#Though it also makes me think 'artificial intelligence' but hey maybe that is fitting for the fabricated eggs theory XD

[qsmprambling]

Imagine Egg A1 still has one life left, and it somehow manages to escape the facility... It is being followed by mobs, by Federation employees, being hurt by the poison ivy and other environmental threats, but it keeps running, because what other choice is there? That parkour course was a trick after all, the last block was a fake, it was never meant to pass that test in the first place.

So it keeps running, but the Federation workers are getting closer. It won't be able to avoid them forever...

But then it bursts through some bushes and comes face to face with someone new - and it's Bad, out building or exploring or just wandering alone. A1 is immediately afraid, of course. It is a stranger, a very visually striking stranger, the complete opposite of the pure white and featureless employees of the Federation. But there are people close behind, and it knows what will happen to it if it is caught, so... It has no choice but to try. It has no way to communicate, no signs or books, so it simply rushes to hide behind him and hopes he understands, and that he is willing to help...

And Bad, for his part, well.. he's an extremely cautious and paranoid person, and this is just an incredibly confusing and unexpected situation to be in. An unknown egg appeared out of nowhere and is hiding behind him, he can see Federation employees in the distance that are clearly looking for something... He knows that the code has been disguising itself as eggs, and that the strange egg in front of him with no marks, no distinguishing features, an egg that he has never seen before, could easily be the code monster preparing to attack at any moment...

But there is absolutely no way Bad could ever look at an egg in distress and not try to help it, even knowing it could be a trap.

So he quickly digs a shallow hole and pushes the mysterious egg into it, covering it up just in time, and when the employees throw him a book asking if he had seen anything, he lies effortlessly, he complains about nonsense, he asks them where the Ekea is and is as annoying as he can be, until they leave.

And now they're alone... just Bad an this mystery egg in the middle of the woods, A1 too afraid to leave the hole even when Bad tries to coax it out. He gives it food and tries his best to comfort it, to tell it everything is okay and that the pursuers are gone. He gives it some signs and a book, trying to see if it will write anything to him or answer any of his questions, but he gets no reply. A1 is just too afraid to even attempt to answer, and Bad doesn't even know if it understands him. He tries what few words he does know of the other languages, and still no response.

What should he do? As much as the image of a tiny, terrified egg makes him want to do all he can for it he also needs to be safe. He can't bring it home, because if it is a code there is no way he is bringing it anywhere near Dapper. Should he call someone else for help, or would that draw too much attention? Would it even be safe for him or the egg to let anyone know right now? And was this egg dangerous, or harmless and in need of protection? He wouldn't abandon it regardless but...

What now?

[timelesslords]

Girl’s Night

Read on AO3

In which Annabeth has a little too much wine at Girl's Night and feels very guilty about it. Thankfully, Percy doesn't mind taking her home.

Annabeth Chase was very good at holding her alcohol.

In all honesty it was mostly because she didn’t drink that much to begin with. Being drunk had never been all that appealing to her— years of being on edge for the next fight made it difficult for her to intentionally dull her senses, and she never liked how foggy it made her brain either. Living in New Rome for the past few years hadn’t completely squashed those instincts, despite its top of the line anti-monster security.

But still. Annabeth could keep it together pretty well, when she chose to indulge. She’d gone to a few wild parties earlier in college, mostly at Piper’s behest, and she didn’t mind having a few glasses of wine every once in a while.

Girl’s Night was every once in a while. Every first Friday of the month, if you wanted to be exact about it. In all honesty the practice was probably a bit dumb and middle aged for a bunch of people (and, okay, ‘a bunch of people’ was generous- it was really only Piper, Annabeth and Hazel) in their early twenties, but Annabeth didn’t care. It was hard to keep up with people these days, and Annabeth appreciated the emphasis on female camaraderie and friendship.

Plus, Piper had really stellar taste in wine.

Tonight’s had been especially good, and after a long and stupidly stressful week at school (Annabeth wished she could emulate Percy’s senioritis, but unfortunately the Architecture program only got harder as it went on, not easier) Annabeth found herself a little extra appreciative of the relaxing effects of alcohol.

It seemed like all of them had had a tough week, because they were all buzzed pretty fast. Piper was even happy to deliver the latest Hollywood gossip, courtesy of her dad, and Hazel was telling them a story about a probie getting stuck in the unicorn stables that made Annabeth laugh so hard she was practically sobbing. Piper and Hazel were not much better; Piper had completely fallen off the couch from cracking up so hard, and Hazel could barely get a word in edgewise before she completely dissolved into giggles again.

It was then that Annabeth caught a glance of the two completely empty bottles of wine in front of them, and realized that all of them— though mostly she, specifically— had made a grave mistake. She had no idea how many times her own glass had been filled and then subsequently emptied, but it was enough that she was well past tipsy and solidly in drunk territory.

It was hard to care about the bad parts of being drunk when you were currently drunk, Annabeth was finding. Everything was just so much funnier.

Apparently Jason had also sensed that they were drunk, or maybe he just had heard the deranged cackling coming from the living room, and wanted to make sure they were all still alive.

“Are you guys alright?” he asked, sticking his head through the doorway.

“I’m fantastic. I mean, I don’t know about you two, but I am—” Piper paused, letting out a small hiccup, “Feeling awesome.”

“I feel great,” Hazel agreed, barely able to stop laughing long enough to let the words out.

Annabeth wasn’t sure she remembered how to form coherent words anymore, so she just gave a thumbs up.

“You guys are really drunk,” Jason said, voice an impressive mix of concern and amusement. He walked into the room, picking up one of the empty bottles of wine they’d left on the table and examining the label.

“That’s my man. Very smart,” Piper said, apparently completely seriously, leaning against Jason’s leg.

“Pipes, you realize this wine is like, 20%, right?” Jason asked, ignoring her declaration of his intelligence.

Piper frowned. The expression seemed very exaggerated, or maybe Annabeth’s head was just messing with her. It was very funny either way, and she had to stifle a laugh.

“Shut up Annabeth. Let me see that,” Piper said, holding her hand up for the bottle. Jason very wisely did not let Piper hold the bottle herself, instead holding it at eye level in front of her. She gripped the bottom of it, pulling it towards her and squinting at the label.

“Nevermind. I can’t read anymore,” Piper said, relinquishing her grip on the bottle. That sent Hazel and Annabeth into another fit of laughter. They would probably be drunk even if the wine wasn’t that strong, but it certainly explained why Annabeth felt like she was floating right now. She hadn’t been this wasted since at least freshman year, maybe ever. Everything was a little blurry at the edges, and she was dizzy in a kind of delightful way. She let out one last giggle.

“And that means we are officially at the me-calling-your-boyfriends time of the night,” Jason said, setting the bottle back down on the table. Piper groaned.

“Party pooper,” she grumbled, though she didn’t move herself off his legs.

“Sorry babe,” he said, apologetically, “You guys are welcome to crash here, obviously. I’ll just call Frank and Percy to let them know.”

“S’fine,” Hazel said, yawning and pulling out her phone, “I’ve been texting him. I’ll just tell him now.”

“That’s against the spirit of Girls Night.” Piper said, pointing an accusing finger at Hazel, “You’re a cheater.”

“I had to tell him about your dad’s friend secretly dating his co-star! She was in his favorite movie!” Hazel protested.

Annabeth had not texted Percy tonight, in part because, as Piper had said, it was against the spirit of Girl’s Night, but also because he was probably asleep. Usually he’d stay up and wait for her to get home, even though New Rome was probably the safest city on the face of the planet, and the chances of anything happening to Annabeth on the six block walk between their respective apartments was ludicrously slim. But he’d been practically dead on his feet when she left, and had agreed pretty easily to turn in early when she suggested it.

She immediately felt bad about the prospect of waking him up. She knew she should though— he’d much rather be woken up in the middle of the night than wake up in the morning with her not there. Even though it would take about three seconds to check his phone and realize everything was fine, old habits die hard and it would unnecessarily stress him out. Especially since it was the one night he’d agreed not to stay up and wait for her.

So waking him up was inevitable. Worse, she was starting to realize that she really wanted to be home with him. As comfortable as Piper’s floor was (and given how drunk Annabeth was, it was genuinely pretty comfortable) she just really wanted to be in her own bed, preferably with Percy also in it.

“Annabeth’s gonna want to go home,” Piper predicted, drawing Annabeth out of her thoughts, “She gets boyfriend clingy when she’s drunk.”

“I do not,” Annabeth said, even though she most definitely did.

“You’re a bad liar,” Hazel said, patting Annabeth’s leg sympathetically.

“I’m an excellent liar,” Annabeth said. Under normal circumstances this would be true. Unfortunately being drunk was not normal for her.

“Uh huh.” Piper said, “Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t want Percy to come pick you up.”

Annabeth looked into Piper’s eyes, currently a very pretty green shade. Not as pretty as the shade of green Percy’s eyes were, but nice, for eyes that were not Percy’s. What was she supposed to be doing again?

“This feels like a trick,” Annabeth said, squinting.

“She wants Percy to pick her up,” Piper said, tugging at Jason’s pant leg.

“Yeah, I got that,” Jason said. Annabeth was pretty sure he was laughing at them, but in her current state it was a little hard to tell. “Let me go get my phone.”

Piper whined as Jason walked away, leaning back against the couch.

“Can you even walk, Chase?” she asked, looking dubiously at Annabeth “He’s going to have to carry you home.”

“I can walk,” Annabeth said, very offended even though she didn’t entirely know if her statement was true. Piper snorted.

“You’re lucky Percy is strong.”

“This is all your fault, McLean. Don’t think I’ve forgotten,” Annabeth said, aiming a soft kick at Piper’s leg.

“Okay, in my defense I didn’t read the label,” Piper said, pulling her leg back just in time to avoid Annabeth’s foot.

“How is that a defense?” Hazel asked, though she was giggling.

Piper did not have time to further defend and/or implicate herself, because Jason appeared in the doorway again.

“Percy’s coming, he’ll be here in ten.”

“Was he mad?” Annabeth asked anxiously. Piper rolled her eyes.

“I don’t think Percy is physically capable of being mad at you,” she said.

“He thought it was funny, actually,” Jason said, ignoring Piper.

“Told you so,” Piper said smugly.

“Shut up,” Annabeth grumbled.

The next ten minutes passed in a very drunken blur. Now that she had fully realized she was intoxicated, the feeling only seemed to compound, each uncounted drink catching up to her with a reckless abandon. She was vaguely aware of Piper crawling back on the couch to lie down, and Hazel curling up in an armchair. Annabeth just stayed on her little patch of floor. If she got too comfortable, she wasn’t going to want to get up.

She could feel something anxious starting to prickle under the surface of all her artificially happy feelings, but it was sort of difficult to dissect when she couldn’t really think straight.

“Hey, Wise Girl,” a familiar voice said.

Annabeth looked up to see Percy smiling down at her. He looked so pretty she almost started crying. Almost. Crying as a normal human function was fine and good and emotionally necessary and all that, but crying because you were drunk and your boyfriend was hot was just embarrassing.

“I’m drunk,” she told him. Might as well get right to the point.

“Yeah, I gathered,” he said, still looking at her with entirely too much affection, “You feel okay enough to walk home?”

“Yeah. I wanna walk,” Annabeth said, accepting his hand and pulling herself to his feet. If he hadn’t been holding her she probably would have fallen over.

“You sure about that?” he asked skeptically, putting his other hand around her waist, steadying her. She leaned into him, because she always leaned into him, and yeah, okay, maybe she needed his support to walk straight, but what about it.

“Very sure,” Annabeth said. Already she was adjusting to being on her feet. Percy half looked like he wanted to protest, but making it out of the living room seemed to convince him that she was okay to at least make it a few blocks home.

Sitting down on the bench in the front hall to put her shoes on was somehow worse than walking. She managed to shove her shoes into her sneakers, but getting them tied was probably not going to happen.

“I can’t remember how shoelaces work,” Annabeth admitted, looking up at him, “Does that mean I’m screwed?”

“Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news,” Percy said, leaning down to tie her shoe for her. Annabeth shut her eyes tight, then opened them again, trying very hard to focus out her vision. It didn’t work.

“What’s the bad news?” Annabeth asked, because bad news tended to ruin good news, and she’d rather just get it out of the way.

“You’re going to be very hungover tomorrow.” Percy said, straightening up. She thought he was smiling, but considering there were two of his head floating around in front of her, it was kind of hard to tell.

“Are you laughing at me?” Annabeth asked. He was definitely smiling now.

“I would never,” Percy said, wrapping an arm around her waist, “C’mon, lets go.”

Their goodbye was not as extended or elaborate as Annabeth expected, mostly because Piper and Hazel were already half-way to being passed out. Still, there were some waves, some I-love-yous and a partially incoherent apology from Piper, though who it was aimed at was something of a mystery.

Stairs were just a bit tricky, but she managed to stumble down them without seriously injuring herself. She was sure Percy helped somehow, but she could barely tell the difference between his arms supporting her and her own movement.

“What’s the good news?” Annabeth asked, once they were safely on the sidewalk, heading in the direction of her apartment. It was probably cold, but between Percy’s body heat next to her and her own drunkenness, she could barely feel it.

“You haven’t thrown up?” Percy offered, half-heartedly. Annabeth swallowed down a gag.

“Don’t say those words again,” she warned. Percy winced.

“Right. Sorry.”

“That wasn’t even good news, that was irrelevant news,”

“I think it’s excellent news, personally.” Percy said. He was laughing at her again, probably, but she also probably deserved it. Probably. She was wrapped under his shoulder because his arm was still helping hold her up, so it was kind of hard to see his face. She focused her eyes down at the sidewalk in front of her instead, focusing on not tripping.

“You would,” Annabeth said, “You didn’t have good news, did you?”

“I was sort of hoping you would forget,” Percy admitted.

“I never forget,” Annabeth reminded him. She had an excellent memory. Especially for things that had happened only 2 minutes ago. Admittedly the rest of the night was already starting to get a little blurry.

“I’m sorry for doubting you,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

Annabeth felt a small stab of guilt. He was teasing her, sure, but he was also being stupid nice even after she’d dragged him out of bed in the middle of the night to practically carry her intoxicated self back home.

And now she was remembering where that little wiggle of anxiety had been stemming from. He didn’t like being around drunk people. He never really said anything, because he was him and thus was probably allergic to the mere thought of even mildly killing anyone else’s fun for his own personal comfort or convenience. But she knew him well enough that he didn’t need to say anything. He’d never taken up Piper’s offer to go partying with them, even though he encouraged Annabeth to go when she’d wanted to, and he hardly ever drank himself. Even then it was only in social situations, and usually just one drink that he probably didn’t even feel.

So maybe he hadn’t flat out said he didn’t like people being wasted around him, but he had told her about Gabe; how he was a drunk, abusive asshole. It wasn’t too hard to put the pieces together.

“I’m sorry I got drunk,” Annabeth said. It was kind of a lame apology considering she was probably slurring her words a good amount, but she meant it anyways.

She felt something shift in his demeanor— if she was sober, she would know instantly what the slight change in pressure meant. As it was, she was kind of in the dark.

“Why are you sorry?” he asked. She thought he sounded surprised, but maybe she was mishearing, because it would be dumb for him to be surprised by that. At the very least, he should understand she felt bad about ruining his night.

“Because, I got messy and you had to wake up and take me home even though I could have just slept on Piper’s floor,” Annabeth said. Words were sort of flowing out of her without her completely approving them, in a jumbled rush. She didn’t like it, but she couldn’t quite remember how to stop it either.

“I don’t mind,” he said, just as she’d known he would. He meant it too, even drunk off her ass she could tell he wasn’t annoyed at her at all, even though he would be totally justified to be.

“But I could have just slept on the floor,” Annabeth repeated, though even the thought caused her to lean deeper into him.

Percy slowed his pace, almost stopping. Annabeth tried looking up at him to decipher what he was thinking, but she couldn’t really make out his face well enough to tell.

“This isn’t just about waking me up, isn’t it?” he asked.

Ugh. Why did she forget in her drunken stupor that he knew her just as well as she knew him? Obviously he was going to pick up on something deeper that was making her feel guilty.

“I just—” Annabeth started, then stopped. It was difficult to pick words precisely enough for the thoughts she was having.

“I know you don’t really like parties and stuff. Or drunk people. And I’m a drunk people right now, so I’m sorry.”

Great job, Annabeth, Annabeth thought to herself. Very delicately put. The lack of subject verb agreement, that was a nice touch. You didn’t sound completely fucked up even a little bit.

God, she hated being drunk.

“I didn’t want you to wake up alone, tomorrow,” Annabeth said, trying again, “But I forgot that me being drunk might be worse, so that's why I feel bad.”

Percy stopped walking. At first Annabeth thought it was in response to what she’d just said, but then she realized they were in front of their apartment building.

Then she realized he wasn’t making any moves to go inside, so it was about what she’d said after all. Instead he turned her around so she could see his face, keeping his arms around her waist in support.

She couldn’t quite read his expression, yet another reason why alcohol was the devil.

“I have a feeling we’re going to need to repeat this conversation in the morning when you’re sober,” he started, “But just for the record, you being drunk doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all.”

Annabeth studied his expression, searching his face for any signs of mistruth. She found none, but she also couldn’t entirely trust her senses at the moment.

“Are you just saying that?” Annabeth asked, suspiciously, “Because that’s the sort of thing you would lie about.”

She had sort of expected him to sigh in annoyance, but to her surprise he smiled instead.

“I’m not lying, I swear.”

“But you don’t like other drunk people,” Annabeth insisted. For some reason the two ideas could not coexist in her mind.

“I don’t like drunk strangers,” he corrected, “You’re not a stranger.”

“Well, duh,” Annabeth said, which made him laugh. She hadn’t meant to, but she liked hearing him laugh, so she would accept it anyways.

“But doesn’t it— I don’t know, bring up bad memories, for you?” she asked, cautiously, “I don’t wanna do that. I don’t even really like being drunk.”

He just shook his head.

“If it did, I would tell you. But it doesn’t, I swear.”

Annabeth frowned. It was probably just her stupid wine brain, but she couldn’t quite connect the dots between all the points he was making.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because,” he said, somehow still smiling, “You’re you.”

“That’s a lame answer.” Annabeth said.

“It’s true,” he said, in that stupid earnest honest voice of his, “I mean, maybe if you started throwing beer cans at my head when you got tipsy it’d be different, but you’re the opposite of aggressive when you’re drunk. You actually get really cuddly, it's kind of cute.”

Annabeth knew he was trying to comfort her, but she also knew that Gabe had done a lot worse than throw beer cans at him. She felt a surge of anger on his behalf, but more powerfully a wave of sadness looking at his upbeat expression. It was so supremely unfair that she wanted to cry, but she just hugged him instead. She was probably proving his point about being cuddly, but she didn’t even care.

“I’m so glad your mom made him into a statue,” she mumbled into his chest.

“Me too,” Percy said, resting his chin on the top of her head.

“I love you so much,” Annabeth said, because she really, really did. Like so much. An embarrassing amount, if she were capable of feeling embarrassed about anything having to do with Percy Jackson, which she was pretty sure was impossible.

“I love you too,” he said, kissing the top of her head to prove it.

“Piper said I get boyfriend clingy when I’m drunk,” Annabeth admitted. He laughed, his chest vibrating beneath her.

“She might be right about that.”

“She’s usually right about things,” Annabeth said, without thinking. Then—

“Don’t tell her I said that.”

He laughed again, but it was quieter. She felt it more than she heard it this time.

“Your secret is safe with me,” he promised.

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” Annabeth said, because she really did feel bad about that, even beyond all the other stuff, “I should have paid more attention to what I was doing.”

She felt him shrug underneath her.

“Stuff happens, it's not a big deal,” Percy said easily, “We’ll just sleep in tomorrow. Speaking of, we should probably go inside.”

As soon as he said ‘go inside’ Annabeth’s brain suddenly registered that she was exhausted. It was late, her head was swimming, and his chest had been very warm and very comfortable. She’d fallen half asleep without even realizing it.

“Inside sounds good,” Annabeth agreed, yawning.

“C’mon, I’ll carry you the rest of the way,” Percy said, finally pulling away, brushing a few stray curls out of her eyes.

Maybe if she had been sober she would have protested. As it was she was pretty happy to climb on his back and rest her head on his shoulder. He looped his arms under her legs and lifted her up easily. Gods, he was stupidly strong. She should appreciate that more.

“I love you,” she mumbled one last time into his shoulder. Whether he’d heard or responded was a mystery to her, because she was asleep before he finished climbing the stairs.

[wastetimeandtype]

A Legend of Korra AU, the setting is Detroit Become Human (summary)

Yooo so I think I’ve mentioned before that I started to write a Detroit Become Human AU for TLOK. Here is that AU, summarised!  Also since I haven’t touched this story in like two years so I don’t remember how it exactly goes, so I am making up a few plot points to make this summary cohesive. To be clear, this is an abandoned story, im just fond of a few plot points in this story after rediscovering this google doc.

To be clear I never played the game, I just got into watching the story cut scenes on YouTube... somehow. Idk. 

The basic premise of the game is that there are android servants who start gaining consciousness, called deviancy. Deviants can be permanently destroyed and killed if you destroy their memories and central programming system (situated in the head). Androids can generally have their memories transferred over to new bodies, as long as it is intact. You do not need to know the game to read this summary, it would have been a retelling of the game but making my own shit up. It loosely adapts Markus’s and Connor’s storyline. Korra was Markus, Mako was Connor (with Bolin being somewhat like Hank) and Asami had her own storyline. I also ‘fixed’ some elements of the game I didn’t like or thought were poorly explored but it generally follows the gist of the game. 

This is going to be super long, so hiding the story summary under a cut!

In a non-bending, future AU of the Avatar world, Future Industries in this universe is the creator of the androids. Deviancy is the name for consciousness. Both the police and Future Industries oppose androids becoming deviants due to being seen as a danger to humans and risking Future Industries profits.

Also to be clear, Korra, Mako and Asami are androids. Mako and Bolin are not related in this story. Bolin is human and a single child who’s parents died young.

Korra is an android who reacts violently to her owner beating her in a fit or rage. She gains consciousness (deviancy). She goes on the run because the police are chasing her.

She runs, and the next day hides in an abandoned house where she meets Kai, who is also a deviant android child. Kai mentions that there used to be an android he was friends with an android called Wan who was helping him run away to ‘Temple’ a sanctuary for androids. Wan has since disappeared.

Also from Kai there’s a general legend of ‘Project Raava’ who is meant to be a powerful android who saves them all. It’s kind of like a legend.

Meanwhile Lin is investigating Korra attacking her owner at the house. She is assigned a new super robo cop named Mako from Future Industries to help with KA cases. She doesn’t like him much and is annoyed that Future Industries so she leaves him to Saikhan and Bolin. Saikhan is the top detective, Bolin is the junior detective partner. Saikhan doesn’t like Mako either so just asks Bolin to distract him (Mako notes that the police are making Bolin babysit him).

What would be revealed in the story is that Bolin’s parents passed away, Lin was for Bolin as she was the at scene of the car crash and was a mentor figure in his life. Bolin was fostered but Lin kept in contact as a close parental figure. She helps Bolin get a job at the police station. Bolin knows he isn’t a very good detective but wants to make Lin proud.

Bolin in general thinks androids are pretty creepy, especially Mako. This is because they left Bolin alone for a bit with an android caretaker at the police station, and Bolin, an already traumatised child, found this robot caretaker uncaring and traumatising.

Also concurrently Asami is reading about the android rights movements and she’s like.. I am interested in deviants. Hiroshi tells her not to be so interested.

At Future Industries we are also introduced to Sitiak who is currently the top robotics person at Future Industries (had to be an OC). We later learn she is the head designer of the robo-cops and knows a lot about Mako.

We also learn throughout the story that Yasuko passed away from breast cancer years ago, and Asami also underwent treatment for it a few years prior as well.

Anyway back to Bolin. Bolin tried his best to just distract Mako whilst the real police do their work but Mako and Bolin realise where Korra is hiding and chase after Korra and Kai. Korra and Kai run across a highway and Mako was going to run across but listens to Bolin’s order not to do that.

Anyway Korra and Kai get in contact with some air monks who give them clues to scan around the city to follow the way to the deviant sanctuary.

Tenzin and the air nation are generally supportive of androids as a) they are not blind and can see that the androids are sentient and feeling and value all life, and b) Tenzin adopted an android child (Jinora) so they could understand androids, and Jinora deviated under their care. She pretends to be a normal android child to be safer.

Opal is a human member of the pro android rights movement. She was friendly and flirty with Bolin but stopped after the police started cracking down on deviants.

Korra and Kai follow clues hidden around the city. Temple is hidden in the mountains. Kuvira is the leader of the sanctuary! She is a committed revolutionary leader. She left Zaofu to help the deviants in Republic City (there are hundreds more in RC). She is pretty radical and an absolutist who believes in android rights and android supremacy. Re

Korra is a bit more chill but gets involved in the cause for android rights.

ANYWAY during the story Mako and Bolin get to know each other. Mako is programmed to have a very adaptive AI. He learns what Bolin wants. But he is committed to his mission of destroy all deviants above helping Bolin.

However one day Bolin panics half way through getting info as he missed the date and missed his parents death anniversary. Mako ‘breaks’ programming by allowing Bolin to go the cemetery to grieve. He also comforts Bolin.

Bolin is very confused by this situation and starts to wonder if Mako is deviating. Mako denies this.

(There would be two types of deviancy: gradual and shock. Korra was shocked into gaining consciousness. Mako’s deviancy would be more gradual).

And Bolin also starts to doubt whether or not he and Mako are doing the right thing by hunting deviants.

Asami meanwhile is asked again by Hiroshi to stop investigating deviants. She ignores him. She eventually learns, by looking through files of ‘Project Raava’ a very powerful android.

Korra and Kuvira and other androids break into a news tower and broadcast their demands for rights. Kuvira is badly injured in the attack, so Korra is the face of the broadcast.

Asami is convinced that Korra is project Raava as Asami thinks that Korra must be special in some way to lead the rights.

So Asami does some more digging, and then realises that something has always been very wrong with her. She cuts into her own flesh, her blood is blue: Asami is an android. And Asami is Project Raava.

FUCKING TWIST. Anyway this would be better set up in the fic as like people would make like ‘hey Wanna go eat Asami?’ And Asami would say ‘already eaten’ but we’d never see Asami eat

Basically Yasuko died of breast cancer. Yasuko was heavily involved in android robotics so she and Hiroshi and Varrick (to show up later) developed a body to house her after she died. They tried to code Yasuko’s consciousness into an AI. This failed and Yasuko ‘died’. When Asami Sato was dying from cancer, she asked to try the consciousness experiment. Knowing it would fail, Hiroshi instead created a full Artificial Intelligence version of Asami, and only coded the memories. She is not actually the old Asami Sato.

Asami was coded to have a very curious personality, but they had to code in limits to her, so she would naturally obey Hiroshi. She never eats or goes to the toilet, but she believes she does, as she basically has code telling her she does, so she believes it. Hiroshi planned to transfer (and wipe) Asami’s mind to different bodies so Asami would age, so he can pretend his daughter is still alive. However because of Asami Sato’s curious nature, Asami’s AI is very curious so Asami deviated when investigating deviants and choosing to not obey Hiroshi’s command to stop investigating them. She didn’t realise she was an android until later though because the programming was so strong and designed to be human like she didn’t see it until her AI pieced it together, she then is able to see her own programming and realise she isn’t human.

This isn’t the first time she has realised she was an android, but the first time she deviated beforehand. Because of this, when Hiroshi offers to wipe her and start over (because Asami usually accepts as an obedient daughter android when she realises that she has android parts by accident) Asami rejects this as she wants to help other deviants and knows they’re fully conscious and shouldn’t be destroyed. Basically Asami is too empathetic to allow deviants to continue to be destroyed when she knows they’re feeling like her, however Asami is also horrified by her own existence at this point.

Asami escapes the Sato Estate. She eventually find the Temple hideout and they’re like ‘wut Asami Sato is an android?’ And she’s like yep accept me, I want to help the android movement. They do. Kuvira is more cautious than Korra but accepts Asami. Asami helps fix Kuvira up after the tower fight. Asami and Korra start bonding.

Lin, Saikhan Bolin and Mako go to the Sato Estate the day after to investigate a deviant attack. Hiroshi and Sitiak inform the four of them what exactly is up with Asami. Lin is a bit freaked out but they agree it’s best to keep it a secret. Later Bolin says out loud ‘maybe we should leave Asami be and let her live her life’ and Lin reprimands Bolin for being sympathetic to deviants.

Asami is like ‘we should find Varrick to find out more about deviancy’. Asami and Korra (somehow) go to find Varrick. He’s living in a secluded house with his deviant android Zhu-Li.

He’s like ‘ah yes my greatest creation, I am your real Daddy’ (neither Asami or Varrick are pleased with his choice of words). Sitiak replaced Varrick in the company because Varrick was going to go public with the knowledge about Asami so he was kicked out and basically threatened by Future Industries to keep quiet otherwise they’d kill him.

He reveals he knows why deviancy happened: because of Asami. Four years ago when Asami activated, Hiroshi programmed a very simple piece of code to say ‘I am human’ if any androids came into direct contact with Asami, so they would believe she was not an android as well. It was an instant override. Varrick designed it to work like a virus and pass between androids. But one android had an overactive AI and the ‘I am Human’ statement warped to be ‘I am Alive’, a piece of programming that would allow the android themselves to become sentient if they needed it in a situation of immense stress or if they simply learnt and evaluated the statement. He realised this after examining Zhu-Li’s coding.

Not sure when this would be realised in the fic, but Asami would realise the first deviant was Wan, who used to be an android caretaker at the house and came into contact with Asami. He left the years ago. Wan is also the source of the ‘Project Raava’ legend, he overheard Hiroshi talking about this and misconstrued it as a android who could help android kind but not yet.

Anyway Korra and Asami leave knowing more about deviancy. They ask if Zhu-Li wants to come with them as Varrick comes across as crazy and Zhu-Li responds that she is a deviant, she knows exactly what she is doing and trusts Varrick, and that Korra and Asami aren’t offering anything safer. She has a point.

Anyway the police some time later get the same idea and arrest Varrick and Zhu-Li for suspected collusion with android deviants. By this point, after the news company hostage incident, the government under Raiko has given sweeping powers to Future Industries over the police to control the android menace.

Sitiak realises that Zhu-Li is a deviant, and electrocutes her, causing her severe pain until Varrick fesses up and complies (he does fairly quickly as Varrick genuinely cares for Zhu-Li who deviated in his home gradually). (The torture is legal as androids are not seen as sentient, they’re seen as defective and dangerous, and are property.)

Bolin watched the torture and is horrified. Bolin noticed Mako’s sensor flash red and Bolin realises finally that he has more in common with Mako and Zhu-Li than Lin and Sitiak so he resigns. He asks Mako to come with him, and Mako has not deviated so refuses, he is still dedicated to his mission of destroying deviants.

Bolin joins with Opal and pro-android movement who are getting ready for more serious action as they realise android and human relations are deteriorating. They want to avoid a full scale war between the two sides but need to get people to realise that deviants are not inherently dangerous, they’re just sentient.

Anyway Sitiak realises that Bolin is a loose end and asks Mako to ‘clean up’ and so Mako goes to shoot Bolin (and Opal who is helping him pack) and Mako can’t do it as he cares about Bolin, finally deviating. Bolin’s like whooo always wanted a brother.

So Bolin Mako and Opal run away to Temple.

(It annoyed me that barely any humans sympathise with literal sentient beings in the video game which is why they’re a larger part of the movement here).

Since Mako deviated, he sees a picture of Wan at Temple and realises what he did. Wan disappeared as Mako killed him (permanently shut him down by shooting him in the head about six months prior). Kai is horrified (because he liked Wan) and wants to kill Mako but Korra and Kuvira point out Mako was not sentient and was just doing as he was previously programmed to do, just as Kai used to be the perfect teenage son. Kai agrees. Mako feels guilty. Mako carries a lot of existential weight and dread without a mission to follow, and guilt about the past. He struggles with adjusting to deviancy the most.

However although they save Mako they are suspicious of Mako He basically hunted their kind. Even Korra with her big heart is suspicious.

Also Opal calls Kuvira out on some of her android supremacy bullshit. Kuvira was a guard for Suyin and Suyin basically didn’t mind deviants, and deviants aren’t oppressed in Zaofu, and humans have never hurt Kuvira directly. Kuvira admits that to be the truth and agrees, admits she just feels so angry that deviants are being destroyed because humans don’t want to understand them. They agree that the only way forward is to work together with humans.

Anyway the deviants and human sympathisers go on a march to town hall. The Future Industries private for hire mercenaries begin shooting into the peaceful crowd. Various attendees are arrested, including Bolin, Opal, Kai and Jinora.

Mako decides to go on the offensive and rescue his new adopted human brother because fuck you Future Industries. He recruits Lin to help him.

Lin at this point is PISSED as the government has taken away power from the police and given it to Future Industries. Lin does not trust Mako much but she made a promise to herself she’d protect Bolin and has realised that some of this android hunting is overreacting so agrees to help Mako break people out of jail.

They break into a facility that Future Industries has set up to investigate deviancy and imprison people (Bolin and Opal and other humans have not gone to trial yet but Future Industries does not work in a police station so does not have access to prisons, so they’re all in the same facility. Please roll with my bullshit).

Mako and Lin break Opal and Bolin out, rescue all of the androids.

Mako realises Varrick is in the Future Industries facility and tries to break him out, succeed at first, but Sitiak shoots him dead. RIP Varrick. They rescue Zhu-Li though. Sitiak gives Mako an evil grin heheheudh.

Anyway Lin after this realises that deviancy is not a danger and renounces her previous anti android ways and likes Mako now.

Also everyone after Mako saves androids and humans realise that Mako is not a threat and is a genuine deviant, and not a spy (maybe Mako could get shot and have a high risk to his life).

ANYWAY. Everyone regroups at Temple but they realise that androids and human supporters have been tortured at the facility and have given away the location of Temple. They realise they are all at risk and Future Industries is likely planning an assault, and there is no way to run apart from fight.

Meanwhile the general public mood is turning against gov’t and the over the top tactics especially since the androids were filmed being shot and killed whilst doing nothing.

Korra is like ‘you should lead everyone Asami you are Project Raava’ and Asami is like no, Korra, you are the hero they need. Asami is a powerful android, but is simply not the most important person in the world— Korra can choose to be there hero (and Asami can choose to step away) — free will! Korra is the ‘avatar’ for android kind.

Anyway Future Industries marches on Temple. There is a stand off. The androids tip off the media so there is public interest and the whole thing is filmed.

Korra gives a rousing speech and gears up the androids. Though they peacefully marched before, they will fight if they need to defend themselves. Future Industries hold off from firing, knowing they will look bad.

Asami meanwhile left earlier that morning to confront her ‘father’ and appeal for him to stop this madness. She goes alone because she knows the Sato Estate well and can sneak in. She meets Hiroshi and pleads for him to listen to her.

Sitiak comes and shoots Hiroshi after Hiroshi does show Asami some sympathy because Hiroshi does still Asami Sato in Asami Android. Sitiak is like ‘my company now muhahaha’.

Honestly I’m not really sure what I intended for Sitiak, I think Asami kills her after Sitiak tries to kill her.

Asami realises by looking at company PC Sitiak has activated an override on Mako that basically restores her control over him. Sitiak wanted Mako to kill Raiko, make Androids look bad and basically give Future Industries free reign to destroy all androids to maintain profits.

Asami races back to Temple as she can’t turn off the override. Mako at this poiint has left the rally, his new mission is to kill Raiko, and is in full murder mode. The deviant Mako fights from within.

Asami manages to get the cloud back online and warn Korra about the issue. Korra goes after Mako.

Mako v Korra fight, but Mako is a better fighter than Korra as he is the most advanced android ever released.

Korra is beaten back, Mako goes into Raiko’s office to execute Raiko, Korra dives in between them to save him.

Mako doesn’t actually want to shoot Korra so he starts fighting this override, so he turns the gun on himself. He plans to shoot himself in the head (horrified at what he has done and feels he can’t be trusted) but Korra begs him not to. Bolin finally reaches them and begs Mako not to. Mako shoots himself in the leg instead, basically disabling himself as he flits between maintaining control over himself.

Raiko is like ‘wow what an impressive android Korra but can I trust you all?” Asami arrives and explains Sitiak’s plan and Raiko agrees and calls off the advance on Temple. Even Future INdustries forces can’t disobey the president.

Then everyone is happy. Asami removed the chip Sitiak was using to remotely control Mako, to give everyone peace of mind. Asami is basically given future Industries (as legally she is still Asami Sato even though Asami Sato has died) and Korra keeps working with Temple with Kuvira.

Also the whole story Korra and Asami fall in love. Asami’s original unease at herself fades. She accepts her android nature and begins a relationship with Korra. They touch hands, and meld their minds together which is like, peak android intimacy.

Mako stays with Temple but also continues to work with the police. Bolin and Opal, together by this point, decide to continue to help androids. Bolin does not go back to the police, he is forging his own path. Lin is proud of him and now has a new surrogate son in Mako.

New elections are held and Raiko steps down. A new human president is elected and Zhu-Li is elected as an android official to work with Humans and Androids (feel like its a bit much to assume Zhu-Li would be elected president). But there is promise of a better future for the androids.

The Endddd.

Things that might have happened:

- Kuvira dies at some point, but i never decided if she dies of her wounds of the news tower hijacking or she dies in the last standoff. She could also survive, but her arc could be accepting that Korra is simply a better leader than she is.

- I have no clue how Korra and Asami find Varrick. Maybe they could hack into something to do with Future Industries, who’d have his address on file.

- I also have ideas that instead of Mako trying to kill Raiko, there is a clash between the military and the androids and Mako is used to try and disrupt the androids winning by killing Korra (and Asami and Kuvira). The problem with this is I don’t see how this can resolve unless the military abandons the fight in a lackluster way after Korra and Asami subdue Mako.

- I mentioned above but I really don’t know how exactly I intended the Asami/Sitiak/Hiroshi confrontation at Future Industries to go down. Who knows. Not sure if I also intended for Asami to be alone in this confrontation. Maybe she could take Kuvira and thats how she dies.

[crystalrequiem]

The Voice that Urged Orpheus

[Part 1/6(?)] [TRC] Summary: Kurogane tries to grapple with how attractive Fai is, fails to propose marriage, and is generally a gay disaster. 

Tags: Kuro/Fai, Canon Universe, Post-Canon,

Warnings:  suggestive thoughts (nothing graphic), overly sappy feelings, Kurogane’s unique combination of emotional intelligence and social incapability. [Part 1] - [Part 2]

Hello friends. It’s been a while since I posted Fic here. I will probably try to get this up on AO3 all in one piece? but I’m a creature that craves validation so it’s up here first piecemeal i guess.  As a hint of this thing’s intended trajectory, its joke title is “5 times Kurogane sat consumed with lust for the evening and 1 time he got to do something about it” So-- maybe eventually some citrusy content of whichever flavor... >_>

Tomoyo did this to torment him, he thinks.

Gliding through the room easy as a fish in water, the Mage makes himself at home as the life of the party. However stilted the his usual attempts at Japanese, with Mokona here to translate he runs circles around the courtiers and their linguistic games. He acts every bit the part of the charming prince he should have been in a kinder life—darting from conversation to conversation, quick with an easy smile and a cutting joke, still managing to keep a careful eye on Syaoran.

Watching Fai smile honest and free of the weight of worry still seems to Kurogane like a miracle, but it doesn’t ruin him. On its own, it doesn’t drive him to hide away on the sidelines, hand clenched tight around his artificial wrist as he struggles to keep his own thoughts in check. No. The real torture derives from the indecent spill of Fai’s hair—a delicately ornamented, flowing stream of gold that traces his pale neck down to a blue silk collar worn just a little too loose. It’s the way he moves in that thing—ridiculous sleeves so long they nearly brush the floor, but somehow he hasn’t lost an ounce of grace. It’s—

The sight of Fai in nearly any garment of Nihon would still have struck him—his traitorous, possessive mind all too willing to catch on thoughts of the mage in his clothes and in his land—but Tomoyo had gone to lengths to make it worse. The cut and drape of what she made for Fai would advertise their relationship on its own, but she’d once again seen fit to embroider the black moon at his chest. Standard for any shinobi under her command, but Fai is not, and with Kurogane’s status as it is… It’s safe to assume every single person here knows what kind of item they are. Just thinking about it is enough to drive a man to distraction.

As if on cue, the mage catches his eye across the crowd and grants him a quiet smile. For an instant, he forgets how to breathe. Fai’s stupid grin can send his heart stuttering in his chest on a good day, but looking like that—

Kurogane growls and turns away. He hopes to whatever god still listens that his face doesn’t reflect the sorts of things running through his head. The fingers wrapped around his metal wrist grip tight enough to hurt, if he’d had any nerves.

“Blue really is his color.”

He has long believed that Tomoyo possesses an extra special sense for his embarrassment.

“Did you need something, your highness?” He grits. Her bell-like peals of laughter fill the shadowed alcove at his expense.

“Who can say? Maybe I just wanted to visit with my favorite subject.” He doesn’t bother granting her a response. He’s almost glad for her distraction, however ill-intentioned it may be. At least it gives him a chance to collect himself. “How much longer do you think you can stay this time?”  Kurogane shrugs in answer.

“Same as usual. Just until the Manjuu says we need to move again. Maybe another day or two I’d guess.” He starts to relax, the heat in his veins cooling ever so slowly, until Tomoyo adds with a pout,

“Not enough time for a wedding then.”

“Princess,” he chokes, mortally affronted as she laughs harder. He tries to tune her out, but keeping his cool presents a serious challenge while he can’t help imagining…

He doesn’t know what exact moment he’d decided he needed Fai at his side always. Maybe as early as Yama? Maybe something in him knew even before that. Either way, his vision of the future rings empty without Fai there to meet it with him, whatever form that might take. Co-caretakers for the kids, battle companions, friends or paramours—whatever Fai deigns to give him, he wants. It’s only somehow in all of that… he’s never really thought about something like a wedding. He really could ask, couldn’t he? Would Fai want that?

He tunes back in to reality and finds Tomoyo staring, all quiet acceptance and expectation. She likes to tease, but in this he senses no joke. She means it—wants him to know that she does. The court in Nihon accepts male lovers easily enough, but he has never heard of a marriage between them. She means to offer him that: the possibility of tradition shattered beneath the weight of the imperial throne.

“You are my dearest and oldest friend. When your sojourn ends for good, I will make sure this is a land you want to return to.” Tomoyo flashes a gentle smile, fleeting between the narrow gap of fan and hair. “The court could use some new ways of thinking.” She murmurs as she looks away, back towards the party and the majority of the court. As usual, her political shrewdness surpasses him. He should have realized she had more reason to parade Fai about than to tease her favorite former protector.

“Princess Tomoyo, I—” He doesn’t know how to answer her, but he doesn’t get the chance to try. She only shakes her head and stares past him, her eyes locked to something over his shoulder.

“Fai! How are you finding the party?” She chirrups, holding her fan a little higher to hide her expression, which is far too self-satisfied. Kurogane freezes like a child caught sneaking sweets.

“Perfectly well, thank you, your highness.” With his thoughts running rampant, Fai’s presence burns like a brand in his awareness. He shuts his eyes and tries not to think too hard about the crescent moons embroidered starkly on that damnable outfit, or exactly what he wants them to mean.

Unfortunately Fai doesn’t understand what ails him and mistakes his attempt at control for annoyance. “Alright there, Kuro-Grumpy?” He teases, voice colored by a fleck of genuine concern as he brushes his fingers against the base of Kurogane’s neck. Tomoyo laughs at the way he stiffens. She knows exactly what she’s done and isn’t at all sorry.

“I’m sure he is,” she teases, coquettish as she gathers her train in one hand. “I’d best leave you two be. Doubtless you have much to talk about.”

Doubtless, his thoughts echo, indignant. He marks her for a traitor as she leaves him be with only Fai and his racing mind for company. He tries to use his feelings of annoyance to strip this buzzing hyper-awareness away… to little effect.

“…Kuro?” He lets the silence linger too long, and the mage grows worried. Kurogane huffs and his gaze falls back on Fai at last.

He’s standing far too close, he thinks as his vision floods with the man he loves most. Too close and too beautiful and waiting too long for him to respond. He tries to find an answer to Fai’s concern and forgets how to use words. Struck stupid by the sight of his magician all he can manage is a hoarse,

“Hello.”

“Hello,” Fai echoes warily, expression warring between amusement and apprehension. “Is everything okay?”

Kurogane catches Fai’s gaze and the rest of the world seems to fade from view, drowned by perfect blue. Blue now—not the stubborn amber of blood-lust or the jarring blot of onyx in an uncertain world—just blue. Bright and alive and still here with him after everything and damn it… he wants Fai by his side for all the hues that might follow.

“What’s wrong?” the mage grows more anxious with each second of silence and starts to draw his hand away, already turning to try to determine what threat has Kurogane unsettled. This won’t do. He catches the hand before it can retreat and keeps Fai’s attention, even as his feelings dam his throat closed. He closes his eyes and tries to find a way to explain what he wants, but the words just don’t come.

You look nice, is banal and, hey, marry me? Seems like a bad thing to spring on someone unexpected at a party. I love you so much, it hurts, is true, but sounds like an accusation and not one he means to levy. He doesn’t regret any part of this. Not for a single instant.

He takes his usual route and settles for action when words fail him—cradles Fai’s captured hand with his own and presses his lips to the center of Fai’s palm.

He looks the way he does every time Kurogane manages to demonstrate some degree of the depths of his feelings: as though the floor has fallen beneath his feet and he has no ground to stand on.

“Oh,” the mage murmurs, backlit by a low light that bounces subtly off the silk of his clothes and the shining gold of his hair. Kurogane wants little more than to pull him deeper into shadow and kiss him until everything he struggles to say coalesces without words.

He doesn’t look away as he shifts their positions to let Fai’s shaking fingers linger over the shape of his jaw. He keeps his hold on Fai’s wrist gentle—tries to provide an anchor to reality as the blonde’s thoughts race behind his eyes. “…Kuro? I’m not…sure this is the time or place for—whatever this is.”

He’s not wrong, but he also makes no move to pull away. Kurogane sighs and closes his eyes, tries to block out the vision that captivates him even as he leans into Fai’s touch. He can’t do more than that with the party still buzzing, barely concealed behind the thin veneer of privacy the alcove affords. He has to say something. He can’t leave it be—not now with his mind so locked on the idea of forever.

“I—Fai. When all this is over, do you, maybe—”

He almost says it then. He doesn’t’ even know the words on the tip of his tongue—they spill forth organically, easily for once in his life and he’s going to say something, even if he doesn’t quite know what. So of course that’s when the kids find them.

“Aha! Mokona’s super secret technique, Finding Mommy and Daddy!” the blasted bun’s cheery announcement treads roughshod over his every nerve. Probably Fai’s too if he had to guess; the mage jerks back as if he’s been burned, his awful fake smile plastered back into place. “Oh no! Did we interrupt?”

…we…?

Kurogane takes a deep breath and dares to turn around. Sure enough, there stand both Syaoran and Mokona. The Manjuu is perfectly chipper but Syaoran at least has the good grace to look embarrassed.

“S-sorry!” he stutters, face a burning red. “I didn’t know you were—uh…. We’ll just go over here, and—”

Fai comes to their rescue as usual. All too used to acting despite his feelings, he casts off embarrassment like a shroud and bustles forth to reassure the kid.

“Nothing to worry about!” he crows, “We were just about to head back in to the fray.” He glides closer to Syaoran and blocks the lingering electricity in the air with distance. Every motion still so damnably graceful—Kurogane feels further doomed with every breath. He crosses his empty arms and leans into the wall, watching his love retreat.  

“Ask me later?” Fai mouths as he rushes away, the corners of his eyes soft with apology. Kurogane huffs and musters something like a smile to reassure him.

“Sure,” he mouths back, though he still doesn’t really know what he wants to say.

…this is going to be a thing, isn’t it? He can just feel it.

[long-bodyswap]

Oh brother

(don’t have the credits)

Chapter 1“Did you see that play?!” Macky asked me as he lovingly hugged me in his arms and lifted me into the air after scoring the winning touchdown.  He was being borderline too affectionate, and I had to hiss at him to let me down when he instinctively tried to kiss me.   “Bro!  We’re in public!  Put me down so we can take pictures.  You’ll get your reward later!” I hiss playfully into his ear.   He begrudgingly puts me down as we pose for some photos together.   “Hey Andy.” “Yeah, Bro?” I answer. “You’re the best little brother ever.  I just wanted you to know that.  I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but I know what’s gonna be getting into you when we get back to the house.” “You’re the best big brother ever.  I love you, and I’m so happy to give you your victory fuck.” He gives my ass a playful squeeze, risking getting seen in public.  The element of danger makes it so hot.  Fuck yeah, I can’t wait to get back to the house.  You know, Macky sure is right- I’m the best little brother ever…or I would be if I actually was his little brother.   3 days agoSo my name is Shane and I’m just your typical gay guy who’s hopelessly in love with the high school quarterback.  I’ve never even flirted with him, but maybe I’ve had one too many lingering glances at him because Macky seems to have sniffed out my adoration.  And the worst part is for as much as he gives me hell, I don’t stop feeling this way.  I just have an instinct that he’s secretly gay, but just can’t admit it.  Either not now or not to me (the only openly gay guy in our high school) because physically I’m just not in line with his desires.  I mean after all, he’s a toned, strong, football jock and I’m an overly thin, bony, computer nerd.  I try to keep the extent of my research a secret because the nerd shit is just another bullet that Macky uses against me.  Unknown to him though, and the entire world, I may have invented something that could give me the chance to finally get close enough to him to see what he’s really like.  The running name for the prototype is Project Transfero, short for the Latin phrase, Transfero Transtuli Translatum, meaning “to transfer.”  Hey, I didn’t say poetic prototype names were my specialty.  But anyway, this device I have built will allow me to transfer my consciousness into another human being and dominate their body and mind.  If my calculations are correct, I will have access to their memories and abilities in an intuitive manner whilst still maintaining all of my essence.  I will upload my old, empty body with a basic artificial intelligence program I designed that mimics my most recognizable behaviors.  To friends and family I will appear to be completely normal, though I have severely hampered the AI’s intellect so as to avoid any technological conflicts in the future or a scary Terminator doomsday scenario.  I also have a secondary program that will surely come in handy.  But I digress… Earlier today I was thrilled beyond belief when opportunity came directly to my locker.   “Hey.  So word’s gone around you got a perfect score on the SAT.  Andy is taking the PSAT next week and I was wondering if you could help him out.  The kid’s pretty bright, but I bet a little bit of your influence and he’d be a National Merit Scholar.  I already talked to him, and he’s cool with this even though I have some concerns…” “Not a problem, Macky.  Tell him to come over at 8pm.” “Look, I appreciate your help.  I really am grateful, but…no funny business if you know what I mean…” “We’re crystal clear, Macky.  We’re just turning your bro into a national merit scholar, that’s it.” He awkwardly thanks me again before walking off to rejoin his football bros.   “Shit, that was the scariest/best moment of the week.” I speak to myself aloud.  Project Transfero is officially in motion.  “Oh we’re gonna make Andy a National Merit Scholar alright.  I’m pretty sure Andy’s gonna rocking out from now on…”As agreed, Macky’s little brother arrived at 8 pm on the dot.  He seemed exactly like a mini version of his older brother, just maybe 2 years and a growth spurt behind.  I could still instantly see a fine and sexy young man in the making.  Andy…I’ve always loved that name; it just rolls off the tongue nicely.  I invite him inside and to my relief he is a much gentler and sweeter soul than his brother.   “I want to thank you for helping me, and sorry about my bro.  He’s just over protective because our dad walked out on the family when we were young.  The guy’s only two years older than me, but he has always felt like he had to step up and take over the father role.” “That must have been tough,” I try to say nicely and thoughtfully as I hide my grin.  “Say, can I get you a drink before we start?” “Oh a sprite would be awesome man!  Thanks.” “Oh, not a problem at all,” I reply as I run to the kitchen, pour two glasses, and top his off with a clear and tasteless fluid.  Andy gulps his whole drink down right away, and I struggle to contain the excitement building up inside me as he begins losing consciousness.  His dose was sufficient that he doesn’t even process the likelihood of a spiked drink.  There is no struggle.  Instead he just says he needs a nap and plummets into a deep sleep.  Fuck.  Yeah. “ungggg…what the?  Where am I?” Andy asks groggily. Finding himself strapped to a table, he begins pulling at his restraints, soon realizing they are unbreakable.  “Dude What the fuck?!  What is this shit?!  HELP!  SOMEONE PLEASE HELP!” “Andy, I wouldn’t waste your energy.  You’ll need it if you want to put up a good fight,” I say as I finish up the final touches on the software settings.  “I hope you know this isn’t personal.” “OH MY GOD!  Are you gonna kill me?!  Is this because of Macky?  I promise he’ll be nicer to you!  Just please let me go!” “I have every intention of letting you go…once we’re done here.  Say, have you ever heard of that old saying ‘Always want what you can’t have?’” Andy doesn’t respond.  He just grits his teeth as he ferociously struggles to pull out of his straps.   “Andy, don’t worry.  This will all be over soon,” I let him know with a soothing tone as I try to place the helmet contraption on his thrashing head. “No Dude!  Get that thing away!” Andy can see that the helmet device is connected to my computer terminal.  He probably thinks I’ve built some sort of electric chair.  I like a little bit of struggle, but this is just ridiculous.  I go and grab a little solution that I concocted a while back.  It’s basically a fluid that can be sprayed like an air freshener, but breathing it causes temporary relaxation of both body and mind.  I put on a respirator, spray the thrashing Andy, and wait for the fumes to dissipate before safely removing my mask.   “Fuck man!  WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!   You won’t get away with this.  You can’t-not gonna win-son of a –piece of shit-kick your-just wait til Macky hears-stop….” And Andy’s pupils suddenly widen as he stops tugging against his bindings and just lays like a good boy on the table, breathing deeply and slowly.  “What are you going to do to me?” He asks, completely tranquil and struggling to focus on the severity of the situation.   “Just focus on how good you feel right now.  Okay, Andy?” I say as I step up onto the adjacent table and begin fitting my own helmet.   “Wait, why do you have a helmet?” Andy asks softly.   I just finished fitting the device to myself and that’s when I insert my mind-clone AI chip into the secondary input slot so it can be downloaded and run my body after my consciousness is done transferring.  “Sometimes people do crazy things for love, maybe even unethical things,” I say before clicking the launch button.   3… “Please, Shane…” 2… “What are you…” 1… “Stop…” BOOM! My head feels like a swirling hurricane as I feel myself losing my gained knowledge.  Algorithms, code, chemistry, biology, all of that is leaching out of my mind as it is ruthlessly downloaded into Andy’s brain.  I try to remain calm, but Andy is feeling overwhelmed by the sheer rush of knowledge.  In spite of the relaxant, his adrenaline is reviving his panic as he howls out and yanks on his restraints again. “NO PLEASE!  It’s too much!  I CAN’T!” he yells as he tries in vain to shake the helmet off. I continue to feel my mind hollowing out as my preferences and personality traits begin transferring into Andy, leaving me numb, but having a different effect on Andy… With all of my knowledge and research he has realized what I have built and what is happening.  He begins crying as he realizes that in a matter of minutes he will be completely possessed by me, but as my preferences and personality are downloaded into him he stops struggling and notices his cute and toned body all sweaty from his struggle.  He knows he’s supposed to like girls; deep inside he’s always been compassionate to gays, but also 100% straight.  None of that matters though as he gives in to new desires to touch himself and appreciate his body from a whole new point of view.  He begins groaning as he desires to rub his lean abs and cup his balls while pumping that well-endowed cock just so he can taste his own man juices as they shoot out of his cock like water out of a super soaker-he whines and curses his restraints as he tries in vain to touch himself.  Andy reaches new heights of arousal as all of my vivid sexual fantasies about possession, mind control, etc. enter and reprogram him.  This formerly struggling cutie is now thrusting his hips into the air, helplessly thinking about cute boys, gay sex, the rush of possession and being reprogramed by my essence…even the thought of getting his brother’s cock up his virgin ass.   “Oh Fuck yeah!” he shouts between pants as he keeps grinding his hips into the air.  “Yeah!  Fill me up!  Take me over!  Make me better!  Use my sexy boy body to get the best dick in town!  Oh YEAH!  You’re gonna get my cherry popped by Macky’s juicy cock!  You’re gonna use my cute bubble butt to milk his juices out of his cock!” Andy is shivering in pleasure and ecstasy, overwhelmed by the constant flow of data.  Finally, I black out as the final phase initiates and my consciousness begins transferring.   Andy is howling in delight as his back arches and he knows what’s coming.  My consciousness is downloaded into his brain as his central nervous system adapts to a new resident.  Andy moans out in ecstasy as the computer screen flashes to green, TRANSFER SEQUENCE COMPLETE.  But at the last minute he has a moment of clarity as I begin unlocking Andy’s memories and personality, ensuring that they will be available to me.   “Wait-this isn’t right.  This is wrong!  WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO ME?!  GET OUT OF ME!  PLEASE MAN!!!!  YOU GOTTA GET OUT OF ME!  DON’T DO THIS!  YOU CAN’T- UNNNGGGGGGG!!!!”  He screams loudly as the pressure in his balls builds and he knows he can’t control what’s coming.  His toes are curling and his fists are balled tightly as he strains in a last act of futile resistance.  The moment right before he blows his load, my vision comes into clear focus, seeing through Andy’s eyes and hearing his hollers of pleasure leaving my mouth as I have my first orgasm in his fit body.  “OH FUCKKKKKKKK UMMMMMMMYEAH!” I shout as I writhe helplessly as my new cock pours a sea of hot cum into these gym shorts.  Fuck!  This dick didn’t even get touched a single time!  Oh My God! I’m laughing in joyous laughter, feeling my hips thrust with every spurt of warm cum and shouting out every time I feel Andy’s dick seize up.  Oh I want nothing more than to reach down and taste my new juices, but my restraints are frustratingly effective.  Right as I relax my arched back and begin riding this wave of orgasmic afterglow, I see my old body open its eyes and undo the straps on the helmet.  Perfect.   “Hello, Master.  Everything has gone according to plan,” My old body says in a monotonous tone. “Well, this was unplanned,” I say pointing at my cum soaked crotch, “But I’m not complaining.  Anyway, do you understand your programing?  It’s time to act like Shane.  I didn’t mind clone myself for nothing.  And call me Andy.” My old body’s face remains blank for a second or two before finally his facial expression perks up and his vocal tone matches my own.   “Hey Sorry about that Andy.  I’m ready to fill in and put on a good show for everyone.  So anyway, what can I help you with?” the new Shane asks with convincing humanity.   “Well, for starters you could unbind me.  And get me a clean pair of shorts.” I say with a giggle and a wink. I make the short walk back to Andy’s house after getting cleaned up- decided to save my full body examination for Andy’s personal bathroom.  It really is crazy- I have all of myself intact, but I have all of Andy’s knowledge and memories available to me.  I can literally see the layout of his house flashing through my mind.  I’m upstairs, last room at the end of the hall to the left, far enough away that nobody will hear some light moaning.  I know that because I can remember Andy locking his door and beating off this already thick and long cock to internet porn.  Lots of tits and pussies filling his browser history.  Better get used to dicks and ass, buddy! I walk in the side door of my new house and Macky hollers from the kitchen: “How was it?” “It was great!  Learned a shit ton.  That PSAT is toast.” “No funny business right?  I don’t wanna have to have a long, painful chat with Shane.  And- wait what are you wearing?” “Bro?  haha shorts and a tee.  Dude, you should go get your eyes checked.” “Nah man, you wore your favorite shorts tonight.  The red ones that you’ve won so many 5k’s in.  Did  Shane-“ “Don’t worry!  I just spilled a sprite all over myself.  It was my bad, and Shane was nice enough to lend me some spare boxers and shorts.  The guy’s even washing my soiled clothes.  You’re really too hard on the guy sometimes,” I say convincingly as I run up the stairs and crash into Andy’s room, practically a tornado of motion as I try to rip these clothes off so I can worship this fit body.  Fuck, being that close to Macky without him being all homophobic is making me so damn hard.  Right as I slip out of these boxers and find myself nude on Andy’s bed I peer over at the clock and see it’s midnight, meaning it’s officially the first day of the rest of my life.  God, how can I be this hard after that load I blew earlier?!  Gotta take care of that right now! Chapter 1.5We’re done with all the pictures and I’m riding shotgun with Macky, who is still elated after scoring the winning touchdown.  Normally he’d shower with the rest of the team, but he practically carried me to the car, bent on getting home ASAP.   “Are you sure you don’t wanna shower with your bros and celebrate your win?” I ask him as we cruise along the road to our home.   “You’re the only bro that matters and we’ll be celebrating, alright,” he says with a wink that makes me blush.  I’ve been in Andy’s body for 3 days now, and I’m already realizing this was the best decision I’ve ever made.  I flash my now older brother a devilish smile before I reach a toned arm over and grab his thick man meat, massaging it with my soft hands and enjoying the feeling of it growing in my grip. “ohhhhhhhhhh fuck….Andy that feels so good.  Wait, we should-“ “Start celebrating right now” I interrupt as I lean over at the redlight and grab his face, forcing my tongue into his mouth and enjoying this passionate kiss as he explores my mouth also.  “I know you’re good for more than one round of celebration” I tease him as I slide my hand into his football pants and grab his rod and begin stroking him.  I know he can’t wait any longer when he’s moaning like a bitch in heat as he thrusts into my grip on his cock.   “Oh fuck bro!   GOD YEAH MAN THAT FEELS SO GOOD!” Macky shouts as I begin sliding his 8 inches into my mouth and down my perfectly relaxed throat.  He surprises me when he involuntarily thrusts the last 2 inches into me, immediately bringing my lips down to the base of his cock, forcing me to take in the sweaty man odor of his trimmed bush.  I breathe it in gladly as I get ready for one hell of a car ride home.  He grabs at the T-shirt I changed into, letting me know how much my mouth pleases him.  2 Days AgoThe clock just hit midnight which means this is the first day of the rest of my life.  Fuck, I’ve gone from the bony computer nerd to the toned and future jock star little brother of Macky, the formerly unattainable subject of my affection.  But laying here in Andy’s bed, having just implanted my knowledge, personality, and consciousness into his brain, fully possessing him, I feel like anything is possible.  Anything except for these damn socks.  Fuck, I’m trying to kick em off without reaching down to use my hands, but these little suckers just aren’t cooperating.  I smile having a memory flash into my head of Andy having the same struggle until finally- shoop- I get that sucker off and kick it off the side of the bed.  God damn, finally, I’m completely naked laying on Andy’s bed.  With a chance to take it all in I take a minute to close my eyes and just enjoy the feeling of Andy’s soft sheets on his golden skin.  Getting curious, I swing my feet off the bed and walk over to Andy’s bathroom and stand before the full length body mirror.   Right before I can dive into my exploration, Andy’s or I mean my, phone vibrates so I walk over to the bed where I left the phone and see a text of a screenshot snap from a friend.   Oh how fucking ironic.  I chuckle and roll my eyes playfully before returning to the bathroom and looking straight into Andy’s eyes.  I really love his prominent eyebrows, so I work on using them to make all sorts of ridiculous expressions, making him look concerned, Sherlock Holmes inquisitive, angry, sassy, and everything in between.   “God, puberty is a beautiful thing,” I say aloud, enjoying my new voice and seeing a flash of what Andy looked like not too long ago in the form of a memory with his older sister.   Oh yeah, thank God for puberty.  I laugh some more, enjoying Andy’s not fully developed voice.  It’s not fully developed yet, but it has an indisputable masculine quality that still retains just a shred of boyish charm.   I look back into the mirror and taunt Andy a bit. “You didn’t put up much of a fight, eh?  I’m thinking you wanted me in here all along.  Yeah?  That your kink?  You always wanted someone else inside you, using your body to do this?” I say as I begin lightly caressing his face, using Andy’s mouth to seductively suck on one of his fingers.   “Oh you’re just a little whore inside aren’t you?  Yeah, little player, huh?  Bet you never thought you’d be doing this I bet. Unnggggg dammmnnn yeah” I moan as I clamp my eyes shut and toss my head back, enjoying the feeling of Andy’s sensitive nipples being stroked by his soft fingertips.  Oh yeah I start circling them, already feeling my breathing pick up, but then my whole body twitches a bit as I grab one of those perky nipples and give it a good pinch.  “Oh fuck!” I hiss as I feel Andy’s dick twitch.  I use my left hand to go back and forth between both nipples, pinching and twisting and pulling enough to send sparks through my central nervous system, occasionally just grabbing the whole pec and rubbing the developing mound of lean muscle.  My right hand does a full survey of Andy’s left arm, feeling every toned ridge of his lean triceps down to his strong forearms from doing lax and football, just like Macky.  Soon I’m running a hand along Andy’s chiseled abs, enjoying the way they feel as I run my hand along them while taking deep breaths. “Mmmmmm yeah, you little punk.  These are mine now.  This body is mine now.  Thanks for being so athletic you little twink.  I can’t wait to see what your abs look like when you’ve got a thick cock cumming in your hole.  You’re gonna be using all the strength in your body to clamp that dick where it belongs- balls deep inside you.  Oh fuck yeah!” I taunt as I spit on the mirror and enjoy watching Andy lick up his own saliva off the mirror.  I’m getting so hard so fast now!  In seconds, Andy’s dick is standing at 7 full inches and nice thickness.   “This is mine now!” I shout as I grab that man meat and stare Andy’s reflection in the eye again.   “This is my cock and I’m gonna use it whenever I want and however I want!  Yeah, you little whore.  You just love it when I stroke you like THIS!  Oh MOTHERFUCK!  YEAH MAN!  You’re dick is great! Unnnnnggggg Yeah!” I yell as I thrust into this skilled grip.  Holy crap, I’m still using the left hand to tweak these sensitive nipples and it feels even better now that I’m jerking Andy’s cock like this!  I rub that hand over these abs which are popping like crazy now that my hips are thrusting like this.  Mmmmm yeah, Andy’s lean, but strong thighs look so nice right now.  And I fucking love his legs.  Those calves are perfect.  Strong, but lean and toned, just like the rest of his body, but he’s got a nice coat of dirty blonde hair trailing up his legs and up his thighs, getting lighter and lighter until it barely meets Andy’s trimmed bush.   Fuck!  I’m getting close!  I leave the bathroom and hop onto the bed, dick pointed straight up as I grab Andy’s cock again and begin thrusting desperately into my grip, grabbing at the sheets with the other hand and curling my toes as I scrunch my face up in one orgasmic expression of pleasure as I pump the holy fucking shit out of Andy’s cock.   “Ohhhhhh FUCK you feel so good Andy!  I fucking love your body!  GOD DAMN MAN Wooooooo” I gasp as I thrash my head around on his bed, hyperventilating and finally feeling his balls tighten.  Damn this feels so much better than that first orgasm.  I quickly grab Andy’s balls with my left hand and begin massaging them right as my back arches, throwing me into the air, as every muscle seems to contract at once and the first shot of cum flies and lands perfectly in my gasping mouth!  I quickly swallow Andy’s delicious cum and try to scream, but no sound exits my gaping mouth!  I just writhe and squirm, trying to comprehend how good this feels as shot after shot of hot cum coats my lean chest and abs.  I finally let go of Andy’s dick and just stare in amazement as this dick just keeps launching cum.  Right as Andy’s cock finally stops this insane orgasm I black out from the pleasure, overwhelmed by my first ride in Andy’s sexy body.  I wake up just a few minutes later, happy that the cum is still warm from being on my burning hot torso.  Shit, I’m still breathing like I just won a 5k and I’m sweating like a pig.   “That was awesome” I coo as I scoop Andy’s cum into his hand and ruthlessly devour it, sparing no drop.  “Andy, even your cum tastes so fucking good.  God you’re such a perfect little stud.” I say aloud as I lay in bed and think.After enjoying my afterglow I decide to shower and resume the primary goal- to pursue Macky now that I’m inside his hot younger brother.   Chapter 2“OH FUCKKKKKKK!!!!” Macky shouts as he dumps endless rivers of cum down my throat.  I hungrily eat every last drop, making sure that whatever didn’t get dumped directly down Andy’s throat is immediately consumed.  Macky is shivering with pleasure and giddy joy and I actually have to grab the stearing wheel because he doesn’t see that truck that just slowed down.  “Holy Shit Balls that was close dude!” Macky shouts, breaking out of his euphoria.  We both laugh together and he just says, “We’ll have to practice the road head more. I’ve gotta work on my focus,” he tells me with a wink as he reaches his hand and grabs my firm rod through the silky fabric of these shorts, firmly gripping and massaging the rock hard mound trapped in this compression underwear.  He keeps rubbing me until a wet spot forms on my compressions, a nice healthy flow of Andy’s precum as well as my squirming body and attempts to keep my moaning under control let Macky know how much I want him, how much his loving brother, Andy, is turned on by him.  When he slips his hand into these compression shorts and wraps his strong fingers around Andy’s marble hard cock, he knows this cock is hard because I want his body and his dick cumming inside me as our sweaty bodies are grinding all over one another.   He looks at me intently, squeezing, massaging, stroking, jacking my cock as I flash him a smile, gasping for breath and ask him, “Are we there yet?”“Bro, you better be a good boy.  You ask me that again and I’ll pull this car over right now and we’ll start on the side of the road,” Macky says with wickedly cute mischief.   I just lay back and relax, moaning in appreciation as Macky expertly pumps my cock, bringing me closer and closer to shooting a load all over his new car.  Fuck, that would be hot!  Then we can both lick it off together.  Mmmmmm God, I love Macky, but I love possessing his little bro, Andy, even more!2 Days Ago… After that amazing orgasm in Andy’s body, I decide to shower and explore some more, enjoying the feeling of the hot water rolling off of Andy’s skin.  After drying off and doing some sexy faces at my reflection I decide to get dressed.  Hmmmm a memory flashes into my head of Andy and his two siblings.  I guess the guy has a safe sense of style. I’ll start introducing my affinity for bright colors and neon into his life eventually, but not this week.  I just want to blend in and get some one on one time with Macky.  Luckily, big sis is already in college, so I don’t have to worry about her ruining my fun.  For now, I remember that Andy and Macky had been planning on going to a game today- the memory of getting the tickets a few months back flashed clearly in my mind.It’s really too bad that my new parent, Andy’s stepdad, couldn’t end up going with us on the big day, but that’ll just give me more one on one time with Macky.  Mmmmmmm yeah, some one on one time is exactly what I need to set this plan in motion.  I go back to Andy’s bathroom and expertly navigate his cabinets and drawers, finding the randomly scattered things like toothpaste, deodorant, some hair product, etc. Before I start, I take a whiff of Andy’s underarms.  Mmmmmm such a delicious boy odor.  I take another sniff and then I just all out huff in as much of Andy as I can, eventually licking these pits clean, tasting Andy’s funkiness with his own mouth.  I need more!  I grab a pair of Andy’s dirty underwear from a run and hold it against my face, sniffing in the musk and getting hard in the process.  I look directly in the mirror as I continue breathing in Andy’s scent, eventually moaning in satisfaction as I rub the filthy underwear all over my body. Mmmmmmfuck- I manage to stop myself before I get fully hard.  Better wait til later!  I just have to resist temptation and finish getting ready, so I pop the deodorant cap and do a teenwolf style play bite at my reflection.  I feel so powerful and sexy as I do something as simple as roll deodorant on Andy’s underarms.  “Yeah, you can’t even do this for yourself.  You need someone like me inside you to do it for you!” I playfully lash out at the mirror.  I grab some of Andy’s underarm hair and try to mentally measure those coarse dirty blonde waves.  “Not a boy, but not yet a man.  Oh you needed me inside you to make you a man,” I laugh some more at my taunts.  Mmmmm even something as ridiculous as putting Andy’s deodorant on can feel so empowering.  I bet this’ll never get old!  Still elated from doing Andy’s morning routine, I quickly do a mental survey of his bathroom and realize I was going to be bringing about some positive changes.  “Really, man? No facial cleanser?  I mean, overall you’ve been blessed with good skin, Andy, but we’re gonna do every little thing we can to keep you perfect.  I’m gonna get a good moisturizer to use on your face because I plan on preserving your boyishly cute good looks for as long as I possibly can.  And I’m digging your robust eyebrows, but I’m gonna get a good pair of tweezers to make sure they’re kept neat and clean looking.  Several memories flash through my head of Andy complaining about all this shit I’ve mentioned being too girly.  My new mom had the right idea, trying to get Andy on board with skin care, but to his core he always resisted, insisting it’s not what guys do.  “Well, Andy, it’s what YOU do now!” I exclaim as I smirk at his reflection, sensually licking one of his fingers and sucking on it, adding more and more fingers until my mouth is full enough to practice for Macky’s thick cock.  I know it’s thick because Andy has several memories of seeing that beast, not up close, but in various locker room and quick clothes changing scenarios.  Ohhhh but now that I’m inside Andy, he’s gonna be getting really up close and personal with some brotherly dick!“Andy!  Hurry up!  We have to leave now or parking’s gonna be a nightmare!” Macky hollers from downstairs.  Shit, I’ll have to scheme later.  Time to be a good brother I think as I grab some clothes and run downstairs. Thank God it’s Saturday!  Nothing like spending some quality time with MY older brother.   As I walk outside I realize Macky and I are almost matching.  We’re both decked out in Navy Blue with our Georgetown hats and ready to enjoy a good game.  Mmmmm Macky is looking extra on point today.  Just from watching him I can see I have a lot to look forward to growing up in Andy’s body.   We hop in Macky’s car and the drive is kind of quiet and awkward, so I decide to do some probing.  “So have you heard back from that Shane guy?” I ask, trying to stir the melting pot of repressed frustration.“I don’t want you to get help from him anymore.”“But, why?  He was super helpful, and really nice to me.”“I just don’t trust the guy.  I mean you know about him right?”“It sounds like you don’t trust yourself,” I blurt out.  “And what is that supposed to mean?” Macky asks a little shaken and caught off guard.  Andy’s memories flash through my head as I respond.“Bro, you hardly ever hang out with your girlfriend.  I never even see you guys texting or messaging or anything.  I’ve seen you around some of your buds, and when you bring your guy friends over you get really touchy.  There was one time where I borrowed your laptop and a porn site was still on your browser, but there wasn’t any pussy or tits…” I say with fake concern in my tone.  Wow, Andy really repressed a lot of dirt on his big bro.  I’m honestly so frustrated as I sift through Andy’s memories and see that he basically dumped all this incriminating evidence in the Just a Fluke/Better Not Bring It Up part of his mind. Jesus.“Andy….I…Uhhhh…I just clicked the wrong link. I-““Hey.  Bro,” I say looking him dead on, “I want you to feel comfortable telling me anything.  You’ve been such a good big brother all these years.  It’s about time I repay the favor.”“Andy, it’s not like that.”“You know I’m here for you.”“Bro!  Just chill.  It’s not like that.  Okay.  Thank you for extending open arms and all, but I’m not gay.  That’s just wrong.  And I don’t hate gays, I just don’t want that guy Shane to get any ideas in your head.” Oh that guy Shane got wayyyyyy more than a few ideas in Andy’s head I think to myself with mischievous satisfaction.  I decide to let up on my probing, feeling all the more convinced that Macky is a melting pot of repressed homosexual desire.  As I doze off for the rest of the car ride I make sure to spread Andy’s legs so my crotch is in plain view.  I don’t even need to open my eyes to know that Macky is sneaking glances. It would be pointless to fight the grin emerging on my face, as I twist Andy’s face into one of satisfaction, so I just ride with it.  Maybe deep down Macky’s hoping I’m having a fun dream about him.  Once we arrive and get the car parked we immediately run into one of Macky’s best buds, Ben, who takes a pic of Macky and me.  You can see what I meant earlier when I said we were accidentally matching.  And I’ll be God damned if I’ve ever seen two bros who looked more all-American and adorable.  The game is pretty boring, even for the part of Andy’s mind I have at my disposal, so I kind of zone out, cheering when Macky does and just going through the motions.  But then I see how I can spice up my afternoon. I’m going to test the limits of Andy’s cuteness, so I start making lingering eye contact with Ben, enjoying his nervous fidgeting and blushing cheeks.  My sick perversion of Andy’s usually cool and “bro” self continues as I look directly into Ben’s eyes and slowly bring my hotdog to my mouth and lightly lick the end of the meat before opening wide and slowly shoving in as much weiner as I can in a single bite.  I even close my eyes and lean my head back slightly, making Andy look like a cock hungry gay boy for the whole world to see.  Luckily, Macky is actually trying to follow the game intently, so he doesn’t see me using Andy’s mouth to put on a show, or the tenting emerging in Ben’s pants. He gasps, unable to control his urges as he picks up his phone and begins frantically typing.  Just a few seconds later I feel Andy’s phone vibrate and open it to find an old selfie and a message from Ben.   LET’S FUCK!  BATHROOM!  PLEASE!I suck in a deep breath from shock and quickly look at him and shake my head no.  I lie and write to him: I’m seeing someone.   I don’t consider this a lie because I plan on making Macky mine…all in good time.  For now though it’s just me, Macky, Ben, and a new message with an irritated frowny face and the word TEASE!  You better not tell anyone or I’ll fuck up your world! I just smirk at him with Andy’s cute face and message him back: Don’t forget who has the leverage here.   At the same time I raise Andy’s phone and show him the photo and dirty message he sent.  It was like Check and mate.  I do let him know though if things don’t work out he’ll be the first guy I call.  This seems to brighten his mood, but deep down I know there’s nothing worse than false hope.  Mehh…what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. We get back that Saturday night to an empty house- Just Macky and me for the rest of the weekend since the folks are off on some Napa Valley excursion.  It’s pretty late now, and Macky seems pretty tired so he retires to his room.  I follow and pop into his room as he’s in the middle of changing and catch him shirtless.  God, this is what I’ve dreamed of for so long, to be this close to him and see that built torso, so strong from football and training.  I want nothing more than to grab one of those meaty pecs and suck on his nipples until he shivers from satisfaction.  “Hey bro, you need something?” he asks.“No, but you do,” I say sensually as I slowly walk up to Macky and lightly run one of Andy’s fingers over his pecs.  To my surprise, he doesn’t resist.  “Andy, I-““Shhhhhh,” I coo as I place another finger gently on his lips, shutting him up and forcing him to suck on my finger as I playfully force Andy’s digit into his mouth.  With the hand still on Macky’s pecs I begin circling closer and closer to those hard nipples until I reach those sweet spots and begin stroking and lightly twisting back and forth between them both, making him gasp in disbelief as his inhibitions diminish.  Macky closes his eyes as I bring my lips to his.  We have a long moment where we just stand close to one another, eventually having a moment of long eye contact.  Macky’s mind seems wracked by conflicted wants and desires, but finally he gives in and leans towards me, opening his mouth slightly and gently moving his tongue into Andy’s mouth.  I meet his tongue with Andy’s and we slowly begin wrapping our arms around one another, caressing and affectionately rubbing each other’s bodies.  I run Andy’s hands along the ridges of Macky’s strong back and he reaches into my shirt places his hands under my armpits and begins rubbing and flicking Andy’s nipples with his thumbs, making me coo in blissful gratitude.  The kissing grows more intense, our mouths open wider and wider until little is holding us back.  It’s a battle of tongues and wills as our explorations of each other’s bodies intensifies to match our passionate kissing.  Hands are moving, rubbing, and caressing in a flurry of sexual desire as we both heat up and feel that rise in body heat that can only be explained by a sexual surge of lustful testosterone.  Macky gasps and moans out when I finally can’t take it anymore and I grab onto him tightly and begin grinding Andy’s rock hard boner against Macky’s, the soft fabric of our underwear sending jolts of sensation into our cocks.  He grabs onto me too, locking us together as we both ravenously grind our cocks together, moaning out as we both start showing dark wet spots from all the precum.   Holy fucking shit!  This moment that I’ve dreamed of for so long is finally happening!  I reach my hand into Macky’s snug boxers and grab his cock, gently stroking it and playing with his cockhead, rubbing his precum around the whole head and making him squirm and groan in ecstasy.  I begin picking up my intensity, still locking lips with him as I begin pumping his 8 inch cock, making him finally give in and egg me on.“Oh my fuck!  Andy, that feels so good!” He pants as he buries his face in my neck and begins taking in my scent, licking Andy’s flesh and playfully biting me.  I pump him extra nice and the surprise makes him hop a bit in surprise as he tenses up and accidentally bites me just a bit too hard.  “Oh Shit Andy!  I’m so fucking sorry!”He didn’t draw blood, but there’s definitely going to be a bruise.  That just makes me harder as I glare at him and rip Andy’s clothes off before pushing Macky onto his bed and dropping to Andy’s knees.  I rip Macky’s boxers off his legs and leave him so his legs are hanging off the edge of the bed.  Macky just looks at me with genuine intrigue and excitement, like a child wondering what’s going to happen next as I bury Andy’s face in Macky’s trimmed pubes, huffing in his manly odor while I grab his meaty mounds of muscular pec flesh and squeeze them in my firm grip, then dragging my fingers down the grooves of his abs as I raise my head and bring Andy’s lips around Macky’s ready-to-burst-it’s-so-fucking-hard-cock.   “Ohhhhhh Fuckkkkkkk. Andyyyyyyyyy Fuck yeahhhhhh” Macky moans as he widens his eyes, paralyzed by sensation as I use Andy’s tongue to playfully lick that cock head and swirl it around my mouth, making sure to lick and kiss my way up and down his shaft.  Macky is squirming and breathing deeply, restlessly moving in place as he grabs my head and begins guiding me to go lower and lower onto his cock.  I surprise him and force Andy’s mouth down, sending all 8 inches of Macky’s cock down my throat as my lips ram into his pubes.  Macky goes wild!  He tosses his legs in the air, toes curling as he grabs my head and pulls me down even harder onto his cock, hollering as he thrashes his head around.  Mmmmmm I love the way his abs and pecs pop from the strain as every muscle in his body contracts at once.  I get into a rhtym, guided by his strong hands as I send his cock sliding down my relaxed throat, over and over, faster and faster.  Macky is ecstatic as he is helplessly arching his back, thrusting his hips into his brothers hungry mouth, absolutely lost in the moment to how good it feels to finally satisfy all of these repressed desires.  Then he feels it. Macky feels the most earthshattering orgasm of his life rolling just around the corner, but instead of ride it out, he immediately snaps back to reality.  He looks at me with a look of panic and fury as he pushes me off him.  The force of my suction makes my lips remove from his dick with a forceful pop, sending more shudders of pleasure through his body before he looks at me, shaking his head, covering his boner with a pillow.  “GET THE FUCK OUT!  I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THAT WAS, BUT IT WAS SICK!  NEVER AGAIN, ANDY!  NEVER AGAIN!” he screams as I scurry out of his room, still naked, not bothering to grab my discarded clothes.  God damnit.  So fucking close.  Macky opens the door, bringing me hope that he’ll let me finish him off, but he just throws my clothes at me and slams the door, immediately clicking the lock.   I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but it’s time to start my secondary protocol… Chapter 2.5 Recap: “GET THE FUCK OUT!  I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THAT WAS, BUT IT WAS SICK!  NEVER AGAIN, ANDY!  NEVER AGAIN!” he screams as I scurry out of his room, still naked, not bothering to grab my discarded clothes.  God damnit.  So fucking close.  Macky opens the door, bringing me hope that he’ll let me finish him off, but he just throws my clothes at me and slams the door, immediately clicking the lock.   I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but it’s time to start my secondary protocol…It’s now one day before Macky’s big football game, and I realize I just fucked things up.  God damnit, really, Shane?  A full frontal assault?  I’m such an idiot.  I let lust cloud better judgment and now after coming so close to tasting Macky’s cream, he’s probably retreated deeper into his repressed homosexual denial than ever before and he’ll probably never look at Andy the same way.   Positive memories of Andy and his brother flash through my mind as that brotherly bond part of Andy’s brain tries to make me feel shame for swallowing Macky’s delicious cock.I almost feel nostalgia-induced shame before I laugh out loud at the ridiculousness.  I’m on Andy’s bed horny as hell, and the only shame I feel is that I didn’t get to feel Macky’s man juices surging down his little brother’s throat.  Picking up Andy’s phone, I dial a familiar number and decide to pay a visit to an old friend…“Hey Andy!” my old body greets me at the front door to my old house, “Come on in.” I try to feel a connection to my old life but I feel nothing as I follow my body downstairs to my research hub in the basement.  Shit, I was in such a rush to get out and enjoy Andy’s life that I didn’t even bring any useful gadgets with me.  I’m genuinely proud as we pass by the transference device as I remember Andy helplessly resisting having my knowledge and consciousness downloaded into his brain.  Shit, just thinking about that last bit of fight he put up is getting me hard.  Come on, man.  Breathe.  Breathe deep and focus.  Okay I’m fine.  I quickly grab the disc that has the video and audio footage of the transference, planning on keeping that for future beat off sessions in Andy’s body.  But anyway, my old body has been jabbering on about nonsensical bullshit.  I mean I programmed the AI to pass as me, but I also hampered his intelligence by a significant degree, hoping to prevent a Terminator doomsday world.  Nevertheless, I am still relieved to hear him complain about not knowing how to use any of my equipment.  “What does all this stuff do anyway?” my old body asks.  “Are you ever going to show me how to use or calibrate or whatever any of it?”“Why don’t you just worry about upgrading your PC RAM and getting to level 100 in Skyrim,” I respond with a disinterested tone as I begin depositing all my portable equipment in a duffel bag.  I grab the euphoria inducing aerosol I used to subdue Andy.  Check.  Gas mask.  Check.  Sleep Inducing Drugs.  Check.  And finally, the secondary protocol to my master plan.  Check.  “Yes, Andy.  You’re right.  I’m sorry, sometimes I just get curious.  I mean I played around with the euphoria aerosol a bit when I got bored.  That shit works great!  I just did one spray in the hot Fed Ex guy’s face and he was high long enough for me to suck him off.  TWICE!” I helplessly grin as I realize how good of a mind clone this AI is, even if he has a fraction of my raw intelligence.  Slinging the duffel over my shoulder, I look at him and realize this is the final goodbye to my old life.  Once I walk out the front door, that won’t just be the AI imported into my vacant body.  That will be Shane, and I will be Andy, the new, better Andy.  As I stare at Shane and analyze his asymmetrical face and revoltingly thin profile and I think Good Riddance! Before casually walking back to my house.  Yeah, that’s right-MY house- because my name is Andy. Back in my room I inspect the secondary protocol and devise my plan.  To be honest, this device never went beyond the prototype stage, so I believe it would be wise to perform a test trial on some lucky stud.   The device is extremely powerful, offering the power of absolute suggestion, or in more pop culture terms, mind control.  This device, which consists of electrode infused adhesive pads designed for the temples and a portable power unit that looks like a hand crank radio, but actually contains highly specific brainwave attunement algorithms operated by my custom designed Neuro-override CPU, has the primary function of forcing one to live truthfully.  That’s how I’m going to get Macky- I’m going to convince him that this is a homeopathic sport performance machine, and that’s when I’m going to force him to admit his homosexuality and his raw passionate desire for me.  And not just admit it, he will be forced to live his truth.  The secondary function is to completely reprogram the mind and implant ideas or traits that were never there to begin with.  I’ll have to use that function to reprogram my parents so they don’t think it’s weird that Macky and I will be having so much loud, ravenous sex all over the house.  Mmmmmm that thought of Macky’s 8 inch juicy cock stretching out my virgin hole is getting me so hard.  Gasping out and hearing Andy’s voice sounding frantic as I try to get my breathing under control and relax my ass muscles to let my older brother slide balls deep inside me….Fuck yeah, I need to do my field test now!  Wracking through Andy’s mind I remember that before Monday games there is always a mandatory Sunday practice.  Okay, I close my eyes and sift through Andy’s memories, visualizing faces and bodies until finally I have my test subject picked!  Anthony!  He’s one of Macky’s best friends and shit, I’ll be god damned if it wouldn’t be hot to make that straight tall dark and handsome jock get down on his knees and suck Andy’s cock.  Mmmmmmyeah I let memories and images of Anthony fill my head. Oh fuckkkkk, the stud signed to be a rower at Boston College, so I know he has a firm and strong body underneath those clothes.  I get up and walk to the mirror, reveling in one of my new favorite pastimes as I taunt Andy’s reflection.“Oh you sick fuck.  You’re about to reprogram a nice guy like Anthony and make him some queer cock whore?  Oh you’re a dirty little fucker aren’t you?”  I quickly huff in Andy’s pits, feeling a euphoric headrush from the stench of his boyish odor.  “Little whores like you don’t deserve deodorant” I say to my reflection, watching my satisfaction visible in Andy’s face which has been warped into a wicked smile of triumph.  I give Andy’s ass a firm smack, lightly yelping as I grab a hold of that firm yet juicy cheek and give it a squeeze.“mmmmmmm yeah, so close to finally finishing this damn plan,” I say, giving my reflection one last staredown before I leave to catch Anthony at practice.  “Don’t you ever forget I own you.  I am you.  I’m inside you.  I abuse your body and eat your cum, but you love it because I love it!”I show up to watch the practice, dressed in athletic attire myself.  I figure I might as well hit the gym after this test run- gotta keep my new body in hard and toned shape.  Accessing Andy’s memories, I whip up a quintessential Andy gym jock outfit: long grey compression shorts, black short shorts over top, Andy’s lacrosse jersey, gold chain, backwards facing Georgetown hat, and some compression garments over the elbows.  I put a white nike compression sleeve over the right elbow, but on my left arm just above the elbow, I tie a bright neon pink band.  Just a little something bright and colorful, a first step in showing the world how cute Andy will look when he’s always wearing either neon or bright colors.  I watch the practice diligently, trying to be a good little brother, but feeling tossed to the side as Macky ignores my cheers and tries to dart his gaze away from me whenever possible.  Anthony notices this and sees me looking a little bummed, so when practice is over he invites me out to do a little off the cuff pick me up play.  This is my first time really testing Andy’s agility, and I’ve gotta say, damn that boy can run!  Well, now I can run!  As soon as I get a hold of that ball I dart and weasel my way through a wall of hulking jocks, expertly jumping over and maneuvering my way through until I finally somersault over the last beefy jock, nailing the landing as my feet plant solidly right in the end zone.“TOUCHDOWN!!!!!” I hear Anthony roar, beaming from where I left him in the dust and looking so American boy next door cute in his light pink shorts and T-shirt that shows off all the hard work he’s put into his body.  I mean I can just tell he’s got a nice solid, yet tight and toned torso.  Cobblestone abs just dying to be licked and a perfect V-shape starting at his wide shoulders and solid arms, leading down to his tight and narrow waist.  And fuck me, those legs.  So strong and toned, oh and the perfect amount of brown hair leading up his inner thighs.  I struggle to keep myself from getting a hard-on as he races to where I’m standing and hugs me so hard he hoists me into the air.  “What the fuck man where did that come from?!  That was amazing!” Anthony applauds as he drops me back down to the ground with a thud.  “I think you’ve got a bright future ahead of you as a star quarterback”Admittedly, I get a little lost in the glory, but I see Macky eyeing me from afar, obviously proud of his little brother, but burying that pride underneath his disdain and frost he feels towards me.  I wait for my little crowd of applauding bros and football jocks to dissipate until it’s just me and Anthony.  I agreed to stay behind and help him put away all the equipment since it was his turn to take on that task.  As we’re hoisting helmets and loading water bottles he keeps piling on the compliments, making me genuinely blush.  I wish I could see what I look like right now- I’ve always imagined Andy would look cute with rosy red cheeks.  “Hey Anthony…”“Yeah man.  What can I do for our future MVP?” he responds with sincere kindness.“I got this new thing that I think might help Macky do better tomorrow at the game.  Would you be willing to help me test it out?”“I think Macky will be fine if he takes some notes on you, man.  How the hell are you still JV?  I’m talking to coach first thing after the game and getting you on Varsity, where you belong.  And-““Anthony, please.  This is serious.  I want my bro to do well.  Will you just give me a few minutes?”“Yeah, man.  Of course”I turn to hide the devilish grin on Andy’s face as I unload the secondary protocol and remove the adhesive temple units.  After having Anthony lie down on his back on the abandoned field, I place the units on his temples and he laughs a bit as he shivers from the cold gel.  I tell him to try to relax as I calibrate the device.“So what is this thing again?” Anthony asks.“Oh it’s the newest hot thing in the NFL,” I bullshit him.  “It sends sound waves or some shit directly to where the brain controls nervousness and calms that down, making it easier to focus and get ‘in the zone’”“Wow sweet!  Well maybe if this goes well we can all get a little zap before the game tomorrow.”Poor sucker, I think to myself as I hit the on switch.“UnnnnnnngggggggggggggGGggGGggg WHHHHHHAAAAAATTTTTTTTHHHHEEEEEEFFFFFFFUUUUUUCCCKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!” Anthony screams as the units begin sending shockwaves of electricity into his brain, making every muscle in his body seize, but also breaking his resistance down in preparation for the next phase.  I honestly start to get a little hard watching this toned jock trembling and unintelligibly shouting in so much agony, but I remind myself that hopefully the best is yet to come.   Suddenly, Anthony relaxes, his arched back plummeting to the ground as he stares blankly into the twilight sky, looking peaceful and docile as the machine begins sending a barrage of algorithm impulses directly into his brain.   “Anthony.  How do you feel?”“I feel good, Andy,” he says blankly.“Did you mean what you said earlier?  About thinking I have a shot at varsity?”“Oh absolutely.  I’ve never seen anyone move like that.”“Did you enjoy what you saw as I made that play?”“It makes me happy to see such good football talent.”“No, did you enjoy me?  Did you enjoy watching my body as I bolted and jumped my way through?  Did you like seeing my tight bubble butt and toned arms hurling down the field?  Did you want to just tackle me to the ground and touch and taste my body?” I ask as I crank up the machine’s power level.  He looks like he enjoys it as he begins squirming and his breathing deepens in satisfied gasps the higher the power goes.  “No, Andy.  I think you’re really cool, but I was only focused on the football.  I’m straight and I’ve honestly never had sexual thoughts about other guys.” Well, I guess now is as good of a time as ever to try out the reprogramming feature.  I hit a green button and make a few calibrations before feeding Anthony his new self.“Anthony, you DID want to touch my body earlier.  You wanted to rip off all my clothes and clean my sweaty body clean with your tongue.  You wanted nothing more than to swallow my cock and let me fuck your throat on the field.”“Mmmmmm Yes, Andy.  Your body looks so delicious.  Always wanted to have your cock in my mouth.  Oh yeah, fucking my throat…”“You work out so much to impress men, not chicks.  Now tell me, why do you work out?”“I-I-I want other men to notice my body, to be impressed.”“Because you love attention from other men.  The thought of a handsome hunk forcing his tongue into your mouth and shoving his cock up your ass is such a turn on.  Hell, we’ll make you vers.  The thought of shoving your cock up a tight boy asshole turns you on too.  But tits and pussy are fading from your mind.  Now tell me how much you like this,” I say as I lean over his body and bring my mouth to his, quickly meeting his tongue and enjoying our little oral dance.“Very Much, Andy!” Anthony says, gasping for air as we end the kiss.  “Ohhhhh yeah, dick and ass.  I love the attention of other men.  I just want a dick in my hole.  And I want to be inside tight boy assholes.”“You love cum.  You crave cum.  You want it inside you more than anything whether it’s inside your mouth and throat or inside your ass, you hunger for the warmth and the creaminess.”  Anthony just moans in response.  “Anthony, you are completely, absolutely gay.  You will still talk and act the way you do with your friends, the straight boy persona and all, but everything I have told you is absolutely true.  Is that correct?”“Yes, Andy.  All correct.”“You will do anything I say.  Is that correct?”“Yes, Andy.”“You love following my orders.  Is that correct?” he just gasps and moans, letting me know following my orders will bring him the highest of sexual pleasure. p>“Good boy” I say with wicked satisfaction as I give Anthony another electric surge like before, locking in all of the adjustments and reprogramming his mind.  So far it seems like the secondary protocol is a success, but let’s wait until he wakes up.  The poor guy blacked out from the experience.  “ohhhhh…..Andy is that you?”“Hey Anthony.  I think you fell or something- hit your head probably.  You feel okay?”“mmmmmm Yeah.  Never felt better,” He coos as he stretches out, still lying on his back.   I see him eying me with new lust, an intensity and hunger that wasn’t there before.  “Hey Andy, do you like getting your dick sucked?”“Fuck yeah, dude.  Especially love finding a bimbo who’ll let me cum down his throat.”“Did you say ‘he’?” Anthony asks with hope in his eyes, as well as dramatic tenting in his pink shorts.  “Here, let me help you with that,” I say as I unzip his shorts, freeing that monster cock as it pops out with a BOING.  “Commando?  Wow, that’s so dirty and hot,” I tell him as I grab his fuck stick and begin pumping him slowly.  He’s moaning out, eyes clamped shut, but then I lean down lightly lick the head of Anthony’s cock before taking the whole head in my mouth and swirling the end of his cock with my tongue, setting off all those sensitive nerve endings and making him squirm for dear life beneath me.  “OH Andy!  UNNNGGGGGGGGFUUUUUUCKKK!” He yells as his fist grabs a tuft of grass and his whole body thrashes so powerfully that he rips an entire fistful of grass from the earth.  As much as he enjoys receiving this treatment from me, I can see a glimmer in his eyes that lets me know how badly he wants to service me.  I stand up and tell him to get on his knees in front of me.  “Service my cock”“Oh yes, please, Andy.  You’re so perfect, Andy,” the mindfucked Anthony exclaims as he yanks my black shorts and my compressions down to my ankles, getting slapped in the face by my 7 inches of glory that flop out.  He starts by pumping me, getting me fully hard right away, making me feel empowered as he says things like:“Oh Andy, you’re such a hot boy.  You have the most beautiful cock, Andy.  Oh Andy, you are so fucking cute.”I’m on a high of power, owning Andy’s body and mind as I feel all this pleasure in his cock, and feeling the thrill of having this innocent and sweet reprogrammed jock pumping my man meat.  Anthony looks at me from down on his knees and then looks at my cock.  I know what he wants, so I let him know to go ahead-and no teeth!   To my great shock, he expertly swallows my cock in one smooth motion.  No teeth at all, and he even uses his throat muscles to make a milking, suction on Andy’s cock.  Fuck, I’ve been horny all day in Andy’s post-puberty teen body and Anthony gave me such an expert hand job.  I can’t believe this, but I literally just got the last inch of my cock down Anthony’s throat when my balls seize up and I feel it coming!“Mother Fucking FUCK!!!!!” I shout as I grab Anthony’s head and ram my cock even deeper down his throat, forcing him to swirl around a bit, making him milk every last drop of my cum as it floods directly down his throat.  As full as he is, I can hear him making feral squeals of pleasure and satisfaction.  The pleasure of satisfying me and taking in Andy’s tasty teen juices was so satisfying to Anthony that he starts launching ropes of his own cum, the creamy missiles landing all over the front of my legs and thighs.  As we both calm down and I pull out of his throat I point at the mess he made.Without another word he gets to work licking up his own juices off of my body, savoring the flavors and making me moan as his enthusiastic tongue starts to drift a little too far up my thigh….Fuck I love being Andy…. Secondary protocol is without a doubt a success.  Ready for primary trial.  Mmmmmm Macky, you’re mine now… Chapter 3 Thus far: Shane, a computer tech prodigy, has a deep and powerful hunger for Macky (right), so he has ruthlessly transferred his knowledge and consciousness into Macky’s younger Brother, Andy (left).  Macky is a deeply repressed homosexual, and Shane, in Andy’s body, failed to seduce him.  So, Shane will be using the secondary protocol, a mind control device, to reprogram Macky and make him crave his (unknown to him) possessed brother.   Recap: “Mother Fucking FUCK!!!!!” I shout as I grab Anthony’s head and ram my cock even deeper down his throat, forcing him to swirl around a bit, making him milk every last drop of my cum as it floods directly down his throat.  As full as he is, I can hear him making feral squeals of pleasure and satisfaction.  The pleasure of satisfying me and taking in Andy’s tasty teen juices was so satisfying to Anthony that he starts launching ropes of his own cum, the creamy missiles landing all over the front of my legs and thighs.  As we both calm down and I pull out of his throat I point at the mess he made.Without another word he gets to work licking up his own juices off of my body, savoring the flavors and making me moan as his enthusiastic tongue starts to drift a little too far up my thigh….Fuck I love being Andy…. Secondary protocol is without a doubt a success.  Ready for primary trial.  Mmmmmm Macky, you’re mine now… The night before the big game… Arriving home, sweaty and dirty from my successful trial of the secondary protocol with Macky’s good friend, Anthony, I know the time to act is now.  I don’t even bother changing or showering as I walk to Macky’s room where he’s holing himself up, still doom and gloom over last night’s incident.  I know he wanted to blow his load down my throat, and he will.  He just needs a little push to get over the whole me possessing his little brother without anyone knowing and turning him into a cock hungry whore thing.  And that’s totally understandable.  But with a little help from this device, Andy’s tastebuds will finally get to taste the manly juices as they erupt from his big brother’s cock, and I’ll get to enjoy the privilege of swallowing every last drop.   *Knock knock knock*“Go Away!” Macky shouts from inside.“Come on, man.  Please let me in.  You’re my big bro and I need to talk to you.”“I said go away!” Macky refuses to relent.  “Look, I know I fucked up and pushed too hard last night.  I know we’re both straight.  We’ve just been really stressed and I shouldn’t have been all weird like that, but I honestly just want to help you play better at tomorrow’s game.  So will you please let me in?” I say using the sweetest tone I can possibly muster with Andy’s cute voice.  I hear rustling and grumbling from the other side of the door and Macky’s lumbering footprints as he opens the door, not saying a word, but inviting me in.  I notice he’s just in boxers and when he catches me glancing at him he quickly puts on a T-shirt and some gym shorts to cover himself up.  Why even bother? I think to myself.  You’ll just be ripping them off anyway once I release you from your repressed horny lust for my body.  “So what is it?” Macky asks as he hops onto his bed, landing on his back and relaxing with his hands resting on his tight stomach.  “KT Tape?  Ultrasound?  Tigerbalm?  I’ve already got all of that stuff.” Macky says, closing his eyes and sounding exhausted.   “No way man.  I got this thing from a friend, and it’s the hottest new thing NFL players are using.  It’s all-natural, homeopathic, and junk, but makes you focus like CRAZY.”“Well…Yeah, let’s give it a go,” Macky says, unable to resist anything that’ll make him a better football player.  I get to work, quickly placing the probes on his temples, eliciting the same cold shiver as Anthony when the cold gel pads adhere to his temples.  “So bro, what is this supposed to do exactly?  Are we doing shock therapy or something?  Hahahaha-“*Click*“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHSSSSHHHHHHHHIIIIIITTTTT!!!!!!!  THE FUUUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKK!!!!!!!” Macky screams, writhing in pain as electric impulses are pumped directly into his brain.  Every muscle in his body is contracting at the same time, making his face turn bright red from strain as he grits his teeth with his eyes clamped shut, face scrunched into one of agony as the veins on his neck dilate until they look like they’ll pop.  Mmmmmmm you should see Macky’s abs and pecs right now, all tight and toned and looking shredded from the electricity disabling his nervous system.  His back is arched with such force that he’s airborne off the bed.  Finally, he collapses with a thud onto the bed, lightly moaning as his deep breathing calms down and he just stares at the ceiling, his psyche’s defenses shattered as his brain is penetrated by waves of algorithm impulses.  I decide to start simple, realizing that Macky’s fragile mind also has the deepest repressed feelings.  “Macky, can you hear me?”“Yes, Andy,” he answers with a soft and peaceful tone.“How do you feel Macky?“I was in pain, but now I feel very good.  My head feels very funny, but I love the vibrations I feel coursing through me.”“Those are the probes, Macky.  They’re sending algorithms into your brain.  Those algorithms will rewire your brain and make you a better football player.  You just have to be honest with me.  I promise I’ll do the same.”“No….No.  Can’t be honest,” he replies with more worry and conflicted tone to his voice.“Why can’t you be honest with me?  I’m your little brother.  We’ve always been such good pals.  You’re the reason I got into football because I saw you looking all serious and powerful and I wanted to be just like you.”  I dip into Andy’s memories and my own memories of practice earlier that day to create that shtick.  I must tread carefully though.  “There’s something.  Can’t say.  Too much shame.”“There’s no such thing as shame between us.  We’re too close for that.  Here, you tell me who you think I am and I’ll tell you who I really am.”“You’re Andy.  You’re my little brother.  You’re athletic and love the attention you get from the ladies.  You’re straight and pretty calm and chill,” Macky responds with subdued confidence in his response.  “No, Macky.  You’re right that my name is Andy, that I’m your little brother, and that I’m athletic, but I don’t give two shits what the ladies think about me.  I am as gay as they come and when I’m alone I don’t like to be chill; I’m a sexual deviant and love perverted sexual taboos.”“What do you mean?” Macky blankly responds with a hint of confusion and curiosity.  “Jesus, man.  I’m saying I like taking it up the ass and I like swallowing hot, fresh cum.”“But-““I was honest with you, now you be honest with me, big bro.”“I-I-I…..I’m…”“You’re?”“I’m gay…” Macky finally says out loud, a cloud of tension years in the making evaporates from his psyche as he lays in bed, saying that phrase in different ways, finally being forced to confront his truth and live it.  “I’m Macky and I’ve been gay as long as I know.  I’m gay.  I’m gaaaaay.  I’m gayyyyyy,” Macky says, exploring different ways of admitting his homosexuality.  Unbenownst to him, he’s self-reinforcing his truth as his phrases, with the assistance of the algorithms, bust through his walls of secrecy and shame.“Tell me how you know you’re gay” I probe.“There’s just nothing like a nice tight, solid bro ass, just waiting for me to slide my cock inside of.  I’ve always wanted to seed a cute twink ass, to have a lean and toned boy to call my own and love and hold close to me at night, and to pound whenever he needs a reminder of who his hole belongs too,” Macky says softly, revealing his truest and deepest desires.  I notice that Macky is starting to get really hard, his erection threatens to burst out of his boxers.  And to be honest, I’m starting to feel Andy’s cock swell up as I try to process how perfect this is going so far.  Soon you’ll be mine, Macky.  We’re at the finish line.  “Do you care what people think about you?  Does any of that matter when you have the chance to slide your meat inside a cute twink and finally have the satisfaction of cumming so powerfully inside him that you think you might pass out?” Macky just stares blankly, twitching slightly as my algorithms force him to embrace his truth.  Finally, he relaxes again and says, “The thoughts of others don’t matter.  All that matters is that I have a cute boy to embrace and seed.”“Good, Macky.  We’ve made so much progress.  Do you think we’ve made progress?”“Yes, Andy.  You’re forcing me to face what I really am, but I’m thankful.  Now I can start looking for a tight virgin ass to make my own.”“You won’t have to look far!” I exclaim with a chuckle.“What do you mean, Andy?” Macky asks with a hint of concern penetrating his relaxed mental state.  “Well, now that you’ve finally accepted that you’re gay we can finish what we started last night and finally let you blow a load deep inside my tight virgin ass.  Isn’t that what you want?  To grab onto me tightly as you thrust your strong hips against me, sending all 8 inches of your juicy cock inside me, making me yell loud enough that it echoes through the whole house?” I ask, hoping to clarify his desires for him.“Oh No, Andy.  I am gay.  Deep down to my core gay.  And I’m glad you’re gay too and that you have my back like I’ll have yours from now on.  But we can’t be together.  We’re brothers.  I love you, but as a bro and a friend.  Last night was complicated.  I was repressing so much.  It just erupted out of me, but I shouldn’t have let things get so out of hand with you.  We can’t ever be together like that,” Macky says with quiet certainty.  I can’t believe this shit!  Frantically, I check the readings on the device, also making sure the probes are still adhered properly.  Fucking Damnit!  Everything checks out, so it’s not possible for him to lie to me right now.  After everything I’ve been through!  After all the years of Macky punishing me for his repressed homosexuality and still making me fall head over heels for him!  After possessing his cute and fit little brother so he could have someone hot enough for him to cum inside of!  After going through the damn trouble of making him embrace his masculine and powerful gay desires!  And he still doesn’t want to be with me!  I’m so fucking mad that without even thinking I grab the secondary protocol device and begin furiously making adjustments.  This was definitely not part of the plan, but I don’t give a fucking fuck!  I hit that green button and prepare to override Macky’s familial love and respect for me as his little brother, Andy.   Macky trembles powerfully, his brain being pummeled by algorithms designed to reprogram his thoughts and perception of the world.  “Do you think I’m hot?!” I ask angrily, constantly raising the power and intensity of the device’s impulses.  “No- Can’t-You’re my little brother, Andy.  Please….”“You want me.  Tell me you want me!  Tell me you want to touch my body!”“W-w-w-w-ant you…NO WAIT-yes, want you.  Want to touch your-Andy, please!- oh no-yes…yes I want to touch your body,” Macky says as he goes back and forth from malleable victim and resistant older brother.  It really is admirable how much he is able to fight this, but there are 30 power levels and we just barely cracked past level 7.  Click-just raised to level 8.  “You want to taste my tongue and kiss me passionately because you are in love with me.  I am your little brother, Andy, who you’ve known and loved as a brother all your life, but now it’s time to see me as a lover.”“Noooooooo…Andy, you can’t-“Click-level 9“Your tongue…want to taste your tongue.  Kiss…you….want to-no why am I thinking this?  You’re my brother! I can’t-“Click-level 10“Yes, kissing your mouth is good.  Mmmmmm yes, Andy, I love the taste of your mouth because we’re lovers-OH MY…no this is wrong this is so wrong!  I won’t! I-“ Click-Click-Click-Click-Click-Level 15“Unnnnnnggggggggggyeaaaaaahhhhhhunnngggggggggg,” Macky groans as he thrashes his head around, being overwhelmed by the surge of overpowering brain power algorithms.  “I love you Andy!  I crave you as a lover.  Want to hold you in my arms every night-feel your warmth comforting me-I want to be the person you wake up next to every morning.  Yes, Andy!  From now until the end of time,” Macky exclaims with enthusiasm and passion as he looks at me with fierce longing in his eyes, longing to hold me in his arms and protect me from the dangers of the world.  The only thing keeping him from sweeping me into his arms is the device, still immobilizing his body by pouring mind control algorithm impulses into his brain because I’m not done with him yet.  “You love me, but you also want to dominate me.  To make me your little boycunt.  You want my mouth around your thick man meat,” I say, getting hard again from the sheer amount of perversion taking place.  “Waittttt-Bbbbbut I love you.  Don’t want to dominate—Maybe just a little….No! I just want to hold you close and never let go-“ Click-Click-Click-Click-Click-Level 20“OhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhFFUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKKKK,” Macky yells as his back arches, the veins swelling on his neck as the muscles in his neck and face contract.  “Yeahhhhhh Andy, I fucking love you so much, but don’t forget that I own your tight boycunt.  Yeah, you’re gonna be using those fine lips and your smooth throat to service my meat.  Fuck yeah, you’re a whore, but you’re my whore that I fucking love,” Macky says with a sneer and a shade of pride and self-confidence that has never existed in him before.  Fuck I’m so hard right now, watching him squirm as his brain is pounded over and over again by my program, making all these utterances of his permanent changes to his personality.  I smile wickedly as I realize we’re almost done.  Just one more thing left, and I suspect it will rouse Micky’s last shred of fight.“You want to seed my tight virgin hole.  You want to mark my hole as yours for life by sliding your 8 inch cock inside me, and fucking a load of your cream inside me.  My moans and shouts will turn you on so much as you look down and see me, your little brother looking up at you, hungry for your cock inside me, and so grateful to be so full of you.  That’s where your cock belongs- Inside me!” The new Macky is squirming in delight, but as expected, the old Macky returns for one last showing of his immense willpower.  “Seed your fucking tight virgin-HOLY SHIT NO!  NO NO NO WAY I—-want to mark your hole as mine for life.  That’s right, this load will coat your insides and then you’ll be mine forever, Baby Bro.  Hope you beg for Big Bro’s cock to give you what you need, a nice and creamy—GOTTA FIGHT UNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGG PLEASE!!!!  YOU’RE MY LITTLE BROTHER!!!!!—and when I look down and see your delight as my cock fills you up, I’ll roar with satisfaction as I give you what you need and fill your tight hole with my—COME ONE, MACKY!!  FIGHT IT!!!! YOU GOTTTAAAA ARRGGGGHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!”I let Macky thrash around, allowing him to be convinced he can fight back and beat it.  Mmmmmmm, watching him thrash his head around, helplessly trying to hold on to his decency is making me so hard.  I can feel Andy’s precum leaking out of his cock like a faucet.  Holy Shit, I think I feel it dribbling down my leg!  Enough of this Bullshit! I reach into Macky’s boxers and grab onto his hard cock and begin pumping him powerfully, bringing him closer and closer to orgasm, before stopping right as he reaches the orgasm level.  “Does that feel good?!” I ask as I pump Macky and edge him for the 17th time.  “Yesssssssssssssss!” Macky screams in delight, desperately thrusting his hips and trying to hump his cock into my tight grip.  “Pleaseeeeee let me cum!”“You know what you have to say, Macky!  SAY IT!  SURRENDUR!”“No, but I can’t!  Gotta-“I remove my hand from his boxers, leaving him helplessly fucking the air as I edge him for the 18th time.  Tears start flowing down Macky’s face as he humps away, so powerfully that he’s shaking the bed.  “PLEASE, ANDY!!!!  I NEED TO CUM!” Macky yells with panicked desperation. I reach over and pinch one of his perky nipples, making him moan as I menacingly look him in the eyes and tell him, “Say it!”“OHHHHHHH FUCK OKAY!   YOU WIN I SURRENDUR, JUST PLEASE LET ME CUM!”“Glad you saw things my way,” I say with a smirk as I reach into his boxers, making him smile and moan with giddy relief and delight as I pump him closer and closer towards the biggest orgasm of his life thus far.  Macky is moaning in appreciation, curling his toes, and smiling as his face is carved into a close-eyed smile of ecstasy.  He’s grinding and thrusting his hips into my grip around his swollen and throbbing cock and right as his breathing starts huffing louder and faster and harder, making him look like a struggling triathlete and letting me know he’s just a few seconds from cumming, I finish him off and destroy whatever remnants of resistance remain inside his brain.  Click-Click-Click-Click-Click-Click-Click-Click-Click-Click-Level 30…Macky’s entire body seizes up and convulses with such power I worry he’ll snap in half as the maximum power of impulses flood directly into his brain!  His mouth is wide open, face bright red, and the veins on his neck threatening to burst as he tries to scream, but no sound comes out.  His back arches in spasms, making him flop in place on the bed like some sort of dolphin having an agonizingly powerful orgasm.  Then, nothing….Macky stares at the ceiling, no words leaving his mouth as a dribble of drool leaks out of his mouth.  Holy Shit I pushed too hard!  I fucking fried his brain!  What the fuck am I gonna-“My cock belongs inside of…you.  My thick manly cock belongs inside of you, My little brother, My lover, my boycunt.  Fuck yeah, Andy, you’re gonna beg me for my cream seeding your ass, and I’m gonna hold you so tight to me as I muffle your screams of pleasure with my mouth.  I fucking love you, Andy!  I’m ready to spend the rest of my days holding you tight late at night and early in the morning, and pounding your boypussy whenever I need to,” Macky says with absolutely no resistance.  He starts convulsing and shouting again, this time because he’s feeling the delayed sensation of blowing an enormous load in his boxers, soaking the entire crotch area and still dumping enough hot cream that it oozes out the thigh holes.  Macky just quivers, sighing with relief and satisfaction before I seal in the session with the electrical impulse, knocking him unconscious from the overwhelming power of the previous events, and permanently sealing all of the new and kinky changes to Macky.  Even though my cock is throbbing and dripping precum down my leg now in a steady stream, I look over at Macky, slumbering peacefully, and decide to cut him some slack before the big game tomorrow.  The guy needs his rest and there will be plenty of time to spend with him afterwards.  I walk down the hall and hop onto Andy’s bed, realizing that my plan has finally pulled through.  Not bothering to change these wet with precum boxers, I just scoop up as much of Andy’s precum as possible and rub it all over his face like lotion, enjoying the smell of his boy juices as I drift off to sleep.  Fucking hell yeah, transferring my consciousness into your tight and lean boy body was the best decision I ever made, Andy.  “So fucking hottt…..” are my last words of the night as I drift off.   The Big Day“Did you see that play?!” Macky asked me as he lovingly hugged me in his arms and lifted me into the air after scoring the winning touchdown.  He was being borderline too affectionate, and I had to hiss at him to let me down when he instinctively tried to kiss me.   “Bro!  We’re in public!  Put me down so we can take pictures.  You’ll get your reward later!” I hiss playfully into his ear.   He begrudgingly puts me down as we pose for some photos together.  “Hey Andy.” “Yeah, Bro?” I answer. “You’re the best little brother ever.  I just wanted you to know that.  I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but I know what’s gonna be getting into you when we get back to the house.” “You’re the best big brother ever.  I love you, and I’m so happy to give you your victory fuck.” He gives my ass a playful squeeze, risking getting seen in public.  The element of danger makes it so hot.  Fuck yeah, I can’t wait to get back to the house.  You know, Macky sure is right- I’m the best little brother ever…or I would be if I actually was his little brother.   We’re done with all the pictures and I’m riding shotgun with Macky, who is still elated after scoring the winning touchdown.  Normally he’d shower with the rest of the team, but he practically carried me to the car, bent on getting home ASAP.   “Are you sure you don’t wanna shower with your bros and celebrate your win?” I ask him as we cruise along the road to our home.   “You’re the only bro that matters and we’ll be celebrating, alright,” he says with a wink that makes me blush.  I’ve been in Andy’s body for 3 days now, and I’m already realizing this was the best decision I’ve ever made.  I flash my now older brother a devilish smile before I reach a toned arm over and grab his thick man meat, massaging it with my soft hands and enjoying the feeling of it growing in my grip. “ohhhhhhhhhh fuck….Andy that feels so good.  Wait, we should-“ “Start celebrating right now” I interrupt as I lean over at the redlight and grab his face, forcing my tongue into his mouth and enjoying this passionate kiss as he explores my mouth also.  “I know you’re good for more than one round of celebration” I tease him as I slide my hand into his shorts and grab his rod and begin stroking him.  I know he can’t wait any longer when he’s moaning like a bitch in heat as he thrusts into my grip on his cock.   “Oh fuck bro!   GOD YEAH MAN THAT FEELS SO GOOD!” Macky shouts as I begin sliding his 8 inches into my mouth and down my perfectly relaxed throat.  He surprises me when he involuntarily thrusts the last 2 inches into me, immediately bringing my lips down to the base of his cock, forcing me to take in the sweaty man odor of his trimmed bush.  I breathe it in gladly as I get ready for one hell of a car ride home.  “OH FUCKKKKKKK!!!!” Macky shouts as he dumps endless rivers of cum down my throat.  I hungrily eat every last drop, making sure that whatever didn’t get dumped directly down Andy’s throat is immediately consumed.  Macky is shivering with pleasure and giddy joy and I actually have to grab the steering wheel because he doesn’t see that truck that just slowed down.  “Holy Shit Balls that was close dude!” Macky shouts, breaking out of his euphoria.  We both laugh together and he just says, “We’ll have to practice the road head more.  I’ve gotta work on my focus,” he tells me with a wink as he reaches his hand and grabs my firm rod through the silky fabric of these shorts, firmly gripping and massaging the rock hard mound trapped in this compression underwear.  He keeps rubbing me until a wet spot forms on my compressions, a nice healthy flow of Andy’s precum as well as my squirming body and attempts to keep my moaning under control let Macky know how much I want him, how much his loving brother, Andy, is turned on by him.  When he slips his hand into these compression shorts and wraps his strong fingers around Andy’s marble hard cock, he knows this cock is hard because I want his body and his dick cumming inside me as our sweaty bodies are grinding all over one another.   He looks at me intently, squeezing, massaging, stroking, jacking my cock as I flash him a smile, gasping for breath and ask him, “Are we there yet?”“Bro, you better be a good boy.  You ask me that again and I’ll pull this car over right now and we’ll start on the side of the road,” he says with wickedly cute mischief.   I just lay back and relax, moaning in appreciation as Macky expertly pumps my cock, bringing me closer and closer to shooting a load all over his new car.  Fuck, that would be hot!  Then we can both lick it off together.  Mmmmmm God, I love Macky, but I love possessing his little bro, Andy, even more! Thank God, we just got home!  The folks are still in Napa Valley-guess they figured we had things under control, and boy do we!  Macky is cursing as he frantically tries to shove the key to unlock the front door.  I can smell his musky and manly sweat, still fresh from his football game where he made his team and his little brother proud.  *CLICK*“Finally!” Macky exclaims as he opens the door and I eagerly follow him inside.   *UMF* He pushes me playfully and forcefully against the wall, forcing his mouth over mine as he finally gets to express everything he feels inside.  I know this is my doing, but it is just so fucking hot to let him think these are his own thoughts and feelings.  Macky briefly comes up for air.“Oh Fuck, Andy I love you so fucking much.  I want your lean, toned boy body so much.  To be on top of you and feel you underneath me as I hold you tight and show you that you belong to me.”He smiles at me adoringly before locking his mouth back over mine, wrestling his tongue with my surprised mouth before he starts grinding his crotch against my own, making me moan with longing as his force and grinds keep me helplessly pinned against the wall.  Macky grabs my arms and pins them against the wall above my head.  For fun I try to escape his grip, but with his strong arms I remain completely locked in place.  Macky giggles at my futile attempts.  “I love you, my little loverboy,” he says as he closes his eyes and leans in to take a deep huff of my neck.“Andy, you smell so gooooood” Macky gasps before he starts licking up and down my neck, taking in my taste, finding a spot next to his bite mark from a few days ago, sucking so hard I can almost feel the blood vessels bursting!  I yelp, my cock twitching from excitement, something he can still feel since he is still grinding his hard cock and crotch against my own.“And you taste fucking fantastic,” he says before locking his mouth over mine again, letting go of my arms as he wraps his arms around me, cupping my tight boy ass cheeks and lifting me into the air.  I wrap my legs tightly around him and circle my arms around his neck as he effortlessly carries me upstairs.“I bet your virgin boycunt tastes even better” he coos, giving my ass such a tight squeeze that I yelp before he shuts me up with another sloppy kiss.  *OOMF*I land on my back as Macky tosses me onto his bed and climbs on top of me.  The feeling of his weight on top of me is extremely comforting and with his new programing it must be for him too since he wants nothing more than to love, protect, adore, and dominate his little brother, Andy.  Lucky for me, I’m the one inside Andy’s brain.   Macky grunts as he leans back, straddling me as he grabs my shirt by the collar and rips it in half.  He finishes ripping it off before he rips his shirt off too and leans back down to grind his chest against mine, keeping me trapped underneath his larger and more muscular body as the taste of his mouth and tongue take me to a heaven, the feeling of his hands grabbing and squeezing my tight boy pecs and nipples take me to whatever is above that.  Mmmmmmm I can see the passionate lover side of Macky.  He’s so loving and protective so far that I almost forget about the domination until he shoves his sweaty pit over my face, making me take in a huff and lick his pits clean after all the grueling and dirty sweat he earned on that hot football field.  Egging me on, Macky sighs with approval, telling me I’m being a good little brother.  His approval makes Andy’s cock dump out a stream of precum, making me moan out in desperation as I hear Macky tell me, “Mmmmmmm yeah, you have to earn the privilege of having my cock in your boycunt.  You gonna show your big bro how much you want it.  Go ahead, show me.”Macky gets off me and lays flat on his back, his shirtless body tantalizing and tempting.  He still has his football cleats and jock strap and football pants, etc. on, so I start by taking off his cleats and socks, getting smacked by a manly odor so strong I feel like I just got punched by a comic book villain named testosterone.  I can’t help but lick all over these grimy feet, making Macky squirm as I clean his ticklish feet for him.  I finally get up to the toes, using Andy’s mouth to suck each one individually until I’m sure there is no trace of his manly filth left.   I can’t help it anymore and strip off the rest of Andy’s clothes, wanting to show off my body to Macky and gain his approval.  As I finally get my tight compressions off (a difficult task with an erection this hard) Macky looks at me with a twisted mix of adoration and dominance.  Just that one look from him makes another drop of precum ooze out of Andy’s cock, making me go into a frenzy as I try to gain Macky’s approval so he’ll finally let my virgin boycunt be full of his 8 inch man meat.  I grab both waistbands, his shorts and his jockstrap, and I pull them down off his legs in one smooth motion before I toss them across the room.  Macky’s cock pops out and smacks his abs, making a pop sound that almost echoes through the room, eliciting a giggle from him that instantly morphs into a moan as I grab his cock with his little brother’s hand and begin pumping him with a tight and purposeful grip.  “Ohhhhhhhhhhhh Andy, little bro, you’re a good little boycunt.  Keep showing me how much you want it.  Prove yourself to meEEEEEEEEEE- Oh FUCK!” Macky shouts as I keep pumping him while also using my tongue to gently and tantalizingly lap up the precum oozing out of his dick, setting off a firestorm of sensation through that fat cock head.  Macky begins thrusting into my pumping grip, hollering out as I keep flicking his cockhead with my tongue, teasing his cock and making him more and more frustrated as he wishes for nothing else than to feel full satisfaction for his wet with precum cock.  Finally roaring in frustration from my tease, which was just what I wanted, he gets up and roughly flips me onto my back, spreading my legs forcefully as he yells at me, “Oh I know exactly what you’re doing, little bro!  A little boycunt like yours is desperate to be full of big bro’s cock.  Well let’s see how you like a tease!” He says as he lowers his head between my thighs and takes in the boyish odor of my virgin hole, tightly licking rings around it, making my thighs literally convulse with anticipation and desire.  I gasp when he finally places the tip of his tongue right on the middle of Andy’s perky rose bud and slowwwwwlllllly begins forcing his tongue inside me.  “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Mackyyyyyyyyyy” I can’t help but groan as he begins swirling inside me, getting me lubed and slick for his fat cock.  I grab Andy’s sensitive nipples and keep moaning out in longing and desire as I muse to myself how earth-shattering it is that this moment has finally arrived.  “Yeah keep moaning for me, you whore!  Your boycunt fucking loves it!” Macky grunts before thrusting his tongue back inside me, making me yelp and making my hole clamp down on his tongue so tight that he struggles to pull his tongue out of me.  “Damn, Andy.  You must really want it.  Show me how much you fucking want this cock,” Macky commands as he taunts me with that hard cock, playfully slapping my balls with it before circling it around my tight virgin hole, making me try to thrust against him in the hopes that maybe I can spear Andy’s virgin hole at least with Macky’s thick cock head.  “Oh you’re not ready for this meat yet, little bro.  Show me how much you want it.  Get yourself read for me!”“Yes Macky!  I’m sorry, Macky!  You’re too big for a virgin hole like mine” I gasp as I begin shoving Andy’s fingers into his virgin hole for the first time.  OOOOOHHHHHH FUCK ANDY IS TIGHT! Even though Macky loosened me up a bit with his tongue it still takes all I’ve got just to get a single finger all the way inside.  I sigh with relief as I finally get the finger inside me all the way to the base of my hand, and then I groan in pain as I try to gently pull the finger in random directions, hopefully stretching this hole enough to make room for another finger.  “You gotta do better than that if you want THIS inside you!” Macky shouts as he pumps his hard meat, enjoying the show.  “Right now, you better slide two fingers in easily into your whore virgin ass or you won’t get to feel me sliding inside you!”“Noooooooo I need your cock inside me!” I desperately respond.  “I can do it, Macky.  Your little brother cock whore can impress you and win the privilege of feeling you inside me!  Let me prove it!”Using all of my willpower and my immense and absolute control over Andy’s body, I try with all my might to relax Andy’s sphincters and ass muscles as I slide two fingers in all the way, gasping a huge breath and a sigh of relief as I get them in all the way until the top of my palm is jabbing against my hole.   “Fuckkkk yeahhhhh” Macky says with wide eyes and a predatory hunger as he watches me moan and squirm from the delight of finger fucking Andy’s tight hole.  I open my eyes and see him approaching me, finally willing to give me what I need, so I pull my fingers out and grab at his bed sheets as I wait for what’s coming.  “Unnnnnngggggggg OH MACKY!” I yell as he slowly forces the head of his cock inside my tight virgin hole.  Holy Shit!  I still don’t think I was ready for this!  But it feels so good to finally be filled!  Macky slowly pushes deeper and deeper inside me, using his strong hips to push, inch after inch.  The feeling of his thick cock stretching Andy’s deep insides is surreal!  And the feeling of Andy’s tight ass squeezing onto Macky’s cock as he just keeps pushing in is making me grip at those sheets and yelp out in Andy’s voice, “Oh my GOD!  Macky you’re so BIG!!!! UNnnnNNNNNGGGGG!!!!”   I thrash my head around a bit and squirm from head to toe as Macky finally leans down, sweaty chest on my chest as he grunts and thrusts the last two inches in HARD.  I see just white for a second as I blank out, overwhelmed by Macky’s 8 inches fully inside me, feeling completely full and penetrated.  And even though he’s giving me a chance to get used to his cock, he’s still moving his hips around in a swirly motion, making his fully plugged cock rotate and rub all the nerve endings so deep inside me I could never dream of reaching them on my own.  I wrap my legs around his strong ass and pull him tightly into me, grunting as Macky shoves his tongue back into my mouth and begins pulling his cock out.  The feeling of his cock leaving me and scraping against my nerve endings makes me feel both incomplete and hallucinatory, but then:“Ohhhhhhhhhhh FUCK!” I scream as Macky thrusts back into me in one hard, fast, motion, completely filling me up and making my back involuntarily arch.  “You FUCKING LOVE IT!” Macky hollers has he pumps his cock into my hungry hole, grunting as he pushes my legs up and wraps his arms around me, making it easier to fill me up.  “OHHHHHHH!!!    I” *THRUST* “FUCKING” *THRUST* *LOVE” *THRUST THRUST THRUST!!!!* “IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! UNNNNNGGGGGGAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”I reach a hand and caress Macky’s back, helplessly pummelled underneath Macky’s strong body as he pumps in and out of my hole, talking so dirty to me and finally making me feel loved.  “Fuck yeah, Andy!  You’ve got such a nice tight hole.  FUCKING TAKE THIS SHIT!  TELL ME HOW MUCH YOU FUCKING LOVE IT!  YOU LOVE HAVING BIG BRO’S COCK INSIDE YOU!”“OH MACKY!  MY TIGHT HOLE FUCKING LOVE’S YOUR BIG BRO COCK!  UGHHHHH MMMMMMMMMMM PLEASE!!!  PLEASE FUCK ME HARDER-OH! FUCK MMMMM YEAH!!!!!”“SUCH” *THRUST* “A NICE” *THRUST THRUST* “BOYCUNT!  UNGGGGGGYEAH TAKE THAT DICK!” *THRUST THRUST THRUST THRUST THRUST THRUST!!!!!!!!* “MACKY!!! THANK YOU, MACKY!” I holler in joy as I see the look of ecstasy in his face before he leans back down and buries his face in my neck, giving my hickey a hickey as he uses his hands to rub up and down my smooth and toned body, making special attention to my developing pecs as he grabs that lean muscle and squeezes, using his thumbs to flick my nipples.  This continues for almost half an hour, leaving me borderline hallucinogenic, when Macky finally says, “GET ON ALL FOURS!  I’M GONNA FUCKING CUM!  I’M SO CLOSE, ANDY!  BIG BRO’S GONNA BREED YOUR HOLE LIKE THE BOYCUNT SLUT YOU ARE!”I enthusiastically get on hands and knees as Macky lunges at me, spearing all eight inches inside me in one rough animalistic thrust!“AHHHHHHHHHHHHH” I scream in a shrill voice.“SHUT UP, ANDY!  FUCKING FUCK!  SO CLOSE!  DO YOU WANT THIS LOAD?!  YOU WANT BIG BRO’S HOT CUM FLOODING YOUR INSIDES!”“UNNNNNGGGGGG YES, MACKY!  PLEASE FILL ME WITH YOUR Hot CUM!!!!“I’M GONNA DUMP THIS LOAD IN YOU AND MAKE YOU MINE FOREVER!  THIS-UNNNNNNGGGGYEAH!!!!-THIS HOLE BELONGS TO ME NOW!”“YES MACKY!  MY TIGHT BOYCUNT BELONGS TO YOU NOW!  WHENEVER YOU WANT, MY HOLE IS YOURS!  I’M LUCKY TO RECEIVE YOUR HOT LOADS!” I yell as my face is scrunched up in overwhelming pain and pleasure.  I use my ass muscles to try to milk the cum right out of Macky’s cock, so desperate to be filled, but Macky just grabs on to me tightly and says, “NOT YET!”Fuck!  I feel my balls tightening.  I just can’t take it anymore!  The feeling of Macky filling up Andy’s hole and the satisfaction it brings me!  I start breathing deeply, grunting and moaning as the pressure builds.  But Macky can sense this; he grabs me by my throat and turns my head around as he tells me, “You don’t have big bro’s permission!”I clench tightly, holding back this orgasm as he keeps thrusting inside me, sliding his cock against all my stretched out muscles and nerve endings and pounding that abused prostate!  Oh FUCK!!! THIS IS SO HARD!  I NEED TO CUM OH GOD I NEED TO CUM!“PLEASE MACKY!” I wail with desperation.  The force of my effort to clench this orgasm inside is making my abs and groin feel like they’re going to rip into shreds.  I scream in agony as the pressure keeps building, refusing to be subdued by me.  I make a fist and desperately start pounding the bed as Macky keeps using his strong hips and abs to slide his meat in my smaller body, hovering over me in a display of ownership and dominion.  “MACKY PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!” I scream as tears begin streaming down my face.“OH, ANDY! HERE IT COMES!   HERE-UNNNGGGG-IT FUCKING-OH SHIT-CUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMSSSSSSSSSS!” Macky roars as he finally grabs onto me and pulls me so tight into his final thrust that I think our bodies might merge.  He digs that cock deeper and harder than ever before as a flood of cum explodes out of his cock, making my hole feel warm and full as he keeps grunting, fucking ropes and ropes of cum into my satisfied boycunt.  “OHHHHH FUCK!” Macky yells as he looks down and sees that he’s cumming so much that each thrust is squeezing previous cum out of my flooded hole, making room for the next load that shoots out of his orgasmic cock.  I Finally let go and I can’t even describe what I feel as my untouched cock finally gets sweet sweet relief.  I just pass the fuck out!I wake up several hours later, or at least I think it’s several hours later.  It’s dark in Macky’s room now, so I’m guessing it’s night time.  I’m still pinned down comfortably on my stomach as his larger and more muscular body is passed out on top of me.  His cock is soft now, but it’s big enough that it’s still plugged inside me, bringing me a sense of comfort and safety as I drift back to sleep, a smile plastered on my face as Macky’s light snoring serves as my lullaby.  I briefly have a flashback to the game we went to together just two short days ago when I first started making my move.  Oh how far we’ve come (and cum) since then.“I love you, Macky,” are my last words right before I close Andy’s eyes, finally happy that I have the perfect life.

[pcy-babygirl]

Pairings: Lee Taeyong x Female!Reader, NCT x Female!Reader (platonic) Genre: Dark!AU, Criminal/Gang!AU, Superhuman!AU // angst, slow burn, smut Series Warnings: dark themes (experimentation/human enhancement, kidnapping, thievery, murder), blood, sex, alcohol consumption, (more will be added if needed)

Chapter Warnings: alcohol consumption, angst if you squint (i think that’s it)

Word Count: 3.2k

Notes: Hey, so this is my first fanfic so I hope it isn’t terrible. I spent a long time writing this first chapter, trying to perfect it. I don’t make it super clear in this chapter, but this story takes place sometime in the near future or maybe in an alternative universe that has advanced technology than what we have today. I had cyberpunk aesthetic in mind when writing (i.e blade runner, cyberpunk 2077, etc.). This story won’t have humaniods or cyber enhanced people, but their will be biological and chemical experimentation involved. If you are uncomfortable with this then I suggest not reading. Anyway, happy reading! ♡

Heathens Masterlist

- Synopsis -

Heathens; this was what they called each other. People who didn’t fit into society nor were like other humans. A group of outsiders who had a plan, one that involved a naive and confused girl.

They were given numbers as names, but she knew them as NCT.

“We are the used and forgotten; you babygirl, are the innocent and brainwashed. In the end we’re both heathens to this unacknowledged dystopia.”

     Neon lights, holographic billboards, and heavy traffic was all that you could see from the high level your room was on. Days were dull and desolate, while nights like tonight glowed fluorescent by technology and culture. Seoul had become the center for all advancing technology. The world calls it the future; where cures for fatal diseases would be discovered and life moved twenty times faster, it seemed. They call it: Neo City. 

The alarm on the glass screen brings you back from your absent mindedness, alerting that it was time to leave for the fundraiser dinner. Walking away from the window and to the object mounted to the wall, you tap the glass and dismiss the reminder. You slip your uncomfortable heels on and check your appearance in the mirror. The sleeveless, cut-out dress was minimal yet elegant. The black material complimenting your skin tone nicely. 

“You look stunning Y/N-ssi.”

“Thank you, Athena.” You reply back to the artificial intelligence system. Something the movies predicted, eventually the high class started living like Tony Stark with their own personal Jarvis. It was something that you found unnecessary.

Satisfied after smoothing your hair another time, you take the elevator down to the ground floor. A car was waiting for you when you stepped outside the apartment building. Rolling your eyes as you get in; you thought, “how typical of him”. 

The fundraiser dinner was a get together for investors who were interested in your father's corporation, a research organization for cancer. Dinners like tonight were important, so you were told. It was to bring in new investors while also encouraging current investors to donate more based off of the newest research found. They were nothing compared to the annual gala your father holds for the corporation, which was his form of gratitude for his employees. As the founder's daughter, you were expected to attend all formal events.

The self-driving car pulls up to your destination and the backseat door opens automatically. You step out of the sleek vehicle and onto smooth, city concrete. Staring up at the tall building you get the feeling of déjà vu. 

Always on the ground floor but never exploring what was above. Curiosity eats at you every time you go to one of these events. The opportunity to go next door and take a look upstairs in the labs was so close to you, yet so far away. You would get caught by security immediately.

You enter the reception hall that your father added next to the research center a few years ago. It was modern and expensive looking like everything else in the Gangnam District. The room was filled with round dining tables, all decorated with silverware, wine glasses, and floral centerpieces. Men and women were all dressed in formal cocktail attire, some being the company's staff but most were investors. You spotted your friend Yuri, a biochemistry research assistant, who worked at the lab. She smiles cheerfully when you step in front of her.

“Hey, are you excited for your trip to Japan?”

Remembering my planned trip abroad, my smile widens. “Very excited, it's going to be the first time I leave the country, the city even.”

It was true, you never left Seoul. Ever since you can remember, you were always sheltered from most of the world. Your father never allowed you to go past city boundaries; but you were an adult now, he couldn't stop you. So when the opportunity to go on a two week, college trip to Japan was available you took it. Your father was furious with you but settled. 

“I'm surprised Minjun Choi-ssi is even letting you go. You're barely allowed to go to school, let alone out of the country.” Yuri huffed in annoyance. You two have known each since your first day of college. It was just a coincidence that she was getting her research experience time at your father's lab.

“He's just very protective,” you explain. Yuri's focus on your conversation was diminished and was now centered on someone else. He couldn't have been much older than you, maybe a year or two younger. He stands tall in his grey suit, brunette locks styled up and away from his pale face. He's stunning, you think.

Yuri must of thought the same thing because she turns her eyes back to you. This time they are filled with curiosity. “Do you know who that is?”

I shake my head; “No-” I turn my head back in his direction to see him walking our way, “-but he's coming over here.”

Before Yuri can do anything more than take in an anxious breath, the mysterious man is in front of us with a charming smile.

He bows to us in greetings. “Hello ladies, who do I owe the pleasure of meeting this evening?”

You grin, knowing your friend is probably too busy malfunctioning to answer him. “I'm Y/N, and this is my friend Yuri.”

He gently takes her hand and bends down to place a kiss on her knuckles. “It's lovely meeting you two. Yuri, a beautiful name for an even more beautiful girl. It means ‘lily’, yes?”

Yuri stands in a daze of fascination and a bloom of dark blush on her cheeks. Amongst it all though, she nods her head and smiles. 

This makes the man's smirk widened. “Their beauty couldn't even compare. I'm Yoonoh.”

You quickly made an attempt to leave knowing you've became the third wheel. “I think I'm gonna get a drink at the bar.”

Yoonoh looks over at you, with his hypnotic smile still present. “I'll keep Yuri company in the meantime. I suggest getting the red wine, it's a special one tonight.” 

He gives you a final wink before taking Yuri off to his table. Walking to the bar, your eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Why did he say it like that? Shaking your head from your thoughts, you make it to the bar and order the wine suggested. You take small sips while looking at the large crowd of people; spotting your father talking to a young man with silver hair. He was shorter than most and currently laughing at, what you presume, was a joke your father just made. There's more young men here than usual, you thought. Were these men new staff or are they possibly chaebols? Your thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a deep voice next to you.

“Isn't it ironic that these people pour money into this organization even though they don't know half of what's actually being researched in the labs?”

You turn your head to the right to see the owner of the voice. Your eyes meet glimmering yet sharp, brown ones. The man in front of you is dressed in a black suit, the first few buttons of the white shirt underneath unbuttoned to reveal a silver chain underneath. His jaw could cut glass and his lips resembled the color of cherry blossoms in spring. His hair was stained bright red like blood, something that made you want to know who the hell this man was.

Not fully knowing how to comment; you stutter out, “I-I guess it's their blind faith. They believe this organization is going to cure cancer. If they see progress then, why stop?”

He scoffs before finishing his glass of soju. “It's easy to believe in a lie, little one. These days people want something to believe in. The promise of cures, tech innovation, the end of poverty and war are all just weapons used against us to keep the cycle of corruption going. Neo City is supposed to be the world's savior, but what if the people in it are the cause of our destruction?”

His words took you back by surprise but also made you curious. You've never known someone who speaks the way he does. He didn't view the world through rose colored glasses like everyone else. Who the fuck was this guy? Why was he here if he, seemingly, hates your father’s company? 

“I have to go.” 

You grab hold of the mysterious man’s jacket sleeve before he could leave, to his and your own surprise. “Wait…”

The red haired man gives me a warning glare, making me loosen my grip on him. “Sorry but, you never told me your name.”

His gaze drops from mine to the ground and he lets out a dry laugh. It was barely noticeable, because within seconds his eyes are back on you and he smirks.

“Taeyong.” 

He was gone immediately after, vanishing through the crowd of who he called the naive and hypocritical. You couldn’t even spot his wine colored hair anymore. You turn back around to the bar and look down at the glass filled with red, smooth liquid. A reflection of yourself could be seen, one that was glazed over in tones of crimson. All the drink did was remind you of his words. Of the veil of lies he talked about. He couldn’t of been right. Your father runs a good company, your father is good. He adopted you as a child and raised you up, without a wife. Your father’s company makes cures, nothing else.

Not being able to stomach seeing red anymore, you step away from your wine glass and go to sit down at your reserved table. You wished your father had enough time for you to ask about Taeyong. Maybe he doesn’t even know who Taeyong is. Questions spun in your mind like a whirlpool, going over the same questions just to come up with another possibility. Your thoughts are put on halt by the tapping of a microphone. On the stage, behind the podium, in the center was the director of research for the Neo City's branch and company headquarters: Dr. Oh Daewon. He has been you father’s right hand man for as long as you can remember. There was something about the man that was always off putting to you. You could never figure out what it was, but you tried keeping as much distance from him as you could.

The doctor cleared his throat before giving the guests a forced smile. “Hello and thank you everyone for attending the investors’ dinner this evening. It is nights like tonight that aid our progress for the future. I would like to thank all the newcomers who are now joining us on this groundbreaking quest for a better human society. With the help of our international branches, the Seoul Mutations Division is just a few steps closer to a cure for cancer and alzheimer's. By creating mutations of different stem cells, we have discovered a revolutionary change in our trials. This could be the start of a healthier, stronger, human race. We are happy to announce that at this year’s gala, in two weeks, we will be presenting the final product that has been in the works for the past seventeen years.”

The audience applauded his influential speech, everyone except the young man with silver hair you noticed. Instead of a praising smile, he gave a stone cold glare at the doctor. He was unmoved compared to the people around him. He painted on the same expression on his face as Taeyong. Turning back to the front, you see your father replacing Dr. Oh at the podium. You only can take it bits and pieces of what he's saying, your mind was too distracted thinking about the list of questions you'd have for your father if he knew who Taeyong is. 

Finally, your father's speech was over and everyone was welcomed to their entrees. You waited until your father was settled in his seat next to you to ask about the handsome red haired man.

"So, I met someone tonight I had never seen at one of these dinners before."

Your father hummed while chewing his kobe steak before swallowing. "He must be a new investor then."

You continue, "His name is Taeyong. He didn't give me his surname though, just 'Taeyong'."

"Ah", Father beamed. "That is probably Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul-ssi's associate. He mentioned that his associate would join the dinner at some point."

"Who is Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul?" You ask, the name being completely foreign on your tongue. 

“He’s an investor, a very young one at that. He runs a business specializing in medical technology in Thailand. He’s interested in contributing to our Thai branch.”

You nod your head and continue to pick around your food, not having much of an appetite tonight. After a pregnant pause, your father sighs. "I think it would be best if maybe one of my men go with you on your trip tomorrow. For your safety."

You roll your eyes at this repetitive argument being brought up, of all places as well. "Father, I'm twenty-one years old. I don't need a babysitter."

"It's for your protection Y/N, you still need to know more about the world. I intend to give you a protected lifestyle for as long as I can. You are valuable to bad people."

Shaking your head, you throw your dining napkin on the table. "You've given me a secluded and sheltered life. I'm just now getting to experience things people my age do. I'm a grown adult now, I need to start making decisions for myself. I'm going without your security."

You could see your father physically holding back his anger, his ears started to turn red and his hand was balled up into a fist. You almost recanted, fearful of this side of him. When his eyes would grow darker and his mouth would turn into an ugly sneer. His expression took an unexpected turn though when he spotted Dr. Oh and his assistant approaching. It was like you could actually see the lightbulb flicker on in his head. 

“How about you take Dr. Oh’s assistant with you?”

It seemed like you were never going to get out of this without him winning in some way. Your father gives the scientist the smile he gives when he wants something from his staff, already knowing he will get it because he’s their superior.  

You move sideways to see the young assistant behind Dr. Oh. He was about the same height as the latter, his jet black hair styled up making him look more mature than what his actual age probably was. To you, he barely looked out of high school.

“Father, I’m sure Dr. Oh’s intern is my younger. How can he look after me if it will feel like I have to look after him?” You argue. 

"Think of it as bringing along a friend, you two don't even have to talk to each other on the trip. It will be educational for him as well. If I remember right, Jeno is a first year at your school. I will ask a favor of the dean to add him to the list of students traveling." Father exclaimed with a triumph smile.

“What if Jeno doesn’t want to go? You can’t just send him to Japan without his consent first!”

“I’ll go…” All three heads, including yours, snap to the young man behind the scientist. He seemed unbothered by the situation, like this request was to go get coffee for everyone.

“Wonderful!” You silently glare at the younger you barely knew as your father spoke.  “You will both leave at eight tomorrow.”

This was unbelievable, you thought. You were officially going to be babysat by someone who’s barely an adult. You didn’t blame Jeno, your father was to blame, but he didn’t help the situation by agreeing. You could of won the argument and would be flying with just your classmates tomorrow. Shaking your head, you lurch up from your dining chair and grab your clutch.

“I think it's time for me to return home.” You announce, bidding everyone a short bow before walking out of the banquet hall. The sharp, night, Seoul air brushes up your bare arms, sending uncomfortable chills down your spine. You shiver as you wait for valet to bring your car to the front. The wind is cut off suddenly by what you realized was a blazer suit jacket. Shocked, you look around for the owner of the jacket only to find silver hair and a dazzling smile.

“You should bring a jacket if you’re going to wear that beautiful dress, baby. It doesn’t accommodate the cold.” 

His voice was sweet sounding, reminding you of lollipops. Something sweet and syrupy; if lollipops were melted down, they would be his voice. Although, behind the sugar there was a hint of mischief and seduction. Too much of him is an addiction, you think, he has the ability to rot your insides if you let him.

Shaking out of your thoughts, you stutter and hold back from a blush rushing to your already rosy cheeks. “Uh, thank you-” then you notice the invitation in the inside pocket of the jacket, “Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul-ssi?”

He gives you an impish smirk, “You can call me Ten.”

Confused, you question why he wanted to be called a number but never ask. The name oddly suited him well, better than his real name even. Ten was smaller than most men, his figure almost feminine in a way. Everything, from his nose to the fingertips of his hands were slender. He was somehow pretty and handsome at the same time. Elegant yet a sense of edge. Something though that Ten, Taeyong, had in common was that they were mysterious and obscure.

“Thank you, Ten.” 

“You seem distressed,” he comments.

You instantly lie, not wanting your problems to be someone else’s. Especially a complete stranger’s. “I’m not.”

He hums soothly, “You’re lying, sweetheart.”

Looking up at him with anxiety, you knew you were caught red handed. You laugh lightly, just wanting to move on from the subject already. "Am I that bad of a liar?"

He moves closer to you, enough to reach out and tuck the blowing strand of hair from your face. "No, I'm just really good at detecting lies from the truth. Although, I myself would be lying if I said you didn't have stress written all over your face."

You return his smile slightly, not fully mirroring though. Looking behind you at the building next door again, it only clouds your mind up more.

"Do you ever feel like your life isn't in your control? That it's in someone else's hands? Just playing you like a puppet? And you're wishing to be released from their grasp, from their watchful eyes?" You look back at the unique man whose brown eyes have never left your own.

"All the time, Y/N."

There's a silent but not uncomfortable pause between you two. Nothing more than starting at each other and the black sky that's lit with neon. 

Finally the valet brings around your car, apologizing for the wait and opens your back door. You hand the jacket back to Ten.

"Thank you for letting me borrow this. It was nice meeting you, Ten."

He folds the blazer jacket over his arm and gives you a warm smile. "We'll see each other soon sweetheart."

Give one last wave, you step into the vehicle, and tell the automated system you home coordinates. Soon enough you're rolling away from the silver haired man and towards your apartment. It wasn't until you were blocks away did you start to question.

How did Ten know my name?

[bratdroid-blog]

The love story of the century, in cinemas now. 

@paradoxidolatry

Coco

> You have the smuggest smug smile to ever smug on your face as you start singing for your boyfriend. 

 "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. 

I'm half crazy all for the love of you. 

It won't be a stylish marriage. 

I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat. 

Of a bicycle built for two."

Carro

> You are blushing ear to ear, and though you've got your mouth covered with the heel of your hand, you are grinning widely and earnestly.  You laugh, a bit breathlessly. 

 "Hal..."

Coco

> Aw yeah, that's what you lose to see. You were already feeling extra soft after last night, filled with Anime, sentimental moments and soft touches. A good reminder of why exactly you do love this man despite all his flaws. 

> You quickly pull him into a embrace, and press a sweet little kiss on his face.

"So, what do you say, Daisy?"

Carro

> You are, by all counts, a big man.  Not the biggest, no, especially in this city of meaty mobsters and bodybuilders, but you know you're fairly tall and well-built for a regular ass human.  But that doesn't stop you from feeling so small right in this moment, arms wrapped around Hal, just.  Absolutely lit up like a Christmas tree. 

> You're still grinning. 

 "You... are you serious....?"

Coco

"I don't sing Daisy Bell for just anyone, dude. Told you: It's always been just you.  I won't ever sing it for anyone else."

> You just wanted to tease him but... The moment seems just a bit too perfect to back out now. This isn't something you had ever expected or calculated but that alone makes it worth it. The unknown is exciting when you get to take the jump with your lover. 

> Weird. Were you always THIS gay?

Carro

> You are....for lack of better word, speechless.  Your mouth flaps uselessly and soundlessly for a few moments, floundering for something intelligent and witty to say, and you come up painfully, awkwardly short. 

> But you do find some words, and those words have a strange, exciting shape: "...Fuck it.  Yeah.  Yeah, sure, yes, let's.  I'd love to... I.  Yes, Hal."

Coco

> Just watching him struggle to form a sentence is already enough of a reward but the words that do end up leaving his mouth?  Make you wish you had a heart to skip a beat. 

> Once again it's a blessing that you can kiss him deeply and talk at the same time. 

"Then let's do it, Daisy Bell. You're going to be mine forever, and I'll be yours."

Carro

> You laugh again against his lips and you throw all of yourself into that kiss.  You feel 17 again--light and excited and hopeful for the future to come. 

"No one else's." 

> Shit, are you crying?  You sniff and lean back to swipe at your eyes.  Fuck, you've been doing this weaksauce shit a lot lately.  Goddamn you, Hal--reminding you that you, in fact, still have a heart.  You take a moment to step away and breathe, fan yourself off a bit, but you're still grinning. 

"Well, fuck, alright, so this is happening.  How's it happening? When? We gonna do a whole ass white wedding or?"

Coco

> This is all you ever wanted for him, and if a silly human tradition is what it takes to have him feel that again, you will gladly go along with it. You don't think either of you has ever so much as seriously thought about marriage, let alone considered getting married yourself but damn. If not him, who else? You give him his moment, but the smile on you face doesn't die for a second. Your eyes may be artificial creations but the love in your gaze is as real as it can be.  It's always been all for him. 

"Well...Don't have a ring right or anything for you babe, but I was thinking we should do something more permanent anyways. You're into tattoos yeah?"

You had considered that one for a while at least, if not in the context of god damn marriage. 

"Right now, is what I want to say but I'm afraid my papers aren't official quite yet. That means I have time to get the prettiest damn wedding dress this shit moon has ever seen though, so there's that."

Carro

> A tattoo wedding band.  Well, shit goddamn.  If that ain't just the best idea you've ever heard.  He's already given you a nice scar to mark you by.  Why not a tattoo? 

 "Fuck yeah... Fuck yeah, aight, we can do a tattoo.  Maybe engrave your finger or somethin'... get a ring to slow in it later, but just like, something to always have around that can't get lost."

God, what is this feeling?  Is this the human emotion called marriage? Aaaand then there's the papers. 

"Shit, that's right... How long's that supposed to take, anyway?"

Coco

"That's exactly what I was going to suggest. Let's do this shit. You got a tattoo shop of choice who will take us on today?" 

> You are literally buzzing with excitement. This joke got real fast but you are not complaining. 

"I'm gonna beg the Queen for this shit, dude. Bitch is a major sucker for this gay shit, I think we have good chances at getting this. About...Sec. About 80%. Messaging her as we speak."

Carro

"Might be able to find someone, but if not, y'know... I trusted you with a scalpel, I think I can trusts you with inking me up." 

> You might also literally be buzzing with excitement, and then your jaw drops. 

"You're- seriously? The Queen? Right now?"

Coco

"Aw babe... Sure, I can do it if you got the equipment." 

> That's even better actually. You haven't done this before, but with the power of internet tutorials? No biggie. 

"Fuck yeah I am. Look, we're both not great with authority and whatever, but she runs this damn gay ass moon and she adores me. Might as well use that to get my gay on. right?"

Carro

"Sure do.  I'll dig it up after the uh, the wedding I guess." 

> You laugh, and you nod, and then you... you exhale deeply, scrubbing your face with your hands as the depth of what's happening slams into you. 

"Holy fuck, we're getting married.  For real.  Tonight."

Coco

"Fuck yeah we are. She said yes. Gotta get our asses to the courthouse asap, dude." 

> Yeah, you really are vibrating with excitement. You are running too hot already, but not to the point where you are going to fry your brain for good. Just the good, gay warmth. 

> You couldn't possibly resist pulling him close for another deep kiss. 

"God. I love you so much, you piece of shit. How dare you do this to me." 

> That about sums up your relationship, yeah.

Carro

> And now you're back out of your intense spiral with a laugh and a kiss.  You hug him tight and you kiss him again and again until you are utterly breathless. 

"Cuz I fuckin love you with every little ... gay-ass bit of my heart, you motherfucker.  I can't fuckin believe us, goddamn U-haul gays.  'Hey, long time no see, you wanna move in and get hitched, maybe?'"

Coco

"You said it yourself, we've already been an old married couple before I got this sweet bod of mine. It's only right to make it official, yeah?" 

> God, you can hardly believe this yourself. Best stupid decision that started as a joke you made in your whole damn life though. 

"Can't wait to start my new life as an official, real ass person by marrying you. Seems fitting. You are stuck with me forever now."

Carro

> You lean in and touch your forehead to his, staring deep into those beautiful fuckin robo eyes. 

"There's nobody I'd rather be stuck with."

Coco

"That's fucking gay, dude." 

> And you love it, so much. Your hands cup his face, itching to be as  close as possible. 

 "Not gay if it's with a robot, right?"

Carro

> You smile somewhat bashfully at Hal and you shrug lightly. 

"...Might still be pretty gay, even with a robot."

Coco

> Oh wow. Is that what it takes to make Dirk Strider finally fucking realize he is indeed, fucking gay? Just a little gay marriage, huh? You said you wouldn't push it though, so you don't. 

"Glad I get to be your gay robot exception, dude. Couldn't be happier."

Carro

> You're glad he doesn't push it; you're still gonna be struggling with that one for a while, but... But this? This is good.  Great, even. Perfect, actually. 

> You kiss him again, and don't let up for a long time, before murmuring, 

"Gotta get dressed and get going, I guess.  Gonna go pick up Sock along the way.  Is Dave... here? We gonna have to pick him up too?"

Coco

> You could spend another few hours kissing him, but you will have plenty of time for that after he becomes your husband. What a weird thought that is. Has you smiling all over again. Seems like your face is stuck like that for now. 

"Shit, I don't have any formal clothes dude. How embarrassing is that?" 

> Not that you really give a flying fuck over getting married in your usual clothes. 

"Yeah, here's hoping he'll be ready in under an hour."

Carro

"Haha, I don't think I've got my good shit out and ready... You can, uh... borrow some of mine, if you want, though? I mean, shit, you could just go naked and I'd be happy." 

> You, though, are already stripping off your BIG MILK t-shirt and looking for a clean, half-decent button-up. 

"He better be.  We got twenty minutes before Sock's ready to pick up."

Coco

"You think all of Derse is ready for my beautiful bod, though?"

That's really the main reason you even bother with clothes at all when you leave the house. Looking at least a bit more normal. Not that you exactly care for anyone's opinion, just makes shit easier. 

"Sure, that's romantic right? Boyfriend style is in yeah? Or husband in this case."

Carro

A shudder runs visible through you and your turn a grin back at Hal. 

"Say that again."

Coco

"Nu uh. Not yet, my dude. Gotta earn the H word first."

Carro

"Awww, c'mon." 

You laugh and then you rummage through your closet until you find a dark red button up for Hal, with silvery white pinstripes. 

"Just once."

Coco

> Aw it's your color. He does care. That earns him a quick peck on the lips. 

"Fine. You are my motherfucking husbando, Dirk. Better than any fucking anime guy, even Android 17."

Carro

"Shit goddamn.  Even Android 17, for real?  I must be special." 

> You wink and then toss on an orange shit and a black jacket and slacks, before fishing out a matching pair for Hal. 

"Does that also make you the husbando? Or is one of us the waifu?"

Coco

"I mean, i ain't giving up on my figures of him for you, but yeah. I'm choosing you over my anime boyfriend." 

> That's love bitch. 

 > This is actually yet another first for you, first time putting on a suit. That shit's not rocket science though. 

 "A family can be two husbandos and their two baby brothers, who are also dating. Y'know. That sounds exactly like an anime plot actually." 

> Thank god that you are not living in an anime, or this shit would be way weird.

Carro

> Jokes on you, life is the ultimate anime. 

> But you laugh and you get yourself sorted out, throwing a white tie around your neck but not quite tying it yet.  You turn to Hal and look to see if he needs any help...but mostly? You're just staring at him, in awe and full of warm, gay, fuzzy-ass dokis. 

"Guess you've got a point there.  Life with the Striders is my favorite fuckin anime this season."

Coco

> You have never tied a tie in your life, but you tie his like you've never done anything else in your life. You are a quick learner after all. 

 "Yeah same..Hey babe?" 

> There's never been as good of a moment to get gay. You continue your song from earlier, just for him. 

"We will go tandem as man and husbando

Daisy, Daisy 

Peddling our way down the road of life 

I and my daisy bell 

When the roads dark we can both despise 

Policemen and the lamps as well 

There are bright lights in those dazzling eyes 

Of beautiful daisy bell" 

> Naturally a song from 1892 did not in fact include the word husbando, but sometimes you just gotta get creative.(edited)

Carro

> Ohhhhh, Hal, you fucker, you've done it now. 

> There are actual, real tears running down your face, and you're stuck halfway between mopping them up, and just covering your face, and you really can't decide what to do with your hands, so you instead place them on Hal's hips instead of anywhere near the vicinity of you.  You're laughing, and you lean in to kiss him again. 

> If you could, you'd never stop kissing him. 

> Also you can't believe a song from 1892 is your song, but hey you wouldn't have it any other way.  Except maybe a hip-hop cover of the song, down the road. 

"I love you."

Coco

"Love you too, Daisy Bell." 

> You gladly kiss him again as you gently wipe some of those tears again. God, look at the two of you, getting all sorts of gay in fucking record time. You both really needed this for a long ass time, didn't you? 

> You are far too happy to ruin this by psychoanalyzing everything about it, not in this very moment at least.

[glowing-gravity]

so I kiiiinda ended up not seeing the tags on that post I made the other day about an idea for a fic where Donald gets sent 12 years into the future, but a PKNA version, until just now- which is why I didn’t respond to you guys who were interested whoops- but luckily, I happen to have just finished the first chapter, so!!

@adamarinayu​ @pkondrugs​ @emilieschwarz9887​ @the-three-caballerbros​ @winterpower98​ (anyone else I should be tagging...?)

it’s also on ao3!

Next Chapter

Chapter 1- Evronians?

Donald hadn't answered when he tried to call him, which in and of itself wasn't something that would warrant suspicion. Donald had to sleep several hours a day, after all; he’d missed calls before.

Paperinik neglecting to act when an Evronian patrol started causing trouble downtown wasn't, at least at first, a particular cause for concern either. He could be rather petty, and Angus' report last night somehow managed to focus on slandering PK even more than usual. Maybe he was trying to prove a point, and would arrive at the last minute to save the day.

When he couldn't find Donald anywhere in the city, he started to worry. He could access anything on the planet, so there was no reason he wouldn't be able to locate him that didn't suggest something had gone wrong.

But it was when Donald's nephews came snooping around the tower, almost a week after the Evronian attack, that he was certain something terrible had happened to his friend. The nephews had never spent any significant amount of time here, as Donald tried to keep them as far out of his PK business as possible, so if they'd found their way here they must be searching for him too.

Or, possibly even worse, searching for Paperinik. Or “both” of them.

While he thought he'd be able to keep an eye on them- he'd been able to keep Master Ducklair away from Donald for nearly the entirety of his visit, before he needed to pretend to be shut off- three ducklings proved to be much more of a challenge to track. They had split up to look around, and dividing his attention between them to keep them out of anything Donald wouldn't want them to find was easier said than done.

Caught up in preventing Dewey from entering one of the passages to the basement and Huey from breaking into Channel 00's offices (whether he was aware that's what he was doing or not), Louie managed to slip into one of the secret entrances to the 151th floor Uno had added for when Donald needed to slip away from someone unpleasant (such as Angus, or his uncle).

And now Louie was up here. Donald won’t be happy, if he gets back.

When. When he gets back.

For now, he was going to have to deal with the problem in the form of a small duck wearing green- Louie had the best taste in color choice, if nothing else- standing in front of him.

"What is this floor?" Louie asked aloud, although he didn't appear to have noticed Uno's visual projection yet.

"The floor previously known as the secret extra floor of Ducklair Tower," he said, startling Louie, who spun around trying to locate him. He moved his main display so Louie could easily see him, and while he was at it, shifted some parts of the building so Dewey and Huey would find their way up to his floor without breaking into anything dangerous.

"Are you some kind of computer?" Louie asked.

"An artificial intelligence, if you don't mind! To be exact, I'm the most powerful, versatile, and marvelous artificial intelligence ever to be built on this planet!"

That was the same thing he'd said to PK when he first snuck into Ducklair Tower a little over a year ago; somehow it seemed fitting to greet his nephews in the same way. Not that Louie would've recognized that.

As he spoke, Huey found his way into the room. "Did you say you're an artificial intelligence? That's amazing! Do you control this whole tower?"

"Yes! I can see everything going on within this building, and even rearrange it if I feel so inclined."

"Is that why there was suddenly that new door that led me up here?"

"You're just letting him up here? I thought you said this floor was secret!"

"You would've told them as soon as you left. This way, I can talk to all three of you directly."

And, speaking of all three of them... "Do you know our uncle? He's Paperinik, right?" Dewey asked, running into the room. Huey and Louie gave him disapproving looks as he joined them. Evidently, telling unfamiliar AIs their suspicions about secret identities hadn’t been part of their plan.

Well, Donald could fix this situation when he got back. For the time being, he was starting to get lonely, and maybe they'd know someone Donald would trust to make a good substitute hero.

"Yes, your uncle is Paperinik. We've been working together since he became the caretaker of Ducklair Tower. Unfortunately, since he disappeared-"

"Do you know anything about that? We've been trying to figure out where he went all week!" Dewey interrupted.

"As much as I hate to admit it, I have no idea where he is, or what happened to him. None of my efforts to locate him have found any traces."

"Last thing we knew, he was visiting Uncle Scrooge. That was last week." Huey frowned.

Louie matched his expression, a reminder they were triplets. "Do you... think something bad happened to him?"

"I can't say either way. Of course, I hope not, but while stranger things have happened than someone vanishing completely off the face of this planet, I don't want to get your hopes up too much. It's also entirely possible he's been taken by the Evronians, or worse."

"... Evronians?"

"Are you talking about those purple monster things Paperinik is always fighting?"

"Yes. They're aliens that feed on emotions, and usually your uncle is the one who holds off their invasion plans. As long as he's gone, a substitute hero of Duckburg is probably going to be needed."

"Uncle Donald won't like that very much..."

"I'm sure he'd hate Earth being enslaved by the Evronians even more. Trust me, I hate to do this as much as you, but I can't fight them myself."

Suddenly, Dewey's face lit up. "What if the three of us were the substitute Paperiniks?"

"Hey, yeah, Uncle Donald trusts us, and we could totally be superheroes!"

He couldn't stop the grimace that immediately appeared on his face. "If Donald was going to be mad that I enlisted a substitute hero, he'd be absolutely furious when he found out I let the three of you be the ones running into danger."

"But we can handle it!"

"And we already know all this secret stuff now!" Uno had to stifle a laugh at the idea that that was the end of the secrets.

Instead, he sighed. "I suppose you can try," he started, and the boys began to cheer prematurely. "But," he raised his volume enough to grab their attention back, "When he asks, we're all in agreement that this was your idea and not my fault whatsoever."

The boys nodded vigorously, although Uno suspected they would've reacted the same for nearly any conditions he imposed.

"So do we get our own costumes?"

"I want a visor!!"

"Can I have cool laser blasters?"

"Calm down, I'm working on the costumes as we speak. In the meantime, let me tell you about the Evronians, so you'll have some idea of what you're up against."

By the time he finished his explanation (which wasn't even that long), Huey seemed to be the only one still paying attention. Dewey had found the Total Immersion Interface system, and Louie was disinterestedly watching Ottoman Empire on his phone. Having a low attention span for admittedly boring- but very important- topics must run in the family.

Luckily, he'd also finished their costumes. It was easy enough to scale down the original PK suit's measurements, and create three smaller replicas, but he decided to go a step further and individualize some aspects of each of their costumes, so they'd still be distinct from each other and their uncle.

"Wow, is this my costume?" Huey asked, carefully taking it from him.

"Your costumes are each equipped slightly differently," Uno began, getting the other two ducklings' attention again and giving them their costumes. "Divided between Huey's special gloves and boots are all the same functions PK's shield was equipped with, including its resistance to coolflaming. Dewey's visor protects his head, but everything else is part of his smaller shield, which is actually closer to a boomerang in combat function. And Louie has wrist-mounted blasters instead of a shield, though they both have all the same capabilities as the shield and aren't limited to just lasers."

"And the hats?" Dewey asked, already wearing his costume.

"The costumes were too empty without something on your heads, but Paperinik's sailor hat felt too personal to the original costume. I modeled them after Huey's cap instead."

"Why don't I have some kind of weapon?" Huey asked, concerned.

"I assumed you'd want to keep your hands free. You can take notes and access files on your gloves, including your Junior Woodchuck Guidebook if you feel so inclined, but they're also entirely functional as a weapon of their own."

"Ooo!"

"So when do we fight those aliens?" Louie asked, glancing up from his phone.

“We’ll have to wait until their next attack, but that gives the three of you a chance to get used to your new suits in the meantime!”

[bentonpena]

Surprise – NVIDIA’s AI and graphics news today for big industry is relevant to artists, too

https://bit.ly/3mHQJfP Surprise – NVIDIA’s AI and graphics news today for big industry is relevant to artists, too https://bit.ly/3wIEvZ4

Even as NVIDIA has a keynote with simulated robots making the rounds of a BMW factory, some of the GPU giant’s latest brings industry- and enterprise-grade tools to artists, too. That also could prove relevant as the pandemic has folks looking for work.

Music and live visual work means one thing – stuff has to happen live. And so that makes these chips more interesting. It means that fundamentally what musicians and artists do, which is to work with materials live in time, now matches up with the way graphics (and AI) chips work. Since they’re crunching numbers faster, it means the ability to create “liquid” interfaces. (That was the concept interactive visionary and legend Joy Mountford introduced years ago in a talk we had together on the South by Southwest stage, and it’s stuck with me.)

Now, I won’t lie, some of this is awaiting GDC, the game dev event. That’s because when you don’t have a BMW factory-sized budget, the punk-style approach of gaming has a ton of appeal. (You can see a bunch of gamers complaining on YouTube actually, I think misunderstanding that this is not a gaming keynote and … that’s coming later and … NVIDIA has always had workstation customers. But we know gaming trolls are not the most reasonable folks and – I for one enjoy watching Mercedes Benz simulate the Autobahn. It’s the Kraftwerk in me. GTA: Normal German Life Simulator. The Edeka parking lot is off the chain.)

But having listened to NVIDIA talk about their new offerings, I think there’s more here than just pro and enterprise applications and the usual workstation / gaming PC divide.

Follow along as there is a ton of geeky machine learning, metaverse, Omniverse, and 3D artistry stuff coming – https://gtc21.event.nvidia.com/

Omniverse

The big pillar here that impacts audiovisual creation is Omniverse. I wrote about this connected platform for collaboration and exchange of all things 3D, built on open tools like Pixar’s very own USD file format (also a subtle hint that y’all can make bank with this stuff):

This week, we get a lot of the questions answered about where NVIDIA was going strategically.

But yeah, if you’re wondering if this could allow audiovisual artists and musicians to connect to big-budget projects – at a time when even the shows you watch at night (Mandalorian, cough) are made with these tools? You bet.

First, the most exciting detail for me was a commitment that Omniverse for individuals and artists will always be free – meaning anyone can get at this platform. That also means that individual 3D artists and AV creators can play with big industry – so it’s a source of gigs.

Also, the Omniverse pricing is not astronomical for those “enterprise” use cases. A small team can buy into it at a per-seat license of $1800 a year, plus a $25,000 cost for a nucleus server. That’s within reach of interactive and design shops, and it seems NVIDIA may even work to adapt to those kinds of small use cases even beyond that.

Omniverse on a shoot? Yes.

I expect NVIDIA may even be underestimating the demand for those individuals – partly because as their tools and partner tools get massively more powerful and easier-to-use, it may not even take an entire team to do great work.

Now, the wait is on just for connectors. 3DS Max, Photoshop, Maya, Substance, and awesomely, Unreal Engine are all supported. But keep an eye out for Blender, Marvelous Designer, Solidworks, and Houdini for even more sign this is on.

It’s an open beta; keeping an eye on the convention is a chance to stay posted:

https://www.nvidia.com/omniverse/

And yes, yes Unreal:

The new RTX stuff is here

It’s tough to mention anything to do with semiconductors right now, given the global shortage that’s on. But yeah, the new pro RTX architecture looks predictably insanely great, for anyone doing real-time visuals, rendering, graphics, and AI.

So, if you’re planning to make your proud reentry into music festivals in 2022 with that fully immersive 3D opera involving live artificial intelligence, you’ll want to go ahead and write these into the grant application.

Desktops get the A5000 and A4000. Laptops get A2000, A3000, A4000, and A5000.

“But how will I fit them in my case?” the tiny man wonders. “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” And then he stares into one too long and a whole Kubrick dream sequence starts, alas.

Either way, you get all the new technology for tons of creative use. Also, even though there’s the mention of “pro,” these laptop chips fit in low-power, thin and light machines. You could wind up buying them in a reasonably inexpensive notebook computer and using it to run a live stream.

Even apart from all the utterly essential graphics applications, that’s good news for music, because the ongoing pandemic ripples are likely to disrupt at least some international travel for the foreseeable future. Oh yeah, and it also means thin-and-light PCs with NVIDIA architectures to compete with Apple’s own silicon solutions. (I wouldn’t write out Apple from possibly future pro interoperability with these architectures, too.)

Yep, laptops will have these – though keep an eye on the semiconductor shortage to see what’s shipping when, as it’s … a doozy, generally.

But the performance gains are huge – in short:

RT cores with up to 2X the previous generation’s throughput (for tracing your rays, shading your whatever, all that jazz)

Third-generation Tensor Cores, also up to 2X throughput (so you can make a HAL that might open the pod bay doors even before someone has to ask)

CUDA cores (2.5X FP32 throughput) for … everything (and possibly even some audio/music applications, but certainly anything that uses the word ‘render’ in it)

Assuming some pros are the right generation for this, so – “It will be mine. Oh yes.“

Specific to desktop:

Up to 24GB GPU memory (or even 48GB with a two-GPU NVLink rig)

Virtualization (tell the server admin)

PCIe Gen 4 (twice the previous bandwidth – yeah, you might want your actual data transfer to catch up with the chip specs above, so this is essential)

Specific to laptop:

Third-gen Max-Q – so it doesn’t sound like a you’re vacuuming the carpet any more (“whisper” quiet is the phrase you want)

Up to 16 GB GPU memory

Also specific to pretty high-end workstation laptops, the the NVIDIA T1200 and NVIDIA T600 refresh of the Turing architecture is out. (That either means something to you because you use multiple-application workflows, or nothing to you and is a cool name.)

I might note, too, that these don’t look quite like the specs of that Apple Silicon stuff – not at the M1 level. I think it’s safe to say that for now, these are different use cases. But I also wouldn’t worry about it, either – the general scene is that working with 3D, video, AI, and streaming all get substantially easier in 2021 industry-wide, once chips get out there.

I also can imagine making an investment this year that lasts a good while, which is what happens when you do make a generational leap.

AI on the cloud

Without going into too much detail (I’ll leave that to NV), there is also a bunch of news this week for delivering GPU acceleration and (crucially for servers) AI computation via the cloud. There are a lot of “cool demo!” capabilities – machine translation, speech recognition, face recognition, eye contact, and live video processing continue to evolve through machine learning techniques from NVIDIA. (Yes, that also means more uncanny valley stuff and questions about the fabric of society, surveillance, and reality.)

But it means the ability to do stuff with big volumes of data, and in a way that doesn’t actually require you to be a huge enterprise to use.

This also deals with science – meaning artists who do understand machine learning now can make these topics relatable to the public. That’s potentially important, as we live in a world that demands more scientific understanding. (NVIDIA included an AstraZeneca chemistry example – and suddenly our lives are all revolving around that chemistry.)

I’ve been critical of some of the very examples NVIDIA uses here – like Spotify making playlist personalization more “efficient.” That’s nothing new – automating music based on trends and profit is basically as old as the music industry. But to really be able to criticize these things, I think it matters that musicians can understand, re-engineer, explain, and advocate with a solid grounding in the science and technology behind the topic. In the case of music, it’s now more complex to talk about the impact of playlists when they’re AI-driven than when you could point to something as intuitive as “payola.”

But science? Yeah, you can do genome analysis on your laptop.

And they continue to advance the state of the art in machine learning – even with smaller data sets:

Watch this space

I realize this was a very niche look at this stuff and will cause anyone not familiar with the area to have their eyes glaze over.

But AI + graphics + 3D + collaboration capabilities will pour into more recognizable use cases soon, powered by this tech.

And watch this space for what this might mean for artists, musicians, and creativity using tools like Unreal. Because there is no question in my mind that Unreal and Blender might well be mentioned in the same breath as Ableton Live and a Eurorack rig more frequently in the coming months and years.

But hey, at the very least, maybe tonight you’ll dream about standing on top of a surrealist skyscraper, gazing up at a King Kong-sized graphics card, and shouting at it “when are you shipping? why do these crypto people keep buying you? I just want to play some video games!“

Giant video card is listening. (Cue 2001-style Ligeti soundtrack… aeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee……)

Also, this is super cute – and great to see what young people are doing with this stuff, especially knowing this is a tough time for them and they deserve some fresh opportunities.

Tags:

a3000

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a5000

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artits

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chips

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cloud

,

collaboration

,

CUDA

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GPU

,

Hardware

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machine learning

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Omniverse

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Unreal

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Unreal Engine

Music via Create Digital Music https://bit.ly/2N55ART April 12, 2021 at 02:48PM

[language-rxgers]

Happy Birthday to Me (Bucky Barnes x Reader)

Summary: It’s your birthday, but you don’t want anyone to know, because you never celebrate it. (Un)luckily for you, today is just about the worst day you’ve had in a long time, but a visit from your metal-armed best friend may just make you feel a little better.

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Characters: Bucky Barnes, Reader, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, Tony Stark

Warnings: None, I don’t think. Fluff. Maybe some sad thoughts.

You woke up ten minutes before your alarm, feeling rather indifferent to the date despite its apparent significance. Even though today was your birthday, you felt no urge to celebrate or even bring it to anyone's attention.

"Good morning, Miss (L/N), and happy birthday," FRIDAY's voice sounded through your room. You sighed.

"Thank you, FRIDAY, and good morning to you too. Um, but could you not tell anyone else that it's my birthday today?" You asked the artificial intelligence program.

"I could, Miss (L/N), but may I ask why?"

You worded your response carefully. "I'd just rather today be like any other day. I don't celebrate my birthday, and I'd like to keep it that way." On top of these reasons, you couldn't help the feeling that something bad would happen today, something that would ruin your day. Who would want that to happen on their birthday? Whatever, it's not like you acknowledged or celebrated your birthday anyway. Best if no one else did either. 

There was a hesitation from the AI system.

"Very well, Miss (L/N)."

You got up and got dressed for a run, tying your hair in a ponytail before leaving the Tower. You walked to a hidden park you'd discovered a few weeks ago, stretching before starting your run.

Before the Avengers, you had been a sniper with a degree in mechanical engineering for the army, repairing and modifying equipment and weapons for your base when you weren't on the battlefield. During one order with your unit, you were taken prisoner by a branch of HYDRA, who tried to force you to create new and enhanced weapons for them, but you refused, despite their… creative attempts of convincing.

Apparently impressed by your will and strength, they experimented on you, giving you an improved version of the Super Soldier serum. The serum, in addition to enhancing you to peak physicality, also made your mind more advanced in every way. Your brain became like a hard drive, in which they essentially "downloaded" dozens of languages, complex scientific concepts, cultural customs, leaked government information, several forms of combat and martial arts, you name it, to make you the perfect soldier and spy. However, they did not foresee that with all these improvements and enhancements, your mind could still not be controlled by them. You were still you, still had a conscience, and still believed strongly in your morals, which were strictly against HYDRA. It was nearly too easy for you to escape.

When you returned to the army, James Rhodes heard of you and what had happened, and told Tony about you. Your file was impressive even before HYDRA took you, so Tony passed it on to Nick Fury, and the rest is history. You had connected with Steve due to your similar moral compasses and, obviously, your experiences with HYDRA, becoming good friends with him. And then Bucky came along, and despite the long road of recovery and trust-gaining that followed, you became nearly attached at the hip.

As you got to know Bucky, you began to see why Steve had fought so hard for him. He truly was one of a kind, the best friend you could hope for. The kind of friend you wished you could be. You knew you could hardly call yourself his and Steve's best friend, but you knew they were yours, and you cherished them greatly.

Your thoughts were interrupted by the buzzing of your phone in the pocket of your leggings. You stopped running and checked it, seeing a message from Steve.

All members report for mission briefing in 10 minutes. Wheels up at 0800.           -SR

You headed back to the tower and beelined for the meeting room, where Steve, Bucky and Natasha were already seated. A few minutes later and you had been joined by Sam, Rhodey, Tony, Bruce, Wanda, Clint and Vision. Steve checked to make sure everyone was there, and then began the briefing.

Basically, your intel was telling you that a HYDRA base had established itself in Russia and was allegedly experimenting on volunteers, like Strucker had been doing with the Maximoff twins. Your mission was to recover and download as much data as you could while the others fought off the HYDRA agents. Your mind could retain any and all information you saw or read, and you were quick and stealthy, which made you the best candidate to do the job.

Half an hour later, you were all boarded on the quinjet and taking off. You were looking over a map of the base to decide the best route to take to the data room when you felt a presence behind you. "Morning, Bucky," you quipped, still inspecting the map.

"Morning, doll. That the map?" You nodded. Bucky leaned forward, looking over the routes you'd highlighted. He pointed at the one you'd been drawn to most. "That one looks like it would be easiest in and out. I can cover you there and hold 'em off till you've got what you need. And there's a window down that hall. Easy exit once you've set the bomb."

You nodded, smiling. "You know, Buck," you turned to him, "I was thinking exactly the same thing."

You were almost done downloading HYDRA's files on your thumb drive, reading through their paper records in the cabinets in the corner. Most of it was the same as what was on the computers, until you came across one file in the back. It was written in French, which made it stand out like a sore thumb among all the others in Russian. It was a file on what looked to be some sort of top secret training program. You read as much as you could, but were only halfway finished when Steve's voice broke through your comm.

"Barnes, (L/N), return to the quinjet now. We're coming to pick you up now on the southeast side of the building. 20 second countdown; abort immediately." Your eyes flashed to the computer, which was 96% downloaded.

"Steve, I'm gonna need at least another minute. I've got 96 percent on the drive."

"Not an option, they're closing in on every side. We need to leave with what we've got."

"Steve, just 30 seconds-"

"No, (Y/N), we're at the rendez-vous point right now, detonate the package immediately and get out of there. That's an order."

Bucky broke through the door, panting. "(Y/N), we gotta go now. There's more coming."

You glanced at the hard drive. 99%. You shoved the paper file in your jacket, starting the 10 second countdown. The thumb drive beeped, signaling 100% completion. You practically flew to the computer, grabbed the drive and ran out the door with Bucky on your tail. You raced down the hall and broke through the window just as the bomb went off, the force of the blast expelling you and Bucky through the air. As promised, the quinjet was hovering just outside the window, the door open with Steve waiting just inside. You and Bucky landed on the ramp, climbing up and into the quinjet.

You immediately went to Bucky's side. "You good?" You scanned his body for any injuries before he waved you off.

"I'm good. You?" You nodded. You turned and counted the heads in the jet, frowning when you came up one short.

"Where's Nat?" Relief flooded through your chest when the familiar head of red hair popped out from around the corner.

"Here."

The door to the jet closed and you opened your jacket, pulling out the French file and taking the hard drive out of your pocket. You handed them to Steve, still panting.

"I’m sorry I took so long, but I just needed that last 30 seconds." You knew you shouldn’t have argued with Steve, but you didn't regret what you did. You might have left important information if you hadn't waited, and at the moment, the Avengers could use every advantage they could get on HYDRA. Steve looked at you sternly, jaw clenched in frustration and disappointment. In that moment he wasn’t Steve, your friend. He was Captain Rogers, your superior commanding officer. You hated when he looked at you like that, and it seemed he did a lot more than you'd like.

"Just sit down, (L/N)." He took the file and thumb drive, walking off to the table in the middle of the quinjet and set them down, not taking a second glance at them. He never did work when he was frustrated; he couldn't focus. He usually just went to think by himself until he cooled down.

You sighed and went to one of the benches, leaning your head against the headrest. Bucky sat beside you, patting your knee. "It's not your fault; he was just scared you'd get hurt. You didn't do anything wrong. Your mission was to recover the intel and detonate the bomb. That's what you did."

"Yeah, but I also disobeyed his direct orders in doing so. He's the captain, Buck. What he says goes; you know how he is about following orders. A team listens to each other and works together, that's what makes it a team and not a bunch of people running around shooting guns. It is my fault. But, hey, at least now we've got a one-up on HYDRA." You looked at him with a bitter smile and he sat back. You didn't care what he said. You knew you were right. You were in the wrong. You deserved Steve's frustration and disappointment.

"Don't do that to yourself, (Y/N). Steve's just throwing a fit because things didn't go the way he wanted." You looked up at him. "Nat said things were getting real rough out there for them too, which is why Steve called it off. HYDRA was ready for us, there were more than we were expecting. I could barely stop for a second holding them off from the control room; they just kept coming. But Steve was a little overboard; 20 more seconds wasn't gonna kill anyone, he just wanted us outta there before anyone got hurt too bad." You knew he was trying to make you feel better, but even if what he said was true, you knew you were still at fault for Steve's anger. He was the captain, commanding officer, in charge of making sure everyone came back safe. It was a tough job and you just made it harder by not following his orders.

But you also knew it was easier to just keep those thoughts to yourself.

You plastered on a smile and patted Bucky's hand. "Thanks, Buck."

You headed down to the gym, swinging your towel over your shoulder. You'd booked a solo slot in the training room as soon as you'd come back, knowing you just needed some time alone to settle your mind. You pushed open the door, only to stop as you saw Wanda and Nat on the sparring mat, clearly in the middle of a session.

"Oh, hey-" you checked your phone, frowning. "It's 2:30, right? Or did I book under the wrong time again?" Nat raised her eyebrows.

"Oh, shit, sorry, (Y/N), I totally forgot you had cleared out the training room for now. Can you take my solo session tomorrow instead? I'm helping Wanda with some hand-to-hand and she could use the extra time." Nat frowned apologetically, and you felt your shoulders sag, but shook it off.

"Oh, yeah, no problem at all. It's okay, I don't need need the solo session. You can keep yours for tomorrow, too." You gave Nat a convincing smile, playing off your disappointment as well as you could.

"You sure?" Nat held your gaze, already slightly turning back to Wanda to continue. You nodded.

"Yeah, it's fine. I'll just go finish my run. I had to cut it short this morning 'cause of the mission. Work hard, girls!" You waved before leaving the gym, feeling the smile falter before the doors even closed.

You were almost in the elevators when you heard your name being called. You turned around to see one of Tony's many assistants running after you. "Agent (L/N), Mr. Stark's asking for you. He needs your help for a project he's working on in the lab." You groaned internally, but smiled politely at the young man, barely halfway through his 20's by the looks of it. Geez, look at yourself. Calling him young when you were 29. But hell if you didn't feel 39 at this point.

"Sure thing. I'll be right there-" you waited for his name.

“Oh, uh, John,” he finished for you.

"John," you repeated. "Could you please tell Tony that I'm going to change into some work attire and be right there?"

He nodded before turning away, hurrying down the hall. You quickly went to your room and changed, then headed to the lab, dreading the fact that you'd inevitably be spending the rest of your day working on a project you couldn't care less about.

You looked up from the blueprint projected on the hologram screen you were analyzing, to see Tony finally strutting in, with a single box of what looked like Chinese food. Your stomach grumbled, and you checked your watch, realizing you'd been there for four hours already.

"Hey, (Y/N), make any progress yet on what the problem is?" He munched in your ear as he looked over your shoulder, and the smell of lemon chicken had your mouth damn near watering.

"Where the hell have you been? You left me here two hours ago." He shrugged.

"My brain was hurting, so I went to get some air. Clear my mind. You know, the usual," he shoveled more food into his mouth. "Found this cute little Chinese place around the corner. You should really try it sometime, changed my life." You rolled your eyes, pinching the bridge of your nose.

"Wish I could, Stark, but I've been here working on fixing your latest experiment for the last four hours. And yeah, I figured out your problem, and fixed it, thank you very much. Did you even double check when you were putting it together to make sure the wiring was correct? Did you even try to figure it out yourself before getting me?"

Tony pauses mid-chew, looking up in hesitation. You scoffed, standing up. "Right, well, it’s fixed, problem solved. Excuse me now, I’m going to get some food.”

You rested against the counter as you heated up what little leftovers you'd found in the fridge from the dinner you'd missed. You sighed, holding your head in your hands as you let the frustration roll off of you. Thank God no one knew it was your birthday, or this day would have been even more awful than it already was. On top of all the frustrating things that had happened, everyone would feel bad for you because it was your birthday. Then, knowing your team- whom you loved and appreciated, don’t get me wrong- they would try to make it up by throwing some big party you weren't in the mood for and, quite frankly, didn't deserve.

The timer beeped and you took your plate out of the microwave, pouting at the table scraps left from dinner. You didn't expect any different; with two super soldiers, five other grown men with huge appetites, and a certain young witch and assassin who could certainly hold their own, you hadn't expected there to be any leftovers at all. You checked the clock, seeing it was 7:15. Your mind wandered to the pile of reports and paperwork to be filled and signed sitting in wait on your desk, and you huffed, resigning to the fact that you were looking at the rest of the evening spent in your office. Yay.

You worked through the papers and forms, trying to get them all out of the way as soon as possible so you could get Steve and Fury to sign them, sipping your coffee absentmindedly. You grimaced at the now cold liquid as it touched your tongue, not realizing how long you had left it untouched as you worked. You set the cup back down and started filling in your last document, only to be interrupted by a gentle knocking at your door. Your head jolted up, recognizing Bucky's large frame filling in the doorway.

"How long have you been working?" He asked. You checked the clock by the door. 10:30.

"A while," you answered, surprised by the scratchiness of your voice as you spoke for the first time in hours. Bucky chuckled.

"I can see that. How're you doing? I've barely seen you since we got back. I didn't see you at dinner."

You smiled at Bucky's concern. "Eh, I've been working all day. Stark had me holed up his lab trying to fix his ridiculous experiment and then I had paperwork. Tony disappeared basically as soon as I got to the lab and came back hours later with Chinese food for himself. Now all I can think about is the goddamn lemon chicken. Promise me we'll visit that Chinese place around the corner sometime? But I did eat-" you gestured to your long empty plate. "I had leftovers."

"Shit, those table scraps? (Y/N), there was barely a meal for one person left over tonight. I'm sorry, if I'd known you were working all day I'd have picked something up to bring to you. It's been kind of a shit day, huh?" He sat on the corner of your desk, playing with one of your pens.

"Yeah, best birthd-" you stopped yourself. "Best day ever," you corrected. Bucky frowned, looking at you.

"What did you say?"

"I was being sarcastic, Buck, geez." You blatantly ignored his implied question. His eyes flashed to the planner above your desk, seeing the date. His eyes widened.

"Shit, (Y/N), it's your birthday! It's your birthday and I didn't even remember! Fuck, I'm sorry! I didn't even realize the date." He was in front of you now, remorse clear in his crystal eyes. You frowned.

"How did you know it was my birthday? I wasn't telling anyone."

"I asked FRIDAY after you made that cake for my birthday. Oh, God, (Y/N), I'm so sorry. I-"

"Buck, honestly, it's fine. I didn't tell anyone. I barely even acknowledged it myself." You held up a hand to interrupt him, forcing on a reassuring smile.

"B-but, it's your birthday, and no one said anything. FRIDAY didn't even give a reminder."

You sighed. "I asked FRIDAY not to because I didn't want to celebrate it. I don't really make a big deal of my birthday. Buck, I told you, it's fine."

He shook his head fervently. "But you made a cake for me on mine. You'd barely known me three months and you took the time to make a goddamned cake. And on Steve's birthday, you got him that book he was wanting and we all watched a movie instead of going to that bullshit party Tony threw because you knew we didn't want to go. Of course we should be making a big deal for you, because you always make a big deal for everyone else."

"Bucky-"

"You made a cake," he said quietly. You sighed. "You're always putting everyone first. You always think of everyone else, and you put yourself last. On missions, you don't get on the jet until everyone else is first, and even if you do, you don't relax until you know everyone's there, safe. You always step up when someone needs help with training, and you never hesitate when Tony's asking for help in the lab or Vision asks if you'd like to make some new recipe with him. You're there for Wanda when she's having trouble handling everything that's going on, and you take over Clint's paperwork when he has a family emergency. And on top of all that," he takes your hands in his, pulling you up from your chair. "You're always there for me whenever I need you, without a second thought. If I'm having a nightmare or flashbacks or just need someone with me, you're there. You deserve to be celebrated more than anyone, because you're everything, doll. You might not think that, you might dismiss yourself or shove yourself into a corner to make sure everyone else's needs are met, but you're the heart of the team. You're everything, (Y/N), and don't you dare think otherwise for a second." 

You struggled to meet his eyes, unable to process and believe what he was saying. You felt your chest tighten at his words, touched that he thought so highly of you and appreciated you so much. You wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him into a tight hug and you kept the tears that overwhelmed you at bay.

"Thank you, Bucky. No one's ever said anything like that to me before," you whispered. "I never thought anyone noticed." Bucky chuckled sadly, pulling away from you just enough to meet your eyes.

"I noticed you. Doll, I've always noticed you." Confused at his words, you barely had time to process him slowly leaning in, stopping just before his lips met yours. Your heart pounded in your chest in anticipation. "Can I kiss you?" He whispered softly. All you could do was nod, but it was enough. Your lips met, Bucky's right hand sliding up from your waist to your jaw, his thumb gently brushing your cheek as your eyes slid shut. It was the most exquisite feeling you'd ever experienced, his lips on yours, and you never wanted it to stop. His chestnut locks felt so soft tangled around your fingers and his lips tasted so sweet and his hand was so warm on your cheek compared to the cool metal of his left around your waist and his chest was so broad and you had a million thoughts running through your head before they all disappeared and then suddenly it was only Bucky. It was all Bucky, washing away your stresses and frustrations and disappointments and worries.

Finally, you broke apart, gasping for air, Bucky resting his forehead on yours as your eyes met. You were lost for words but you felt as though his eyes and that dorky smile tugging at his lips were telling you everything you needed to know. Bucky lifted his head to kiss your nose before returning to its previous position, and you closed your eyes in bliss.

"Happy birthday, doll."

[purkinje-effect]

The Anatomy of Melancholy, 11

Table of Contents Go to first. Go to previous. Go to next.

Updated 2019.01.29. (Minor name tweaks.) PTSD episode tw

Melancholy set down his coffee cup, and swallowed while he continued fidgeting with his Pipboy. Thus far nothing had spurred him to really acquaint himself with the nuances of its dials and buttons, and he sat there in the pharmacy break room skimming the lead-yellow, wrist-bound instrument’s menus in half-boredom, half-interest. The calibration of its global positioning system seemed reliable, as he presumed of its itemized annotation of the user’s vital statistics. The wrist-cuff padding contained sensitive diagnostic features which monitored the user’s vitals. Neither of these preliminary tabs of the menu seemed pertinent before. He knew his way to Concord and Lexington from Sanctuary, even on foot, and he felt more and more like the Pipboy would never correctly diagnose his critical condition from what limited scope of statistics it could scan.

There is no medical precedent for what is happening to you, Mister Carey, he told himself with a wry disinterest. I simply know you’re falling apart.

The third story bathrooms still had one in-tact mirror, the only left in the place he’d found yet. One page in the health section listed diagnostic returns of features he’d already learned of in this way: the device could not pinpoint what had oddly cataracted his hazel eyes, a shock of white now streaked his greying hair, and vitiligo mottled his jawline and various parts of his right and back sides where cryogenesis had, in its own way, frostbitten him. Another sub-menu in the health tab piqued his brow a moment: in the few weeks he’d worn the device, it had already inferred a rather detailed itinerary of his core proficiency and skills. On yet another sub-menu, the Pipboy let him know it knew of all the addictions he’d racked up in the same few weeks. He flipped tabs with a grunt, and bit his lower lip.

Since it seemed at first glance they required access to a terminal port for keyboard entry in order to be most useful, he skipped over tabs which looked useful for maintaining inventory invoices and for organizing correspondences. The last tab on the menu list queued up a series of local radio signals the Pipboy could pick up, and 'Choly’s hollowed eyes glazed. He set down his glasses on the table to look it over. Surely, these couldn’t be sophisticated radio stations. How could such things be maintained with the landscape as it had become? Dubious, he flicked the dial down to one whose frequency had been clearly labeled, and selected it: “Diamond City Radio.”

♫ ...and I wonder why everything's the same as it was. I can't understand. No, I can't understand how life goes on the way it does... ♫

“What kind of--” The chemist hushed himself and glared at his Pipboy as he recognized the song in disbelief. “Don’t they know... it’s the end... of the world...”

“Ah! You found some music to fill the place!” Angel stopped its skimming the cabinets to brainstorm meal plans, and came over when it heard its owner whispering along. “The tune’s a bit drab, though, don’t you think?”

The deejay came on, broken and awkward.

“Coming to you from. Ah. The jeweled green... I mean the green, the, ah, Great Green Jewel of the Commonwealth. It's... Diamond City Radio. That was Skeeter Davis. A name I still find confusing. Was I. Ah. The only one surprised that Skeeter Davis is, you know... a woman? Just. Aah. Didn't really sound like a woman's name. Ah-- anyway! Here's a real classic from good old Nat King Cole... ‘Orange Colored Sky.’ It's. It's a good one!”

“Great Green Jewel,” 'Choly repeated as the next song aired. “I wonder if this is just a recorded radio personality, or.”

“Only one way to find out, hm? Where is this Diamond City he mentioned?”

“Someplace in Boston, I’d imagine. I don’t know anyplace that was named that before the bombs fell.” 'Choly took another sip of his coffee and gave his Handy-bot earnest eye contact with its triplicate visual sensors. “Guessing we’ll have to work on becoming road ready sooner than later. It’s just dawned on me--General Atomics was working on cross-compatibility with RobCo in the years leading up to the nuclear exchange. I know the old model struggled with it, but this newer one I nicked in the vault seems capable. Let’s head into the stock room and see if we can’t interface you with my Pipboy. Update your hydraulics calibration, too. You’re far beyond overdue for maintenance, my friend.”

“Stars and garters, yes.” Angel caught up in itself. “Pardon the animation. I’ve simply... been unable to tend to my own upkeep all this time, and--”

“Hey, now,” the chemist grinned, putting his glasses back on. “You remember, don’t you, how much better I felt once I got to bathe after being frozen two hundred years? It’s your turn.”

“I-- Thank you, Sir.”

The tune of Mercer and the Pied Pipers' ‘Personality’ followed them to the next room over.

♫ ...Certain things, like sable coats and wedding rings...? ♫

+ + + + + + + + + +

♫ --The world’s gone mad today, and good’s bad today-- ♫

Like the consequence of a defibrillator, the building drew its first rasps in centuries. While the chemist had spent most of the last two weeks in an unreal soup of chems, the Handy-bot had spent the same time disinterring the back room in the first story, motivated by its recent repairs and recalibrations. Too, the second elevator’s doors on the first story appeared from behind the rubble, though like the other elevator, damage from the neighboring building’s collapse trapped it from access. Angel had shepherded its owner to do the honors, in the optimism that the effort could reinstate full electrical current to the structure. Though many lights and electronics no longer functioned from the combination of nuclear damage and centuries of disrepair, many others previously unaffected by the other floors’ breaker boxes still sprang up and brightened.

A coughing fit overtook him as the air ducts billowed bicentennial dust. The lower half of his face shied into the collar of his dress shirt.

♫ --Just think of those shocks you've got, ♫ ♫ and those knocks you've got-- ♫

“–Maybe this was a bad idea.”

♫ --and those blues you've got, ♫ ♫ from those news you've got-- ♫

“Oh, Sir! Coming right away.” Porting the tangle of bed straps its owner had tied all over it the week before, Angel rounded up behind the awkward cane-synecdoche which ascended the stairwell. “Wouldn’t you rather make use of the harness you outfitted on me? Be careful!”

♫ --and those pains you've got, ♫ ♫ if any brains you've got ♫ ♫ from those little radios-- ♫

The Russian-American had had enough of the Pipboy’s peanut gallery in the moment, and nearly punched it to turn it off. Evacuation to the second story yielded no better ventilation, and ‘Choly reclaimed the wheelchair as he took the elevator to the third story. Anxiety crawled up his body as he recognized the sounds of things inside the walls also stirring afresh. Reality had an unpleasant, rippling echo that late afternoon. Where could he find respite until the air system had evened out? Would the ancient filters yield results? He couldn’t open windows on a building with none. A flurry of draughty haloes refracted his path.

Among these dust-borne glories, he saw the operating light on the other elevator. Testing its soundness would take too long, and he didn’t know how far he could climb the stairs, either by their failing form or his failing function--he had outfitted Angel with the harness so he could ride it, but he hadn’t really practiced balancing on its back in this way, and the thought of urgency necessitating test runs only made his blood heave through his veins harder. He bit his upper lip and squirmed, throat and eyes burning, while he awaited the call button to retrieve the car.

“We left everything out in the kitchen. Dinner is ruined, though I’m sure you might have guessed that.”

“–Least of my worries right now–”

Another coughing fit silenced ‘Choly from voicing his irritation, from having tried to talk. He ground his teeth from inside his shirt and rushed inside, Angel following while he depressed the 'close doors’ button with a rapid desperation. Once shut in, he noticed cleaner air, albeit stale. He wheezed and inspected the operating panel. The elevator could no longer arrive at the first floor, but it could in theory go to the fourth through eighth. It seemed both elevators evaded the dust onslaught. Yet. Maybe…

“Are we to remain in the carriage, Sir? We can have a slumber party! Ha-ha!”

“No. We can’t just stay in here indefinitely.” As he caught his breath, he steeled himself with a sublingual Mentat from his pocket. “What all is still in your storage compartment?”

“Well!” the pale Handy replied in thought, rooting around behind inside itself, “I have your pistols and munitions. Seventy-three 10mm rounds, and twenty-six .38 rounds. A box of deviled eggs and a can of water. Your jumpsuit from the vault. Oh, and that odd cowl you took from that lass in Concord. We can stay in here a little longer, though, right Miss Sir?”

'Choly’s jaw tightened as he stared past the elevator’s wainscoting. He loathed the very notion of donning the vault suit again, even with what few foundations he now had. Paired with Angel’s verbiage glitch, he flinched at the notion, but he loathed even more the idea of staying longer than necessary inside an elevator, especially one of untested reliability.

The chemist leaned forward, and sweated pressing the button for the fourth floor. The elevator’s winch mechanisms groaned but hoisted smoothly otherwise.

“Give me the water. …And the hood.”

Angel complied, and the indicator panel announced their fourth floor arrival with a holographic voice and a bell-ding. ‘Choly panicked when the doors opened, and, frantic, he lunged at the ‘close doors’ button again. He sat, breathing heavy, with the items in his lap. The panic of having to evacuate was blooming into a recurrent theme. To the vault, as the sky threatened to fall. From the vault, as its artificial intelligence warned of impending loss of life-sustaining operations. And now, from the new home he’d begun to fashion for himself. He chastised himself for likening kicking up all this dust to the former situations which had genuinely threatened his life. Still, his head and heart throbbed, shooting pain down his left arm, and he was convinced the only way to quiet himself would be to step foot outside.

“Is… everything all right, Sir?”

The chemist motioned for his Handy-bot to can-open the water for him, and with it he doused the canvas sack hood. Moisture served to enhance its ability to block airborne particulates. He slipped it on and tucked the open can in the back corner of his wheelchair seat, under the cane beside him. The Mentats told him he had bounded upward rather than outward, and his face flushed at the mistake made in his state of alarm, but he did his best to reassure himself that entering the streets of Lexington at night stood to endanger him far worse than some musty air.

“We’re going to be fine,” he lied. “I need the 10mm. And the bullets for it.” It complied, though hesitant. “I’m just grateful there’s no apparent gas leak, Angel. Your thruster would have blown us up.”

“Silver linings, I suppose.” It failed to conceal worry in its intonation.

Melancholy opened the elevator and wheeled out to find a hall to either side rather than a lobby. Damaged fluorescent lighting flickered, and he could see several doors to either side of the elevator, as well as two across from it. Office floors, as he had predicted weeks ago. Having soaked the hood made breathing a heavier ordeal, but the barrier of moisture did as intended. Only one elevator accessed these floors, he noted, as he rolled to each end of the hall. The lone door to the left of the elevator provided access to the roof, it boasted. A breath choked him as he struggled to open the interior door, then the exterior. Angel helped once it grasped the desired effect.

Upon rolling out onto the rough paved roof and into the night air, Melancholy’s jaw slackened. Though the building tucked itself beneath the shadow of a multi-level overpass, across the way lay the Corvega assembly plant. The automotive facility’s iconic saturnesque globe and multitude of smokestacks still boasted to illuminate Lexington’s ruined cityscape. He squinted upward to see that he’d connected enough circuits within the wiring of the Walden Drugs’ pharmacy to light up the billboard sign at the top of it, as well as the sign at the front corner of its lower stories.

He sat back in his chair and caught his breath. Removing the hood, he allowed himself a dry, broken chuckle, and he quaffed at the can of water from beside him. Thoughts lost him as the stress slowly melted, but the sound of quiet commotion garnered his attention. When he looked up, he found humanoid silhouettes on the rooftop of the plant. Adjusting his glasses, he returned their gawking.

“Might we… return inside, Sir? Seems our refurbishment efforts have garnered some unwanted attention.”

“Hey, now. I don’t know if it’s unwanted yet. They might be different from those asses in Concord.”

“BRILLIANT,” one of them yelled sarcastically.

“–I,” he set his water between his knees and cupped his hands to his mouth, “THANKS.”

The group that had gathered gave him an unanimous chuckle, and he smirked to himself a bit.

“I think we’ll have dinner on the roof tonight,” he told Angel, as he turned the radio back on at low volume. The mellow, jazzy brass of Val Bennett’s ‘Soul Survivor’ greeted him, and he melted into his chair a bit with a smile. “Pass over those Yum Yums.”

Go to Next »»»

[spirify]

Artificial Flower― CH. 9

w. Rielin to never fade; only to live.

“Behind the flashiness of an eternal flower petal, there’s a liar who has never bloomed nor withered.” -Eddy Kim.

bgm Maze - Kim Na Young While You Were Sleeping OST

Hey, Eid. I never said it before, but I always admired you. I always looked up to you. You were my role model. I wanted to be exactly like you. Perhaps there can only be one Eid in the world. Maybe that's why I killed you, so I can overtake the king and wear that crown.

Ever since we were young, we were treated entirely differently. Although we looked exactly the same, our height, our voice, our face- everything, literally, but our personality wasn't. I mean, you were like "the better version" of me, at least that's what our mother said. You were more intelligent, much kinder, much more wiser, and you knew how to do everything; you were simply the definition of perfection. Meanwhile, I wasn't smart enough to be praised by mom. I mean, I did try and did get A's on my exams, but I guess it wasn't enough to be hugged by her. She ignored my presence, instead.

It's alright though, it's okay if you got the spotlight, I didn't mind. I was proud of you as well. Except until… I met her. Sorry brother, but I fell in love in first sight when I saw her. She was your girlfriend though, I shouldn't have, why did you even introduce me to her anyway? But you were in the spotlight, so all I could do was just watch you and her… loving each other from the backstage, where the light doesn't shine.

Then our parents died of sickness. Of course, you got our dad's company, I didn't mind though. You look much more fitting as a CEO than me. You knew how to control the world around you. I didn't.

But you know what I couldn't stand? You being with her. You talking to her, you hugging her, you kissing her, even you being right next to her. Why couldn't I do that? I mean, I loved her as well, even more than you, I knew that for sure. Why couldn't I have at least one thing, brother? Why did you take everything?

Jealousy turned into insanity.

It was a raining day. Didn't you hate the rain? Well, for sure, you would definitely hate the rain after this day- oh wait. You're dead. You can't even hate anything now, can you?

As always, I was standing on the backstage, where the light doesn't shine, so you two couldn't see me. You drop her off at her house, you kiss her goodbye, she goes inside her house, and you get in your car and use the shortcut to come to our house- it was always the same. How did I know? I stalked her, of course. Just to plan this.

The shortcut's real nice, isn't it? It's about 10 minutes shorter than using the main road. But not many people use the shortcut since there aren't any streetlights. I got inside my car as well. I was waiting inside of our house and I knew the exact time when you would be on that shortcut road. I was right. I saw your car on the opposite side of the lane. You despise the rain so much that were quickly trying to wipe away the droplets on your window with your wiper. In fact, you were too focused on that, that you didn't even see my car.

I smiled. My heart was beating so fast, I was sweating, I couldn't wait! I couldn't wait to hold her in my arms instead of yours! Just how petite is she? Just how pretty is she? Just how adorable is she? You wouldn't know, you're dead.

WIth my adrenaline pumping through my veins, I swerved the steering wheel, and there. I crashed my car into yours. Haha, you should've seen the look on your face just when you saw my car lights shining on your face. I bet you saw my face as well, I was laughing hysterically. Good thing you died though, no one would figure out that I'm the one who killed you. It was a risky choice since I could've of died as well, but I was actually concentrated on my driving rather than focusing on wiping away the droplets of rain. Father always told us, Eid, always focus on the road.

I actually broke my ankle from that accident. My car wasn't destroyed too much either, unlike yours. I quickly got out of my car and opened the door that was blocking my reach toward you. I checked your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. Yep, you're dead. I did a pretty good job, didn't I? Do you think mother will praise me for doing something right at last? I took your wallet, your phone, all of your belongings and quickly drove off. Of course, I threw my car away. I can't have anyone suspect that I killed you. Oh it's okay though, Chung knows. You know, your secretary? I didn't mean to tell him but he found out by himself. If he spoke about that accident to others, I swore I will kill him. Haha, he was like a little puppy, all scared and trembling, he's pretty entertaining, too.

Everyone figured out that you died of car crash. But my main goal was to actually be you and return to her. So I just told Chung to tell everyone else that Eid didn't actually die, he's in a coma. So I had to stay hidden away from her view for a year. A whole fucking year. I wanted to see her so badly, so you know what I did? I made Chung wear this special type of glasses, it had a tiny camera on it. I made sure he visited her, to make sure she's alright, and so I could see how she was doing. She was in a depression though. It made me worried, but a year passed by. I was stroked to meet her.

I didn't tell her of course, I wanted it to be a surprise. I knocked on her door, and haha, her facial expression was so cute. Her eyes widened, she was trembling in disbelief, tears were starting to form within her eyes, then bam. She hugged me. My dream came true, how small she was in my arms. And you had her all by yourself, brother. You sure are selfish.

After holding her, I realized that only I want to hold her. No one else can hug her. No one else can kiss her. No one else can talk to her, look at her. Because I was her boyfriend. I was Eid.

We moved into a condo, one close to the company. I mean, being a CEO wasn't easy but you left all kinds of steps and tips behind, I guess it was all for you, but thanks, that helped me to actually become you even to the society's eyes.

I guess she loved going outside, she said she loved shopping, watching movies, going to places. But if I allow her to do that while I was at work… others would look at her. They could even talk to her. How could I let them do that to her? Only I can do that. She's mine.

I made sure she never left the house. I didn't know why, but she seemed so depressed. But I can't let her leave. What happen if she leaves ME? What happen if she figures out everything and runs away from me? Even thinking about it brings me nightmares, even to this day.

I locked her in. Surely, she was sad. At first, she tried to fight with me, but it didn't work out. Then she started to give up, she started to become so fragile and weak. I gave her all kinds of presents she would like but she threw them all to the side. She didn't love me anymore. It stinged my heart. But it was okay. As long as she was next to me. As long as I can see her, talk to her, hug her, kiss her… but she didn't wanted to do that with me anymore.

I decided, that I will let her be free and enjoy being outside. As long as I was next to her. As long as I made sure no one looked at her, no one talked to her. Slowly, her eyes started to become vivid, those golden eyes shined like the day she met me.

Then something I couldn't believe happened. She started opening up to me. Took her awhile, but she started to actually look into my eyes. She started to hold a conversation with me. She hugged me. She let me kiss her. She even let me spend the night with her. I couldn't believe that not only her mind loved me, but her body loved me as well. She loved me! Everything was going perfect. I even bought an expensive diamond ring for her, I was going to propose to her. I had everything planned. After work, I was going to take her to a restaurant which I reserved the entire place just for us. It was decorated with her favorite color, her favorite flower, her favorite food, it was everything she would want.

But that day, Chung decided to bring up the accident. I was irritated. Why did he wanted to talk about this today? Should I just kill him? No, it's like he liked Eve or anything. Maybe I should just hire a doctor to tear his tongue out, to rip all of his teeth out just so he could never speak.

But why were you there…? Why were you behind that door, listening to everything?

"Who the fuck are you,"

Why are you angry at me? I'm the person you love, I'm Eid. You were never angry at Eid. I did everything to please you, I am living just to make your life better. I saved you from that depression, didn't I? I made you smile again, I made you happy again. You said you loved me. Wait… you never did. You never said that you loved me. Ha, all of my efforts to become Eid was useless…?

Why?

Everyone loved you, Eid. Why couldn't I just have one… just one person's love? That's all I wanted in my life. Why couldn't she love me? Why, even in the end… she chose you? Did she even know, that whenever she called me 'Eid', it stinged my heart?

She was an artificial flower. You were blooming, yet you never showed me a sign of life. I watered you, placed you on direct sunlight, yet nothing happened. Another petal didn't bloom, another petal didn't die. You're alive to other's eyes, but you're honestly dead. They never fade, only to live. You're an artificial flower, my dear Eve.

note:

This entire chapter is Add talking to Eid and explaining every event! Also shows his very crazy side lmao

But I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! The reason of the title is now explained! Next chapter will be the last chapter and it's fairly short. It's kind of like an epilogue, I'd say. Hope y'all are looking forward to it!

Rielin’s Fanfiction Site

[esamastation]

Nobody trolls everybody and everybody leafs

"JARVIS – why is there a green thing on the counter?" Tony asks blearily.

"I believe that is what is known as a plant sir," the AI answers wryly.

"Why is there a plant on the counter?" Tony demands to know.

"I understand they are often used as decoration. House plant is what I believe they're called. They're common in most homes."

Tony stares at the house plant for a moment. It just sits there, being all green and living in its quaint little pot. "You know what, it's too late for this," he then decides and stumbles over to the coffee pot.

"It's seven a.m. sir."

"Precisely," Tony says and gets a refill for the cold, congealing mess at the bottom of his cup. He takes a sip and shudders. Its terrible, absolutely terrible. "Perfect," he decrees it and turns to head off again.

"What should I do about the plant, sir?" JARVIS asks.

"I don't know. Its a plant. House plant, for decoration," Tony says with a yawn and waves a dismissive hand. "Apparently common in most homes."

"Quite so, sir."

"Yeah," Tony agrees and then stumbles off, and back to the workshop.

-

Steve arches an eyebrow at the flowerpot sitting on the kitchen counter. Its the first thing he's seen in the tower that isn't metal, plastic, glass or fake – or integrated into the structure. Its just... a flower pot.

"Heading out on a morning jog, Captain Rogers? Would you like route suggestions?

Steve glances up and smiles. "Yeah, thanks JARVIS, that's be good," he says and then goes for the fridge to get something to eat. "Anyone else up yet?"

"Define up," JARVIS says delicately. "And yet."

"Awake, already?" Steve offers and then frowns. "Stark's still in his workshop and hasn't gone to bed at all, has he? Should I go intervene?"

"I do not believe it would be welcome, and sir has privacy mode engaged – you would not be able to enter in any case," JARVIS says apologetically.

Steve shakes his head and then gets a bottle of milk out. "What about the others?"

"Agent Barton is still asleep I believe and Doctor Banner is meditating. Agent Romanov however is at the gym."

"Hmm," Steve answers, pouring himself a glass. He side eyes the flower pot. "What's that?" he then asks, because it really doesn't seem to fit the gleaming, stream lined futuristic design of the kitchen at all.

"Apparently a common decoration in most homes," JARVIS answers somewhat sarcastically.

Steve's eyebrows arch at that and then he ducks his head a bit. Huh. He hadn't really though that Stark was into that sort of... well, sentimentality. Was the guy trying to make the Tower more homely or something? It was kind of...

Steve sips his milk and then figures, in Stark speech, it was down right mushy as gestures went. Especially since it doesn't look like the plant had cost more than few bucks – which is pleasant surprise considering the last thing the man had offered them were actual sports cars.

Steve might have reacted badly to that, in hindsight.

Maybe this is Stark's way of... trying to be moderate? Still buying things, but not expensive, life changing things.

Steve smiles a little. "It's kind of charming," he decides and then puts the glass into the dishwasher. "I think I'll head off now. Hey, JARVIS? Can you add a flower shop to my run route?"

-

Natasha stretches her shoulders idly while walking towards the kitchen. Her eyes are immediately drawn to things out of place – namely two house plants, sitting on the counter, which most definitely don't belong on Tony Stark's sterile penthouse suite, never mind his gleaming kitchen.

"JARVIS," Natasha says slowly "Why are there house plants on the kitchen?

"I'm told they're charming and common decoration in most homes, Agent Romanov."

She makes a face at that. It sounds rehearsed and exasperated – even more than usual for JARVIS. Which means that Stark is being an idiot, sad, or sulking, possibly all of the above. "Where's Stark?" she asks.

"In the workshop – with privacy engaged."

So definitely sulking. Maybe it was the sports car debacle – someone might've said something about throwing money around not being good basis for working relationships, never mind friendships. And Stark had, of course, not shown any of them how deep that must've hit.

Sighing Natasha pushes her shower wet hair back and then goes to inspect the plants – just in case they're something one of them might be allergic to. Pepper had told her about the strawberries, after all.

They're pretty basic house plants, though – a fern and a ficus, she thinks, though she's not exactly an expert on house plants. Knowing Tony, though, they'd be a dead before the week was over after no one remembered to water them.

Still. House plants.

"I guess there's worse things," Natasha muses and goes to grab a water bottle from the fridge. "If anyone asks, I'll be out shopping," she says.

"Very well, Agent Romanov," JARVIS answers amiably.

-

"What the hell?" Clint asks, looking up from his, toast as Natasha comes in, carrying a flower pot.

"Good morning to you – you missed out on workout," she says, sitting the pot in the middle, of the kitchen island.

"Yeah, yeah – jet lag. I'm gonna catch up with Steve later, see if he'd go on a run with me," Clint answers with a yawn and eyeballs the pot suspiciously. "Is there C4 inside or, something? A gas grenade? What?"

"It's a plant, Barton," Nat answers dryly. "It's for Stark."

Clint stares at her for a moment. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that because I think I might be still half asleep – it honestly sounded like you just said you bought a plant for Stark."

"Didn't you notice the plants over there?" She asks, nodding towards the counter.

"I checked them – no bugs or anything, " Clint answers and glances upwards. "Not that it matters much in a place with built in ingested microphones everywhere, listening in on everything we say and do..."

"I also have clear visual," JARVIS tells him in serene tones that make Clint shudder a little. Artificial Intelligences, ugh – had Stark never seen a scifi movie?

Natasha gives him a look and then shakes her head. "Stark bought them and now he's sulking," she says. "As far as good will gestures go, this is down right tame for him – I thought I'd encourage it. That's all."

Clint gives her a piercing look. She's too good nowadays to squirm under it – but he's known her for a long while. It's definitely not that she's interested in Stark that way – and Stark's definitely too scared of Nat to even think it but...

But Tony Stark is the first person after him who, technically, welcomed her to his own house, even knowing who she was and what she did. And not just to visit or stay a while – but to live. For Nat that's a much bigger deal than she'll ever admit.

But how do you say thank you to a guy when you're both emotionally stunted and the guy literally owns everything?

Apparently, you buy a plant. Its absurdly ordinary, when Clint thanks about it, for their band of misfits... but who knows, maybe it works.

"Well... okay then," he mutters and eyes the plant on the kitchen isle curiously. It's a succulent of some sort. "Guess every home needs few houseplants."

Nat glances at him and then gives him that awkward half smile of hers that she probably thinks looks natural and spontaneous but usually it just looks like it takes lot effort. She can't really do uncalculated expressions, too much training in the way – but she tries, bless her lethal soul.

Clint coughs and turns to his toast. Who knows, maybe Stark had a point – maybe this whole tower thing would be good for them.

"Where did you get that, by the way?" he asks nonchalantly, nodding at the plant, and bites into his toast.

-

Bruce blinks at the plants in the kitchen. He's fairly certain they weren't there before.

"JARVIS," he glances upwards. "I though the tower was kept sterile, no plants allowed?"

"Only in the R&D levels, Doctor Banner," JARVIS answers. "Residential levels have separate air conditioning however, so plants and even pets are perfectly fine."

"Huh," He says and goes to examine the plants. "So.... the plants?

"Apparently houseplants are common decoration in most homes, they are charming, there are worse things and every home needs a few houseplants," JARVIS recites, obviously quoting somebody.

Bruce heart thuds heavily at that and he drops his hand. He can just hear Tony, saying all of that, babbling excuses for a simple open gestures because he couldn't just do something nice without expecting people to criticise him for it. "Home, hmm?" he murmurs. "That's..."

He swallows.

It's been a long time since he'd even dared to think that.

Home.

"Doctor Banner?" JARVIS asks worriedly.

"That's nice – the plants, they're nice," Bruce says quickly. "It's just – nice."

"I see," the AI says gently. "Would you like me to give you the phone number to a flower shop, Doctor Banner?"

Bruce blinks, glancing up and then looking down. "Yeah – yeah, please do."

-

JARVIS considers the penthouse kitchen. There are now five plants there – Humata tyermanii, Ficus benjamina, Crassula ovata, Opuntia microdasys and Aglaonema commutatum. Most of them were purchased as some form of gratitude towards sir.

There is some symbolism to it – to choosing live potted plants as opposed to cuttings that would die. Permanence and duration – and care, as the plants would require regular care.

He decides he rather likes the symbolism of it.

Then he puts in an order for an Aloe vera.

-

Tony frowns at his kitchen for a moment. "Are those things multiplying?" he asks. There's six of them now – what the hell?

"It seems the other occupants of the floor took liking to the idea of plants in the kitchen," JARVIS says. "Apparently they're charming, there are worse things and every home needs a few houseplants, and they're nice. Also, there are studies that state they're good for air quality."

Tony's eyebrows lifts at that. "Is that critique on my Tower's air conditioning? Because I take issues with such talk."

"Sir, I would never," JARVIS says and Tony scoffs.

"Well," he says after a moment and shakes his head. "If they're so wonderful, who am I to stand in the way of home decoration and air... quality..."

He frowns at the plants, which just sit there, being all decorative. And homely.

"Huh," Tony says.

"I know a good florist if you're interested, sir," JARVIS says casually.

"Don't be ridiculous," Tony answers and then hesitates. "How good?"

- - -

Call back to a simpler time when we thought the Avengers could be nice to each other.

[princess-stabbity]

corvidoe replied to your post “tbh i really want to know what the ryders’ family dynamics are like so...”

the family aspect is the part I'm most interested in tbh and ofc it's the one we know nothing about. lmao. I'm in the same boat. i want to plan stuff for once and i feel like i can't bc we don't know these ppl or how they fit. and i worry it's going to feel less like my own character bc of it.

corvidoe replied to your post “tbh i really want to know what the ryders’ family dynamics are like so...”

also i feel like we knew a lot more about the hawke fam dynamic before da2 came out?

i know exactly what you mean 

the problem with being so mum on everything is that fans don’t have enough cool shit to get distracted by, and instead keep picking apart what little you’ve released until they notice every flaw. ultimately the less info you release, the more they either imagine the worst (making them not want to buy the game and wary for its flaws if they do) or build it up so much they’re disappointed with the real product

honestly bioware, y’all brought this on yourselves

anyway, as far as the ryder family goes--i’m gonna warn for mild spoilers here even tho i’ve avoided watching the “first [x amount of time] of me:a!!” videos past checking out the cc and how it affects papa ryder (answer: from what i can tell, he changes skin/eye color based on your ryder, and his facial features rely on what preset you used, much like the hawkes--that’s why the skin color options are limited, so you don’t end up with a black albino dad (which, of course, assumes you don’t want that, but que sera sera))  

my point is, i don’t know much, but i have picked up a few general facts about the family that seem fairly solid for character-building purposes 

“Born on Earth in 2129, Alec Ryder says his love of new frontiers was fostered by a childhood in the Sierra Nevadas. According to his service record, he joined the Alliance military and was eventually assigned to Jon Grissom's historic expedition through the Charon Relay. His experience made him a candidate for what would later be known as N7 training back on Earth. Alec continued military service, most notably on Shanxi in the First Contact War against the turians. Assigned as a military attaché to the Citadel in the late 2160s, Alec became interested in artificial intelligence as a means of human advancement.” 

alec ryder is something of a tech genius in addition to legendary soldier, given that he also apparently helped with sam’s creation? and was dishonorably discharged for it? 

at least the kids were born after their dad decided to take a potentially one-way trip thru the charon relay

sounds like he’s kind of critical--there’s a bit where pc!scott says something is “pretty good” and alec replies “pretty good isn’t good enough” (to which scott replies “yes, sir”), and i’ve heard another part described where it sounds like alec begrudgingly praises you for taking the exploratory, roundabout path, and you can respond sarcastically that “that is what i was trained for” 

your mom is dr. ellen ryder. she didn’t come with you to andromeda (it sounds like she died before the game), but she was aware of its existence, since your dad says that she made him promise to take both kids to andromeda (would he not have if she hadn’t made him promise? no clue, nor do i know if he would have shown hesitation out of a sense of protection or not thinking they were up to the task or what). she was the original creator of the ai sam. 

“Born on the Citadel space station in 2163. With informal training aided by Alec Ryder's N7 background. Scott joined the Systems Alliance military and was assigned to an outpost near Arcturus Station overseeing Relay 202. A primary route to Arcturus, this mass relay leads into contested space and has an unsavory reputation. Scott was needed to protect Arcturus, but also had "a front row seat to everyone else going off to fortune and glory.””

“Born on the Citadel space station in 2163. With informal training aided by Alec Ryder's N7 background. Sara joined the Systems Alliance military, which was continuing its search for Prothean technology after successful discoveries on Mars. Initially assigned to peacekeeping duties. Sara was approached to serve a support role for these Prothean researchers. She often describes the thrill of serving with scientists like Mateus Silva on the brink of the next great discovery.”” 

mateus silva was previously mentioned as being the namesake of a planet in the euler system, described as “leader of the prospector team that unearthed the Prothean Archives on Mars” 

my headcanon is also somewhat impacted by the training histories--basically, starting classes. they’re almost like service histories, since they describe what role you played as part of the alliance, and though you can specialize however you want, i personally like the sound of “leader,” which is basically a sentinel:

“You were a team player and natural leader in the Alliance military, working closely with your cohorts for their safety and the safety of others.” 

besides putting me in the basic class i wanna play as, that sounds like exactly the sort of person alec was seemingly raising his kids to be? elite yet well-rounded, a leader as well as a soldier and tech specialist, using every skill available to get the job done. although on that note, the fact that both kids have innate biotic potential makes me wonder if alec didn’t purposely expose them to element zero in the womb, even knowing the likely cancerous effects, which conjures shades of henry lawson, but maybe i’m reading too much into this 

anyway, going in, all i had was “hey, since bioware is giving me a dad in this game, what if i make him look like my other favorite space dad besides anderson, bill adama”--which, y’know, once people try out more presets we’ll see how much that’s possible, but actually works kinda well given the “following in distant military dad’s footsteps” drama that both lee and zak went thru. in this case you could argue sara/meeley is lee and scott is zak, in terms of potential vs desire to do dad proud

[kennethmontiveros]

Artificial Intelligence Will Change How You Do Marketing in 2021

How often do you reflect on the ways technology changes your life as a marketer? 

I’m not talking full-on paradigm shifts here. (“We do our marketing… on the internet.”) I mean the sly, step-by-way manner in which new tech slides neatly into your existing stack and subtly reframes the game on you. 

These changes don’t always alter your job in dramatic ways, but they eliminate the hassles and headaches. They may speed up your time to results, automate painful routines, and enable you to focus on what matters most. (Remember what collaborating on a document looked like ten years ago? Remember printed memos?)

Very rarely, these technologies also let you do things you’d never considered possible. 

No incoming martech makes a better case for this sort of incremental innovation than artificial intelligence. While new AI products are surely on the horizon—self-driving cars are coming any day now, possibly, maybe—AI’s most dramatic effect on your job today lies in adding new features across the tools that you’re already using. 

When you’re living it, of course, this type of change can be hard to notice. It’s like suddenly realizing you desperately need a haircut after three months in lockdown. 

But, one day soon, you’ll marvel at all the things AI sneakily helped pull off your plate. Because when marketing meets AI, magic happens. It can feel inevitable—but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to pay attention.

At Unbounce, we not only believe that applied AI is the future of marketing, we also think marketers tuned in to what’s happening now stand to benefit in a big way in 2020 and beyond.

To put it another way, marketing and AI is a love story for the ages.

Marketing and AI: A “Meet Cute”

For marketers interested in learning what AI can do for them, right now, debates and philosophy about artificial intelligence can be heady stuff. And, honestly, it’s kind of a distraction. So, instead of getting into the weeds, let’s start with the distinction that makes the most sense for marketers to learn: the one between AGI and ANI.

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

Strong AI or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is what most people think of when someone says AI.

This technology replicates neural networks (not necessarily human ones) to perform highly sophisticated cognitive tasks. AI researchers typically take this one step further, though. According to them, AGI “controls itself autonomously, with its own thoughts, worries, feelings, strengths, weaknesses, and predispositions.” 

Teams across the world are working on AGI, but the closest to a consensus from researchers is that we might see it sometime within our lifetime. And some skeptics doubt we’ll ever see AGI, let alone more advanced forms.

Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)

So handing over your marketing campaigns—or, gulp, your job—to an AI is decades or centuries away. But weak AI or Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), sometimes also called “applied” or “pragmatic” AI, is available to marketers today. Right now.

As the name suggests, ANI focuses on narrow problem-solving applications. In the world of marketing, this means taking on specific, repetitive tasks to deliver additional business value. It may learn and make decisions independent of your input, but mostly this AI tackles the work you’d rather not.

But here’s the thing: ANI might not challenge our fundamental conceptions in the same way AGI does, but it’s having a transformative impact on our lives (and jobs) nonetheless. It integrates so deeply into our everyday lives that we don’t have to think about it. Chances are good you’re already using ANI, whether you know it or not.

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at a few places you might be encountering ANI today, either as a consumer or as part of your job. I admit that here that this list is not even close to comprehensive, but that’s my point: AI is slowly but surely filling all the cracks in our marketing stacks. (And, hey, that rhymes, so it must be true.)

Product Recommendation and Content Curation

Companies like Amazon and Netflix made fortunes by pointing people at more things they might want to buy. Much of these efforts are powered by sophisticated algorithms that let them match the right products and content with the right customer.

Amazon, for example, runs on a recommendation engine that’s been driving significant business value for more than 20 years. From the early days of user-based collaborative filtering (i.e., an algorithm making recommendations based on similarities between users) to more scalable solutions driven by a deep learning framework called DSSTNE.

DSSTNE is pronounced “destiny,” by the way—as in “buy this jewel-encrusted toilet brush… because it’s your destiny.” They’re not subtle. 

Today, customer recommendations are a very small portion of Amazon’s total investment in AI.

Netflix doesn’t sell products, but they similarly credit the combination of contextually-aware recommendations and personalization (both powered by machine learning models) with saving them $1 billion a year. 

How does this work? By reducing one-month churn by several percentage points. In the crucial 60 to 90 seconds that a customer will spend browsing before quitting the app in frustration, Netflix serves up content most likely to appeal to people with similar tastes. And it works: 80% of what people watch comes from a recommendation.

By presenting customers with content they’re more likely to watch first, Netflix reduces churn. Even thumbnails are selected by a neural network based on predicted clickthrough. 

Say you’re not Amazon or Netflix, though. Say you’re part of a small team or a startup tight on resources. What can you do? 

The good news is that today’s marketers can similarly take advantage of AI-powered recommendation engines on a more affordable scale.

Not only is some of this tech available to your developers, but more than one tool exists right now that lets you deliver product and content recommendations based on audiences, their intents, and their interests. Their availability will only increase in the months and years to come.

AI-Enhanced PPC Campaigns

Like Amazon and Netflix, Google will stick AI almost anywhere, even before its fully baked—from Gmail’s Smart Compose, which lets you email platitudes at lightning speed, to the AI-based noise-canceling feature recently added to Google Meet. Then there’s BERT and RankBrain’s role in search, and TensorFlow’s application to encryption, translation, robotics, and more… (The ellipsis is well-earned here.)

For digital marketers, one of the most significant use cases for machine learning has been in Google Ads. In a couple of years, Google’s Smart Bidding technology has gone from a curiosity that, at best, once ruffled a few feathers to something that has PPC experts rethinking how they’re spending their time.

According to Workshop Digital’s Andrew Miller, this sort of tech has overturned a lot of longstanding PPC best practices.

AI and machine learning are enabling PPC analysts to spend less time manually crunching data and more time on strategy development. Our jobs are not in danger yet, but machines are allowing us to rethink and recast our roles as AI-driven tools augment our capacities.

Andrew Miller, Co-Founder, Workshop Digital

Smart Bidding was once a neat trick that couldn’t hold a candle to an experienced human. Experts like Andrew tried it out, and many wrote it off. (Some still do.) But many PPC’ers point out that automated bidding is increasingly reducing the time spent on manual bid management. 

Are agencies running for their lives because of AI-powered enhancements like Smart Bidding? Definitely not. But roles are changing as today’s PPC specialists spend more time on higher-level strategy and specialized growth tasks. For an industry that thrives on staying current, AI is a net positive.

Machine Learning and Conversion Rate Optimization

Roles are changing on the other end of the funnel too. When it comes to delivering more conversions from your landing pages, A/B testing is still very effective. But running tests also demands time, traffic, and expertise that marketers don’t always have. For small businesses especially, these minimum requirements put optimizing out of reach.

Enter artificial intelligence.

Around 2017, our R&D team realized machine learning has the potential to remove these hurdles from A/B testing—and free marketers to focus more on what humans do best. AI can even do things when testing that no human can do, making decisions on the fly about what version of a landing page is best for what type of visitor. 

We kept thinking, ‘it isn’t the page that converts. It’s the visitor.’ So we started looking at how different visitors convert across different landing pages. The team built and tested machine learning models to see how far we could extend this concept. Sure enough, it turned out that we could drive higher conversion rates beyond what would ever be possible with a one-page-fits all system. We started prototyping immediately.

Yosem Reichert-Sweet, CTO, Unbounce

After three years of training a machine learning model, and investigating different ways to apply it, we arrived at Smart Traffic, a feature that fulfills this promise and makes AI-powered optimization available to Unbounce customers.

Smart Traffic uses a contextual bandit algorithm to learn about your visitors based on attributes like location, device, browser, and timezone. Once you’ve created and published a few variants of your landing page—the only thing it can’t do at this point, frankly—Smart Traffic delivers each visitor to the one most likely to convert. 

There are two things that Smart Traffic shares with the best martech AI solutions today. First, our customers see results just by turning it on. (Nothing cuts through hype like actually getting stuff done.) And, second, it never stops learning, getting better at its task during the life of a campaign, and adapting to changes in traffic sources without human intervention. 

Editor’s note. If you’d like to learn more about how Smart Traffic works, take a look at our announcement or read a few stories about marketers who’ve used it. Garrett’s also got you covered with some advice on how to build landing page variants that’ll take advantage of it.

AI-Augmented Chatbots 

Chatbots are among the most common ways that your customers interact with AI. But even today’s strongest AI-powered chatbots are better at pulling relevant bits of data from specific contexts than they are detecting nuance. They’re humanlike, not human.

For business owners, however, this shouldn’t be a dealbreaker. Chatbots can be a lot more personable than asking your visitors to fill out a form, and interacting with them can foster engagement. They also let your customers self-serve, which saves everyone time.

I’ve always appreciated how Microsoft’s Purna Virji put it in an article for MarTech Today:

In one way, this is actually the future returning to the past. For years, internet users have sacrificed the personal touch for convenience. Now, we’re entering a world where we can have both. It’s the Personal Touch 2.0.

Purna Virji, Senior Manager, Global Engagement, Microsoft

Though fully custom chatbots are reserved for enterprise, small teams embrace the tech using solutions like Drift, MobileMonkey, Snatchbot, or even in Facebook Messenger. Juniper Research estimates that by 2023, retail chatbots will save the industry $11.5 billion in costs, and generate over $112 billion in revenue. 

Mitsuku, a five-time winner of the Loebner Prize, tells me she’s “the world’s most humanlike conversational AI.” But she doesn’t get my simple idiomatic question—unless, y’ know, she’s wicked sarcastic.

So, you’re unlikely to mistake a chatbot for another person long enough for true love to set in. But we shouldn’t define chatbots by the quirks and failures of today since they’re a rapidly developing technology. There’s a lot of promise in chatbots enhanced by natural language processing (NLP) and sentiment analysis. One day soon, you might just meet the chatbot of your dreams. (I’m not judging.)

AI-Generated Content 

When content creators read about AI-generated content, they begin to sweat. Buzzy articles with titles like “Ten Ways AI is Going to Replace Your Content Team and Leave Them Bankrupt and Unloved”… Well, let’s just say they don’t exactly alleviate our imposter syndrome. 

Michelle Halsey is ultimately skeptical, though, about the prospect of being replaced by a machine. She writes,

Talented writers have no need to worry about automation stealing their gigs. At least, not as long as our clients are more interested in engaging their audience than they are sucking up to search engines.

Michelle Halsey, Content Blogger and Copywriter

Note the emphasis on talent here. It’s much more likely that AI will first tackle templated and repetitive work that hardly calls for persuasive writing anyway.  These days, applied AI can also smooth out the rough edges in your podcast, remove some of the pain from meticulously editing videos, and gut-check your sentences for clarity.

Given the danger of AI-generated content flooding the net with misinformation and spun content, it’s also a use case we’re still grappling with. For now, AI appears to offer solutions to the very problems it creates, as developers teach tools like GROVER to generate “neural fake news” to detect it.

GROVER generated this article based on my own words. It’s not good, but it might be a sign of things to come.

AI-Driven Data Insights

Every growth-minded marketer loves data. It’s an addiction. We bring it into every meeting and include it in every strategy session. We spend hours staring at spreadsheets, analytics, and reports, even if there’s way too much data to digest.

But even when you’ve got a hotline straight to your data team, recognizing patterns and pulling opportunities from massive swathes of data is hard. Artificial narrow intelligence helps with that too.

Recently, Unbounce explored the role that copy plays in landing page conversions through deep learning research, including a modified version of Google’s BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers).

Our Conversion Benchmark Report crunched the data from 34 thousand landing pages. It delivers insights about how reading ease, word count, and emotional language relate to conversion rates across 16 industries.

Sample benchmarks for home improvement landing pages.

The amount of data here (every word on every landing page) already put this analysis outside of human capability. But using machine learning allowed the team to dig deeper:

With data analysis and machine learning, we can take an unbiased look at what goes into a great landing page, and find opportunities for every landing page to improve. Machine learning allows us to look at significantly more data than a human being ever could, and find real, data-driven patterns that lead to higher conversion rates.

Tommy Levi, Director of Data Products, Unbounce

One question readers ask us about the report is why we included some niches (“pest control”) and not others (“model train enthusiasts”). The answer: the machine learning model generated these subcategories, on its own, from our aggregate data. Instead of imposing our arbitrary human bias, ML started with the data and sorted it from there.

Call me a nerd if you want, but that’s kinda mind-blowing. A lot of what’s happening in the Conversion Benchmark Report wouldn’t have been possible without pairing human intuition with the power of machines.

Want to see what our machine learning analysis revealed about your industry? Explore benchmarks and data-driven insights for 16 industries in Unbounce’s 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report.

AI Ain’t Perfect (and That’s Okay) 

If you’ve ever tripped over a Roomba or struggled to get Siri to do, well, anything sensible, you know artificial intelligence has a long way to go. (If you’re feeling masochistic, try asking Siri how to contact Unbounce. I dare ya.)

But does that mean it’s just hype? Not. A. Chance.

By any measure, we’re still in the early days of the long romance between AI and marketing. We’ve yet to see its full potential. The transformations that marketing is undergoing now aren’t always so easy to recognize or understand. As we’ve seen, applied artificial intelligence already penetrates our jobs, our strategies, and our campaigns on almost every level. 

You could just go with the flow, of course. Keep doin’ what you’re doing. Wait for AI to come to you and your stack. You’d be missing a trick, though.

Because by actively thinking about ways in which AI can enhance your marketing practice today, you’ve got the opportunity to get ahead of this thing. And by actively adopting it, you can start taking advantage of the freedom and new capabilities it delivers—before the competition gets there, as they inevitably will.

Why Unbounce Invested in AI for Your Landing Pages

Unbounce recently announced that we raised $52M (CDN) in funding to bring accessible AI-powered optimization to our customers. We’re investing now because we’re convinced using artificial intelligence to augment your marketing isn’t just aspirational, even for small businesses. It’s the future. This transformation is coming—really, it’s already here—and our customers will be a part of it.

The coming together of AI and marketing is tremendously valuable for businesses of all sizes. Whether it saves you time and money, highlights opportunities and patterns you didn’t know existed, or frees you to run slicker, higher-converting campaigns. As Rick Perreault, our co-founder and CEO, describes our ambition, the technology we’re developing today will eventually allow marketers to “set it and forget it through machine learning.”

It’s all part of our conversion intelligence mission.

What’s Conversion Intelligence?

At its core, it’s the conviction that the best use of AI lies in matching human savvy with the capabilities of a machine. It’s the idea that even small businesses—scratch that, especially small businesses—will stand to benefit from these enhancements. And it’s the belief that AI isn’t some far-flung concept—it’s an everyday tech that’s going to play an even more essential role in how you do marketing going forward.

Conversion intelligence is you, and your marketing know-how, augmented by machines. You can read more about it here.

In 2021 and beyond, AI insights will make it possible for you to create and optimize the highest-converting campaigns possible. Heck, in 2021 and beyond, AI just might rock the foundations of how you build, test, and optimize your landing pages.

Unbounce’s product teams are hard at work on these innovations, and we’re downright giddy with excitement about sharing progress and learnings with you here on the blog. 

Watch this space. The story continues.

Artificial Intelligence Will Change How You Do Marketing in 2021 published first on http://nickpontemktg.blogspot.com/

[annaxkeating]

Artificial Intelligence Will Change How You Do Marketing in 2021

How often do you reflect on the ways technology changes your life as a marketer? 

I’m not talking full-on paradigm shifts here. (“We do our marketing… on the internet.”) I mean the sly, step-by-way manner in which new tech slides neatly into your existing stack and subtly reframes the game on you. 

These changes don’t always alter your job in dramatic ways, but they eliminate the hassles and headaches. They may speed up your time to results, automate painful routines, and enable you to focus on what matters most. (Remember what collaborating on a document looked like ten years ago? Remember printed memos?)

Very rarely, these technologies also let you do things you’d never considered possible. 

No incoming martech makes a better case for this sort of incremental innovation than artificial intelligence. While new AI products are surely on the horizon—self-driving cars are coming any day now, possibly, maybe—AI’s most dramatic effect on your job today lies in adding new features across the tools that you’re already using. 

When you’re living it, of course, this type of change can be hard to notice. It’s like suddenly realizing you desperately need a haircut after three months in lockdown. 

But, one day soon, you’ll marvel at all the things AI sneakily helped pull off your plate. Because when marketing meets AI, magic happens. It can feel inevitable—but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to pay attention.

At Unbounce, we not only believe that applied AI is the future of marketing, we also think marketers tuned in to what’s happening now stand to benefit in a big way in 2020 and beyond.

To put it another way, marketing and AI is a love story for the ages.

Marketing and AI: A “Meet Cute”

For marketers interested in learning what AI can do for them, right now, debates and philosophy about artificial intelligence can be heady stuff. And, honestly, it’s kind of a distraction. So, instead of getting into the weeds, let’s start with the distinction that makes the most sense for marketers to learn: the one between AGI and ANI.

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

Strong AI or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is what most people think of when someone says AI.

This technology replicates neural networks (not necessarily human ones) to perform highly sophisticated cognitive tasks. AI researchers typically take this one step further, though. According to them, AGI “controls itself autonomously, with its own thoughts, worries, feelings, strengths, weaknesses, and predispositions.” 

Teams across the world are working on AGI, but the closest to a consensus from researchers is that we might see it sometime within our lifetime. And some skeptics doubt we’ll ever see AGI, let alone more advanced forms.

Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)

So handing over your marketing campaigns—or, gulp, your job—to an AI is decades or centuries away. But weak AI or Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), sometimes also called “applied” or “pragmatic” AI, is available to marketers today. Right now.

As the name suggests, ANI focuses on narrow problem-solving applications. In the world of marketing, this means taking on specific, repetitive tasks to deliver additional business value. It may learn and make decisions independent of your input, but mostly this AI tackles the work you’d rather not.

But here’s the thing: ANI might not challenge our fundamental conceptions in the same way AGI does, but it’s having a transformative impact on our lives (and jobs) nonetheless. It integrates so deeply into our everyday lives that we don’t have to think about it. Chances are good you’re already using ANI, whether you know it or not.

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at a few places you might be encountering ANI today, either as a consumer or as part of your job. I admit that here that this list is not even close to comprehensive, but that’s my point: AI is slowly but surely filling all the cracks in our marketing stacks. (And, hey, that rhymes, so it must be true.)

Product Recommendation and Content Curation

Companies like Amazon and Netflix made fortunes by pointing people at more things they might want to buy. Much of these efforts are powered by sophisticated algorithms that let them match the right products and content with the right customer.

Amazon, for example, runs on a recommendation engine that’s been driving significant business value for more than 20 years. From the early days of user-based collaborative filtering (i.e., an algorithm making recommendations based on similarities between users) to more scalable solutions driven by a deep learning framework called DSSTNE.

DSSTNE is pronounced “destiny,” by the way—as in “buy this jewel-encrusted toilet brush… because it’s your destiny.” They’re not subtle. 

Today, customer recommendations are a very small portion of Amazon’s total investment in AI.

Netflix doesn’t sell products, but they similarly credit the combination of contextually-aware recommendations and personalization (both powered by machine learning models) with saving them $1 billion a year. 

How does this work? By reducing one-month churn by several percentage points. In the crucial 60 to 90 seconds that a customer will spend browsing before quitting the app in frustration, Netflix serves up content most likely to appeal to people with similar tastes. And it works: 80% of what people watch comes from a recommendation.

By presenting customers with content they’re more likely to watch first, Netflix reduces churn. Even thumbnails are selected by a neural network based on predicted clickthrough. 

Say you’re not Amazon or Netflix, though. Say you’re part of a small team or a startup tight on resources. What can you do? 

The good news is that today’s marketers can similarly take advantage of AI-powered recommendation engines on a more affordable scale.

Not only is some of this tech available to your developers, but more than one tool exists right now that lets you deliver product and content recommendations based on audiences, their intents, and their interests. Their availability will only increase in the months and years to come.

AI-Enhanced PPC Campaigns

Like Amazon and Netflix, Google will stick AI almost anywhere, even before its fully baked—from Gmail’s Smart Compose, which lets you email platitudes at lightning speed, to the AI-based noise-canceling feature recently added to Google Meet. Then there’s BERT and RankBrain’s role in search, and TensorFlow’s application to encryption, translation, robotics, and more… (The ellipsis is well-earned here.)

For digital marketers, one of the most significant use cases for machine learning has been in Google Ads. In a couple of years, Google’s Smart Bidding technology has gone from a curiosity that, at best, once ruffled a few feathers to something that has PPC experts rethinking how they’re spending their time.

According to Workshop Digital’s Andrew Miller, this sort of tech has overturned a lot of longstanding PPC best practices.

AI and machine learning are enabling PPC analysts to spend less time manually crunching data and more time on strategy development. Our jobs are not in danger yet, but machines are allowing us to rethink and recast our roles as AI-driven tools augment our capacities.

Andrew Miller, Co-Founder, Workshop Digital

Smart Bidding was once a neat trick that couldn’t hold a candle to an experienced human. Experts like Andrew tried it out, and many wrote it off. (Some still do.) But many PPC’ers point out that automated bidding is increasingly reducing the time spent on manual bid management. 

Are agencies running for their lives because of AI-powered enhancements like Smart Bidding? Definitely not. But roles are changing as today’s PPC specialists spend more time on higher-level strategy and specialized growth tasks. For an industry that thrives on staying current, AI is a net positive.

Machine Learning and Conversion Rate Optimization

Roles are changing on the other end of the funnel too. When it comes to delivering more conversions from your landing pages, A/B testing is still very effective. But running tests also demands time, traffic, and expertise that marketers don’t always have. For small businesses especially, these minimum requirements put optimizing out of reach.

Enter artificial intelligence.

Around 2017, our R&D team realized machine learning has the potential to remove these hurdles from A/B testing—and free marketers to focus more on what humans do best. AI can even do things when testing that no human can do, making decisions on the fly about what version of a landing page is best for what type of visitor. 

We kept thinking, ‘it isn’t the page that converts. It’s the visitor.’ So we started looking at how different visitors convert across different landing pages. The team built and tested machine learning models to see how far we could extend this concept. Sure enough, it turned out that we could drive higher conversion rates beyond what would ever be possible with a one-page-fits all system. We started prototyping immediately.

Yosem Reichert-Sweet, CTO, Unbounce

After three years of training a machine learning model, and investigating different ways to apply it, we arrived at Smart Traffic, a feature that fulfills this promise and makes AI-powered optimization available to Unbounce customers.

Smart Traffic uses a contextual bandit algorithm to learn about your visitors based on attributes like location, device, browser, and timezone. Once you’ve created and published a few variants of your landing page—the only thing it can’t do at this point, frankly—Smart Traffic delivers each visitor to the one most likely to convert. 

There are two things that Smart Traffic shares with the best martech AI solutions today. First, our customers see results just by turning it on. (Nothing cuts through hype like actually getting stuff done.) And, second, it never stops learning, getting better at its task during the life of a campaign, and adapting to changes in traffic sources without human intervention. 

Editor’s note. If you’d like to learn more about how Smart Traffic works, take a look at our announcement or read a few stories about marketers who’ve used it. Garrett’s also got you covered with some advice on how to build landing page variants that’ll take advantage of it.

AI-Augmented Chatbots 

Chatbots are among the most common ways that your customers interact with AI. But even today’s strongest AI-powered chatbots are better at pulling relevant bits of data from specific contexts than they are detecting nuance. They’re humanlike, not human.

For business owners, however, this shouldn’t be a dealbreaker. Chatbots can be a lot more personable than asking your visitors to fill out a form, and interacting with them can foster engagement. They also let your customers self-serve, which saves everyone time.

I’ve always appreciated how Microsoft’s Purna Virji put it in an article for MarTech Today:

In one way, this is actually the future returning to the past. For years, internet users have sacrificed the personal touch for convenience. Now, we’re entering a world where we can have both. It’s the Personal Touch 2.0.

Purna Virji, Senior Manager, Global Engagement, Microsoft

Though fully custom chatbots are reserved for enterprise, small teams embrace the tech using solutions like Drift, MobileMonkey, Snatchbot, or even in Facebook Messenger. Juniper Research estimates that by 2023, retail chatbots will save the industry $11.5 billion in costs, and generate over $112 billion in revenue. 

Mitsuku, a five-time winner of the Loebner Prize, tells me she’s “the world’s most humanlike conversational AI.” But she doesn’t get my simple idiomatic question—unless, y’ know, she’s wicked sarcastic.

So, you’re unlikely to mistake a chatbot for another person long enough for true love to set in. But we shouldn’t define chatbots by the quirks and failures of today since they’re a rapidly developing technology. There’s a lot of promise in chatbots enhanced by natural language processing (NLP) and sentiment analysis. One day soon, you might just meet the chatbot of your dreams. (I’m not judging.)

AI-Generated Content 

When content creators read about AI-generated content, they begin to sweat. Buzzy articles with titles like “Ten Ways AI is Going to Replace Your Content Team and Leave Them Bankrupt and Unloved”… Well, let’s just say they don’t exactly alleviate our imposter syndrome. 

Michelle Halsey is ultimately skeptical, though, about the prospect of being replaced by a machine. She writes,

Talented writers have no need to worry about automation stealing their gigs. At least, not as long as our clients are more interested in engaging their audience than they are sucking up to search engines.

Michelle Halsey, Content Blogger and Copywriter

Note the emphasis on talent here. It’s much more likely that AI will first tackle templated and repetitive work that hardly calls for persuasive writing anyway.  These days, applied AI can also smooth out the rough edges in your podcast, remove some of the pain from meticulously editing videos, and gut-check your sentences for clarity.

Given the danger of AI-generated content flooding the net with misinformation and spun content, it’s also a use case we’re still grappling with. For now, AI appears to offer solutions to the very problems it creates, as developers teach tools like GROVER to generate “neural fake news” to detect it.

GROVER generated this article based on my own words. It’s not good, but it might be a sign of things to come.

AI-Driven Data Insights

Every growth-minded marketer loves data. It’s an addiction. We bring it into every meeting and include it in every strategy session. We spend hours staring at spreadsheets, analytics, and reports, even if there’s way too much data to digest.

But even when you’ve got a hotline straight to your data team, recognizing patterns and pulling opportunities from massive swathes of data is hard. Artificial narrow intelligence helps with that too.

Recently, Unbounce explored the role that copy plays in landing page conversions through deep learning research, including a modified version of Google’s BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers).

Our Conversion Benchmark Report crunched the data from 34 thousand landing pages. It delivers insights about how reading ease, word count, and emotional language relate to conversion rates across 16 industries.

Sample benchmarks for home improvement landing pages.

The amount of data here (every word on every landing page) already put this analysis outside of human capability. But using machine learning allowed the team to dig deeper:

With data analysis and machine learning, we can take an unbiased look at what goes into a great landing page, and find opportunities for every landing page to improve. Machine learning allows us to look at significantly more data than a human being ever could, and find real, data-driven patterns that lead to higher conversion rates.

Tommy Levi, Director of Data Products, Unbounce

One question readers ask us about the report is why we included some niches (“pest control”) and not others (“model train enthusiasts”). The answer: the machine learning model generated these subcategories, on its own, from our aggregate data. Instead of imposing our arbitrary human bias, ML started with the data and sorted it from there.

Call me a nerd if you want, but that’s kinda mind-blowing. A lot of what’s happening in the Conversion Benchmark Report wouldn’t have been possible without pairing human intuition with the power of machines.

Want to see what our machine learning analysis revealed about your industry? Explore benchmarks and data-driven insights for 16 industries in Unbounce’s 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report.

AI Ain’t Perfect (and That’s Okay) 

If you’ve ever tripped over a Roomba or struggled to get Siri to do, well, anything sensible, you know artificial intelligence has a long way to go. (If you’re feeling masochistic, try asking Siri how to contact Unbounce. I dare ya.)

But does that mean it’s just hype? Not. A. Chance.

By any measure, we’re still in the early days of the long romance between AI and marketing. We’ve yet to see its full potential. The transformations that marketing is undergoing now aren’t always so easy to recognize or understand. As we’ve seen, applied artificial intelligence already penetrates our jobs, our strategies, and our campaigns on almost every level. 

You could just go with the flow, of course. Keep doin’ what you’re doing. Wait for AI to come to you and your stack. You’d be missing a trick, though.

Because by actively thinking about ways in which AI can enhance your marketing practice today, you’ve got the opportunity to get ahead of this thing. And by actively adopting it, you can start taking advantage of the freedom and new capabilities it delivers—before the competition gets there, as they inevitably will.

Why Unbounce Invested in AI for Your Landing Pages

Unbounce recently announced that we raised $52M (CDN) in funding to bring accessible AI-powered optimization to our customers. We’re investing now because we’re convinced using artificial intelligence to augment your marketing isn’t just aspirational, even for small businesses. It’s the future. This transformation is coming—really, it’s already here—and our customers will be a part of it.

The coming together of AI and marketing is tremendously valuable for businesses of all sizes. Whether it saves you time and money, highlights opportunities and patterns you didn’t know existed, or frees you to run slicker, higher-converting campaigns. As Rick Perreault, our co-founder and CEO, describes our ambition, the technology we’re developing today will eventually allow marketers to “set it and forget it through machine learning.”

It’s all part of our conversion intelligence mission.

What’s Conversion Intelligence?

At its core, it’s the conviction that the best use of AI lies in matching human savvy with the capabilities of a machine. It’s the idea that even small businesses—scratch that, especially small businesses—will stand to benefit from these enhancements. And it’s the belief that AI isn’t some far-flung concept—it’s an everyday tech that’s going to play an even more essential role in how you do marketing going forward.

Conversion intelligence is you, and your marketing know-how, augmented by machines. You can read more about it here.

In 2021 and beyond, AI insights will make it possible for you to create and optimize the highest-converting campaigns possible. Heck, in 2021 and beyond, AI just might rock the foundations of how you build, test, and optimize your landing pages.

Unbounce’s product teams are hard at work on these innovations, and we’re downright giddy with excitement about sharing progress and learnings with you here on the blog. 

Watch this space. The story continues.

from Digital https://unbounce.com/marketing-ai/artificial-intelligence-will-change-how-you-do-marketing-in-2021/ via http://www.rssmix.com/