#Tire Cord Machine

[cherrise-rose]

imagine a small town having an annual mechanical bull riding contest but for overdue pregnant people

[kewindia]

Manufacturer of Flexible Packaging, Paper, Tire-Cord, and Textile Machinery

Krishna Engineering Works is a company based in India that specializes in manufacturing and supplying a wide range of industrial machinery and equipment. The company was established in 1980 and has since become a well-established name in the industry.

Krishna Engineering Works offers a wide range of products including Flexible Packaging, Paper, Tire-Cord, and Textile Machinery, Slitter Rewinder Machines, Coating Machines, and many more. The company's products are widely used in industries like packaging, printing, paper conversion, and textiles.

[peachesofteal]

ghoap x reader / 18+ mdni / dark themes / prev here / masterlist

Six thirty in the morning might be your favorite time of day. 

It’s the before.

Before anyone else comes in, before the morning rush, before the chime of the front door’s bell, before the shop is filled with lines of people, before it all upends you.

At six thirty in the morning, you sit in the back, perched on the prep table, with a fresh cup of coffee. You leave the side door open, screen separating you from the world, fresh air mixing with the smell of strawberry basil scones, cinnamon coffee cake and mini kolaches, fruited with whatever jam you’ve managed to throw together. Steam rises, semolina spills, the sun dawns, and the world wakes… all well after you’ve had your breakfast.

This corner of the city is busy, and the shop always hums like a well-oiled machine in the dregs of a rush, the front counter team churning out specialty coffees and teas effortlessly. It’s cyclical, similar faces every day, morning commuters rushing in and out, locals settling in a nook with their laptops and lattes, people swinging in for a quick bite. You hide in the back, usually, elbow deep in sudsy warm water with your mountain of dishes, answering the occasional shout of 'do we have more of-' and 'just sold the last-'

This morning in particular, cranberry orange scones, pumpkin muffins and mini quiches are the only things left cooling on the speed racks, waiting patiently for their turn to be placed in the display case, an endless cycle of replenishment lasting until the rush dies down, morning fading into afternoon, triple shot monstrosities turning into decaf coffees. 

It’s laborious, this routine. Five, six, sometimes seven days a week, going to bed with the sun, rising before it. Your wrists ache from rolling dough, cutting dough, scraping dough. Your back weeps when you lift the bowl from the mixer stand every morning, and your joints fare no better. You need new boots, and new insoles for your new boots, and probably a new standing mat, though you know your boss will never go for it. 

You’re tired.

The exhaustion settles into your bones easily today, wearing you down until you’re allowing your eyes to close, wilting atop the butcher’s block- 

The shop phone rings. 

You heave yourself down and swing through the double doors to the front, scrambling for the classic corded receiver, nearly fumbling it in your hands. 

“Hello?” Shit. You always forget to answer with the shop’s name. You’re not exactly the customer facing part of the operation. “Galaxy’s.” You correct and… wait. 

There’s no response. 

You think you can hear someone breathing, something rustling, but it’s too faint and difficult to make out. 

“’Lo?” You try again, but still, there’s silence. It’s an unending moment, you on one end… who knows what on the other, and you hold your breath, straining to hear, to listen. 

The line clicks dead in the next second. 

Odd. 

The shop girl is chewing gum. 

You’ve told her a million times not to chew gum when she’s working the counter, but clearly, she’s never heard of norovirus, and you’re not the boss, or the owner, so being the broken record only gets you so far. 

“There’s someone out front to see you.” She snaps it between her front teeth, and your molars grind together like stone. 

“Who?” You toss a clean towel on the stainless steel table in the middle of the kitchen with a frown. You don’t really get visitors here, most of your friends are in the same industry, and either work the line too late to be up in time to even get coffee somewhere, or are already at work, buried beneath a bain-marie and the never-ending sound of a ticket printer. 

There’s dried, caulked dough caked to your fingers, shoved up underneath your nails, and you brush them self-consciously against the ratty old apron stretched across your waist. 

The surprise lingers on your tongue, and then explodes when you spot the massive dusky blonde from the other day, the one who was with the guy who split the coffee all over your favorite dress. He’s too tall, and too broad, and too imposing, everything in your sense of self-preservation screaming at you to run when he notices you approaching, gleam of a predator sparkling in his eyes.  

Still, somewhere, tucked away, it thrills you, the idea of them, the balancing act, two halves of a whole. He’s etched from stone, strong and steady, while his partner is saporous, vibrant, and riotous, crystal blue eyes sparkling in the mid-day sun. 

You wonder what they're like. What they talk about. What they do.

Curiosity killed the cat.

Your skin prickles once you fall into his orbit, immobilized by the molten toffee pooling around his irises. You float for a second, tracing his knife’s edged jaw, the fullness of his lips, imperfect pieces puzzled together to make a masterpiece, and then crash back to earth quickly, realizing you’re standing in front of him… staring. 

“Uh. Hi.” What is he doing here? How did he know where to find you?

“Sorry to barge in on you at work.” He starts immediately, wallet appearing from his back pocket like a magic trick. “Wanted to make sure we settled up.” Thick fingers hold a folded nest of notes, and you stare down at them, slowly processing what he means.

Cash? 

“Oh, I… I have… venmo. Or we could use apple pay, you didn’t have to come all the-“ 

“Don’t have venmo.” His mouth tilts, and you go with it, head listing to the side like a wayward buoy. “This is easier.” He pushes it into your hand, peeling your fingers back to enclose the money in your palm, heat sparking up your spine. 

“How did you know where I worked?” You blurt, unable to keep it at bay any longer. The question singes, settles uncomfortably in the sparks between you. 

“Saw you in the back yesterday, when we were in for a cuppa.” Oh. Suspicion sheds, snakeskin left behind on a cold, dusty trail, suspension of disbelief settling in the back of your mind. Sure. After all, this is where you ran into them last week, on your day off. They do come here. 

“Well. Thanks.” 

“It’s our pleasure. Hope the stain came out okay.” 

“Oh, yeah. It’s… still at the cleaners.” This is absolutely false, but he doesn’t need to know that. The spare bills will probably go towards your energy bill, and the ruined dress will go in the trash. 

It is what it is. 

“Couldn’t help but notice when I was comin’ through the parking lot that the back door is open.” His voice swoops low, dropping into a rumble, and you blink, lips parting. 

“Oh, um y-yeah. I like the breeze.” He shakes his head, a simple rejection, leaving you spinning. 

“City’s not the safest right now, yeah?” Oh, yeah. Of course, you knew. Rival factions of organized crime were leaving a red sea of bodies in their wake all over town, a new murder popping up in the headlines nearly every week. 

But you were safe. You were fine. Galaxy’s had never been stained with the bloody touch of any of them, and you took it as fact. Permanence. 

You agree reluctantly, watching the storm clouds roil on across his expression before evaporating. You shrug, hands clutched in your apron, doubt and skepticism clear on your face.

His expression shutters. His eyes turn cold.   

His thumb and forefinger dart through the air, latching onto your chin. 

You freeze. You should tug away, jerk backwards, yell and scream and hiss, but all you can do is stand there, caught in a trap and trembling as he leans forward to murmur in your ear. 

“Lock the door, little doe.” 

[0bticeo]

lurk | feyd rautha

part four of five. (part 1.) (part 2.) (part 3.)

summary:

“i need you,” he rasps, etching a molten kiss on the dip of your collarbone. “need to get rid of his taste.”

his hand crawls up your thighs, the folds of your velvet dress gliding against your skin. you can still hear the soldiers outside, feel the low thrum of their clamour in your very bones. should you focus, you’ll perceive the baron’s suspensors sucking away at gravity, the servants’ roaming about, feet like neelde-ants on cold marble.

anyone could catch you.

“what are you waiting for, my lord na-baron?”

wc: 1.6k

tw: political machinations, reader being inches away from killing everyone in the damn place including feyd, kissing, biting, mentions of breeding, possessive & needy feyd, sub!feyd, oral (fem receiving), fingering, hallway sex.

you’re getting tired of dreams. 

there’s terrible, terrible purpose dripping from their edges. you see it all - snapshots of horror, fractals reflecting endless bodies dropping to the ground. sixty one billion people, dead. ten thousand worlds burning, the universe begging for respite under your brother’s crushing fist.

paul. little mouse, whom you’ve shielded all your life, whom you’ve sparred with, crysknife pressed against his throat, his shield a feeble protection against your blade. something shatters. blades. so many of them. your blade. jamis’ blade. feyd-rautha’s blade. 

your dream has you standing in what you know to be the emperor’s ship, shrouded in bene gesserit veils. two silhouettes stand against the bleeding sun of arrakis. 

the realisation embeds itself in your mind, marble-carved. fate is looking down upon you and tells you: one of them dies in the end.

when you wake up, there’s a scream dying on your tongue.

you don’t know where you are. you don’t know where you are, why your side is on fire, why you taste blood in your mouth.

slowly, you rise, heart beating furiously, breath laboured. i must not fear. your fingers dig your sheets. the infirmary. fear is the mind killer. you close your eyes, will yourself to breathe. fear is the little-death that brings total -

a hand settles over yours, bone pale fingers weaving with yours. warmth settles on your shoulder. you relax, ever so slightly, leaning into the touch, burying yourself in the crook of feyd-rautha’s neck. he’s all sharp edges, honed to deadly perfection. in the quiet midnight of geidi prime, he softens for you.

“what troubles you?”

you wonder if you should tell him. of the golden path, paved with blood, so much blood it clings to the soles of your feet, you see it rise, rise, eager to seize you-

a low mumble of your name.

“dreams are messages from the deep,” you whisper in the crook of his neck. 

his hold tightens over you, brings you closer to the warmth of him, thumb running over the smooth skin of your belly, over your unborn child growing there. from your position, you can feel it, the way his vocal cords vibrate. he’s purring, soothing you bit by bit.

you tilt your head, hand coming to cradle his face, knuckles brushing against his cheek.

“i should be plotting your death.”

a low chuckle, a flash of almost eagerness in his eyes.

“i don’t doubt you will.”

his hand wraps around your neck, resting on the soft skin of your throat, bringing you closer to him, shifting your bodies until you’re straddling him, arms wrapping around his neck. you could strangle him. you could use the voice. ask him to take the knife you know rests on the bedside and slit his own throat like the harkonnen beast he is. use it yourself.

but you’ve sealed your fate the moment you stepped on arrakis. so instead, you let the darkness swallow your confession.

“i don’t want you to die.”

“i won't,” he mumbles against your lips, words like an oath as he kisses you.

they say the beat of a butterfly wing can cause a tempest on the other side of the globe. you wonder what tempest will be borne out of the fury beating in your chest. here goes: morning comes. the spice rules it all, even the baron’s affairs, so he gathers his troops to make a planetary governor out of feyd-rautha. 

the glorious sun of geidi prime shines its lifeless light upon you all. 

the finest harkonnen soldiers, ruthless hounds barking their sovereign’s name in fervent adoration, thousands upon thousands of ants stretching as far as you can see. they corrupt it all the harkonnen, eating away at the horizon. waiting. 

you’re waiting, too, hands folded before you, lone silhouette clad in dark robes, veils like a mask before your face. bene gesserit, the court calls you. 

not quite.

by bearing feyd-rautha a child, you’ve gained a modicum of respite. the bene gesserit will spare you, the mother of their precious kwisatz haderach. they will keep your survival a secret and bury it behind inscrutable eyes.

plans within plans within plans. you’re a pawn in the baron’s meaty hands, he’s a pawn in yours, and the bene gesserit have been pulling the strings for ninety generations. 

your gaze flits to the scene before you. feyd-rautha harkonnen, clad in dark leathers, silver embroidery like pauldrons over his shoulders. the mass of his uncle hovers above him, a hovering beast eager for power. two meaty hands encompass his face - absolute disgust coils in your chest as you watch vladimir harkonnen kiss his nephew. he kisses back. a show of dominance.

the soldiers howl his name, earth trembling under the clamour. they salute, arms crossed over their heads, a living, breathing organism, synchronicity at its peak. 

arrakis has a new ruler. 

a hand clasps over your wrist, drags you away from the adoring masses, in the sweet darkness of the palace’s hallways. you’re pinned against the wall, and feyd-rautha looms before you, terrible hunger burning in his eyes. slowly, he lifts your veils, high enough to bare your mouth to him. 

“my lord-”

you’re cut off by his lips on yours, eager, desperate, savouring you like fine arrakean spice-wine. 

“i need you,” he rasps, etching a molten kiss on the dip of your collarbone. “need to get rid of his taste.”

his hand crawls up your thighs, the folds of your velvet dress gliding against your skin. you can still hear the soldiers outside, feel the low thrum of their clamour in your very bones. should you focus, you’ll perceive the baron’s suspensors sucking away at gravity, the servants’ roaming about, feet like neelde-ants on cold marble.

anyone could catch you.

“what are you waiting for, my lord na-baron?”

he nips at your ear, grin sharper than his blade as he sinks to his knees. slowly, intimately, a shadow curling at his mistress’ feet. he unravels you, nails raking up your thighs, liquid desire burning in their path. 

“eyes on me.”

your eyes snap open. oh, he’ll be the death of you, with the way his eyes freeze you in place, willing, begging for his touch. you shiver, a low, needy sound escaping you. 

he grins, a flash of black teeth against the liquid darkness of your robes. shadows will swallow you whole - he will swallow you whole. already is, with the way he trails kisses up your thighs, teeth sinking in the meat of it until blood drips on your skin. 

he’s lapping at it, hands wrapping around your leg, spreading you apart inch by precious inch until he fits the broad expanse of his shoulders in the space he’s carved for himself. he raises his head, leans his cheek against your thigh, nuzzling in its softness. there’s blood coating his lips, sweet like forbidden fruit, and an unquenchable fire in his eyes.

“exquisite,” he purrs, nail digging in the blossoming mark he’s left, until your hips seek his touch.

he puts his mouth to you. you bite your lip, hard, as you feel him tease you, tongue lapping at you like sweet pomegranate, skilled fingers coaxing pleas for more. the cold of his silver ring has you keening - you're melting against him.

it’s obscene, how the only sounds you can hear are the pleased moans of your lover, the squelching of your juices dripping down his face, his wrist. it’s too much, too fast - your nails dig into his nape, bringing him closer. fucker’s purring, hands digging in your hips. he’s making a feast out of you, and you’ve never seen prettier sight. 

feyd-rautha, kneeling at your feet, a pretty, pretty blush dusting his cheeks, his soft mouth on your cunt, ruining you as he denies himself sweet release.

“feyd-”

a jolt - he’s just nipped your clit, and you’re falling apart with his name on your tongue, burning, melting in the pits of desire. you grow boneless, faltering on unsteady legs. he pulls you to him before you can fall, kissing you, moulding his devouring mouth to yours. 

distantly, you register that he’s breathless, that he’s pressing you against him, that you can feel the dampness at the front of his pants.

his voice is a low, needy rasp.

“you taste divine, my dear.”

there’s a commotion. someone, somewhere, is calling. a servant. a feast is prepared. blasphemy - the baron is a beast, and he will not have his nephew leave without obscene amounts of food. good. it leaves room for you to plan - you’re running out of precious, precious time. there are too many variables for you to act alone, yet you are.

you’re sitting at feyd-rautha’s side at a banquet table. on you watch, a mockery of a bene gesserit, nails digging in your palm. there’s a knife before you, of course. the baron’s sitting at the head of the table, stuffing himself until he’s about to burst. 

repulsive.

you could do it now. put an end to the harkonnen, avenge your family. plunge that knife in the baron’s throat and watch him die like an animal. 

but revenge is best served cold. you remember princess irulan being seated in front of you. you remember the emperor at the head of the table. you remember his knife slicing through unknown poultry. a falcon. he’s doomed your family to death. 

the emperor is old. paranoid. anybody would’ve seen that the atreides were far too loyal to even consider rebelling against him, rising influence or not. someone convinced him otherwise. the truthsayer, reverend mother gaius helen moriam. 

you take a bite of your own meal and find it tasting like ash. the only dish you yearn for is revenge.

you want the baron dead. you want the emperor stripped of his power. you want to watch the split second of horrified realisation on the reverend mother's face. 

you want them to burn, and burn they will.

taglist: @kpopnstarwars @moonsoulk @alexandrainlove @saturnhas82moons @coureurs-de-bois9 @kamcrazy123 @beebeechaos @avidreader73 @yzuposts @jaiuneamesolitaiire

[yawnderu]

K-9 — Simon "Ghost" Riley x Reader | Chapter III

Sick as a dog, and just as vicious.

1 2 3 4 5

You work magic with your hands

Or

The human body is able to withstand extreme damage.

"Medic!" Price's voice boomed across base, heavy footsteps following right after. The door slammed open before you could even get up, Gaz and Simon carrying a bloodied Soap. They set him down on the medical bed and you got up, rushing to them and examining the damage.

It's incredible, really, how the human body can withstand extreme conditions and stay resilient, such as a gunshot that had blood leaking out of Johnny's head like a faucet.

"Out. With me, Simon." You bark out orders and the men obey, Price patting your shoulder twice, the look in his eyes saying much more than words. Fix him.

"Apply pressure on the wound." Simon nods his head, quickly discarding his skull gloves as his bare hands apply pressure on Johnny's chest to limit the blood loss. You felt a weak pulse earlier, yet the sound of the EKG machine as soon as you hook him up served as reassurance. You immediately put on your gloves, not bothering to hook him up to an IV to avoid wasting time. His heartbeat is weak, but he's still here.

Your hands get to work immediately as Simon begins to treat the wound on Johnny's chest, a much simpler injury than the bullet in his head. You bring the light closer to his head, able to make out the familiar glint of the bullet encrusted in his brain.

Twelve hours. That's how long it took to complete surgery on Johnny to remove the bullet in his head and stabilize him. He's a lucky motherfucker; the base of his brain and spinal cord being completely untouched, allowing him to be part of the 10% of people who have survived a headshot.

Your knees give out right after you make sure Johnny is all covered up, exhaustion and stress along with the disappearing adrenaline finally catching up to you. Strong arms wrap around your torso to prevent you from falling— Simon, who refused to leave your office, staying awake those twelve hours in case his help was needed.

"With you, lass." He reminds you, helping you stand up and guiding you to your chair, crouching down to get a better look at you.

"Need a cuppa?" He asked gently, the back of his hand making contact with your forehead to check for your temperature.

"Fucking brits..." You grumble, tired eyes looking down at him, the way his gaze softens and the corners of his mouth tilt up into a small smile, a deep laugh escaping out of his lips for a second.

"Some coffee?" You nod your head, hands going under your glasses to gently rub your eyes as you struggle to stay awake. He gets up, hand on your shoulder squeezing softly to make you look up at him.

"I'll go tell that lot Johnny made it, think you can stay awake until they're here?" His words had hints of teasing despite the concern in his eyes, only turning away once you nodded your head. You got up from the chair, walking over to the medical bed and looking at Johnny's unconscious body. His heart beat was stable, at the very least.

"I miss you, Johnny." Your hand reaches out to hold his, squeezing softly before you bring it to your lips and plant a soft kiss on his knuckles, slowly putting his hand back on his stomach. As annoying as he can be, he feels like a younger brother, someone you'd lay down your own life for with no hesitation, though that secretly goes for the rest of the team.

You take a step back when you hear footsteps approaching, pretending to fix the new IV injected to him.

"Doc." Price greets, walking over to you and looking down at Johhny. Bruised and bloody, but alive.

"Knew I made the right choice with you." His heavy hand pats your shoulder, managing to offer you a smile despite all the stress he was in, not knowing whether or not one of his boys was going to make it.

"I'm honored, Captain." He could hear the appreciation under the layer of sarcasm.

"I don't know when he's going to wake up, but there wasn't any damage on the frontal lobe or top of the brain, so probably not gonna have brain damage either... not that it'd make much of a difference." You drift off, eyebrows furrowing slightly as you think back on the twelve hours that just passed, the deep chuckle escaping the captain turning your attention back to him.

"Good. Go rest, Gaz and I will take turns watching over him." You simply nod, turning away to leave and patting his arm gently as you walk past. A small smirk sets on your lips when you feel the muscle, quickly leaving the office and going to your quarters. You barely manage to remove the bloodstained white coat before you collapse in bed, any thoughts about what happened and the coffee Simon was making for you completely forgotten as you finally drift off to sleep.

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[lipglossanon]

Crossing the Frame

Infected!Leon S. Kennedy and fem!reader

Warnings: 18+ MDNI, one shot, horror, body horror, unwanted insemination, OC, mentions of blood/death/bodily harm, vomiting, reader called chief

not proofread; inspired by the Alien series; something before October—might add more later idk

title from Crossing the Frame by Coheed and Cambria

It’s sudden. One moment you’re empty, a void unto yourself. The next, your eyes are open, unseeing as your brain begins to think again, thoughts filling the crevices of your mind. 

You cough violently, curling onto your side, an homage to your fetal beginnings. Pressing a hand to your abdomen, a skittering fear runs down your spine like spider legs. 

Something isn’t right. 

Closing your eyes, you struggle to remember why you’re here. You were to help an agent… one who had been infected by the Plagas strain. Kennedy, you think. The president’s lapdog. 

Pain radiates through your pelvis and you gasp wetly. It needs out, you think. Followed immediately by, what needs out? What’s inside you? Bile rises in your throat. 

Weak as a newborn kitten, you raise up onto your knees. Turning your face away, you gag and cough, a mix of stringy bile and saliva spilling from your mouth. 

A headache throbs behind your right eye; slipping your glasses off, you cup the socket and gently rub your eyelid. It doesn’t ease the pain—but it doesn’t make it worse—so you give up and put your glasses back on. 

Finally looking around, you take in the mess of what was once the lab. Beakers and burners are overturned, unknown liquid spilling off the surface and onto the floor; papers are scattered about like someone just tossed them before leaving. Another searing cramp makes you double over even further, breasts pressing against the tops of your thighs, hands hugging your stomach as you cry out painfully. 

Once you can breathe without wanting to die, you ease back up, slowly climbing to your feet so you can find help. There’s no one left in the lab and the door’s opened halfway, showcasing an empty hallway as far as you can see. 

Shuffling steps outside halt your own progress—hip digging into a counter as you freeze in place. 

“Hello?” Your voice cracks and you have to clear your throat—the dry heaving from earlier making it sting. “Hello?!”

A rattling breath makes you duck behind the counter—unable to see—only able to hear the door being pressed fully open while those same footsteps shuffle inside. 

“Hello,” a voice whispers, “are you in here, Chief?”

You slowly arch your neck up to peek over the counter. An intern, Andy you recall, looks around the room, hand cupping his side where blood has stained through his lab coat. Pushing yourself up, you use the counter as a crutch in order to stand in place. 

“Thank god! You’re alive!” He smiles, hazel eyes tired and strained. 

“What happened?” You rasp, swallowing to smooth your vocal cords. “I think I have a concussion.”

“The subject escaped. Leon Kennedy,” the intern steps closer, wincing with the movement. “He was infected with—“

“Plagas, I remember that,” you gesture to his side. “What about this? Or why’s the room trashed? I think I’m—“

Infected. The word curdles on your tongue like spoiled milk. 

“I woke up already bleeding,” he moves his coat and shirt aside, showing off the padded gauze and tape keeping it bandaged. “I think I got cut from the window overlooking the observation room. It shattered when he broke out.”

You nod, short flashes of memories coming back to you.  It was early morning when they brought Kennedy in for observation. Dressed in only a hospital gown, his skin looked sallow and washed out. The bags under his eyes made the blue that much darker. His hair seemed to be the only thing that defied his poor health, looking sleek and shiny under the fluorescent lights. 

The examiner had the agent remove the upper half of his gown, letting everyone see the raw and irritated scar from the machine that supposedly destroyed the embryo in his chest. X-rays proved there were remnants clinging to his chest wall—the reason why he had been called in to your lab. 

Being the chief medical officer in charge, you had sat quietly in the audience chamber above the room—watching as the scientists and doctors argued and questioned Kennedy, who only had the scattered notes from his mission to really backup any of his claims. 

They injected him, you remember suddenly. He had reacted negatively, body jerking and twitching before he began to scream incoherently, voice raising in pitch until your vision wavered. The glass splintered and rained down on the room, slicing anything in its path.

The alarm began to blare and you locked eyes with what used to be Agent Kennedy, black washing out his sclera and dark veins overtaking his skin like twisting vines. 

“Are you okay?”

Shoulders jerking upward, you shake your head before looking back up into Andy’s drawn face. 

“Yeah, just trying to make it all make sense.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, clenching his teeth suddenly. “Fuck, I fixed myself up as well as I could, but I definitely need to get help.”

“Of course. Are we still under lockdown?”

“Uh huh,” he sucks in his top lip. “It’s why I came this way. I was hoping to find your keycard.”

In case you were dead rings as loud in the room as if he had spoken it. Reaching down, you hold up your lanyard. 

“Lucky for you, I didn’t lose it.”

You both smile even if it’s an empty consolation. 

“Do you need help walking?” You point to his side. 

“I’ll be alright as long as we don’t have to run.”

Both of you know if it comes to that, neither of you would be making it out alive. 

Slowly making your way out of the specimen room—why were you even in this room?!—the intern follows behind you, quiet and careful. The two offices you pass by are empty, not a pencil out of place. The hallway itself doesn’t look like anything is off. A blaring light by the exit’s the only thing to signify anything is awry. 

Leaving the safety of the hallway, you hold the door open for Andy, letting it fall shut once he’s past the threshold. 

“Do you know why I was in this section?” You turn to him, keeping pace instead of walking out in front. 

He shrugs, “Everyone kinda went their own way once he got out. I think someone said you needed to grab the data on the latest test batch?”

You pat your pockets and find a small thumb drive in your overcoat. 

“Okay…” 

You frown down at it, mind still entirely blank. 

“He—“ Andy cut himself off. 

“He what?”

“The subject followed after you. I don’t know if they stopped him or anything like that. I kinda passed out,” he gave you a bitter smile. “I guess at least I wasn’t outright killed.”

“So he killed people?”

Andy nodded, “We’ll pass a few colleagues. Rose and Dr. Kline. Others are too bad to guess.”

You feel a pang of sadness, “That’s awful.”

The intern doesn’t say anything, eyes cast down to the floor. You let the conversation go, splitting your attention between your surroundings and the young man walking next to you. Surprisingly, it’s an uneventful walk out of the research and development area. But once you meet the intersection between it and medical, everything changes. 

The door slides open with a low hiss and you freeze, the salty tang of copper wafting out. The stench of blood and god knows what dogs your footsteps as you guide Andy through the carnage littering the floor. 

“It’s so much worse than before,” he whispers. “It’s like he came back.”

Fear makes your legs weak but you press on, eyes darting around for any movement, ears straining for any odd sounds. The alarm system wails in the distance, amber emergency lights pulsing in time with the sound. You eventually pass by Dr. Kline and his assistant Rose, mutilated in ways that turn your stomach. Andy touches your arm and you push past the bodies, eyes eagerly seeking out the red EXIT sign attached to the stairwell door. 

You touch the handle and a searing bolt of agony rips through your abdomen, like something with a mouthful of teeth is shredding your uterus. It hurts so much you can’t even make any noise, collapsing onto your knees, hands wrapped around your middle like it will stave off the pain. 

“Chief?!”

Andy tries to kneel but groans, legs shaking as he rights himself, hand grasping your shoulder. 

“I can’t,” his voice breaks, “I can’t lift you, Chief. Please, stand up. We’re almost out.”

You open your mouth to reply and puke, bile rushing up from your stomach to stain the floor. Eyes watering, you dry heave for far longer than last time until your body has nothing left to give. 

“Please,” the young man whimpers, “I don’t wanna be alone.”

A shaky hand reaches up to pat the one he has in your shoulder, “I-I’m okay. I think.. I think I’m sick. I don’t know if it’s safe to even be around me.”

Standing up, he doesn’t pull away. 

“We both probably are,” he mumbles, eyes drifting to the door. “But we gotta try.”

You press a hand to your abdomen, “No, Andy. I think I’m—“

“A host.”

A new voice cuts in—low, humorous. You both turn, the young man beside you grabbing your bicep with an iron grip. It takes a second to spot who spoke. Eyes partially concealed by blood soaked fringe peek from around the corner, an off shoot hallway in the opposite direction of the emergency exit.

One hand with abnormally long fingers, creeps over the edge like a deformed spider. The nails look like sharp little talons, and what skin you can see is dark, dry and scaly. 

“He’s, he’s not—oh god, what is he?” Andy whispers, and you shake your head. 

“I don’t know.”

Kennedy laughs and it floods your body with chills. 

“I’ve evolved,” he speaks, voice normal in complete opposition to his looks. “She will be, too.”

Andy subtly tugs your arm and you both take a step back, eyes never wavering from the eerie stare from the creature in front of you. A chittering noise comes from Kennedy and his other hand joins the first, splaying wide against the wall. 

“It was so easy to make you a host,” he laughs again, eyes glittering. “And you didn’t even lose any blood.”

The pair of you make another shuffling step back before those dark eyes narrow. You snap your CAC off of your lanyard clasp and press it against the hand Andy’s using to grip your arm. 

“Take it,” you hiss under your breath. “Go first, get to the containment ward. If everything’s gone to shit, activate the evacuation code and seal yourself off from here.”

“What about—“

Tears drip from your eyes, “I’m contaminated. Please, Andy, just get out of here. I’ll try my best to buy you time.”

“Okay,” he lets out a wet sounding breath. “Okay, Chief. I-I’ll do what I can. Thank you.”

You nod and he finally lets go of you, the heat at your side slipping away. Listening to his shuffling steps, you hear the security pad beep, followed by the stairwell door swinging open. It closes with a soft snick, but you don’t turn away from the pair of eyes in front of you.  

“You knooow you can’t stop me,” that chittering noise again making you realize that’s his laugh. “But it’s sweet of you to give him a head start.”

The cramping in your abdomen is beginning to flair up again but you grit your teeth and take a half step back. You continue walking backwards until your back bumps the door. Hating having to lose sight of him, you turn your sights on the security pad. You make quick work of it, you pull the lab ID card from your pocket, slide it into the slot, and snap off the bottom. The pad blares red—ERROR repeating itself across the small screen. 

“Do you think that’ll stop me?”

He murmurs directly behind you, raising the hairs on the back of your neck. 

You’re too scared to turn around. 

“Probably not, but it invokes a building wide security warning and shutdown,” voice trembling, you reply. “It also alerts the Agency that there’s been a breach.”

He hums, “Clever. Not that it matters.”

Those hands of his, basically scaly claws at this point, wrap their disjointed fingers across your waist and interlock—trapping you in place. The parasite in your body trashes wildly, cramps perforating your abdomen until you become only pain; your legs tremble, weight now held up by the monster’s hands—fear overriding the incessant will to live. 

“It needs out,” he croons, a strange clicking echoing behind you—like mandibles, you think almost deliriously. “Doesn’t it?”

Glancing down, you catch a segmented tail slipping away, tipped with a hardened exoskeleton that looks sharp enough to pierce. Gray begins to creep into your vision as your legs fully give out, Kennedy’s odd hands catching you underneath your breasts, pressing on your ribs so hard you feel the muscles shift.

You’re able to catch sight of his mutated face before passing out; too horrified to scream, you welcome the reprieve of inky darkness. 

[phoenixblaze1412]

HCs for reader and Dottore who have a child pls? - 🐓

Having a child of his own was a topic that Dottore rarely talks about. He already has his segments of different timelines and ages, why would he need a child when he can create a child segment of himself?

During Pregnancy

Dottore didn't expect for you to waltz into his lab, hug him from behind and suddenly announce that you're pregnant with him going to be a father soon. Even the segments stopped working on their tasks as they stared at you in shock.

You were shocked to see the doctor faint and fell to the floor, the vials he was holding shattered when he dropped it. You were panicking the whole day while the segments reassured you that Dottore will be fine.

The news of your pregnancy eventually reached the ears of the other harbingers. Most of them congratulated you while some, Pantalone mostly, just teased Dottore at how a mad scientist like him could be able to create an infant properly instead of creating it in a lab.

Regrator even gifted him with books like 'Parenting 101', 'How to care for an infant', 'How to be a good father and husband'. Dottore was definitely pissed about it.

The whole pregnancy progress actually went smoothly. With your husband as a doctor and scientist himself, he immediately has a medicine for any pain or cramps that you are feeling.

The only thing Dottore couldn't handle well was your cravings and mood swings.

Sure he experiments on a lot of things, humans and machines for example. But he doesn't experiment on meals. He and his segments could only watch in shock as you eat a Jueyun Chili popsicle. You literally just froze the damn ingredient and stuck a popsicle stick on it.

"Are you sure you're supposed to be eating something spicy while pregnant? I don't think that's good for the baby, love."

"If you don't shut the fuck up, I will stick this up your ass."

He immediately turned and walked away when he saw you bite a large chunk of the food, proving you weren't bluffing. He decided to just let you be, you would come to him later and ask for affection anyways.

Whenever Dottore is busy and can't be by your side, Pantalone is there to be your company at the time. Pantalone would literally spoil you, if you ask him anything you want, he only need to snap his fingers and you immediately get the thing you asked. Dottore didn't liked it though.

"Come now, doctor. She told me you weren't letting her have what she wants most of the time."

"That's because I'm doing it for both her and the baby's health. Besides, she is my wife, Regrator. Go fuck someone and make them pregnant then you'll come to experience what I'm going through."

During Labor

When your time for labor came, Dottore was the one to personally help you deliver the baby. He doesn't trust any other doctors or midwifes. Besides, his segments are also there to assist him.

What he didn't expect though is for you to crack Delta's fingers from gripping too hard. Strangled Gamma when he encouraged and told you how easy it is to just push the baby, when it's not. Even punched Alpha to the gut when he tried to calm you down. Omega and Theta had to hold you down by grabbing each of your arm so you wouldn't hurt anymore segment.

What surprised him even more was when you yelled out curses and threats towards him.

"Just one more push, darling."

"I'm already pushing you fucking cocksucker! If you weren't such a whining bitch, I wouldn't be in much pain! I'll fucking chop your fucking dick off and feed it to the rishboland tigers!"

Dottore could only stand in shock as he held the baby in his hands. He knows he's supposed to be happy since he's holding his child in his arms but your threat made him froze in fear and possibly traumatized.

Epsilon and Sigma gently took the crying infant in his grasp before cutting off the umbilical cord and went to clean the blood off.

In the end, both you and Dottore were tired from the whole event but you two happily held your newborn baby.

Aftermath

Your child was loved by not just the segments, but the entire fatui harbingers as well. Pierro and Pulcinella becoming the grandfathers while the rest of the members are either the aunts or the uncles.

Dottore actually did read the books Pantalone gave him and surprisingly, he's doing great.

Whenever you or Dottore are busy, Dottore would let a segment or two babysit your child. He doesn't trust his fellow harbingers when it comes to taking care of his kid.

One time he let Arlecchino babysit, he came back to see both her and Columbina dressing up your child like it was a doll. It was cute, from what the damselette said, but he prefer his child wearing the same color palette as his.

He is not going to let 'Uncle Childe' babysit. He could already tell that the ginger war freak would try to teach your infant how to hold a weapon at a young age.

You had to convince your husband to not be too overprotective of your child and let the others at least spend a bit of time with 'mini Dottore', Sandrone was the one who gave the nickname.

Your baby's first word was 'Lonnie'. Both you and Dottore had to chase Pantalone around the palace for him being your child's first words instead of Mama or Dada. Luckily their second word was Dada, you were a bit disappointed it wasn't you.

Your child has Dottore's soft, blue, curly hair meanwhile their eye color was the same shade as yours. The only problem was they had the same sharp teeth as your husband. You had to endure all the biting from both your child and husband.

Dottore would be the one who teach your child how to read and learn. He lets you teach them how to write, his own handwriting is barely understandable and he doesn't even have the patience for it.

You have a family picture of you three and another with all the segments placed on your bedside drawer.

There was another time where you and Dottore let the segments take care of your child while you both go out to the city and enjoy dinner together.

You both came back to see your child asleep in Omega's arms while the other segments were trying to wipe away the colorful doodles your child drew on their faces.

Since Dottore is the last one to go to bed due to him wanting to finish his work for the day, he would expect to see you and your child on the bed asleep already.

He would lay down beside you, your child in the comfort of your arms as you both dozed off to sleep. Dottore could only smile and place a kiss on both of your foreheads before wrapping his arms around your figure and pulling you and your child close to him.

[willowworkswithwords]

Eddie looks at the empty fridge. Then his laundry. Back to the fridge.

Eddie’s brain’s been swimming in fog all night. The bites have been itchy, the nightmares had kept him up until he’d not bothered trying to sleep at all, and he feels like he’s gonna cry and for what. Just a basket of laundry and a near empty fridge.

It dawns on him that Wayne hasn’t left the factory yet, that Eddie could call him and ask him to get groceries on his way home. But Wayne’ been working longer shifts for a couple months now, to make up for the time he spent with Eddie in the hospital those first two weeks when no one was sure what was going to happen. Eddie’s been trying to do things on his own when Wayne isn’t there, to let him help when he is, to balance physical recovery and mental trauma and school and the bills sitting on the kitchen table.

Eddie won’t call Wayne.

He looks at the phone on the wall, weighs the pros and cons, tries to imagine himself getting into his van and driving all the way to the laundromat and then the grocery store by himself and already feels tired by it.

“Hello?”

“Hey Steve, it’s me.”

“Eddie, you ok?”

Eddie wraps the phone cord around his finger, grimacing at the worry he can practically see emanating from Steve.

“Yeah man, I’m uh, I’m like, fine? But could you help me do some, some errands?”

Eddie holds his breath, pulls the cord tight around his pinky finger.

“I’m on my way, Eddie. See you soon.”

And that’s that. Eddie hangs up, sliding his fingers from the cord and sits down on the couch, knee bouncing, until he hears the Beemer roll up onto the gravel drive. Steve let’s himself in and Eddie’s heart jumps into his throat when he realizes he’s left the door open this whole time and anything could have happened and—

“Hey Eddie,” Steve says, sliding onto the couch right next to Eddie, knee bumping bouncing knee.

“Hey.”

Steve presses his hand, just for a second, to Eddie’s knee. Eddie stills his knees but pulls a lock of hair into his mouth, can’t stop himself from doing it even as the voice that’s always in his head tells him to just stop.

Steve squeezes, then lets go. He stares at Eddie for a second more, then smiles softly and grabs the basket of laundry.

“Ok man, let’s go.”

“Can we, uh, run to the grocery store too?”

“Sure. Anywhere else?”

“No,” Eddie starts to lever himself up off the couch. “Thank you, Steve.”

Steve is already at the door, holding it open for Eddie as he props the basket up against his hip.

“No problem, man.”

His smile is soft, and Eddie feels his own lips curl up and knows Steve can see his eyes crinkle.

The early dawn of the morning is beautiful, promising. Eddie feels the anxiety of the night still gripping onto him, but it’s moved from his chest to his legs, which is better but still not best. Steve doesn’t try to make conversation as he sets the Beemer in motion, letting Eddie watch the passing trees to the tune of Tears for Fears. Maybe it’s because Eddie doesn’t even reach for the dial that Steve keeps quiet, or maybe it’s the gentle morning still making its way over the horizon, still burning off the last dredges of sleep.

Glancing at Steve, Eddie doesn’t think he got much sleep either.

The laundromat is on Eddie’s side of town, close enough to downtown that they’ll probably just walk to get groceries once the clothes are in the dryer. There’s no one else there, though a machine is running in the corner. Steve starts setting up the machine immediately, and Eddie suppresses his surprise behind a lock of hair. He wouldn’t have thought that Steve would know how to work the machine but wonders never cease. It lets Eddie sit down gingerly on chair by the window.

The restlessness in his legs has turned into an ache. Steve glances at him as he put the clothes in, separating lights and darks into two different machines. Eddie starts to push his hand into his pocket for change, but Steve, facing away from him, not even realizing, takes nickels and dime from his own pocket and pops them into both machines, setting them running.

“Here, I grabbed this for you,” Steve says, book in hand. It’s an old, tattered copy of a collection of science fiction Wayne had given him. It’d been sitting next to him on the couch, Eddie realized, and he takes it from Steve’s outstretched hand with a grin he can’t help.

“Thanks, Steve-o.”

Steve’s own grin breaks out. He pulls out his own book, which was in his back pocket, for whatever reason, and Eddie tries (and fails) to hold back the look of utter confusion that crosses his face. He swears Steve did that on purpose.

“Anytime, Ed.”

They sit in the loud-quiet, the clunking machine and soft sound of each other’s breaths, and for a little while, they just are.

[pokedash55]

Racing against Death

1,786 words, Pre-movie, Oneshot,Turbo escaping the Roadblasters crash, Headcannons about his time homeless, Near Death, Glitching, Minor Canonical character death, TurboTwins (mentioned), Finish Line (the other racing game at Litwack's)

Click for the A03 link but the whole fic is under the cut :) (I usually don't post my fics to tumblr but it's where the Turbo fans are I think. Ya'll are Turbotastic)

-------------- \ō͡≡o˞̶ ---------------

All he could think in that moment was drive... Drive as fast as his racecar could as the pixels around him started to disperse into the black void. This wasn’t where he would end. Dying forgotten in the bowels of some second rate racing game would not be his lasting legacy. His code rushed with adrenaline, mind racing with only one goal: Survival. He gripped the wheel tight with desperation, pushing the engine as far as it could go and looked straight ahead to the exit to Game Central Station. The tires churned roughly on the grassy terrain as he neared the exit, the ground beneath him glitching and separating behind him. He was racing against death, but Turbo never loses. 

His code burned inside and he could feel his pixels glitch all over, the program still recovering from the collision with the more advanced data. It was a strange feeling having the game crash as it did. It was an unexpected, but rather pleasant outcome. With a glitch like that he expected  Roadblasters would be gone for good, but he did not anticipate just how quickly they would pull the plug. It was a fitting end to the worst game ever created. With Roadblasters out of the picture he could go back to being loved by all in the comfort of his machine. A determined grin crossed his face as the tires latched onto the metal of the copper wire, quickly gaining speed on the smooth surface as the last of the pixels dispersed. The car rushed through the cord, ignoring the railroad as he did when he first drove here, driving up and down the tunnel to gain bits of extra speed. 

He pushed out of the gateway, spinning and hitting the brakes as soon as he escaped the outlet, tightly maneuvering the wheel so as to not take damage or spin out into another game. The car spun a donut before he gained control and stopped in the middle of the empty power strip. He lifted the yellow visor from his helmet, breaths still quick and heavy. As he looked up at the game, the red text displaying “RoadBlasters” disappeared from the name screen and Turbo’s panicked breaths morphed into chuckles. He did it! He continued his airy laugh, shakingly getting out of his car, trailing his hands on the door before letting go to stand at its side, one hand reaching up to his face, fingers twitching with glee. His plan worked perfectly! Sure he couldn’t become part of the game, which was unfortunate (he will have to research how to implement outdated -er- retro sprites into a more technologically modern program later), but he was alive and Roadblah-sters was NOT!

Turbo grinned spitefully at the empty plug. Time to go back to his perfect life! He dusted his track suit off, though his arm still had small pixels of white and grey that were displaced from his sprite. That was surely nothing, It was fine he just needed to return to TurboTime and things would be back to the good old days. After a successful mission, he could use a cooldown race with his blue rivals. He didn’t usually enjoy their company, always bragging about the ridiculously small number of times they actually managed to beat him (it was always the players fault), but a celebration was in order after all. The three of them could hit up tappers after closing time and crash Felix’s nightly party’s to cap off the night. 

With glee, he hoped back into his ride. It needed repairs after such a crash but just like his sprite all would be repaired once he got back to TurboTime. He revved up the red and white car and slow rolled casually back to his game with a smirk, although his face started to drop as he got closer and closer to his port. 

“Wh… Where is MY GAME” He babbled in disbelief under his breath. He and Roadblasters were right across from each other but looking at the gateway Turbo saw nothing but pitch blackness. The same darkness he had just narrowly avoided. He laughed nervously, standing up on the seat, leaning his body over the windshield. He analyzed the doorway, anxiety slowly creeping into his mind. Why would they unplug his game too! No one had touched the console for a week there was no way anyone had played the game! Which snot nosed kid decided to come crawling back after that time of betrayal? With the children enamored with the disgusting new game, TurboTime was rendered unplayable far before his absence so why now was it ripped from him? He was stuck with the bitter surprise and his arms dropped sulkingley to his side looking at his empty port. That grief was short lived as the glitches on his body grew more sporadic and rushed through his system, a scowl forming on his face. 

Roadblasters took everything from him. He was his game’s hero, the greatest racer of all time! Everyone loved him and rightfully so! He refused for it to end this way. He deserved more than to be rendered some homeless forgotten wretch. A pitiful nobody who destroyed his own game. What praise and adoration would come from that? Thinking through his situation he realized what would happen if the other games found him here. They would either scorn and lecture him or (worse of all) take pity on him. Losing was bad enough, but having lesser beings pity you for it was worse. He couldn’t be found, that much was clear. He was not going to live a life of mockery, scorn and false sympathy. He deserved more. 

Turbo’s gaze lowered down to his car. It was the only thing that survived… but he couldn’t escape the scene of the incident with it. The car was damaged and without his game’s power source there was nothing to repair it. He usually enjoyed standing out, but at the moment his bright red cart would only slow him down. With a resolved expression he jumped out from the vehicle. Turbo won his very first professional race in this car. It was everything to him. He hated to lose the only thing he cared for but it had to go if he was going to regain the respect and admiration of the gamers. He marched behind it, placing his hands on the rear of the car and pushed it towards the abyss. Once the front wheels touched the darkness it was easy to push in the rest. The car exploded into a cloud of red and white pixels, leaving Turbo the soul survivor of the now defunct machine. 

He stood alone and the station was eerily quiet, with everyone still on the job in their respective games. The silence disturbed him and left him frustrated, scowl growing again on his skeletal face. Turbo had become accustomed to the loud cheering of fans. The loud sound of engines and stands cheering his name. It was all his and rightfully so. He craved those sounds and the desire caused his eyes to flicker. As his determination rose, his glitches creeped around his body, growing harsher and harsher. Just like his car he was damaged and without an energy source his code could be corrupted. He needed to wire himself into another game or he could die in this torturing silence. 

Turbo hated to admit it, but he needed to upgrade. He failed his conquest of Roadblasters because his code was incompatible. Accessing the code was one thing but he needed to know how to control it. If he could edit himself into a game, he could become whole again. But he’d need cover and a plan for that to happen without someone finding him and was getting nowhere standing outside an empty husk of a game. He gave Turbotime one last glance before heading off into hiding.

 He did not have to wait long, as Litwack soon added the game called Finish Line. He watched the game get plugged in, the crowds of characters awaiting the new friends who would join the arcade. When nobody exited the port, the sprites eventually dispersed and the racer made his move into the new racing game. He expected it to be harder to blend in, but Turbo learned quickly that the reason nobody had come through to Game Central Station was because there was nobody living inside the arcade cabinet. All the programmed assets were the vehicles and they were all inside the programming sans drivers, making it an easy hiding place.Turbo got to work quickly, finding the code room and playing around the most he could. He was able to delete the automated program of one of the cars just enough to allow a driver and worked on that code block for weeks. He despised being nothing more than an enemy NPC, just like those blue wannabes back home (whom he just realized they most likely are deleted. The least of his worries however), but the racers' identities here were never shown. He could not regain his rightful recognition in a game like this. Instead of a home it became more of a perfect toy for Turbo. He could code and recode all he wanted while the game automated the other cars and tracks. It was the perfect practice for when something much better came along.  

The glitches never went away and every time they ran through his system he shuttered. It stopped being painful but it still wasn’t sustainable. He tried for years to code into the game, but without a base code block he couldn’t map his digital DNA to anything. Finish Line simply didn’t allow for a character sprite as complex as his since it had no frame of reference; The game had no human renders and nothing resembling in game personalities. He couldn’t even comfortably race anymore, as it became obvious that without a proper connection one crash could lead him dead on the tracks (as the blue hedgehog so kindly reminds everyone every 5 minutes). Despite the limitations, Turbo stayed hidden in Finish Line. It was disgraceful resorting to this but it gave him ample time to test his abilities inside the code room. It was nothing but a waiting game now. He saw every bit and piece of the game’s inner workings. It was replaceable. All he had to do was wait��.

1997

Finally…. He grinned as the newest game arrived just across from Finish Line. Racing Avatars with colourful and cheerful expressions lined the box. It was the perfect place to regain his glory. 

Sugar Rush… a game fit for a king.

[acciopietro]

doctor pt. 3

pairing: namor x fem! reader

summary: you take an opportunity despite the repercussions. namor’s determination to protect his people blinds him.

part one part two part four

word count: 6,939

tw: lots and lots of death. forced suicide (because of the talokanil sirens). the typically stuff. lots of angsty and sadness

a/n: i was listening to happiness is a butterfly while writing so this took a turn for sure... it took a hot minute but i hope you enjoy nonetheless!! i’m nervous ab this so pls let me know your honest opinions...it kind of took a turn 

part one part two

IT REALLY ONLY TOOK ONE email to make your heart drop. It was a phone call and a series of texts, too, but it was the email that did it for you. Arial, Size 12 font, formal greeting, body paragraph, half-hearted thank you, polite goodbye. Signed Doctor Reynolds, Ph.D., with the name of your team and company. Message subject: Wakanda.

You read it with vigilant eyes, still hands resting on the metal of your laptop, blue light from the screen casting a cool glow onto your tired skin. The music in your earbuds continued to play, but the sound of The Weeknd wasn’t helping calm the way your heart’s steady beat began to pick up. The words on the email flashed out at you as if they were bolded: Wakanda, harvesting, vibranium, testing, trip. Trip?

“Hi, Doctor Reynolds,” you spoke casually into your telephone, despite your palms sweating around the handle of it. Twisting the coiled cord of it with your index finger, you said, “Yeah, I just got the email. I just had some questions...”

Long story short, a team of marine scientists had ventured into the pacific, delving into the deep seas in search of the vibranium you had found a little over a year ago. You had abandoned that research per Namor’s (tacit) request (more like demand), however, you had known that it was bound to be looked at at some point. The issue was that ships were now apparently being hijacked, their tracking machines being destroyed under water as well as large groups of scientists somehow falling off ship and into the waters to their tragic death. No one knew why.

Reynolds believed Wakanda had something to do with it. He believed that since they were well known for being the sole producers and protectors of all the Earth’s vibranium, he was under the impression that they were trying to stop the United States scientists from harvesting it. Which, you had thought to yourself, would be plausible considering the United States was notorious for taking things that weren’t necessarily theirs.

“Why are we getting involved?” you asked Reynold, gripping your scalp anxiously as you listened to Reynolds explain the situation. “It’s not like if we take a boat out there, we, somehow, will miraculously end up okay. If boats are being hijacked, then... oh, I don’t know...”

Reynold went on and on.

“Wait... you mean to tell me that you already booked it?” you shrilled. “Please excuse me if I���m stepping out of line here, but it’s very likely that our boat will just get hijacked, too. And besides, why do we care so much about vibranium, again? It doesn’t harm any marine life or ecosystems...”

Reynolds spewed a bunch of nonsensical answers, beating around the bush and never quite landing on the reason you know was true: getting money and getting power. Often the root of many of Reynolds’s aspirations.

“You’re more than welcome to deny the job,” Reynold says. “But I’ve decided that I want you on that boat. You’re a useful member of this team. Whether you like it or not, this could be very big.”

You clenched your jaw. “I’ll think about it.”

“You’ve got a week.”

You had only been home from Yucatán for one month. You had a wonderful four months of being with your sister and her family in the days and sneaking off with your man from the sea at night. You couldn’t have gotten closer to Namor; well, unless he took off his shorts and... well, you wouldn’t let him do it, anyways. He had asked. A few times. More than a few times. But for some reason, you just couldn’t do it. For starters, you weren’t on the pill and you were sure there wasn’t contraception under the sea (you asked if he had a condom one time, and he asked you what language that word was in. For someone who is immortal, he sure didn’t know a lot). 

You felt like sleeping with him for real for real would make things realer. It made him more of a commitment, gave him more power. And you told yourself you wouldn’t let it happen unless you were absolutely sure that he deserved it. It was really hard to say no sometimes, though. He sure knew how to persuade you.

Accepting the job and getting on the damn boat would for sure cause an issue if Namor found out. You didn’t want to search for vibranium, especially knowing the damage it would do to Wakanda if the United States got access to such a resource, and to Talokan if the States got knowledge of their existence. But... Reynolds personally invited you, and it could do wonders for your career if it went well. 

“I don’t see why not,” your sister said when you told her of your predicament the next day. “I mean, I understand the hesitation, especially if boats are being hijacked. But who knows, maybe they’ll get an Avenger and put them on board with you to keep you safe. Hopefully it’s Captain America.”

“As much as I’d love to have Sam Wilson on a boat with me for two weeks, I’m still not sure,” you groaned, plopping down onto your couch and opening up your laptop, the blue light hitting your face as you held your phone against your ear with your shoulder. Scrolling through the news, you said, “It just feels like a thing just for money. And, like, yeah, it is, but I... wait a second...”

You stopped scrolling, eyes casting across the headline of the latest CNN article, your lips falling apart. Wakanda’s King T’Challah dead at 41.

“Oh my gosh,” you breathed. Your sister asked you what it was on the other side of the phone, and you hastily forwarded the article to hear. She cursed, and both of you fell silent as you read. “Jesus Christ. I can’t go on that boat.”

---

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU won’t get on the boat?” asked Reynolds the followed week when you went into office. You shook your head, clenching your jaw.

“King T’Challah just died,” you told him matter-of-factly. “And if there really is more vibranium out there, and the States gets access to it, that’ll do a lot of damage to Wakanda.”

“We are not giving the States access to it,” Reynolds furrowed his brow, the hair of his grey mustache fluttering as he spoke. “We’re just figuring out how much of its in the water. It’s not our job to start harvesting it, that’s up to Archeology.”

“It doesn’t matter who does what,” you said feverishly. “We’re still helping do something that will eventually lead to bad things for Wakanda. And I don’t feel comfortable doing that, especially after their king just passed away.”

Reynolds narrowed his eyes at you, and said nothing before circling around to his desk and clicking the mouse of his computer. You blinked, watching him search around for something with a stern face. You waited a minute for him to speak, and when he didn’t, you cleared your throat.

“Sir..?”

“Look, L/N,” Reynolds looked at you from over his bifocals. “I understand where you stand on these more... well, political aspects of the job. But this is a big opportunity I’m offering you. If you decline, fine, but I’ll know that you’re not up to the task. I’ll give the job to Quade.”

You clenched your jaw, feeling something bubble in your stomach. Ugh, you thought. Quade. He was the worst. You knew it was wrong to take this job. Morally, it was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

“Okay,” you sighed defeatedly. “I’ll... I’ll do it.”

“Good,” Reynolds gave you a nod and stopped typing. He pressed the delete button and held it down. “I can get rid of this email to Quade then. We leave Friday. Back your bags and tell your family you love ‘em.”

---

UNDER THE THRASHING WAVES OF the Gulf of Mexico sat a king on his throne, his forearms resting on his strong, tensed thighs as he read a piece of torn paper. He had to put the paper under pieces of surface-dweller plastic so the pages didn’t fall apart under the water, but even still, the ink had smeared a bit. Nonetheless, Namor sat, his jaw clenched, and he read.

Namor, the letter read. 

Hopefully this letter got to you all right-- my niece isn’t always too reliable. I’m writing to you in an attempt to explain myself so you don’t find out from other sources. Some people from my team will be sailing out into the Gulf with another team that’s mining for vibranium. I wanted to deny the job, but I need to take whatever opportunities they throw my way if I want to keep my head above water. I’m going to do my best to protect you and your people, but there’s only so much I can do. I’m sorry. Really, I am. If there’s anything I can do that you can think of (without totally tarnishing my reputation and/or getting fired), find a way to let me know, and I’ll do it. Again, I’m really sorry. I hope you can forgive me. Hopefully I’ll see you soon.

Sincerely Apologetically Love

From, Y/N

Namor gripped the paper tight between his calloused, jewelry covered hands. Lifting his head, he glanced up at his people, the civilization they had built together, the vibranium everyone wore. He glanced at the chest plate he wore, the cuffs around his arms, at the vibranium he wore. It was everything.

He clenched his jaw, bowing his head and pinching the bridge of his nose. He laid the paper down on his lap, squeezing his eyes shut to think. 

“Namora!” he called out hastily, and after a little over a minute, the woman emerged into the space and walked up to him, standing before his throne. She knelt, opening up her palms to him in a greeting before standing up. “K'abéet in actualizaciones yóok'ol le láak' rastreador. Yaan in biin ta wéetel (I need updates on the next tracker. I’ll be going with you).”

---

THE DRIVE TO THE PORT was peaceful, palm trees swaying in the breeze and reminding you that, although it wasn’t Mexico, you were appreciative for the beauty and pleasantries of the place you lived in. Florida, with all of its ups and downs-- and you meant all of them-- was nice. The giant boat was astonishing once your Uber pulled up. People were hustling and bustling about the port, and you simply stared up at the giant ship, clutching the strap of your bag and admiring its beauty.

“Ah, Doctor L/N, good to see you. All packed?” asked Doctor Mishra, one of the men of the group who you actually liked to be around. You were thankful he was on the trip. “Boat’s giant, no?”

“Oh, yeah,” you whistled. “Y’know, I’ve never been on a boat like this.”

“I’ve been on a couple of cruises,” Doctor Mishra told you. “Wonderful vacations. However, we will not be waited on on this boat.”

“Fine with me,” you shrugged. “Do we just... go inside, or what?”

“Not sure,” he said. Smiling, he heaved his duffel bag over his shoulder and said, “Let’s find out!

Everything went smoothly for the first week and three days. All the men had to share rooms with at least one other person, and you were lucky enough that everyone agreed that you should have the single room. Your research seemed to be going fairly, however, you never caught a glimpse of the research of the others aside from Doctor Mishra, who you were doing a lot of your work with these days.

One evening, after a nice warm shower, you ventured out onto the deck of the ship, letting the ocean breeze cool your warm cheeks. You caught a glimpse, however, of Dr. Reynolds and Bernstein exchanging words on the deck, standing quite close and speaking under their breaths. You crept closer around the corner, trying to eavesdrop. 

“We found it around thirty-five miles from the west tip of Cuba, so we’re thinking if we move closer towards Cancún and Yucatán and all that, we’ll find more,” Bernstein said quietly but firmly. Reynolds nodded his head in understanding.

“But what of the machines?” he asked. “The last one was destroyed, you said, signal lost?”

“Something’s hungry down there,” Bernstein shrugged. “Or however far down the vibranium is, it’s too deep for our computers. We need higher tech to harvest it.”

Your stomach turned. The team wasn’t supposed to be thinking about harvesting vibranium. Reynolds had told you that was up to Archaeology. You gulped and kept listening, fighting the urge to jump out and ask a million questions.

"I’m in contact with some people up north who’ve got new stuff that could work,” Reynolds scratched his white beard pensively. “They’ve had limited success too, but it could be helpful.”

“Us getting this vibranium could change the game,” Bernstein said emphatically. “I mean, can you imagine if the government realized we had this stuff? They’d pay us a lot of money to take it off our hands.”

“This is more than just money, Bernstein,” Reynolds said lowly. “If Wakanda found out that the States got hold of the one thing they’ve got on us? We’re back on top.”

“Holy shit,” Bernstein ran a hand through his oily blonde hair and grinned. “I went into the right profession, that’s for damn sure!”

“Yes, well, let’s just see what the other men have gathered in the past week and compare,” Reynolds told him. “Maybe there’s something right under our noses that we haven’t noticed.”

You clenched your jaw and stepped out from behind the corner. You squeezed a fist in one hand to prevent yourself from lashing out, and it wasn’t until you cleared your throat that the two men noticed you.

“Oh, L/N!” Reynolds gave a gasp of surprise and then a chuckle. “Wasn’t expecting you to be out so late. Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

“I don’t have a bedtime, sir, I’m a grown woman,” you said firmly. “But you’ve got about twenty years on me, so I’m confused as to why you’re not in bed either.”

Bernstein and Reynolds shared a glance.

“I’m also confused about all this I’m hearing about harvesting vibranium,” you said, not saying anything for a heartbeat to give them room to defend themselves. “I didn’t think that was what we were doing here. I also thought that as a team we were supposed to be, I don’t know, working together?”

“Look, L/N, you’ve got your own research, and so do we. We chose not to include you because you, for some reason, seemed very against delving deeper into this vibranium business,” Reynolds explained in a slow and calm voice as if he were speaking to a child. “This could be very lucrative for us and helpful for American forces.”

“You’re hiding shit from everyone,” you spat.

“No, I’m not,” Reynolds sneered. “Just from you.”

As if someone had pressed a button, all of a sudden Reynolds and Bernstein stood upright, their faces blank, eyes fogged over. You furrowed your brow and snapped in front of the former's face. A song began to echo the ship, as if someone was playing it on the loudspeakers, and you glanced around as if to see if someone else noticed it. 

You glanced up to the top deck, where a man stood next to a large scope. He was walking very uniformly, his face blank as well, and you watched as he continued to walk and walk and walk until--

You screamed bloody murder. The man walked until he reached the railing, where he hopped over it and simply threw himself off the ledge and into the depths of the ocean below. Breathing heavily, you whipped yourself around and watched as Reynolds, mesmerized by the song, began to walk towards the railing, Bernstein at his heels.

“No!” you cried, grabbing ahold of Reynolds’s arm to hold him back; he thrashed himself out of your grasp and climbed over the railing. You grappled at the back of his shirt, trying to tug him back, but he too, like a rag doll, plummeted into the crashing waves below. Bernstein was looming closer to the railing, and you wrapped your arms around his torso to hold him back.

You kept seeing men out of the corner of your eyes walk over the edge and throw themselves into the sea. You hadn’t realized it, but tears were pricking out of the corners of your eyes as you mustered up all your strength to try and hold Bernstein back from the edge.

“Snap-- out-- of-- it!” you cried, and brought one of your hands to slap him clean across the face. To no avail. Balling up a fist, you let go of him and stood between him and the railing; you wound up your arm and socked him clean across the face, to which he toppled onto his back. Blood was now seeping from his nose, but at least he wasn’t walking to his death. 

You squinted out into the sea, to try and figure out the source of the sound, but all you saw was the water and the midnight blue horizon. A groan from behind you alerted your attention; you dropped to your knees, shaking Bernstein awake.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” you cried. He wiped his nose, the blood staining the sleeve of his white shirt.

“You fuckin’ punched me!” Bernstein muffled, sitting upright and punching you straight across the face, hard enough for you to topple back onto the deck. He got to his feet, and as if nothing had happened, his face became blank again. You groaned, sitting upright and clutching your bleeding nose as he walked towards the railing again. 

“No, no-- stop!” you called out, getting to your feet, but it was too late; Bernstein climbed over the railing and fell face first into the ocean. You saw the tail of a dolphin in the distance as his body disappeared, and you squeezed your eyes shut, covering your face with your hands, blood from your nose seeping through your fingers. “Jesus christ, what the fuck? What the actual fuck? What the fuck is happening?”

SPLASH! You drew your hands away from your face, and to your horror, saw the fins of sharks circling around the boat, the occasional tale of a dolphin, or the splashes of other marine life you couldn’t identify from so far away. The beating of your heart was so fast that at this rate you were sure you could die of a heart attack. Unable to take your eyes away from the sea of troubles below you, you were terrified to see the body of a whale rise close enough to the surface for you to see, and what shocked you the most was the outline of a person riding on its back. Your jaw dropped.

Without a second thought, you sprinted towards the hatch that led to the inside of the ship. You ran at top speed across the creaky wooden floor until you reached your room, grabbing your bag that held your journal, your phone, your laptop, and your camera. A knock at your door made you jump and almost yelp.

“It’s just me,” it was Doctor Mishra, his hair disheveled and his eyes wild. He had on a large pair of earmuffs. “Are you okay? Your nose is bleeding!”

“No!” you practically screeched. “I just fucking watched the entire crew kill themselves!”

“Everyone?”

“Well, I don’t know about everyone,” you stammered, shoving anything and everything important to you into your bag. You grabbed the printed map of the gulf, with annotations and drawings and other kinds of markings, and rolled it quickly before shoving it into your bag. Picking up your taser, you blinked at it before shoving it into your bag, too. “Bernstein and Reynolds are gone, same with the rest of the crew on the deck, and the man from the mast, and the--”

“Slow down,” Mishra said to you, squatting down next to you and handing you his handkerchief for your nose. “There’s almost no signal, and the only ways we can send out an S.O.S. are either from the red flare device on the mast, or by the radio in the control room.”

“Okay,” you breathed, putting the straps of your bag over your shoulders and tightening it so it wouldn’t fall off, wiping your nose despite it continuing to bleed. “But... what if we get all weird too and try and walk off?”

“Here,” Mishra fumbled with something in his pocket: wired earbuds. “Plug them into your phone and blast some music. Should do the trick. My earmuffs worked pretty well.”

You grabbed the earbuds from him, untangling them before plugging them into your ears. Grabbing your phone, you shuffled a playlist and turned up the volume. Mishra beckoned you to follow him out the door, to which you complied, Tyler, the Creator’s “ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?” blaring from the earbuds. Not the time, you thought, but you couldn’t afford to stand there a pick a good song for the occasion.

“I’ll head up to the mast,” you offered. “The control room is safer for you since it’s pretty contained.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “The mast is insanely high, you could get hurt.”

You clenched your jaw. “It’s fine. I’ll send out the flares. Good luck, okay?”

“Take care of yourself,” Mishra told you firmly. “Meet back on the deck in ten minutes or so.”

You nodded and turned, sprinting back up onto the deck and opening the hatch. There were people on the deck, with beautiful feathered headdresses and jaded armor. You stared at them for a moment, but before they could see you, you ran behind one of the poles, trying to focus on getting up to the mast. The ladder was on the other side of the deck, leading you to inch your way around the center portion until you could find the ladder with your eyes.

There were tons of the soldiers across the deck, running around, whispering to one another. They all held massive, sharp spears, the jade and gold glinting under the pale moonlight. It reminded you of Namor, you thought, until you realized it was possible they were his people. As much as you trusted him, you didn’t trust the spears; you weren’t about to risk your life, and even Doctor Mishra’s life, just to reunite with the man from the sea. 

You bolted towards the ladder, grabbing the bars and climbing up it with no hesitation. Someone from below shouted something. You didn’t look down, moving at a speed you were sure you had never moved at before, until you reached the top level where the light machine and the red flare device were located. You practically threw yourself onto the bright red button, pressing it over and over again so tens of red flares shot up into the night sky.

Your earbuds were playing Childish Gambino, now, and despite it being one of your favorite songs of all time, you couldn’t find it in you to enjoy it. You kept pressing the button, red flare after red flare firing into the sky. People were shouting from below you, in a language you couldn’t decipher, especially with “Me and Your Mama” blasting into your ears.

You took a brief moment to glance at the deck, peering over the railing. Someone was climbing up the mast, the gold of their armor glinting under the light of the mast. You panicked, unzipped your bag and grabbed your taser. You ran to the other side of the table-like desk in the center of the platform and crouched behind it.

Feet adorned in golden-plated sandals planted onto the platform. You swallowed your breath, holding out your taser for when they rounded the desk. You cursed your earbuds; you were sure they could hear the Childish Gambino blasting from them. When they rounded the corner, you shot up and stuck out the taster onto their stomach, to which they convulsed and stumbled backwards. You pressed the red button a handful more times, but before you could act again, you felt a hand grab you by the neck and heard the cling of a blade being unsheathed.

“Suelta a arma (Drop your weapon),” the person holding you said firmly, to which you shakily dropped your taster. It clattered onto the wooden platform. The soldier let you go, your back towards the ladder, and with the shear pointed right at you, commanded, “Péeksik (Move).”

You couldn’t understand them, but you had enough context clues to understand what the soldier wanted. You caught a long enough glimpse at them to see a strange mask over their mouth and nose, water splashing around inside of it. You wanted to look for longer, but they nudged you with the butt of their spear, so without protest, you climbed down the ladder.

By the time you reached the floor of the deck, you barely had a moment of freedom before the soldier grabbed you again, holding you by the shoulders with their spear at your neck. They spoke to another soldier, the blade of the spear dangerously close to your skin. 

One of the soldiers wore a tall, orange-feathered headdress, with the same feathers donned around the necklace she wore that looked like it was made out of something woven. The soldier holding you shoved you forward, hard enough that you stumbled over your feet and almost fell flat on your face. As soon as you were released, the other soldiers circled you, spears pointed.

“Vacíe u póoj (Empty your bag),” she commanded. You blinked, not understand. At your silence, one of the soldiers poked your bag with their spear, nudging it off. You reluctantly shook it off of your shoulders, letting it fall onto the deck. “Je'e le! (Open it!)”

Another soldier poked it with your spear before another nudged you forwards. Lowering to your knees, you grabbed the back and opened the zipper pocket so the contents of your bag was visible. One of the soldiers snatched it from you, turning it upside down and shaking it so everything fell out; your map tumbled to the ground, along with your computer, camera, and journal. Cringing at the sound of your computer and camera dropping onto the deck, you made a move to stand, but the feeling of a spear pressed against the back of your neck kept you down.

The woman in the headdress, who you assumed was in charge, bent down and picked up the map, unrolling it. She ran her finger where you had outlined the hypoxic zone in red pen, the notes near the southern border of the United States, as well as the circle around your sister’s town in Yucatán.

“Talokan ma' u dibujado (Talokan is not drawn),” she said. In broken English, she read the notes and pronounced. “Hi-gh con-cen-tra-ti-on.”

You gulped, watching them interact with one another. The one behind you holding the spear to your neck said, “Ba'ax le kíins wa ma'? (Do we kill her, or not?)”

“Le ajawo' tu ya'alaj ma' u testigos (The king said no witnesses),” another soldier proclaimed. “Kíisa (Kill her).”

“Pa'atik! (Wait!)” one exclaimed, leaning down and grabbing your wrist. “Ilawil u x-oron (Look at her wrist).”

“Lelo' u Talokan (That is from Talokan),” another said, to which gasps and murmurs spun around the circle of soldiers. You squeezed your eyes shut for a moment; the word Talokan was circling your brain. Namor. These were his people. Where was he? Why were they on your ship, killing your team? About to kill you?

“K'aaba' ti' le ajawo' (Call the king),” the woman said, to which one of the soldiers held up a large conch shell. After a beat of silence, the soldier brought it up to their lips and blew through it, a loud clarion call resounding through the air. After the call ended, the woman announced to the soldiers, “Leti' jach le ts'ook viva (She is the last alive).”

“Le ajawo' yéetel complacido (The king will be pleased),” a soldier said. 

“Y/N!” came someone's voice from above. Your heart lurched when you saw Doctor Mishra from atop one of the platforms where the radio room was. You internally cursed him for revealing his presence to the soldiers. The soldiers shouted something, and one moved to go after Mishra, but before he could, a figure shot through the air towards where the doctor was.

The figure landed on the platform next to Mishra, who, before he could run away, was struck in the head with the butt of a spear; Mishra fell to the floor, alive, but unconscious. The figure flew up into the air, circled the mast, before soaring towards where you and the soldiers were, landing with a hand on the deck.

The soldiers knelt, joining their hands at the wrists and opening their palms to him. The figure moved, the wings at his angles fluttering as he stood up. Your breath caught in your throat when he set eyes on you, breaking through the circle of soldiers to stand before your kneeling figure.

“You,” was all you could breathe when Namor stared down at you, his spear gripped in his hand. His hair was slicked back with the water of the ocean, his eyes narrowed in one of the deadliest glares you had ever witnessed. A chill went up your spine.

“I gave you that because I trusted you,” Namor poked the bracelet on your wrist with the tip of his spear. Your hands were shaking now, tears pearling at the corners of your eyes. “And here you are... harvesting vibranium. Just as you promised me you would not do.”

“I... you didn’t read my letter?” you stammered out. He was scaring you. There were drops of saltwater on his eyelashes, those ebony eyes of his making you simultaneously melt with adoration and freeze with fear. “I thought... they... they lied to me, they said we were just finding the concentration, I didn’t know they were harvesting it here--”

“You lied to me,” Namor said slowly with composure. His jaw clenched. Something in his eyes changed. “You tricked me.”

“I didn’t,” you were crying now. “I didn’t. I promise, K’uk’ulkan--”

“You do not deserve to call me that,” he gave a dry scoff. He gulped. He wasn’t just angry, you saw; he was upset. Devastated. “You are now an enemy.”

“Look at the map!” you urged him, scrambling to find it. “Look at my notes! I didn’t-- it’s not even near Yucatán, it’s-- it’s just where the concentration was higher, I swear--”

“High Concentration,” the woman from before said, handing the map to Namor. He took it, unrolling it and eyeing the area you had outlined.

“What is this?” Namor asked you, not meeting your eyes. You sniffed, swallowing the frog in your throat.

“It’s-- it’s just where I found the high concentration of vibranium in the first place. I thought we were just supposed to go back to that area, in the northern Gulf, to test the concentration, and that’s what I thought we were researching! That’s what my-- that’s my project. My work.”

“Your project,” Namor repeated. 

“Remember?” you practically begged. “Remember how I spent all that time working and you stopped me from getting data? That’s what I was researching! That’s what I’m doing here! I didn’t know that fucking Bernstein and Reynolds were trying to harvest vibranium! I had no idea!”

“How am I supposed to believe you?”

You could barely catch your breath. “I-- I don’t know. My map, my computer, my journal, my goddamn phone, everything’s in there. Take it all, I don’t care. Read everything I’ve ever written, you’ll see!”

Namor bent down and picked up your journal, flipping open to the first page and starting to read. Your knees were starting to hurt from how long you’ve been sitting on them. The silence was deafening, watching him flip through the journal. He read every single word, and you tried to calm your breathing as you watched his face change as he continued to flip.

When he reached the last page, he closed the journal and held it by his side. His glare was gone; he was frowning now, refusing to look at your face. Glancing up at the soldiers, he lifted a hand, to which they lowered their spears away from you and backed up. Namor extended a hand to you as if to help you to your feet. You eyed it hesitantly, but seeing the grimace on his face, you took it and stood.

He didn’t say anything. It was like he couldn’t. He avoided your eyes, and without a word, he turned around towards the railing, resting his forearms on it with a sigh. You were still shaking, but as your fear subsided, you felt the anger bubbling up in your stomach. A drop of blood fell from your nose, touching your top lip.

“You killed everyone,” you muttered, wiping the blood off of your lip. He turned his head and said nothing. “Your people almost killed me.”

“I will do anything for my people,” he told you carefully. His voice was wavering. “If they are threatened, I do not care what it takes. I will protect them.”

You weren’t sure what to say. You walked up beside him, resting your arms on the railing, too. Out of the corner of your eye, you could see his chest rising and falling with a quick cadence, and despite not being able to hear his fast breathing, you could see he was becoming flustered.

“I pray you can find it in you to understand my motives,” he continued. You, again, said nothing. You could barely form words, your mouth dry. There was something warm on the back of your neck; you brought your hand up to touch it, only to find fresh blood on the pads of your fingers. The spears had cut you. Namor glanced over at your bloodied hand, brows twitching. He reached towards you, “Allow me to--”

You flinched back. You couldn’t look at him. He dropped his hands and bowed his head, staring at the waters below. They were calm, now, the sharks and dolphins no longer splashing about. That whale you had seen had gone, too. You willed your rapid beating heart to cease, wishing your chest would stop twisting and turning.

“I get it,” you murmured, using the collar of your shirt to wipe the last bit of blood from your nose. Namor’s head twitched up, eyes on you in less than a second. “Gotta protect your people, just like you were when you wouldn’t let me take those samples. But this... this is... what I saw...”

“If I had known you weren’t apart of it, I would never have let--”

“I wish you had trusted me,” you sniffled, finally looking at him. His ebony eyes were wider than you had ever seen them, brown brows tilted upwards in a form of desperation you would have never picture them having. He was beautiful. “My letter, I thought... I thought I explained it.”

“You did,” Now that Namor had caught your eyes, he didn’t dare look away in fear of losing them again. “You did, I... jumped to conclusions.”

“You jumped to conclusions,” you repeated, breaking the eye contact. You clenched your jaw. “So you killed my entire team.”

Namor’s mouth opened and closed like a fish for a second, unable to find proper words. “You have to understand where I’m coming from, here. These ships harvesting our vibranium-- Talokan’s vibranium-- would put us at risk. It could lead to the end of my people.”

“I know,” you sighed, closing your eyes and putting your head on your hands where they rested against the railing. The ocean’s breeze struck at your forehead, cooling your skin and blowing your hair off your face. Namor didn’t say anything, but you could feel him looming closer. You hid your face from him.

“Y/N,” he said, his voice so soft you almost didn’t hear him over the breeze. “Please look at me.”

After a prolonged second, you lifted your head from your arms, the breeze chilling the tears that had rolled down your cheeks. You couldn’t meet his eyes. You couldn’t bear it.

“Take me home,” you said quietly. He blinked. “Please.”

“To... to Yucatán?” he inquired, a layer of hope underneath his words.

“No,” something was twisting in your chest. “To Miami.”

“...right now?”

“Yes.”

Namor didn’t move, just staring at you with those puppy dog eyes that made you want to wrap your arms around him and pull him into you. 

“Are you sure?” he asked. “Please, Y/N, we have to--”

“Yes, I am sure,” you said pointedly, despite the wobbling of your voice. “It’s not like there’s anything for me to do here, anyways. Everyone’s dead.”

Namor raised an arm, and the female Talokanil soldier from earlier came to his side. He muttered something to her in his native language; you hadn’t bothered to listen, for one because you didn’t speak a word, but for two because for some reason, hearing his voice was making it difficult to hold your ground.

“Come,” he said to you, holding his hand out. You glanced over at him; he began to rise from the ground, wings on his ankles keeping him suspended in the air. You glanced at his hand. “Do you trust me?”

You felt your lower lip tremble. 

“I don’t know,” you said, grabbing his hand anyways. He frowned, his eyes more glassy than ever. You wondered if he would cry. He pulled you up, gently wrapping an arm around your waist and holding you tight on his side, his other arm holding his spear.

In a flash, you were soaring towards the horizon, the cold, salty air whipping you in the face as he flew. His skin was cold against yours, and despite your anger, you pushed yourself against him, wondering when the next time you’d feel him would be.

The gold of his jewelry pressed against your skin, and you stared at the way in glinted under the pale moonlight. You stared at him, the jade in his septum, the point of his ears, the bronze of his skin. There were tears prickling at the corners of his eyes, prevented from rolling down his face and simply flying away from the force of the wind.

You hadn’t realized how quickly you were flying. The shore was near, you could see the lights of the city as you approached it. You slowed, your hair relaxing from the absence of the harsh wind. Scrunching your nose to get some feeling back in it, your feet skimmed the top layer of the ocean as he brought you to the sand and let you go.

You dusted your self off, fixing your head and allowing yourself to adjust to being back on the ground. You had gotten dizzy from the flight, but came to it in less than a minute. You glanced at where his hand still held his spear. When he saw you look at it, he lowered it without hesitation. You finally laid eyes on Namor. The tears from earlier had fallen onto his cheek. 

“Do you fear me?” he asked.

“I fear what you’re capable of,” you muttered. “Because I don’t think you’ll ever trust me.”

“I trust you,” he breathed. You frowned. “I trust you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do,” he insisted, falling to his knees in front of you. His ebony hair was partially covering his eyes, but the wind suddenly pushed it back so you could see his face. Your eyes widened, gaze lowering to where he sat. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I trust you. Fully.”

You could barely believe the sight before you; Namor, on his knees. You were cruel, you thought. You were still crying. 

“I just need some time,” you said, feeling your heart change at the sight of him. His eyes kept flickered around your face, to one eye, to your nose, to your lips, to the other eye, back to your lips. “Okay?”

“Time?” he repeated, nodding, knees digging into the sand, wings on his ankles fluttering a bit. “Yes, that’s-- as much time as you want.”

“Okay,” you sighed. Namor slowly rose to his feet, reminding you of the way he towered over you. He didn’t let his eyes leave yours, as if he were trying to tell you something tacitly. He looked at your lips. 

He lifted his hands towards your face, and when you didn’t flinch away, he cupped both of your cheeks with his palms. You closed your eyes, heart thumping. 

“Whenever you are ready,” he began, his thumb rubbing over your cheekbone. “I’ll be here. All right?”

“Mm-hm,” you said, letting yourself look at him. He nodded, biting the inside of his cheek. 

“Good-bye,” he said. He leaned forward, pressing a kiss to your hairline so tenderly you thought you might start sobbing right then and there. Before you could say anything more, he soared up into the air, flying away and disappearing into the midnight sky. You wiped at your cheeks, ridding the tears, and with a sigh, you turned around and made for your apartment.

---

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[rotworld]

16: Trust Fall

art by @exorbitantsqueakingnoises

trapped on a remote outpost, you send distress signals into the void while waiting for salvation. just when you've nearly lost all hope, it arrives--with blood and death.

->warhammer 40k. original drukhari character/reader. explicit; contains dub-con, implied non-con, conditioning, mindbreak, sadism, unhealthy d/s dynamic, implied captivity.

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“This is Outpost Urania One-Five-Oh, requesting immediate assistance. I repeat, this is Outpost Urania One-Five-Oh, requesting immediate assistance.” 

The cogitator is dying. It spits sparks, internal cooling systems whirring loudly. The metal casing thrums blisteringly hot. Beneath cracked glass screens, monochrome green displays flicker with warnings and error messages. You have to keep jostling the tangle of thick cables running along the floor and manually resetting the broadcast settings. Toggle “distress signal.” Select “priority - high.” Crank the range knob, again, to make sure the signal reaches orbit, then try to keep your voice firm and steady until it all goes dark and you have to start over.

“This is Outpost Urania One-Five-Oh, requesting immediate assistance,” you say. You order a scan, watching waveforms inch slowly across a rudimentary map of the system. “Situation dire. Life support systems failing. Unknown fatalities. Requesting immediate assistance—” 

Your voice cracks and you press your hand over your mouth, muffling a sob. You inhale shakily. Exhale, fighting a whimper. You can do this. You just have to stay calm. Someone will come. The slow pulse of emergency lights drapes a red glow across your back. The cogitator falls dormant and you hold your breath until it blinks back to life. A cluster of dots suddenly appears on the scanner, blinking slowly across the screen. 

“This is Outpost Urania One-Five-Oh,” you say quickly, rattling off all the necessary proclamations with your heart in your throat. Please answer, you think desperately. You pick at the thick, thermal material of your maintenance uniform, scratching anxiously at the high turtleneck collar. Moments pass in agonizing silence. Your breathing quickens into hyperventilation. “This…this is…”

“Copy, Urania One-Five-Oh.” The voice is stern, every word sharp and clearly enunciated. “This is the Righteous Edict of Patrol Fleet Cobalt-Prime. Describe the nature of your emergency.” 

A patrol fleet! You have to collect yourself, your relief so powerful it almost becomes panic again. “I’m—it’s, uh—” You stop. Deep breaths. You’re so tired and hungry and afraid, but you’re going to get out of here. You just have to keep it together a little longer. “We were attacked. It happened so fast. It was xenos, I think, I didn’t—I’m just a menial. Our orbital defenses are gone and our systems are failing. There’s not many of us left, we were ordered to salvage what’s left but it’s—it’s really not looking good.” 

“Copy.” Another long pause. You watch the dots on the scanner hover in place. They’ll stop, won’t they? They’ll help you? They have to. You pull and pick at the turtleneck of your uniform again, your breath coming in quick, shallow puffs. They have to. They have to. You can’t do this anymore. The communications chamber is deathly silent. There’s no one here but you and the dust in the air and the mess of cords and cables forming knots and webs across the metal floor. The ventilation occasionally wheezes. Coolant leaks from a busted machine chassis in the corner. The emergency lights grow dimmer with each passing hour and you’re starting to see things in the shadows. Swift, moving shapes. Cruel eyes and sharp smiles. 

There’s nothing there. Probably. 

“Forwarding your location via astropathic relay,” the Righteous Edict reports. “Regrettably, we can’t render aid. We’re en route to Lothal to rendezvous—” 

“No, please!” You’re frantic. You can’t help your outburst. “We’ve already been here, waiting, for weeks. Everything is shutting down. Our tech priests are missing, we can’t keep the outpost running anymore! We’re almost out of rations and with all of our defenses down, we’re sitting ducks. Can’t you just…we need help, we need to leave!”  

“Compose yourself, Urania One-Five-Oh,” comes the cold reply. “You are speaking to a Naval Commissar. I cannot divert the entire fleet for a single outpost when we are needed elsewhere. By the grace of the God-Emperor, your message has been received and will be passed along.” 

You’re going to be sick. Your head is spinning and your pulse is racing, cold tendrils of despair squeezing your heart. It could be months before someone comes across this remote corner of the galaxy again. Years, if the tides of the warp set them astray. The communication chamber becomes smears of gray-green and blinking red through your tears. 

“Please don’t leave me here,” you beg, your voice quivering. “Please, I can’t…there’s, there’s supplies! We have supplies, weapons, you can take whatever you want! You can—” You have to think, you have to offer him something. Lothal, he said. They’re going to Lothal. That’s a Forge World. To rendezvous, not for repairs. What does that mean? A meeting? A political maneuver? Supporting an Explorator fleet, maybe. He’s a Commissar, he’s probably going to talk to someone important. He’d want the upper hand in negotiations. “The Magos, he said…he told us we have to get the device somewhere safe. Too risky to keep them here anymore.”

“Device?” The reply comes much faster this time. “What device? Describe it.” 

He’s listening. He’s interested. You have to think fast. “Oh, it’s…it’s not too big. Not tiny, either. Metallic. Sort of oddly-shaped. There’s some sort of interface on it but I was told not to touch it. The Magos made it display a pict once but I’m not sure what it showed. He called it a ‘blessed blueprint.’”

You wait in suffocating silence. One of the emergency lights sputters out. You can smell a sharp chemical stench coming from somewhere, burning and corrosive in your nose. The whole outpost seems to groan and creak around you, the aging metal damaged and threatening to collapse. The planet’s surface outside the outpost isn’t inhospitable. The air is breathable, but the nights are bitterly cold. If the power goes out, could you scavenge enough material to stay warm? You care about that so much less than the eerie quiet. Trickling, spark-popping, shrill electronic beeping, but never voices. Never footsteps. Never anyone but you. 

You are sore and exhausted from hunching over the cogitator, you are starving and running low on emergency naval rations, but more than anything, you are alone. You scratch at your neck with a whimper. 

The cogitator’s speakers hiss with static and the words you’ve waited so long to hear finally arrive. “Urania One-Five-Oh, a ground team is now being assembled. Provide outpost coordinates and prepare for immediate evac. Do not handle the STC blueprint, please, or the tech priests might shoot you on sight. One of my men will provide you with a secure transport safe.” 

“Throne bless you,” you say hoarsely. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. B—be advised, Righteous Edict, there’s a debris field in our orbit.” 

“We see it.” 

You give them the coordinates and then you switch off the cogitator’s microphone so they don’t hear your weeping. Soon. You’ll be out of here soon. Just a little longer. You watch one of the dots on the scanner break from formation and start blinking closer, traces of a shaky, hopeful smile on your lips. 

There’s not much for you to do now but wait. You have nothing to take with you, no precious belongings to pack. You shut off several extraneous functions, rerouting power from other parts of the outpost to brighten the exterior lights so they can find you more easily. The skin of your neck is getting irritated under the cloth from how much you’re rubbing and scratching and picking, but you can’t help it. You just want this to be over. 

The wreckage of dozens of ships circles the Urania outpost’s planetoid in a twinkling river. You can’t see it with the naked eye until a piece nudges loose and plummets through the atmosphere, a streak of green fire across the sky. The arrival of the patrol fleet’s landing shuttle disturbs several chunks of shrapnel that turn into falling stars somewhere over the horizon. You wait at the foot of the outpost’s front step, shivering and rubbing your arms. Midday isn’t as frigid as night, but you can still see your breath in the air. The shuttle makes a quick, bumpy descent to the rocky surface, sliding to a stop on a metal landing platform bearing the ashy stains of artillery blasts. 

The commissar came in person. He’s the last one off the shuttle, preceded by an armed group of naval soldiers. He descends the boarding ramp with a cautious, scowling glance at his surroundings, a sword at his hip and a bolt pistol in his hand. You glance at the sky again, expectant. 

“What happened here?” the commissar asks you. He and his men approach with far more hostility in their body language than you’d expect for rescuers. 

You shake your head. “I don’t know what they were. They had us badly outnumbered. Disabled our defenses somehow and then swooped in like vultures. I think they took prisoners.” 

“But not you?” 

“No. We were trying to get the shields and anti-air artillery back online, so we were in the control center. They never came inside. I’m not sure why. But we’re stranded and things have deteriorated badly since.” 

The commissar narrows his eyes. “How many survivors?” 

“Less than ten of us,” you say. “Maintenance personnel, mostly.” 

“Hm.” He looks suspicious. That’s fine. It doesn’t matter. You’re almost out of here. You’re so close. The commissar studies your face and work uniform, the blood and grit caked to your hands and stuck beneath your nails, and then he nods. “We need the STC secured,” he tells you. 

“Right, of course,” you say quickly. You look past them, towards the horizon, your pulse picking up. It’s fine, isn’t it? Everything’s going to be fine. “Uh. This way.” 

You hoped you’d never have to step foot inside the outpost again. An alarm blares somewhere, a rhythmic, monotonous droning that echoes far away. Smashed cogitator screens hang crooked on the walls, showing fizzling gray lines. Blood spatters the walls of corridors, long dry, but there are no bodies. Every passing moment makes your fear sharpen. This isn’t right. You should be leaving by now. You were good. You did everything you were supposed to. Tears burn your eyes and your throat constricts. 

You get as far as the mess hall, all overturned chairs and shattered tile, when your legs give out. You can’t go any further and you’re inconsolable, curled up beside a broken table with your head in your hands. One of the soldiers kneels at your side, checking for head wounds. The commissar voxes the Righteous Edict asking for a second shuttle and a medic. He frowns tightly, then repeats his request. The sight of his rigid posture and wary glance back at you over his shoulder makes your sobs turn to sniffles, hope blooming in your chest. 

It’s going to be okay, you realize. You never should’ve doubted him.

The commissar orders the soldier beside you to move away. He clutches his bolt pistol and starts to say something. “What…?” You can only guess what he meant. What’s going on? What really happened here? What have you done? It doesn’t matter.

The shriek of a shard weapon firing sounds like a thousand windows shattering. The commissar stumbles back with wide eyes and blood trickling from his open mouth, glittering crystal shrapnel piercing his chest. Luminescent green liquid trickles from each sliver and into his wounds, hissing on contact. The shot is incredibly precise. You hear the clustered ammunition whisper just above your head. You don’t run for cover. You stay where you are and hold perfectly still as the room erupts in a cacophony of blaster fire, streaks of sizzling void punching through armor and unraveling flesh in bubbling bursts because that’s what you’re supposed to do. Sit. And wait. And trust him, like always. 

And you do. You trust him more than anyone. Bodies fall all around you, skin pincushioned, wounds crystal-studded, limbs and throats and clutched, heaving chests weeping red, and you don’t move. You sit there in the middle of all of it, darklight shrieking so close to your cheek that you feel the kiss of the void sizzle on your skin, blood spatters painting your clothes. Not a single shot missed. Not a single blast lodges in the wall or clips a table and not a single stray poison-filled shard lodges in your back. The commissar and his men writhe on the floor in quivering agony. Most of them will live and wish they hadn’t. 

And then you hear it. You hear him. They’re all here, too, the lesser lords and ladies, but you can pick out his slow, confident saunter through the chaos, the click of his boots across the floor. The pain in your heart fades and the fear melts away, everything swirling into peaceful bliss.

“There’s my darling songbird,” Xeranthross coos, looking down at your quivering form. He’s a perfect being, as beautiful as he is dangerous. Every movement is graceful and every word is a low, seductive purr. Eyes like rubies and smile like the curve of a knife, his hair is jet black and uneven, longer one one side than the other. You aren’t ashamed to throw yourself at his feet, letting the barbs and spikes jutting from his armor scrape your skin as you tremble with soft sobs of relief. “Oh, you poor thing! Why the tears?” 

You try to answer but all that comes out is wretched, warbling nonsense. It makes him chuckle. He bends slightly from his towering height, resting the pointed claws of his gloves on your head.

“You didn’t doubt me, did you?” he asks, his voice lowering to something menacing. 

“No!” You make yourself speak, forcing the words out as quickly as you can no matter how incomprehensible they might be through your weeping. “No, no, no, I didn’t, I swear, I didn’t, I never doubted you! Never!” You knew he would come. You knew, deep down, no matter how many days dragged into nights. “I didn’t,” you mewl, rubbing your face against the side of his boot. Your cheek catches on his armor’s spikes and you feel blood beading to the surface, a warm trickle down your chin. You don’t mind. Any pain he gives you is a gift. 

“Hush,” he says. You try. You cover your mouth to stifle your own miserable sounds. “Who do you trust, my dear? More than anyone?” 

“You,” you say. You don’t even have to think about it. 

“And who do you obey, before all others?” 

“You. Only you.” You shudder when his claw grazes your throat, pinching the fabric of your uniform between his fingers. He peels the turtleneck down, exposing a dark ring of metal. It’s a simple but elegant thing, a thick band of black that reflects deep blues and greens when the light dances across it. Made of the same lightweight, skin-tight material that forms Xeranthross’ armor, the band is engraved with the complex scrawl of runes you can’t read. He’s told you they signify ownership. Should you be found by others of his kind, they will know who you belong to.

Xeranthross traces the symbols on the collar with the sharp tip of one finger, his eyes half-lidded and his smile satisfied. He cups your chin and you look up at him, just as you’ve been taught. “And who do you sing for?” he asks. 

“You,” you whisper. “Always you.” 

“Mm. Very good. Now on your feet.”

You rush to obey, standing so quickly you feel lightheaded and sway on your feet. Xeranthross doesn’t tell you where to go. He shoves you back and you stumble, a cracked countertop digging into your back. You’re lifted on top of it effortlessly, your legs left to dangle. Xeranthross slots himself between your open legs and his glove cups the space between your thighs. Before, you would’ve tried to stop yourself from making noise. You would’ve bitten your lip until it bled. Now, you know better. You let him hear every sharp breath and whimper. The stiff, leathery material covering his palm presses hard against your sex and you shamelessly grind against it. 

“There’s my good little songbird,” he says, the praise sending blood rushing between your legs. His touch is rough and fast and not enough, muffled and not enough through your clothing, but you don’t dare ask for more. He’ll give you what you deserve. You push your hips against his hand and moan for him, secretly hoping you can earn something more. “What a needy little thing. Did you miss me?” 

“So much,” you say shakily. Your breathing is quick and frantic. Xeranthross drinks in the sight of your eager, arching body, your parted lips and bucking hips, but most of all, he looks at your collar. He grinds his palm against you harder as he stares at it, rubbing so hard it starts to hurt. 

“Did you touch yourself?” he purrs.

You stiffen under him. You did. You did, and he didn’t tell you that you could. He didn’t forbid it, either, but you’re supposed to ask for permission. You know that. Xeranthross clicks his tongue in disapproval. His claws hook in the waistband of your uniform’s lower half, pulling it down so viciously that the fabric rips around his claws. He doesn’t take them off completely. He keeps it bunched just beneath your hips, keeping your legs trapped. The air in the room is cold and somehow he’s even colder. He teases you with the back of his hand, interlaced plates of metal leaving goosebumps everywhere he touches.

“It’s alright,” he coos. “You can tell me. You trust me, don’t you? More than anyone?” 

You do. Of course you do. Xeranthross drags his fingertips down the heated flesh between your legs and you shudder. He could cut you easily if he’s not careful. He could do much, much worse if he wants. But you trust him, so you squirm and whimper but you don’t pull away. You lay on your back and you let his touch ghost up and down with slightly more pressure each time. 

“I did,” you say, quiet and ashamed. “I…I touched myself. Thinking about you.” 

Xeranthross smiles. “Thinking about me doing what?” 

About him taking you. Fucking you. Bending you over the cogitator and sinking his long, pierced cock into your body until he’s fully hilted. Thrusting hard and fast, leaving long, bloody marks down your sides and back with his claws. Taking you any way he wants, as many times as he wants, spilling inside of you and dripping down your thighs. Letting the other lords and ladies use you while he watches, stroking himself to the song of your pleasure and pain. And when the prey comes bumbling in, he guts them like animals and takes you again in the mess he makes. He smears red handprints over your skin and leaves you with scratches and bites. You tell him this and you know it pleases him because he gives you another dangerous stroke with just the tip of his claw. 

“Do you remember what you were like when I found you?” he asks. 

You nod, slight and ashamed. You do. You weren’t much different than the commissar and the others. Not much different than all the repair crews and treasure seekers and pirates and evangelists who came here before them, the remnants of their last foolish venture now circling silently in orbit. But you were special. That’s why he picked you. You were the quietest. You hid the best. Lived longest, day in and day out scurrying through the outpost’s darkness, until you had no strength left. Xeranthross plucked you from the storage closet you’d stuffed yourself inside. He dragged you out by the ankle with a sharp grin and told you he’d grown tired of all the silence and monotony. He wondered if he could make you loud.

“How far you’ve come since then! What a wonderful little songbird you became.” He pulls away suddenly. It’s a struggle not to whine at the loss of his touch. “Get up,” he says. You do, embarrassed by the mess he made of your clothing. The others are smirking at you. Staring intently, with heat in their gazes. “Leave those rags behind. I’ve had something new made for you. Something much more fitting for my darling bird.”

Xeranthross smiles and all the shame of your shame is forgotten. There’s nothing wrong with this. Not if it pleases him. He wraps an arm around you, his claws dragging down your shoulder. It hurts, and it throbs, and it oozes. It makes him look at you like meat. He pulls you closer and you don’t fight, no matter how many times his armor’s spikes gouge your skin.

“I think you’re ready for a much prettier cage,” he says, and you shiver with delight.

[wolven91]

Drifting - Part 2

“Okay, make a fist.” Asked the serious geckin, blue in scale but the owner of long spines that started on his nose and continued up and over his head, down his back and finished at his tail. Zeet was his name.

Casper the friendly human, made a fist and felt the action drain him, as if he’d been at the gym for the last hour doing the same action. However, as his fingers met his palm and the tendons on the back of his hand tensed and corded against his skin, the giant metal fist not a few metres away, suspended in a secure field; made an identical fist.

“What’s the drift?” The blue geckin asked the second geckin who monitored the process not a few feet away, but a fair distance for the diminutive creatures. Her name, as far as Casper knew, was Wren.

“0.001%.” She retorted with an equally serious tone, she turned back and adjusted the two round panes of glass that sat across her snout. If not for the fact that Casper was sweating with the exertion of making a fist, he would have found her cute.

“Impossible. Check it again.” The first geckin demanded, turning to face her as if she had just made a poorly timed joke.

“Sir, I checked it three times, then used the older program to see if it got a different result.” Wren explained, quite confident despite Zeet’s incredulous tone.

“And?”

“It reports 0.002%.”

Both geckins turned back to the human, almost expectantly and gazed at him. No; studying him.

“W-what?” He asked, strain in his voice.

“You can relax Casper. You did very well.” Praised Zeet as Casper gasped, unclenching his fist, and slumping in the chair. He’d been fresh as a daisy when he’d sat down; why had a few wires been so draining?!

“That… took effort…” The young man explained, slipping his arm from the sleeve, and ensuring it was placed carefully onto the caddy.

“You were controlling more than just muscle and sinew young man.” Zeet explained, touching a finger to the control rod of his own personal walker and approached the human. At a foot tall, just like the rest of the geckins, he utilised mechanical legs attached to a platform that he stood upon to move around larger distances.

“Why am I exhausted?”

“Because, unbeknownst to your conscious mind, you not only controlled your own limb, but also controlled that robotic limb.”

“I’ve seen that done before…” Casper licked his lips to try and bring moisture to them. “They used electrodes or something… they had to concentrate, but it didn’t tire them out.”

Wren appeared at Casper’s side and pressed a bottle of orange liquid into his hands. It was almost as tall as her.

“Drink this, you’ll feel better.” She promised, her green scales were a deep emerald, her it was the frill around her neck that was only partially pulled in that made Casper smile. She was agitated. Perhaps worried about him?

The man gave her a curt nod, which caused her frill to pull in tight before he grasped the bottle and drank from it deeply. It wasn’t quite ‘orange’, but it was certainly something citrus and refreshed him almost immediately. After the first gulp he took a breath and downed the rest of the bottle in one, almost immediately feeling better and like his old self.

“What you just did was unconsciously control every single servo, circuit, and piston within that machine. Your mind: without your knowledge, was able to manage and steady all of that. The electrode method, that you mentioned, is a low intensity method of controlling simpler systems.”

“And we can’t use that method with these?”

“These are not for domestic use. I make it quite clear to you; these are bleeding edge machines. Capable of not only reacting as your body, not as a mere extension, but also your mind being able to incorporate the advantages these machines have.”

“Like what?”

“We can have a play with telescopic vision if you like? I’ve heard that is the easiest to manage. If you get addicted to the world those eyes, we can try out electromagnetic wavelengths, infrared, perhaps-“

“Sir.” Wren cut in, a frown on her face and her small, pointed teeth being bared.

“Mm, yes. Carry on.” Zeet surrendered, holding up his hands as if giving up.

“Before we go on, how are you feeling?” Wren asked, looking up at Casper and adjusting her specs.

“Better.” The man replied, giving her a warm grin.

“Better? You weren’t well before?” She poked, not letting him off the hook yet.

“I was tired, like I’d been doing bicep curls all morning. But now it’s like I’m fresh again?” Casper admitted honestly, if she was a doctor checking on him, then he wasn’t about to lie. The speed of his recovery was as if he had been fooled into being tired, rather than actually being tired.

“Marvelous.” Zeet whispered.

“*Sir.*” Wren immediately hissed; the respect of his seniority gone. Casper frowned then cut in, there was something he wasn’t being told.

“What’s going on? Is this about the.. the ‘drift’ thing? What was the drift you were on about?” He asked, demanding an answer.

“I knew he was bright, am I allowed to answer that *direct* question doctor?” Zeet asked the green geckin with a near taunting tone.

Wren merely sniffed, flattening her neck ruffle against herself and shrugged with a single hand, offering Casper up to Zeet, seemingly satisfied.

“’Drift’ is the natural loss of signal strength between your mind and the mechanical parts. The more parts, bits, and pieces, the greater the chance of drift and the more sluggish the movements and actions of the piloted mechs will be, all the way until failure.” Zeet explained with a toothy grin. It was Wren who spoke next, softly explaining it to Casper without infantizing him.

“Geckin have a fantastic drift score. We can manage mechs of incredible size and complexity without much loss of control. Realistically, the next closest would be chintians, but they refuse to be pilots for our mechs.” She said, turning her hand in a gesture as she spoke, still calmly and softly.

“Why?” Casper asked.

“You know the plug in your arm?” Zeet began, pointing at the limb that was limp in Casper’s lap.

Casper looked down and turned his arm over. There was a single dark red dot of scabbed blood. Around it was a bright red circle with the metal casing of the plug had been pressed into his flesh.

“Yeah?”

“It can lead to fur-loss.” Concluded Zeet, rather offhandedly.

“Along with other things.” Cut in Wren, with the speed of someone adding ‘terms and conditions’ at the end of an advert.

“They consider that unacceptable. We consider it the cost of having faster reaction speeds to our machines. They rely on taking hits and surviving them. We believe in the philosophy of never getting hit.” The tiny lizard explained with a mouthful of sharp teeth, eager at the thought.

“Do geckins have any fur to lose? Do you lose scales?” Casper asked, if there were side effects for some species, were there any for geckins?

“No.” Zeet answered immediately.

“Well…” Wren began, but was immediately cut off.

“No, we do not lose scales with use.” Zeet said again, staring at the doctor.

“They can dull though.” She explained, closing her eyes then turning her head to look at Casper before opening them again. She held his gaze firmly.

“Not through usage doctor!” Zeet snapped, certainly exasperated.

“A pilot who is connected for long periods or who is in intense environments requiring constant movement will find side effects, such as scale fading.” Wren continued, putting across the idea that it was not without a cost.

“He doesn’t need to hear this, what is the chance he’s going to be in that environment? Zero!” Zeet shouted, throwing his hands up before gesturing to Casper, then then inert arm.

“Look, it’s fine. As you say; unlikely.” Casper agreed, trying to calm the tension in the room. “So what about me? What about human drift”

“Ah, good male. A fine mind between those big ears.” Zeet grinned again, turning to Casper and clasping his hands. “Your drift, at worst calculation was about 0.002%. That is nothing. That is about as good as a prostetic replacing your actual arm. Unheard of for managing an arm that complicated.”

“What’s a geckin’s drift percentage?”

“5.” Wren said pointedly. “On average. Ace pilots are around the single percent or less range, but that is through biological luck, augmentation and prolonged life-long training. Your natural ability appears to be quite potent.” The tiny green lizard admited.

“Yours, baring in mind your evolution wouldn’t have any sort of natual selection for this, is considered a one in a life time pilot. If humans are all this well adjusted, each and every one of them will be very much welcome in geckin territories…”

Casper turned to the arm and gazed at it. A mech pilot? That would be fantastic! He didn’t like the idea of ‘stressful environments’ though.

“You wouldn’t want me in like, a fight or anything, right?”  Casper asked, staring at Zeet carefully.

“May my tail fall off! No! Could you imagine what the GC would say if we endangered a human? Immediately after your new classification? Absolutely not. Completely out of the question.” He promised, waving his hand as if to dismiss a fly that was bothering him.

“Normally I would warn you about listening to our Zeet here, but he’s right. The geckin people are still under threat by ssypno aggression. Their seat at the table of three means all they have to do is convince one of the other two to agree that they be allowed to create a vassal of our people and we can expect no support from the GC to stop them. Endangering you would all but guarantee the support of one or both of the other two.”

A small hand touched his arm as she leant forward to rest her’s against him, the good doctor offering him a smile.

“The danger to you is over, you can rest easy knowing the rest of your life will be free of hardships.” She lied.

[r/WolvensStories]

[Ko-Fi]

[september-rainn]

ANOTHER NIGHT

CG!Jack Twist x Little!Ennis Del Mar

AO3 LINK // BELOW THE CUT

Summary: Ever since the divorce, Ennis has had trouble keeping the nightmares away. The only thing that lulls him to sleep is hearing Jack's voice echo through the payphone walls.

Tags: Nighmares, long distance, phone calls, public regression, secret regression, baby regressor Ennis Del Mar, hurt/comfort, a LOT of crying, non verbal Ennis Del Mar

Word Count: 1354 

Warnings: Nondescript mention of corpse// violence, Nonverbal Ennis Del Mar

A/N: I love them, your honor, I will happily be the first to write age regression Brokeback Mountain fanfiction

Jack Twist slept on the couch. 

Lureen's chest fell heavy, and she took the quilt down. Jack’s baby blues analyzed her, and she curled up alone again as he posed himself against the arm of the couch. The only sound was the gentle roar of stale air and his expectations. This rendezvous reared its head fast after his averse companion’s divorce– The stress of unnavigated loneliness was the perfect background for night terrors. 

It was clockwork by now. Ennis fighting with the blanket, eyes hazy, rolling to fight the tears. He’d stomp on his boots and grab his head for the principle of the thing; Ennis was much for routine. He’d stalk the sidewalk, hugging the shabby bricks of closed stores, seeking out glass security. His beer-stained tank would scrunch up his body when he slumped down. His cowboy hat sheltered his waterworks from peeping eyes. Streaks of headlights passed him by, and he would scrunch closer into himself.

Ennis’s eyes squeezed, but every time he was sunk into darkness, he was assaulted with the memory of the slowly rotting corpse his dad showed off with a lingering joy. It was a tragedy only the damned mourned. Every night, he vividly saw Jack in the ditch, and every night, he felt compelled to call and check that he had safely returned home.

Ennis’s shaking hands would fumble with what little coin he held in his pajama pants. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s encrusted face peered at him, and he slammed it into the slot before he submitted to the shame. It jostled around the machine. A beep jumpstarted his heart. He had heard it so many times, the sound living in his dreams. The dial tone was quick to comfort. Muscle memory took hold but gave him more time to listen to the apprehension whispering to him. 

The handset hugged his stubbled jawline. The waiting beep taunted him. His ankle wrapped over the other. The tip of his worn-out boot bounced in sync with the pulsing rhythm in his ears. 

Click

“Same nightmare?” came from the other end of the receiver. 

There was nothing but the sound of leather sliding up and down his messy blonde locks.

“Yeah?”

The confirmation arrived with the same sound.

“Yeah,” He repeated. “Poor lamb. It torments you like it’s their nine to five..” Jack’s head leaned forward, lips grazing the phone, and wishing, like always, it was Ennis’s. Ennis huffed through the line. Shivers rolled down the brunette’s spine, the dim light of the room casting long shadows. If he closed his eyes for long enough, he could imagine his secret lover was next to him, the warmth of a shared bed enveloping them, with him snuggling into Jack’s side, breathing delicately.

The sentiment was not shared between the two boys. Right now, all Ennis needed was Jack to calm him down so he could return to the sanctuary of his run-down trailer home. He’d forget the night prior. He’d pretend the call logs didn’t paint a desperate mischaracterization of him.

Jack mumbled, too tired to filter himself, “You know how much these calls break me. I want to take care of you properly. I ain’t a poet, but Goddamn it, I know how to tuck in a man.”

A choked whine twitched his lips into a frown.

“I know, Lamb. You miss me too.” Jack was well acquainted with Ennis going nonverbal. He didn’t talk much when he was big; it was a different story when a trembling baby was behind his pupils. 

Jack swirled the coiled cord around his index. He eyed the open door of his bedroom. “Dada has been lonely without you. ‘Magine, how fast these night frights would disappear if I held you at night.”

He backtracked faster after a wail peaked the audio. Jack saw comfort in living together, and all Ennis could find was another body in a pit. Reassuring Ennis was like stalking a bunny in the woods; the most minor *crack* and he was back to chasing.

He let his aggravation fall before speaking again, “Us in the tent again… warm August air…” He looked at the ceiling and sighed. “Only us. Only Dada and his perfect lamb… in harmony with the world. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”

Nothing, as if Ennis had stopped breathing altogether. 

He brought himself to grin. “Even found this nice stuffed horse when shopping with my wife-”

The peace faltered fast with shaky sobs. 

“-....With Lureen. It was brown with white spots. Next time I see you, I’ll give it to you.”

Jack looked out to the street. Ennis did the same. They were looking for each other through miles of streetlights and architecture. The wet flick of Jack’s tongue to his dry lips echoed through the phone booth. His head frantically swiveled. No one was out this late in a town this small, but Ennis was nothing if not paranoid. He couldn’t understand how he ducked at the swing of doors, but Jack could ramble with his wife in the other room.

He thought Jack was foolish for being so persistent in his love for him.

“Da..da..?” He slammed his heel into the wall as the terror ran its course through his body. He felt disgusted but too needy to stop himself. His head hung low. Rivers of tears flowed past the plastic held to his face.

“Yes, Lamb?” Jack was grinning. Getting Ennis to speak when regressed was a task. He worked himself up so much and couldn’t push past even a murmur. 

All Ennis wanted was Jack. He wanted him to know this. Jack caught on fast. He drummed his dull fingernails into the chunky cream phone.

“Dada loves you, y’know that. I enjoy these calls. I like hearing your voice every night.”

All Ennis could do was babble an agreement. “Do you think humming to you would help? ‘Know that’s what your mama used to do.”

Jack sprawled himself on the couch. He was exhausted, hardly hanging on to consciousness, but had his priorities on Ennis. That’s how it always went. 

He didn’t hear a response. He could sense it, though, so his lips pursed together and pushed out the notes to the melody Ennis graced him with on Brokeback. It wasn’t a long segment. Hell, he got half of the notes wrong, but what mattered was the calming huffs from the other male keeping pace. Ennis yawned. He tried to distract from it with a whimper.

But Jack knew, “Now dada thinks you should *try* and get some sleep. You’re so deprived of it; I can hear your eyebags hit the floor when you blink.”

The sweetest giggle fluttered Jack’s heart, leaving a remnant in his stomach. “‘Want you to get real comfy. You still got that plushie I got you last time-” He snickered into his hand- “When you shooed me away ‘cuz of the girls?” He heard the ruffle of hair. He assumed the best, “Good. When you get back home, I want you to hold that. Hold it *reaaaaaaaal* close to your heart.”

Ennis whimpered. He was too scared to go back to sleep again, but Jack kept demanding it and making requests. He sucked at the joint of his pointer. It calmed him down, having something to mouth on. If Jack were here, he’d chew on his fingers instead. 

“-Even get yourself some warm milk. Now Dada has to go. I loved talking to you again. I’ll stay by the phone, in case you need him. I can’t abandon my sweetest lamb.”

Jack pressed his lips to the transmitter. He peppered it with kisses. The plastic, warm from his face, was nothing like the perfection of Ennis’s skin. Ennis cupped his mouth and turned his back to the road. He hunched forward like he was hiding something and returned the kisses. Ennis slammed the phone back onto the metal prods and walked back home. The shame followed close behind him. He hated that he required that comfort every night to slip into a dreamless ecstasy. 

Jack fell asleep on the couch, like the countless nights before.

[asyncmeow]

Its New Weapon

this is my first time doing any kind of creative writing uhhh... ever,, it's probably gonna be bad? but still, here you all go

The pilot had spent its morning jacked into the simulation rig, practicing its skills for today: the day its new toy arrived. It and its handler had been waiting over a year for this. A month ago, it got the neural interface connector installed at the top of its spinal cord. Anyone could do it - with this particular pilot, it only required a drill, a soldering iron, and a steady hand to install. After all, if it only takes an hour to do, why not do it? 
Once the new mech got here, though, they would spend the rest of the day unboxing it, as well as installing the equipment outside to recharge and refuel it. Thankfully for them, this was a lower-end model, with less support infrastructure required to use it. The pilot and handler didn’t need a lot of firepower - but they needed more than the bows, arrows, guns, and otits weapons they had until now. They had quite a few enemies, and defending their territory was getting tiring, but the pilot had done a good job so far, and this was its reward.

The new mech got here around noon. The handler called the pilot through the neural link, where it ended its training for the day to start getting everything put together. The mech came as a set of seven boxes, one for each limb and the head, as well as the torso which housed critical components, with the final box being the charger.

The two spent the rest of the day assembling it, with some mild difficulty from using unfamiliar equipment in the process to hoist the upper parts of the body where they needed to be. Finally, they connected everything up to the pad, and issued a command to run a self-test. This would take about a few hours, so the two had dinner.

Eventually they heard the beeping from the built-in computer on the mech’s pad - the self-test had passed. The pilot climbed into the cockpit of the mech, sat in the chair, and connected the mech to its neural interface port. It had sweat beading on its forehead, shaking a bit. it had done this plenty of times in its room, in simulations, but everyone always told its the real thing would feel different. Those were just glorified game engines, you don’t have to worry as much about silly things like “camera resolution” or “motor speed limitations”, and although the simulations tried to be realistic, you could only get so close.

The pilot reached its hand over to the key, let out a deep breath, and turned the cold piece of metal. It immediately started getting feedback over the link cable as each system started up. It got log data intruding its thoughts from the on-board computer. Sensor readouts started to take over its senses. First was temperature, the simplest of the sensors. The pilot immediately started to feel colder from the late December snow, as its vision got replaced by the mech’s camera feeds, in square-shaped sections starting in its peripheral vision. It started to hear everything happening outside - birds chirping and flying away as they start to hear the high-frequency power circuitry in the machine, a nearby river, even a tree nearly a quarter mile away. Its sense of smell and taste turned to nothing - this lower-end model did not have those sensors. The pilot noticed how this was a very distinct feeling from not smelling or tasting anything, this was a unique feeling to it - the lack of the senses entirely, compared to the senses being present with no input.

Finally, the systems were almost done starting up. Now that its vision had been fully replaced with the machine’s own, it started to see diagnostic information in its peripheral vision - perfectly readable, but out of the way. As this was the first time booting the mech up, it prompted the pilot to do a few things to know how to interpret the data returning from the link cable. It moved each of its joints, one by one, the mech slowly moving in unison. First its fingers, moving back to its wrists, elbows, and eventually motion for its entire arm was one-to-one with the mech.

After doing the same for the legs, it took a few small steps, its handler following along at a fairly small distance, only about ten or twenty feet, just in case anything happened. They slowly got far enough away to test how well the weaponry on the machine worked. Selecting the light machine gun, the pilot cautiously focused on a point far in the distance, blinked, and… a second later, there was a hole there. The new weapon was effortless to use, making the pilot hopeful that this would make defending the two much easier than it had been in the past.

The pilot reached its left hand out, grabbing a tree and pulling it out of the ground. Realizing how heavy it was - the weight displayed on the HUD as “2 TONS”, capital letters and all - and how effortless it was surprised it. it threw the tree as far as it could, reached its right hand toward it, and focused on the tree. Before it knew it, the gun had fired, leaving several holes in the tree at the peak of the arc from throwing it.

It was now becoming close to midnight, the sun having set long ago. The two made their way back toward their home, getting more tired the later it went. After walking for about half an hour, they returned, and the pilot stepped on to the pad, disengaging the neural link between the pilot and machine automatically.

Its vision got replaced with its own again, seeming as unfamiliar to it now as the machine’s vision did not too long ago. It felt the heat of the cockpit, a drastic change from the cold of the outside, feeling the snow landing on it. The odd quietness of the cockpit, isolated from all sounds of both the mech and the outside, to reduce possible interference.

The pilot took the key and stepped out of the cockpit, climbing down the ladder next to the pad. As it stepped off the ladder, the handler - the witch - hugged the doll tight, gently petting its hair, whispering in its ear, “I hope you enjoyed your Christmas present.”

[archergrid]

“I had a dream. I was in a strange land. A vast wilderness. I went on and on, but met no one. I called, I shouted... but no one answered. I was alone.”

-Akira Kurosawa, Ran

<< Ch1-5 Ch 6-10>>

Chapter 1

Look, I get this question a lot for obvious reasons, so I know you won’t like the answer. It’s dissatisfying. But, because you asked, the best cybersecurity commercially available is something called an air-gapped computer.

An air-gapped computer has no network card. You won’t see a cerulean ethernet cord spouting from the stern of the case. There’s no hard, hollow plastic antenna to receive a wifi signal. It doesn’t have Bluetooth. My compsci professor at Tech explained it like this: there’s a literal wall of air—a gap—between the computer and anything that could inject it with compromising code. This abstinence-only approach makes air-gapped computers cheap, simple, and impenetrably secure.

But much like celibacy, not a lot of people opt for the air-gapped method. What’s the point of a computer, they ask, without e-mail and Twitter and porn? And I understand that. There were days I got so dog-tired of the manual data dumps, of examining each file down to the binary before connecting the USB, of hand-transcribing scraps of code onto sheets of paper, of the day-to-day ennui of existence inside those invisible walls. But when I broke into a system, all I saw back then was each and every way very, very bad things could get in.

The air wall was better. It let me breathe.

My laptop had to be online so I could access those vulnerable systems, but my desktop was air-gapped—a little black lockbox of my pdfs, jpgs, pngs, mp3s, mp4s, xls, txts, zips, bins, bats, dats, all my associate backgrounds and every line of my code. Knowing how safe they were in there calmed me at times like this, when I felt Julian Ek’s omniscient data network watching me like an enormous, electronic eye.

Notifications came like machine-gun fire into my phone. My apartment was dark, black under blackout curtains. I saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing but automated search alert after automated search alert filling my notifications: ek trial, julian ek trial, ek trial update, ek trial verdict, ek inc, joseph chambers, joseph chambers shooting, joseph chambers deepfaEk, deepfaEk, deepfaEk scandal, deepfaEk shooting edit, deepfaEk trial. More and more, on and on. I With dread, I went to Twitter, and there it was in blue and white. #EkAcquitted. It was the #2 trending topic, below #NationalVideoGamesDay. My hands began to shake. It had to be misreported—a mistake. I searched “Ek trial” and clicked the first link, scrolling past Ashlan’s disbarment and the Marshals’ conspiracy convictions to read the 6 words I’d dreaded for 4 years.

Julian Ek acquitted on all charges. 

Ek walked. I went to the Herald for nothing; became a fugitive for nothing. I gave up my parents, my friends, my condo—my dream job obviously. I blew my whole life up, and now I’m stuck here, all alone on the other side of the world. Jeopardy attached, meaning I was officially of no use to anyone; meaning I could never, ever go back home. This dusty, pitch-black 300-square foot apartment really was my life. 

I was hyperventilating. Breath after keening breath, air refused to reach my lungs, only rattle in the back of my throat. My head and stomach and knees went fuzzy. My phone screen smeared as it slipped from my hands. I reached for it and missed. The clatter of it hitting the floor—the dull pain of my thigh hitting the floor too—degraded into garbling static as I sank into gasping, grasping unconsciousness.

[twnj]

Temari frowned, waited for the answering machine to finish its spiel, then cleared her throat as it beeped again.

She’d put the coins in now. She had to hope it was the latter.

“Hi, Shikamaru. I, um…” She paused for a stranger to walk by the phone and offer her a tight, pitiful smile. She blanked them. “I hope this is you. The other number got smudged, and I wanted to…” She sighed. “I don’t know what I wanted. I don’t know, I just — well, it’s been so long.”

She rubbed her forehead and tightened her grip around the phone and its cord. He clearly wasn’t picking up, but Temari couldn’t bring herself to stop talking.

“I won’t be there for the opening ceremony tomorrow,” she explained. “My brother…” She took a deep breath and steadied herself to give the same mechanical, soulless answer she had offered the chess federation the week before. “My brother and my uncle were in a traffic accident last month, and the funeral is tomorrow. I’ll be…” Her throat sealed. When she forced it open, its voice was anything but soulless. “I’ll be in Sochi to play the day after, but not before. I’m needed here.” She squeezed her eyes shut and paused. He still wasn’t picking up.

“Look, you probably already left,” she concluded, “but either way, I guess I’ll see you in Sochi. And if not, I guess I’ll… Well, I guess I’ll—”

“Hey! Um, Akimichi-Nara, er… house here. Yes. I’m sorry for my, um, my English — I am tired. Who is this?” [...] “Are you still here? I was washing my teeth, but I heard a voice on the machine. Hello?”

Grandmaster on ao3 by @notquitejiraiya