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blu-eh · 4 years ago

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after school summons

[AO3]

or: Danny gets summoned. He doesn’t like it.

It starts with a tugging feeling in his very core.

Danny Fenton pauses. If there’s one thing he’s learned in the last year, it is not to ignore random things that are definitely ghostly in origin. He has just enough time to place his pencil on the desk from where he had dutifully been doing his homework—for the first time in two weeks, mind you—before his vision goes white, he hears a snap, and suddenly he’s not in his room anymore.

For a moment he’s weightless, lost in the feeling of falling. Then, his body jerks and he has just enough time to think, oh fuck—before he’s slammed to the ground hard. His knees buckle under the unexpected weight and he goes down, clumsily, and trying not to throw up what little he’d managed to eat between homework packets.

“Ow,” Danny says.

He lies there, just for a moment, taking in the cool concrete underneath him. He tries to steady his breathing just enough so his mind can process what the hell just happened in the last thirty seconds. He’s still blinking stars from his eyes when he hears the hushed whispers echo around him and a heavy pair of footsteps approaching him. All in all, very bad signs when mysterious (and somewhat painful) things happen to you suddenly.

A gruff, questioning voice asks, “A child?”

“Oh, man,” Danny says, because that definitely does not sound good. Then he forces himself to his knees and looks up.

The first and foremost thing Danny notices is that he’s not alone. He’s on some sort of altar or platform, elevated a foot or so above the ground. A couple feet away, a group of no more than a dozen people surround him in a semi-circle, faces all covered by tattered cloaks. Another cloaked figure, dressed in much more formal robes with gold trimming, stands on the platform a mere couple feet from where Danny is. They all seem to be staring at him, waiting.

Danny hastily gets to his feet. He shifts a little into a sloppy fighting stance, just in case things were to get messy.

The dimly-lit warehouse room and the head covers don’t give him much to work with in the facial feature department, but he’s pretty confident that none of them are ghosts. Mostly from the fact that none of them are glowing and/or ranting about how much of a pain in the ass he is, but it still pays to be wary. Especially when Danny’s situations tend to quickly dissolve from bad to oh my god there are ghosts lose in Amity Park and also he maybe-sort of-possibly died in the process.

Which brings him back to his next brilliant deduction; he’s definitely in ghost form. He definitely was not in ghost form before this. His ghost form is rather obvious considering he sticks out like a glow stick in darkness of the warehouse. He doesn’t even feel the need to check his hair color, this time, but that’s more due to the fact that he doesn’t want to take his eyes off the weird people who managed to summon him from his bedroom and forced him to change into his ghost form.

(He desperately hopes that they hadn’t seen him change—weird warehouse people are not people that Danny generally associates with secret keeping.)

“Is this a cult thing?” Danny asks before any of them can speak. He takes in white line that surrounds him, and the red liquid (which he very much hopes is not blood) used to paint runes and symbols that circle him, and their weird cloak-like robes, and says, “This is definitely a cult thing. Oh my god, did you summon me? Seriously—”

Before this, he hadn't even known he could be summoned. It's just the little ghostly things learned via accident, sometimes, that truly take the icing on the cake.

There’s a tiny spark of anxiety in his gut, but honestly there’s a large difference between humans threatening him and ghosts threatening him. On one hand, he’d take weird cultist over Skulker’s lair any day. On the other hand, pure white walls and experimentation tables aren’t super high on his to visit list either. Worst comes to worst—before they sacrifice him to some ancient gods, more likely—he puts on his scary face (and maybe adds a couple of explosions) and slips out before they even notice he’s missing.

“Silence, creature,” the robed man snaps. Danny zeros in on him and immediately deduces him to be leader from vibes alone. Also the gold trimming on his robe, which very much screams leader of weird cult that summons ghost kids.

“I—okay, you know what? That was just rude,” Danny says. He points to the white line that surrounds him, “Is that cocaine?”

Danny has a feeling he doesn’t want to know the answer to the mysterious red liquid and painted symbols, so he doesn’t ask.

“It’s salt,” one of the other cloaked figures answers, like it should be obvious.

(It’s not actually obvious, and actually leaves Danny with more questions than he started with. Mostly in the realm of how did a group of cultists summon him with salt. He knows salt is supposedly an anti-ghost measure, but Danny is pretty convinced it has little to no effect on him considering the amount of Nasty Burger fries he’s consumed haven’t taken him out yet.)

“Salt,” Danny repeats. He pauses, then awkwardly tags on, “That’s good, I guess, because drugs are bad. Uh, don’t do drugs.”

A cultist quietly, and a little slowly, answers back, “We, uh, don’t.”

“Right,” Danny says. His eyes catch another section of weird in this already weird, cultist warehouse. At the base of the platform sits a variety of bones, so fresh that some of the muscle still clings to them. “Are those bones? Oh my god, did you sacrifice someone? That’s not cool! Murder isn’t cool!”

“Those are goat bones,” another follower says.

“Oh,” Danny says. “Well, I mean, that’s still fucked up on a variety of levels, but I guess that’s better than murder. Unless it's considered goat murder? Uh.”

For a second, there’s silence. The nature of the interaction is so awkward and oppressing that he almost goes invisible just to save himself the scrutiny of these random people and get the hell out of dodge. His curiosity is the only thing that holds him back—that, and the fact that he’s not quite sure if any of these people are secretly hiding ecto-weapons.

Danny very much does not want to be shot tonight.

He looks around the room, eyes taking in every inch of the sparsely decorated warehouse. There’s nothing that immediately grabs his attention, nor anything that really screams danger but it pays to be suspicious of his surroundings in his line of work. A few of the cultists notice this, and start shifting awkwardly as Danny looks over them as well.

Then, Danny’s eyes flicks back to the lead cultist and he says, “I’m going to be real honest here and say that I have no idea what the heck is going on.”

The leader makes no inclination that he acknowledges any word that comes from Danny’s mouth. Instead, he brings an old, wrinkled hand up to his face, like he’s thinking about some complex problem. The leader circles Danny once, then again, and Danny feels something inside him defensively coil like a spring.

He tries not to be bothered when people treat him as something lesser—it’s not, exactly, uncommon for him to encounter. He dealt with being shoved into lockers long before he died, anyways. It doesn’t stop his shoulders from tensing just the barest amount.

Instead of showing this, he brings his feet up to his chest and crosses them mid-air, and fakes a yawn for good measure. A few of the other cultists gasp in wonder and fear. The leader simply stops his prowling and turns to face Danny.

“So this is the fabled Ghost King,” the man says, like he expected better.

Danny feels he should almost be offended if it isn’t for the tiny detail that these cultists—who summoned him by using salt and goat bones—assume he is the ghost king. “…Did you seriously confuse me with Pariah Dark?”

The man pauses, and asks, “Pariah Dark?”

“Yes! He’s like fifteen feet tall, has a huge sword, is a pain in the ass, and has, like, an entire ghost army. I have, I dunno, pre-calc homework in my bag. We are not the same.”

Some of the followers in the background shift uneasily. Danny bares his teeth in their direction, just to see them squirm. A couple take worried steps back and Danny fights off a satisfied grin.

Hey, poke a bull and get the horns. In this case, summon a ghost-teenager and get the ecto-powers.

(He’s slowly becoming more and more aware that these people have no idea what they’re doing.)

“I see,” the leader says. From his tone, he definitely does not see. “It doesn’t matter. Our book summoned the King of Ghosts and that is you, so you will do as we tell you and your pain will be lessened.”

“I am still not the Ghost King,” Danny tells him. “And no thanks. I’ve already used my yearly cult sign up and I can’t say I’m thrilled to join another. If you’re going to hold an initiation ceremony, at least decorate a bit first. Uh, not counting the goat bones and salt, of course.”

“You have no choice,” the leader snaps and steps a bit closer to him. Danny merely raises an eyebrow. “We are the Followers of Infernal. We have summoned you to serve us. You are bound to our will and bound to our grace, as the book foretold. Now bow, demon, for we are your new masters.”

There’s a very large portion of Danny Fenton that is convinced any good karma he held in life did not pass with him during his death a mere year ago. An even larger portion of him is convinced that these guys are no more serious than the GIW is. Danny does not tell the cultists this.

Instead, he squints and says, “Alright. I definitely failed US Government, but I’m pretty sure that’s not legal. Don’t you guys need like, a permit to summon undead beings of mass power?”

“It thinks it’s funny.” The leader’s face is mostly hidden by his robe, but Danny can imagine the sneer there from his tone alone.

“Trust me, I’m not the one who’s a joke right now,” Danny says. He looks back over at the dozen or so followers and grins at them. They don’t seem too keen that he’s not following their master’s orders and bending to their will. He turns back to the leader. “What’s in it for me?”

“What?”

“If I follow you and stuff, what’s in it for me?”

The leader pauses, then says, “You will be spared of punishment.”

“Hmm, that’s not good enough,” Danny says. He angles his body so he's once again looking at the followers and points at one in the middle. “Hey, you! With the cloak. No, not you, the other dude. To the left. Yeah! You. What do you have to offer me?”

The follower looks so startled that he cowers for a second. Then, seeing as he hadn’t been reduced to a pile of ashes from Danny’s gaze alone, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out something small and silver. “Uh, I have a paper clip, your ghostliness.”

“A paper clip,” Danny repeats. “Yeah, sure, fine. Whatever. That sounds neat.”

“You’ll submit to us?” the man sounds so hopeful that Danny almost feels bad for being a jerk. Then, he remembers that they summoned him out of his nice, warm bedroom at ass-o’clock in the night and feels significantly less amounts of pity.

“No, dude, I’m not being your sack of potatoes for a paper clip. Man, you guys are stupid.” Danny rolls his eyes and floats just a bit higher. The other followers shuffle around again, uncomfortable. In front of him, the leader remains impassive as ever. “Where even am I?”

“The lair which you will spend the rest of your afterlife,” the leader says.

“Okay, this is definitely a warehouse, firstly. And secondly, dude, I meant what state.”

“…Wisconsin,” the man allows because of course everything terrible happens in Wisconsin.

“You chose the worst state to have your crappy lair,” Danny tells them. Now he has to fly a couple hundred miles home and hope he gets there by morning, all the while avoiding his creepy, obsessed arch-nemesis. He wonders if Vlad is even aware there’s a ghost-obsessed cult in his home state. Probably not. “Nothing good ever comes from Wisconsin. You can take that as, like, ghostly wisdom or something.”

“Hey,” one of the cultists says, offended. “The Packers are in Wisconsin.”

“Nothing good,” Danny repeats, firmly.

“Enough of this nonsense,” the leader says. “It’s trying to distract you because it fears control. Briar, bring me the orb.”

“Yes, sir,” one of them says.

The followers mutter to themselves and teeter around in their positions. The woman who spoke, on the end, bows and scurries off. Danny watches as she runs through the darkness of the warehouse, footsteps echoing around them, until he can no longer see her among the darkness.

“Hey, if they already listen to you then why do you need me?” Danny asks. The leader doesn’t answer, so Danny floats a bit on his side and puts his arms behind his head. “What kind of orb are we talking about, anyways? Like one of those Spirit Halloween ones? Or is it more like orbeeze? I can’t saw I’m super excited from your ominous it fears control statement, but—"

“Silence, beast,” the leader says.

Danny huffs. “I’m just asking. No need to be so snippy.”

The man ignores him which, rude. Danny’s just about to see how far he can test this guy’s patience when Briar comes back, just as quickly as she had disappeared. She jogs through the warehouse and up the steps of the platform. Danny can’t see her face, but from the way her hood moves to glace at him every so often, he figures that she’s probably nervous. Specifically about him lounging around in a circle full of salt.

“Father Johnathan,” Briar says and bows. In her hands is a glowing, silver orb. It really did look like a generic orb one would find in a Spirit Halloween. “The orb.”

“Your name is Father Johnathan?” Danny asks. He eyes the orb for a second, but doesn’t feel the tingle of ghostly energy from it, so he ignores it. He turns right back to the leader, not able to keep the grin off his face. “Your name is really Father Johnathan?”

Father Johnathan gently takes the orb in his hands as Briar scurries off towards the rest of the followers. Then, he sighs and says, “Yes, creature, my name is Father Johnathan and I shall be your new master.”

“Oh my god,” Danny says, positively gleeful. “I meet real life Papa John and he summons me with salt and threatens me with a Spirit Halloween orb.”

“Laugh all you want,” Papa John says. The nervous air shifts into something a bit more predatory. “You will not be laughing much longer.”

The cultists break into applause and talk amongst themselves loudly. They shift forward, eagerly, as if they want to watch the spectacle up close. They’re only a foot or so away from the platform when Papa John waves at them to halt.

Papa John holds up the orb. It swirls, the silver fog inside consolidating and then dissipating. Something inside it starts to glow the barest amount.

Danny pauses, just for a second, and watches it. There's still no tingle of ghostly energy coming from it. If he hadn’t already thought these guys are a joke, he definitely would’ve been a tad more nervous. As it stands, he thinks nothing of it—no ghostly energy means no control over ghosts.

(Unfortunately, he knows the feeling of ghost-controlling objects quite well. It’s not an experience he’s eager to repeat.)

The orb glows brighter, and brighter, swirling more furiously. The chatter of the cultists picks up to the point where they’re almost shouting, jeering at him. Papa John draws closer and closer, orb outstretched. He holds it through the salt line and touches it to Danny’s chest. The shouting from his followers almost becomes unbearable.

And then….nothing. The orb stops glowing. The fog inside stops swirling. It simply dies in Papa John’s hand.

“Was that supposed to do something?” Danny asks.

Papa John touches him with the orb again, a tad more forceful, so Danny assumes it was supposed to do something. From the panicked whispers around him, it definitely was supposed to do something to him. Danny’s honestly not sure if the outcome is due to him being a halfa or these guys being a joke.

(He’s willing to bet it’s the latter.)

“I think your LED batteries died,” Danny tells him. “Or maybe you mixed up your Spirit Halloween orbs. Better luck next time.”

Papa John stops furiously pressing the orb to his chest and if Danny could see his face, he has no doubts that Papa John’s expression would be livid.

“You will obey us,” Papa John says.

“No,” Danny says. “I won’t.”

“You will—”

Danny swings his feet down so hard that he cracks the very ground he now stands on. Dust kicks up around him as he stands tall, even though Danny’s at least two feet shorter than the leader in front of him. His eyes burn a brilliant green and he crosses his hands over his chest in an effort to look intimidating. The cult thing is interesting and all, but it's late, he still has homework to do, and Jazz has definitely noticed him missing by now so it's probably better to end this before they can get another object from a Spirit Halloween and try that instead.

It works, if the half-step back from Papa John is anything to go by.

“Listen,” Danny says, flatly. “Get a hobby and leave me alone or else you won’t like what I’m going to do.”

He makes his form flicker and the temperature drop in the room, just for dramatic effect.

Some of the followers in the background shift uneasily. A couple take panicked steps back. More than a few look ready to bolt for the door and leave this cult business behind forever.

Danny takes notice and stares at them, smiling wide enough that they could see his slightly-toothy grin. He makes sure his eyes flare, just a touch, and says loudly, “Boo.”

To say the cultists are startled would be an understatement. More than a few stumble back, a couple falling onto their asses. One trips on their robe and is sent tumbling. Another one yells and cowers. Papa John has no time to reign in the situation before two scatter completely.

“Peace!” Papa John shouts over the chaos of a dozen panicking followers. Those that remain do settle down enough to hear his words. “Stand down, there is nothing to fear. It is only trying to scare you into letting it free. It is trapped whilst it remains in the circle.”

Danny snorts. “I can leave any time I want.”

“You cannot leave here, demon—”

Danny raises one single eyebrow and dutifully steps out of the summoning circle.

The warehouse erupts into chaos.

The cultists are yelling now, but this time there’s only because of fear. They scatter over each other, running and tripping over their obnoxiously long cloaks. A couple trample the goat bones to the point where several loud snaps are heard over the pandemonium. It only adds more fuel to the fire as less than a dozen people scramble to get as far away from the platform—and subsequently the ghost-kid—as possible.

“Do better than a paperclip, next time!” Danny calls out to them. They only seem to run faster at the sound of his voice.

Papa John is the only one who doesn’t run. He had stumbled off the platform and away from Danny the second that Danny made it over the salt line. However, in the disarray, he had been knocked to the ground, his orb lay broken at his feet, and his robe’s hood had been yanked off and left on the ground beside him. He sits, frozen, but Danny doesn’t know if it’s from shock or from fear.

Danny takes a step closer to him.

“How…?” Papa John whispers. He’s not looking at Danny—only his old, wrinkled hands. He’s bald, with brown eyes. He looks like nothing more than any generic old man that Danny would see at a grocery store on Sunday afternoon. “We followed the book. We…we took every precaution the book said. We were supposed to have the perfect slave, bound to our every word. We…”

“That didn’t work out too well for you, huh?” Danny says and crosses his arms over his chest. “It’s ‘cause you forgot the dunce cap when you decided to be the class clown.”

“Please,” Papa John says. “Spare me.”

There’s something wrong about this—seeing a human beg for his life at Danny’s feet. Danny doesn’t want to be feared. He never has wanted to be feared.

He presses his lips together and takes a single step back. Some part of him, though, knows that he desperately needs to make his point clear to avoid another situation like this (likely with more weapons, next time).

“I warned you,” Danny says softly. His voice echoes around the warehouse. The man below him shivers in terror. “Do not summon me again, or I won’t be so nice next time.” He pauses, just for a second and can't help but tag on, "Papa John."

He lets his threat linger and hopes the man takes it seriously enough that he won’t get summoned again. Then, the cool strings of invisibility wrap around his body and he disappears from sight. Danny takes one look at the man left on the floor before he shakes his head and shoots up into the Wisconsin night sky. He doesn't hear the shouted response of it's Father Johnathan from several hundred feet below him on the warehouse floor.

Danny waits about all of thirty seconds before he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone.

"Jazz? Hey, yeah, I'm fine. Yes, seriously, I'm fine but you are not going to believe what I just went through—"

#me mentioning my love for spirit halloween no less than five separate occasions #anyways #my fics #danny phantom #i Attempted to mention every single ectober week 2020 in this fic so like. lmao #ectober #ectober 2020 #ectober week #ectober week 2020 #phan phic #phic #tw drug mention #there are no actual drugs but i do reference a drug by name so this warning applies

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kagebros · 5 years ago

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Here (Evac x Reader)

Summary: |REQUEST| You’ve been working at NEST in hopes to meet aliens and maybe befriend them! Your attempts though are dashed until one blue Autobot shows up at the base one day. Warnings: N/A Word Count: 1455

Tags: @ the one anon who sent me the request!

One afternoon though, a new Autobot had rolled into the base with Optimus and Ironhide, having taken on the shape of a blue Nissan GTR. He was someone who had apparently been on Earth for quite a while now compared to Optimus and you immediately were curious. Perhaps this new Autobot could be your friend. You were determined to at least have one Autobot be your friend, everything else be damned.

When the blue Autobot got out of their altmode, they stood about the same height as Bumblebee. Alright. Good start. At least they weren’t 32 feet tall like Optimus.

“Autobots,” Optimus said, the Autobot’s attention turning towards him as he introduced the new recruit. “This is Evac. He is here to help us protect the remaining Allspark shard.”

“It’s good to be around comrades again, Optimus,” Evac said. You approached Evac meekly, gripping your clipboard as nervousness wracked your body. You had to be used to this by now, it was standard procedure after all. All NEST scientists had to essentially do a checkup on all Autobots, especially new ones before they were sent out on missions. It was a deal that the NEST operatives and Optimus had allowed, as long as no experimentation was being done on them. After all, they were intelligent beings. Giant ones with intellectual prowess higher than any human.

“H-Hello!“ you called out to Evac.

“Ah, (y/n),“ Optimus said, noticing your small form. “I believe you’re the one conducting the check up on our friend?“

“Yes,“ you replied, “Evac, if you could follow me, to the decontamination chamber…” You then turned around and started leading him to the decontamination chamber, something Ratchet had created for Cybertronians, using the knowledge he had from previous years before Cybertron had fallen.

“Is this standard procedure?” Evac asked, being careful not to kick anyone as he followed you.

“Yup, don’t worry, we’re just making sure everything is healthy, after we’re done on our part, we’ll send you to Ratchet,” you replied. When Evac entered the decontamination chamber, you pressed a button that cleaned him of whatever needed to be cleaned and he got out of the chamber feeling refreshed, you then pointed him to a lowered berth essentially and he laid down on it as you climbed onto it and walked around him, using various tools to see how his health was. During the entire time, you struck up a friendly conversation with him, asking him every question that came into your mind, knowing that you wouldn’t have any other chance of becoming friends with this new person. “Ah- sorry,” you then said, cutting yourself off.

“Hm?” Evac hummed.

“I just realised I’m asking too many questions, sorry,” you said shuffling a little bit in embarrassment. He gives a light laugh and a pink tint rises to your cheeks.

“No, it’s fine! Honestly, I’m enjoying the conversation, nice to get to know the people on this planet,“ Evac smiled. You paused for a moment, looking at his expression to see if he was being genuine and you cleared your throat as you set aside the last tool.

“Well, I’m done with everything for you,” you huffed. “Now you gotta deal with Ratchet, you seem fine in everything so I don’t think he’ll give you too much trouble,” you smiled. He got up from the berth and gave you a smile before approaching Ratchet for the rest of his check up. You stood there for a moment before one thought ran through your mind. Oh, he’s kinda cute.

A few months passed since you first met Evac, often glancing at him every now and then to see what he was up to. Little did you know that whenever Evac was back at base from missions, his optics would be searching for you every now and then. Ever since he met you, he found you pretty endearing. The conversations you had through those months were short, usually cut off with you having to work and Evac being gone during missions.

It was rare that he had time off, but when he did he’d find ways to seek you out and spend as much time as possible with you. After all, he enjoyed your presence and your friendliness towards him was a breath of fresh air. And you enjoyed being around him, learning more about his world, him as an individual. So the day when you realised you fell in love with him hit you like a bus. Maybe you were just looking at him for too long or just acting on something else. But his laugh! His smile! It made your heart race whenever he gave you that smile, something that he seemed to only give to you when you passed by on your way to do a task that had been assigned to you. So when Evac finally had enough time to himself to go out for a drive he immediately approached you after you had finished with your work for today.

“Hey!” Evac greeted. “So um,” he rubbed his servos on the back of his neck, suddenly growing nervous. “I was wondering if you wanted to go out for a ride. Together. Just the two of us.” A smile immediately grew on your face and you accepted the offer. Evac wasn’t expecting you to say yes so quickly and stood there with his dermas slightly open for a moment, processing before giving a light chuckle and changing into his altmode. He opened the driver’s door for you and you got in, Evac leaving the hangar a little bit faster than he should have, mainly because he couldn’t contain his excitement. The Autobots watched as he sped off and Ratchet muttered to himself as he went back to his work.

“Young Cybertronians, always unable to control their sparks,” Ratchet grumbled.

“So, where to?” you asked Evac as he drove off the base.

“I dunno, any ideas on where you wanna go?“ Evac replied through the stereo. You thought about it for a moment before a location came to mind.

“There’s a mountain pass nearby that overlooks the ocean,” you said. “We can park at a spot up there and just watch the sunset.”

“Watching the sunset? Sounds romantic to me,” Evac teased. You gave an awkward yeah and cleared your throat, trying to will away the blush that was growing on your face.

“Yeah, so?” you said defensively. Evac’s fans started going full blast for a moment before calming down and you quirked a brow.

“I, just uh,” Evac tried to find the words but couldn’t, so instead he just kept driving, leaving you both flustered. You gave him directions as he went, your voice cautious and gentle, beginning to feel more and more nervous as you drew near the spot. When you arrived, you got out of Evac and placed your hand on his hood as a sign of affection before looking towards the sun, which had begun to set.

“Nobody’s here-” you were cut off as soon as you spoke by the sound of Evac shifting out of his altmode, your hand now in his servos as he sat down on the edge. You kept your hand in his servos for a moment before your face flushed red and you withdrew it, muttering a sorry. Evac only gives a light laugh, motioning you closer. You think about it for a moment before drawing closer to him, sitting on the ground and leaning against his large frame. He wraps his arm around you and the two of you watch the sun set, saying nothing the entire time, simply taking in his body heat as the air began to cool as it settled into night. It was nice. Just the two of you sitting here all alone, with no responsibilities to worry about. You kinda wished it’d last forever. Just being here. With him.

#evac x reader #evac #transformers x reader #transformers request #evac transformers #uhh i hope this is alright!#little difficult cus i remember going on the ride but its fuzzy #anyway #kagebros.writing

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toonerdyandiknowit · 6 years ago

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Hardware Part 3

Honestly, this whole series is a hot mess. But by god I’m gonna finish it.

Tony X Reader (Possible smut in future chapters)

Warnings: Mention of hospital, cattle prod ?

You weren't sure what Tony had done, but things with the team had calmed considerably.

In the past week you'd been invited to dinners, breakfasts, movie nights, and game nights. It had been fun, the atmosphere was much more relaxed and you found that you were actually enjoying the company of most of the group. There was however an underlying source of tension.

Every now and again something would be said, and suddenly all eyes would be on you, just for a moment, before moving away with a quick change of subject. Whether it was Nat asking Clint about his latest arrow heads, or Steve making a joke of something Sam had done on mission, there would be an uncomfortable pause as everyone seemed to simultaneously remember that there was an outsider in their midst.

You. Because despite your powers, and despite the fact that you were also living in the Avenger compound, you were an outsider. You weren't an Avenger, and had made your opinion clear on the matter. Clearly, this still bothered them.

Whenever these moments of charged tension arose, you'd made a habit of excusing yourself to the labs. You didn't want to be the cause of anymore arguments.

So you ended up spending a lot of time with Tony and Bruce. With Tony, you mostly helped tinker in the mechanical bay, cracking jokes and trying to describe what all his toys sounded like when they spoke to you.

In fact, Tony had begun singing your praises. Your abilities were making you invaluable to his research, and you'd even managed to fix a few of his experimental weapons. Several of which were now being used regularly by the team.

Tinkering in the lab, bantering with Tony as you made amazing new tech that could help save people...it felt pretty good. Good enough that you'd actually started considering asking if you could stay once SHIELD was done with you.

Maybe you couldn't be an Avenger, but you could still help out in a way that didn’t make you want to run for the hills?

Tony's attitude to the whole situation certainly made things easier; the casual flirtation and sharp wit peppered with innuendo made time fly, and you found yourself spending more and more time there. Surrounded by tech which often looked more like lumps of metal with random wires poking out, the damaged walls, and the abysmal organisation, that was when you felt the most relaxed.

You had managed to have that talk about boundaries, though it hadn't exactly gone according to plan. Rather than looking abashed, Tony had laughed, asking if you'd liked what he'd picked out. To your horror, you'd returned to your rooms later that night to find three new romance books piled on your bedside table, with another winky face post-it stuck to the cover of the top one. The post-it had been strategically stuck across the hip bones of the cover-model, giving the illusion that all that kept your gaze from seeing everything was a yellow, winking sticker.

You’d discovered the cover model was actually wearing a loin cloth.

You'd taken the post-it down with you to the lab the next evening, and stuck it firmly to Tony's forehead. He'd laughed, giving you a wink before pulling you in to ooh and ahh at his latest gadget.

You knew that he often crashed on the battered sofa in the lab, a side effect of not being able to sleep, and once or twice you'd found yourself falling asleep down there too.

One time you'd woken up wrapped in his arms on the sofa. You left before he woke up.

With Bruce, you spent more time in the Medical bay. You'd always hated hospitals, the way they felt so sterile and lifeless, and the med lab was no different. When Bruce had gotten a look at your powers, he'd immediately decided that he was going to spear head the research into them.

This turned out to be a very good thing, you can't imagine what it would have been like if you'd have had to leave the tower everyday for these tests. They were often exhausting, and every now and again SHIELD would send a request through that made you uncomfortable enough that you were thankful you and Bruce had become friends. You would have lost your shit if a stranger had had to conduct some of these tests on you.

That was where you were now, feet swinging back and forth as they hung over the edge of the medical bed. Tony stood in the corner of the medical room, a large bucket overflowing with phones and small nick-knacks by his foot as he fiddled with his phone.

You were wearing what you liked to call 'experiment-chic' clothes, which had made both Tony and Bruce snort in amusement the first time they heard. Black leggings, a sports bra, and a loose button-up shirt made up the ensemble, which you'd chosen for it's comfortable feel and so it could be moved around without disturbing any wiring that may be attached to you for the day.

You reclined back on the bed slightly, the head having been raised so you were mostly sitting up, and rolled your shirt up so Bruce could get started. As Bruce started strapping the ECG and EEG wires to your body, you noticed his faint blush as you moved your shirt around to accommodate the tabs that needed to be stuck beneath your breast. He mumbled an apology as he stuck them in place, quietly reminding you that if you wanted a female nurse at anytime, to just say so. You smiled, poking his pink cheek as you joked that you were irresistible.

“Covered in wires and baggy clothes, yep, I’m the hottest thing in here, no nurse would be able to resist me.”

Flicking your eyes to Tony, you felt a jolt run through you to find him watching, his eyes hooded and hot as they tracked the small flash of skin revealed. His eyes flicked up to you, and the heat was gone, replaced by a cheekily flirtatious smile and a wiggle of eyebrows that made your snort. You must have imagined it.

"Alright, to be honest we've got a pretty good idea of how your powers work now, but there’s still two more tests to do. The first is we need to figure out just how far your powers can reach, the second is to see if there's anyway we can disrupt them." Bruce moved away to tap at a screen which hung suspended from the ceiling, pulling it round to point out a few things to Tony, who nodded.

Standing, Tony began placing a number of different gadgets throughout the room; in front of you, behind you, close enough to touch, far enough to barely see, hidden in piles of towels, in a medical drawer, there must have been about twenty small gizmos dotted around the room by the time the bucket he'd brought was empty.

"Now, most of what Tony's hidden are phones, but some are just old toys, handhelds and such. We want to see how far you can reach, if you can influence what you can't see, and what sort of a radius you have." Said Bruce, tapping at several screens as Tony stood next to him, flicking his attention between the screen and you.

You closed your eyes and nodded. Breathing in, you let your awareness creep out slowly, brushing past the closest gadgets until you could feel the gentle hum of every gadget in the room.

"Interesting, the electrical spikes in her brain should be an indicator of severe brain damage, I'd expect to see a seizure at the very least..."

"Yeah but remember the MRI? Her brain structure seems to have altered to compensate for the..."

You let their voices drift away as you sent out a simple order; come here.

The sudden rattling caused you to open your eyes as the gadgets pulled themselves out of every hiding place, scrabbling to you with legs made from wires and cogs and tiny processors.

You noticed that the gadgets Tony had hidden outside of the door about fifteen feet away, which had been the hardest to hear and get a hold of, but you had managed with relative ease.

"Alright, Sparky, I think we're onto something. I wanna try something new if that's ok with you?" Said Tony trotting over to perch on the bed.

"What?"

"Just a teeny, tiny, electric shock. I'm curious as to whether your powers may have some correlation to Point Break's, and whether the introduction of electricity directly to you body in an involuntary manner...."

"Alright, alright. Jeez Stark, I don't need the entire paper you're writing on it, hit me." You smirked as he nudged your shoulder with his own before hopping off to get a...

"A cattle prod?!" you yelped, twitching back against the bed. The genius, play boy, philanthropist, nut-job waved the prod back and forth cheerfully.

"Oh relax, it'll barely sting! It's not meant to hurt, just expose your body to an outside source of electricity to see if that will effect your abilities in anyway."

You rolled your eyes and held out an arm.

"Just get it over with, you lunatic." You wiggled you fingers playfully and waited for the inevitable pain.

Instead you felt the cold touch of metal on your arm, followed by a rush of pure energy that spread through your body and made you tingle down to your cells.

Popping your eyes open on a gasp, you looked at Tony and Bruce in shock.

"What was that?" You choked. You felt tingly and full of energy, like you could swim the Thames.

"I dunno but these reading just went haywire, trying reaching out again." Said Bruce, tapping frantically at several screens while Tony looked them over with wide eyes.

Without thinking, you reached out with your powers; wake up, do something.

For a beat, nothing happened. None of the equipment moved, or behaved in any way it shouldn't.

Suddenly there came a heavy thud from above you. Shouting, crashing, and gun shots rang out as the three of you looked at each other wide eyed.

"What the fuck?" You breathed.

#writing #writing is hard #what is this #hardware #fic #fanfiction #Tony stark #tony stark x reader #tony stark fanfic #avengers #avengers fanfic

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end-o-the-line · 7 years ago

Text

A Captain America: the First Avenger Timeline for Fic Writers

(I’m so sorry I erased the original post I’M SO SORRY! You can read this without the visual aids on AO3.)

March 10, 1917 - James Buchanan Barnes is born, and we were all officially fucked.

July 4, 1918 - Steven Grant Rogers is born, and somewhere in Brooklyn Bucky's mother wept . . .

June, 1924 - Steve's mother is bedridden from illness associated with Tuberculosis.

September, 1930 - 12-year old Steve and 13-year old Bucky meet for the first time in Hell's Kitchen, where Bucky scares off bullies trying to steal Steve's money. What were they doing in Hell's Kitchen? No one knows. Steve tells Bucky he's been living in the orphanage 'on 8th' since his mother's death. Which is odd since Bucky was apparently at her funeral when they're both legal adults in a flashback scene from the Winter Soldier. For the purpose of this timeline, info from the movies will take precedent over info from the various tie-ins. Meaning Sarah Rogers is basically Schrödinger's Ma for the next 6 years.

1936 - Shrodinger's Ma finally actually dies fo sho of Tuberculosis. Bucky breaks everyone and their mother's heart with his 'til the end of the line' line. (Also, per MCU canon, Bucky's 'folks' are still alive . . . and own a car.)

February ish, 1940 - Colonel Phillips first approaches Howard Stark, in Los Angeles, about working for the SSR. (Stark Industries was formed in 1939, and 'a year later' Howard is at a nightclub in West Hollywood called Ciro's, demonstrating the properties of Vibranium. Ciro's opened in January of 1940. So keeping in line with the MCU canon and with real world history, as you do, January 1940 is the absolute earliest that Howard could have been recruited.) They're pursued and Stark deploys rockets from the ass-end of his car to escape them because Howard Stark.

Agent Margaret "Peggy" Carter, aka Agent 13 is already in deep cover working for Schmidt as a maid in his personal mansion.

November, 1940 - Peggy rescues Dr. Erskine from Schmidt's mansion two days after Johann Schmidt forces him to inject the experimental serum, proving that we all could have saved a lot of time if Peggy had done that three fucking days earlier, Jesus.

May 25, 1941 - Steve goes to the Dodgers-Phillies game at Ebbets Field. Was Bucky with him? We don't fucking know. It was a Sunday, so maybe. It’s not like Steve knew other people . . .

December 7, 1941 - Steve and Bucky are in an art class - like . . . how can anyone write these two as dirt poor when they're fucking around on their Sundays at baseball games and art classes? By this point the economy was booming as the work force was being drafted left and right, these two would not have been in need of jobs. And two Irish-Catholics (honestly, Bucky is probably Scottish, lbr) skipping church? tsk tsk - when the class is informed by a runner that Pearl Harbor has been attacked.

Okay real talk here, for a second. The draft officially started in 1940, pulling men 21 years of age and older. In 1940, Bucky was 23. He was single, no kids. He absolutely could not have given conscientious objector status as a way to avoid it because if he had, when he was drafted later on he never would have seen combat. He should have been drafted in '40 or '41. The only reasons he wouldn't have been was if he was a student, or if both his parents and/or his siblings were considered his dependents. Since some sources say both Bucky and Steve were orphans, then it is entirely plausible that both Bucky's parents died close to the time Bucky turned 19 or 20, in which case he could have become the legal guardian of his younger siblings.

PS: Bucky is not an orphan in the MCU (nor is he poor in that suit, jfc):

So either Bucky was working like a damn dog supporting his family, in which case the fuck are you doing in an art class, kiddo? Or he was actually a student at a college or university.

.....he could also have, during the years the US was gearing up in case they were forced into the conflict, held a job that was considered vital to the coming war effort. This sort of deferment was limited to jobs in war production, and jobs that involved national 'health, safety, or interest'. Literally the only job I can think of without actually like . . . researching it, that Bucky could have been in where he would have been skipped the first few times but taken in '42, is if he had been a police officer. That would fit very well with his ability with a gun, plus explain why he made sergeant so fucking fast, with prior training other inductees would not have had.

Considering what a golden child Bucky was in Brooklyn, all three of those scenarios would be a perfectly valid reason for Bucky to have avoided the first several waves of conscription. Just thought that was interesting.

Anyway! Steve wants to enlist right away, so Bucky (a three-time YMCA welterweight boxing champion, suck it) trains him for two whole weeks because Bucky is apparently of the opinion that Steve is an idiot who won't get in anyway so why fucking bother going hard.

*at the time, under the regulations of the New York State Athletic Commission, welterweight was a weight class of 147 to >160 pounds. Meaning post-war Bucky gained about 40 pounds of pure muscle after getting the serum....dude.

December 24, 1941 - Bucky is right and Steve's first attempt to enlist fails so hard. Go to Midnight Mass, Steven.

March, 1942 - Red Skull fucks shit up in Tønsberg, Norway and finds the Tesseract.

September 21, 1942 - Bucky receives his draft card, and takes it to an intake facility and enlists in the US Army. The following dates are literally nowhere in canon, but I have research to back up what is essentially pure speculation on my part. His serial number is 32557038. There is a real world counterpart who actually had this particular serial number, and he was enlisted on this date. So, in order for Bucky to have gotten to the number before this guy, Bucky probably woke up early Monday morning to get shit done.

Desperate Historian's Note: I always assumed that since he was a Sergeant when he first shipped out, Bucky had been in service for at least a year and a half, which is still pushing it within the constraints of the timeline. Most NCO's at the start of US involvement in the War, Corporals and Sergeants, already had years of Army service under their belts. But no. 9 months. So. Bucky basically kicked ass and took names to become a Sergeant in 9 months of non-combat training (which took place at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin btw). That, or every NCO in his regiment came down with a sudden case of the Deads and he got promoted.....Bucky would have needed a special recommendation from the company commander - TWICE in 9 months - to reach that rank. Jesus. It is canon fact that Bucky was indeed an absolutely phenomenal soldier (and leader) . . .

He would have been sent to basic training and been gone for ten weeks, meaning it would have been over by the 1st of December, 1942, or thereabouts.

December 1, 1942 - Give or take a week or two, maybe, depending on how quickly he was whisked away after enlistment, Bucky would have been given a week's furlough after training at Camp McCoy ended.

December 8, 1942 - Since he is a designated marksman (not a sniper, the US Army didn't have those in WWII. A designated marksman was just a guy in a regiment who was an excellent shot and stuck with their regiment at all times and was used situationally, never went off alone to shoot people in the head and stuff), he absolutely would not have been sent to any sort of sniper training because, again, the US did not have those in WWII. He wouldn't have stayed in NYC, though.

He would have been on an Army base somewhere, with the occasional week-long furlough to return home. There were 114 mobilization camps by 1942, and only three of those in New York state; Madison Barracks, Camp Upton, and Pine Camp, with three more in New Jersey; Fort Dix, Fort Monmouth, and Camp Shanks. 17 were in California, 14 in Texas. Anyway. So, before Bucky leaves for war, he and Steve wouldn't have seen a whole lot of each other for the year before that, either.

June 7, 1943 - Bucky probably arrives in NYC on a final week's furlough before being sent to War. With the way Steve looks at him when he sees the uniform later on, and Bucky's cocky little head tilt, it's probably safe to say Bucky received his sergeant's chevrons not long before this furlough. (Honestly . . . I have never understood this part. Bucky damn well knew he was 107th from the moment he reported, and Steve should have as well. Also, ‘getting his orders’ had nothing to do with his uniform, soldiers were required to wear that shit everywhere they went. Unless Steve knew he’d gotten his orders simply because he was there and shouldn’t have been....whatever, movie exposition, blah blah)

June 14, 1943 - Steve's fifth attempt to enlist fails spectacularly because he had to claim to be from New Jersey. He then goes to get the shit kicked out of him in an alley behind a movie theater, that's what you get for saying you're from Jersey, Steven. He and Bucky attend the Stark Expo that evening, where Steve ghosts like an asshole - even though for all he knows this is literally the last time he will ever see Bucky alive!! - and is chosen by Dr. Erskine as a candidate for Project: Rebirth.

June 15, 1943 - Bucky and the 107th ship out for 'England'. Now, the troop transport Queen Mary left NYC on June 1, 1943, heading for Gourock, Scotland and carrying the 1077th Signal Company Service Group. It took 5 days; they arrived on June 6, 1943. On July 16, 1943, the Edmund B. Alexander carried 5,000 replacement troops to Liverpool, England. That journey took ten days; they made land on July 26, 1943. Maybe. The records are full of literal question marks, so I dunno. That's the closest thing I can find to Bucky's stated journey. Most of the troops leaving from NYC at this period were actually heading for Africa, landing in Casablanca, Morocco.

I know Bucky says he's shipping out for England in the morning, but it makes so much more sense that the 107th would have been sent to Africa and then swept up into Italy in the next four months of fighting, where Steve finds them later. It would be easy to deal with this by either saying Bucky's an idiot, or (my recommendation) that Bucky knew exactly where he was heading and he just wasn't telling Steve that he was being sent into the heart of the brutal African and Italian campaigns rather than a nice balmy Liverpool in the summer. The journey from NYC to Casablanca, Morocco would have been anywhere from 11-15 days.

June 20-25, 1943 - Bucky would have hit Liverpool, England right around this time, if that's the way he was sent.

June 25-30, 1943 - Bucky would have docked in Casablanca, Morocco, if this is the way it went instead. So I guess you could safely say he made landfall in the European Theater on June 25, 1943? Haha right in time for Mussolini to get his ass arrested and the Italian Fascist government to fall.

June 22, 1943 - Steve is injected with the super-soldier serum, right Steven? (Meaning he only had a week of basic training, at most, and everything else he knows about being a soldier he taught himself with all those books he brought to Camp Lehigh with him.)

September, 1943 - Ugh, okay, history nerds cover your ears, because there is just no way to make the real invasion of Italy match up with the MCU invasion of Italy. Unless the 107th just said fuck those guys and marched right into German territory past the . . . bombs and stuff. On September 9, there were Allied landings at Salerno and Taranto, Italy, and they didn’t enter Naples until October 1. I mean, is it really all that shocking that they got their asses kicked in Azzano? NO. But having a fucking USO show that deep into Italy means the MCU said fuck it, so you too can say fuck it when it comes to the real WW2 timeline in Italy, idfc. This is apparently what the MCU lines looked like at this point in time, and let me just tell you, see that bulge there, right under the Hydra flag? Those fuckers would have been surrounded and cut off so fast, so fast, just like in Bastogne. Assholes....anyway.

October, 1943 - The Battle of Azzano results in Hydra declaring war on anything that moves, including Nazis, and takes prisoners from various different regiments that historically were either still in training or in the Pacific Theater at this point, but that's fine. Prisoners are taken over 120 km away to a Hydra weapons factory in Kreischberg, Austria, where their Hydra captors separate the men into cages according to their nationality and other factors. The purpose of this is for the bickering hodgepodge of Allied soldiers to keep each other busy with in-fighting so the Hydra guards can forget to train and get beat up by Captain America in a month or so.

Dum Dum Dugan almost immediately makes a joke while Cage Team Howling Commando is introducing themselves, and a brawl breaks out. As you do.

In Bucky's cage are the following:

Jacques "Frenchie" Dernier, French Resistance, born January 2, 1911 (32). The fuck was your French ass doing in northwestern Italy, son? To my knowledge the French Resistance kind of worked mainly . . . in France. The Italian Resistance was very active in this period, so they could have been collaborating, but that's not what the Resistance did, mostly. So the only logical conclusion we can come to with Frenchie is that he was captured somewhere in France by Hydra and transported to the factory as labor. He lived in Marseilles before the War, and likely would have stayed close to it.

Major James Montgomery "Monty" Falsworth, born January 2, 1914 (29), of the British 3rd Independent Parachute Brigade, which historically first saw action in June of 1944, ha. Anyway, Monty was from Birmingham, England and was known in the comics as Union Jack, and the pin on his beret is a nod to that. Teeeechnically? Monty outranks Steve, but since they're not even part of the same Army, that's kind of a moot point. He winds up with the rank of Brigadier, which wtf, that means he outranked Colonel Phillips when the war ended . . . four for you, Monty.

Private Gabe Jones, born August 14, 1918 (25), was 92nd Infantry Division, a segregated unit that historically first saw action in September of 1944, haha. Gabe was from Macon, Georgia and was fluent in French and German thanks to pre-war studies at Howard University. Just as proficient in hand-to-hand as the others, he was often part of the team’s frontal assaults, as well as handling the radios . . . and he boned Peggy Carter in the comics.

Corporal Timothy 'Dum Dum' Dugan, born April 11, 1912 (31), was a member of the 69th Infantry Regiment, which is also known as the 165th or Fighting Irish, recruited solely from NYC, who were making landfall in the Pacific right about now. Frustrated historian's note: Had he been a real boy, Bucky Barnes would have been enlisted into the 69th Infantry as well, just like Dugan. Canon-wise it makes sense that Bucky and Dugan were from the same unit, even though canon thinks they weren't because canon made up the WWII-era 107th? Anyway, the fact that both Dugan and Bucky were in the same foxhole when the Hydra tank hits in the cut scene from First Avenger is all fucked up because you don't put your NCOs where they can be blown up together, okay. It's bad strategy. Add to that the fact that Dugan calls him Bucky like they've been buddies for a while, but the tie-in comic is still on 'Jimmy' and also states that Dugan and Barnes were in the same company after all, that cut scene is frustrating. Or I guess the comic is frustrating? Something's frustrating, anyway. I think the best way to deal with this is just to say that the 107th IS the Fighting Irish regiment because fuck it. Dugan will eventually take over leading the team when Steve goes splat, leading the Howling Commandos and being involved with SHIELD, and Nick Fury personally, well into the Cold War.

Private Jim Morita, born October 20, 1919 (24) - also, Happy Birthday here's a Hydra weapon NOW ASSEMBLE IT - wasn't in the same cage as the others, but he served in the US Army's Nisei Squadron as a Ranger, aka the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Their real fight in the European Theater began in June of 1944, so who the fuck knows how his ass wound up in Austria. And since the whole unit was made up of men of Japanese descent, it's safe to assume there's a 50/50 chance Morita was given the choice back in Fresno between enlisting and an internment camp. A lot of fics write Morita as the team medic, but I'm not entirely sure why. In WWII, medics held a rank of Private, Private First Class, or Technical Sergeant. So, the medic would either have needed to be Morita or Gabe Jones in keeping with this. But there is literally no canon mention of him being any better at triage than any of the others, and he is definitely not a medic by trade. None of them are. The more likely scenario here, because none of them wear the insignia of a combat medic, is that all of the team were equally trained and capable at the most basic of field triage, but the team itself probably flew without a safety net and used the medics from whatever regiment they were shadowing at the time.

Sergeant James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes (26) - who you will notice is literally the fourth James in a team of 7 men - contracted what can only be assumed to be walking pneumonia on the battlefield of Azzano, and as his condition gets progressively worse in captivity, hastened by the hard labor of the weapons facility, he eventually becomes so weak that he drops several components in front of the officer in charge of the Facility, identified only as Colonel Lohmer. Lohmer beats Bucky like a rented mule, and when he's deposited back in his cage, the other four realize that if he's made to work again the next day, he'll die. They devise a plan to kill Lohmer, which would put one of the kinder Nazi assholes in charge who would allow Bucky to remain in the cages until he was able to recover. Their plan works, crushing Lohmer under a ton of machinery and symbolism and signifying the first time the soon-to-be Howling Commandos had worked together successfully. The soldiers return everyone to their cages after the accident to keep order, and Dugan tells Bucky that he's safe from Lohmer now, with the only punishment being a reduction of the POWs food rations for a week since there was no one specific to punish. Bucky is an ungrateful dick and not only asks Dugan to stop calling him "Jimmy", but graces him with the nickname Dum Dum in the process. Bucky is saved from dying on the manufacturing floor only to be singled out by Arnim Zola and taken to the 'examination rooms'. And we all know what happens there.

August to Early November, 1943 - Steve Rogers sings and dances his way through over 200 shows and makes several badly conceived films while his best friend is slogging his way through Italy.

November 3, 1943 - Steve disappears behind enemy lines to go find his Bucky.

November 8, 1943 - The Man With A Plan dramatically re-enters the Allied base camp where Colonel Phillips is fixin' to tear Peggy Carter a new one for losing Captain America over enemy territory. If the Battle of Azzano happened on a goddamn Earth map at the real Azzano in the Province of Udine, and assuming the Allied camp was somewhat close to that area, the march from the factory back to the Allied base camp would have been well over 120 kilometers as the crow flies. Those prisoners were metal af.

I'm getting that date from the assumption that walking over 120 km back to (supposedly because in reality they'd have needed to walk to goddamn Naples) Allied territory with 400 sick and wounded men would take a few fucking days. An American unit in Sicily in WWII (30th Infantry Division) marched 54 miles in 33 hours across country. But it's safe to assume that the company Steve rescues from Kreischberg would not be moving at top speed, but rather a steady pace that would keep them moving, but not fucking kill them.

The closest thing I can get to this incident is in July of 1944, when the German armies began a forced march of POWs across Germany to delay their liberation by the approaching Red Armies. Groups of 250 to 300 men marched over bombed out roads in a meandering route because they were forced to skirt around various battles, kind of like what our POWs would have to do in enemy territory. The groups would march between 20 to 40 kilometers a day, with very little food, clothing, shelter or medical care to speak of. Using 30 km/day as our benchmark, that's at least 4 days that it would have taken to get back to the Allied encampment. If the Hydra factory went boom on the night of November 3rd, and Steve flounced into camp in daylight, November 8th is a very safe bet.

November 15, 1943 - Steve pinpoints the Hydra facilities on the map in the SSR bunker in London (which was located in the Cabinet War Rooms in Whitehall) and is given permission to form his own elite special ops unit. Sidenote, the Howling Commandos were never called the Howling Commandos until after the War ended, they were merely called the 107th Tactical Team. Another nickname bandied about in 'non-canon because it contradicts the movie ahahahahahah' was The Invaders, which is probably what other soldiers would have known them as when encountering them. Neither Steve nor Bucky would know what the fuck a Howling Commando even is until they read up on history, and even then neither of them would likely ever think of himself as a Howling Commando.

Now, in trying to find this date, my inner frustrated historian has begun to weep, because I just cannot find a base in Italy that makes sense for any of these damn movements to have been based out of. The Allies hadn't even gotten through the Gustav Line at this point, which ran across the boot and through the town of Cassino, south of Rome. For them to be in Northern Italy close to the Austrian border, dude. WTF were they doing there? And how did they get in and out?? I mean was anyone really surprised when their straying asses got pounded by enemy forces deep in enemy territory??

I have no idea how to judge how long it would have taken for the future Commandos to get to London and drink in a pub because there is literally no rational logic to pinpoint their starting location, and therefore no way to guess what modes of transport were even available to them so close to enemy territory. The easiest way to find this date would have been to find out what date Captain America was awarded his Medal of Honor, but . . . even I'm not that good, apparently, 'cause I can't dig up shit. The Medal of Honor ceremony that happens at the same time as this scene would have been at least a week and probably more from the action on the night of November 3rd simply because it took that long for the paperwork to travel back to Washington. It was usually months before soldiers received their Purple Hearts, for instance. But let's assume this was fast-tracked because it's Captain goddamn America. Let's also assume they didn't have Howard Stark fly them back to London in his plane and tell the other 400 POWs to go make like a leaf and fuck a tree or something.

So the trip back to London probably took at least 7-10 days. We also need enough time to have passed that they expected Steve to get from the front lines all the way back to DC for the ceremony. My first instinct is to say up to a month could have passed when this scene comes around, but a month just seems way too long when looking at the context of the scenes, from the celebratory pub crawl of the POWs to the fact that Steve is being debriefed here, which would have been literally the first concern of an agency whose job is gathering intelligence.

TL:DR version, this could be anywhere from a week to a month later, idfk.

It's safe to assume this is also the night of the pub when Bucky reveals how heterosexual he is not by asking if Steve is going to keep his stage suit for no apparent good reason.

Mostly I'm putting this date here because it is the day the Allied Expeditionary Force for the invasion of Europe is officially formed. Having the SSR gearing up for - or as a result of - that meeting seems to make a lot of sense.

November 15, 1943 to March 4, 1945 - Steve and the Invaders, often along with other military forces, plow through HYDRA factories like an enraged ex with a John Deere tractor and a bottle of Jim Beam, and also join the larger battle against the Axis Powers on the Western Front. Essentially this period is Band of Broooos: Howling Commandos Edition. This period is where you can really have your fic fun, because canon doesn't tell us fuck all about it.

Well . . . that’s not necessarily true, though. Through the (paltry imo) Howling Commando montage of the movie, we see at least 10 distinct missions, and in clips from TWS there are hints of a few more; as many as 15 total. There are 6 Hydra facilities on the board, labeled 1-6. #4 was never taken during Steve’s time. But we can assume at least 5 of their missions were blowing the rest up. One was ‘in Poland, near the Baltic’, the other was ‘30-40 miles west of the Maginot Line’, thanks Steve. That doesn’t give us shit, son. But I will try.

1. A Hydra facility raid, #2. This is the one 30-40 miles west of the Maginot Line, labeled #2 on the map. West, in fact, of Liechtenstein, and southeast of Innsbruck, in a town that begins with RES. I think this is Resia, Italy, and the Reschen Pass (Resia Pass in WW2), which would make sense, tactically. I’d like to point out that they show Bucky entering with the team, show the team running out, show Steve riding out on his motorcycle, and then the place blows up. No Bucky. Take better care of your marksman, boys . . .

2. An approach with additional military forces through a forest, in the snow. Look at those BAMF motherfuckers. I got no clue what this mission could be, though. This has the feeling of a patrol, rather than a directed attack on anything. Bucky doesn’t even have his rifle.

3. A direct attack through a forest of exploding trees . . . no snow. This is probably a frontal attack intended to push at the enemy lines. With mortars like that coming at them as they advance, there’s no way whoever they were facing wasn’t dug in on a forward line.

4. This is most likely a harassment mission. They’re shown disturbing the lines of supplies to somewhere, and taking care to be covert, which is . . . not usually how Steve rolls, lbr.

5. Another Hydra base raid, Base #5. This is shown through only film, with Steve planning an approach to somewhere and a whole shitload of troops mobilizing with them. From where they are, he’s pointing south. God help me. Looking at the map he’s pointing to, the best guess I have based on the coastline is that it shows the northern bits of Belgium, and he’s pointing toward Hydra base #5, which is somewhere in the northeast corner of France, right below the border of Luxembourg.

6. Seek and destroy mission. This was another battle, not a base. Despite the fact that they’re in rubble, but then . . . most of Europe was rubble at this point, lbr. Peggy pulls a ‘Hydra battle lines’ flag from the map after this mission, so this was about pushing the forward line back. And we know this was the Hydra line, not the Nazi line. The scene we see was likely after the battle itself was over, when the search for the wounded and intel begins; that’s when enemy snipers made their last stand, like the one seen stalking Steve’s oblivious star-spangled ass. Bucky almost kills Steve for saluting at him and giving away his carefully chosen position.

7. A pitched battle in a town, somewhere. Steve is seen kicking ass and stuff.

8. Cool guys don’t look at explosions . . . The only reason I am separating these three clips is because the middle one is obviously in a forest, where the other two are in towns. We’ll call them three separate skirmishes. I would imagine all three of these are about pushing back that forward line.

9. The mega huge tank in the middle of town. I can see the team being sent out just to take care of this thing. Historian sidenote; the Nazis did indeed cook up some monster tanks. Hitler had a size kink. The Tiger II, or as the American GIs called it, the King Tiger, was . . . I mean, you were fucked if one of these rolled up into your path. They were damn near indestructible and they carried a big fucking stick. The problem with a heavy tank is that a Europe that has been bombed back to Creation for several years is a muddy Europe . . . if that Hydra tank wasn’t stuck in 5 feet of mud it was made of aluminum or something.

10. A last Hydra base raid, Base #?. This is shown only through the resulting smoking husk of a destroyed base and Red Skull being a diva. I don’t know which one this was, other than knowing it had to be #1, or #6. I hate to tell Steve, but I’m not sure any of the flags on this map are in Poland near the Baltic Sea, my dude. It would have to be #6 that he was talking about, though. #1 is just northeast of Lübben, Germany, in what appears to now be Briesensee nature preserve.

The only other hints we get at their missions are the clips of footage from TWS.

11. Hydra Facility #3. #3 is in the south of fucking Greece, near the northwestern tip of the body of water called Maliakos Kopos. There’s a marina in that area, Agia Marina, that would make a very convenient Hydra facility if I do say so myself. Now, this looks like a water landing! And it’s not an ocean landing, so that marina at facility #3 might be the ticket.

12. I’m going to call this a Hydra Facility Raid. Look at him go. There he go. Again, this is either #1, or #6. idfk anymore.

13. Prisoners. Cap is seen escorting surrendered German soldiers, It’s notable that they’re not Hydra, so that would be one of the ‘regular’ missions they ran with other troops. It could be part of any of the above missions, though.

14. Clearing out a town left by retreat. Those soldiers are not particularly the kind of alert that possible enemy combatants in the weeds will make you, so that town has probably been cleared.

15. Troop Transport/Advancement. This is notable because it’s a bridge, and not a little stone bridge, either, it’s a big one. In fact, this is the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine. (You can learn more about the capture of this bridge by looking up the Battle of Remagen.) Bridges were kind of a big deal at this stage when the German army was pulling out all the stops trying to prevent the Allied advance. Bridges large enough to convey heavy artillery got blown up but quick. This bridge in particular was front page news when it was captured by the Allies. Unfortunately, we can’t place Steve and his team at the Battle of Remagen, or at the Ludendorff Bridge, because this happened just days after Steve nosedived into the Arctic. So. We’ll call it an MCU bridge! This was either coming back from the front and they were deeper in Allied territory, or more likely after a battle, but on the way to the new front lines, as established by the winning of the goddamn bridge. Doubt this was a Hydra mission, either.

All in all, Bucky and Steve have 16 months of battle side-by-side. Bucky would have had 20 months total of combat service in the War.

I'm going to list some real events from the War during this time that the team might have been involved with or nearby for that could fill in some of those non-Hydra missions above, and some things they would definitely have at least talked about. You can skip these if you like, just scroll down to the next bolded bit. I am copying and pasting these because I can:

December 2, 1943: The Germans conduct a highly successful Air Raid on Bari, Italy. One of the German bombs hits an Allied cargo ship carrying mustard gas, releasing the chemical which killed 83 Allied soldiers. Over 1000 other soldiers died in the raid.

January 17, 1944: The first Battle of Monte Cassino begins when the British X Corps attacks along the Garigliano river at the western end of the German Gustav Line.

January 20, 1944: The U.S. Army 36th Infantry Division, in Italy, attempts to cross the Gari River but suffers heavy losses.

January 22, 1944: Allies begin Operation Shingle, the landing at Anzio, Italy. The Allies hope to break the stalemate in south Italy, but they are unable to break out of the beachhead and the line holds until late May.

February 15, 1944: The second Battle of Monte Cassino begins with the destruction of the historic Benedictine monastery on Monte Cassino by Allied bombing. The Allies believed the grounds were used as an observation post by the Germans

February 16, 1944: Germans launch a major counter-attack at Anzio, threatening the American beachhead.

March 15, 1944: The third Battle of Monte Cassino begins. The small town of Cassino is destroyed by Allied bombers.

April 27, 1944: The Slapton Sands tragedy: American soldiers are killed in a training exercise in preparation for D-Day at Slapton in Devon.

May 8, 1944: D-Day for Operation Overlord set for June 5.

May 11, 1944: The fourth battle of Monte Cassino begins led by general Anders of the 2nd Polish Corps.

May 18, 1944: The Battle of Monte Cassino ends in Allied victory. Polish troops of the 2nd Polish Corps led by general Władysław Anders capture Monte Cassino. German troops in west Italy have withdrawn to the Hitler Line.

June 4, 1944: Allies enter Rome, one day after the Germans declared it an open city. German troops fall back to the Trasimene Line. Meanwhile, Operation Overlord is postponed 24 hours due to high seas.

June 5, 1944: Operation Overlord commences when more than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day. And the first Allied troops land in Normandy; paratroopers are scattered from Caen southward.

June 6, 1944: D-Day begins with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France. The Allied soldiers quickly break through the Atlantic Wall and push inland in the largest amphibious military operation in history.

June 10, 1944: At Oradour-sur-Glane (a town near Limoges), France, 642 men, women, and children are killed in a German response to local Resistance activities.

June 13, 1944: Germany launches a V1 Flying Bomb attack on England, in retaliation for the invasion. The V-1 attacks will continue through June.

July 3, 1944: The Allies find themselves in the "battle of the hedgerows", as they are stymied by the agricultural hedges in Western France which intelligence had not properly evaluated.

July 24, 1944: Operation Cobra is now in full swing: the breakout at St. Lo in Normandy with American troops taking Coutances.

August 15, 1944: Operation Dragoon begins, marked by amphibious Allied landings in southern France. Elsewhere, the Allies reach the "Gothic Line", the last German strategic position in North Italy.

August 19, 1944: The French Resistance begins an uprising in Paris, partly inspired by the Allied approach to the Seine River.

August 25, 1944: Paris is liberated. The German military disobeys Hitler's orders to burn the city.

September 2, 1944: Allied troops enter Belgium.

September 6, 1944: The "blackout" is diminished to a "dim-out" as threat of invasion and further bombing seems an unlikely possibility.

September 9, 1944: The first V-2 rocket lands on London.

September 17, 1944: Operation Market Garden, the attempted liberation of Arnhem and turning of the German flank begins.

October 18, 1944: Hitler orders a call-up of all men from 16 to 60 for Home Guard duties.

November 1, 1944: "Operation Infatuate", an Allied attempt to free the approaches to Antwerp begins; amphibious landings take place on Walcheren Island. It would become a major supply port for the Allies by the end of the month.

November 20, 1944: Hitler leaves his wartime headquarters at Rastenberg, East Prussia, never to return; he goes to Berlin, where he will soon establish himself at the bunker.

December 16, 1944: The Battle of the Bulge begins as German forces attempt a breakthrough in the Ardennes region. The main object of Hitler's plan is the retaking of Antwerp.

January, 1945 - The only mission the MCU gives real details about comes from the Smithsonian Exhibit's interview with Peggy Carter (which you can watch in its entirety btw). The 'difficult winter, 1945' has to be January, and they were outside Stalingrad, Russia. During - or possibly in the aftermath of - a blizzard, Steve (and presumably the Commandos but fuck those guys amirite Agent Carter?) fight their way through a Hydra blockade that had been there 'for months', and saved half a battalion, over 1,000 men, who'd been penned down behind German lines. That's literally all we've got for mission details, and none of that makes any sense. Like any. At all. Why the fuck were they near Stalingrad?? How did they get to the Eastern Front, STEVEN???

February 1945 - Bucky falls from a goddamn train in the Alps. There is no resource to tell us how much time passes between Bucky's fall and Steve's supposed death in the Valkyrie. So let me get my history on for a second. On February 17, 1945, the British Special Air Service executed Operation Cold Comfort, a parachute drop raid near Verona, Italy with the objective of blocking the main rail lines through the Brenner Pass by landslide. The Brenner Pass is a mountain pass through the Alps which forms the border between Italy and Austria. Sounds familiar, right? (It's also featured on one of the Captain America covers, Captain America No. 33, 1943).

The operation would ultimately be a failure, but since Schmidt wouldn't have known that, hearing rumors of this operation, or even word that it had been attempted and fearing a second try, this could have been the inciting incident behind why he had Zola hauling his evil ass along that railway at a speed described as 'moving like the devil'. So we can safely put Bucky's fall between February 15 and February 25th. You could also stretch and say it was February 14th, if you are the reborn incarnation of Satan.

Now, by the end of February, the Red Army was sweeping through the northern regions of Poland toward the German border, moving north and west. It's a Russian soldier who finds Bucky in the Alps, so either that patrol was way the hell out of their lane, or . . . Bucky laid there for a while, folks. Seriously, the Red Army didn't even sniff the border of Austria until March 31, 1945 with the Upper Silesian Offensive. Which leads one to postulate that, a. the Russians who found Bucky were lost as fuuuuuck, b. the Russians who found Bucky were a rogue group who defected to Hydra after Hydra declared itself a separate entity from the Axis forces (doubt it), or c. neither Steve nor any of the rest of the team ever actually looked for Bucky's body, even after Steve went down in the Valkyrie, and he laid there for weeks. I honestly choose to believe one of the former, since the latter is just . . . I can't.

[No, you know what? Fuckin......frustrated historian meta addition.]

It's always bothered me that they might never have looked for Bucky's body, y'know?

I always assumed the arm got ripped off when he hit the side of the ravine. Like maybe he grabbed for or hit a ledge and the speed/height of his fall was just too great and it got ripped off. Because it's not crushed like it would be if he'd landed on it, it's a traumatic amputation. It almost had to have happened during the fall. Which could mean he'd have landed close to the edge, or maybe like hit higher up and tumbled until he was at the bottom instead of freefalling the whole way?

In his flashback, you can see he's still bleeding as the soldiers are carrying him. Bleeding a lot. If he'd been in the water or motionless in the snow for any amount of time, the bleeding would have at least become sluggish. He'd be hypothermic; his body would route blood away from his extremities to protect his vital organs, plus the blood vessels in the wound would be constricting due to the cold. But, if he'd been moving under his own power trying to get to help, it would explain why he's still bleeding; his movement kept the blood circulating where it would otherwise have clotted up.

In this gif, it looks almost like the blood trail starts just a few meters away. If we take a leap and assume that when they started moving him it jogged him awake, then this scene shows where the Russians found him. Those are trees, aren't they? Meaning he moved under his own power after he landed. Meaning he got the fuck up after falling off that train, and walked through that ravine toward help. What a fucking badass, jfc.

Two things I think we can say with certainty; one, the Russians were definitely searching for someone. He's on a stretcher, which wasn't something a normal patrol would've been carrying, especially over rough terrain. They had it with them for a reason. And two, the Russians weren't there because of Zola. Between Bucky falling and Gabe taking the control room, he had very little time to get off a communication with sitrep and location. And even if he was able to, it would have been to Hydra troops, who would have shown up wearing Hydra gear. And Russians are almost certainly not part of Hydra at that stage in the War.

Those Russian soldiers were probably an Allied search party that was sent out to find Bucky. That would tick off a lot of problem boxes, wouldn't it? It would mean someone - the SSR, the Army - did order a rescue/recovery for a damned war hero like a fallen Howling Commando, and Allied Russian troops were closest or something. It would explain why Russian soldiers were in such a remote area, with a stretcher, when they had zero other reason to be there! It would explain why Bucky is listed as KIA instead of MIA even though they obviously never found his body. It would also explain why Bucky didn't struggle as they were carrying him off; he thought they were on his side, rescuing him.

My theory after writing all this up? He lost the arm in an impact with the side of the ravine, but contacting the ravine walls also slowed his landing and put him on dry ground. He then got up like a BAMF and moved, either until he found shelter under some trees, or he simply collapsed from shock or trauma or exposure or all of the above. An Allied rescue/recovery party found him, but they were Russian, and they reported him KIA and kept him because they knew he must be enhanced to have survived that sort of fall, cold, and blood loss, and they wanted their own Captain Comrade.

March 4, 1945 - The SSR and other forces raid the secret Hydra bunker and Steve Rogers boards the Valkyrie on his way to getting fridged, literally haha, so Peggy Carter can become a hero . . . good job Captain Cannonball.

March 15-24, 1945 - The Commandos assist in Operation Undertone, which was part of the Allied invasion of Germany by the U.S. Seventh and French 1st Armies of the U.S. Sixth Army Group. It was a very real operation, so info is easy to find about it if your heart is still in your chest after watching both our boys plummet to their supposed deaths.

Some time in April probably?? 1945 - Dugan and Morita head to the last known HYDRA facility, Facility #4 bitches!, known simply as the Fortress, located some the fuck where in Austria, with Peggy Carter. They capture HYDRA General Werner Reinhardt and take possession of the first known classified 084, the Obelisk. We don't see the Obelisk again until Agents of SHIELD.

May 8th, 1945 - VE-Day. The remaining five members of the team gather in a pub to toast 'the Captain', suggesting that they did indeed just leave 'the Sergeant's' body rotting in the Alps somewhere, fuck that guy. (It is notable that one of the tie-in books for the movie states explicitly that they toast to both 'the Captain' and 'the Sergeant', so it's probable that they gave each man his own, individual farewell. We just didn't see it.)

(If you want more timeline! Trying to track the Winter Soldier through both canon and history.)

#steve rogers #bucky barnes #Howling Commandos #history nerd rants #research #fic reference #history sorta #timeline #meta maybe?#captain america #ca:tfa #MCU detail references

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mint-sm · 8 years ago

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LOS CAMPESINOS! REVIEW/ANALYSIS: We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

Last time on the Los Camp review (suspenseful orchestral soundtrack plays), I went over “Hold on Now, Youngster...,” which was an excellent introduction to the band, but I don’t think was completely reflective of the refinement and impact it would later reach. While what was presented was impressive and lively as hell as is, and the foundation for a wittier, more poetic, more intelligent, more refined and diverse sound was there, they just didn’t have the a full-enough grasp on their visions to take advantage of it.

Well, just 8 months after the release of “Youngster,” the world was suddenly sucker-punched right in the face with “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed,” which had immediately shown a much firmer grip on that path. Bare in mind, prior to the release of “Youngster,” the band had already existed for 2 years, and that album was something of a compilation of different songs they had been performing in university clubs and internet radio shows. It’s an excellent compilation, and it’s still very well put-together, but it likely wasn’t the most precise voice and identity resembling what the band intended to jump for, at least for the future.

With “Doomed,” they finally found ground for their true calling, and it was surprising as hell. Starting things off, the album immediately hits you with “Ways to Make It Through the Wall" with its bombastic opening chords, grimy feedback, incredibly-banging and dense melodies, crashing cymbals and blasting violin, and even MORE shouty vocals from the band, including Gareth almost incoherently screaming “AND A ROOM FULL OF VACUUM AND A ROOM FULL OF AIR LOOK THE SAME!” during the bridge. On one hand, it still somehow manages to feel like the good ‘ol Los Camp we knew, and yet at the same time you ask yourself “This is the same band that just released an album with a song called ‘Drop It, Doe Eyes’?”

(HOW YOU BREAK THE RULES THAT YOU YOURSELF IMPOSED / THINK YOU'VE GOT IT IN FOR US, I THINK YOU'VE GOT IT IN FOR YOURSELVES!)

I kinda mentioned this in my intro, but I would personally divide Los Camp’s discography into 3 periods: A “Twee Indie Period,” followed by an “Noise Pop Period,” then a “Mellow Rock Period,” and “Doomed” is found kinda sandwiched in between the first two. A lot of the fresh-new-vibrant-indie-ness of “Youngster” can still be felt, but it doesn’t quite reach the more experimental and even more noisy magnificence of “Romance is Boring” that we’ll discuss next time. That said, this transitionary period still feels like a massive blow to the head with just how much more powerful the production feels now, but it’s really, really welcome.

While I don’t really think other tracks in the album reach as much of an impact as the intro, it still does consistently have a more consistently… not “tight,” but “punchy” feeling to it. Much of it feels in a way somehow messier than “Youngster,” with a more abrasive side, almost garageband-like than hipster-y (though looking it up, I just found out that “noise pop” is an actual thing. You can see why I’m probably not the most qualified music critic lol).

Later bangers (haha see that I'm an awesome reviewer look at my lexicon) on the album, such as “Miserabilia,” the title track, and "All Your Kayfabe Friends" all have this less-pure, but still clashing feel to them, with more distorted guitars, harsher-sounding percussions, and more compressed vocals, almost sounding cassette-recorded quality at times. Even their comparatively softer tracks, such as "You'll Need Those Fingers for Crossing" and “Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time,” still feel very feedback-y and dense, if that makes sense.

(WE GOT NOSTALGIC, ENDED UP FILLING SHOE BOXES WITH VOMIT / COLLECTED SCABS IN LOCKETS, HUNG THEM ROUND OUR NECKS LIKE NOOSES / NONE OF IT MATTERED, NONE OF IT MATTERS, NOBODY CARED)

Now this probably sounds like “Doomed” is maybe too messy or harsh to be really accessible if you’re coming from “Youngster,” but honestly, it’ll all feel surprisingly pretty familiar since a lot of the instrumental sensibilities from that record still shine through and are in the forefront. We still have a lot of those plucky, lo-fi keyboard synthesisers, we still have the violin and glockenspiel riffs, we still have the many call-and-response verses between Gareth and Aleks, and we still have the upbeat, catchy melodies and choruses.

Not much theory-wise has fundamentally changed in that regard, except maybe the softer, lowkey ballads have gotten more distinctive, such as “You’ll Need Those Fingers for Crossing,” which not only has a constant, but soft and occasionally punchy rhythm to it, but again, has that duet aspect, and it flows beautifully.

“Between an Erupting Earth and an Exploding Sky” is also this great, a bit dissonant, synthesized, little screechy, but also rather ethereal and floaty-sounding instrumental, a track that I honestly think is one of the band’s most visual-sounding themes, one that provides one of the most clear mental images, like maybe you’re splayed out while floating midair as both the earth and sky are already exploding beneath and above you all in extreme slow-motion, where everything’s all violent and impatient and tense and shit but at the same time weirdly serene and kinda cosy? It’s like experiencing a terrifying apocalypse and yet it feels like everything’s going to be okay.

There’s also “Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time,” which on top of just being one of the band’s very few honest-to-god love songs that’s surprisingly heartfelt (it’ll get more surprising when I discuss “Romance is Boring,” believe me), the muted vocals, the reverbed, feedbacked to hell background ambience, but very crisp guitar and percussion just paint this beautiful, but kinda fading image that’s honestly one of the most sweet tracks the band’s ever made, but also one of the most vaguely tragic.

(I DON'T WANT TO SOUND TRITE BUT YOU WERE PERFECT / THE WAY YOU LOOK COULD SERIOUSLY MAKE NATURE DYSMORPHIC / I WISH THAT YOU WOULD KISS ME 'TIL THE POINT OF PARALYSIS / THE WAY I FLAIL MY ARMS IN FRONT OF YOU, IT JUST EMBARRASSES)

And then we get to the lyrics, and like I’ve said, this is where the band has started to get much more flowery and descriptive, and honestly very funny in a sort of cringe-comedy-ish way, accentuated by once again, dissonant instrumentals. “Miserabilia” in particular is just like a really jaunty, upbeat and smiley-sounding track, and there is a definite playfulness both sonically and lyrically, but at the same time you go “wow, this ‘miserabilia’ (because get it, misery? Memorabilia? Miserabilia!) isn’t something I should cling onto, but at the same time, it’s pretty natural to do so, innit?” There’s also a really cute and funny lyric about “He whispered, ‘Oh my God, this really is a joy to behold’ / I thought he said, ‘It's a joy to be held,’ so I held him too close / It was a grave mistake, he never came back again!”, and I honestly can’t help but smile at just how absolutely DUMB it sounds when I hear it.

But on the more depressing side of sardonic, there’s the title track, and it’s probably one of my personal favorite cuts in the band’s discography, not just because how much it hits close to home for me personally -- it’s about a long-distance relationship falling apart, and how over time you start getting more and more resentful of them and their diverging interests and they get so much more unfamiliar it makes you wanna break their new friends’ teeth in no I’m not still bitter -- but also because how it manages to perfectly encapsulate that snide, but genuinely frustrated catharsis, not just with the banging instrumental or the gradual vocal escalation as the song continues, but the really specifically-vibrant vignettes Gareth provides to really build this mindset, like how “Absence makes the heart grow fonder / fondness makes the absence longer / Length loses my interest, I'm a realist, I'm insatiable / Swapped counting days until I fly, with hours before your reply.” Really, if you can only listen to one song from this band, it’s this one (even if it is for the climax, which is absolutely incredible if emo-sounding as fuck).

(OH, WE KID OURSELVES THERE'S FUTURE IN THE FUCKING / BUT THERE IS NO FUCKING FUTURE / I'M JUST PRACTICING MY ACCENTS, PICKING AT OLD SUTURES)

Admittedly, there are some times when the lyrics really elude me on their exact meaning, probably because I can’t really pin down what scenario or what context they were born from, unlike the lyrics to “No Blues” where I can say “Oh yeah, he’s just making a football reference, right” (we’ll get into that later). Like the song “It's Never That Easy Though, Is It? (Song for the Other Kurt),” which I think is about the narrator meeting with a girl, breaking up with her, and I think like the on-off resentment he gets when she snogs with some other dude? I think? I dunno, I’m reading the lyrics and I’m listening to who’s singing what line, but I still don’t really get a clear scenario.

Though like I said, Los Camp doesn’t USUALLY excel or at least specify in making images, and are more for crafting mentalities, mindsets, and atmospheres, and you still get this kinda-restrained giddiness juxtaposed with deep-seated resentment/fondness about a girl and part of her family, which is a theme that continues on for pretty much the entire second half of the album, like with “The End of the Asterisk,” or “Documented Emotional Breakdown #1,” whose exact meanings also elude me, but they have an obvious, kinda “twee indie”-style jauntiness to them, but haunted by an understated feel of darkness.

(THEY SAID, "THAT BOY'S TOO LAZY", YOU WERE CLEARLY FOREWARNED / A JEALOUS EX SILENCED THE ROOM, HE SAID THAT YOU WERE A WHORE / "DO YOU KISS YOUR MUMMY'S LIPS WITH THAT MOUTH?")

I think that just about sums up this album in a nutshell: Twee indie-style jauntiness with darkness haunting under them, like maybe say, an erupting earth and an exploding sky? It feels like Los Camp have finally identified an ominous, impending feeling of doom underneath their twee pop exterior and is slowly bringing that out with noisier production, more simultaneously specific-yet-vague subject matter, and a lot more honest-to-god atmosphere, brought out with much more concise and evocative lyricism.

It marks the true beginning of what I think the band is all about, and redefined what to expect from them. Once again, the feelings it provokes are a simultaneous yet somehow distinctive mishmash of wanting everything to be raucous and violent and you wanting to break down walls and shit, but also at the same time wanting things to be more emotional and down-to-earth, yet additionally being resentful and anticipating that fearful, inevitable doom.

It really is a great addition to the band’s discography, and it honestly feels like the perfect halfway point between the band’s innocent enjoyment of a time and scene gone by and the massively sardonic bitterness of the future. What happens then? Stay tuned! (suspenseful orchestral music ends) (4.5/5)

FAVES: “Ways to Make It Through the Wall,” “Miserabilia,” “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed,” “Between an Erupting Earth and an Exploding Sky,” “Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #1,” “Heart Swells / Pacific Daylight Time”

PS, if you’re interested, I’ve also got an EEP released recently too! It’s electronica/chiptune fusions about a lot of cheeriness and sadness and shit! Thank!

#los campesinos #music review #we are beautiful we are doomed

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