#I saw the template and i couldn't stop myself

[startrekmemequeen]

[ivoryminitower]

Echoes of Home: 117 - Steve ("something stupid")

Echoes of Home: FFXIV AU OC – WoLs on Earth

CW: Violence

I want to write about the ultralight and the progress we've made on it.

I want to write about how my magnificent miqo'te worked through the template recipe thing with her component recipes and how she made wind chimes.

I want to write about fighting for Myra and how Tsu'na and I can maybe train for it.

I want to write about computer games and music and movies and TV shows and the stuff Tsu'na reads and the stuff I've been suggesting she read.

I really want to write about all that.

Frank has been hanging out at the diner more.  I guess since he can't officially pester us in the workshop he decided to unofficially pester us at the diner.  He'd nurse a cup of coffee while reading a newspaper.  He's never tried our pies.  He didn't seem to be paying us any attention.  He was just there.

It would have been a little easier to ignore him if he didn't sit way down at the end of the counter, where he was between us and a lot of our teenage customers, who we couldn't ignore.  Him and his newspaper and his coffee and his stetson. He'd stay there for a good chunk of the evening…I didn't know if he was doing it on his off-hours, or if it was his idea of a night shift.  If he was on his own time, he really should have tried a pie.

Maybe if he'd been sitting closer to the register, where he could be seen from the door and through the window, the stupid kid wouldn't have tried to rob us.  I didn't see where Frank had parked…a cop car is kind of hard to miss. But maybe the kid was that nervous, or that stupid, or that strung-out or something.  Whatever the reason, I suddenly found myself at the register looking at a ski mask and a gun.

"Open up the register!"

That was very, very bad.  At that point it would have been better if Frank hadn't been there at all, since he was down by the teens.  If Frank drew on the kid, he'd have one target, but the kid would be firing into a crowd.

I didn't know what Frank would do, so holding aggro wasn't an option.  I gently rested my hands on the counter, saying, "Easy…take it easy…" then vaulted over the counter so I was between the kid and everyone.  He stepped back, but he kept the gun on me, a nice, close target.

Then I switched to Paladin and raised my shield.  He froze, eyes wide.

I quietly said, "You really should leave now."

I didn't know where Tsu'na was.  I thought she was in the back refilling the mop bucket, but I wasn't sure.  She could have maybe gone Ninja and Stealthed around behind him.  But then I heard the creak of her bow from the kitchen.

The kid was fucked.  He should have run.  I would have let him, maybe let Frank pursue.  But instead he turned at the creak and fired a shot at what he saw.  He was rewarded for this with an arrow to his arm that spun him around and knocked him into a table.

The kid screamed.  He grabbed his arm, tried and failed to raise the gun, and flung himself off the table to start stumbling toward the door.  Tsu'na charged out from the kitchen, already drawing another arrow, and loosed into the kid's leg.  He went down on his face, still screaming.

I moved forward, shield still up.  From behind me I heard Frank yell, "Freeze!"  I wasn't sure who he meant, so I stopped to see what he would do.

He pushed around me with his gun out.  His eyes darted between us: me in armor holding the shield between the kid and the teens, Tsu'na standing with a third arrow drawn, and the kid on the floor with two arrows in him and the gun somehow still in his hand.  Frank settled on the kid and moved forward to grab the gun and wrest it from him.

I admit I don't know anything about Frank…how much of him is watching cop shows, and how much might be training he received somewhere, and how much actual copping he's done.  But I'm guessing this was his first time at securing a perp with two arrows sticking out of him.  It certainly would have been mine…we didn't exactly have perps in Eorzea.

I looked it up after we got home and found this on reddit: "No matter how incapacitated a suspect may appear to be, if they can move, then they have the potential for being dangerous. That is why they are handcuffed. In my training, we were taught to handcuff a suspect even if they were dead."

Frank hesitated, kind of fussed a bit, but did the job, pulling the kid's arms behind his back and cuffing him.  It made the kid scream more, but he was already screaming.  I don't know how all this affected the teenage customers -- the robbery, the gunfire, the violence, the screaming -- though they all seemed okay when they left.  I didn't have a lot of sympathy for Ski Mask's trauma.  I didn't have much for Frank.

He got on his radio, calling in the incident and requesting an ambulance and backup.  While he was paying attention to Ski Mask, I switched to Earth-normal and got out my gator-hunting shield.  Tsu'na followed my example, switched from her ranged gear and took out her gator-hunting bow.

I turned to the teens.  "Okay, guys, show's over.  Closing up now."

They didn't put up a fuss, but Frank did.  "No one's leaving until I get statements!"

"They're underage, Deputy.  You can't question them."

He peered at me.  "Where's that armor you were wearing?"

"What armor?"

"You were wearing armor!  Just a minute ago!"

I looked over my shoulder, betting on my esteem over Frank's.  "Hey guys, was I wearing armor a minute ago?"

A rousing chorus of "No!"

I shrugged at Frank.  "Dunno what to tell you.  Must've been my heroic aura.  Which probably doesn't show up on video."  I didn't look to see if the teens behind me were suddenly busy with their phones.

"Then where's that shield from?"

"Made it in the workshop.  You like it?  I can cut you a deal on one."

He turned to Tsu'na.  "You have a bow here?"

She tilted her head.  "It is my hunting bow.  I brought it here.  Should I not have?"

He grimaced at the two of us.  "You just happen to have weapons when an armed robbery occurs."

"Good thing too, huh?  I didn't think I'd need a shield tonight…I just brought it to show my wife."

"It is a very nice shield, Husband."

"Thank you, my love."

None of this was placating Frank, but he still had a perp to manage.  "You and your gear are coming to the station after I take care of this guy."

"Fine," I said.  "Gonna show the kids out."

"I want names!"

"Get a subpoena!"

Tsu'na closed up the register as I led the kids around behind the counter to not interfere with Frank's crime scene.  They acted like the incident was the coolest thing that had ever happened to them…which, in the Wyatt Metropolitan Vicinity, was probably true.

Backup arrived in the form of a member of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, dressed in a brown version of Frank's attire.  There was a localish ambulance, but the nearest hospital that could handle those sorts of wounds on a detained perp was in the Tulsa area, which made it a cross-county prisoner transport.

While Frank and the patrolman worked out details I called Hartman to let him know what happened.  I assured him no one other than the robber had been hurt, and I gave Frank all the credit for the save.  Hartman sounded relieved and told us to call for a ride if we needed one.

The arrangement was that the patrolman would ride in the ambulance with the perp while Frank followed with us.  We locked up the diner, then Frank loaded the shield and bow into his car's trunk and us into the back seat.

That was the arrangement, anyway.  The ambulance started off, Frank pulled out behind it while he radioed in.  He didn't get far.

"Dispatch, en route with…"

"Frank!  Charlie's in trouble!"

"Di--uh, Betty?  What's going on?"

"Charlie's out by the old Lombard farm!  He says he's pinned down and getting shot at!"

"Okay…uh…Call State and…"

"I did that!  They say they're half an hour out!  Charlie says there's too many of them!  Sheriff and Mickey are on their way, but you're real close there!"

"Betty, I…I can't…I've got people in the car with me…"

"We consent," I said.

"...What?"

"We consent to being taken to a hazardous location.  Go take care of your people."

"But…"

"Go!"

"...Dispatch, en route.  Advise State and Patrolman Pickett of change of plans.  Out."

Frank flipped on the cop lights and siren and made a hard U-turn in the middle of the road.  He tore up the highway, made a right on a smaller road that petered out into gravel, then turned onto an even poorer dirt road.  That led to a fence with a broken-down gate, fields on either side, and what in the dark looked like a house and a barn.

A bunch of vehicles were already there: two cop cars, their sides facing a herd of motorcycles and a couple SUVs.  It looked like a broadside naval battle with all the muzzle flashes, though most of those were coming from the herd.  The flashes on the cop side were far more fitful.

Whoever the opposition was, there was just too many of them.  All they had to do was keep firing, keep the cops pinned down, and they could start coming around the sides.  Frank pulled up and made the cop front a little longer, but shots started diverting our way before he'd even stopped the car.

He threw open his door, yelled "Keep down!" at us, and made his way out to join the others.  Maybe he could have let us out, since the back doors are locked to the inside, but I suppose he thought we'd be safe in the car and not likely to do something stupid.

But we couldn't just sit there.  We had to do something, stupid or no.  There were too many gangbangers or whatever they were, they had too many guns, and they were too willing to use them.  Sure, we could have just teleported out of there, but that would have left the cops behind.  Even if the windows hadn't shattered, even if the car would have stopped all the bullets, we couldn't just sit there and be safe.  It wasn't something we could do.

We

[redwhump]

Whumpmas In July Day 1: (Re)Introduce Yourself

i never actually did an intro post, so hello! i'm briar/red, i write whump sometimes. i currently have a scifi whump series (which should get to the actual torture in the next part), and will be posting the first part of a vampire whump series soon, whenever i manage to finish that. i don't post/reblog any explicit nsfw stuff on this blog, i want to keep it sfw.

i'm going to try to complete all the whumpmas in july things, but i'm generally not good at completing events like this (i've failed at lex/ember twice so far), so we'll see.

favorite whump tropes:

character stuff: whumper turned whumpee + whumpee turned caretaker, reluctant caretaker, carewhumpers, vampire/immortal/nonhuman whumpees, defiant/angry whumpees, desparate whumpees who are just doing what they can to make the situation better, "professional" whumpers (who are mostly doing the whump because it accomplishes some other goal. professional isn't quite the right word but i couldn't think of something else), intimate whumpers

story/plot stuff: sleep deprivation, starvation, stress positions, captivity, whumpee having to choose how they'll be hurt, torture, whumpees dealing with the effects of trauma, recovering from trauma, trauma nightmares, gore, non-consensual body modification, mind control/telepathy

random facts:

i'm genderqueer & bi. gender is confusing so i've stopped trying to figure out aomething more specific than nonbinary and genderqueer.

i've been a writer for a while, but there was a several year gap before i started writing for this blog where i didn't really write anything. whump has helped me start to get back into writing, which is really nice, i missed writing.

my love of vampires started through me playing oblivion, finding out there were vampires in the game, and then using my at the time limited english to go to a wiki to figure out how to become a vampire

EDIT: saw the template whumpmasinjuly posted, so i figured i'd do that as well

❤️ Name: briar/red

💛 Gender: genderqueer / wtf is gender anyway /j

💙 Favorite season: where i live now, fall. back in finland, winter or summer.

❤️ Average amount of sleep: uhhhhhh 6.5 hrs maybe.

💛 Dream job: fuck if i know. something stable where i have free time and enough money to easily provide for myself.

💙 Blog established: honestly i don't remember qhen i made this sideblog. i started actually using it in like march 2022.

❤️ Reason for URL: it sounded cool

💛 Fave Whump Tropes: already did above

💙 Projects you’re working on: the Dust series, plus the vampire whump series i mentioned. also possibly a hero/villain thing.

❤️ Favorite color: very dark blue

💛 Anything else you’d like to add: i guess not?

@whumpmasinjuly

[softtransbf]

I saw the template and couldn't stop myself- one of these things is not like the others lmao

[jeonmilks]

Hi! I'm so in love with your Kookmin Dog Cafe AU, like, I was having a terrible day today, but I saw your post on my dashboard, and omg, I read it and couldn't stop smiling so much. :') So, just, ugh, thank you for making them and I can't wait to read more! <3 Also, if I may ask, where did you find your iPhone texting template, I've been wanting to do something like that for a fic I wrote, but I can't find one so far. ;A;

aww, munchkin :“) thank you sm for these kinds words! they really motivate me to write more~ ^^ ohh, it’s not a template :) i used imessage and used my email to message myself. i’m just changing the contact name. but there’s also this app called social dummy, there’s a limitation tho ;-;