fire click of her heels on the sidewalk, or perhaps sensed the aura of fury and doom oozing from her every pore, because he turned his head towards her and widened his eyes. He shouted something that Chloé would have registered as 'look out' had her anger-addled brain been able to do so, but before she could get out the first word to tear him a new one, Nathanaël, and the whole city even, slipped downwards in her field of vision.

She never saw the ice. The ice Nathanaël had slipped on just a few seconds ago. The ice he had tried to warn her about. The ice that sent her legs flying forward from underneath her and her head crashing backward into the concrete.

She never saw the CT scans that showed internal hemorrhaging in the back of her skull. She never saw the surgeon desperately trying to save her. She never saw her heart monitor flatline, the aide who performed CPR for almost fifteen minutes, the nurse who placed his hand on the aide's shoulder, assuring her she had done all she could. She never saw the surgeon glance up to the clock and call her time of death right at midnight with a wry mutter of 'Merry Christmas.'

She also never saw the bright green wave of light that originated near Notre Dame and washed across the entire city.

[signalsowon]

A Little Big Family -02 Denny's, Lost Shoes and Sparkly Stuff-

⁎Pairings:Namjoon x Reader, Jimin x Reader, Yoongi x Hoseok, Yoongi x Taehyung, Seokjin x Jungkook

⁎Warnings: Little Space, cg/l, age regression- de-aging, non-sexual age play, non-sexual intimacy, polyamory

⁎Genre/s: Fluff, more drabbles than plot, cuteness, future angst

Summary: Y/N, Yoongi, Seokjin (and all of their littles) decide to buy a house and live together.

✧ This fic is also ongoing on my ao3 ✧

| 01 | 02 |

The next morning Y/N woke up feeling a little confused as to where she was, seeing as she wasn’t in her own bed, before she remembered the events of the previous night. Speaking of last night, where were her boyfriends? She was about the get out of the empty bed when the smell of smoke hit her like a ton of bricks. Her mind running a mile a minute, she quickly went to find the source, or the boys, whichever she found first.

She made her way into the kitchen to see Jimin sitting at the kitchen table swinging his feet and Namjoon fanning at the toaster with a towel. She went past the two of them and quickly opened all of the windows and batted out the small fire that had started inside the appliance. After the fire was out a blackened bagel popped out with a ‘ding’.

She turned to the oldest of the two boys and gave him a look that, without having to say anything, made Namjoon explain the situation.

“Well, I was just trying to make breakfast for me and Jiminie but uh I didn’t know how hot to make the toaster so I uh turned it up all the way and then it was on fire and I really didn’t mean to set Yoongi-hyung’s toaster on fire but it happened so quickly- I’m sorry noona.” His head was hanging low and by the use of honorifics, he wasn’t in little space.

“It’s fine Joon, I’ll just buy Yoongi a new toaster. You’re not hurt are you?” She really wasn’t mad or upset, Yoongi probably didn’t even use the toaster anyways.

“I’m fine, but now we don’t have anything to eat for breakfast…or a toaster.” she chuckled at the tall boy and suddenly remembered something.

“Hey, speaking of Yoongi, where is he? And the boys, too. I haven’t seen them either.” She said noticing the apartment’s lack of brown and orange haired boys running all over the place.

“They went to the park for a little bit but we didn’t want to go without you so we stayed here.” Jimin said from his spot at the table, still slightly swinging his legs.

“Well, since they’re out and we have nothing to eat, do you want to meet up with them at denny’s or something?” She didn’t know very many places to eat a good meal for cheap and denny’s was the first thing that came to mind.

“Wanna go to denny’s mommy! Can Jiminie get crayons?” sometimes Jimin could go into little space surprisingly quickly, usually it happens when he has memories of doing things while little or keywords that remind him of being little. Triggers, if you will.

“Of course, baby boy. Go get dressed and we’ll head out. I’ll text uncle Yoongi and tell him to meet us there okay?” The two boys nodded in response before going to change, Jimin skipping excitedly and Joon trailing behind him. Y/N shook her head and giggled about the events of her morning before going to get ready as well.

After a short drive they arrived at Denny’s, one of Jimin’s favorites. When they stepped out of the care Y/N couldn’t help but notice how good they all looked. She wasn’t trying to brag or anything but damn.

Jimin was wearing blue jeans , a fuzzy black sweater and white sneakers, his freshly dyed pink hair looked fluffy as ever and he had asked Y/N for help with a little bit of silver glitter eyeliner. Joon was in a more simple outfit of blue jeans, a black shirt, black chucks and a hat. Y/N had her hair in a bun and was wearing Jimin’s striped long-sleeve and black jeans. They looked bomb, to say the least.

While they were waiting to be seated Yoongi had texted her that they would be a few minutes late because somehow Taehyung had left one of his shoes at the playground and didn’t say anything until they were almost there.

Their normal waitress, Wendy came over and told them to follow her. “Table for three, right?” she said picking up one regular menu and two kid’s menus. Yes, they went to Denny’s that often and thank god Wendy was so sweet and understanding.

“Not today. Yoongi and the boys are gonna join us, too.” She gave a nod and brought out two more kid’s menus and another regular one before Namjoon spoke up.

“Uh n-no kids menu today please.” She gave him an understanding smile and switched the kid’s for a regular one. Namjoon was always very embarrassed talking about little space when he was big. Y/N held his hand and gave it a soft squeeze, silently telling him everything was alright and he smiled in return.

Wendy led them to the big round booth that comfortably seated all six of them and handed them their menus and crayons, leaving them to figure out what they wanted to eat. Jimin was slightly bouncing in his seat along to a song he was humming as he looked at his menu. Namjoon almost always got the same thing so there was really no need to look at the menu. And Y/N had her mind set on waffles. Wendy came back with drinks: coffee for Y/N, a coke for Joon and a hot chocolate with extra whipped cream for jimin.

After getting their drinks she quickly reappeared with Yoongi and the boys behind her. Tae sat in the booth first, then Hoseok and Yoongi. Jimin gave Tae a big hug and they started coloring together. “Your eyeliner looks pretty today, Jiminie,” Tae said with a giggle making Jimin blush. They were best friends, like two peas in a pod and it was adorable to watch them interact.

Namjoon had started talking to hoseok about one of their upcoming literature tests and that left Y/N and Yoongi. She took a sip of her coffee before asking “Have you talked to oppa or Jungkookie this week? I haven’t heard from them in a few days.”

“Yeah, they went to Busan to see Kookie’s parents or something. And how come you call Seokjin ‘oppa’ but not me?” He was really up-the-ass about honorifics for some reason and it was honestly quite funny.

“Yoongi-yah you’re only three weeks older than me, I am not going to call you oppa. Anyways, do you know when they’ll be back?” She chuckled at his grumpy expression before taking another sip of coffee.

“They should be back in two days. Hyung took a whole week off for vacation. Jungkook somehow convinced his professors into giving him all of the powerpoints for the week with some kind of black magic or something.” They both laughed as Wendy came back to take their orders.

After all of their bellies were full, Y/N and Yoongi split the bill and they were on their way to the mall. It was first Jimin’s idea to go shopping but once Tae agreed so did the others and twenty minutes later Y/N found herself in the massive shopping center with the five boys. Jimin had dragged her by the wrist into the Disney store where he found a cute nemo plushie and a watch with Ariel from The Little Mermaid on it.

Next, it was both Tae and Jimin going into Claire's and picking out matching sparkly earrings. Hoseok and Namjoon wandered off to the food court to get smoothies and an iced coffee for Yoongi. Jimin had also found a cute pencil case with bunnies on it and all it took was “Look mommy, for my crayons.” and Y/N was taking it up to the counter along with the two pairs of earrings.

They barely walked out of the store when Jimin suggested they go to sephora because “There’s a really pretty highlighter that makes your cheekbones shiny.” and even though she argued “But your cheekbones are already shiny and pretty, baby boy.”. It’s obvious that no matter how much she protested, the soft spot she had for the pink-haired boy always ended up winning.

Y/n thought she was just going in for a highlighter and leaving, but of course, she ended up with a handful of products that would certainly take a chunk out of her bank account. Sure, she might’ve browsed through the many brands and maybe she might have contributed to the truckload she was holding, but she’s only human. In the end, the giddy look on Jimin’s face made it all worthwhile.

In the midst of their adventure in sephora Tae had come up to Y/n with his head dropped slightly, mumbling something that Y/n couldn’t quite make out. Even though he towered over her, she tilted his head from looking at her through his bangs. “What is it Teddy?” The nickname made him feel a little better so he decided to use his big-boy voice.

“D-do you think daddy will let me wear this?” He held up a sparkly pink eyeshadow Y/n hadn’t even noticed he was holding until now. She almost cooed at how small the tall boy appeared in front of her.

“Of course, Teddy bear. It’s a very pretty color, actually, can you grab one for me too?” His signature smile came back like it never left and he skipped through the store to get the shadow.

Yoongi had told her before how much he liked when tae wore sparkly things saying how it made him look so much brighter; he didn’t even know that was possible. Taehyung usually only ever wore subtle neutral shadows so his apprehension was understandable.

Handing over the products to the cashier was slightly worrying. Y/n knew her card wasn’t going to decline but she still had her doubts. The products were all nicely wrapped in two large bags and Jimin gave her hand a small squeeze, much like she had done to namjoon earlier, when he noticed the slight worry painting her features. The total ended up being lower than Y/n had expected and she felt a little better walking out of the store with both boys giggling beside her.

Walking into the food court, Y/n spots the three boys sitting at a table. Yoongi is on his phone, pushing up his glasses up the bridge of his nose every once in awhile, and Namjoon is laughing about something on Hoseok’s phone when they sit down. Jimin is tempted to poke the dimples in both of their cheeks but he settled on taking a sneaky picture of the two.

“Did you guys have fun?” Yoongi finally put his phone down, pinching Tae’s cheek.

“Yeah Jiminie got a lot of makeup and noona got Taetae a pretty eyeshadow.” Yoongi smiled at the brown-haired boy as he was talking.

While Taehyung was telling Yoongi about all of the soft brushes and colorful makeup, Y/n realized the two ‘94 boys hadn’t gone shopping yet. “Namjoon-ah, were there any shops you wanted to go to?”

“No, not today.” His gazed returned to his phone and Y/n couldn’t help but wonder what was wrong. Of course he wasn’t little everyday so that wasn’t the issue. What made her worry was Namjoon never turned down the chance to get new clothes. He seemed a little weird all day, actually. She didn’t disregard his strange behavior but she wouldn’t ask him about it; if he needed to, he would come to her so she just has to wait it out.

Lost in her own thoughts she almost didn’t hear the small “psst” that came from beside her. She turned to Jimin and he waved her closer so he could whisper something to her. “Is something wrong with Joonie? He’s acting funny.” See? Even Jimin had noticed the shift in his mood.

“I don’t know baby boy. Maybe he’ll tell us later but for now let’s let him be, okay?” He gave her a small nod.

“Daddyyyy, can we go home now? Taetae is very tired.” He was leaning his head on Yoongi’s shoulder; Yoongi reaching up to ruffle his hair slightly.

“Yeah kiddo, let’s go home.” With that, the whole gang walked out of the mall, happy to be going to the warmth of Yoongi’s apartment.

In the car on the way back, Namjoon sat in the passenger seat; leaving Jimin by himself in the backseat. He was had finally looked up from his phone and Y/n took the opportunity to ask what was going on. She couldn’t stand to see him so down so she decided now was as good of a time as any.

“What’s going on, Joon?” The question came out of nowhere so the “Hm?” she received was expected. “You seem down today. Something wrong?” He shook his head, more like he was contemplating telling her than it was a response.

Silence filled the car for a moment before Y/n looked over to see the boy sitting shotgun looking like he was on the verge of tears. She took his hand and decided to pull over the first place she could, which happened to be a Mcdonald’s. Putting the car in park, she turned herself to the side to face the boy on her right.

“Can you tell me what's up, Joonbug?”

He took a deep breath; Y/n rubbing her thumb against his hand helped him to relax a bit.

“It’s just that- I just-” He sighed. It was sometimes hard for him to articulate his feelings when he got worked up. Even with his extensive vocabulary, he was seemingly speechless. “It's stupid.” He shook his head again, telling himself he was just overreacting.

“I'm sure that whatever it is, it's certainly not stupid. No matter how stupid you think it is, you can tell us. Right, Jiminie?” The boy in the back nodding his head with a ’mhm’.

“Well, earlier I seen how easily Jimin goes into little space and I wanted to go into it too but I couldn't and then at Denny’s when Wendy got a kids menu out it felt weird and I don’t know I guess not being little is just weird…” This boy is so well-spoken that it almost makes her laugh at his rambling. Almost.

“I understand but, You can't force something like that. Yeah, Jiminie can go into little space really quickly but he's done it for years. You just barely experienced going into headspace a few months ago. It takes time for something like this. Hell, even I'm new to this.” That earned her a small ‘Mommy, don't swear!’ from the back seat. He seemed to relax at her words, maybe he was just overreacting.

“Now, I don't know much about how to go into headspace but maybe you can ask Hoseokie to see if he knows what you're going through; he might be able to give you some advice” She kissed the knuckles of his hand and he leaned over the center console to give her a hug.

“Thanks, noona.” She gave him a squeeze before he sat back down in his seat.

“Okay, who wants ice cream?”

“JIMINIE DOES!”

[yahoo-puck-daddy-blog]

Puck Daddy Bag of Mail: Canucks' strategy remains puzzling

Jim Benning has done some dubious work, as the Canucks GM, but he has an extension in hand. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

It’s a bit of a grab bag this week, folks. Pretty healthy mix of people wondering what teams are going to do down the stretch, with respect to their playoff chances or what they might do at the deadline,

Alrighty, here we go:

Yamada asks: “Jim Benning extension: speak on that?”

Hoooo boy.

The number of times this team has moved the goalposts on the rebuild — one assumes entirely due to the whims of management — is pretty incredible at this point. This is a team seemingly dead set on vacillating between saying all the right things about rebuilding (which Trevor Linden did in a letter to season ticket holders before the Benning presser) but not actually following through on that. Which is only going to piss off smart fans and keep less-smart fans not-that-interested.

You really can’t argue that Benning isn’t doing a good job at the draft. You can very much argue he isn’t doing a good job in any other aspect of the job. He traded picks and prospects for Erik Gudbranson in a obviously-bad-on-Day-1 deal and years later is going to re-sign Gudbranson rather than trade him.

If you’re legit rebuilding, Benning’s job of finishing 28th, 29th, and probably in that same range again this year is pretty good! But the Canucks aren’t legit rebuilding. They’re spinning the tires and they’re going to do it for another three years behind this extension.

From management’s point of view, I get it. I don’t get it from any other point of view.

MDS asks: “Do you think the Jets making the Western Conference Finals is plausible?”

Yeah I mean, look where I’ve had them in the Power Feelings all year. If Nashville is now clearly the best team in the West (they are, and they’re gonna add at the deadline), it’s still tough to see the Jets as being too far behind them. That means even though they’re going to play in the second round, it’s very conceivable that Winnipeg comes out on top because, y’know, weird stuff happens in this sport.

That said, they have some obvious holes to address if they want to improve their chances of getting that far. I don’t trust either their forward or defensive depth as much as I do for Nashville, but this is a very good team that, if it gets even a little hotter, would be a tough out for any great team.

Borbay asks: “Should an intentional blow to the head result in a match penalty and an instant penalty shot by any player on the ice at the time of contact?”

I’m of the opinion that the NHL should take a real NFL-style approach to all this and just straight up penalize a guy for any contact to an opponent’s head that seems a little more than incidental.

Obviously you give the refs a little discretion to dole out those penalties as minors and majors, or even match penalties, based on the severity of the incident. So it should be automatically a penalty, but the extent of that penalty shouldn’t be set in stone.

The idea that you’d give away a penalty shot, which is basically worth a goal on every third headshot your team gives up, is interesting because that’s a pretty good deterrent, but that feels like it’s messing with the rules too much.

Aliza asks: “With the Rangers actually starting to try and tank now, how likely do you think that they’ll be able to get the No. 1 pick and Dahlin?

It’s very unlikely this year.

They almost certainly won’t be able to trade the only reason they’re any good this year — Henrik Lundqvist — and he’s not gonna drop off so much that they lose, I guess, six or seven of every 10 games down the stretch.

Plus there’s the fact that they’ve banked so many points already. They have 59 points, which isn’t a great total, but it’s also nine more than anyone in the bottom-five has. Even if the Rangers slow down a little bit and finish with 82 points, that probably puts them in the range of seventh to ninth from the bottom. And that’s assuming that all the teams behind them don’t sell off and get worse as well.

If they get into that area, they probably have about a 5 percent chance of winning the draft lottery, which isn’t great. Stranger things have happened, I guess, but the Devils winning last year was a shock and they had an 8.5 percent chance to win, having finished tied for third-bottom.

So, to answer your question directly: “Don’t get your hopes up.”

Tim asks via email: “What do you think about Jim Rutherford standing pat with Riley Sheahan?”

I mean I guess it’s fine because the Penguins are on right now.

The odds that they overtake Washington to win that division are looking pretty good. And Sheahan, after a slow start with the organization, has 10 points in his last 18 games, which is probably all you want to ask from a No. 3 center you’re playing 16 minutes a night.

Are there upgrades out there? Probably. Do they cost more than what Rutherford already gave up to get Sheahan? Almost certainly. So if you’re doing a cost-benefit analysis here, it’s fine that he’s standing pat. They’re still probably going to lose to whoever comes out of the Atlantic.

Krista asks: “What’s your all-time women’s hockey dream team roster?”

I really don’t know enough about women’s hockey to go 20 bodies deep on a roster but I can sure put together a starting lineup. Here they are with some of their international stats:

Up front, give me Hayley Wickenheiser, Cammi Granato, and Cassie Campbell. Conveniently, they all play different forward positions. This is a no-brainer, but there are so many good candidates who get left off: Jenny Potter, Cherie Piper, Meghan Agosta, Hillary Knight, Julie Chu, the Lamoreux twins, Marie-Philip Poulin, etc. You can go on for a while. But if you’re putting together a Women’s Hockey Mount Rushmore, it’s these three and then you pick someone else.

On the blue line, it’s gotta be Angela Ruggerio and Geraldie Heaney. I believe they’re the two defensive leading scorers in women’s international hockey history and they’re both in the Hall of Fame. I also can’t think of too many more defenders who even come close to staking up, so they gotta be the two.

And in net, three-time Olympic and five-time World Championship gold medalist Kim St. Pierre seems like a pretty good pick, but I think maybe you gotta go with Shannon Szabados. Szabados had a shorter international career but also was the first woman to play in the AJHL, WHL, and SPHL. Playing four seasons of men’s professional hockey, and being actually pretty damn good at it, is amazing; the game is a lot faster and the shots are a lot harder, and Szabados kept up with it pretty effectively for like 50 games.

I will, by the way, listen to an argument for Noora Raty in net for a lot of the same reasons as Szabados (she played in men’s leagues in Finland, etc.) but she doesn’t have the international resume the two Canadians do. Though, to be fair, Finland ain’t exactly Canada.

So yeah, those are my picks:

Cassie Campbell – Wickenheiser-  Granato

Ruggerio – Heaney

Szabados

Dan asks: “What would be the most effective move Chicago could make for the future, either trade for someone or trade someone away or stay pat? And who?”

As I said yesterday, they should sell if they can, but they probably can’t. I’d put a for-sale sign on almost everyone over the age of 25 and see what kinds of deals other teams want to make. Most of the big-ticket guys probably can’t be moved until the summer, if at all.

They have a bunch of pretty good (not great) young players, and heck I’m even inclined to chalk the poor year for Brandon Saad up to bad luck — his on-ice shooting percentage is well below his career average, just as an example, while his underlyings are very good — but other than that if I’m Stan Bowman and you want to have a conversation about Toews or Crawford or Keith or Kane, hey, let’s talk.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

All stats via Corsica unless noted otherwise.

[yahoo-puck-daddy-blog]

Puck Daddy Countdown: Kings, Canadiens and shameful hockey writers

The Los Angeles Kings look unstoppable right now, but will it last? (Juan Ocampo/NHLI via Getty Images)

(In which Ryan Lambert takes a look at some of the biggest issues and stories in the NHL, and counts them down.)

7 – Norris candidacy

The Blues put Alex Pietrangelo on IR this week and expect him to be out a week. Bad news for everyone who penciled him in as the next Norris winner instead of Erik Karlsson, who actually deserves it, because now that whole “At least he’s durable!” argument goes away.

It can be used to start a pile with the “Pietrangelo added an element of offense to his game.” But one assumes that the Blues being a lot better than the Senators will be held against Karlsson, who coincidentally is also not from Canada, as will the fact that someone asked him about his contract status and he answered honestly.

How much do you think has to go wrong for the Blues and Pietrangelo for the Canadian media to not give him the Norris this year? A lot, right?

6 – The Ducks

Here’s a one-act play I wrote:

Randy Carlyle: Hey, Ryan Getzlaf and Jakob Silfverberg are back!

Ducks fans: Oh that’s great, because this team has been muddling through an injury-filled season and haven’t really been able to play at full strength all year. And sure, the playoffs are already feeling like a dim hope, but maybe just maybe they can put something together for the last 60 percent of the season or something.

Corey Perry [writhing on the ground and being helped off the ice]: Ah, my knee! I’m gonna need a week or two off at least!

Ducks fans: Crap.

Thanks. If you want to pay to produce this, the rights can be yours for a billion dollars.

5 – Playing the game

This is inside-baseball stuff, but I really don’t care. It’ll also get me banned from the PHWA forever and I don’t care about that either. So here goes:

Far be it for me, a guy who is not in the PHWA, to tell the PHWA how to handle its business, but it seems to me that it is very bad for the guy who is in charge of the organization to start telling off its members publicly via tweet.

The Athletic’s Justin Bourne, who was a scholarship NCAA forward and later played in both the ECHL and AHL, before also being a video coach in the AHL, said he didn’t like a certain kind of shootout move that Connor McDavid tried and failed, prompting PHWA president and certified brain genius Mark Spector to tweet at Bourne, asking how many goals he scored at the NHL level.

The answer, of course, is zero. But if you’re gonna “never played the game” someone, make sure it isn’t someone who made a living for a few years doing just that. Especially if your Elite Prospects page doesn’t exist.

But the larger point is: The president of the PHWA shouldn’t be calling out members for any reason, especially if he’s also been the president of the Professional Hockey Writers Shouldn’t Criticize Each Other Publicly Association for a lot longer than he’s been running the PHWA. I hate to use this phrase, but Spector is the kind of thin-skinned writer who can absolutely dish it out, but throws a temper tantrum when anyone tries to make him take it.

Spector’s public apology said he was wrong to criticize Bourne without knowing his résumé as a player, which again is about a million times more impressive than Spector’s (even if Bourne did only play at Alaska Anchorage lol), but that’s missing the point, which Spector does a lot, I guess, so it’s par for the course.

The idea that you have to have played the game to understand it is demonstrably stupid, although you certainly have a much greater chance of not understanding it if you didn’t. Exhibit A: Mark Spector.

The PHWA is not an organization which has covered itself with glory in recent years (see: The Alex Ovechkin All-Star kerfuffle, and the fact that Spector of all the writers in the world is allowed to run it), but to let this bozo — whose takes lately have resembled the Sideshow Bob rakes scene — act like this without any apparent repercussions or at the very least offer a better apology is unconscionable.

4 – Mulling a trade

Apparently the Canadiens, after winning five straight and then immediately losing three straight, are back to having an identity crisis about whether they should make a big trade to get them going. And I mean, maybe they should. I don’t think it would hurt, but also I bet it probably doesn’t provide the panacea everyone seems to think it will. Certainly, any midseason trade they could complete won’t make their team shooting percentage league-average overnight. It won’t make the goalies better than .903.

So I dunno. Do what you want, I guess. Probably won’t make this a playoff team. The Habs are 10-14 in regulation and that’s a pretty deep hole to dig out of.

But I do like the idea that despite all these problems, they’re demanding that Shea Weber play hurt in freakin’ mid-December. Never give up!

3 – Carrying water

Eric Francis did a great job in the Calgary Sun this week, basically threatening on Murray Edwards’ behalf to personally move the Flames to Houston if the city won’t pay for a new rink in the next three years.

The best line:

“Maybe this formerly progressive city of 1.4 million is in fact reflective of the anti-business leadership at all three levels of government, driving entrepreneurs like principle [sic] Flames owner Murray Edwards out of town.”

I can’t even imagine what kind of broken-ass brain you have to have to side with a guy worth almost $1.9 billion over the taxpayers in your own city, but conservatives, by definition, are selfish people.

I’ve said this before, but when you see someone going this hard in favor of something that is deeply unpopular, and in favor of moneyed interests, you gotta ask yourself: “What’s in it for that guy?” And maybe there’s nothing in it for him at all! But maybe there is. Who’s to say?

2 – Fleury’s back

By the transitive property of Vegas having a bunch of ECHLers give them save percentages well above what should have been expected, it’s reasonable to predict that Marc-Andre Fleury will go .960 the rest of the season.

1 – The Kings

I’m on record as not really believing this Kings team is especially for real. They have sub-50 possession numbers and the third-highest PDO in the league and really benefit from playing in a pretty bad division. I mean, if you think Jonathan Quick (.930 in all situations, .934 at 5-on-5) is this good, I have a 10-year contract to sell you.

But hey, they’ve won eight straight and sit atop the Pacific, and that’s with Jeff Carter — just about their only good forward last season — being out for almost the entire season to date. Now look, it’s hard to win eight straight against anyone, so even though I’m not super-impressed with that run including wins over Anaheim, Detroit, Chicago, Minnesota, Ottawa and Carolina, you gotta say, hey, they banked the points.

(Not ranked this week: The freakin’ holidays, folks!

I’m stressed out!!!!)

—

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All statistics via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)

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Trending Topics: Golden Knights already badly mismanaged

The Golden Knights completely bungled the Vadim Shipachyov situation. (David Becker/Getty Images)

If you were wondering whether George McPhee had gotten any better at handling an NHL roster since he was ousted in Washington, and you still had some lingering doubts even after he mostly punted the expansion draft, the end of the Vadim Shipachyov saga should answer all questions with finality.

Let’s not all look at once, but Vegas has one win in its last six games, and it needed to score five goals against a not-great Senators team to do it. Part of their current problem is that they can’t keep even an AHL-level goalie healthy enough to stay competitive, sure, and the team is still second in its division. But we all know hard times are coming even if Marc-Andre Fleury gets healthy sometime soon, because the team isn’t going to shoot almost 12 percent for the rest of the season.

But it’s lucky for McPhee the team got off to that hot start — such a great, fun story, especially in the wake of the shooting there; all that stuff is 100 percent true — because if they were playing to the level we would have all expected and were, say, 5-9-1 instead of 9-5-1, the Shipachyov saga would have people asking a lot more questions than they currently are.

Everyone signed off on his contract termination Thursday, and it’s expected the center will head back to Russia. The good news for Vegas is that it’s only on the hook for the cost of Shipachyov’s contract while he was rostered with the NHL club, and a smaller portion of that from when he was technically buried in the AHL, plus a very small portion of his signing bonus.

After the whole story came to an end and Shipachyov “retired” from the NHL, McPhee revealed that he had a trade on the table but that the player wanted to head back home (not hard to understand), but also that Shipachyov wasn’t playing well enough to supplant even the No. 4 center on the roster. This is an incredible statement to make, because in their most recent game, Vegas used Pierre-Edouard Bellemare as its No. 4 center, and he only got a whopping 10:34 of ice time, second-lowest total on the team.

The idea we’re supposed to buy, then, is that Shipachyov wasn’t good enough to take 10 and a half minutes of ice time against fourth liners and do better than Bellemare (currently a 45 percent possession player with 2-1-3 in 15 games against bottom-of-the-barrel competition).

This means one of three things, and neither one speaks highly of what McPhee has done to this point.

1) McPhee is just glossing over a chemistry/dressing room issue

Maybe Shipachyov, like plenty of other Enigmatic Russians over the years, is just a jerk and no one likes him. If this were Boston or Edmonton or Philly, we’d already have gotten those stories shivving the player on his way out of town. And let’s say this is the real issue: It explains why the player capital-R Refused to report to Chicago. But it also leads you to ask why McPhee didn’t do his homework before bringing aboard a 30-year-old who’d never played in North America at $4.5 million for two seasons.

McPhee would have, of course, had plenty of experience dealing with malcontent-locker-room-cancer Russians with the whole Alex Semin thing several years ago, and as good as Semin was in those days — really, really good — the player’s presence was something that overshadowed his quality to a significant extent. Do you know how much of a prick you have to be for an NHL general manager to look past 271 points in 277 games over four seasons?

That’s not saying Shipachyov would have been nearly point-a-game for Vegas, as Semin was, but the principle is the same. This is a guy who can score, and if you screwed up the vetting process, that’s on you.

Frankly, though, I don’t think that’s it, because why wouldn’t McPhee himself just shiv the guy in the exit interview if that were the case? “It didn’t work out because he didn’t match our culture,” is an explanation the hockey establishment would mostly buy. As with elephants, sometimes hockey players are just jerks.

2) McPhee overestimated Shipachyov at the time of the signing

Hey, it happens all the time: GMs get all excited about what they think is a great talent, throw a bunch of money at it, and then find out, “Oops, that was a mistake.”

But I find it extremely difficult to believe that McPhee misevaluated Shipachyov’s talent level to the point that the guy goes from potentially being the No. 1 center — remember, this is on a team with Wild Bill freaking Karlsson as its actual No. 1 center, so being the top pivot isn’t that hard — to thinking, “Ah well, y’know, he’s more like our No. 5.”

Real McPhee quote from when the team signed Shipachyov: “He is prepared to play a lot and sees that there could be a lot of ice time. We fully expect him to be one of the top six forwards, as well as a major contributor on play on power plays and the penalty kill.”

Now he’s not even good enough to be in your lineup? We’re supposed to buy that?

When was the last time a GM was that wrong about someone? Maybe when Ken Holland got Stephen Weiss at $4.9 million — by the way, that contract would still be happening if it hadn’t been bought out three summers ago — and he only put up 29 points in 78 games over two seasons. And even then, that disappointment was driven as much by injury as by Holland not being good at his job.

So if this kind of misevaluation were the case, and I partially doubt that it is, that says to me McPhee is a world-class misjudger of talent. But again, there’s misjudging things and misjudging things so badly that you think an AHLer is going to be the best center on your team. No one is this bad at their job.

3) McPhee underestimated Shipachyov once he got to Vegas

This seems to me to be the most plausible. Remember, Vegas held Shipachyov, Shea Theodore and Alex Tuch off the NHL roster for a little while in part because McPhee was forcing the team to carry the 52 bad defensemen he took in the expansion draft.

Shipachyov, however, didn’t report to the AHL even though he was assigned there, because his wife doesn’t speak English and reportedly wasn’t doing well alone in a new city on a new continent. Shipachyov did pretty well in the preseason, driving play but only getting one assist. He also scored in his NHL debut when the team finally called him up, but that was his only point in three appearances and he got pushed around at 5-on-5.

So it’s a mixed bag in terms of how he played, but it’s also fair to say he wasn’t given a chance by either Gerard Gallant or McPhee. His total ice time between the preseason and regular season only comes to about 100 minutes over seven games — 14 a night, give or take — and overall he finished a mere 51 percent at 5-on-5. However, despite the promises of a lot of power-play time, he got none in either the pre- or regular season. That, frankly, just doesn’t make sense if you thought for even a second the guy was a potential elite scorer.

Again, there’s no way you take a talent with that many points in that many KHL seasons and say, after 100 minutes of even semi-competitive ice time, “This guy’s worse than Bellemare and it’s not particularly close.”

How much, then, does this have to do with the fact that Vegas shot 12.5 percent and went 8-3 before they called up Shipachyov and got him into a game (in which he scored)? How much does it have to do with the fact that in his three games, the team shot just 9.9 percent over three games, all of which they lost because they didn’t have an AHL goalie in the lineup, before they stopped using him again?

If Vegas bought its own BS 12 games into the season, before cutting bait on a potential top center after three losses that weren’t even his fault, that seems like McPhee being colossally bad at his job.

But the good news is no one has to care or think about this again. First, because Shipachyov is Russian and instead of forcing the team to stash his hefty salary in the AHL, which he almost certainly would have dominated with little effort, he just went back to another country and another league, and kept just $86,000 of his $2 million signing bonus. Second, because the team banked a lot of wins when it was shooting 12 percent. Third, because ah who cares, it’s an expansion team and they’re not supposed to be good anyway. Fourth, because this team is in Vegas and no one’s really paying attention. And fifth, because no one in the hockey media dares question a Good Hockey Man like George “Forsberg-for-Erat” McPhee.

It’s a perfect storm of non-accountability. So McPhee comes out of the mud here sparkling clean, but he shouldn’t. Because no matter how you care to look at it, this is like the fourth thing he screwed up since June. No other GM for no other franchise would be able to absorb that kind of failure rate.

—

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

All statistics via Corsica unless otherwise noted.

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Puck Daddy Bag of Mail: Struggling Habs, hot starts, historical duos

How will McDavid and Matthews stack up to Crosby and Ovechkin when all is said and done? (Mark Blinch/Getty Images)

It has been quite the opening week in the NHL.

The Golden Knights are 3-0 and actually playing pretty well given their talent level. The Leafs are obliterating a lot of teams and having fun doing it. The Habs are horrible because they can’t score. A lot of guys have a crazy number of points already. A lot of rookies are playing very well.

But with only a handful of games played for even the busiest teams, that leaves a lot of questions to be answered. People sent them to me, and I am contractually obligated to answer several of the best ones.

So let’s go:

Vazken asks via email: “I’m a Montreal Canadiens fan, should I settle in for a long season or will we turn it around?”

Well, the question for this team was always going to be, “Who scores the goals?” Right now, the answer is, “Basically no one.”

Which is, for the most part, not that big of a deal. You’d like the points, certainly, but if your whole team is shooting 2.6 percent through four games while dramatically outshooting the competition (they average a shot differential of nearly plus-10), you shouldn’t be sweating it too much.

Put another way: How many times over the course of the year do we suppose the Canadiens take 155 shots and only score four goals, while also allowing 13 goals on 118 shots? We know the talent level of this team, and we know how good the coach is. They brought in a good number of new players this summer and this is the first full season of the Habs playing in the Claude Julien system, so we might have expected some growing pains.

But it’s not permanent. I still think this is one of the best on-paper teams in the East and while there’s been a too-slow start, the good news is they’ve played less than 5 percent of the season. If they’re still struggling with this in November, I guess that’s a different story.

James asks: “Why is Vegas not making use of LTIR for Grabbo & Clarkson? That space would allow them to take a bad contract and pick for a D, no?”

This is a simple one to answer but I can see why people would be confused. The team’s CapFriendly page tells the story of “why” fairly well here.

You don’t get the cap benefit of LTIR until you exceed the cap and right now Vegas has almost $6.6 million in cap space. And that’s with Vadim Shipachyov buried in the AHL. So there’s just no point in LTIRing them. In theory, the Knights could take on a huge percentage of the contracts in the league (only 43 players have contracts with AAVs of more than $6.5 million) and still not exceed the cap.

LTIRing them also wouldn’t knock those players off their 50-contract limit, not that Vegas has to worry about that, either. As an expansion team with a limited farm system, they only have 42 guys signed.

The only thing, therefore, preventing Vegas from trading one or more of their too-many defensemen is that no one else wants to make those transactions. Given the quality of those defenders, it’s hard to blame them.

Matt asks: “Is there anyone off to a hot start (define that however you want) that you think can keep the pace up for most, or all, of the season?”

I think it’s fair to say that, by definition, hot starts are unsustainable. Anyone who’s scoring more than a point a game is unlikely to do so for the whole season unless we’re talking about Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid or maybe one or two other guys.

When it comes to goaltending, though, that’s always going to be more sustainable. Ahead of Wednesday night’s games, the top-10 goalies in the league in save percentage were all north of .950, which obviously no one will do over 60 appearances or whatever the number ends up being.

But if we’re talking about Sergei Bobrovsky — who’s currently .985 — being a top goalie at the end of the year, or Corey Crawford or Semyon Varlamov finishing somewhere in the top five in save percentage, I think that’s feasible. All have shown on more than one occasion that they’re perfectly capable of posting above-average save percentages (though Varlamov was awful last season in just 24 games).

Other than that, I can see a guy like Evgeni Kuznetsov, Patrick Kane, Mark Scheifele, Steven Stamkos, Auston Matthews, et al keeping up their production if they stay healthy. Not at the two-points-a-game rate, obviously, but the fact is that elite offensive talents tend to stay at the top of the stats leaderboard, while guys like Brayden Point (seven points) or Mike Green (six) will surely fade.

On a related note:

Neil asks: “How long does it take to know that a rookie is for real? Flashy early season numbers from Bratt, Milano, DeBrincat and Butcher won’t all last.”

The thing I would say here is that anyone’s season starts to look real convincing the closer you get to 50 or 60 games. That goes for teams or players.

Lots of players can have 10, 20, even 40 games where they play well above their normal performance level. Maybe not rookies, but it happens. Barret Jackman won a Calder once. All things are possible.

Likewise, how many teams have been the Colorado Avalanche of a few years ago and had 60-something great games despite poor underlying numbers and then absolutely gone in the ditch from mid-February on?

When you’re like two-thirds or three-quarters of the way through the season, time and math just catch up with you. At some point, almost everyone hits a wall in their rookie years, but when you’re only looking at goals and assists, if you’ve banked 50 games of high performance, that’s going to look real good for you at the end of the season no matter how much you drop off in the final 30.

Having said that, I think there’s a chance DeBrincat in particular (at least of the guys you mentioned) keeps up a high scoring rate. His junior numbers are obscene and the quality of guys he’ll be able to play with — especially if given power play time — is pretty high.

Zoe asks: “With the great news of the NWHL-Devils partnership, how can fans encourage other NHL teams to create similar deals?”

This is going to sound like a joke but I’m dead serious: Write to them about it. Not just on Twitter and not just via email, but write an actual physical letter and put it in the mail. Someone whose job it is to read it and forward it to the proper parties will have to read it and send it to the proper parties.

I still think the whole “professional women’s hockey” thing needs to get its own house in order and just merge the leagues, and many people privately acknowledge that will have to happen. That would probably help get everyone on the same page in terms of potentially pushing a partnership forward. There’s no reason on earth for NHL not to help out financially and commercially in much the same way the NBA supports the WNBA.

But with that having been said, there’s also no reason individual teams shouldn’t be making partnerships with their respective city’s NWHL or CWHL teams. The good news is there’s now a template in place. Someone has to be first and, this being the NHL, not everyone wants to be first. But now that the Devils took the step, the odds that other teams get involved just went up significantly. That, in turn, probably pushes the league as a whole to do it.

Jim asks: “Who will be historically remembered as better: Ovi and Sid or McDavid and Matthews?”

Hooooo buddy this is a great question.

Ovechkin and Crosby are both in the conversation for top-10 of all time at a minimum. I think Crosby is irrefutably top-five (I put it Orr, Gretzky, Lemieux, Hasek, Crosby), and Ovechkin is closer to 10th (albeit probably the best ever in goal-scoring), so it’s hard to top.

But there are two caveats here: First, Matthews is still a bit of an unknown in terms of what his ceiling is, though I think it’s fair to say he doesn’t have the profile of one of the all-time greats. If he ends up being top-50, that’s incredible.

Second, Crosby and Ovechkin are both solidly cemented as elite all-time players because they did what they’ve done for so long. With Matthews and McDavid we’re projecting.

Crosby is the best player of his era, bar none. But he is very much a player of his era; low center of gravity, overwhelmingly skilled in tight spaces, etc. He’s suited to the kind of hockey played post-2005 NHL better than anyone.

But here’s what I think works in the younger guys’ favor: McDavid might legitimately be the best hockey player of all time. It’s hard to say for sure, but the way he moves with and without the puck, and specifically the way he pushes the puck ahead of himself when he’s at full speed so he doesn’t have to slow down (like a soccer player does) could fundamentally change the way the sport is played.

This gives him an Orr- or Gretzky-like talent. If the thing you do is unique and you’re so incredibly good at it that you’re effectively breaking the sport, that puts you in an entirely different class. He really is that good.

So with all that said, give me the Crosby/Ovechkin pair over McDavid/Matthews, but also give me McDavid over Crosby.

Adam asks: “Does it bother you how the clock continued to run during a penalty shot in “Lisa on Ice”?

Yes but The Hollywood Elites (i.e. LIE-berals) seem to have a very loose grasp of the rules of hockey in particular. Watch any Mighty Ducks movie. Hell, in the first one, young Gordon Bombay misses that penalty shot during running time as well. Plus, Duane totally would have gotten a game misconduct, and not just a two-minute minor, for roping.

Sometimes when you’re a hockey fan, you have to accept this patina of nonsense. It’s so rare anyone pays attention to the sport. Are you really gonna Neil-de-Grasse-Tyson “Well actually, the curvature of the earth and force of gravity dictates that …” about it? Nah.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

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Connor McDavid, Carey Price and shaming the rich (Trending Topics)

Earlier this week, Carey Price and Connor McDavid signed two of the richest contracts in NHL history.

In a few years, when neither team has won a Cup — well, Edmonton might, but Montreal almost certainly won’t — talk will immediately turn to how their contracts are onerous and maybe they should have taken less money if they wanted their teams to be competitive. You might even hear talk about how they can’t win under pressure and all that sort of thing, which is of course nonsense.

When those teams don’t win, it’s not because they “overpaid” an elite goalie and a guy who, by some reckonings, is already the best player alive. Doing so is effectively impossible in a cap system where the top guy can only make 20 percent of the total ceiling. It’s impossible to say what the cap ceiling will be for 2018-19, but it’s tough to see the increase exceeding 4 percent. As such, Connor McDavid’s AAV being more than, say, one-sixth of the cap.

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That’s with him having reportedly done Edmonton a big favor because he wasn’t “comfortable” taking an extra $750,000 or $1 million out of his teammates’ pockets. That’s his prerogative, and other elite-level talents have done the same in recent years — one wonders if Sidney Crosby will ever take more than $8.7 million — but someone put it perfectly on Twitter:

That money left on the table is what it’s worth to him to not get shanked in the Edmonton media every day for the last six years of his new contract.

To be fair to his future detractors, McDavid’s contract taking up 16 percent or so of the cap will be the largest share in quite a long time; only back in 2008-09 and 2009-10 (based on full salary data from NHL Numbers that only goes back to 2007-08) did a player make more than that portion of the total cap. Alex Ovechkin’s teammates did little to help the perception that you can’t win making that much of the cap.

Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby won a Cup when their big deals kicked in, but they had to wait another several years for the percentage of their AAVs to come down before they could do it again. Likewise, no one said it about Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, whose $10.5 million cap hits are still tied for second-highest in the league’s history, when they went and won another Cup in the first year of those twin deals.

But boy are people ever starting to say it now, aren’t they?

The lesson here is clear enough: People are more than happy to blame the richest players in the league when their teams can’t compete, but not so much when overpaid journeymen cash their big tickets.

Should Connor McDavid shave $1 million off his AAV to make Edmonton better, or should Kris Russell? Seems to me in a fairer cap system both of them split the difference, but that is inexplicably not how it works. McDavid is somehow embarrassed to be making so much more money than anyone else on his team — literally more than double the next-biggest cap hit — but in terms of the value delivered per dollar spent, he should make considerably more.

After all, how many guys can attribute their mid-eight-figure career earnings to Crosby or Malkin or Alex Ovechkin or Kane or, hell, even lower-paid elite guys like Ryan Getzlaf or Joe Thornton? Lots of guys get richer than they “ought to” riding shotgun with Hall of Famers. Maybe you say Leon Draisaitl, who didn’t do much scoring away from McDavid last season, is about to join that crew.

Crosby did the Penguins a favor taking $8.7 million. Did James Neal think of the salary cap when he took $5 million? Did Pascal Dupuis or Chris Kunitz feel bad when they started cashing $4 million paychecks every year?

That’s not to say they should have, of course. The market bears what it bears. Hell, if a GM calls you and says, “All evidence suggests your output comes because you play the majority of your minutes with a mega-star, but how does $6 million sound?” you’d be a fool not to take the money and run.

Though McDavid will soon make more as a percentage of the cap than the league’s highest-capped player has in eight seasons — and there aren’t too many guys who you’d say could even come close to threatening a top-five cap hit of $9.5 million in the meantime — the number of wins he effectively guarantees you in a given season far exceeds that of all but Crosby-in-his-prime in terms of what you can reasonably count on.

Rob Vollman recently crunched the numbers and estimated McDavid’s output over the length of his upcoming contract, and figured that McDavid would clear 100 points four or five times in those eight years. This is an incredible number. We have no real frame of reference for this in modern hockey. Since the first Dead Puck Era began around 1995, only two guys have cleared 100 points five times: Crosby and Jaromir Jagr. Ovechkin did it four times. Four more did it thrice each.

McDavid, at 20, has already done it once. The guys who do this kind of thing more than once are basically all Hall of Famers, except Dany Heatley. If, as Vollman suggests, McDavid is pushing 1,100 points before his 30th birthday, you have to imagine the pure value he delivered to Edmonton just in terms of goals and assists leading to wins well outstrips his $100 million total payout.

That’s before you factor in the “draw” he provides in terms of getting some free agents to take slightly less (such as Milan Lucic) than they would have commanded elsewhere to just get a little piece of that McDavid-driven glory. That value, too, adds up over time.

The same is true of Price in Montreal. Goalies are obviously different animals in terms of quantifying their value. They save x number of goals over the league average based on the difficulty of the shots they face, and then you can say x number of goals is worth y wins. Elite goalies like Price, or Henrik Lundqvist, are easily worth their AAVs in terms of the number of wins they deliver. Or would be if they weren’t on the wrong side of 30.

(In both cases, what were they gonna do? Not pay them and let them go instead?)

How often did they make the defensemen in front of them rich? God, look at the Rangers’ cap hits the past few years and you’ll get the message pretty quick. It’s not Lundqvist’s fault the Rangers can’t win a Cup, but you might be able to say it’s indirectly his fault that he made so many mediocre guys look like elite shutdown defensemen who therefore needed to be paid as such.

Now, you can often look at these high-AAV contracts and say, “Ah, that’ll be a problem in a few years.” But that’s not their fault. Look at just about any team with high-paid talent and it’s the same story. You have success and you pay for it. Players ride shotgun on elite talent and cash in.

So when doling out blame for playoff failures, it’s important to think rationally. McDavid and Price and Crosby and Lundqvist and all these other guys are giving it their all, and providing significant return on investment. It’s the players they make look good — and the fiction that it’s “hard” to play with guys like them — who deserve the criticism.

They’re interchangeable parts. Widgets that can be swapped in and out while the top guys produce just the same as they always have. And as always, you shouldn’t break the bank on products like that.

Put another way: You pay for quality, or at least you should. What you really need is a GM who can tell the difference.

—

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

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What We Learned: Behind the Minnesota Wild’s collapse

(Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.)

There’s a perception that at this time of year, teams coached by Bruce Boudreau tend to collapse.

Well, maybe “perception” is the wrong word here, because on some level they do indeed seem to drop off a bit in the final month or so of the season. The postseason record — insofar as we want to read into all those one-goal Game 7 losses being indicative that he’s somehow to blame there — stands in furtherance of the point, if you’re trying to make it.

I don’t think that’s entirely fair. From March 1 on in the full seasons (and March 15 in the lockout-shortened 2012-13 campaign), his teams have collected a record of 108-63-22, a pace for a little more than 101 points over 82 games. But a lot of that is propped up by his time with that Caps wrecking crew, which carried a 121-point pace after that cut-off date under Boudreau.

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With the Ducks, there were two “collapses,” if you want to call them that. When he took over midway through the 2011-12 season, Anaheim went just 7-9-2 down the stretch (a 73-point pace), but that was a bad team in the first place and also an improvement on the pace they had before Boudreau took over anyway. The next year, with the lockout, they went 10-9-3, which flat-out isn’t good enough for a team that started 20-3-3.

But the next three seasons with the Ducks? Paces of 105, 104, and 105 points after March 1.

That ain’t collapsing, folks. Sorry to say.

Obviously, then, this year is a bit of an outlier for Boudreau in that regard. And while Wild fans always talk about mid- and late-season swoons for that franchise in general, regardless of coach, the three years previous to this one have seen them improve on their season-long paces after March 1.

This is a basically unprecedented collapse for both this coach and anything resembling the current roster for this franchise, and people understandably want answers. What they’re probably not going to want to hear is that thing Don Sweeney was talking about this year: “Decision-makers don’t want to hear about bad luck.”

But listen gang: It’s bad luck.

That’s it.

And to be fair, it’s particularly bad luck. Almost incredibly bad luck, as a matter of fact. Because everything the Wild have done that’s not directly related to goalscoring one way or the other since the start of March has actually been really damn good (not including yesterday’s game with Colorado).

I left the stats unadjusted here because while score effects certainly play a role, it’s important to illustrate that they’re not so powerful as to lead to 21 percent reductions in attempts against and so on. There would generally be a little wiggle room of course, but not to this extent.

Point being, the Wild are playing better now than they did for most of the year, but they’ve seen a huge swing in both goalscoring and goalkeeping. You don’t need to be an expert to understand that. But what’s amazing is that, as you can kind of infer from the scoring-chance changes above, the Wild are doing a better job of keeping opponents away from their net. They’ve cut high-danger shots on goal very slightly, and medium-danger shots are down by more than 30 percent. Low-danger shots are also down.

So the fact that Devan Dubnyk’s save percentage is in the .880s since the start of March is kinda on him (and perhaps, you could argue, Boudreau as well, for giving him so many minutes). The team in front of him is making it easier for him, but he’s melting down to a ludicrous extent. And that’s not to say he was ever likely to go .930-plus for 60 or 65 games, but to swing this badly, and more or less overnight, is a major issue. One wonders if there’s something physically wrong with him at this point that no one has disclosed.

But at the same time, you have to wonder why Boudreau doesn’t go with his backups more often than he has — and to his credit, he’s going to them more regularly than he did in the first several months of the year. On the one hand, Darcy Kuemper seems to have contracted the same disease as Dubnyk (though he also had it in February, and October, and a bunch of other points in his career, mainly because he isn’t that good). On the other, well, it’s hard to do worse. And at least Alex Stalock has been decent in limited minutes.

The goaltending issues, of course, don’t explain why the Wild have seen their shooting percentage drop from 11.2 in all situations through the end of February (the highest in the league, and extremely high even for a league-best) to just 7.25, the fourth-lowest in the league.

If their scoring chances are up, and they’re putting more shots on goal, then why on earth are they scoring 31 percent fewer goals per 60 minutes? I think part of it relates to who’s actually generating these scoring chances. Jason Zucker, Zach Parise, Mikael Granlund, and Mikko Koivu have all seen their individual xGF/60 (a good measure of individual shot attempt quality) fall by at least 9.8 percent from the first 60ish games of the season to the past 17. Meanwhile, the guys who are generating more are deeper in the lineup, and you can generally expect those guys to convert on a relatively smaller number of their chances in the first place, plus they don’t exactly get a ton of minutes in the first place.

So if team numbers are, to some extent, being propped up by depth guys and the skill players are having a bit of bad luck (as evidenced by Granlund’s sterling unconverted scoring chance at 2:35 of this video) in addition to a little more difficulty actually getting to the net, yeah, that’s gonna hurt.

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The problem is that this team is now generally getting down early in games because its goaltending is bad, and that results in big pushes that lead the team to look worse as games go on.

There are systemic problems here that Boudreau should, to some extent, be able to fix. But if a lot of the Wild’s problems seem to be the same kind that got Claude Julien turfed in Boston, well, that’s because they are. And hey, at least they banked all those points from being extremely good for five months.

If this same run of 17 bad games cropped up in, say, December and January, but the Wild returned to winning after that, we’d have all forgotten about those 17 bad games by now. The fact that they’re arriving just six weeks before the playoffs start, and persist to this extent? Well, I really can’t see where the blame falls on anyone but Dubnyk. But there too, the guy was .930 for months. You can’t be too mad at him now.

There’s still a week left in the regular season. Maybe the Wild figure it out by playing the Avs and Coyotes to wrap things up.

And if not, well, I’m not sure what Boudreau could have done differently.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: Oh yeah, the Ducks are good because of Randy Carlyle. This is a take that’s going to age well.

Arizona Coyotes: This is the highlight of their season, for sure.

Boston Bruins: They’re gonna give Cassidy the job. Let’s just accept it.

Buffalo Sabres: Congratulations to my son for his big NHL debut.

Calgary Flames: Flames owners are ghouls trying to bleed a city already going through difficult economic times for as much as $1.8 billion. With a B. Listen, the two of the five guys listed on the team’s ownership page are worth about $5.2 billion combined, according to The Internet. Crying poor when you have something like $7-8 billion in the bank as a group of five guys is disgusting and if the rich were capable of feeling shame, I would say they should be ashamed of themselves. Obscene wealth breaks people’s brains, of course, and you have to have an extremely broken brain to think normal people should give you $1.8 billion because you own a sports team. These creeps will go into the Edmonton playbook and say, “Well look at all these benefits a new arena district will provide.” But the thing is, if there were any real financial benefits to building a guaranteed-to-depreciate asset for $1.8 billion, you can be damn sure that a bunch of billionaires would be financing their own damn stadiums and pocketing the money. What people have to understand about their favorite sports teams is that these are corporations that only talk about the importance of The Fans insofar as doing so helps expedite parting The Fans with their money. All those people who lost their minds when Wyshynski made an Oilers playoffs joke seem to have very quickly forgotten that Darryl Katz was threatening to move to Seattle like 30 months ago. It’s the same with the Flames. If Murray Edwards — who by the way also helped engineer the last two lockouts — and his richboy buddies thought they could make more money in Kansas City, they’d have left years ago. Instead, they made their fans sit through an ugly rebuild and are now basically saying, “We’re good again, so pay up, suckers.” Civic pride has nothing to do with it. They could give a rat’s ass about the city of Calgary or the people who live there. These guys with multiple commas in their net worths are awful. They’re only humans in the same way Gollum used to be like a hobbit, twisted into foul creatures by their depthless avarice. If these five guys each ponied up $360 million, the arena would be Paid For. Most of them literally wouldn’t miss that money. It would not affect their lifestyles in any way. So don’t support them, and don’t let them get away with this crap. I wish I could use stronger language on here. Any team owner in any sport that does this should be beneath your contempt.

Carolina Hurricanes: This was a fun story line but it’s tough to see this team bridging the gap in any real way now.

Chicago: This is a pretty impressive feat for a team that really should be a lot worse than it is after all these years.

Colorado Avalanche: Things are going well for JT Compher these days. Except that whole “has to play for the Avalanche” thing.

Columbus Blue Jackets: Hear me out on this: What if this team’s insanely high shooting percentage for the first several months of the season wasn’t sustainable and their success was largely predicated on that good fortune, plus Bobrovsky playing incredibly well? I’ll hang up and listen.

Dallas Stars: Quick, trade Lehtonen while his value is at its peak!

Detroit Red Wings: The headlines this season have gotten progressively more depressing.

Edmonton Oilers: The last week is gonna be amazingly fun in the Pacific.

Florida Panthers: Gotta sign that horse, baby!

Los Angeles Kings: This is good stuff.

Minnesota Wild: Joel Eriksson Ek is a good late add, I think. Can’t hurt, anyway.

Montreal Canadiens: The uh, bad one. Just kidding. Maybe.

Nashville Predators: Uh, Joe? I believe it’s spelled “avoision.”

New Jersey Devils: This rowdy son of mine also made his NHL debut. What a perfect boy he is.

New York Islanders: That’s the Islanders, baby!

New York Rangers: Well it’s a good thing they’re gonna start the playoffs on the road I guess.

Ottawa Senators: This team isn’t that good. I don’t know how many times I have to repeat that.

Philadelphia Flyers: This is some scary stuff. Good lord.

Pittsburgh Penguins: Sid Crosby sure is good but it feels like intentionally shooting at a goalie’s head is not nice.

San Jose Sharks: It’s a good thing for the Sharks the Wild are getting a lot of attention for falling apart, because the Sharks are falling the hell apart.

St. Louis Blues: I really don’t know that it matters who finishes third in the Central. You either play the Wild or the winner of the Pacific. Not exactly the tallest order on either front.

Tampa Bay Lightning: Folks, this Kucherov kid is solid.

Toronto Maple Leafs: Let’s think back to all those “Patrik Laine is gonna win the Calder” takes. Seems quaint now.

Vancouver Canucks: The premise of this column is amazing. “What if their coach weren’t one of the worst in the league?” “What if their GM could competently put together a roster?” Coaching is hard, GMing is easy. What’s the issue?

Vegas Golden Knights: Bless up Bill Foley!

Washington Capitals: This seems like one of those quotes where it’s like, “Except he didn’t say ‘junk.’”

Winnipeg Jets: Yeah the team is not good. Why are you surprised by this?

Play of the Weekend

I could watch this Oilers’ top line every second of the rest of my life and be perfectly content.

Gold Star Award

Wonderful to see the strong women of USA Hockey go into Plymouth and mop the floor with everyone they play again. Nice to see them get a bunch of money while they do it. Heck yeah.

Minus of the Weekend

Folks I’m feeling good about hockey this weekend so everyone gets a pass except Flames ownership. They’re bad. Morally.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Year

User “mint” had a proposal that literally led me to say, out loud, “Hell yeah, I’m in!”

To EDM: Tavares, agrees to long term extension.

To NYI: Puljujarvi RNH 2017 1st Jones/Bear/Nurse

Signoff

Marge, is Lisa at Camp Granada?

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Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All stats via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)

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