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pamgkrthwrites · 4 years ago

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Flame of Healing | EraserMic x Reader | Chapter 6 - Please Love Me

Masterlist | AO3

Warnings: Angst, Hizashi Flirting, some sexual themes

Word Count: 2162

Taglist: @stargazingaloneatnight @rinzyx05

A/N: Sorry about the long wait, had exams. Also, I did not write half of this while watching the election results, no.

Shouta got into the couple’s car and started driving to their home. Hizashi was uncomfortably quiet as we waited for Shouta to finally speak. As they turned the street your apartment was on, Shouta began to talk.

“When I followed her into the building I saw her talking to Saito.” Souta began, Hizashi listening in carefully. “They started talking about her quirk and I noticed she grew upset. I thought this meant he was harassing her and so I pulled her away from him. She pulled away and ran off.”

“So you insulted rejects, yay.” Hizashi said sarcastically. “We are trying to make them trust us so I understand why you went to help her-”

“I called out to her as she ran off.” Shouta interrupted. “I was corrected by Saito. Her name isn’t M/N.”

Hizashi froze in his seat and snapped his head to face Shouta. Shouta kept his eyes on the road, however.

“He said her name was Y/N.”

The two grew silent.

“So. She lied. She doesn’t want us.”

“From what I got out of her she thought we were happy without her.”

“How would sh-” Hizashi snapped at Shouta only to be given a glare.

“I yelled at her for that. That’s why she was crying.”

Hizashi slumped in his seat and crossed his arms. The two stayed silent for a moment before Hizashi broke it.

“So, she doesn’t want us.”

Shouta sighed. “I asked her to give us a chance, and she hugged me.”

Hizashi’s snapped over with a smile.

“That’s good! Is that why we are going to visit her tomorrow?”

Shouta softly smiled at Hizashi’s mood switch. He was worried that his partner will fall into a depression about this again, Hizashi had the most hope out of the two of them.

During their friendship with Oboro, Oboro taught them many things about choosing your own path on soulmates but made it clear he wasn’t saying you should outright reject your soulmate. Like you got to choose your pace of the relationship and not just dive right in just because they are your soulmate.

It was as if he said it before and someone took it differently.

Shouta didn’t know back then but now he does, that person who mistook his words of choosing soulmates was you.

It was probably why on some days, the couple would find times Oboro looked off in deep thoughts drowned in sadness, or how when the three saw you walking home he would make sure the two could see her but never approach.

They knew something happened between you two but they never pushed it out of him. It also hurt them in a way. They thought you were - well, you - and were told you weren’t. They felt so close yet so far. Only for now for it to be revealed they were close this entire time.

“Yes,” Shouta answered. “When we arrive tomorrow we will talk to her about our soulmate bound. She goes to those reject meetings for a reason. All we can hope for is that she will give us a chance.”

---

You’re felt so heavy after crying and hugging Shouta last night. You didn’t even want to get up but you knew you had to, but they were coming over soon and so you had to get ready.

You pushed yourself out of bed and made your way to the kitchen to have a fast cup of water before heading into the shower to get ready. You were a mess but you were going to hide behind a face full of makeup and pretty smells to hid behind.

---

Shouta and Hizashi walked their way from the car park to your apartment door with a small paper bag that had 3 servings of breakfast muffins. The two really didn’t mean to, but they ended up dressing up.

Shouta had his hair tied back, wore black pants and a white button-down shirt. Hizashi had half of his hair in a messy bun and he wore black leather pants with a black v-neck long sleeve shirt.

Shouta knocked and pushed his hands into his pockets. Hizashi waited, swinging on his heels.

“I think we might have overdressed, Shouta,” Hizashi whispered. “it’s only breakfast and we look like we are taking her out for dinner.”

“If we are lucky we will be spending our whole day with her.” Shouta mumbled, a blush starting to form on his cheeks at the idea of you wanting to spend more time with them.

The idea excited Hizashi as well. He had been dying to spend time with you ever since he met you that day in high school. Yeah sure, you were almost kissing Oboro, but he wasn’t angry about it, not anymore anyway.

Shouta was about to grow impatient until he doorknob jiggled.

The two froze and watched as you opened the door.

You peaked out to see who it was, being relieved it was the two. You were surprised about their clothing choice as it was July, one of Japan’s hottest months. You wore a white sundress that had your favourite flowers printed onto it. You also had a light cardigan on just for if the cooler in your apartment got too much.

“Isn’t hot?” You asked the two.

The two stared at you before beginning to blush of embarrassment. They were going to regret their choice of clothing later into the day.

“We brought breakfast!” Hizashi smiled as he stepped closer to you.

You opened the door wide so they could enter. You saw how Hizashi practically ran in, a bounce being in his steps. Shota followed eyeing what you were wearing.

You closed the door behind them and took in a breath. You’ve never been this close to them before and in such a comfortable manner. They were both really eager to have the relationship between you three work. You could tell they would have done anything for you just to like them.

You made your way to the kitchen and the two followed you, like dogs to their owner.

“You two want coffee or tea?” You asked awkwardly.

“Straight black for me,” Shouta answer before looking up at Hizashi for a fast second then back to you. “Please.”

You felt your heart sting.

They may be trying to put in the effect for you, but the love they clearly have each other will always be there.

You weren’t needed.

Why should you be selfish and want their love for yourself?

You turned around to get Shouta’s coffee, the two noticed how you looked tensed and their glance at each other.

Hizashi mentally kicked himself. Shouta said you felt as if you were not needed or wanted in this relationship. Hizashi wanted to prove that was not the case to you.

“What will you have, little Princess?” Hizashi smiled as he leaned onto his hand.

Shouta stiffened from the nickname and you snapped your head around.

“Uh, w-what?” You asked as your cheeks burned.

You were kinda ashamed at how you were responding to the nickname. Your body buzzed happily at it, wanting him to call you that again.

“I will have whatever you’re having darling.” He smiled, looking into your eyes deeply as he tried to memorize all the colors.

You blushed at the nicknames he was giving you. Weren’t sort of names you give to your partner? Shouta doesn’t seem that fazed by it.

Did… Did this mean he already saw you as part of the relationship?

No, that can’t be it. They were just playing nice for you. That had to be it.

“I’m having a hot chocolate.” You finally answer him.

Hizashi’s smile widens from your response.

“Good choice sweetcheeks. Again, I’ll have what you’re having.” He winks at you with his tongue pointing out.

You couldn’t stop or hide the blush burning into your cheeks. Shouta smirked at the reaction, finding it very cute. You pulled your head around, forcing your head around to let yourself cool down.

Shouta looked over at Hizashi and saw an evil smirk on his lips. Shouta followed his eyes and noticed how Hizashi was eyeing your skirt. Shouta side-eyed Hizashi and coughed.

“Your dress looks really nice on you, Y/N.” Shouta said as he rubbed the back of his head. Maybe he wasn’t as open with his flirting like Hizashi, but he still wanted to let you know it wasn’t one-sided flirting that only Hizashi delivered.

“Um, thank you.” You said as your cheeks burnt. You got the kettle and brought it to the tap so you could start pooring water into it.

Than Hizashi had to speak.

“I agree. It really shows off your cute butt!” He smilled.

Your body froze. You felt the harsh blush on your cheeks grow to your ears and heat grow between your legs. You took in a breath and let your body relax before responding.

Hizashi and Shouta watched you. Hizashi waiting to see what you would reply with, and Shouta hoping you won’t reply negatively. He knew Hizashi was going to fast and needed to slow down. When he saw how you were trying to relax, he decided to take control of the conversation.

“We should be talking about why we are here, Hizashi.” Shouta side-eyed his partner.

Both you and Hizashi stiffened. Hizashi because Shouta had changed the topic but also for reminding him of why there were there. You for that same reason, because the following conversation was going to really put you in your place.

You brought the kettle out of the sink and put it on, turning off the tap. You started getting the cups ready for the hot drinks, waiting for Shouta to start the conversation.

Picking up on your social cue to him, Shouta began the conversation.

“Why dod you lie about your name and not having soulmates?”

You turned around after putting in mugs with milk into the microwave. You crossed your arms so they would not pick up how nervous you were.

“When I was younger I had many issues with people around me judging me. When I was 10 I made the decision to hide thee names to protect myself. I moved away from the town and moved here. Because of my quirk, I then got used to people using me for my quirk and so I never really had a true friend until I met Oboro.”

“Oboro talked about his views on soulmates.” Shouta sat back in his chair as he mentally brought puzzle pieces together. “With you using to hiding our names and with Oboro’s ideals, you thought you weren’t needed?”

“Oboro’s ideals worked for him because he didn’t have a soulmate.” Hizashi comment. You noticed he wasn’t in the playful mood he was in a minute ago, but now mirroring Shouta. Either from their UA training or the amount of time, they had together. “He gave you his ideals because he thought you were like him.”

“That is true…” You tried to avoid their gaze. “I guess I got attached to the idea that I got to choose that I didn’t really think the ideals wouldn’t work for me.”

“Why did you give me a fake name those years ago?” Hizashi asked, with a hint of sadness behind it.

You bit your inner lip from the pain in his voice. You made him sad, did you even deserve their forgiveness?

“I actually found out about you two before the sports festival. Oboro came running into my room and told me about my name on Shouta’s wrist and realised it was me. I don’t know how, my names were always covered. Maybe he saw it one time he came over after school. When he told me he really pushed me to meet you two and I grew scared. When you walked in on us Hizashi I panicked and just gave you my middle name. I just continued the lie. And when Oboro and I stopped being friends… I didn’t think I would see you guys again.”

The room grew quiet as Shouta brought all the information together.

“You have made mistakes, but I know for Hizashi and I, we want to have a relationship with you. We can take this relationship slowly if that’s what you want, just at least give us a chance, please.”

Your heart warmed at his words. Even though you had your doubts, you knew in your heart you wanted to try as well.

“Please, Y/N.” Hizashi’s eyes begged. “Please let us love you.”

You were quite. You knew your answer. You wanted to love them, so, so much.

But would it be best for you?

The microwave and kettle went off at the same time,

“Alright, we will take this slow for now.” You said, opening up the doors you locked a long time ago, thinking they would never be open. The doors to let your soulmates love you.

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bymyside-fic · 3 years ago

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Epilogue (~2100 words) read on AO3 // AFF

- September 2, 2023 -

“Professor Kim?”

Kibum looked up from his desk, setting aside the roll of parchment he just picked up when he saw Maureen Jones, one of the girls from the class that had just let out. She was hugging her very new copy of Magical Drafts and Potions to her chest, her knuckles white around the book. Kibum clasped his hands together as he leaned forward to ask, “What can I do for you, Ms. Jones?”

“I’m…” Her eyes were slightly red-rimmed as if she were on the verge of tears.

His brow furrowed, and his tone shifted as if he were speaking to either Yeongjin or Hyejin when he asked, “Is there something wrong?”

Her mouth pressed to a firm, thin line, and she blinked rapidly as tears started to fall. “Am I a bad person, Professor?”

“What?” he said before he could stop himself, then he glanced down at her uniform, finally seeing the hints of green peeking out from over her textbook. “Are you worried about having been sorted into Slytherin?” When she nodded, he flicked his wand at the fire, charming the kettle to set itself over the fire so he could make them some tea. “Well, I can’t tell you not to be, because I get it. I felt the exact same way when I first started here at school.”

“Really?” she asked, wiping some of the tears away as she plopped down in one of his armchairs.

He nodded, smiling now. “I heard a lot of bad things about Slytherin, and when I got sorted, I cried, too.” Her eyes went wide. “But you know what? It’s not as bad as you’d first think.” The kettle started to sing, and Kibum held up a finger to her before he slipped out from behind his desk to get some tea made for them. He set her cup down on the desk before her before he sat back down. “Do you want to know a secret?” She nodded, scooting closer when Kibum leaned in conspiratorially. “Slytherins can be just as good, or kind, or loyal, or smart as anyone from Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, or Ravenclaw.” He raised his hand to block his mouth as he whispered loudly. “The Sorting doesn’t really matter all that much. Your House is just a place to call home while you’re here, and your fellow Slytherins are your family.”

“What about the other Houses, then?”

“Just think of them as your close friends and family, and you’ll get along just fine.” He glanced at the picture of Minho smiling back at him on his desk. “And, from one Slytherin to another…” He looked back at her with a small smile. “Do yourself a favor and befriend a Hufflepuff. I promise you won’t regret it.”

* * * * *

- March 14, 2026 -

Steam from the bubbling cauldrons around Minho filled the workroom, fogging up the windows of Healing Touch Apothecary. Rain pittered merrily outside, the joyful melody accompanied by the sounds of the girls playing a game with Dad in the storefront. What they were doing, he wasn’t quite sure, but he was glad they were having fun.

He added the last few dittany leaves to the pile on his cutting board before he started mincing them. There were quite a few orders due today, but luckily, this was the last of the potions he needed to have started before he took a break. Once he was happy with the size of the leaves, he pulled the gold set of scales Kibum had bought for him for his birthday last year toward him, measuring out exactly what he needed before he scooped every last bit up and tossed them into the nearest cauldron and pulled the orders out of their clips to inspect them.

A burst of green flame in the fireplace filled the workroom, startling Comme Des and Garcons to wake and start barking. But Minho didn’t have to look up to know who it was.

“Hey, Bum,” he said absently, shuffling through the order slips, his brow furrowing.

“Hey, love” came his reply, right before he kissed the crown of Minho’s head as he passed by. “Taking a break soon?”

“In a minute.”

He caught a glimpse of him as he stepped up into the store, smiling despite his break in concentration at the girls’ excited greeting when they saw him. Minho sighed, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes before he got up from his bench and started for the archway between the workroom and the store. But by the time he reached it, Kibum was already ushering the girls back toward him, Dad floating behind them. “You hungry?” Kibum asked, his hand resting on Minho’s hip as he stopped beside him.

“What’s for lunch?”

Kibum shrugged, smiling as he went up on his tiptoes to kiss Minho. “I didn’t even look. Come on.”

He grabbed Minho’s hand, and Minho let himself be pulled along, he grabbed his wand out of his apron and flicked it at the /Open/ sign, flipping it over to /Closed/.

* * * * *

- September 1, 2031 -

“Kelly, Karin,” O’Neely called, his voice ringing out across the Great Hall as a girl hurried up to sit on the stool so she could be sorted into her House.

Kibum cast a furtive glance down the dais before he leaned slightly back so he could see the page of his notebook as he wrote, I think Hyejin might be next.

He didn’t have to wait for very long for a reply. Are you still thinking she’ll be in Slytherin? Minho asked, and Kibum nibbled his bottom lip, looking up at the sound of his House being called, then…

“Kim, Hyejin.”

We’re about to find out.

He sat up in his seat, glancing around at the sea of students, finding Yeongjin easily amidst her fellow Gryffindors as she practically stood up on the bench to see her sister better. Before Hyejin sat down on the stool, she peered around O’Neely, and waved at him. Grinning, Kibum waved back, and she plopped down on the stool, to face the others.

His heart started beating a bit faster as O’Neely lowered the Sorting Hat to her head. What must be going on in her head? Was she nervous? Excited?

“Ravenclaw!” the Sorting Hall called out, and Kibum blinked in surprise as he watched her traipse down to join her new school family. She sat by the other first years who had already been sorted, then looked up at Kibum, who gave her a bright grin and a thumbs up before he picked up his quill again to let Minho know.

You know what? That works. Now we have one of each in our family.

Oh, true...And you know what else this means?

What?

We finally have the house...all to ourselves again.

Are you implying what I hope you’re implying?

Kibum coughed to cover his laugh, and glanced around to see if anyone noticed before he looked back down at the notebook. I guess you’ll have to wait and see, hm?

* * * * *

- July 22, 2033 -

“Have fun!” Minho called after Yeongjin, Hyejin, and the Edwards girls, watching them as they ran around the bend in search of the caves hidden in the catacombs of Magiabajo. Reluctantly, he turned away when Kibum’s hand settled on the small of his back.

“They know their way around, honey. They’ll be just fine.”

“I know, I know.”

He cast one last glance over his shoulder before he followed Kibum up to the floating island that Gil and Ana were already lounging on. She looked up from her book and set it aside as they sat in the chair opposite of her. “Where’s Gil?”

“Probably getting beer.”

“He was still talking to Mateo when we left.”

She smiled, leaning back and stretching out in the sun filtering through the river overhead. “Mateo may curse you for inventing the Babbling Concoction by the end of this trip.”

Kibum shrugged. “I mean, if he hasn’t so far, I don’t see why he’d stop now.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Don’t give him a big head,” Minho murmured as he leaned his head back, closing his eyes. “He already thinks he’s right all the time.”

Ana chuckled when Kibum flicked his knee. “It’s because I am and you know it.”

“You’re right, of course, dear.” But when Kibum turned back around, Minho met Ana’s gaze and rolled his eyes with a smile.

“I saw that,” Kibum said, even though he didn’t turn around.

Minho pushed himself up, wrapping his arms around Kibum and resting his chin on his shoulder as he said, in Korean, “I guess I’ll just have to make it up to you later.”

Kibum reached around, holding the back of Minho’s neck as he glanced his way. “Is that a promise?”

“Oh good,” Ana said with an exasperated sigh. “I’m glad to see that even fifteen years of marriage doesn't stop you two from flirting in Korean.”

“Old habits, and all,” Minho said in English, winking at her as she shook her head.

“Well, don’t let me stop you,” she said, hiding her amusement as she picked up her book and opening it to where she left off.

* * * * *

- June 16, 2034 -

“Appa, do we really need a babysitter?” Yeongjin asked as she flopped down on Kibum and Minho’s bed. “I’m almost seventeen, I can look after us both.”

Kibum hummed absently, pulling some of his clothes out of the closet to pack for his and Minho’s annual after-school honeymoon. “I thought you were excited about Uncle Jjong and Tae coming to visit.”

“I mean, yeah, but…” She sighed heavily. Dramatically. Kibum bit back a smile at how much she was taking after him.

“What? Were you planning on throwing a wild party while we’re gone?” She scoffed dismissively, and Kibum grinned when she started to smile. “Your grandparents and Aunt Ana would let us know if that happened.”

“I know,” he said, drawing out the word as she fell back on the bed again. “Can we have friends over, at least?”

“Depends.”

The sound of the front door gave them both pause, especially when it was followed by Minho’s cheery ��Honey, I’m home!”

Kibum glanced back at Yeongjin, correctly interpreting the glint in her eye as she bounded away. He tossed the clothes he had picked out onto the bed as he rushed to follow her downstairs, and before he could greet Minho, she was already badgering him with pleas. Minho met Kibum’s gaze over her head, his eyebrow quirking in silent question. Kibum just sighed, but that was enough of an answer for Minho. “Hon, did you already ask your father?”

“Yes,” she said, her tone sullen.

“So, why are you asking me? You know I’ll side with him.”

She sighed again, and Kibum cleared his throat, garnering both of their attention. “Yeonggie, Hyejin, you too…” He waited for a second, but soon Hyejin poked her head out of her bedroom door, adjusting her glasses. “I’m fine if you both invite friends over while we’re gone, as long as it’s okay with Jjong and their parents, okay?”

Hyejin gave him a small smile before she slipped back into her room, but Yeongjin did a happy little dance before she hugged them both tightly and ran off toward her room, saying something about needing to send a few owls.

Kibum rolled his eyes, shaking his head a little before glancing Minho’s way. Unsurprisingly, he was watching him with a bemused smile. “What?”

“Getting a bit soft, are we?”

“Shut up.” Minho grinned as he closed the distance between them, Kibum happily letting himself get wrapped up in Minho’s arms as he kissed him, at last. “Good day?”

“It is now.”

Kibum sniffed a laugh, smacking his chest lightly before he pulled away. “Come help me pack, love.”

“Okay.”

The stairs creaked beneath their feet as they went up to their bedroom, and Minho sat down on the bed to start folding the clothes Kibum had already picked out. “I guess we should pick a destination, huh?” Kibum asked as he resumed his place before their closet. “Where do you wanna go?”

Kibum looked back at him when he didn’t answer right away, finding Minho giving him his annoyingly, overly fond smile. “Anywhere, as long as you’re...you know, by my side.”

#Minkey #SHINee #SHINee fic #SHINee drabble #SHINee au #bonus material #year: after school

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sablelab · 4 years ago

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Covert Operations - Chapter 137

SUMMARY: When new intel comes to light about the mole Frank Wolverton-Randall, Fergus is buoyed by what he discovers. He goes to Madeline’s Office where Section’s leaders are waiting for him, with a progress report and tells Operations and Madeline of his findings and they are gobsmacked to know the identity of the mole in Section. They reflect on their dealings with Frank in order to make sense of his hatred for them as well.

WOO! HOO! I missed my 2 year Anniversary of posting this story at the end of July (Chapter 135(S) ) so I just wanted to give a shout out to all who have at one time or another … ever read one, or more, or all of my chapters over this time, left kudos, a like, a comment, reblogged the chapters or contacted me via a DM. THANK YOU ALL … SO MUCH. Much love to each and every one my readers YAY!

Chapter 136 (S-NSFW) and all other chapters can be found at … https://sablelab.tumblr.com/covertoperations Sorry to say I am not on Ao3, but perhaps when I finish this story I will try and navigate how it works and how to post there.

CHAPTER 137

During the week Fergus Claudel was busy, as usual, at his computer collating any last-minute details in his report for Operations and Madeline about the mole. He wanted to make sure that he had all his t’s crossed and his i’s dotted before he presented the intel to his leaders. He’d been exhausted when he’d eventually left Comm. last night, but he’d certainly slept well knowing that what he had to show his superiors today would be most pleasing to them. Hopefully the Intel would also help reverse his pal’s fiancée’s evaluation status. He was totally convinced that his data would be just what Operations and Madeline were looking for. Absorbed in his task he was unaware that Murtagh Fitzgibbons had walked up behind him. The first indication that he realised that he was not alone was the sound of something being dropped onto his desk and a familiar voice saying, “Open it.” After the initial shock of being crept up on registered in his brain, Fergus looked down at his desk and saw a hard, plastic case containing a computer disk. He picked it up and immediately his eyes lit up when he realized what he held in his hands. The computer geek couldn’t contain his excitement.

“No! … No way!” he exclaimed in shock and excitement. “Yes,” Murtagh replied very pleased that at his buddy’s reaction. Fergus was chuffed at the gift as if his best mate had given him the most precious of items on the top of his wish list. “Oh ... this is awesome!” The older operative was delighted at his friend’s reaction to his surprise gift. “First off the line ... and you can retrain the display ... as much as you want without losing data.” “Oh, wow! Thanks,” Fergus replied unable to stop looking at the gift his buddy had given him. “No ... no, thank you,” Murtagh answered back thinking that it was the least he could do to repay his friend for all the help he had given him. “For what?” Fergus asked realising that no favour he might have done warranted such an awesome gift of thanks. “For Bóinne. Things went great on our date. I also saw this little black cat jewellery box and I knew she’d love it. I couldn't have done it without you amigo.” Suddenly, Murtagh stopped talking and looked behind him when he heard light footsteps and saw the woman, they were discussing approaching.

“Speak of the devil's mistress.” The Med Lab nurse watched the two friends deep in conversation and saw the look on her fiancé’s face which told her that he’d asked Fergus to do something for him. Bóinne could tell by his expressions as Murtagh was an open book for her. She gave him a warm smile and finally came closer.

“There you are honey.” His eyes crinkled in delight at seeing her. “Hi.” Severing their gaze, Bóinne then looked down and smiled at his friend. “Hello Fergus.” He was a little surprised at her attempt to be so nice to him. “What's up?” “Nothing ..., I just stopped by to say hi … and to tell you what a great time we had the other night.” “That’s fantastic.” “Oh, and by the way, I also found this in Med Lab,” Bóinne said handing him a small contraption in a plastic bag. “I was wearing surgical gloves when I discovered it, so I haven’t contaminated it Fergus. Murtagh thought it might be important for you to check out.” Fergus’ brows knitted somewhat when he saw the tiny device she held out in the palm of her hand. He looked at the device then back up at her, “Where did you find this?” “I was preparing one of the beds for a new patient and found it under the gurney in ICU.” “Where Jamie was?” Fergus asked nonchalantly, not wanting to raise any undue concerns. “Yes, it was actually. Why?” “Oh nothing … I’ll check it out and see if it’s anything significant. Did you find any others?” “No … that was the only one.” “Thanks I’ll look into it.” Fergus declared.

He was not at all surprised that he had failed to locate the device when he’d done a sweep. It was small and would have been hard to detect. Obviously Bóinne had smaller hands and perhaps it had dislodged when the bed had been remade or was hidden under the mattress, he thought. Anyway it could be another piece of the puzzle about the mole and if Frank Wolverton-Randall had placed it there then this would be significant if he could find something on the device that would incriminate him. As they were talking, Murtagh happened to look up past Bóinne and saw Operations approaching their way, so he brought the conversation to a swift end whispering to Fergus, “Okay. I’ll see you later. We have a whole day of downtime.” “All right. I really have to finalise my report for Operations and Madeline. See ya.” The two operatives quickly slipped away not wanting to confront their superior especially when they had better things to do on their day off. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Fergus was busily watching the departing couple and didn’t realize that Dougal Mackenzie had walked up to his station and had joined him at his desk. He was a little startled that Section’s leader had approached his station at this time, especially when he was to report to Madeline’s office shortly. He was also a little miffed too that he’d been caught unprepared for his briefing because Murtagh and Bóinne had taken up his time and he hadn’t realised that he was indeed late for the meeting. “Fergus … Madeline is expecting you. What is the hold up?” “Nothing sir. I was just collating any final points for the briefing. I didn’t want to miss anything,” he nervously replied. “And I was just handed something that I must check out as well. It might be an important piece of the puzzle about the mole.” “I see … very well. I’ll inform Madeline that you’ll be another thirty minutes.” “Thank you sir.” “Bring all your data to her office as soon as you can then. We’ll be interested to hear your report.” However, the other reason Operations was there was that he needed Fergus to pull up a different assignment that was imminent, “But first I want you to upgrade another Mission ... the one we're running in Somalia.” “I'll pull the file.” Swinging his chair around, Fergus accessed the information from another computer. Operations then started to give him a quick sketch of what he wanted done. “The Profile calls for an Abeyance Medical Team of five to infiltrate a terrorist compound where insurgents are wounded to gauge the Intel we require on the health of their leader. The Primary Team will carry out the Mission to destroy their headquarters and all medical facilities if he is found to not be there. Send the Abeyance Ops to Murtagh to get their inventory when he returns from his downtime.” “What's the survival likelihood of the Abeyance Team?” Operations gave their IT specialist a “that's a silly question” look, before answering. “Zero.” ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Once Section’s leader had left his station, Fergus Claudel was left with a problem. Bóinne Rivière’s standing would automatically place her in the Somalia mission. He pulled up her profile and stared at the abeyance standing flashing on the screen. He couldn’t send Murtagh’s fiancée to her death on this mission. Not now … not when his friend was so happy. He had to do something. Making a decision that he hoped would give him enough time to find a way to repeal her termination ranking, Fergus speedily changed her status to the highest level of eight then quickly exited her Profile. He then took the small device she had given him and ran it through his system. To his delighted surprise it came up trumps. “BINGO!” he exclaimed. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Gathering up his evidence, Fergus Claudel made his way to Madeline’s office where he knew that Section’s leaders would be waiting for him with his Intel and a progress report. With a strong belief that the information he’d found and especially from the device so unreservedly given to him without fear of any consequences, he just might also have enough information to change Operations and Madeline’s minds about sending Bóinne Rivière on the Somalia mission. Fergus hoped that what he’d found would please them about the mole in Section and give him some leverage to place a case for the Med Lab nurse’s reclassification and change their minds about her abeyance mission. He had a slim chance but he had to try for Murtagh’s sake. Last night he’d combed the whole system trying to find a connection to any of the operatives in Med Lab and any associated with Jamie and Claire over the past few weeks of the Rising Dragons’ mission. The fact that he’d been able to find anything or anyone who had passed the Intel to Colum and how, was a miracle. Frank Wolverton-Randall had certainly hidden his tampering extremely well and had gone to great pains to cover his tracks, but Fergus had managed to find the link and what Bóinne had given him would certainly be the final nail in his coffin. Putting all the pieces of the puzzle together had not been easy but it was a good thing that he had, because Operations and Madeline were both vulnerable if Intel keep leaking to Oversight. It seemed strange to Fergus that Colum would be keeping tabs on procedures in Section One when he had been debriefed on several occasions, however with a little further digging he’d come to establish a reason why he’d enlisted Frank’s expertise in doing so and it appeared to be personal. Oversight was the board and the only entity Operations had to answer to. It was all tied up in the Rising Dragons’ mission and Oversight’s perception as to how expediently Section was dealing with the triad. It was well known that Colum and Operations were rivals and there was little love lost between the two adversaries. Perhaps Colum was displeased that things were not moving as fast as he had hoped, but then again in his search Fergus had also stumbled across a communiqué from Colum to Mr Lambert which was very revealing as to his motives. Fergus knew that Operations and Madeline would be pleased with what he’d found. He had managed to solve the conundrum of the mole in Section … the ghost mole actually … as the person responsible was not physically present but had still managed to pass on Intel surreptitiously despite being transferred to another substation. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ An apprehensive Fergus Claudel stood on the threshold of Madeline's office with the information firmly in his grasp. She was talking to Operations who was there as well, but when they saw him, they motioned for him to enter. “So Mr Claudel I trust that you bring us good news.” “I’ve made some progress sir.” “Excellent.” “We’re listening,” Section’s leader stated pricking up his ears in the hope that the mystery would finally be solved. “Please inform us to your findings. What did you discover?” Madeline instructed leaning on her desk. Although he was a little nervous, Fergus began his briefing to his superiors on his results and gave them a status report on his findings. “I ran an inventory of all the possible people who may have been involved as a possible mole in passing Intel to Colum at Oversight and I checked out all the people on your list as well.” “And?” “Zero … Dr Foster and Bóinne Rivière came up clean and although both had tremendous access to Med Lab, there is nothing to indicate that they were involved.” “Hayes and Lesley?” “Likewise.” “So you’re telling us that all of them came up clean?” “Yes sir… I was also unable to find any surveillance cameras or listening devices in Med Lab.” “I thought you said you had something for us Claudel … this is not what I hoped you would find.” Before they could protest some more, Fergus continued, “But … I have now come into the possession a small mechanism that was discovered in Med Lab by nurse Bóinne Rivière. I have just run it through the system. It confirmed my suspicions and gives us concrete evidence of the perpetrator. Without her finding the device I only had my gut feeling and supposition to go on. She was invaluable and is, I believe, totally innocent and loyal to the Section or else she would have disposed of the device instead of handing it over to me,” he added glowingly for extra clarification. Operations heard his statement about Bóinne Rivière but chose not to respond to it, instead he stated, “Go on.” “It was a sophisticated, minute listening device that was attached to James Fraser’s bed in ICU. I ran a fingerprint on it and I found something very interesting.” “Get to the point Fergus.” “I said I’d found no one suspicious but … there is one exception. The fingerprint showed up a match. I narrowed it down to one prime suspect.” That information whetted their appetite. Operations was all ears. “Who?” “A person in another substation but no longer in Section.” “Cut to the chase Fergus … who is it?” Section’s leader insisted as if he had little time for the mundane facts he’d given them already. He wanted something concrete … and he wanted it now! “Frank Wolverton-Randall,” Fergus blurted out. “Who?” Operations exclaimed incredulously but it made sense given their history and how he’d transferred him away from Systems and Fergus. “Frank Wolverton-Randall,” he repeated.

“I heard you the first time,” his superior barked turning to face Madeline with anger in his eyes.

This was certainly a surprise. Madeline took a seat behind her desk thinking that Wolverton-Randall had had little contact with medical or the Rising Dragons mission that they knew of since he’d been transferred to another sector just after Jamie and Claire arrived back from the retrieval Mission. Operations looked at his second in command. “Didn’t Colum specifically ask for Frank to be transferred?” “He did … and we were only too glad to see the back of him. Do you remember?” Madeline added. “Yes … I do.” Operations stated with disdain. He was livid at the underhand tactics Colum had used. He realised that his brother must have planned this all along and was just waiting for his chance to discredit them by using Frank as his mole especially given his knowledge of Section. Fergus waited and listened to the exchange between the two leaders before continuing with his findings. “I raked the system, all of it and I cross-correlated every piece of data on Wolverton-Randall I could find. Once I was able to solve the deeply hidden channel code that I discovered, it all made sense that he was the person responsible.” “How is that possible when he is no longer in Section but at our substation?” “I believe he did have time to set this scam up before he was transferred. He was my main focus because he is the only person who could manage to infiltrate sensitive files about operatives and then pass this Intel on to Colum.” “But why him? Why Frank Wolverton-Randall? Did he approach Colum or he was approached?” Ever pragmatic Madeline gave Operations the answer. “Several reasons Dougal. Think about it … Frank has a number of personal motives for being Colum’s mole and he had the expertise to pull off such a coup. He has the computer knowledge on the same scale as Fergus and he has ulterior reasons to find your brother’s proposition advantageous to seek retribution against us.”

“Hmmm,” he mumbled.

“Not only that, but Colum knew that Frank had animosity towards you and I. He made a bargain with the devil for sure with both parties benefiting from this collaboration. It would be a win-win for your brother too if he could discredit us but you in particular Dougal. He has always had an axe to grind over Letitia’s unexplained disappearance and I would suggest that he blames you for that. After all you did take over Section One when no trace of her was found.”

Dougal Mackenzie took stock of what his second in command had stated and what Madeline said made sense. They now had to come up with a plan to put a stop to it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Frank Wolverton-Randall was the mole! Fergus’ information raised a number of plausible scenarios in Madeline and Operations’ mind as to why the operative had done what he’d done, and they both in their own way, reflected on what would also provide motives for his deception.

Operations recalled the circumstances under which they’d dealt with Frank when he’d been recruited at such an early age. It was a catch twenty-two situation. Wolverton-Randall was young but he was smart and Section One needed him, however, it was his stupidity and the invincibility of youth that had been his downfall. It was obvious that Frank would have a personal vendetta against him for being brought into Section One. The young man’s rebelliousness and seditious attitude because he was incarcerated away from his mother and father would be legitimate grounds for him to have a special grudge against them as well.

Section’s leader remembered their conversation as if it had happened only yesterday.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Hey, go to Hell! Where am I exactly? Stupid City? I want to talk to the man in charge!” "I am the man in charge." With the irreverence of youth Frank’s reply to him had been derisive and sarcastic. "You couldn't be in charge of my crotch." It had taken less than a minute for the young upstart to get the better him, a man who had kept his cool under the most trying conditions. He realised then and there that he would be a thorn in their side but they needed him and that was that. He didn’t have to like the lad. He saw nothing funny about their teenaged guest. Frank Wolverton-Randall was dismissive, cocky and was not afraid when he was brought to his office. His disregard for authority was apparent and he saw everything as a challenge regardless of the consequences. His body language showed that he didn’t fear or feel threatened by the leader of Section One which totally ticked him off. The thought that he could make almost every captured target and operative in Section shake in fear, but couldn’t faze a teenager was galling. He’d taken great delight in telling the youth that he would not be leaving Section. But in his inimitable way the lad was unimpressed. “Unfortunately ..., this place cannot tolerate mistakes. You've seen that.” “Spare me the lecture, Old Folks. Are you going to let me go or not?” “No, we're not.” He’d smiled realising that he had the upper hand over the teenager that was until Frank snookered him in his arrogant manner knowing that he would release him or else he would not fix the problem he had created in Comm. “Hmmm. You may want to reconsider that.” “And why would I want to do that?” “Ask Fergus.” It was obvious that the recalcitrant youth had set up some sort of a virus in their system. He’d stared at Frank for a moment, then walked over to his window where he had a clear view of Comm. and Fergus in the middle of a multiple anomaly because the decoded sequence was generating a virus that was bleeding into the system. Wolverton-Randall’s cocky and boastful reply was the last straw. “I might be able to fix that for you.” He immediately realised that Frank, who was wearing a very smug expression on his face, knew about the possibility of a virus before he’d left on his little sight-seeing tour of Section and knew that it was his get out of jail card if he needed it. But of course that hadn’t eventuated and the tables had indeed been turned on the lad with Section’s subterfuge when Frank thought he was home and hosed and going back to his parents. Operations understood that Section’s double jeopardy alone by reneging on their agreement was enough reason for him to side with Colum in his vendetta against him in particular and Section One.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Madeline also internalised what Fergus had told them about Frank Wolverton-Randall.

She remembered vividly when he came into Section and was cognizant of his tender age but his mental prowess was undeniable. There was no denying that the lad was a genius in his field, so what Fergus had told them was entirely feasible. But Operations was far from happy with the Intel about his compatibility to life in Section and it was not what he had wanted to hear when they had discussed the youth.

“What about Wolverton-Randall Madeline?” “I'm working on an integration program.” “What’s his survival likelihood?” “Over 92 percent, actually ... He's a surprisingly good match.” Section’s head strategist remembered sitting at her desk observing the lad on her monitor. Operations was standing behind her, also staring at the scene. He’d leaned down to get a closer look at Wolverton-Randall and had watched as Claire left Frank to amuse himself. She noticed his 'realignment' of the computer hardware and wiring and had brought up Fergus Claudel's Profile on the monitor to prove that he was capable of accessing their files to ally his boredom while he was waiting to be told why he was there. Her observation of his behaviour was very telling. “Fergus? Fergus Claudel. Age - twenty-one; one hundred thirty-five pounds; 20-80 vision; SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATION for every host on this Local Area Network. Should I continue?” Madeline had acknowledged his skill but only because they had let him. “We've let you roam through an outer, non-secured area of the network to give you something to do." “Gee, thanks. You think I can't dig deeper?” His scornful reply was soon silenced by her ice-cold demeanour. She’d turned from distant and kind to threatening. Moving closer to Frank he’d immediately felt her intrusion into his personal space which was exactly what she had wanted him to feel. But more importantly, Wolverton-Randall soon realised that her threatening tone left no illusions in his mind … she meant what she had said. Frank, being the bright genius that he was, picked up that this woman was dangerous and he needed to tread lightly. “If you did ... and by some fluke ... happened on to something, classified ... You'd never go home again. ... Never see your family again. ... Your life would be over.” For a brief moment their eyes held a type of holding war. Then her warning delivered, she’d returned to her 'distant and kind' impersonation and Frank was slightly intimidated. “We've gone to a great deal of trouble to protect you, don't work against us Frank. We need you to break a code.” “What if I don't do it?” Her threat … “You'll do it,” and her cold stare had left him in no doubt that she meant exactly what she said and there would be no deviation whatsoever. Frank was facing a personality that he had never had to face before. She was someone intelligent enough to realize his potential, but cold enough not to be more lenient due to his age. She was a formidable woman and Frank knew when to listen and do what he was told. A slight smile bowed her lips recalling this incident, but her thoughts soon turned to others involved in Frank Wolverton-Randall’s incarceration. Perhaps he also had a grudge against Claire Beauchamp and James Fraser as well given that they were the ones that captured him and brought him into Section. That could explain his helping Colum with Intel about them from the mission as well. If he was able to destabilise the operatives crucial to the Rising Dragons’ mission then he would have accomplished his job … to sabotage the mission for the head of Oversight … or for his own retribution against Section One. Perhaps it was the fact that she’d gone back on her word. Frank may have perceived this as a lie which had left him in Section One against his will with no chance of returning to the life he once had, or more importantly to his mother and father. “I’m sorry we had to do this, Frank. We need your assistance for a short time ..., then you'll be safely returned.” All Colum’s platitudes about them doing so well were obviously just a ploy in the early phase of the Rising Dragons’ mission so that when the end game was near, Colum then would put in motion his plan … whatever that was and for whatever his reasons were. More than likely his motives were because of his lost love Letitia and Dougal’s succession under suspicious circumstance as she’d already alluded to with him. Colum had never come to grips with the disappearance of his love … Section One’s founder … and if he knew that Dougal was in any way involved then he would seek vengeance on his brother. That could very well explain his skulduggery in involving Frank as a mole hoping to find a link between her vanishing and Operations more so than the triad per se.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Section’s leaders each had cause to reminisce on Frank Wolverton-Randall but were also interested in Fergus’ take on the young man and his reasons for thinking that he was Colum’s mole. “Go on.” “I've worked with him. But I never trusted him.” “Surely this is just sour grapes on your behalf?” Operations interjected but not entirely convinced by the young techie’s answer. He realised that Frank had kept Fergus on his toes and had come into Section because their IT mastermind couldn’t solve the problem.

Was he just saying this because he was better than him and this was what riled him? Did he still have self-esteem problems over the computer genius’ methods?

Fergus realised what Operations was alluding to and he vehemently denied this assumption. “Of course not! He's the only one who could have gotten through for Colum like he did. I found something that I’m sure is how the Intel was passed on to him.”

“Continue.” “I re-routed a deep channel and found an interesting anomaly. It would appear that Frank Wolverton-Randall has the expertise to monitor our systems even from afar. After Bóinne Rivière gave me the mechanism, she’d found that I’d missed in my search, I re-scanned the Med Lab computers and I found a suspicious tag on Dr. Foster’s workstation computer that held Claire and Jamie’s medical history while they were in Med Lab … It was a programme piggy backing off his case files.” “So he could access their progress without us even knowing. Is that what you are saying Fergus?” “Yes. That's right.” “Let me get this clear … what you’re telling us is that Frank Wolverton-Randall would be able to access these medical files when they were open and then pass that Intel on to Colum without anyone knowing.” “Precisely. I've unlocked a half dozen security two files as well. Each contains a treasonous breach which would result in immediate cancellation. They're all linked to Frank by an iris match. He set up an elaborate system that was not easily detected and he went to a lot of trouble to cover his tracks.” Operations leaned on Madeline’s desk with a thought provoking look on his face. Madeline too had a similar disposition. “Explain.” “That's the scary part. He’s been beta testing the software … working out the kinks. Frank used an unusual code, but I remembered the similarities to when he first came into Section One for that very purpose to solve the complex code. He was the only one who had any idea how to approach that thing. This one had elements of that code that Frank had initially solved. It has his footprint all over it. Methods used to decipher it had been implemented in reverse so no one would suspect or be able to find the decryption to decode it. It was difficult but I did it … and voila … it linked to Wolverton-Randall totally.” “I see.” “There is one other damming thing that you may be interested in.” Fergus had already given them enough Intel to ponder and they were surprised that there could possibly be more explosive information. “What is it?” He took a deep breath before uttering, “Colum has been keeping tabs on the Rising Dragons’ missions and in particular Jamie and Claire’s success. He also has been collating data on the disappearance of the founder of Section One, Letitia Chisholm. ” The look on Operations face was incredulous. He couldn’t believe what Fergus had just said. “He’s doing what?!?” “How is that possible?” Madeline added perplexed. “A lot is possible if Frank Wolverton-Randall is involved it would seem,” was Operations terse reply.

“Thank you, Fergus, … I think I have a lot to discuss with Operations. You have been most thorough.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ to be continued on Tuesday 11th August.

#jamieandclairecrossover #Jamieandclairefanfic #the lallybroch library #outlander fanfic #covert operations #sablelab #LFNoutlander #jamieandclaireau

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sonatanotwo · 5 years ago

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This suddenly seems much shorter than how it feels in Quoll writer... huh. Um. Anyhoo. Oh man. I can post rp np, but posting a fic has me anxious as all heck. XDDD SO. YEAH. I started this like.... so long ago... Sometime in July of 2015... Yeah. I. Suck at this. XDDD Um. Anyhoo. This chapter could still end up changed in the future... but I think it’s fairly locked in at this point, but who knows. lol I should stop stalling.

So. Here is the first chapter of this... thing. The title it has is only tentative so I’m gonna... not mention it. XD //drops it and goes to like... hide// /)__(\;;;;;

"Thunderbird 2 to base... Mission complete, I'm on my way home."

"F.A.B. Thunderbird 2. ...You okay, Virgil?"

"Yeah, just tired," Virgil replied Gordon over the comms as he flew towards Tracy Island—home. He'd been out on what had meant to be a simple mission, but of course, it had been anything but simple, in the end. Exhausted, Virgil was incredibly glad to be on his way home, though he still had one obstacle to deal with.

"Ah, one of those, huh?"

"Yeah, one of those," Virgil replied, unable to not crack a small smile, in spite of it all. "I'll tell you about it later. How about that tropical storm? How're things looking from the ground?"

Thunderbird 5 had been monitoring a tropical storm forming for quite a few days now. While it didn't look like it was going to be upgraded in strength, it would still pack a pretty good wallop on their island. Virgil had expected to be home long before then, but of course, it wasn't going to work out that way. John had kept him informed of the status from above, but that didn't exactly tell him what he needed to know.

"Not too good. The sky is looking pretty dark and the waves are really crashing against the island. Think you'll beat it?"

"It's not looking too likely, but I should be okay as long as the runway stays clear. Keep an eye on it for me, would ya? If it'll be more like taking a swim than a landing, I might have to have a change of plans."

He had a few options if going home wasn't viable. He could keep above the storm and just wait it out or see if Lady Penelope wouldn't mind a visitor for a day or two. Neither were as appealing as getting home and falling into his own bed, however. There was little else he wanted more right now.

"Sure thing, Virg."

"Thanks, Gordon. Keep me informed. Thunderbird 2, out."

Once Gordon's hologram vanished from his dash, Virgil returned his full attention to the various indicators in front of him and the darkening sky through the cockpit windows. Well, there were those storm clouds. Things were about to get a whole lot more bumpy.

As if on cue, Thunderbird 2 shuddered from turbulence as she flew into the storm. This was hardly the first, nor would it be the last time Virgil flown through such weather. Thunderbird 2 was designed to handle harsh storms, but it didn't mean it was easy flying, by any means.

Gripping the yoke, Virgil did his best to keep her steady. It made no sense to climb up above the storm considering he was coming up on being only minutes from Tracy Island. At least, it made no sense unless he heard otherwise, although he was starting to wonder if his plan to land hadn't been his best idea. Even this, however, would be easier than his last tricky landing, so he wasn't inclined to abort at this point

Intending to call in again that he was about to land, the comms crackled to life before he could activate it. It was definitely Gordon contacting him again, but Virgil couldn't make heads or tails of anything that was being said. As harsh as the storm was, Virgil wasn't sure why the signal had suddenly distorted so badly. Perhaps the island comms equipment had taken some damage? Reaching up to flick a switch on the comm controls, Virgil quickly returned his hand to the yoke.

"Gordon? You're going to have to repeat that, for me," he replied distractedly, eyes on his instruments, as he was starting to descend to make an attempt at landing.

"Th—nde—"

The signal this time dissolved into nothing but static, much to Virgil's frustration. Reaching up again, Virgil stopped short of the buttons he'd intended to press as something happened.

Every indicator on the dash suddenly spun madly, as Virgil felt a violent shudder run through his ship. Lightning? No, he had the new and thoroughly tested lightning shield up—it wasn't a lightning strike. The lights in the cockpit flickered and then suddenly, blinding white light filled his vision, forcing Virgil to close his eyes.

For a moment, it felt like the world had gone completely topsy turvey around him. He felt disoriented in more ways than one by time he pried his eyes back open. How long had his eyes been closed? He couldn't say. It was like he'd completely zoned out which was easy to believe as his head was absolutely spinning. It even took a moment to realize the shrill sound of a warning alarm really was blaring in his ears.

It had to have been pure instinct that made him cut the rockets and fire the VTOLs, pulling Thunderbird 2 into a sharp turn, just narrowly managing to avoid crashing into the island cliff face. The proximity alarm fell silent.

Allowing Two to hover on her VTOLs, Virgil sat back, releasing a breath of air he hadn't even realized he'd been holding. His head was spinning and his knuckles white, still clutching onto the yoke for dear life. It was rare that Virgil was shaken, but whatever the heck had just happened, had him literally trembling. Nothing like that had EVER happened in the hundreds, upon hundreds of times he'd come in to land, even in bad weather. He could not think of any explanation in the slightest for what had occurred. It wasn't like he'd blacked out. He knew what that was like and that sure hadn't been it. Not to mention, whatever it had been, it had definitely affected Thunderbird 2 as well.

His thoughts were interrupted as the comm suddenly sprang to life, the signal once more clear and a frantic voice on the other end.

"Thunderbird 2! Base to Thunderbird 2! What just happened? You nearly crashed into the island, Virgil!"

Okay, maybe the signal wasn't so clear. Either something was wrong with the comms or his ears, because something sounded decidedly off. Then again, considering what just happened, was that really so strange?

"I don't know... I..."

"Whoa, Virg. You don't sound so good. You better land."

"Y-yeah... F.A.B."

Virgil purposefully killed the comms, wanting to ensure a moment to himself as he rubbed his face with both hands. He was feeling worse, rather than better. What was wrong with him? Maybe something really was up with his hearing, given his head was spinning. A concussion? Although, he didn't remember hitting his head on anything and he didn't seem feel any bump on it either. Virgil also was fairly certain he didn't have near enough a rough a jolt to do it either. Did he have a migraine, perhaps? His stomach was definitely starting to feel rather nauseous, which certainly gave the thought merit, but what about what happened to Thunderbird 2? It had been affected just as much as he had.

Well, he figured he would try to work out what just happened later, for now he just needed to land, given he didn't know if anything was wrong with his ship and that storm was only getting worse.

He started to circle Thunderbird 2 around to make a second approach, but found himself bringing his the large craft to a stop midair once more.

"What the...?" he muttered aloud, staring through the narrow windows at the island below.

Even through the rain, he could see the island wasn't Tracy Island. It bore a resemblance, sure, but this wasn't it. Beyond puzzled he brought up the GPS and ended up looking even more stumped. No, these were exactly the coordinates. This was where it was meant to be it. This was meant to be home, but it just wasn't.

Had something happened to his GPS? It didn't seem to be malfunctioning, but surely it had to be. What other reason could there be for this?

What was going on?

There was a runway below, however and given his head was spinning even worse now and he was struggling to keep Thunderbird 2 steady, he really had no choice—he'd have to set her down there. Aiming to set her down as inland along the runway as he could to get as much shelter from the incoming storm as possible, he somehow managed it.

Almost feeling like he would actually be sick at this point, he decided he needed at least a moment of fresh air. As soon as he at least felt a little better, he'd contact Thunderbird 5. John could then get a fix on his location and they could try to figure out just where he really was and how broken his GPS was.

Virgil practically stumbled from his seat onto the elevator. Stepping onto the runway, he was met with sea spray and wind. Rain hadn't started yet, but it would only be a matter of time. Unfortunately, the fresh air didn't seem to be helping at all. Leaning back against one of his ship's landing struts, he stared down the runway, noticing several figures had appeared and were running towards him. Was that good? He wasn't even sure, but he didn't take a chance, touching his wrist controller to have the elevator ascend.

For a brief moment, Virgil even thought he heard his name being called, but he couldn't stay on his feet any more, his head was just swimming. He let himself sink down onto the runway and closed his eyes, despite hearing voices now above him. He just couldn't pry them back open.

#~OOC Post #Thunderbirds Are Go #~Not RP #~Virgil Mun Writings #ohgodi'mdoingthis #finally actually posting some of it #askdalksdalksjdam #I feel like I'm forgetting something I should be adding about this #...oh well #i have no idea lol

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violetsmoak · 5 years ago

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Pieces of April [1/?]

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21099044/chapters/50202530

Summary: On the anniversary of his death, Jason’s second life takes an abrupt new turn and he’s faced with a challenge that neither Batman nor the All-Caste prepared him for.

Rating: PG-13 (rating may change later)

Warning(s): Past Jason/Isabel, kidfic, minor canon character death (pretty sure you can guess who), I’ll add more warnings/tags as I think of them.

Canon-Compliance: Takes place in between the two RHATO series, so after Roy and Kori and before Artemis and Bizarro. Jason and Isabel Ardila

Author’s Note: Exactly what it says on the can. I’ve had this idea kicking around my head for a while, getting in the way of finishing the next chapter of Philtatos and I figured if I started jotting down the basics of it, I could stop thinking about it.

________________________________________________________________

Despite the carefully cultivated exterior of a hardened criminal, Jason Todd is remarkably straight edge.

After what happened to his mother, drugs were never going to be a thing; he stopped smoking long before a lunatic clown beat him to death; and though his preferred hangouts tend to be bars, that’s more to keep an eye out for trouble than for slinging back shots.

There are exceptions, of course.

Coping with any kind of murder that involves kids. The days immediately following another one of Joker’s breakouts and inevitable mind games. Some of the worse fights with Bruce. And certain anniversaries.

Days like today, when all he is boils down to traumatic flashbacks of metal caving in his lungs and high-pitched laughter, and mounting fear turned to begging for the end. Circular thoughts and ‘what-ifs’ that he ignores or pushes to the back of his mind every other day of the year are stronger now, now occupy his mind with the stubbornness of a cancer.

Today’s a day for hard whiskey and keep it coming until he can’t see straight, for everything to melt away behind a fog of false levity until he wakes up again and he can forget for another year.

He’s nearing that point when his phone rings.

It’s not the harsh tune of I Hate Everything About You that he’s programmed for any of the Bats civilian phone lines, but a generic ringtone. Not a call to offer sympathy, but not an emergency.

(If they couldn’t reach the comm in his helmet, they’d just show up.)

He ignores it, goes back to his drink.

There’s a brief silence once it goes to voicemail, and then ten seconds later it rings again. The bartender is giving him a look with raised eyebrows, but Jason just gestures for another finger of whiskey.

Around the fifth time, Jason picks up the phone if only to turn the damn thing off or chuck it at a wall, but pauses at the Caller ID—Gotham General.

What the hell…?

No one he knows would contact him on a public hospital line.

His thumbs fumble as he accepts the call, but even as he barks out, “What?”, he hears a static click and the electronic monotone of his voicemail bidding the incoming caller leave a message.

There’s a pause, and then a stranger’s tired voice comes on the line.

“This message is for Jason Ardila. I’m Dr. Kerry at Gotham General Hospital. We have you listed as the primary contact for Isabel Ardila.” Jason straightens up as best he can at this. “I have news regarding your wife’s condition. It would be best if you came to the hospital as soon as possible. You can reach me at—”

He rattles off a number but Jason doesn’t catch it, mind whirling.

Isabel? Emergency contact? What the hell? Wife? Even more what the hell. At least she knew not to give his real name, but...again, why call him? They aren’t exactly close, and he hasn’t seen or spoke to Isabel since that thing at Elysium.

That was…what…last July?

He counts back again, needing to check his math against his alcohol muzzled brain. In any case, it’s a few months shy of a year, which makes it more than random she’s calling him now.

Wait…

“—can’t make it here within the next two hours, please contact a hospital representative to assist you.”

The message ends.

Jason stares blearily at the phone for several minutes, trying to put his thoughts in order.

Something needles at the back of his mind, and his thumb smudges across the screen to open his browser, pulling up Gotham General’s staff directory. It takes longer than he’d like to navigate, squinting at text that’s far too small before he remembers he can resize that shit, and finally he locates—

Dr. David Kerry, M.D., F.A.C. S., Obstetrician.

Jason’s stomach lurches.

He counts back again.

April back to July.

Almost nine months.

Nine months since the last time he and Isabel—

No. No way, it must be a coincidence. Probably she just got into some trouble. Trouble that needs the Red Hood to solve, and that’s why she named me as contact.

He scrubs a hand down his face, trying for sobriety.

But then why didn’t she call me and tell me? Why wait until she’s at the goddamn hospital?

And under the care of an obstetrician. That’s…the thing he’s most concerned about.

There’s no way. She said she was seeing someone, if there were anything, it would have to do with him. But then…why contact me and not him?

He’s dimly aware of shrugging his jacket back on, of throwing a bunch of bills on the bar-top and wandering out despite the barkeeper saying something to him. Of getting out into the chill and damp spring air, trying to hail a cab, because yeah, the bike he left in the alley has an autopilot feature, but Jason doesn’t feel like risking road rash if he slips off it on a sharp turn. Which he might do, considering he drops his wallet twice trying to put it back in his jacket.

Also, if he and Isabel need to make a quick exit if she’s hurt, it will be easier for him to steal a car later than try to put her on a bike. And if she’s not alone—

Don’t think about it.

As he gets his wallet back in his pocket, he remembers he basically gave the barkeep all his cash, and shit, does he even have anything left? This means he’s going to waste time going back in and taking it back since the guy hasn’t exactly followed him out to return it. Probably thinks it’s a tip or—

Jason stiffens, that sixth sense honed from a childhood on the street and training under the most paranoid man in the world bypassing his otherwise alcohol clouded senses to warn him. Someone’s behind him.

“Whoever you are, you really don’t want to test me right now,” he growls, speech only a little slurred. Shit-faced or not, he’s still a better fighter than any low-tier thug in Gotham.

“I’m not testing anything, except how much your situational awareness sucks when you’re drunk.”

The voice is dry and familiar, and Jason turns around, half-expecting to come face to face with Red Robin crouched in the shadows. Instead, Tim Drake is several feet away, dressed casually and leaning against a sports car that has no business idling on the streets of Burnley.

Jason didn’t hear him pull up, which means he’s been here a while—and he didn’t notice him.

Need to sober up now.

“The hell are you doing here, Drake?” he snarls to cover up his obvious impaired reactions.

“It’s the 27th,” the younger man says, slow and careful. “I’m keeping an eye on you.”

Of course, he knows what day it is…

Jason bares his teeth. “In case I do something crazy? Decide to go on a rampage?”

“In case you needed a ride home or someone to talk to or just make sure you don’t choke on your own vomit,” Drake retorts.

“Aren’t you the little do-gooder. How’d you even find me?”

“Roy Harper called me out of the blue. He told me someone should check in on you, and he figured for some reason I’m the best candidate to look in on you.” He shrugs and there’s a frown of confusion on his face. “Don’t know why he thinks so, considering our history.”

Jason suspects it has to do with Drake being the one who got him the information needed to find and save Roy’s ass in Qurac, but he’s not about to say so.

“Doesn’t answer how you knew I was here.”

Drake raises an eyebrow at that because, yeah, they both know how he found him.

Damn stalker.

Jason rolls his eyes. “Whatever. You found me. You saw me. Now step off, I’m trying to get a cab.”

He turns away and starts heading up the street to the busier intersection.

“Headed to another bar?” Drake wants to know, uncertain, like he’s trying not to sound judgemental.

“No, screw you very much, I need to get to Gotham General.”

And it’s further proof of how much his mind and his reflexes are on a roller coaster tonight, because he’s actually started the hand that falls upon his shoulder. As it turns him around, he instinctively lashes out with a right hook, but Drake dodges it with embarrassing ease.

His eyes are raking over Jason, up-and-down, re-assessing. “You hurt?”

He’s fishing, Jason thinks; none of them have gone to the hospital for an injury that wasn’t faked in years, least of all Bruce Wayne’s legally dead ex-son. Perhaps that’s why he’s able to detect the genuine concern in the bland question. It’s not laid on as thickly as Dick might do, or tinged with the hint of judgement and self-recrimination from Bruce.

Maybe that’s why he finds himself admitting, “Someone I know might be.”

The younger man nods, understanding; some of the intentness leaves his face.

“I could give you a ride,” he offers, nodding his head at the car. “I could get you there faster than a cab could.”

It’s on the tip of Jason’s tongue to refuse, before he remembers he has no cash.

He glances back at the bar once more, wondering if it’s the better option to “haggle” with the barkeep to get his money back. Suspects that will lead to a fight, which if Drake insists on hanging around (which he suspects he will, even if it’s just watching him from a distance, the creep) he’ll probably intervene in and—

This is getting too complicated.

“Fine,” he sighs at last, earning a blink of surprise from Drake.

No kidding. I’m surprised, too.

Still, if there’s anything going down at the hospital, if this is a trap or something, and Jason needs to ensure Isabel gets out alright, however much he is off his game right now, having Red Robin backing him up wouldn’t be the worst thing ever.

It’s not like they’ve never worked together before, or kicked ass doing it.

Jason course corrects once more, heading for the car. Still, he can’t help making a comment, just to show how much he’d rather not be doing this. “But if we’re doing this chauffeuring thing, you’re gonna keep your mouth shut about it. And fork over whatever coffee I know you have in that shitbox of yours.”

Tim is the one who bares his teeth this time, a sharp, cold smile that Jason suspects is the last thing his enemies ever see. “Call my car a shitbox again, and you can walk.”

________________________________________________________________

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#violetsmoak #violet writes #jaytim #jaytim fanfic #kidfic #babyfic #enemies to lovers #or rather reluctant allies to lovers

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tgwltw · 7 years ago

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In your shoes.

This was requested a long time ago by @australiasami and initially I had some qualms about writing it because I didn’t know much, or any, at all but then, a sweet darling @balletbunsandsugarplums gave me a few advice and I am forever thankful to have you help me.

I am still worried about how this turned out so I hope it was alright and hope everyone can enjoy this! I have less than 28 requests now so I will work on them and hopefully by the end of July, I can open the requests again. Anyways, enjoy!

Being back at home is such a stress-reliever for you but too bad, the same cannot be said for your entire family, with the exception of Alfred, of course. You have half the mind to ask Alfred if he had been to Texas before but decided against asking him because Alfred might not even give you a straight answer. But you are back in Texas and you are happy to be back – it feels like you haven’t been home for the longest time.

“Y/N, we are not getting in that truck you have rented.” Bruce frowns, looking at the truck. “It does not feel safe.” You roll your eyes at your husband’s answer.

“Bruce, I love you very much, I really do but every single night you go out to fight crimes,” You whisper this part quietly, “You will be perfectly alright with getting on this truck.” You tell him, putting a hand on your hip, looking at him with one of your eyebrows raised, as if challenging him to answer back.

But before Bruce could even reply, Damian cuts in and slides in between the two of you, keeping his back to Bruce. “Mother, I have never driven a truck before – can I drive?”

Bruce and you look at your youngest son before answering, “No.”

Damian frowns. “Tt.” He crosses his road and moves to stand beside Alfred.

“Fine but I want to drive the truck.” Bruce finally relents and you smile at him before pressing your lips on his cheeks. He makes to move towards the truck and you turn to face the rest of your boys.

“Okay, Dick, you and Jason have got that truck and I trust Tim, Damian and Alfred will be alright with the last truck?” You ask and Alfred gives you a small smile, nodding his head. Damian looks at you.

“Are you sure I cannot drive, mother?”

You laugh, shaking your head. “No, Damian. Alfred’s driving.”

Jason picks up all of the luggage and gently throws it at the back of the truck. “Come on – the heat is crazy and I want to take a shower before we do anything later.” He calls out before getting in the truck he had been assigned to with Dick.

“We’ll see you at Grandpa’s house, Ma.” Dick exclaims before making his way to the truck. You wait until all of your kids as well as Alfred get in to their own respective trucks before heading to the truck where Bruce is currently waiting for you.

Bruce starts the engine as soon as you are seated, he glances at you and lets out a sigh before putting your seatbelts on for you. “Safety first.” He reminds you causing you to laugh before pushing him back to his chair.

“Come on – let’s go home!”

After eating the lunch your parents have prepared, you decided to bring your boys along to the local livestock show that happens to

After eating lunch that had been prepared for your entire family by your parents, you decided to bring your boys along to the local Rodeo. It took a little convincing mostly because Bruce had been skeptical but after reassuring him that no one would make fun of the Bruce Wayne, he had relented like he initially did with the trip and you beam. Damian had been as excited as he can get – though honestly, you think he was probably looking forward to the events where he can participate – Tim on the other hand is documenting every single moment, making what you assume is a Vlog. Dick and Jason are chatting with each other about how they could probably win the mounted shooting – your parents had been more than helpful with giving the boys details pertaining to events happening at the rodeo.

“Do you think if I ask mother enough, will she eventually let me drive the truck?” Damian asks once all of you arrive at the stadium. “Or perhaps, she will allow me to do some of these events?” He asks no one in particular.

“Maybe if you sneak away and do it, she probably would not realize.” Tim snickers, filming Damian up close. Damian rolls his eyes before pushing the camera away from his face. He has a few things he wants to see and if possible, register too.

“If any of you are betting, just don’t blow too much money.” You tell your boys before hooking your arm with Bruce’s. Alfred had decided to stay back at your parents’ house to help prepare food for dinner because all of your siblings and cousins are going to come down tonight and it’s really going to be really fun to see all of them again.

“This is surprisingly not as bad as I expected it to be.” Bruce presses his lips on your temple causing you to giggle, snuggling against his side as the two of you walk around the arena. You used to go to these things all the time with your grandpa while growing up and being here reminds you of the fun times you had with him. “What’s in that mind of yours?”

“I used to go to all of these things with my late grandpa – Rodeo was a huge deal to him and since I was the first born grandchild, he shared that love with me.” You smile at Bruce who nods his head. “Which is why I wanted to share that love with everyone too.”

Bruce feels a little bit guilty for his earlier reservations. He doesn’t even know why he had been so reluctant to come to Texas with you – perhaps, it’s a little bit out of his comfort zone, he can’t quite pinpoint why yet though – but now that you have shared that important part of your childhood with him, Bruce really wants to try to enjoy being in your hometown now.

“Alright then, you have me interested. What do you think we should do?” Bruce asks you but before you can answer, your comms – it’s a tad bit easier to have this rather than calling your sons one by one – rings and Dick’s voice enters your ear.

“Uh, guys – I think we may have to leave soon because Damian is starting to steal all of the cows he thinks are being mistreated.”

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dantelaw21 · 4 years ago

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 290

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 290 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Hello everybody and welcome to Hump Day hangouts Episode 290. Today is the third of June and we are going to get rolling on into things here we got a couple of quick announcements. This is the show where I do not use Hernan’s title cuz I got enough problems and I’m gonna stick with my intro so I’ll let her know and explain that in a minute. But let’s say hi to everybody first and then we’re gonna get into it. So, Bradley, how are you doing today man?

Good happy to be here.

I just read Hernan’s comment anyways just happy to be here guys.

Outstanding well let’s hop over to you what’s going on man? I do not know that there’s a reason why I put it there in the chatbox. I was about to put it on the

Slack channel but I know that Bradley will share his you know his screen and then you know

everything will break loose Regulus, but anyways, yeah, excited to be here. Really, really good to be here. How’s Santa Monica? How are you doing today? Iron Man trying to hide his porn.

I think porn would actually be a lot better receptive and that is better received than his comment.

Anyway, things are good. Things are good. I can’t complain. I mean, I could go What’s the use right here any good? Yeah, he’s just complaining. So just, I just enjoy it, let it go and move on to the next thing which is making money looking for ways, of course, looking for ways to mess with Google.

Fair enough, which I’m going to come back to that in just a minute but first, Chris, how you doing man?

Doing excellent. had a really good gym session today. So I’m super pumped happy. weather is good some ways definitely approaching and yeah, can’t complain.

Yeah, I am not as pumped. I was like, I’m gonna take my miles up, do some long run. So I was going to go out and do 12 miles today and decided to bump up so it’s Like 91 here, which is like for our Celsius speaking friends, that’s like, what? 34 Celsius at 33 out there. Yeah, nice and toasty. So this will be a fun one for me. But instead of telling everyone about my exercise plans and the weather in the Bay Area, I wanted to share real quick. We sent out an email. There have been some webinars happening lately. But more importantly than that, we had a lot of people asking us about GMP verifications, and we’ve sent a couple of emails but we know people sometimes Hey, you’re busy, you might miss it. mgyb.co. GMP verifications are backed up. And you can find that just by going over to mgyb.co. Find out more there. Please pay attention to the very few but very important restrictions. There’s a couple of niches that you just it’s not possible, so don’t bother ordering. So all you have to do is go to mgyb.co and you click on the store, you go to GMB verifications, and right there it’ll have a shortlist of The only niches that you can’t do, if you don’t read that, then you know, we’ll just gonna end up refunding it. I say that because it happened a few times. I want to make sure that you guys get what you need but as always,

sorry, like does that mean there are people that pull the trigger without reading instructions? Is that what you’re saying?

There are but you know what, I appreciate that they were so happy to get started and GMBs that they’re just actually connected. But you know, we don’t want to hold you up. We don’t want to cause you any grief. So just make sure you know, you’re aware there are a few areas that we can’t do that for and more importantly, to you know, these are the verification system is something that comes and goes. Obviously there are some hang-ups there with outbreak and Coronavirus. And you know even while I’m not going to go into the details, but let’s just say we can’t tell you when this could go away. So if this is something you were doing or you want to do for like local Legion or for your own stuff, this would be a really good time to get into that. Marco Do you want to have you read the bullet list?

It is what we don’t have to get back to So, we can’t do that. Because we said we can’t do that. And so asking if we can do it doesn’t make sense. Since we told you, we can’t do it. Oh, that makes it make sense to me.

Yeah, no, that sounds good. So we just had a webinar, we’re going to be sharing it a little bit more in the future moving forward with everyone. It’s a new tool that Bradley has been using a lot. I checked it out. I’m just not using it because I’m not big into local. But I think for anyone that has local clients go high level and the training that Bradley is developing, and some of the other goodies we’re going to have available are pretty amazing. And I don’t know if there’s more to say right now about that Bradley, or if we can just leave it at that and say we’ll share with people and not at the moment, I’m going to be providing a case study for how I’m using it and a couple of ways that can be used will provide my test pans out the way I hope that it does, to experience kind of exponential growth with it. Um, I think there’s a way to kind of tear out like receiving benefit from a client but also from clients. And so I’ll explain all that during you know, in the case study when it’s done, it’s probably going to be about a month out. But that will be a bonus for anybody that purchases it as well. Nice.

Yeah, it’s great. I’d like to share something that happened with Hernan because he forwarded me a list of when the person was selling links, high domain authority, whatever page or what did just whatever from that Edu domains and then and all these great things and charging an arm and a leg for them. And I talked to rob and then Rob says, isn’t that the one we push down? And so while he was looking, I went to look and I said yeah, that’s the one we pushed down for, for the keyword SEO shield. And so I’m like, haha, coincidence is right where you go and you get someone trying to sell you something. And you can write back to them and say, well wait a minute we did our way, just took down your way. So why should I buy your way you should come over and buy my way. Because it’s cheap I will be. It’s just, it was just hilarious or the whole list of it would have cost me just thousands of dollars to get all of those links. And it cost you a fraction of that in MGYB, and works mode better.

Definitely, if you’re on the email list, I highly suggest if you’re interested in SEO, Sheldon, we’re talking about it, that you nominate that if you’re if you’ve seen these emails for the Fourth of July sale, we’re going to have coming up we’re going to have some we usually have something very good but we’re asking you guys for some input this year. So be sure to fill those surveys out, open up your emails, when you get them from us around you. It just takes a minute and you’re going to get a lot out of that. Real quick too. If you’re an agency owner or a consultant, you want to get more clients you want to grow your revenue and scale your team at that Me, I think that’s everyone here. So I can work less and earn more. If you want to be like that, then go check out to x your agency comm This is great training for people who already have clients. But as well as people who are just getting started and maybe you know, you’re not trying to grow the biggest agency ever, but you want to quickly get up to speed and really grow your consulting business or your agency. And last but not least, we’ve been talking a little bit about SEO about MGYB. But if you want to get step by step processes for SEO results, then the best place to do that is that battle plan dot semantic mastery. com grab the battle plan. And that’s generally where we tell people to start when they come to us and they come to Hump Day Hangouts and see what’s next that that that those two are great places to start. They’re complimentary, but you may want to start with one or the other, depending on what your most immediate need is, and go from there. All right, guys. Anything else before we dive into questions?

I’m doing so. All right.

So we’re good.

Grab the screen. Okay,

guys, we’ve seen everything right.

Yeah.

How Do You Use SEO Shield If You’re A Beginner?

All right. So it looks like this is the first question says my SEO shield was just delivered, but I have no idea what to do from here. I only got logins to an ID page and a pro account plus approach. Okay, so you shouldn’t have got it. Anyways, I’m just going to read the question. Got a log into an ID page on a pearl trees account is what that means plus an HTML file to download and a Google site URL. What about the syndication network and the IFTTT where I post content? Please advise or tell me where I can find a tutorial to use these assets? which I’m sure awesome Yes, I have the battle plan 4.0. But there are no mentions of what to do with these assets specifically, thanks. A while the delivery email should have contained all of your information unless it came in and separately like in other words when your syndication network if it was an SEO power shield, which includes all the stuff. You should have gotten an email when the syndication network was delivered, which should have been first before the drive stack was completed.

So and when the SEO shield is delivered, it gives you once you log into that Google account, which by the way, that’s one of the first things you should do, guys, as soon as you get your SEO back, log into the Google account because it binds that account now to your IP. And we recommend that you do that like right away like within you know, within a few days anyways of receiving that email. But once you log into that Gmail account that was provided to you with the login details, then you click the URL to the spreadsheet, which opens up like the drive stack, essentially all the files and folders and everything. And then through that same Gmail account, you can click in the drive and you can actually go in and look at all the individual files and folders and all of that kind of stuff.

Are we sending out the done for you RYS black book with the delivery from SEO shields? If not, we should include that, Marco.

And that’s a standard practice because although it’s a bundle, as everything is done, it gets delivered. And part of the delivery is, of course, the Done For You User’s Guide. And the BattlePlan says exactly what to do with what, whether it’s a new asset or an existing asset. As the pieces come in. Your next step is link building, press releases, link building, embeds, link building more press releases until you get the results that you’re looking for. I mean, our system hasn’t changed and I don’t know how many years because it’s simply worse. It’s just the way we bundled it. And he’s asking about his syndication. Well, he submitted a syndication point, which is his RSS feed or wherever it is that he’s going to be syndicating from his syndication network, so that his content can be published, right. So he should have gotten with that That we wouldn’t have built the syndication network. So he’s asking about that he’s supposed to be blogging from there. So he’s supposed to look into how to set up his silos, how to go after the top market level category. These are all things that we’ve discussed in past Hump Day Hangouts. I mean, the approaches, everything’s free in the on our YouTube channel, all you have to do is use the channel search function. And look for all of these things. Well, what do I do with the RSS feed? How do I syndicate? All questions that can be answered from our YouTube channel. From our free content, you can go into the free Facebook group and ask the question, I know that this particular one I told them, as in Hump Day hangout so that we could go into more detail about what to do, but it because I wanted to make sure that everyone knows, is like you’re not we’re not doing anything different. You get the syndication network, you start syndicating content, you don’t have to wait for everything else to come in. Right? It should be primed. You should have content ready, you should have your silos more or less ready. If you didn’t, then you should have gotten a keyword research gig from us where we can suggest how to approach your niche. But I mean, nobody knows your niche better than you or you should be researching your niche to the point where nobody knows better than you. We can give you suggestions. And we could give you a question and answer your question format so that you can do questions and answers in your content syndication. But again, nothing has changed from the beginning. It’s still the syndication network used to the syndication network is for syndicating content, and it’s for bringing that entity together, right? It’s the beginning of the validation process that we did a whole webinar on that as a matter of fact, in MGYB, then as everything as the @ID gets delivered, and then the final piece of the puzzle of the SEO shield, the dry sack and G site. Well, that’s what you hammer with the link building and you can shoot your press releases through that and out into your tier one brand, which is your syndication network. This is all a process and it’s all set up. And again, we discuss it thoroughly in the battle plan, not only in the battle plan, but in the webinar that we did, where were you, Rob and I got together and we discussed all the different parts of the battle plan and how to approach it and what to do with it. It’s all there. It may take a little bit of research into the YouTube channel, but it’s all there and it’s all free. It’s all free. So you have to just go place the order with MGYB and Okay, what do I do with this? Well, you, thank you for coming here and asking so that we can go into detail. Thank you. But all of these things are available.

Yeah. So like, Where do I post content? It depends on what you used as your trigger or told us to use it as a trigger for your syndication network. Was it blog syndication? So using an RSS feed or was it a YouTube channel? That’s the question so you just post content to whatever you chose as your trigger for the network, right. So either post blog posts on your blog, or upload videos to YouTube channel. That’s where you would post the content too. I do think that this is a good opportunity, perhaps for us to do Marco and Rob and me perhaps to jump on a creative webinar for MGYB like an update webinar, that is just a quick run-through of what to do after your SEO shield has been delivered, or while you’re waiting for all of the components to be delivered. Maybe just do a quick webinar and update that we can then send along with the delivery email with the done for you Users Guide and all that stuff. But just to kind of give an additional resource, I’m up for that. So if I could twist Marco and Rob’s arm to jump on with me, in the next couple of weeks, maybe we’ll do that as an update webinar for MGYB just to kind of give it all consolidate it all into one, you know, 20-minute video or something that explains on you know, what, what best practices are for going forward? I think that might be helpful. What do you say?

No problem just set it up.

Okay. So yeah, we can do that in the meantime. Go look it should have done for your user’s guide. It should have been delivered. If it hasn’t been just contact [email protected]. And request it will make sure you get it but it should have been delivered and then go back and check for your syndication network. Whenever that’s completed, you should get an email for that first, like, you know, a week or however many days prior to your done for you. Drive stack being completed because that’s always done first if that makes sense. So if that’s what you ordered as an SEO power shield along with you know, with all the stuff included, then that’s the timeline that you should have received notifications. Okay.

Does SERP Watching Hurt A Website’s Ranking?

Mohammad is up next. What’s up, Mohammad? He says, hey guys, does SERP watching her a ranking for a specific website, my car dealer. My car dealer client is rising rapidly for a major keyword almost too fast (Shout out to SM). It’s awesome. I’ve shown him the progress and he got so excited. He’s checking it every day. I requested he take it easy, but if he’s actually hurting things, I’ll tell him to stop. That’s a really good question. I’m not sure about that. What do you say, Marco?

Well, it depends on how many unique visits his IP is getting counted for. Right? And now here’s the problem. So let’s say he’s looking at it from his desktop at work. Then he goes to his laptop, and he looks, then he’s home and he looks at it from his mobile phone. Then he tells his wife, hey, go, go, go check this out, and he reaches out to a friend. Now you’ve had five or six visits that just go and say, Oh, look, Wow, this is great. But they take no action that on that search engine result. Or maybe they click through to the website, which is great for your click-through rate. But when they’re on your website, nothing happens. And you’ve heard me talk about this before Mohammad, the final piece of this entire puzzle is getting that person to that click to call that form to whatever it is that you want that person to do. And finish it off. Most people are like, Oh, how pretty Look, look, this is really neat. I’m number nine. I’m number two, whatever it is, the harm could come, like from too many sessions, right? The separate sessions that they can kind of work without anything happening, because that can actually be a negative, because to Google that somebody’s not finding what they’re looking for or somebody’s not trusting you enough. If they land on your website to get you that information. If he’s just looking from time to time, depending on how much traffic it will what percentage it is of the overall traffic, it’s not going to make any difference. Now, I’m going to tell you another thing if he’s watching this close closely, and you know how fickle Google is the first time this thing dances, you’re gonna get a call at midnight because this guy’s gonna be watching. You have no idea what you’re gonna get that call, and he’s gonna be panicking. Right, and Do you want that call? Tell him to stop and look at the fucking results. That’s it. Stop, stop it is your phone ring, it’s coming up, wait for the next report. Then you go and look, relax, let you see initial results. Give me time to put everything in place so that you can see what the end result of what I do cuz he’s not really giving you a chance. And I’m telling you, the first negative thing that happens this guy’s gonna freak out. Remember, Marco told you?

Yeah, anybody that SERP watches that much is going that’s a clear indication that they’re going to be trouble. They’re gonna high maintenance, Mohammed and you have a tendency to attract those types of clients for some reason. So I totally agree with Marco. One other thing I want to mention is I’ve experienced something similar but when managing Google Ads campaigns, what I mean by that is I’ve had some clients that they go and they Go check, you know, Google, they do keyword searches to see their ad. They don’t click through because they know they’re going to pay for every click that, you know, even if it’s them clicking through, they’re going to pay for that. So they know not to click through, but I’ve had clients that will kill my click-through rate. Right, which if you understand Google ads, you know that one of the best ways to raise your quality score and lower your cost per click, and all of that is to have a high click-through rate. And I’ve had clients that have like literally negatively affected their click-through rate, drove it down the CTR down because they’re SERP watching their ads. And it shows all these additional impressions, but not as many click-throughs because they’re just checking it to see where it’s at. And so I always tell somebody, if you really want to take a look at where you are, if you’re as long as you’re on page one, go use the Google Ads preview and diagnostic tool inside of Google ads, right? Because then you can simulate a search without it actually counting as an actual impression right? So as long as you’re on and it works for even organic because you can actually set your, you know, it simulates a location, but then you can also simulate whether it’s a desktop, a tablet, or a mobile device. And you can search for your keywords. And as long as your ranking is on page one, whether it’s an ad or an organic, it will show and that’s also another way that you can have like, for example,

I’ve got a pest control client. He owns the company, and it’s a northern company in Northern Virginia. They provide Pest Control services in Northern Virginia. But he now resides as the owner of the company down in Florida, and he often after I sent and I don’t know why once per year, I have to go through this shit with him and I don’t understand why. But anyway, like last month, for example, when I sent the monthly reports, again, I’ve gone over this many times with him, but you know, I still send a local rank report as bright low Reports, because you can set again a simulated location and everything else. And you’ll look at the report and then he’ll go look in Google and search from a Florida IP for his keywords. And obviously, it’s going to look significantly different than what it does for somebody that’s local searching in the Northern Virginia area. And then you’ll come back and say, Well, you know, how do I get rankings back for our primary keyword in our primary area? And I’ll say, Well, wait a minute, you are ranking? Well, the report shows this. And when I do a search, it’s not coming bla bla bla. And I’ve had to explain that to them many, many times, and say, and even provided tutorial of like, hey, look, go use a Google Ads premium diagnostic tool. So you could set the mobile device, you could set the location, and even then that’s still not 100% accurate, because again, it’s a simulated search, as opposed to an actual real search which you can’t simulate user behavior and all that like in other words, like a history of the type of content people have engaged with and all that other kinds stuff so no, you know having simulated searches are they’re never going to be as accurate as they are in real life and I’m only telling you that guys because like I said the same type of thing is you can still show your client or tell your client if these that adamant about being cysts on constantly SERP watching which is not a good sign, have them do it through the ad premium diagnostic tool over instead of like through an actual browser. That makes sense. Okay.

Is It Okay To Add The RSS Feed Of A Money Site To The General Spliced Feed And Syndicate It To Directories?

BB’s up with his long list of questions again, no matter how many times he’s persistent, I’ll tell you what, so what’s up guys, should you risk adding the money site RSS feed to the general spiced feed feeds that contain all the branded properties and money site and some authority site RSS and syndicated to a huge amount of RSS directories, which some of them could be spammy? This comes from the guideline of no links to money site because press releases in the SEO SEO so you must be talking about like the advanced RSS strategy module from syndication. Academy Yeah, it doesn’t that’s fine RSS directory. Remember, you can’t control other people scraping your RSS feed. You have no control over that, right. So it’s not, it’s not the same as if you submit your RSS feed as Super feed right as you called it, which is spliced in with related content feeds web 2.0 feeds and all that you submit it to directories and aggregators, it’s fine. It’s not the same as a direct backlink to your site. So you’re okay to do that. I’ve never had any issue with that. There are some that may be spammy. It’s not gonna affect your site. Because again, if that were the case, then anybody out there that had an RSS feed period could potentially be hit with some sort of negative SEO penalty, or, you know, some sort of penalty because other people took their RSS feed without their permission and used it. And so again, it’s kind of a different set of rules there. It’s not going to affect not the same as if you’re going out and building links intentionally to yourself. Any comments on that?

Oh, no, that’s fine. Okay, so moving on the second one, this is better, maybe you’re getting better.

Can You Power The RYS Properties With Tier 2 RYS Properties?

You’re getting better than the next one is let’s say you have a domain that is powered by an RYS stack. Can you power the RYS properties with tier two RYS properties? If yes, can it replicate the links package and embed the package? And can this power and go into tier three and tier four? Um, my first thought, and again, Marco is the expert on this. But it’s what’s that? What would be the point of that when you can continue to build and expand the existing drive stack? I don’t know why you’d want to tear drive stacks. I don’t know what the purpose of that would be. So I don’t know Marco, that would be my first thought. What do you say?

No, I mean, we’ve talked about this before. The best thing that you could do is go inside the main drive stack and add keyword-driven, stacks, within that with inner pages on the G site, matching the inner pages on the money site. That’s the best thing that you do. And then you go to town on that drive second G site because now it’s branded, you created all of the brand plus keyword relationships. And then you focus you got the keyword-driven stack that’s going to carry all of that art activity, relevance, trust, and authority over to the page that you’re trying to rank. You’ve isolated everything. I don’t want to get too technical, but you’re accruing PageRank on that inner page, and you’re driving it over to the inner page that you’re looking to rank. And then when you link build, you not only accruing more page more PageRank but you make up for any link atrophy for PageRank that you’re going to lose because of the way that Google the way that they add up the PageRank right the way that they set it up, so I don’t see it. I don’t see it necessary to them. An additional g site and drive stack unless you have a really stubborn keyword. It just won’t move then. You might want to it would be something like a PBn type drive stack, which focuses on that keyword even more. It just hones in on that one keyword that’s really sticky that you did the inner g site page and the keyword-driven drive site over to the money site, inner page, and it didn’t have the effect that you wanted. So that’s when you would isolate with that. I haven’t I have yet to see anything that needs to go that far. Even in the Amazon case study that Didier conducted that wasn’t really necessary. All that was necessary was going after that keyword, right that keyword said that in that specific niche in that top market level category. Can it replace the link? No. No Because there what you’re doing is you’re broadening the link profile. It’s not all coming just from Google properties. And can you power then tier three and tier four? Yeah. But why? why if you can just go directly into the drive secondary site, get all the effects in there, accrue PageRank and ranking score in there and then transfer it over to the money site. It won’t transfer one to one, of course, but you get a better effect than breaking it up the way that you’re talking about BB.

Yeah, just to be clear, BB. You know, over the years, we’ve seen a lot of people that have come to us with these elaborate linking schemes and things like that. And diagrams sometimes you can tell people spend hours drafting a diagram to show and then they come and ask, what do you think this will work and a lot of times, not to, you know, burst your bubble or anything like that, but it’s overcomplicating stuff. That’s unnecessary. And you know, if it might seem like a good idea, but a lot of times when you add complexity, it makes it harder to manage the project to begin with. So that’s why I always recommend using single-tier syndication networks for most brands as opposed to multi-tiered syndication networks. When you’re talking about blog syndication. That’s part of the reason I’ve been saying that for years now because you overcomplicate things unnecessarily. And so that’s what I would just warn against that, you know, I understand trying to come up with new ways to squeeze more power out of stuff and all that and that’s fine. That’s great. That’s how you become a good SEO is to hypothesize and then test. But you know, that’s also what we do. And so, I’m not saying don’t go out and test your own things. It’s good that you’re coming here and asking questions, but as Marco just said, you can simplify what you’re trying to do now by continuing to expand your existing drive stack and your G site. Instead of adding all of these additional tiers that are going to limit or reduce your overall link profile when you’re better off just really smashing the shit out of your existing drive stack and G site as you continue to expand it out continue link building and embed packages to that.

Do You Need To Index After Having An MGYB DFY Link Building Service?

So okay Mohammed’s up again, he says, Hey guys, I just learned I should be using the link indexing service after MGYB DFY service. Do I just index all links I get after a link building job until now? I never indexed so I’m worrying that I sabotage myself. No, it certainly helps. Muhammad. However, I don’t know. There’s I don’t know if we’ve resolved this yet. But there’s a limit to how many URLs you can submit at a time with the link indexer. So it’s kind of a pain in the ass to use. I’m not gonna lie unless we’ve resolved that Marco Do you know if that’s been resolved? Can we submit text files yet or CSV files? I can’t tell you offhand.

Okay. Yeah, because I don’t use it that often. I do. For some things, but like when you get a link building campaign back and you’ve got thousands of links, it’s, I mean, it would take you a lot of manual work to be able to upload the links to the indexer. And I know that was on the to-do list. I don’t know Rob has resolved that yet. But we need to get that to where we can upload either paste in a, you know, batches, big batches, or upload a text file or the CSV file with the links to have them all index. I think, right now there’s a limit to like, I don’t know, 300 URLs at a time or something like that. And so that’s, that’s, that’s part of the reason I don’t use it as much as I should because it’s just kind of a manual process of adding links to it. So, Mohammed, Rob can answer that question for sure. If you need to, you could always ask in the free group and we can reply on it there.

So no, not yet. The answer is no, not yet. You can’t you cannot add a text file or CSV or Excel or anything else. It has to go through the system. As far as link indexing, this comes from the heavy hitter club, the free group where he asked it, and he’s getting results. So now he’s wondering, is not so much sabotage himself. But could he be getting better results? And that’s we have no way of knowing what would have or could have happened. Had he submitted the URLs for indexing? Of course, we can’t know. But he’s getting results. So it just means that that’s getting picked up over time, which is perfectly fine. You don’t have to force the indexing like Google index natural. The link indexing is just a way to speed up the process and make sure that the Google gets in there crawls it, you’re going to lose links over time, it happens to everybody, no matter what kind of link building you’re doing are linked indexing. Now, what you could do is maybe get a URL A sheet that you got back from Deadia. And you can link built to those and get an indexing package to the new ones, which will have an effect on any existing old links to buy up or you tear your links and get those reindex power, the power those up that way. That would work. But I don’t see why if you’re already getting results that just keep doing what you’re doing. And then from here on out, make it your standard operating procedure to order indexing with every gig that you order from MGYB that I just came up with an idea that I don’t know why I hadn’t thought about this before. But tell me if this would work. If you set what if you took the CSV file that you got back with the links that were built, and then you know, turn it into a Google Sheet, and then submitted the Google Sheet URL to the indexer. That would get the bots to come to crawl the Google Sheet that has all the URLs in it right?

Yes or no? Would that work?

Yeah, I don’t see why it wouldn’t. I don’t know why I’d thought about that. So that might be the way to do it then would be to just add the CSV file with the links that were delivered to drive, set it to anybody that has the link can access, and then submit that URL, the sheet URL to the indexer. Done. Right. I haven’t tested that. But I don’t see why it wouldn’t work, because and by the way, probably, the reason why we do the things the way we do it now is that we have to count the URLs that are being submitted, right. Because it’s not unlimited. I mean, potentially, if you gave someone the test to upload a text file or CSV, they could just upload thousands and thousands of URLs if they wanted to. Right, and they would just dilute the or, Tara, I don’t know we’re controlling it. I just heard back from Rob controlling it because of that we need to come The URLs are that are being submitted. So maybe we need to extend it. I don’t know. He said, it’s being coded in though, you know, we’re moving platforms, right? Yes. And we’re testing that out and that’s in the process as soon as we have the new platform is going to be a lot simpler to do things.

Google Policy Violation To A Two-Year-Old RYS Drive Stack

There you go. So JT, SEO is up. He says, Hi, Marco. I got an email from big G, Google policy violation warning saying that the G drive that a Gdrive with a two-year-old RYS is violating policies about malware, destructive code, warned that if it persists, they may restrict access to it. Have you come across that before? And before you answer the question, I want to read the next part to the second post. He says I have not touched the RYS in weeks, seems odd. Any advice appreciated. A week previous to getting the warning. So yeah, is that related to the XML script?

One of the reasons is the XML script if it’s set to work, there’s a setting on it, right? There’s a timer, where you go every two hours, every four hours, every eight hours, whatever. What happens is that we, I don’t know, we should make this public, we rebuild the entire site on that cycle, so you’re using up a lot of resources, and some of those will time out. And so what we recommend is now you don’t build it every 248 or eight hours. I mean, actually, you don’t need it. Every three days, every five days is fine. Every, I don’t know. 1618 hours, pick an odd number every 19 hours. It gets rid of something so that you’re less burdensome to Google, then you are now because the one thing that they hate is people hogging their resources. If you’re not paying for those resources, and you will get those warnings. And they will kill your drives tech and your G site. If you continue. Now, I don’t know what you did. Because you’re not saying what it is that you’re why you went in there. And what it is that you did that set Google off because it hadn’t been touched in two years, and it was working just fine. So I don’t know that it’s really difficult to answer this, right.

Yeah, and I’ve had a couple of stacks where when I placed the order, I submitted a bunch of photos, for example, and the builders built using the photos but then the rebuild script will rebuild all those photos and that’s resource-heavy super resource-heavy apparently. So I’ve learned to only submit a handful of images with the order because you know, something similar. I’ve not had any warning talking about malware or destructive code that at least I don’t remember that specifically mentioned, but I have had To the XML scripts timeout and shut down on me because of the too many images, which I guess is resource-heavy. So but yeah, that’s just I recommend doing what he just mentioned. go in and change your rebuild time limit to something much more for that. It doesn’t have to be rebuilt every two or four hours. They won’t get crawled out often anyways.

What MGYB Service Is Good For A One-Year-Old Site With Good On-Page SEO?

lonnis up says, Hey guys, I landed my first client. I just got the client’s GMB verified. The site is a year old with no links. I’ve done some pretty good on-page SEO. So the site is starting to move. Should I buy your SEO power shield or our ys drive stacks, I’m having a meeting with a client and I need to know which direction to go. Thanks for your help. The SEO power shield is are like a combination of everything right? That’s it’s hands down. It’s all of the assets that we talked about. And that’s why we built those packages. Because, you know, for a long time, we had all the individual components that you could purchase but people would ultimately and you know a lot of the times people would buy certain components Not all of them and not combine everything, and then come back and say, Well, this isn’t working. And that’s not working. And whenever we would dig a little deeper, we’d find out that, you know, they only had a part of it. And I always screw this saying up, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

That’s right. I can never get that one. Right. But yeah, it’s like, if you only do 25% of the work, you’re not going to get 25% of the results, right? It’s less than that. Like, in other words, if you do 100% of the work, you’re going to get 150% of the results, if I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it does. It’s kind of an exponential thing when you have all the components together. So that’s why we offer those in different clips of bundles like that the SEO power shield is that is the top tier, right? And so that’s everything combined. So yeah, I would recommend that. That’s just a standard operating procedure for all projects that I work on now as an SEO power shield. Sometimes I ordered them in separate components because of, you know, specific reason. That may be, but in your case, especially just starting out, I would just go with the SEO power shield, it’s going to make it much easier because you’ll get all the components delivered in the proper sequence as well. The comments,

I totally agree to go for it SEO power shielding, don’t separate the drive stack from it, although the drive stack and z sight will have an effect on it anyway, what what you’re actually doing is is everything that I’ve been talking about for years, which is working on that entity in that brand, versus doing it piecemeal. You’re bringing everything together all at once you’re giving it all to Google, and you’re trying to make your clients brand, the keyword in that niche. That’s what you’re striving towards. So anything that you could do to try to get that you should be doing. You can’t leave things that you cannot leave out the syndication network, but those are profiles that you’re going to claim and schema in your sameas as being part of the organization. It’s part of who and what your brand is, or in this case, your client, you can’t separate that. I mean, you could go later on and get it. But then if you know that you’re going to need it later on, why not just get it all just now and be done with it and move on to the next phase, which is hammering everything that you get back from us for better results.

Yeah, and I just, I want to, you know, kind of touch on something briefly, because, believe it or not, I was looking at the kind of doing an audit for one of our members in the mastermind today. It’s kind of an ongoing thing. And I want to make it real clear, guys. You know, when you get your drive stack back and your G site, remember to, you know, the drive stack expansion, we talked about expanding that and that’s a service that is in beta right now for mastermind members and such where we can, you know, we can do that for you at MGYB, but we talked about theme mirroring all the time, but something else is really critically important. Is embedding your money pages from your, in other words, that the pages from your primary website into the corresponding sites on the G site page, it’s really important because you can inject structured data, for example, schema.org, right. So whatever type of project you’re on, if it’s a local business, you know, you can inject that schema into the G site by doing so. It’s very important. And I think that gets overlooked a lot. Maybe we’re not having been really clear about it, I thought we have been, but you know, even one of our mastermind members, who’s been with us for many, many months and have received a lot of help, has overlooked that. And I don’t understand how that gets overlooked. It’s very, very important because that’s one of the ways that you get that structured data into the G site. And how you push so much of the power that you’re developing and accruing through the drive stack in the G site through to the money site. That makes sense by embedding those the corresponding pages from the money site on to the G site, right. So when you theme marry you do that And then and again, I don’t know how that gets overlooked at times. But maybe again, we haven’t been really clear about it. But that’s why I want to touch on that here. It’s critically important to do that. And so I would recommend that you do that, as well as is make sure that you have structured data, guys, you know, by the day, we’re going deeper into the Semantic Web, right? So it’s super important that you have you make those associations with structured data code to tell Google specifically your entity assets in the connection between them, right. And it’s really really, really important to do that. And I see a lot of that still being overlooked by people and, and I think that’s a mistake. So any comments on that for move on?

and that’s perfect you know, in heavy hitter club, the last two webinars or the first two, in the series that we’re doing were entirely about the entity, schema, and content and how to structure your unstructured data and then how to how to structure your structured data so that it matches your unstructured data so that you’re feeding the buttons. All of the information possible to make your entity or your brand, the keyword in the niche or the top entity versus all of the other entities because at the end of the day, what we’re talking about in Google is a huge relational database. So just think of a data dump. And yes, of course, it’s categorized and Google has entities and it has that like that the ultimate entity in that niche, right, what it would look like and the closer that you get to matching that ultimate entity, the better your results are going to be in the end, which is outranking everybody else. I keep saying it. We took on Amazon, and one and then we can do that with our methods. Then the entire internet is wide open to you guys. And we’re not hiding anything from you. Everything that we use is in MGYB. That’s how we do it. Right? Maybe in our free groups like heavy hitter club or the Semantic Mastery mastermind, we’ll go deeper into the why and the how. But as far as what we do to get results, it’s right there. It’s an empty vibe to all of those services. Those are things that we use to rank our projects. And we do it over and over and over again. And I don’t see why you guys aren’t doing. If you’re not doing we got a lot of people here who do get results, by the way. Yeah.

SEO Power Shield Or RYS Drive Stacks

Because as long as I began, he says to add to my other question, should I buy multiple SEO power shields or RYS drive stacks? I’m excited. I just want to make sure my client and I guess we are aware of upcoming costs. No, that’s what we just talked about. Just a few moments ago, Lonnie, that’s not necessary. You know, one drive stack in G site for your client is all that’s needed, right. And you can expect And that out by theme mirroring. And so if you’re not sure what we’re talking about, you go to the MGYB.co and look at the webinars. I think Marko’s first heavy hitter club webinar was public. I don’t know if it still is. But that drive stack expansion and we did a webinar, this mg y b, I know we did. No, watch that one. It’s in the webinar section, you can watch about that and talk about how we talked about expanding the drive stack, the mirroring, and all that. And that’s why you don’t have to keep buying what you should do, which you should be buying after the drive stack and G site has been built is link building and embed gigs to power it up and continue building out that drive stack to mirror, the site, the website itself and everywhere that you have digital assets that you can mirror to the primary structure of the website, right or the excuse me the structure of your primary website. That’s what you should be doing. So again at mgyb.co. The webinars tab you can go look at PR silo stacking, or press release silos. And you can silo press releases together to mirror whatever your silo structure is from your primary website as well as your G site as well as your drive stack. You do the same thing with GMB posts. If you’re using Google, if the project that you’re working on has a Google My Business profile, right, so all everything that you do should be mirrored into a silo structure, whatever the primary website structure is, you duplicate that and mirror that on to your other assets. And the same type of linking structure happens when you do all of that together. Now you have all these assets that are all, you know, tightly siloed that’s what the silo means, right? So it’s a, it’s like a vertical silo, right? So everything is tightly siloed. And then you link build into those and do embed gigs into those, and you can push massive relevancy, very specific to certain areas of your site, or you know, certain keyword themes or keyword sets. Does that make sense? So that’s how you Do it. Marco, do you want to comment on that?

Yeah, I think we have to be the only people on the web who would tell people don’t spend money needlessly. Because anybody else would have just told you, Loni. Yeah, get five of them. Five is better, and come up with a really intricate and mixed up way on how you can knock those all up and daisy chaining them and come up with all this crazy shit on how to make them look better. We got to be the only people who look tough. No, no, don’t spend all that money because you’re doing it needlessly do exactly what Bradley said. You build inner pages and inner stacks in your branded stack. To increase the power of link building, embed, link building press releases, link building cycle, you’ll spend the money on that because that’s what’s going to power up everything. And it keeps it on a cycle through everything, but you only need one branded drive stack and G site one and then inside of that, you’re going to remember You’re going to copy, you’re gonna mirror you’re gonna clone whatever the fuck you want to call it, the inner pages on your G site, the categories, whatever the wherever the money is you focus on that, right? Because your, your market level category should be where the money is. And that’s what you’re trying to rank for. When you try to rank for that all of the money keywords under that top market level category are going to come up because of the way that you’re approaching this, which is from the top-down, instead of bottom-feeding and going after just the long tail. That’s going to happen if you approach it the right way. But no, don’t go spend money in these needlessly go spend money and focus on getting the best results and the best results are dry sack g site branded and then you extend the initial drive second g site, not additional ones.

There you go.

Yeah, just keep building the power to the one that’s the best, the best Answer we can get I, like that power to the one

BattlePlan

alright so Don says I already got version one and two the battle plan so what’s the new one cost me this time just click through and go check it out battleplan.semanticmastery.com. But Don I’m gonna do it for you. Okay, there you go 32 bucks you know, we broke the bank on that one cylinder 32 bucks, didn’t we spend an hour and a half recording that net video or something ridiculous like that. So for 32 bucks, man.

alright, so and it’s simplified. we’ve simplified it specifically because it just you know, it just makes it easier to put everything into the package, you know? packages like what we have for sale now on MGYB. It’s just easier that way. And that’s you know, we always recommended that before but again, we would tell people to go buy all these different components and so now we just put them together and packages It makes it so much easier. And you know, we’re still working on trying to make things easier, guys. And that’s why they’re trying to change platforms at MGYB. So it’s a work in progress. Right?

Drive Stack Expansion Availability

A Nexus Hey guys, I’m thinking of getting the SEO shield. When will you be rolling out the ID loop page folder service? So you mean the drive stack expansion service? That’s essential, I guess, the more proper term for it. I’ve heard Doing this will improve results. Absolutely. It will. So Marco, when will that be publicly available?

It’s already public. I would as I thought Rob had published that it’s public and available.

Oh, shit, I didn’t know that. You guys kept me in the dark. I feel like a mushroom. Shit, all day. I think he published it on Facebook. If I’m not mistaken. I just, I just don’t let’s go public. I mean, if it’s there if it’s ready, let’s go. Let’s give it to people and let them have at it. I thought it was still in beta. So my bad, so it should be. Apparently it’s news to me. It’s available for everybody. Drive stack expansion. I hadn’t even seen it in the MGYB store. So maybe I don’t know, I hadn’t even seen it.

So maybe the image hasn’t been added. It’s just so much stuff. Yes. Rob says the expression is public and on the store page, it’s on this.

sweet. I hadn’t seen it, Rob.

We need to bring Robin from now on because we get a lot of questions that he could be here answering. Yeah.

How Many Times Does Your Google Stacks Report?

Olaf says How many times do you think your Google stacks got reported? And why do you think Google does not care or ban them? I don’t know how many times they’ve been reported. I really don’t care. Now, I think Google doesn’t care because it’s a Google property, I suppose. And they’re narcissistic, which you know, we use that in the original sales copy, use Google’s own narcissism against itself. You know, that they recently made some changes to drive, I think, to combat that or, you know, to try to prevent some of what it is that is, you know, we’ve been doing but Marco and Rob immediately figured out There’s a workaround for that, too. So I think that was an indication that they were trying to do whatever they could, or something, at least symbolically to try to prevent people from using them the way that we’ve been using them, but I don’t I don’t think they were successful. What do you say?

Ah, yes, that’s something that I lose sleep over. How many times? How many times have I shown publicly? Well, think about how many times I’ve shown publicly, the Virginia SEO, SEO Virginia case study over the last over nearly five years, right. It’ll be five years in August, by the way.

No, it’s five years in May last month.

Yeah, but I’m saying your case. The one that you originally did is five years. It this past May or last month, but I’m saying it in August. It’ll be five years since we released our way as Kevin written. And we had that question. Well, how long before that loophole is closed? That was you remember? During during the webinar, and I remember that clearly like I asked, Well, yeah, how long before the loophole is closed? It happens not to be a loophole. And it happens to be a door that’s wide open. And that that’s really hard to close. If it was simple for a simple fix, it would have been done by now we’re working from. And I continue to say this, and I wish people would just listen, and really pay close attention. We’re working off web principles. It’s not Google principles that Google Terms of Service. We’re working from web principles, foundational principles, on the web. That’s how we target this. Now, of course, we don’t talk about this a lot because unlike other marketers, we don’t like to confuse our people. We don’t like to confuse you with all this technical stuff that we’ve had to go over during the last six years or so. Since I’ve been researching this because it would probably hurt most people It hurts my head. I know. It’s gonna cause a whole lot of headaches. I mean, why we just show the reason Do we care about Google? We’ve shown that it’s not something that we just say that Google is narcissistic. It’s something that we’ve shown timing is something that we proved live. I mean it. I don’t know how many other people are actually are actually able to do this to prove the fact that Google prefers itself over anything else. Proven. This isn’t theory. We don’t give you guys theory. It’s proven. It’s a fact. Now, how long? Or how many times? Does it matter? Like, I don’t care? manual? Yeah, sure. And then we’ll just build 10 more. Doesn’t matter. It like the way that it is right now. Why doesn’t Google care or ban them? We don’t know. We don’t work for Google. We just gonna keep manipulating until we can’t anymore. And then if we can’t, then that just means I have to figure out a different way or I have to sit with Rob and we have to say okay, so this door is finally closed. But we know that there’s 10 more doors that just opened up because they just closed that one. That’s how code works. I mean, it’s really difficult with the amount of code. Yeah, Google has to work with, yeah, to shut one thing down and not open 10 million more things that make it even simpler to spam and manipulate. Right? I mean it. And, again, we work off foundational principles in the World Wide Web. It’s not just Google. It’s not just their terms of service. It’s a lot of things that we’re approaching from that standpoint.

SEO Power Shield Works

So I want to read Austin’s comment, Austin Dom What’s up man? I’m still waiting for him to come to join the mastermind. But anyways, Austin says and then I want to very briefly before we wrap it up, I want to do a live search for the SEO Virginia Case Study or whatever that we did, because I’ll talk about that a minute. But Austin says got an SEO shield for a client about a month ago. This is the second site for him. It is now past the other site I have been maintaining for two years. He is now number one, number two for many organic and MAP KEYWORDS in the real estate niche. Yes, power shields work. And so to bring this over to so it was interesting, but about a month ago, for the first time in five years. I saw and so we’re going to see where it is now. We’re going to do this live. Okay. The first time in five years, my SEO Virginia, Virginia, SEO Virginia SEO agency, SEO agency, Virginia, like all of those keywords, for the first time in five years, the drive stack or the G site from that awful and it’s not even a complete drive stack. It’s not built to the standards that we build them today. But for the first time in five years, it moved down, it dropped. Let’s see where it is today. Let’s just see because I’ll tell you exactly what I did and we’ll see where it’s at. Okay, so it did move a little bit now. It’s number three for me. to Virginia Okay, so let’s open up another tab and check another keyword and this is in five years of not touching it okay without doing any work to it at all in five years. Okay, number three for that term, Virginia eight SEO agency Virginia. Let’s look at another term. Let’s look at Virginia SEO. Okay, so guys, I’m sharing this to be 100% transparent with you okay, we’ve used this case study for five years as an example. And it’s wasn’t even really a case study. It was an experiment with me testing what Marco told me to do. And it was again, not built to what we build standards today. You can take a look at it, it’s done. It doesn’t look anything like what we build today. It wasn’t there are not nearly as many files and folders there’s no interlinking done like what we do today. But for five damn years, the son of a bitch has sat at number one and hasn’t budged until about a month ago when I noticed. For whatever reason, I was doing a quick search on it and I noticed that it had it moved a little bit. So you can see it has moved slightly and five years. No link building, no press releases nothing.

And that’s why I’ve always loved to use this as an example to show how powerful these damn things can be. Because it wasn’t even done correctly or to our current standards, yet it has ranked outranked Virginia SEO agencies for five damn years. And I haven’t done anything to it. So it had moved several positions down and still on page one. But I lost several positions when I noticed this. And I think Marco even pointed out said to me in slack or group chat, you know, hey, I noticed it had moved first time in five years. And I said, Yeah, I noticed that a couple of days ago. And I said, Maybe I should order a link building package to it, just to push it back up. Well, I didn’t I was too lazy to even do that. So all I did was one press release. I’m not kidding. One. freakin press release. Let me show you what I did. I’ll pull it up. And then we’re gonna wrap it up, guys. I just want to point this out. Again, it’s 100% transparency. So we go to the news. Let’s see if it’s still showing. Okay, there. Right there. So you can see two weeks ago, it says right there published two weeks ago. Okay. So all I did was I put Virginia SEO agencies my keyword in there, then I used Virginia SEO agency, a keyword anchor, to link to the G site from that stack. Why? Because a G site can take that I wouldn’t have done 100% keyword anchor to my, you know, website, but to the G site, why not? It’s not gonna hurt anything. So that’s what I did. So you can see that that was two weeks ago, guys that that was published on May 19. Yeah, so about two weeks ago, okay. And all I did was I linked to that, and I linked actually with to a page on my website that isn’t even complete. But that was it, those two links. And so what when it had dropped down to like position five, it was between, I think four and seven, depending on what keyword you were looking at. But all I did was one press release and it’s already been pushed back up now to number three position and in fact Last week on the mastermind web, my mastermind webinar, when I looked at all of my keywords, I was in the number one position. So it’s dancing right now a little bit, but the press release was only published two weeks ago. So that’s normal, right, three weeks worth of dancing. So again, last week, when I looked at it, I was back to number one for these keywords. Now, it looks like I’m at number two or number three for my keywords. One, press release, guys, I used 100% anchor text, keyword anchor text right there to link to that site. And it’s back to number two to number three position after five years of never fucking touching it. So just want to show you guys as these things work. And for the first time in five years, it dipped it dropped, get one press release, and it’s already moving back up. So imagine if I had purchased a link building gig, I could probably get away with low competition, link building gig from MGYB or an embed gig or something like that, and push it back up, but I just wanted to see what the results were from just one press release and to be honest with you, I just didn’t put the effort into trying to push it up yet. So, again, I just want to be 100% transparent with them because I thought that this was interesting to see, after all this time, it finally started to move down just a little bit, but one press release started pushing it back up.

Yeah, and I mean that that’s not even what we recommend, because we recommend a PR stack, right? And then link building, and then embed and then link building. But again, as you said, it was a half-assed attempt to start with it back in May of 2015. And it’s a half-assed attempt, your one PR, and it just shows the power that’s inherent in this that something that you do something half-assed, and you can rank on the first page in Google. So imagine if you do it, right, the kind of thing that you could do well, Amazon is there for the taking. Amen.

Thanks, guys, for being here. We’ll see you all next week.

Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 290 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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