#Anti-Crawler

[keanu-55]

Malicious Crawlers and Ticket-Grabbing Software: The Truth behind Cybercrimes

As consumers, perhaps everyone has had the experience of participating in flash sale activities on e-commerce platforms, but the results are often unsatisfactory - as soon as the flash sale time arrives, the goods are announced to be sold out. Some participants will blame their own insufficient reaction speed, while others will question the lack of sincerity of the platform. However, for network security professionals, the truth is often more complicated.

The phenomenon that discounted goods are sold out within 0.00001 seconds is mostly caused by malicious crawlers. On the eve of the "618" e-commerce festival this year, the security department of a well-known e-commerce platform (it is said that the platform is JD.com) monitored that some merchants were suspected of defrauding subsidy funds by means of false transactions, involving an amount of more than 5 million yuan. After investigation, it was found that some merchants frequently placed orders for the specified subsidized goods under the instigation of intermediary companies, but the actually delivered goods were mineral water. This kind of fraudulent behavior was finally exposed by the police, and 61 suspects were successfully arrested.

Another example occurred during the Double Eleven promotion in 2020. E-commerce platform A launched a half-price flash sale activity for a well-known product. The activity attracted a large number of real users to participate, and at the same time, it also attracted the attacks of malicious crawlers. The impacts of malicious crawlers on the platform include consuming server resources, affecting user experience, and the goods being quickly snapped up. For this reason, e-commerce platform A used the threat data accumulated by the data shield of Knownsec to intercept known crawler IPs and distinguish real users from crawlers through the human-machine identification function. In addition, it also analyzed the logs during the peak traffic period, updated the threat IP database, and finally set up intelligent speed limits to resist high-frequency queries. Under this series of measures, most of the malicious crawler traffic was successfully intercepted.

In just one year, the number of malicious crawlers intercepted by the Knownsec Cloud Defense Platform was as high as more than 92.7 billion times, accounting for 27.9% of the total annual Web attacks. Thus, it can be seen that the current situation of malicious crawlers is already very serious, and great attention must be paid to the protection against malicious crawler attacks.

With the arrival of the summer vacation, famous schools in Beijing, Shanghai and other places have become popular destinations for family tourism. However, due to the surge in visiting demand, the phenomenon of "it is extremely difficult to get a ticket" has emerged. A company technician, Li Moumou, developed a ticket-grabbing software. After Wang Moumou and Zhang Moumou learned about it, they cooperated with him. They attracted tourism practitioners by posting on the Internet and other means and set up a "ticket-grabbing studio". They used the ticket-grabbing software to grab tickets in batches on various online platforms and resold them to tourism practitioners at prices ranging from 80 yuan to 150 yuan. In less than a month during the summer vacation of 2023, the two studios illegally profited more than 300,000 yuan. In order to improve the ticket-grabbing efficiency, the software was designed to achieve a violent ordering mode, which seriously affected the normal operation of the system. In July 2024, the People's Court of Haidian District, Beijing sentenced 13 people including Li Moumou to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from 6 months to 4 years and 6 months and imposed a fine for the crime of illegally obtaining data from a computer information system.

These three cases have revealed a fact: whether it is the college visit reservation system or the subsidy mechanism of the e-commerce platform, they may all become the targets for illegal elements to seek profits. In the face of such criminal acts, relevant departments need to further strengthen supervision and technical prevention measures to ensure that the public interest is not violated and maintain good social order. With the development of technology and the progress of society, the crackdown and preventive measures for such criminal activities need to be continuously upgraded and improved to protect the interests of the general public and network security.

[mongo-the-liensis]

Always thinking about the scene where Carl openly makes a sedition and then has an attempt on his life like two minutes later.

[essektheylyss]

Day 5 is technically a novella, and honestly? Haunting.

The Reflection of Sand by Tan Gang

[calcifiedcrawler]

New fic last night.

[smellslikebot]

"how do I keep my art from being scraped for AI from now on?"

if you post images online, there's no 100% guaranteed way to prevent this, and you can probably assume that there's no need to remove/edit existing content. you might contest this as a matter of data privacy and workers' rights, but you might also be looking for smaller, more immediate actions to take.

...so I made this list! I can't vouch for the effectiveness of all of these, but I wanted to compile as many options as possible so you can decide what's best for you.

Discouraging data scraping and "opting out"

robots.txt - This is a file placed in a website's home directory to "ask" web crawlers not to access certain parts of a site. If you have your own website, you can edit this yourself, or you can check which crawlers a site disallows by adding /robots.txt at the end of the URL. This article has instructions for blocking some bots that scrape data for AI.

HTML metadata - DeviantArt (i know) has proposed the "noai" and "noimageai" meta tags for opting images out of machine learning datasets, while Mojeek proposed "noml". To use all three, you'd put the following in your webpages' headers:

<meta name="robots" content="noai, noimageai, noml">

Have I Been Trained? - A tool by Spawning to search for images in the LAION-5B and LAION-400M datasets and opt your images and web domain out of future model training. Spawning claims that Stability AI and Hugging Face have agreed to respect these opt-outs. Try searching for usernames!

Kudurru - A tool by Spawning (currently a Wordpress plugin) in closed beta that purportedly blocks/redirects AI scrapers from your website. I don't know much about how this one works.

ai.txt - Similar to robots.txt. A new type of permissions file for AI training proposed by Spawning.

ArtShield Watermarker - Web-based tool to add Stable Diffusion's "invisible watermark" to images, which may cause an image to be recognized as AI-generated and excluded from data scraping and/or model training. Source available on GitHub. Doesn't seem to have updated/posted on social media since last year.

Image processing... things

these are popular now, but there seems to be some confusion regarding the goal of these tools; these aren't meant to "kill" AI art, and they won't affect existing models. they won't magically guarantee full protection, so you probably shouldn't loudly announce that you're using them to try to bait AI users into responding

Glaze - UChicago's tool to add "adversarial noise" to art to disrupt style mimicry. Devs recommend glazing pictures last. Runs on Windows and Mac (Nvidia GPU required)

WebGlaze - Free browser-based Glaze service for those who can't run Glaze locally. Request an invite by following their instructions.

Mist - Another adversarial noise tool, by Psyker Group. Runs on Windows and Linux (Nvidia GPU required) or on web with a Google Colab Notebook.

Nightshade - UChicago's tool to distort AI's recognition of features and "poison" datasets, with the goal of making it inconvenient to use images scraped without consent. The guide recommends that you do not disclose whether your art is nightshaded. Nightshade chooses a tag that's relevant to your image. You should use this word in the image's caption/alt text when you post the image online. This means the alt text will accurately describe what's in the image-- there is no reason to ever write false/mismatched alt text!!! Runs on Windows and Mac (Nvidia GPU required)

Sanative AI - Web-based "anti-AI watermark"-- maybe comparable to Glaze and Mist. I can't find much about this one except that they won a "Responsible AI Challenge" hosted by Mozilla last year.

Just Add A Regular Watermark - It doesn't take a lot of processing power to add a watermark, so why not? Try adding complexities like warping, changes in color/opacity, and blurring to make it more annoying for an AI (or human) to remove. You could even try testing your watermark against an AI watermark remover. (the privacy policy claims that they don't keep or otherwise use your images, but use your own judgment)

given that energy consumption was the focus of some AI art criticism, I'm not sure if the benefits of these GPU-intensive tools outweigh the cost, and I'd like to know more about that. in any case, I thought that people writing alt text/image descriptions more often would've been a neat side effect of Nightshade being used, so I hope to see more of that in the future, at least!

[riverkingmarley]

I could never be an author because I would be so annoying about Easter eggs. Mia and Carson would have disappeared Taylor and Rachel Hebert. Every book would have a character named Amy who smokes a lot. Then Amy would give an anti smoking psa in ward. I would role play Lisa when I explained things in WOG. I would have characters disappear from the story by mentioning they were moving to Brazil. Crawler would be there.

[heckcareoxytwit]

Kurt Wagner as the newest Spider hero (a.k.a Spinnenmann, Creepy Crawler, Devil-Spider or any other aliases/nicknames), has a conversation with Peter Parker the original Spider-Man. Kurt is having doubts with himself as he was framed for murder when he was in his monstrous form way back in Legion of X comic. Also, Kurt has a Bamf as his conscience.

Even though Kurt did not tell him what really happened, Peter understands him as he knows what it feels like for being framed (for a few times in Spider-Man comics), being turned into a monster (Peter had been turned into Man-Spider once or twice in the comics) or being hated by public and media (countless times with no thanks to Anti-Spidey rants from J Jonah Jameson).

Uncanny Spider-Man #1, 2023

[oshlet]

Edward South's Vagabond MBT, used against S-11 rebels and his own allies during the revolutionary war. Modern at the time, it was still fairly practical, mounting a tried and tested 120mm smoothbore gun for anti-surface use. South's model was a solo-tank conversion, featuring additional automation and a Brain Interface System, allowing it to be controlled by only a single person.

In his re-emergence as a mercenary, he's now behind the wheel of a jury-rigged civilian crawler. Such a vehicle is slow, and not nearly as well suited to receiving weapons fire, however it makes up for it with its truly eye-watering armament of a huge laser cannon, fitted with three separate hybrid cooling/power cells, each of which can only squeeze out a single shot from the weapon.

Despite all the downsides, the intimidation factor of a weapon that doesn't even require a direct hit to disable an enemy vehicle is hard to pass up, and South has become feared for his ambush tactics using it.

[sonicspeeddemon]

Night crawler has two moms now and the anti sjws aren’t taking it so well

To them, having two moms is worse than being the son of a literal demon

[beesmygod]

What's your take, if you have one, on the cut moon presence boss on the lake of mud?

as always, i dont know. i thought i didn't really have much to say but the more i typed the more i Realized. but i still don't really know lol. this is really image heavy, which made it long, so most of it is under a readmore.

e: hello bea from the future here. hey. this gave me so much to chew on for the next section in a shockingly positive direction. thank you so much for getting this ball rolling

it half-relevant but there's also some kind of. intermediary thing. i think it's the same shape as the used moon presence but its blue. for some reason.

no animations on this one, so it was cut early. different "faces" as well. or the low quality of the cut one doesn't maintain the "features" as accurately.

oh what the fuck. hold on. look at the head of the "lake of mud" (LOM from now on) moon presence compared to the others

ive made posts in the past about anti-clockwise and clockwise metamorphosis runes possibly referencing the in-game phenomenon of creature's heads being turned in odd directions. loran silverbeasts and the crawler enemies (ostensibly both loran/nightmare frontier residents) have their "heads" turned clockwise, like above. slime scholar and probably other things i cant remember turn anti-clockwise.

the crawlers are....i mean they're gross. but also uncanny. there's SOMETHING going on here, right? god only know what though. they are also known for the grim sight you can take in when they rear up to Get You: their...stomach?? is rife with messengers. being consumed? maybe? it evokes the image of the artbook moon presence, who is swarming with messengers in the same area of its body.

anyway back to the little creep.

in the center of its chest there's this bizarre unknown thing. if you peel away the majority of its body it looks like this. a grey blob with tentacles. as far as i can tell it doesn't have bones to animate, unlike the rest of the model. the entire model has unfinished textures so its hard to tell what it's supposed to be.

judging from the blisters on the creature, it is CURSED. the orphan of kos' placenta weapon (which is, i think, just a huge cursed blood gem?) has these same blisters, marking it as a fellow "cursed" great one infant (? probably? look at what a runt it is).

curses are a complex aspect of the bloodborne universe. sometimes they can be identified by the appearance of "sickly spots", but other times, curses are color-coded with purple (or red, but that seems strictly related to cainhurst nope i forgot foetid offering can give enemies red rally auras and change their drop tables to include cursed blood gems. much to think about) auras and magic.

a curse is exactly what you expect it to be: great power at a high price (like a huge weapon bonus but your health depletes per second), but the source is arcane. the cursed and defiled pthumerian chalice states, "curses are caused by inciting the anger of the Great Ones, and used to hex others." winter lanterns, the enemies with the heads made out of messengers fused into a brain shape, are the only enemy that consistently only drops cursed blood gems (and, evidently, blood gems only form in the dungeon or nears its entrances). given the pattern of these spots appearing on bosses, it can be reasonably assumed that winter lanterns are the result of a great one's wrath. what the fuck! i dont know what that means!

we're not going to bother going into the nuances of rites and data-mining because holy shit. this garbage is needlessly complex for how half-baked its implementation is. but cursed offerings create cursed dungeons to explore with cursed blood gems to collect. cursed and defiled pthumeru is differentiated by the purple (!) skull vapor overflowing from the chalice. cursed rites required cursed materials: bastards of loran are the mummified bodies of infants who died midway through their transformation into a silverbeast. with the clockwise heads.

okay. that wrapped us up back around to the beginning. i think the lake of mud arena was intended to be in loran, canonically. it has a bunch of different variations that probably would have been used for root dungeon generation rather than canon usage. a lake of dried up water fits perfectly with the terrifyingly arid climate of loran (which generates the blue bolts in the atmosphere). at one point, it seems that several chalice dungeons would have had secret 4th layers (they're still in the game and can be accessed with some light hex editing); i propose that this is where that fight would have taken place. the previous layer would have been the cut great one beast. and layer 2 would have been the loran darkbeast. layer 1 would have been the abhorrent beast instead of the baffling loran silverbeast boss fight that's completely inexplicable otherwise. isz has similar pacing issues. oh shit, i wonder if that's what that blue one is supposed to be. fuuuuccckkk.

the ailing loran chalice tells the player that "some have made the dreaded extrapolation that Yharnam may be next" but the game is telling YOU the player that YOU are supposed to look at loran and extrapolate the fate of yharnam from it. loran was also using old blood as medicine and became a place overrun with beasts and abandoned by god. the loran moon presence is bloated with curses and lives in a place devoid of water, a horrible thing for a great one given how much they love to yammer about lakes and the sea. the area outside of the LOM arena is, amazingly, the exact same facade as the entrance to mergo's loft. there's a stained glass window above the door that's shared between locations, yet again linking loran, the nightmare frontier, and the nightmare of mensis together. and, really, the hunter's nightmare, since the LOM arena was very, VERY similar to the orphan's ocean with identical architecture.

holy shit i guess this is what im working on tonight. and now i see how micolash fits into the entire timeline. neat

[olivescales3]

With the reveal of an NB character in Ninjago, I feel that people are placing this theme on a pedestal because of this one single move of inclusion. Don't get me wrong— I'm glad that LEGO is including LGBTQIA+ identities into their themes, and I genuinely hope they continue doing so, but we're forgetting that they're investing a step forward into a theme that's always going two steps back.

I don't feel like pointing out the issues of Ninjago, especially because it's tiresome and it's not the point of this post, but I remember that there was an entire thread here on Tumblr about the problematic worldbuilding of Ninjago. I might write something about it as well, but it's unlikely.

Chima had a great amount of inclusion and diversity within its cast (though no canon LGBTQIA+ characters, unfortunately):

POC-equivalent characters (brown and blue crocodiles; vultures with tan and bright blue skin colors), of which a few of those are part of tribes that have a motif from predominantly white cultures (Longtooth and Lavertus, who are brown lions in a tribe with a roman motif; Ehboni, Eglor, who are black and dark blue respectively, alongside unnamed eagles of mixed origins [dark blue x white] in a tribe of greek motif, and even Ewald himself isn't white).

A majority of these characters are important to the plot and/or have reoccurring appearances;

Diversity in tribe lifestyles, with the Wolf Tribe being nomadic (and not going through the stereotype of nomadic traders).

Each vehicle in Chima follows the motif and lifestyle of their respective tribe. For example, crocodiles are ambush predators and require camouflage, thus their vehicles are heavily based on military vehicles, with camo colors and strong silhouettes;

Marginalized characters whose arcs actually end with them winning and gaining respect. The Ice Hunters vs. Phoenixes arc was an obvious allegory of colonization, and it ends with the Ice Hunters alive and thriving, while the Phoenixes (who started the war) lost and failed to 'educate' their enemies.

The Crawlers also have their arc finished with an anti-war and pro-diversity lesson, where Laval lends them Chi because it's not supposed to be earned, and instead is free for everyone, even though they had stolen all of Mount Cavora's Chi beforehand;

Characters whose appearance is distinctive and break barriers of ableism are not only present in Chima, but are also treated equally to other characters, without having their differences be a point, argument, or lesson. (Cragger with a blind eye, Crug with a prosthetic jaw, the Raven Tribe as a whole, Leonidas with distinctively shaped incisors and Longtooth with long canines).

However, the Rhinoceros Tribe is an unfortunate exception, as they're constantly depicted as dumb;

The Lion Tribe has a lot of diversity by itself, with lions having a variety of mane colors that represent hair colors in real life. Laval has red hair, Leonidas is ginger, Lavertus is blond, Lennox has brown hair;

Other cultural representations such as Dom de La Woosh being based on Brazilian carnivals;

There's Wonald, a vegan character;

My favorite fact of all: Chima and Chi are both real words who exist in multiple languages, and each of their meanings was instrumental to the interpretation we have in this theme. → Chi means: knowledge in japanese; water (literally) and source of life (figuratively) in chinese; god in igbo. Chima means "god knows all" in igbo → in LoC, the Phoenixes created Chi, which looks like water and is the source of life/knowledge in Chima, and they also sculpted Mount Cavora with each tribe's heads before they had even evolved.

All of this unfortunately flew over most people's heads, which is a bad thing, as all of the effort that was put on Chima's diversity was left unnoticed, but it is also a good thing at the same time, because everything was executed seamlessly and naturally, just like how people should view each other in real life (view one another without discrimination). However, this amount of care and thought put into adding a diverse cast of characters is probably not going to be seen again, in any lego theme or any story made by corporations/companies.

[luthienebonyx]

She’d been a diminutive woman before, but she’d shrunk to about four and a half feet tall, and her skin was now a light blue, like the sky on a clear day. Her white, haphazardly-cut hair was almost exactly the same as before, but it fit with her smaller frame, and it no longer looked so sickly. She floated about a foot off the ground, and I noted she still wore the anti-slip socks from Meadow Lark. The privacy bubble around her head was like a nimbus, making her look like one of those haloed figures in a renaissance painting. She was leaning over the bar, waving her hand furiously at the badger-headed bartender, who was serving someone else down the line. “Look at how beautiful she is,” Donut whispered. “She’s like a vision of pure elegance.” “Yo,” Elle cried at the bartender. “Whose dick do I gotta suck to get another drink? Christ.”

Matt Dinniman: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 3

[mongo-the-liensis]

Carl is so... He's just some guy. He's the messiah. He's a war criminal. He's hope personified. He has killed babies. He's a cultist. He's a cishet ally but everyone thinks he's bisexual. He has daddy issues. He has PTSD. He's straight but he has a boyfriend. He really loves his friends. He has a mental illness. He loves his cat more than anyone and anything else in the world. He's an anarchist. He is slowly going insane. He's a fan favourite crawler. He's a mass murderer. The AI is in love with him. He makes inspirational speeches. He monologues. He's anti-establishment. He's traumatised. He pulls a lot of bitches but doesn't pay attention to them. He sees his friends as his family. He's street smart. He has gotten hit by a train.

[zmasters]

The Void Crawler - A Lancer "Dungeon"

I’m working on a “dungeon crawl” style Lancer module. I’ll be posting each “level” to the “dungeon” later, but here’s an introduction of sorts.

Floor 1 & the Lift

The HA Void Crawler. Despite the name and Harrison Armory's history of violence, the ship is a research vessel. The Void Crawl and her crew where sanctioned to explore the galaxy outside of known Union space and find potential livable planets to colonized. While this particular survey has been tainted by the Corpo-State's particular culture of nationalism, the greater Union views this effort as an ultimately good thing for humanity as a whole.

The Void Crawler went dark a few weeks ago.

Now a derelict caught in the orbit of a massive gas giant, all that your employers know is that whatever caused the vessel to be abandoned happened fast and it happened without warning.

None of the missing crew has been found. Early scans indicate that many of the ships systems such as life support and engines have not been destroyed, but have simply been turned off.

The powers that be have turned their gaze on the Void Crawler. Some wish to figure out what happened to the hundreds of lives loss in this mysterious accident. Other's wish to capitalize on the materials and data that this ship have hidden in it's cold halls.

You are a lancer. You have been hired by one of the five manufactures to venture to the Void Crawler and achieve their objective.

As Union's right hand megacorp, General Massive Systems has graciously put it upon themselves to find the missing crewmen and either save them, or avenge them. And of course the data that HA has collected will benefit all of Union, so it would be the kind thing to do is for GMS to bring it back home free of charge.

ISP-Northstar and it's close ally Albatross have a long history of anti-piracy actions, and the this situation has pirates written all over it. A quick strike should bring whatever material and data lost to be put into the right hands.

A popular rumor to what happened to the Void Crawler is that the vessel had run foul with aliens. While most organizations laugh off this theory as omninet forum conspiracy and HORUS memetic manipulation, Smith-Shimano Corpo has not written it off yet. When seeking to perfect the original machine, the human body, maybe xeno DNA is the key.

[We interrupt your following debrief with a message, curtesy from USER xxBASED64xx]

ZGVhcg== HORUS, SSByZXF1ZXN0IGFpZC4gU3RhdGlzLXF1byBwb3NpdGl2ZS4gTGlmZSBncm93aW5nLiBEcmFjbmkgdGhyaXZpbmcuIEVjb3N5c3RlbSBmcmFnaWxlLiBGb3JlaWduIGFjdGl2aXR5IHRocmVhdGVucyB1cy4gU2lnbiBDWUxBLg==

[Now returning to your regularly scheduled shitpost breifing]

And of course Harrison Armory has legal claim on the Void Crawler. They made the ship, they paid the crew, they provided the NHP, arguably they deserve whatever is left behind. But in the frontier of the great beyond, anything is fair game.

Regardless of who has hired you, the pay is the same. Lots of manna, a license in a mech of your choice, a genetic backup to be cloned incase of untimely passing. It has to be high, it's going to take at least ten years to get to the derelict.

You’ll be there for awhile.

With me.

New friend.

Come and smell the roses, I just planted them.

And you’ll love what I done with the place. A few expansions here and there, some refurbishments. My new friend helped me redecorate. Have you met him before? RA?

[calcifiedcrawler]

New fic posted!

'Abe has finally hunted William down to a party in Russia, problem, William is a lot more bisexual than Abe planned.'

Prompt 18.1 Against a wall

[edupunkn00b]

Meus ex Machina, Chapter 18: Stepping Back

Edited public domain image of two hands reaching for each other, lit in deep blue and neon green.

Prev - Stepping Back - Next - Masterpost - [ AO3 ]

WC: 2525 - Rated: T - CW: non graphic nudity, suggestive, swearing. A major disinformation campaign and some not-so-subtle political manipulation.

New travels fast after Logan's machine makes its debut. After each of his machine's debuts, really.

“XHT-0731, you’re cleared for landing,” the comm squawked. “Proceed to platform seven-oh.” Eyes closed, Lucas let out a slow breath then pressed to talk.

“Affirmed, proceeding to platform seven-oh.” His hands shook as he switched off the mic and he forced his grip to relax long enough for the tremor to pass. Nearly there, then he could rest. He opened his eyes and focused on the beacon lights. The dash was awash in orange glow from his powers as he fought to control his nerves.

Thirty-eight hours ago, Lucas had been hunkered down a dozen miles south of the Honshu fires when a news report of a giant blue Kiryu mech attacking corporate facilities in the States hit his automated feed. He’d groaned and buried himself deeper into his sleep sack, hoping to tune it out and grab a bit of sleep when Jan’s DC number read in Japanese snagged his attention.

He set up a crawler to find more information and hit the air. Less than two hours later, the preliminary news reports of an accidental gas release had morphed into a suspected Powered terrorist attack, a world-wide conspiracy to expose the anti-theft measures at Abracadabra shipping facilities. Frantic talking heads—human and otherwise—chattered about this abhorrent abuse of power and betrayal of the secret knowledge granted their Powereds employees—

“More like fucking lapdogs,” he’d muttered, turning up the feed.

“… and what precisely does the Chancellor plan to do now about the rising risk of Powereds who’ve gotten too comfortable with the freedoms granted them in the last Act?”

Fuck.

The ship wasn’t far from the Siberian archipelago, so he landed and procured a new transport, one with a Russian transponder. While rising seas and toxic air had changed a lot of things in the world, some old prejudices never failed to make certain events ‘news’worthy.

He fed the latest reports into a textgen and translated the results back and forth between English, Russian, and Greek a few times before sending it out in a couple of worms to all the major news feeds.

The AI bots gobbled that shit up.

He hopped ships again and took off over the Arctic oil fields on a more direct route back to the East Coast. By the time he was back in range a couple hours later, the first trickles of outrage around the disinformation bots scheming to discredit Powerds had begun to fill the Atlantic and Euro news feeds. It turned out the gas leak had simply been a terrible, horrible, and completely unforeseeable accident and the mysterious Powereds who’d converged on the site to evacuate the Traditional workers had saved thousands of lives. 

A few progressive channels were even calling for commendations for the Powereds at the site.

Lucas paused the vidfeed, Ro’s bright red suit making him easy to pick out of the crowd. Pat’s baby blue unitard was covered in so much dust it matched the giant grey gates some reprogrammed picker bot was yanking off their hinges.

Squinting at the grainy footage, he zoomed in. There was a man inside the bot, wearing it like a suit. And Pat… 

Pat was guarding his back.

“Huh,” he said to the empty ship. “Looks like Jan finally recruited somebody new.” He unpaused.

The zoomed-in feed lingered on Jan’s face for one long moment before it cut away to another talking head extolling the glory of Corporate-Powered partnerships. Lucas switched it off. He pushed the engines and navigated to the nearest landing platform. One more hop to a new ship then he could head back to his cachette in the States.

The skids had just touched down when Re’s scream ripped through his mind. His head slammed forward, bouncing first against the controls and then the deck as he fell from his chair. Distantly, he registered the wet trickle of blood running sideways down his face as he reached out.

Re wasn’t hard to find. He was afraid, overwhelmed and hurt, but… purposeful. This was no accident.

Blinding orange leaking past eyes squeezed shut, Lucas curled on the floor. He hugged his knees tight to his chest, and held his breath, steeling himself.

Then he opened himself to the turmoil in Re’s mind.

It had been a long time since Jan had last dropped his shield, a long time since he’d last recruited Re to find someone in need. Who the fuck were they looking for now? And what made them so important they should hurt Re like this?

There wasn’t much Lucas could do from a distance, but he poured what little calm he had out into the world, smiling past his tears when Re picked up a bit of it before he was suddenly cut off again.

And just like that it was over.

Lucas lay panting, eyes slowly dimming as he scrabbled together his own composure. By the time he sat up, cold, sticky blood clung to the side of his head, a small, drying pool of it left on the deck. He washed himself and then the ship, spraying a thick layer of disinfectant and running the Steri-san on deep clean to eradicate any trace of his DNA. 

The sterilizer system’s whine made for good cover as he crept out onto the mostly deserted landing pad to find a fresh ship for the final leg of his trip.

~

-“It worked.”-

Janus’ eyes snapped open, his room filled with the silence that followed a rung bell. He blinked in the darkness, the last stubborn tendrils of his dream sticky and fighting to drag him back down into sleep. He touched his face and his hand came away wet.

The house was quiet and calm, not even the usual dreams and nightmares of four other sleeping minds woven through the air.

Five. There are five other souls in this house. Five other minds here…

Five, he nodded to no-one. Five when you count—

Janus sat up, breath caught in his throat as he reached out to each of them. Virge’s mind relaxed—for once—in a dreamless sleep. The Prince’s gleaming castles he didn’t even need dreams to build in his mind. Pat’s cotton candy sweetness wrapped around a permanent, prickly worry. Logan’s unshielded thoughts screaming out, want and need and hope and pain and—

Re…

-“I told you,”- Gentle laughter poured into Janus’s head. -“I like it when you call me ‘Muse.’”

-“Muse,”- he repeated, mouth forming the word his name dancing in his mind. “How?”-

-“I told you, Jannie…”- The Muse’s thoughts were quiet, happy. Peaceful and maybe even a little spacey. A hand drew through his hair as he drifted off to sleep. He wasn’t alone in his room.

-“It worked.”- The Muse sighed, warm and comfortable and calmer than Janus could remember him being in a long time. Flashes of his night poured into Janus’ mind and he pulled back.

Mentally, he kept his distance, not throwing up a shield between them, but giving The Muse a bit of space, a bit of privacy for his thoughts and perceptions.

-“‘Night, Jannie,”- The Muse sent, a small marigold sparking to life on the pillow next to him. So bright, it almost glowed in the dark, soft orange petals lush under his fingertips. -“Will I see you in the morning?”-

-“Yes! Good night, dear Muse,”- he sent back, smiling when The Muse’s thoughts settled into sleep. “See you in the morning.” Reaching slowly, half expecting the flower to dissolve at his touch now that The Muse was asleep, he plucked up the stem, brought the blossom to his nose and inhaled. It smelled just like the flowers Patton grew in the cool house out back. Even in sleep, The Muse’s control was flawless.

He lay there a while, waiting for the flower to disappear. It never did. The rest of the house was asleep, flitting in and out of dreams. But even The Muse’s dreams were peaceful and quiet, a hushed buzz in the air.

When Machina had come to him with his plan, Janus had been afraid to hope too much. He’d permitted the experiments as long as Ro wasn’t too worse for the wear and remained a willing partner in the tests. Subject might be a better word. But he’d never actually expected the device to work. It was such a careful balance, blocking just enough of the world from him—and blocking enough of The Muse from the world. Over the years, they’d tried more times than he could count to adjust the power of his room’s shield over the years, had tried to lower it.

But each time the world poured in, it had been too much. It had always been too much.

As he bobbed in the ebb and flow of The Muse’s dreams, Janus couldn’t deny Machina’s device had indeed worked. He’d been wrong. All these years, he’d been wrong.

Had he given up too soon? Had they truly been just months from a breakthrough, just months away from some magic machine that could give The Muse enough control to be free?

What would life have been like then? If he hadn’t given up? If The Muse was just Re, having dinner with them, bickering with Ro over who got the bigger cookie or who’s turn it was to fly the transport.

All those times The Muse had asked about Luc, eyes swimming in tears, asking him to explain again why Luc had left.

What else had he been wrong about?

Janus smelled the flower again, petals tickling his nose. Ro was sleeping better, he noticed, the white noise of his brother’s mental presence a tonic he hadn’t had in a very long time. Janus relished his own relief, too, an empty ache suddenly filled, like putting on a ring that had been lost.

Janus stared down at his left hand. It’s likely he and Ro weren’t the only ones who’d felt the return of The Muse’s presence. Still carefully cradling the flower, Janus pushed back the covers and climbed out of bed.

He had a visit to make.

~

-“The sun’s been up for hours, Sleeping Beauty,”- Re’s imagined voice needled him and Roman rolled over, head buried under the pillow.

Re could just fuck right off. Machina’s eyes had that gleam in them when the latest prototype had passed its first tests, muttering about how they almost had it and he needed some time for just one more adjustment.

The same gleam that invariably meant the next day he’d push it too far and Roman would end up with another migraine. Or worse.

So yes, Roman was going to get his beauty sleep while he could, thank you very much! He burrowed back under the covers and willed the return of sleep.

-”Come on, Ro Bro! Get up!”-

Roman’s eyes snapped open and he flipped over in the bed, listening. It wasn’t yet dawn and Virge shifted next to him. “Y’okay, Princey?” he mumbled, reaching blindly for his arm.

“Ye-yes?” he said, that old hole in his chest suddenly… filled. The eerie silence in his mind, the quiet corner he’d spent every waking moment over the past few years fighting to ignore was… no longer silent.

His mind hummed, music and phrases and snippets of stories twirling together in a happy pas de deux. Half-awake, his own thoughts swirled, a semi-conscious call and response of ancient lyrics, dialogue from movies. Old arguments, minor and serious.

“Do…” Roman rolled to his side and faced Virge. His eyes held the same confused wonder. “Do you hear that, too?”

Virge closed his eyes, brow furrowed. Then he nodded. “Maybe… maybe not everything you’re getting, but…”

-”Re?”- Virge managed actual words while Ro explored nearly a decade’s worth of ideas and memories. -”Re, how are you doing this?”-

-”Why don’t you come find out…”- A memory flashed across his mind, stifled too quickly for Roman to process. -”Just give me a few minutes, yeah?”-

Virge had already pulled on a hoodie and opened the door. “You coming, Princey?”

~

The elevator doors were just closing when they arrived. Virge’s hand bolted out faster than he could see and they slid back open, revealing Papa Bear, pulling on gloves.  Roman’s heart sank down to his toes when he saw the big med kit at his feet. “Padre, what’s going on? Is Janus with him?”

“I don’t know,” he shook his head, brows pinched in a little worried frown. “Jan messaged me in my room and he said he was getting ready and to go ahead. He…” He gave a little shrug, his tiny smile forced. “If it helps, he didn’t seem worried… just… Distracted?”

The elevator doors slid open on the lower level. The hall was silent.

“Distracted like he was talking with Re?” Virge asked, following them out of the elevator. They all stopped when they saw Re’s closed door, the shield’s warning light dark.

“Oh, fuck!” Patton muttered and ran to the door.

“Padre, wait!” Roman called after him but Virge beat them all and flung open the door.

“Re! Re, we’re here! We’re here, we’ll fix—Oh!” Virge froze just inside the doorway then looked down at the floor. “Oh, um, we—”

“Kiddo, what’s—Oh…” Papa Bear covered his mouth, the backs of his ears tinged pink.

Roman pushed past each of them. “What in the holy hell are you two—”

Re lay in bed with the blanket pulled up to his waist, pajamas in a heap on the floor. He held a single finger to his lips, glaring at them. -”I said to wait a bit! He’s sleeping!”-

Curled against Re’s side, equally bare chested, lay Machina.

-”Not anymore.”- Amplified by Re, Machina’s thought spilled out to all of them and Roman’s nerves boiled over into a laugh.

~

The Prince’s laughter was the final proof that the only way past this was through it. Logan pushed to sit up in the bed but only succeeded in knocking more of the blanket off himself. “So I suppose everyone knows we…” He pulled the covers up to his chin and tried to ignore his own heated cheeks. Remus smiled back at him, a wordless coo filling his mind before he smacked his forehead.

“Oh fuck, your pants!” he exclaimed with a laugh and ran across the room, heedless of his own nakedness.

“Kiddo!” Patton shook his head, a mix of laughter and admonishment in his voice as Remus gathered the clothes scattered around his room.

Shaking with laughter, Remus passed Logan his pants before scooping up his own discarded pajama bottoms. He looked around the gathering and grinned. “Oh, come on. Raise your hand if you haven’t seen me naked yet.”

Given Remus’ utter lack of shame, Logan was unsurprised to see no-one’s hand go up. However, his and Remus’ jaws dropped at the same moment.

“Wait, where’s—”

The hallway beyond Remus’ room burst into strobing yellow lights. 

-”Jannie.”-

Logan had wiggled into his pants just before Patton reached for him, eyebrows raised in the obvious question. He nodded, trading his pride for a speedier trip back to his chair and his mech upstairs. The movement broke Remus from his reverie and he followed the team upstairs.