#Travel Insurance Admiral

[insurancenewsx]

10 Incredible Ways Admiral Travel Insurance Transforms Your Travel Experience

Traveling is an exciting adventure, but unexpected events can disrupt even the most meticulously planned trips. This is where Admiral Travel Insurance steps in to provide you with peace of mind and a seamless travel experience. In this article, we’ll explore the ten incredible ways Admiral Travel Insurance can transform your travel journey. 1. Comprehensive Coverage for Medical…

[mapofthesea]

forward!jimin x social media manager!fem!reader

hockey!au

genre: smut, fluff, porn with a hint of plot!

word count: 5.8k

summary: star forward Park Jimin is not only good at the game of hockey, but the game of life. He’s rarely faced with adversity and enjoys the perks of being admired by millions of fans between his sporting and modeling endeavors. To you, he’s nothing but a massive thorn in your side: a reminder of your past life as a puck bunny and your biggest challenge in landing your next promotion. He’s damn lucky he’s handsome.

warnings: arguing, tension from past relationship (they were never Together but they did fuck), swearing, jimin is a smug little shit, jimin with a lip piercing (!!!), hockey talk but no actual game time action, they have Feelings for each other, kind of enemies to lovers but lowkey, specific smut warnings include: penetrative unprotected sex (don’t do this irl!), dom!jimin x sub!reader, slightly bratty reader, degradation (he calls her a slut, she likes it though) and praise, making out/sloppy kissing, fingering (f receiving) oral (f receiving), handjob, hair pulling, hickeys/marking, multiple orgasms, coming inside, slight overstimulation, aftercare ofc

a/n: as always my work is not proof read or edited so there may be some mistakes! Also this is clearly smut so please do not go below the cut if you’re under 18 or uncomfortable with the content noted above. Happy reading!

The warmth of the hotel sheets engulfs you, the expensive feeling silk rubbing gently against your freshly washed skin. You barely know what time it is, but the sleep weighing down your eyelids negates any logic.

An involuntary sigh passes your lips as you feel your spine decompress from the cramped position you had to assume on the plane ride here. Your phone vibrates on the beside table but you skillfully ignore it, snuggling further into the comforter. A sweet lull of sleep starts to envelope you- and then your phone vibrates again. Once, twice, three times, and then the barrage of texts turns into a full blown call, rattling your phone violently.

"Fuck, what?" You yell, throwing the covers off and snatch the phone off of the bedside table. The brightness makes you squint, answering the call without seeing who it is.

"Hello?"

"Oh Thank God, Y/N. I need you to-" the sound of your boss's voice sends anger through your veins. It was his idea for you to travel to this tournament, and now he has the audacity to call you after working hours?

"No, please, Ken. It's late and I'm tired. Whatever the issue is it can wait until the morning."

"It really can't, Y/N. I need you to go talk to Park. Now." You still, heart hammering at the name. You can't imagine what the fuck he would need at this hour, but you're not a babysitter and you certainly aren't giving up your rest for him.

"No, I'm just here to do media for the games. It's not my problem if he needs a handler tonight." Ken sighs and the tension is palpable through the phone line. The silence buzzes through you like a live wire.

"If you don't go talk to him now, your job is gonna be a lot harder than it needs to be in the morning. Please, Y/N. I need someone with boots on the ground to help me. If you get it solved I'll fast track your application for the promotion." Ken's offer hangs over your head. Fuck this capitalist system and the fact that whoever takes the promotion is based more on connection than talent. As much as you despise having to continue to climb the ladder after years of hard work in college and the office, the perks of better health insurance glimmer in your mind.

"Okay, fine. I'm going." Anxiety spikes in your chest as Ken thanks you and hangs up. You vividly remember the last time you were one on one with Park Jimin, and the thought makes your cheeks flame. Suddenly your breezy pajamas feel too warm, and the slightly damp strands of your hair at the nape of your neck itch.

When you started your career in sports media, you never saw yourself working for the same hockey team he plays for. You always saw it as a near impossibility when you moved away from your hometown for the degree- but the universe works in weird and cruel ways that happen to force you into close quarters with a whole gaggle of professional hockey players. You really tried your very hardest to avoid interacting with any of the players on the team outside of working hours, not just Jimin. Although several of them had also flew in today and settled in the same hotel, you made sure to book with a separate airline and get a hotel room on a separate floor. You had no interest in mixing your business with your personal life; it’s nothing but an irresponsible risk.

But here you are now, embarrassing yourself by applying a fresh layer of deodorant before you leave your hotel room. The lavish hallways are luckily empty, and the cool elevator shaft eases the heat crawling up your neck. It’s incredibly nerve-wracking to imagine why you needed to have this intervention, and the idea of how he may answer the door makes you dizzy.

Maybe he’d injured himself? But surely you wouldn’t be the one called to his room in that case. There was always the possibility that he did something to cause a media storm- got into a fight, was spotted robbing a store, maybe it was reported that he did cocaine in a bathroom- but it had only been a few hours since their plane landed, so would he have had time for any of that? And wouldn't covering up a personal blunder be up to his personal manager, not you? Your palms slick with sweat at the possibilities of the mess you’re going to find behind his door.

You hover outside it, staring at the gold plated numbers illuminated by the nearby sconces. It's oddly intimidating to know he's just on the other side of the door; living and breathing and simply existing- perhaps making some kind of erroneous mistake that could ruin his career or basking in the aftermath of that. The wood of the door feels thick and expensive under your fingers as you knock, and it’s so feeble that you can almost guarantee he didn’t hear it. You swear and try again, knocking harder despite your shaking knuckles.

“Coming!” His voice sounds light and airy but it makes lead drop through your stomach. The urge to run away overtakes you and just as you make the decision that no, this isn’t worth the possibility of a promotion, the door swings open.

Park Jimin has no right looking this handsome at whatever ungodly hour you had knocked on his door. His black hair is mussed at the back of his head as if he had just been laying in bed. The softness of his hair is almost enough to weaken you, but the familiar narrowed cut of his eyes runs ice through you. Heat blooms in your cheeks as you blush and internally chastise yourself for the stupid reaction; you were here for a professional reason, so why the fuck was your heart hammering in your chest at a million miles an hour?

"What can I do for you, Y/N?" Jimin's silky voice filters through your hazy mind and you startle, shaking your head to clear the suffocation surrounding you. Alarm bells ring at the familiar cadence of his voice, the way he perfectly crafts the syllables that make up your name.

"Um, I-" your eyes flit around his face; the tempting golden sheen of his skin under the gold casted hallway lighting, the fullness of his cheeks and his pretty lashes and the silver gleam of his lip-ring...

"What the fuck is that?" You practically yell, pulled out of your reverence at his handsomeness as the lip ring registers. It's a bold silver curve, resting temptingly in the middle of his plush bottom lip. It shines as if tempting you to look closer, to touch it, to feel it. Your stomach stirs at the fleeting thought of how the cold metal would pull an addicting contrast between the heated press of his lips.

"This?" He licks at the metal with his tongue and you suddenly feel the need to take a seat. "Got it a while ago, honestly. Off season stuff." He waves his hand nonchalantly as if you'd asked him if he wanted chocolate or vanilla cake. "You like it?" He arches a perfectly shaped brow and leans casually on the door frame, arms crossed over his chest. He's small and lithe for a hockey player, but you know that he has intimidating strength corded through his arms and the stamina to match.

Dumbly, you nod at his question. You like it a lot. Jimin lets out a heady laugh and you can only imagine how fucking stupid you look right now; slightly damp hair and a flushed bare face, mismatched sleep socks and these stupid lamb pajamas your mom got you for Christmas. Your face blanches at the sudden realization that the shorts were certainly too small for standing in a hotel hallway under Park Jimin's gaze.

"Wait, no, I'm here because Ken told me to come down and talk to you!" You backtrack quickly, pulling at the bottom hem of your t-shirt.

"Awe, come on Y/N, you mean you didn't want to come visit me for old times sake?" His electric eyes travel your bare legs. You grit your teeth and try to find the fire of anger in your stomach-the shield that's allowed you to ward off your feelings for him for so many years- but it's been replaced by the quivering attraction that never quite left.

"N-no, Jimin." You plant your hands on your hips; hoping to instill some of the social media manager persona back into your conversation. "That thing is a liability for you, and for me, it sounds like, because Ken sent me down here to take care of it. You'll have to get rid of it. It's out of regulations for the games." Jimin blinks owlishly, as if he had never considered that the piercing would be out of regulations.

"Really?" He licks the damn piercing again and your greedy eyes soak up every part; the perfect pinkness of his tongue and the way he maneuvers it around the metal in a tantalizing circle that's much too familiar. Your stomach simmers with arousal.

"Fuck, Jimin, yes. It really is out of regulations, and I would assume Ken saw some picture of you with it, and he's pissed and made it my problem because he isn't here yet. So please, for me, take it out for the games." When is this guy ever going to give you a break? You spent your entire teenage years pining for him and half of your college visits home tangled in his bedsheets, and now as a full fledged adult you're begging him to get his shit together so you can get considered for a promotion. "Please, Jimin, can you just do this one thing for me?" The exasperation of the night makes your voice whiny even to your own ears, and you can practically see Jimin's ears perk at the sound. A cheeky grin overtakes his features.

"If I remember correctly, I've done lots of things for you." You don't miss the shift in his voice; the darkened tone that haunted your dreams for months after you vowed to never speak to him again. Suddenly your throat feels dry and you choke on your rebuttal as he takes a confident stride into the hallway. You can smell the clean linen of his cologne and you instinctively close your eyes and take an inhale. Your nose flares and you swallow your impure thoughts.

"Listen." You poke a finger into his chest and immediately regret it; the firmness of his well toned muscles rejecting your jab. "Come on, Jimin. I'm begging you."

His chest shudders under your finger, and he's so close you can feel the exhale of his breath against your hair. You're frozen as he moves, clasping one of your shoulders with strong fingers. His grip makes your skin tingle as he lowers himself to match your stare.

"I seem to remember you being much better at begging, Y/N. Hmm? Want to try that again?"

Arousal lights your veins and your brain whirs into overdrive, screaming at you to follow the animal instinct clawing inside your gut. Unbidden flashes of your past with Jimin run through your mind: the grip of his hands on your plush hips as he drives himself into you, the paths of bruised kisses he left on your tits after hours of teasing them, the reddened claw marks you left on the bronzed skin of his back.

The current of dominance in his words sparks something dormant inside of you; the slumbering brattiness that you had converted into tenacity reborn. You surge up against him, closing the gap with a bruising kiss. He stumbles slightly in surprise but easily recovers, capturing you around the waist as you devour his mouth. The cool metal of the lip ring is just as addicting as you imagined it to be, wedged between the unending warmth of his plush lips. It's fucking addicting to be kissing him again as he pulls you against the hard planes of his body. There's no hesitation in his actions as he shoves his tongue into your mouth and you nipples pebble in response to the liquid heat he elicits in you.

Oxygen becomes useless to you the longer you kiss him. All that matters is the connection of your bodies, the slip of your tongues against one another. Your heart stutters with yearning as Jimin helps himself to a handful of your ass cheeks and you nip at his piercing playfully. A moan reverberates through him and he uses his grip on you to pull you impossibly closer, walking your bodies backward into his hotel room.

The change of scenery shocks you enough that you finally break from the kiss, panting from the exertion. The heavy door slams shut behind you as Jimin pushes it, perhaps a bit too hard. To your wild satisfaction Jimin looks just as winded as you feel. “Fuck,” he croaks the word and you smile, unable to hold back anymore. Something in your mind loosens, and you surge forward to fumble with the tie of his sweatpants. A beautiful moan falls from his lips and for a second you’re sure that the control he never gave you had become yours: that in the years you’d been apart he had shifted into a man who let you take. After so long of playing the sexy and mysterious playboy, Jimin had finally unraveled for you.

But his sudden strength re-emerges just as you begin to wiggle the fabric down his hips, and he captures your wrists under his palm. Forcing your wandering hands away, a familiar gleam of delight at your pliancy shadows his eyes.

“Oh, little girl, you know better than that, don’t you? Or did you forget how this goes for us?” He tuts dismissively but the passion on his face makes your knees weak. “You-“ he shuffles you closer to the king sized bed, “do what I want you to, isn’t that right, Y/N?” Arrogance colors his tone, and you have half a mind to tell him to shove it, but he guides your hands back to his cock and your brain shorts.

He’s hard, twitching under your touch as he holds your hands there, controlling the pressure of your touch. From your seated position on the bed you get a glorious view of the vein in his neck throbbing, and you regret not plastering any bruises onto his neck earlier. “You always were so good with your hands, Y/N. Fuck. Used to drive me crazy thinking about your hands on my dick.” The husk of his voice makes wetness pool between your thighs. It had been so long since you heard him like this but it was just as delicious as before. The pressure he holds on your hands relinquishes but it’s clear what he expects of you so you snake your hands under the layers of fabric dutifully.

You can’t help but tease him a bit, tracing the curve of his balls through the fabric of his expensive boxers. His hips jump forward and he bites out a warning that has you eager to feel the firm hotness of his bare cock in your hand. You shift forward to pull him free, and you keen at the sight of his cock.

A thatch of welcoming dark hair at the base, the length that puts your last boyfriend to shame, the pretty red-tinged head pulsing with a pearlescent shine of precum. Suddenly, you feel extremely empty.

The seam of your pajama shorts presses right where you need it, so you settle for rubbing your thighs together subtly for now. Your hand encases his length, starting with small gentle strokes that you know are doing nothing but driving him crazy. His stomach clenches and trembles as you start pumping him faster, relishing in the little jumps of his cock as your grip gets firmer.

“Feels so good,” the praise falls from him without thought and strikes a hot iron in your stomach, thighs rubbing together without much thought. “Pretty little hand on me like that, fuckin missed that.” The haze of arousal occupies you enough that you don’t allow yourself to overthink anything: instead taking the liberty to rub your thumb firmly over the tip of his cock. The precum aids your glide but you feel a devious idea sneak up on you and you promptly lean forward to spit directly onto his cock. The sound he makes is inhumane and you adore it, gobbling up the strained whimper of your name as he grasps your hair, hard.

Pleasure shoots down your spine at his grip and he grins slyly, calculating eyes shooting down to the quivering of your thighs. You don’t cease your hands, only adding the second to cup at his balls again while he appraises you. “My pretty little slut, spitting on my cock without me even asking.” He holds your hair harder, cocking your head just enough that you can’t look away from his smoldering eyes. “Are you my pretty little slut?”

You were expecting the question: a relic of your college aged trysts, but it still bowls you over like a semi truck.

“Y-yes, Jimin. ‘M your pretty little slut.” He grins so hard that his eyes scrunch and an approving sound rolls out of him. Your pussy throbs at that, hips canting forward as you mindlessly work your hands over his cock. “Do you need some help?” The grip on your hair disappears and you immediately miss it, the sting of your scalp serving as a beautiful reminder. It takes you a minute to decipher what he means, but the way his penetrating stare flickers between your eyes and your center clues you in. The seam of your shorts had been consistently stimulating you but not nearly enough for any kind of relief: you had soaked through them and your panties while Jimin spoke to you.

You pout at him and nod even though he really didn't need more persuasion. Jimin's quick to cup your pussy in his hand, rubbing his palm over the soaked fabric. Your grip on his cock tightens at his touch and he hisses approvingly, pressing harder against your pussy. You grind your hips upward in a bid to get him closer to your clit. The dull pressure of him cupping you entirely only heightens the neediness in your veins.

"Please, Jimin," you whine and petulantly drop your hands from him when he doesn't get the hint fast enough. Jimin arches a brow at you.

"Is this the game you wanna play, Y/N?" Only now do you realize that his hand has stilled as well, the heat of his palm radiating against your wetness. You shake your head, unable to bear the idea of being denied his touch any longer. "That's what I thought," he tuts. "Now be a good girl and keep touching me, and maybe I'll return the favor."

You immediately grasp for him again, making quick work of thumbing the vein running on the underside of his cock. Jimin returns the favor by honing in on your clit through the fabric of your shorts. You work each other in a lustful tandem, sharing moans until Jimin slips his fingers underneath the soaked layers of fabric on you. The feeling of his fingers on your bare pussy sends you reeling, hands doubling their work on him as he circles your clit with a nimble index finger.

"Fuck, Y/N, you're gonna make me fucking cum," his hips stutter wildly under your grip and you smile, dopey on the satisfaction and the energy building in your core.

"Wanna make you cum," you supply, squeezing the head of his cock lightly. Jimin grunts heartily, head tipping back against his shoulders and you know you have him right there. Triumph squeezes your heart as you make quick deliberate strokes across his cock.

You hear him cum before you feel it, the beautiful tone of his voice husked with arousal. His hips stutter and buck against your hand as his cum paints your top and your palm, the sticky wetness oddly satisfying to your lust addled brain. A laugh of disbelief leaves him as your hand finally loosens. His own hand comes back to life and you gasp; surprised by his renewed energy so soon after coming.

His chest heaves as he bares down over you, leaning your body back onto the plush mattress. His eyes skate down to the mess he made of your shirt and a devious smirk decorates his face.

"Hmm, maybe we should get you out of this messy shirt?" His voice is invariably playful again and you can't help the laugh that bubbles out of you.

"Oh, I guess if you insist..." you bat your eyes playfully as he dislodges his hand from your pussy. It leaves you feeling oddly cold, but the gentle tug at the bottom of your shirt distracts you.

"Can I?" The sheepish look on his face stuns you. After everything that had happened tonight, and all of the times he had taken the liberty of stripping you naked before, you're surprised to see the hesitation on his face.

"Yes, Jimin, if you're sure." You cup his face gently, thumbing the delicate metal of his lip ring. He nips at your fingertip and laves at the spot with his sinful tongue. The flush that stains your face is blocked by the fabric of your shirt as he shucks it off; and Jimin's gaze finds your tits immediately.

"So pretty," he pinches a nipple in reverence. "I missed these tits, Y/N. Missed you." You can't be sure if he meant to admit the last part, but hope strikes your heart regardless. He squishes your tits together and jiggles them, and for a second he's transformed back to the boyish college freshman he was when you first started to hook up; high on his new career as an athlete and the fame that came with it.

His tongue laves across the curves of your breasts, biting a bruise into the supple flesh right above your nipple. The pain transforms into arousal in a second, and your hips buck against him in silent question.

"Oh, can't have just half the outfit on, can we?" He dances his calloused fingers along the waistband of your tiny shorts before yanking them clean off, underwear easily going along with them. The rush of cool air that meets your pussy raises goosebumps along your skin.

"Don't worry, baby. I'll get you nice and warmed up again." Jimin cracks a feline smile and settles comfortably on his knees before parting your thighs. Wetness slicks between them and he hums in satisfaction.

His long hair tickles your legs and you already feel so overwhelmed that by the time he puts his mouth on you, your back is arching toward the ceiling. He presses a kiss to your pussy and the cold sting of his lip ring brings tears to your eyes. Jimin parts your lips with his fingers and allows himself to feast, licking you so thoroughly that you think this must be a holy experience.

Surely this is what divine intervention feels like: Park Jimin feasting on your pussy like a man starved, circling your clit with his tongue and teasing your throbbing entrance with his deft fingers. Your body is honed into every move he makes, and each twitch of his tongue and push of his fingers brings you closer to the sweet, blinding edge. Your hips squirm at the overwhelming sensations and Jimin nips at your clit in retaliation, throwing a strong arm over your lower stomach. Effectively holding you in place, he redoubles his efforts and slides two fingers home, stretching your walls at the same time he wraps his lips around your clit and sucks.

The hot wetness of your arousal, his mouth, the slip of his tongue against you, and the shockingly chilled press of that god damn lip ring send you into happy oblivion. An inhumane string of noises rips from your throat as you come, writhing against the sheets as white heat flashes behind your eyelids. You vaguely register Jimin's fingers pushing you through the high as he laps the last bits of arousal out of you.

"There's my pretty little slut," he purrs as you settle. Your thighs twitch as he pulls his hand away to smooth down the hairs sticking to your face. It takes you a few blinks to register the pretty grin on his face, but you return it with ease.

"Never get rid of that thing." You gesture vaguely to his mouth and a puff of laughter runs across your face. He tongues at it thoughtfully, and even though you had just come, your pussy throbs again.

"Funny, about an hour ago you were begging me to take it out."

You slap his chest noncommittally, still weakened from your explosive orgasm. Jimin pecks your forehead and you keen. A softness appears around his edges as he looks down on you; and even in your bare faced, sweaty state you feel adored.

"I missed you too," the words burst forward before you can rethink it. It'd been swimming around in your mind since you accepted your job offer and caught sight of him for the first time in years. Although neither of you were ever bold enough to make it official, there was no denying the magnetic attraction you shared.

"Fuck, I'm so glad you said that. I have so much I wanna talk to you about-" he presses another delicate kiss to the corner of your lips and you grin. "But I am so hard right now, can we please talk later?" He rolls his hips against you and the evidence is clear. Your brain blanks, replacing the fuzzy adoration with sharp, demanding need.

"Uh huh, talk later. Need you now." Jimin makes short work of his shirt at your approval. His instagram modeling presence has made you no stranger to the sight of his bared chest; but the toned muscles of his pecs and abs scramble your mind. His skin nearly twinkles under the light, and whether its a trick of your mind or the evidence of a very fancy moisturizer, you're just happy to be in his presence.

"Flip," he orders, voice devoid of the sweetness it held just moments before. A shiver wracks your spine as you follow his instructions, flipping onto your hands and knees and obediently curving your back. Jimin hums in praise and you feel renewed energy course through your veins.

He traces the curve of your ass, ghosting his touch around the sensitive skin. You can't see him but you can picture the self satisfied grin on his face as he relishes in the smooth skin. The touch of his lips against your full cheek shocks you and you rock forward into the bed. Jimin bites into the flesh firmly and you moan at the feeling of his sharp canines. You can imagine the blooming bruise that will be there by the morning, and the mere idea of the sore reminder of this night makes your core throb.

"Do you-" Jimin's words die in this throat. "Do you have any condoms?" The punch of reality has you sagging into the sheets. Of course you didn't. The last thing you expected was for this night to unfold like it did. Heavy disappointment weighs your heart.

"I didn't bring any, I haven't..." he trails off again and you wait a few breathless seconds for his words before you twist your upper body so you can see his face. His cheeks are flushed a rosy red that's so endearing your heart squeezes. If it weren't for his evident arousal you would think he had just woken up from a long, restful sleep.

"I haven't been with anyone in a while." He gives you a sheepish smile and you nod in understanding.

"Me either." The admission passes between the two of you like calm water, cooling the tension until a storm whips up in Jimin's eyes. His cocky grin returns as he palms himself.

"I'm clean, are you?" You nod, body reacting to his insinuation before your mind can fully catch up.

"I'm on the pill," you breathe the words as if you can't believe them, and Jimin looks absolutely ravenous. He runs two thick fingers up your pussy, gathering the heady arousal that already has you slippery and stretched for him.

"Gonna let me get in you raw, huh?" He shuffles forward until you can feel the tip of his cock pressed against your folds. He holds his cock against you with his thumb as he glides, careful not to enter you prematurely.

"If I woulda known all it took was a few years apart..." you huff a rueful laugh that transforms into a moan as he slips the head of his cock into you.

"Oh fuck-" Jimin wastes no time in sliding in until he is seated fully inside of you. Your walls pulse around him and you can feel drool pooling in your mouth. He takes a handful of each of your asscheeks and pulls your body against his own, a little experiment to see just how greedy your pussy is for him.

An obscene squelch sounds between your bodies and it only spurs Jimin into further action.

"Fucking perfect little ass and pussy swallowing me up." Jimin moves impossibly fast, taking care to sheath his entire cock inside of you hard before pulling out. Your finger nails rake through the comforter as the waves of pleasure ripple through you. Jimin's body encases your own, trapping you under the strength of his muscles and heat of his sweaty skin. With his chest pressed to your back, his cock drives into you at a brand new angle that makes your toes curl with delight. Jimin's sinful lips find a home at the juncture of your neck and he seems more than happy to decorate you with hickeys to match the one on your ass. The addicting drag of his cock pairs with the tickling cold of his lip ring each time his mouth lands on you, and the sensory overload has your stomach clenching.

You have completely lost control of your mouth and allowed the animalistic sector of your brain to take over as Jimin fucks you stupid. His own incoherent grunts vibrate against your neck in fragments. "Pretty...good little slut...fuck..."

Your eyes roll as he slows his thrusts, aiming for the perfect spot that makes your legs jelly. It only takes him a few moments to find it, and the world quickly becomes washed with tears.

You hiccup his name as he steadies a hand around your abdomen, sneakily playing with your clit.

"You gonna come for me, Y/N? Get my cock all nice and wet just like you're supposed to?" He braces his unoccupied hand overtop of you, clutching the headboard with flexing muscles. His presence is suffocating in the best possible way and you feel like you're drowning in Jimin.

"Such a perfect little pussy. So hot and wet for me all the time." His voice wavers and his thumb catches your clit just right. A dark chuckle graces your senses just as you tip into oblivion.

Your entire body contracts and shivers under him as you cum, Jimin's hips driving you forward until you collapse into the comforter in a fit of cries. It feels like you come forever, leaking waves of arousal around Jimin as his hips slap against your own.

"Good job, baby. I-I'm gonna come, you feel so good." You whine and plead for him, ready for the electric feeling of him filling you with his cum. You're still feeling shaky when he comes, driving his hips as far forward as possible as he fills you. Beautiful airy moans leave him as he grinds against you, relishing in the sloppy warmth of your mixed cum.

His hips slow their movement but his mouth never ceases, spilling praise and planting kisses along your back until he's spent. When he pulls out you instantly feel empty, whining as his cum slides out with him. Both of you are too spent to do anything about it, but Jimin watches with hooded eyes from beside you as it leaks onto the comforter. It's scary how suddenly the sleepiness hits you, and you reach near blindly for the man next to you.

You must look exhausted because he coos and pecks a kiss over your nose. "You can sleep here." You giggle and crack your eyes open and find him so close that you can see the irregularities of his teeth as he grins.

"Good, cause I'm not walkin' back to my room now. Even if I could walk, my clothes are ruined." His face flushes at the reminder of your debauchery. He licks his lips and your eyes catch on that damned lip ring again.

"You really will have to take that out for the games," you run your thumb across it again, obsessed with the feeling.

"I know," he whispers, and then his lips are ghosting over your own for permission. This kiss is nothing like the one you shared at the top of the night. It's gentle and slow and punctuated with a deep connection that runs years deep. Despite how much you had done tonight, this kiss feels the most intimate of all.

No more words need to be exchanged as he helps you sit up and walks you to the bathroom with some pajamas from his bag. He patiently waits outside as you pee-both of you agreeing that you weren't quite ready to be that available with one another- and he lends you a bit of his face wash in earnest.

The comforter is stripped from the bed by the time you're back, and he's pulled the extra pillows from the linen closet to accommodate for you. You shuffle under the sheets and are happy to find them just as silky as your own were. Jimin slips in next to you, fully clothed again, and promptly kills the bedside lamp.

Sleepiness overtakes you almost instantly then, and it's so dark that you rely on the pattern of his breath to gauge if Jimin is still awake.

"I'm sorry if I made things weird for all that time, I- I was just scared that I would say the wrong thing." You speak to the surrounding darkness, and for a minute you think that maybe you missed the short window of opportunity. But then Jimin gives a thoughtful hum, shuffling so that he can tuck your body against his chest. His response is muffled by your hair.

"It's okay. We were young and stupid last time. I hope you'll let us try again." Your heart swells and you hum in affirmation and snuggle back against him. "Tomorrow?" You offer, the hazy edge of sleep just seconds away.

"Tomorrow." Jimin agrees before your consciousness drops easily into dreamland.

[midasslave1]

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The amazing MIDAS family have achieved the improbable and developed the technology to travel back to any point of history we have chosen and remarkably met and negotiated with historical figures themselves to ensure you get your moneys worth, you may never want to come back.

Choose to travel back to civilizations that first discovered the alluring effect gold has and what kind of impact in the future as we know it.

CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING TRAVEL DESTINATIONS AND TIME

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN GETAWAY

We have 3 fantastic experiences at the birthplace of mankinds fascination with this amazing hunk of metal for you to choose.

Meet Cleopatra herself - Her beauty will leave you literally breathless

Spend the day with a sexy Pharoah and despite never being lonely in bed , will dedicate the whole day to you and maybe hes after a soul partner.

Be close up and personal and witness the fine detail the mighty jackal god of the afterlife Anubis go through a mock weighing of the heart vs feather test.

ANCIENT ROMAN EXPERIENCE

Visit Neros Goldenhouse - where you will be showered with attention.

Or choose to dine with Nero and his senators where you be the guest of honour and the centre of attention.

Become a gladiator for the day and meet the mighty Julius Caesar ,be his champion in the arena.

SPARTAN ARMY SPECTACULAR

Become Spartacus and lead the mighty spartan army into battle, feel the excitement of wearing his golden battle armour.

RASPUTIN RUSSIAN RENDEZVOUS

Travel back to pre-revolution Russia and learn and witness the "mad monk " Rasputins mind control on a volunteer for your amusement. Maybe he will include you also.

AZTEC ALTAR ADVENTURE

Admire the ancient and sacred tradition of a golden sacrifice to their gods

Or...

Immerse yourself in the golden pool of sacrifice that the Aztecs use to dunk the chosen sacrifical adult male in bubbling liquid gold to appease the gods for the coming of the sun period.

MAGNIFICENT MAYAN MOMENTS

Feel the dark atmosphere and splendour of the golden mask as the Mayan priests seal a sacrifice into the mask with molten liquid gold. Maybe they will let you feel the weight of the mask and be part of rhis magical but eerie ritual.

MANY MORE TIME LOCATIONS WILL

BE ANNOUNCED AS WE NEGOTIATE.

suggestions are being taken ... must obviously be gold related and the theme of the travel is to experience the mystique and wonder of the time period and environment you find yourself in.

We hope to see you sign up real soon...

This is a once in a lifetime chance you just cant miss....

Stay for the time travel itself is limited to 24 hours... We cant guarantee your 100% safety ,this being a travel at your own risk due to the reallife dangers you may encounter.

MIDAS TRAVEL INSURANCE IS AVAILABLE and will ease of doubts and stresses of injuries or worse.

CALL NOW 1800 6239-64327

thats 1800 OBEY MIDAS

Good boi OBEY MIDAS

sign up now OBEY MIDAS

Join the Gold Team today and become part of the best team in theworld by contacting @goldenherc9 @brodygold @polo-drone-001 for your Brocess

#golden army #golden team

#jockification #male transformation#thegoldenteam #male tf#join the golden team #gold#golden opportunities

#dronecap #pdu #ai polo drone

#polo drone

[pinkanonwrites]

Vash with a Courier!Reader

GN!Reader headcanons below!

Your job was far from an easy one, especially in the washed-out sandscapes of Gunsmoke where bandits and ne’er-do-wells could be lurking behind every dune and cliffside. You were a lone Courier, shuttling mail and packages in between the towns and major cities with the small herd of Thomases at your command. It was in one of those podunk towns where you met Vash for the first time, him squaring up against the bandits while you snuck about freeing hostages and recovering some of your stolen cargo.

Neither of you expected much past it, just a simple teaming up when it was easy and convenient. Yet somehow, whatever town you trotted into next, it seemed that Vash the Stampede was already there. Sometimes he was alone, sometimes he was flanked by two silly insurance agents and a so-called priest. But regardless of who he was or wasn’t with, he always had a smile and a few words for you.

You became an odd pair of friends, trading stories and knick-knacks whenever you happened to run across each other on your respective journeys. Vash was never the type to keep too much on him, he preferred to travel light. But he found himself getting more and more drawn to little baubles and curiosities he’d find in town shops, wondering if you’d like it, how you’d react if (when) he handed it to you. You gave him a feather from your head Thomas that he kept tucked into the inner pocket of his duster basically at all times.

Speaking of which, he’s obsessed with your Thomas herd! He’s constantly cooing and trying to snuggle with them, even as they gnaw on his coat and nibble at his spiky hair. You teach him about the massive bird-beasts and take him riding from time to time, your pair of Thomases careening up and down the dunes with your laughter bubbling through the rushing air.

You’d never once considered trying for the bounty on Vash’s head, something he was eternally grateful for though he never asked why himself. But he didn’t actually have to, because you ended up supplying the story yourself one night while sipping drinks under the star-speckled sky. As hard as it was, you truly adored your job. You liked helping people in need, making them happy, making sure they had what they needed. And 60 billion double-dollar bounty or not, you could tell that Vash was the same as you, he really just wanted to help. You really admired that.

It was at those words, that you admired him, that something finally clicked in place in Vash’s head. You weren’t even looking at him, staring up at the stars with this look of such contentment and comfort on your face, like you wouldn’t rather be anywhere else. That’s when he finally realized what that odd pull was whenever he saw something that reminded him of you, that bubbling excitement whenever he ended up running into you in the next town, the next city.

He liked you.

And god, he really had no idea how to feel about that. He knew that simply being near you would put you in incredible danger, yet he couldn’t find it in himself to fully distance himself from you. He’d gotten too attached, too comfortable. As strong as you were, compared to the kinds of people he was dealing with you were incredibly fragile, and the last thing he ever wanted was for you to get hurt because of his burdens.

And yet, he just cant help himself, he’s incredibly shameless. He flirts with you constantly but is flustered to the point of stammering with every compliment you give him, constantly toying at the idea of something more but unable to take the first steps himself. You’ll have to be incredibly patient and persistent with him to actually get him to be willing to enter a relationship with you.

Once you are though it’s so painfully obvious he’s smitten with you to literally everyone you guys ever meet. He bursts into delighted tears when you first tell him you’re going to be traveling alongside him from now on, not just wandering and hoping you bump into each other. You’re the first person he worries about when things go awry and the first person he celebrates with when he manages to pull it all together again. You tell his favorite travel stories to his other companions and he’s ecstatic with how fast you make friends with them too.

He’ll move to the ends of Gunsmoke’s most treacherous deserts and back to make sure you were safe and happy, and he can’t help but feel loved knowing that you’d do the same for him too.

[k-marzolf]

Kindred Spirits

(Strangers to lovers, coffee shop au?, mentions of sexual abuse (both Billy and Reader), mentions of physical abuse, themes of obsession, Reader has asthma, fluff/angst, fem!reader)

1.84k words.

A one shot I’ve been working on off and on. I like how it turned out.

You’d dropped out of high school on a cold day in winter, running away until the cold air burned your lungs, making your asthma flare up, and as you looked for a bus, dragging what little belongings you had behind you, you wheezed. You were sixteen, a couple years away from adulthood. You just had to evade social services in that amount of time.

You ended up coughing and hacking in your seat, lungs protesting, but making eye contact with no one. The heat on the bus settled your lungs, and when you arrived in New York after many days' travel, you found a job willing to pay you under the table as a minor.

You never looked back, working at a bakery now in New York City, getting by just barely, and no medical insurance. But you didn’t complain. It was better than the beatings, you thought looking at your scarred hands. “Please, grandad. I’ll behave.” You remembered begging after he’d tried to touch you.

You were twenty six, and with nothing to say for your life. You’d never been to college, and had no great achievements. But you were happy, and that was what mattered.

A man at least several years older than you, liked to come in and order a danish, and a coffee, straight black. He wore tailored suits, and had slicked back dark hair, shaved on the sides. He had a beard, and you itched to touch it, to feel it between your thighs. “You look like you’ve got the wiles of the Devil.” You’d blurted after staring at him a few seconds, struck by his handsomeness, before apologizing profusely.

He’d chuckled, and it went down your spine like velvet sliding over a dagger. His voice was deep, but soft. “If only you knew, bunny.”

“Bunny?” You asked, tilting your head.

He pointed to the bunny pin on your shirt, and you laughed quietly. You’d bought the pin as a splurge. It had been a few dollars.

“You’re not from New York.” He said, and you wondered how he knew. “Your accent.” He clarified.

“I’m just a farm girl from the Midwest. Nothin’ interesting.” You said dully.

He looked at your hands, before taking a sip of his coffee. “I doubt that, bunny.”

You’d found yourself daydreaming about the man in the tailored suit after his words. As though you were interesting to him, a dull girl who spent her life milking cows and chasing chickens. You wondered what his kiss would taste like. Probably bitter like the coffee he drank. What his touch would feel like. It was those moments you realized just how lonely you were, desperate for attention and companionship.

“Hi, Billy.” You said cheerfully as he came in one day.

“Hi, bunny.” He said, amused by your eagerness.

“Coffee, black, right. And a cherry danish?” You asked.

“Mhm.” He hummed, hand in his pocket.

You got his coffee ready, and slipped a cookie in his bag with his danish. You didn’t want anything in return, only his attention.

Your heart raced as you gave it to him. He smiled as though he knew. “Have a good day, bunny.” He thought you were sweet, gentle, tender. All the things he craved.

Your cheeks burned.

“You’re my favorite patron.” You confessed one day, handing him his coffee, admiring his pink cheeks from the cold.

His lips had turned up, as he silently took his coffee, dark eyes almost black, sparkling.

He pulled something out of his pocket, pushing it towards you. It was a little toy bunny, and your heart stuttered. It was white, with pink feet, and a pink nose. “You’re my favorite baker, bunny.” He teased you, before taking his coffee and walking away.

He had that thick New York accent which drew you in, being from the Midwest yourself. He had a darkness in his eyes that made you shiver with a thrill at catching his attention, his dark pits turning to you. Choosing you.

He noticed your scarred hands, looking like he wanted to comment. Unbeknownst to you, he admired them knowing most scars were a sign you’d survived, you’d fought. He’d been angry when he read the police report on you when he looked into you. Your hands cut up with a broken vodka bottle. All because you didn’t want grandfather's advances.

Like Billy had fought advances at eleven years old. He could still remember the pain exploding in his shoulder. The helplessness. The rage.

But you were just a poor farm girl from the Midwest, on the run from an abusive grandfather, you thought. And Billy was a status above you. What would you have in common, you thought dully. Your heart squeezed, you’d never wanted something more than you wanted him, you thought playing with the bunny he’d given you in your pocket. All because he’d given you his attention.

You continued giving him an oatmeal raisin cookie on the house, discreetly. Your way of showing affection. But not so discreet, you soon realized.

After a few weeks of this, he hummed, taking the cookie and pocketing it, “You always give free cookies out to patrons, bunny?” He asked, lips forming a wry grin.

You felt your cheeks heat up, “I’m sorry, sir.”

He smiled, “For your favorite patron, huh?” He kept every cookie. No one had ever given him something so freely. Even as a boy, adults scorned him. He’d been a nuisance to them. He’d been invisible.

And even now, women only loved him for his beauty and wealth, you were just kind, expecting nothing in return.

It was a cold day in winter, and instead of running from something, you were running headlong into something. Only you didn’t know exactly how much he’d watched you. Fantasized about coming home to you, kissing you. How pretty you’d look in the morning waking up next to him.

He’d have someone to come home to. Proof he wasn’t just some asshole who thought he could have the good things in life.

He could have something good, like Frank had Maria and the kids.

He’d never had such domestic thoughts before, but goddamn he liked you, wanted to make you his.

And that he always intended to make you his all along. His sweet little rabbit. And he would understand poverty and being unwanted better than anyone else. Understand being touched without consent, and fighting for autonomy, with the scars as proof.

You were kindred spirits, of that he was certain.

Tags: @idaofinfinity @e-dubbc11 @rosaleenablack @firexfate @aoi-targaryen

[scotianostra]

On 17th October 1821 Alexander Gardner, renowned photographer of the American Civil War was born in Paisley.

Some of you wmay not know the name but some of his the photographs should be instantly recognisable. As a young man in Glasgow, he had been a jeweller, then he became editor and publisher of a Glasgow newspaper.

Alexander Gardner was a great admirer of Robert Owen, who was largely responsible for the New Lanark Mills. In 1850, inspired by the New Harmony community established by Owen's son, Gardner, his brother and seven others travelled to the United States. They purchased land and established a cooperative community close to Monona, in Clayton County, Iowa. Gardner returned to Scotland to help raise more money and to recruit new members.

In May, 1851, Gardner visited the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, where he saw the photographs of Matthew Brady, he would be his inspiration.

On returning to the US with his family in 1856 he learned many of his friends in Iowa had died or were seriously ill with tuberculosis, he decided to stay for a time in New York, where he sought out work with Brady, two years later with his mentors eyesight failing he was put in charge of the Washington Gallery.

Through his friendship with fellow Scot with Allan Pinkerton Gardner met Abraham Lincoln, who was then running for President, along with Brady they made 35 portraits of Abraham Lincoln during the 1860 presidential campaign.

On the outbreak of the American Civil War there was a dramatic increase in the demand for work at Brady's studios as soldiers wanted to be photographed in uniform before going to the front-line. Because all the photographs were given the Brady Studio tag it was he who was given the credit for the work, Gardner and around another 20 assistants however took the pictures. Gardner especially went beyond the front line. Now you have to remember that photography was still in it's infancy and subjects had to pose for pics, there was no action pics, with this in mind Gardner took his camera to the ditches and fields where thousands had fought and died, and pictured them as they lay sprawled at the moment of death. In the history of warfare, it had never been done before.

Perhaps it was a byline,commenting on the photographs in The New York Times in 1962 that read "Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it. . . .By the aid of the magnifying glass, the very features of the slain may be distinguished.", that caused Gardner to go his own way in 1862, opening his own studio in Washington.

Gardner was back on the battlefields at Gettysburg portraying grisly results of massed cannon and musketry. He recorded the scenes in an album he named Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War. One particular has become more famous over the past 150 or so years, "Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter." Gardner is said to have moved the body of the soldier for more dramatic effect.

After the war Gardner also took what is considered to be the last photograph of President Abraham Lincoln, just 5 days before his assassination. Gardner would go on to photograph the conspirators who were convicted of killing Lincoln, as well as their execution.

In 1867, Gardner was appointed the official photographer of the Union Pacific Railroad, documenting the building of the railroad in Kansas as well as numerous Native American tribes that he encountered.

Gardner gave up photography to start an insurance company in 1871. He lived in Washington until his death in 1882. Regarding his work he said, “It is designed to speak for itself. As mementos of the fearful struggle through which the country has just passed, it is confidently hoped that it will possess an enduring interest.”

I have deliberately not posted some of pics as even now some are pretty graphic, to photograph the dead and especially an execution leaves a distaste in my mouth, the first pic is Gardner himself, the second Lincoln, the third Lincoln again but fellow Scot Allan Pinkerton to his left, the fourth pic shows the Scaffold for the Lincoln Assassination Conspirators, you can imagine the pics that follow this one

You can google his name you can look through many of the pics if you wish, whereas they might not be as graphic as ones you see online nowadays, they do involve shots of many dead bodies.

Read more about the man here https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/.../Alexander...

[tumblingdownthefoxden]

"The Assistant and The Star"

Chapter 1: Standard Routine

*11 years later

It was shortly after dawn and the sun was rising. Atop a grand hill stood Asha and another girl. Before them stood easels with canvases where they painted the sunrise.

Asha looked over at the other girl's painting. "Oh, Bazeema. That is an excellent shade of pink. How did you get it?"

Bazeema showed Asha her wooden palette. Using a clean brush, she took a dab of red paint, a dab of white and a touch of yellow before mixing it all in the center. "Oh, I see." Said Asha before she repeated the process. Asha places a few strokes of pink on her canvas before stepping back to admire her work. She thought it was grand. Asha looked around the forest and back to the sunrise before releasing a light sigh. "You were right Bazeema. I do feel better. I really needed this after last night."

The previous night, Bazeema and her mother were working late to finish tending the royal garden when they came across someone trespassing through the moss trees. When asked about their whereabouts, the person simply said they were looking for someone who owed them a favor and tried to push past them. The gardeners kicked out the heckler and would later find Asha hiding under a moss tree. She was hiding from a heckler that was chasing her near the castle. The same heckler that they just kicked out. Bazeema helped Asha get home and invited to take her uphill to paint the horizon before they went to work.

"Hmm. Do you want to leave now? We're a long way from the castle and I don't want to make you late for work." Asked Asha.

"It's still pretty early but we could leave if you want to. I'm finished with my painting anyway."

Asha added her signature onto her canvas before packing up her art supplies. They traveled for 30 minutes before reaching Asha's home. Outside the house, sat Mama Sakina brushing the fur of a baby goat. The goat noticed the two and bounced over to the pair. Excitedly braying as he pawed (hooved?) Asha's legs.

Asha giggled. "Good morning, Valentino. Happy you're awake as well."

"Good morning Asha. Hi Bazeema. How was the sunrise?" Greeted Sakina. "Good morning, mama. It was beautiful. I'm getting better at painting as well." She said as she lowered the canvas to Valentino's eye level. "What do you think buddy?"

Valentino cocked his head and paced side to side in critical thought before giving an approving bah. "Thank you very much." Replied Asha. She raised her canvas and looked back to Sakina. "We're just going to set these to dry and go to the castle." They placed their paintings against the wall of the house.

"You're going into the city now?" Sakina asked, concerned. "Can't you take the day off today? It's the middle of the Summer festival and there's a Wish Ceremony is today. It's going to be crowded in town square. It could be dangerous."

As she said this, Saba Sabino came outside. "Here's some food for thought. Why don't you celebrate your Saba's 100th birthday all afternoon and evening? Take a break from everything happening in the city."

Asha paused at the offer. Two years ago, she was interviewed and accepted to become the King's assistant. A role that allows her to help manage the wishes, prepare magic ingredients, and many other things. Rumor has it that the King's assistant will not only have their wish granted sooner than most, but can get other peoples' wishes granted.

Asha is quite famous in Rosas, but it is a perverted form of fame. Asha had more than her fair share of hecklers and fake friends. It only got worse during the solstice and equinox festivals. Today would be one of the few times that the King will grant wishes on the same night as a Wish Ceremony, and people will do whatever it takes to be sure that the "insurance" will deliver their wish that night.

"I know but this is the most demanding day and I have to help the King. He needs me to help choose the wishes to be granted and test the performance of his new spells." She began stroking her locs. "I know yesterday was… dramatic, but I can find another route and Bazeema can help me get home without anyone noticing."

Sabino sighed, a little sad. "Okay, if you must. But if I may suggest, that soldier fellow you know. The one near the castle. You can ask him to take you home as well."

"Simon? He's a castle guard, not a soldier. And he's on the night shift, I can't ask him to take me home."

"You get off of work near sundown. Simon's shift starts at midnight. He should have time." Bazeema rebutted.

"But he's asleep around that time. It's a long way to and from the castle and it would be rude to interrupt the little rest he gets to-"

"He will not mind." Sakina placed a firm hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Simon is one of your oldest and truest friends. He will not antagonize you for needing his help. He won't ask for anything in return." She smiled.

Asha sighed in defeat. "Okay. I'll ask him." She said before going inside the house. Entering her room and opening her closet, she searched through a set of 10 masquerade masks to wear on her trip. They were a gift from Magnifico to help her travel unrecognized. She picked a golden ibex mask and changed into her assistant's uniform. Asha grabbed her leather bag from a nearby chair and put on a dark hooded cloak over everything.

Walking out to the living room, she heard a gasp from Sabino.

"Oh, stars above! La muerte?! Oh, is it my grand daughter's time already?" He knelt down, trying not to smile. "Oh, please. Have mercy on her. Take me instead."

Asha laughed and rolled her eyes. "I'm not dead yet, Saba."

"You will be if you keep working yourself like a mule." He teased, standing up. "But if you're going into the city, maybe I can take advantage of crowd and play my music for them to hear." -He went to open a cabinet and pulled out a mandolin case- "Maybe, they will pay attention this time." He whispered to himself.

"You know, I could try to get your wish granted tonight." Asha offered. "Maybe find out what it was." Sabino chuckled. "No need to stress over finding it. I wrote it down before I gave it to the King. Now I wait for it and attempt to achieve."

"Oh." Went Asha. "What did you write?"

"It's a secret." He whispered with a smirk.

"Saba!"

Sabino just laughed at her frustration. "Well, what would like for a present?" Asha asked.

"If you find a little trinket in the market that I could add to my collection, that would a great bonus. But all I need is for you to come home in time for cake." He said with a smile.

Asha hugged her Saba goodbye and left the house. She hugged her mama and walked up to Bazeema. "Hey Valentino? Are you coming?" Asha called. Valentino hopped up to follow but Sakina picked up before he could approached. "Hold on there, mister. We can't have you go into that chilly castle without your pajamas, can we?" Sakina sat down on the grass criss crossed and positioned the little goat back on her lap. She pulled tiny pajamas from her pocket and fitted them over his head. "There you go." She chimed as Valentino ran over to Asha and Bazeema. "Watch over her, please. I love you all." She called to them. "We love you too. Goodbye." Asha called back as they made their way through the forest.

A while later and the trio made it to the outskirts of the forest, just outside the city. Asha stood in admiration of the festival decor around the area. Streamers of red and yellow. Banners for the rising and setting sun. Blue, unlit lanterns strung above the street. The streets weren't filled with people yet but enough to dissuade going through town square. They had not noticed a hunter at the edge of the forest looking their way in suspicion. Something about the cloaked figure seemed familiar but they weren't sure why. Then it hit them.

"Hey, are you the veiled assistant?" They called out. "I want to ask you something!" Valentino took notice and headbutted Bazeema's leg to see the hunter approaching. In a mild panic, Bazeema took Asha's hand and they bolted down the outskirts towards the docks. "Hey, where are you going?" The hunter cried after them.

After a short while, they made it to the docks. "Are... Are we... still being followed?" Asha panted, hanging onto her knees. Bazeema looked back and saw no sign of pursuit. "No, we're safe. But we need to find Dahlia and Hal. They can take us down a new route at the docks."

"Okay. Woo... Let me catch my breathe first."

After a good 7 seconds, Asha straightened her back. "Wait, you didn't tell Dahlia about last night, did you?" Bazeema was silent and only interlocked her fingers. "Oh no! Bazeema! She's going to be all over me!"

"But she can ensure you get in and out of the castle!" Bazeema beamed.

They approach the city where two other girls stood by. One with a crutch and anxious look. The other with a basket looking out at the nearby ships on the horizon. The anxious girl looked their way and squealed. 'Oh boy,' thought Asha. "Hi Dahlia. How are y-" Dahlia tackled Asha in a bear hug before she finish speaking. "Great Heavens! Great Heavens! Great Heavens! Please take off your mask!" Was all the girl said. Asha complied with the request and lifted the mask from her face. Dahlia spared no time before taking her face into hands, turning it side to side to check for any bruises. "You're not hurt? They didn't reach you? Oh, I should've been there with you!" Dahlia panicked.

"I'm alright, Dahlia." Asha reassured. "They grabbed my cloak but I got away." The last sentence did anything but reassure Dahlia. "THEY TOUCHED YOU!? Oh ho! No! Do you remember their face? What they wore? Do you have their name?"

Hal came up and tugged at Dahlia's dress with her free hand. "Go easy on the lady, Doc. We still need to take her to the door." Dahlia took a deep breathe and let go of Asha's face. "Sorry. Okay. It should be this way." Dahlia led them past the great bell tower to a large wooden door that she swiftly unlocked with a key hanging on her belt. "This is the delivery route. The cooks use it to quickly bring in new shipments of food and herbs into the royal pantry." She opened the door to a dark hallway. "There are wall windows further down but it's stained glass so people should only see your shadow."

Asha looked inside, worried. "What if I get lost in there?"

"It's a one way path. Wherever it's too dark to see, just feel for the wall and follow it."

The 5 of them jumped as the great bell tower rang out to announce new arrivals coming to Rosas. Hal looked out to the ships about dock. "It's time, Dahlia!" She said. "You'll be fine Asha. See you tonight! And remember, you're the Goat!" She praised with a finger gun. Valentino brayed annoyed. "Oh, right! You too Valentino!" She said, petting his head. Asha placed her mask back over her face and the two entered the hallway, closing the door behind them. Dahlia will lock it once they're inside the castle. The three remaining girls returned to the gate to meet the approaching newcomers.

"Good morning and welcome. Glad you could make it here. My name is Dahlia Akaboshi and I will be your tour guide for today. These are my friends, Bazeema and Hal." She took the basket from Hal's hand. "Would you care for a muffin. Gratuity from my parents, the royal bakers." The guests took a few muffins and looked around. "So, shall we begin? Come this way." Dahlia looked back at the now open gate and the three girls led the new comers into Rosas.

A/N: Tumblr freaked out on me and this got deleted 2 times but things came out better. The story became much more extra than I anticipated but I like how it's coming along. I'm giving my girl a major internal conflict. I'm hoping to draw out my rewrite of "Welcome to Rosas".

@annymation @signed-sapphire @wings-of-sapphire @chillwildwave @kstarsarts @rascalentertainments @emillyverse @uva124 @oh-shtars

[oceansprompts]

marvel's midnight suns | misc quotes 1

I will not be howling at the moon any time soon.

Have to say, for a haunted Transian Castle raised on the cursed grounds of Old Salem it's pretty cozy.

I really should up my homeowner's insurance.

You smell... wrong.

You know what they say. All work and no play... is how we ended up with Ultron.

We invented stealth.

I don't actually care, but they need to stop moping. So. Can they play with your dog?

Admit what? That I feel a sense of admiration and respect for a fellow teammate?

Yeah, I didn't figure someone so great and powerful would be into a book club.

You're hung up on the were-roosters... Alright, let's hear what you got.

Is this visit business or pleasure?

How’s your mental health? A good portion of this “darkness hunting” game is mental health and processing intense situations.

But, hell on Earth isn’t a garden stroll.

I’ve spent decades experimenting and putting it together. Any of ’em interest you?

I’m telling you. I don’t know what’s coming next, but I do know when the shit hits the fan with Chthon...

You’re acting like I did it for fun...

Comfortable? I’ll never be comfortable around that monster. . .

You’re turning out to be one of my favorite people. . .

Why do you think? They take vicious killers and present them as tragic and misunderstood.

It’s just... Off, somehow. I swear, the moonlight on a clear evening is too dim for this time of year...

Was your first thought about killing me?

What I’m asking is, if I lost control, would you stop me?

Let’s talk about how your mother just turned one of my best friends against us.

These people look to me for guidance, but it feels like I’m stumbling around in the dark.

Just the fact that you are willing to learn means you’re on the right track.

So how do I tell him I’m totally cool with being best pals without scaring him off...

It wouldn’t take many guards to secure the building. So the question is: What else are they doing in there?

It’s not big enough to swim laps. Its only real purpose is for lounging and soaking up the sun.

It figures she’d send you. Did she tell you I want nothing to do with it? Because I still don’t.

Every time I think I’ve got my mind wrapped around this conflict, I get thrown a curveball.

But right now? I want to let you know how proud I am to be serving alongside you and watching your leadership.

Maybe this is what we’re supposed to be doing, fighting an endless war.

What do you make of our chances to get out of this mess in one piece?

That’s an easy question with a complex answer. Tell me this–what type of leader would you follow?

I always did what I thought was right. No more, no less.

Well, not so much fish as that ginormous, invulnerable sewer monster that swallowed the Sanctum.

I’m told I can be rather persuasive when I need to be.

It’s all just starting to blur into one big giant green gamma mess…

I’m having it right now and-wait. I think… oh no. Did I feed my cat before I left?

Would you have been able to take the shot? Because I don’t think I could’ve.

I’m going to be up all night trying to make sense of it, see if it helps us find our way back into the Sanctum.

But the more I see him in action, the more I think he might be an okay dude.

I’m telling you if I have to spend one more hour scanning digital maps…

All you have to do is be ready to fight for what you care about when the time comes.

Yeah, I know. Nasty artifacts like that aren’t known for their safety features…

I have to admit, I don’t think you’d be such a formidable poker player. Yet another reason to respect you.

This is the life, licking it with the legendary Hero, and kicking said legendary Hero’s ass at a fighting game.

Believe it or not, I don’t have a lot peeps I can call friends, not close ones at least.

I feel like you get how just how heavy all that extra baggage…

Sadly, the sense of wonder eventually wears off like most things.

… Sorry if I’m ruining any romantic notions of space travel.

I’m not just my powers. Sometimes I like to take it slow…

I’ve tried blindfolds, facing away from the board, and one-finger throws. Perfect score, every time.

The forbidden nap, if you will. Mercenary work is a grab bag of awful stuff…

Because looking at it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I can play nice all day when we’re out there kicking bad guy booty…

Uh, haven’t you listened to anything I’ve said? Money!

I forgot. You aren’t as self-aware as I am…

Well, your friends have been avoiding me like the plague…

He waved goodbye and peaced out to live a life of solitude…

[justforbooks]

Stanley Booth

American music journalist who chronicled ‘the mystery of the Rolling Stones’ in their pomp

As a group of Hells Angels beat and stabbed a Black teenager to death a few feet away from where the Rolling Stones were playing on warm evening in California in 1969, the writer Stanley Booth watched the mayhem from a vantage point next to his friend Keith Richards’s guitar amplifiers.

The murder of 18-year-old Meredith Hunter by thugs hired to act as security men for the Stones’ free concert at Altamont Speedway marked an end to the peace-and-love idyll of the 1960s. It also gave Booth a dramatic climax to the book he would write about the Stones and their rise from London’s clubs to worldwide success and notoriety.

The Stones embraced Booth, who has died aged 82, not least because he represented an authentic connection to the blues music from which they had taken their inspiration. He had been brought up in Memphis, Tennessee, one of the music’s centres, and knew many of the musicians whose work they admired and imitated.

Long-haired, silk-scarved and thoroughly familiar with mood-altering substances, he was perfectly in sync with the social currents they embodied. He met them when, having established himself as a contributor to major American magazines, he travelled to London in 1968 to cover the trial of their founder, Brian Jones, who had been charged with possession of cannabis. “I wrote a story,” he recalled many years later, “but I had only glimpsed – in Brian’s eyes as he glanced up from the dock – the mystery of the Rolling Stones.”

That mystery was the subject of the book he planned to write when he joined the Stones on tour in the US the following year. He slipped so easily into their inner circle that soon they were inviting him to share not just their confidences – Anita Pallenberg told him that Jones had missed shows and recording sessions because he had broken his hand while hitting her – but their drugs. When a fan handed Charlie Watts a yellow-green LSD tab, Booth wrote that “Charlie asked, ‘D’you want it?’ ‘I ain’t too sure about this street acid,’ I said. ‘Maybe Keith will want it.’”

Published in 1974 as Dance With the Devil, and republished in the UK in 1985 as The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, his book brought to bear an observant eye and literary skills that elegantly stripped the varnish off the story, leaving posterity with a faithful eye-witness account of the group’s activities and their social milieu during their prime years.

Booth was born in Waycross, Georgia, near the Okefenokee swamp, a vast wetland straddling the border with Florida. His father, Irving, was the vice-president of an insurance company, while his mother, Ruby (nee McClellan), was a schoolteacher. He studied English at Memphis State University and remembered being thrown out of a Ray Charles show for sharing a table with some Black fellow students. He began postgraduate studies at Tulane University in New Orleans before breaking off in 1964 to return to Memphis, where he began his career as a journalist.

His background, his love of music and his social circle gave him access to local subjects that interested the editors of national magazines. In 1968 Esquire published his description of Elvis Presley’s life among his courtiers: “When he puts the cigar between his teeth a wall of flame erupts before him. Momentarily startled, he peers into the blaze of matches and lighters offered by willing hands. With a nod, he designates one of the crowd, who steps forward, shaking, and then, his moment of glory, of service to the King, at an end, he retires into anonymity. ‘Thank ya very much,’ says Elvis.”

Typically, the real interest comes when Booth aims slightly away from the target. The source of the best Elvis anecdotes is Dewey Phillips, the first radio DJ to play Presley’s records, found by the author working in a furniture store 20 years after his heyday. One of those tales, involving the actress Natalie Wood, was too ripe for the Esquire piece but is included in Rythm Oil, a collection of Booth’s magazine pieces published in 1994.

The book’s UK edition opened with a mood-setting series of colour photographs taken by William Eggleston, Booth’s friend and fellow Memphian: freight trains, cotton fields, diners and lonesome highways. The pieces included portraits of other local musicians, including the bluesman Furry Lewis, who had spent decades sweeping the city’s streets, and the ill-starred jazz pianist Phineas Newborn.

For all his warm empathy with most of the musicians he encountered, there was also evidence of the essential splinter of ice in the writer’s heart. About his piece for Rolling Stone on Janis Joplin’s poorly received visit to Memphis in 1969, he later reflected: “She died, so I hear, bearing me ill will. Can’t please everyone.”

With a reputation, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper, as “a libertine and a wild man”, in 1971 he was fined for growing his own marijuana and broke his back a few years later after falling down a waterfall in Georgia while high on LSD. A second collection of pieces, Red Hot and Blue, was published in 2019 and he leaves an unfinished memoir and unpublished biographies of the songwriter Johnny Mercer and the singer Gram Parsons, a friend who was also from Waycross.

Booth was married three times. After the death in 2014 of his third wife, the poet Diann Blakely, with whom he had lived in Georgia and Florida, he returned to Memphis. He is survived by a daughter, Ruby Booth, from another relationship.

🔔 Stanley Booth (Irvin Stanley Booth Jr), writer, born 5 January 1942; died 19 December 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[grumpygreenwitch]

The Witches and Wizards Job 3-4

Updates will come every Tuesday afternoon/evening.

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Jessamine Lochlin was a slim, elegant woman that seemed as given to nonsense as an Elizabethan spinster. It was a terribly deceptive look, because as soon as someone at the door told her Parker was there she came charging through the main atrium and squeaked in delight to see the thief. "Iggy!"

"Jess!"

They greeted each other like delighted teenagers, much to the bemusement of Nate and Sophie. Parker introduced her as curator to the Sokolov collection, on loan from the Tetryakov Gallery and on its way to the MET, where Lochlin was actually based.

Sophie stepped forward when Parker turned to her and Nate, a nearly imperceptible Russian accent coloring her voice, her tone warm, her posture shifting to project an aura of calm, implacable serenity. "Ekaterina Yegorov, critic, collector. Independent curator, and absolutely delighted to see Sokolov's works finally seeing the international adoration they deserve."

"Right?" Sophie had readily struck true, and Lochlin puffed up in delight, Minnesota suddenly speaking loudly in her brogue. She was obviously willing and able to gush over a favorite topic, so Nate stepped in. "Nathan Ford. Former insurance, currently independent security."

"Oh, do you work with Iggy?" Lochlin's handshake was warm and solid, and she seemed not at all put off.

"Casual acquaintances," Nate assured her. Parker made friends outside their work so rarely that the rest of the team readily went out on a ledge just to make sure she kept the few she did make; the mastermind was no exception. "But when we heard there was a Sokolov collection on display, we might have imposed on her," he added conspiratorially.

Lochlin laughed. "Iggy's the reason it's here," she admitted to them in the same tone. "Without her contributions to our security systems, I'm not sure either the MET or the Tetryakov Gallery would have agreed to it." She escorted them through the gracious spaces and murmuring crowds along the rooms and galleries, chatting away with both Parker and Sophie. Nate, used as he was to ceding the spotlight, saw no problem with it. It gave him an excellent chance to take the measure of Jessamine Lochlin, not just as curator but as a potential asset.

And, maybe, as Parker's friend. Surely he could be excused being a little bit protective of his people?

Which was very much what Sophie was doing, except she was coming to actually like Lochlin. The young woman was exactly who she said she was, exactly what she presented herself to be. Young, certainly, but sure of her knowledge, devoted to it. If her interests had run to different goals, she would have had the ruthless devotion to become a fine politician. As it was, all her focus was on her charge and what it took to keep it safe, while also making it available to the viewing public.

Sophie also didn't miss the way Lochlin's spine went to a rigid steel bar as they passed by the broad doorway leading to the Dutch gallery. To the curator those empty frames weren't a slap to the face, but a punch to the gut she'd not been able to counter. Yet.

A room on the topmost floor had been set aside for the nine pieces the Tetryakov Gallery had been willing to part with. They were, for the most part, large pieces, portraits of young women and boys. One painting of Sokolov's wife had place of pride and a hushed crowd of admirers, perhaps to the chagrin of the many young nobles and royals depicted elsewhere. But then, the artist's love shone through his craft on that piece as it did none of the others.

Sophie left Lochlin and Nate bemoaning the misery that was insuring and securing traveling collections. Or, for that matter, prying a loan from any other gallery and museum, the better to spread its beauty. She and Parker roamed, with some measure of discretion, to one of the largest and less watched pieces.

"I thought Sokolov mostly did portraits," Sophie murmured.

"It is a portrait," Parker protested quietly. "Isn't it?"

"Yes, but -" Sophie looked up at the piece. It had been recently restored, at least partially, its colors vibrant. "Look around, Parker. Sokolov was a technical painter. Very skilled, but his real strength was his mind. He knew he was good at one thing and did wonders with it. Most of his portraits don't engage the whole subject like this. There's a reason Tetryakov never loans out his group portraits, they're too rare to risk. I'm astonished they were willing to part with even this."

"They had a good reason," Parker replied, looking only a little smug. There was, indeed, nothing the Tetryakov would not do to have two of their treasures restored to them so they could remove the replicas they'd been discreetly replaced with to save face. And Parker really did like Jess.

Before them, a woman sat in severe opulence for the artist. She was older, her hair an elegant silver bun pinned with delicate silver combs. She was stern, her features sharp and deeply Slavic, her eyes fiery in a way most painters would have never been able to convey. She wore a gown fitting for the nobility of Solokov's time, dark and rich green velvet with russet and gold accents. The embroidery on it had been painted with such exquisite attention to the detail of it that it seemed entirely possible, if Sophie were to reach out and touch it, she would be able to feel every singular stitch. Ironically for someone of such obvious wealth and importance, chickens danced on the hem of the woman's skirt, and peasant boots peeked under it. One hand, gloved in exquisite black lace, rested on her lap; the other held a gnarled cane, wood made dark and smooth with use.

She was also not alone. Behind her, standing, one hand on her shoulder, was a younger man, much too young to be a husband and far too old to be a son. He had the same sharp features, though in him they sharpened to make him look vulturine, nearly predatory. His black hair was tied back severely, rather than the artful curls most people preferred to showcase when they were being painted; his moustache and beard were nothing but angles. His cravat was so white it seemed to shine, in sharp contrast with the ferocious black of the rest of his clothing. Astonishingly, for a portrait, the thinnest smirk curled up one side of his mouth. His eyes were so green they seemed not real, the visceral tint of them matched only by the elegant brooch he wore, half-hidden under the lapels of his jacket.

"Charming," Nate murmured just over her shoulder. "Do you think he ran out of every other color but green?"

She scoffed. "It's so unlike his other work, don't you think?"

"I'm not much for Russian portraitists," he admitted. "Where did Parker go?"

"I think she and Jessamine are planning their next heist." When he glowered mildly at her she persisted. "No, really, apparently that's how it works, they plan a heist and then beat it. I'm not sure even I could break into this place any longer."

"Sophie, you could break into anywhere you liked, as long as someone told you you shouldn't."

"Aw, flatterer." She bumped affectionately into him. "Is this her, then?"

Nate stepped back and focused solely on the painting. Aside the obvious technique of it, and the elegance of a master of his craft, it was a portrait like any other. "It's as close as we're gonna get until Hardison gets a full composite," he admitted, picking up his phone and taking a quick snapshot while Sophie covered him.

"Well, if you're done breaking the law, this is still a fine collection of Sokolov art and I want a look," she declared primly and meandered off.

"Alright." He sent the picture off to Hardison and stared at the painting, his mind whirling. Who are you?, he asked the woman in the picture. Was she behind the attacks? A target of them? Her presence at fourteen sites put her well past the point of being an innocent bystander, but that still left the how, the why, the who. So many questions, so many variables. Even beyond the measure of any case they'd ever taken, this one promised to be a headache and a half, and for no discernible win. Even getting Fedorov in his pocket might not be payout enough.

So he stared at the picture, and let his thoughts run away in fractals, as they always did, asking questions he didn't even have words for just yet.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" A familiar voice said by his side. "Pyotr Sokolov was a master."

"Mister Fedorov. You're late."

The Russian smiled. He wore a cashmere turtleneck and a contrasting jacket, casual slacks and what looked suspiciously like very fancy steel-toed boots. "I have been meaning to make time for the Sokolov collection, but I am a busy man, mister Ford." They both stared at her. "She doesn't quite look right," Fedorov mused.

"I wouldn't know, we didn't get a full composite," Nate admitted.

To his surprise, the Russian's grin widened. "Ah. How many screens have you lost?"

"One." Nate considered Fedorov's words. "So far. You?"

"Two full rigs, three more screens." Vanya admitted readily. "But then, I am also a very stubborn man." His humor faded. "I do not make the… accusation I made yesterday lightly, mister Ford."

"I don't believe in that sort of thing."

"I was raised in what is still a very empty, very wild forest in my homeland. I believe in much most people dismiss as fantasy."

"You grew up in Vladivostok."

Fedorov looked amused. "No, I moved to Vladivostok and made sure to make it look as if I'd lived there all my life. The problem with converted electronic documents is that you must convert from something, and paper is a very… pliable medium."

"Still don't think you should be confessing crimes to me."

"Mm, perhaps not," the Russian admitted, turning his attention back to the portrait. "But it still looks wrong."

Nate, having taken the opportunity to truly focus on the painting, had to agree. Much like Vanya, he couldn't put his finger on it, though. Was it the proportions? The colors? Maybe the restoration process wasn't finished? Was it - ?

"He got the nose wrong."

Both men turned. On Nate's other side was a stately, elegant woman, severe and stern. She wore an exquisite black dress stitched with black embroidered and accented with tiny pearls. The buttons of her jacket were silver, in the shape of tiny bones. Her hair was the palest silver, exquisitely done up in a fanciful bun secured with a black comb.

She had spoken in Russian, and continued doing so. "He was painting from memory, as most portraitists do. So, you know. He only got the nose wrong."

Nate stared at the woman.

The woman stared at a portrait for which she could have readily been the model if not because, unlike the painting, she had no sharp, longish nose. Her nose was quite normal. She even wore a touch of make-up, which the woman in the painting had completely eschewed. Her eyes were wintry, an icier blue than even Fedorov's. "I rather like the touch of the chickens," she declared.

"Isn't it just wonderful?" Sophie chose that moment to return, Ekaterina Yegorov's soft Russian burr firmly back in place. "It looks like you could reach out and feel how soft the stitching is." She let the words linger for a moment. "Painted like a man who never had to wear one of those dresses in summer."

Every eye turned to her, but it was the older woman who spoke first. "Spoken like a woman who has," she said in accented English. "Who are you, lovely child? What do you do here?"

"Ekaterina Yegorov, art critic, collector and independent curator."

"Goodness, that sounds exhausting," the older woman declared tartly. "Three jobs and all of them involve you trying to get a man to listen to the expertise you have and he does not. How strong a spine you must have."

Unbidden and unexpected, Sophie felt a frisson of pride go up Ekaterina's spine at the praise.

"She looks upset," Parker, behind Nate's other shoulder, declared stoutly.

"That's just the portrait," Nate corrected her. "They always strive for a neutral expression."

"But she doesn't look neutral, she looks upset," Parker persisted.

"Why would she be upset?" Sophie asked, trying to be rational.

"Because she's stuck with an asshole," Fedorov stepped neatly into the conversation.

All four of them turned to look at him. He shrugged blithely and gestured at the painting. "Look at him. The smirk, the posture. Everything about the man screams 'asshole'. If I had to sit and keep my peace waiting for that to stab me in the back, I'd be upset too."

The older woman burst out laughing. It was brief, and it barely made a sound among the hushed conversations, but it was real all the same. She promptly covered her mouth. "Oh, the cheek of you," she chided Vanya in Russian.

"I was born with a mouth," he replied cheerfully. "It seems a shame not to use it."

Nate opened his mouth. A moment earlier he'd had not enough questions about the case; suddenly he had too many, and was having trouble choosing one. The woman's presence seem too provident, too perfect. He wanted to ask who she was; he wanted to know what she knew about the painting; he wanted to know why she was there.

He turned.

Just past the doorway the man in the painting, down to the stitched black embroidery on his long coat and the hawkish nose, was just strolling out of sight.

The mastermind blinked.

Heavy shutters suddenly slammed shut over the two windows and the doorway with a terribly final sound, trapping a little under two dozen people in the room with nine of Pyotr Sokolov's portraits. Gas began to pour into the room, and a faint scent began to fill the air.

People screamed, as they're wont to do when the unexpected slams into their lives.

Someone began to cough.

"What is that?" Fedorov demanded.

"The fire suppression system?" Sophie sounded very dubious.

"You don't sound certain."

"I'm not."

"She's not," Nate confirmed.

"It's not," Parker declared, looking around frantically for escape routes she neither needed nor had.

"What is it, then, if not the fire system?" the Russian demanded.

"It is the fire suppression system," Nate explained hastily. Several people were banging on the shutter that had come down over the open doorway. "But argonite is odorless. This smells like, like…"

Several more people were coughing.

"Flowers," Parker all but snarled.

"Perfume," Sophie was keeping close. The gas kept piling up.

"Fernflower," the older woman choked out and began to cough sharply.

"Why hasn't the alarm gone off?" Vanya demanded, rushing over to hold up the older woman when the wracking cough folded her in half.

"Because there's no fire," Nate replied.

"Which is a problem," Sophie added, on the woman's other side.

"Yup. Parker, pick me a lock."

"I can try, but I might set off an alarm -"

Sophie, shoving Ekaterina aside for a moment, leaned close enough to whisper, "Sweetie, that'd be a really good thing right now."

"Oh. Right. Because we're not actually stealing anything." Parker lunged at one of the shuttered windows.

"Why not the door?" Fedorov protested mildly.

"Because there's two more shutters behind that one, this one only has one more," Parker replied didactically, ripping open a discreet panel that had looked, until that moment, like nothing so much as a few light switches. She looked up expectantly, and growled when nothing but the hiss of gas and scattered coughing filled the pause. She began to jab her lockpicks, having gotten them out of god-only-knew-where, into the circuit panel she'd revealed.

Sophie was moving through the crowd, getting people to climb up on the benches, away from the quickly pooling clouds of gas. The Russian bodily picked up the older woman and set her on one of the benches. She let out a startled little wheeze but didn't complain. "You said this is an argonite system, Ford. They are not dangerous to humans."

"Normally, yes," Nate agreed, dialing on his phone. "Very safe. When there's a fire to put out. I'm betting the system's not currently detecting the oxygen content of the room, either, so it's going to keep going until there's either no argon in the tank -"

"- or no oxygen in the room," Sophie finished for him.

"We're in one of your accidents, Fedorov." Someone finally picked up his call. "Hardison."

"Nate, got your picture, what's up?"

"We're trapped in a room in the Gardner Museum with a broken argonite supression system," the mastermind told the hacker calmly.

"What?!" Back at the loft, at that tone, Eliot's head came up like a hound scenting blood.

"Never mind that," Nate gestured impatiently. "Can you lock down the rest of the building?"

"Uh…"

"Fast. I think the man who did this is still in here."

Hardison sprinted for his console, throwing his phone on the work desk. Eliot picked it up and put it on speakerphone. "Nate."

"Eliot, call emergency services. A few people here are having trouble breathing already."

"Are you good?"

The mastermind didn't even hesitate. "Oh, yes, we're fine. I'll be even better if you catch that man in here with us." As if on cue, an alarm began to shrill, high and piercing, and Parked looked confusedly victorious. Whatever she'd done didn't stop the gas, though. One of the shutters on the nearest window rolled back up with a snap, revealing a steel grate and the Venetian-style window beyond it. "Parker, did you and Lochlin get around to updating the windows yet?"

"No," she replied. Immediately guessing what he meant, she threw herself to one side.

"Fedorov."

The Russian didn't hesitate. His gun was in his hand in a single, smooth motion, and he fired at each pane of glass amidst screams. The reinforced glass cracked under the first impact, and most of the panes shattered under the second. He finished what was left with a third shot until the gun clicked on empty. Gas poured out and blessedly fresh air poured in. Parker slid back to the control panel and got back to work.

A second, bellowing alarm kicked off somewhere beyond the shuttered door. "Place is locked down," Hardison told Nate. "I hope it was fast enough."

"So do I. Do you have eyes on the place?"

Hardison was staring as every screen on the wall came to life, several providing multiple feeds. "Live feeds everyw-"

"No! No, not live! Record everything, not live, Hardison, not -" Nate heard something explode tinily on the other end of the line. "Hardison?!"

Two heads peeked up from behind cover at the screen that had just lost most of its upper right corner, the rest of it flickering madly. "We're fine," the hacker replied numbly. "Um."

Nate sighed.

The second shutter rolled up. Parker hefted herself up on the windowsill and kicked at the frame until there was a section clear of glass that she could grip to try and force the window open. She fought the damn thing up an inch, then another.

"In the name of expedience," Fedorov stalked up to her, shrugging off his jacket, "may I assist?"

Parker made room for him. He folded over his jacket to give them both a larger area of leverage. They pushed at the heavy frame as hard as they could.

There was a word echoing in Nate's mind, and he couldn't dislodge it. He couldn't see his question past it. He couldn't hear anything under the whispering weight of it.

Fernflower.

Sophie was talking to him, her voice distant and blurred. The alarms were a tangle of strangling vines around his mind. The phone demanded his attention. People were screaming. People were coughing. People were dying, and he…

He…

"Child."

Profound silence followed the one word. The world went perfectly still. Nate realized he'd forgotten at some point to breathe, and his chest hurt, but he couldn't make himself work the muscles for that one, tiny exercise in staying alive.

The old woman was before him. She looked ashen, her skin threaded with a sickly, poisonous green. But still she reached out a hand and so very gently brushed his chest. "Child," her voice was kind, "be calm."

The window relented at last with an almighty crash and a third, older alarm joined the other two.

Nate felt a rush of soothing cold wash over him. The alarms got shoved aside as the inconsequential noise they were. The coughing people would get help; Eliot probably had half the emergency services in the Boston Metro area coming, and it being the Isabella Gardner in distress would likely summon the other half. All they had to do was survive the runaway suppression system for the next few minutes.

"Nate?" Sophie clung to him as if she were afraid he would fall down. Mainly because for a moment there the mastermind had looked like he was about to fall down.

"Ford!" Fedorov called out.

"Nate, there's no fire escape!" Parker shouted over the mingled roar of the alarms.

"What?" He and Sophie rushed to the window, only to discover it was true: the familiar steel structure was missing altogether.

Nate turned. "Then we go up. Parker, you first. Then me. Fedorov, you hand us the people. Sophie will keep them calm for you."

Before Vanya could say anything Parker had slithered out and her feet were disappearing over the not-too-distant rim of the roof. "I do believe you are confessing crimes to me, Ford," he pointed out mildly, watching the thief vanish with impossible grace.

"Allegedly," Nate replied without missing a beat, following Parker up, who was fuming somewhat.

"Getting out from up here's going to be even harder, you know," she pointed out distractedly.

"Not stealing anything, Parker," he reminded her, kneeling by the edge and calling out. "We're set!"

Vanya and Sophie escorted the older Russian woman to the window. She was gasping desperately for breath. "Grandmother," he told her respectfully, "I'm afraid I have to get very handsy with you."

"Oh, that's alright," she patted his arm lightly, and managed a strangled little smile. "I have not been manhandled by a handsome young man in a very long time. It will be thrilling."

The enforcer had to grin back at that, before he bodily picked her up and hauled her out of the window, lifting her where Nate and Parker could take her outstretched hands.

"How's that, breathing better?" the mastermind asked her as they helped her step onto the roof.

"Yes, thank you."

"Yup. Don't go anywhere," he told her casually as he reached out for the next person. He had so many questions for the woman he didn't even know where to begin.

"Child, it is a rooftop," she laughed around another bout of coughing. "Where would I go?"

One by one they brought everyone out of the room. Before they'd got a handful of people out the police already had the museum surrounded. By the time half the visitors were out, someone had discovered the access to and from the roof had been welded shut. By the time everyone was out and the fault in the broken suppression system was finally fought into compliance, fire engines had been maneuvered closer and ladders were being extended.

And the old Russian woman was nowhere to be found.

Eliot brought the car around and waited just past the crush of the gawking mob, trying not to hover like an overprotective dragon. His people simply sauntered away until one of them was intercepted.

"Ford," Fedorov said quietly.

"Fedorov."

"Do I have more than your attention now?"

Nate was seething inwardly at losing the woman, apparently into thin air, and having the unknown man in black slip through their grip, likely by mere seconds. He kept it hidden with his usual ease. "That was some nice shooting."

The Russian enforcer smiled thinly. "I wear body armor. I expect everyone else to do the same. When they do not I am pleasantly surprised. When they do it still does not matter."

Nate nodded; that did explain how the man had punched through most of the window panes. "Is it going to be worth it, stealing the police reports for this?"

Vanya paused. "I will send you the ones that matter," he offered.

Nate nodded. "Fedorov," he called out when the Russian walked away. "Do you know what the woman said about the gas, in there? What it smelled like?"

"She said it smelled like fernflower."

"I don't know that flower, do you?"

Fedorov looked faintly amused. "You are wearing it, Ford."

Nate looked down, startled; he was not in the habit of wearing a pocket square, let alone flowers. He pressed a hand over the bright crimson spray of tiny blooms tucked in his jacket pocket and watched the Russian walk away, trading casual greetings with the cops.

"Nate?" Sophie came up to him, having belatedly realized they'd left him behind.

"Sophie, do you still have that friend at the London Botanical Gardens?" Nate plucked the flowering stem out of his pocket and rolled it between his fingertips.

"Percy? Yes, he's a sweetheart. Keeps asking me to be a peer on his mycology paper."

"Do you think he could look something up for you if you overnight it?"

FOUR

"Fernflower's not real."

Nate considered these words, delivered with careful solemnity by Sophie, while staring blankly at the box of Indian take-out in front of him. Eventually, he gestured lightly. "I held those flowers, Sophie."

"I know."

"You held those flowers, when we packed them up for shipping."

"I know, Nate."

"They were real."

"They absolutely were."

Nate exhaled sharply. It wasn't often the team saw such a gesture of frustration from their mastermind, but at every turn something kept popping up that insisted on derailing the carefully logical pathways of his mind. "So what you're saying is -"

"What I'm saying is that Percy can't identify them. Nate, the London Botanical Garden can't identify this flower! The entirety of his staff is up in arms. They've sent inquiries to Cairo and Beijing. Beijing, Nate! He hasn't talked to Xi Jian since the orchid debacle!"

Nate had a strong feeling that he didn't want to know what the orchid debacle was.

"It's a plant," Hardison protested.

"No, it's not just a plant," Parker argued. "It's a magic flower, obviously."

Nate didn't have the energy to try and deal with that.

"Yes, ok, but" Hardison wasn't about to hit that particular trap, "it's a plant. It can't be hard to figure it out, yeah? We map people's DNA these days at the corner store, it's easy."

"Anything but," Eliot countered placidly, setting an empty container aside. "Plants are the most flexible organism on this planet when it comes to DNA. We can only pass it down, parent to kid - plants can do it sideways."

"Sideways," Hardison stared at him.

"Yup.They steal it. See something a neighboring plant can do and snag it for their own."

"Plants steal?" Parker looked deeply intrigued.

"Yup." He grinned a little when the team stared at him. "Dated a botanist once. Kinky woman. My point is, it's very easy to create a hybrid, and from there create a mutant, a whole new species. The hard part's always been making it do what you want it to do, like the potato, instead of having it do whatever."

"Well, my point is, Percy's never seen it before, he's never even seen anything remotely like it." Sophie groaned, putting her curry down a little more forcefully than she meant. "Ugh, he's never going to leave me alone now, he'll think I did it on purpose. Send him a brand new plant that he can put his name on."

"Yeah, where a botanist's concerned you might as well have sent him a marriage proposal," Eliot teased her, got a napkin thrown at his chest. He grinned wickedly at her, but quickly grew serious. "Mechanical fault again," he declared, clicking his remote to activate one of the screens on the wall. "On paper the insurance company's claiming the valves overheated and locked into an open position. I snuck in, took a look at it." It hadn't been hard to join the slews of people going in to do clean-up, once Hardison had counterfeited the clearances for him. What he'd found had left the hitter grinding his teeth in both confusion and offense; while not a Boston native, Eliot understood the value, both artistic and emotional, of a place like the Gardner Museum. It had been bad enough to have his team caught in the crossfire of whatever mess the Russians had in their hands; that the perpetrator hadn't cared about the art on the line was getting to be just as upsetting, to say the least.

"Those things were melted." He'd taken pictures of the entire fire suppression system. "That whole system had nickel-copper heat exchanges. I've seen nuclear plants more likely to have a meltdown. And…"

"And?" Sophie prompted him when he hesitated.

Eliot stared down at the table, seeing nothing. He was, he felt, as reasonable as a man in his position, having lived the sort of life he'd lived, could be. He knew he was profoundly fortunate to have found a family, dysfunctional as it might be, that had his back, no questions asked. He knew he would go to the wall for any of them without hesitation.

But in the basement of the Isabella Gardner Museum the hitter had found a place where he didn't know if he dared ask them to follow. "I found this down there," he admitted at last, his voice carefully neutral. He clicked the remote until he came to a specific photo.

Everyone stopped eating.

"Is that a handprint?" Sophie asked, stunned.

"Yeah."

"On the outflow valve?" Hardison demanded.

"Yeah."

They stared at the very clear print on the metal. It looked as if someone had gripped it and squeezed, and like warm wax, it had been reshaped.

"There's no wriggle," Sophie murmured.

"Or blur," Nate added, just as thoughtful.

It was Eliot who explained for the other two. "When you grab something hot, your first instinct is to jerk your hand away, right? Hot metal, metal that's gone so hot it's soft, won't let you do that. It clings, it tries to hold onto you."

"So when they did that," Hardison tipped his head at the screen, "they should have messed up the print."

"Right."

"But they didn't."

"Did they just… leave their hand there?" Even Parker looked vaguely aghast.

"Sure looks like it." Eliot flicked the photo away; the vague sense of disorienting confusion he'd felt when he'd first seen the print was returning.

"Wait!" Nate suddenly focused sharply. "Wait, go back. Go back to the tanks."

Eliot obeyed. "Why, what's wrong? I'm not familiar with argonite systems, they're too new to be common, but nothing looked out of place."

"Nothing's out of place," Nate replied thoughtfully as he stood up, restless. "I'm not looking at the tanks, I'm looking at the valves." He'd been looking for reasonable discrepancies, and for a moment he'd been almost delighted to find one, until the numbers had made sense. "Argonite systems are simple. Blend argon with something, nitrogen in this case, smother the fire without smothering the people. Now, argon, nitrogen, both, something else, if you replace all the oxygen in a room with it, you kill both the people and the fire, right?"

"Right," Eliot agreed.

"So why tamper with both the valves when just the one would do? There's no reason to fiddle with the nitrogen, but someone did." He pointed at the screen. "They shut it off. Completely." He stared at the picture. "That's not the original tank, either."

Eliot stared thoughtfully at the picture. "That's a new tank," he suddenly declared. "One of the guys on site was fiddling with his toolbox when I went by. Bet you anything the insurance people told him to replace it on the sly."

"So where's the old tank? Did you take pictures of the tanks in storage?"

"He didn't, I did." Hardison was already putting them up on the screen.

"It seemed safer that way. Place was hot as hell, someone was going to start asking questions if they caught me going around to too many places."

Nate nodded. The pictures were stills from a security camera, showing shelves, boxes, cylinders -

"Nate," Sophie murmured.

"I see it." On a lower shelf was a small silver cylinder, much tinier than all its siblings. It had none of the typical cautionary symbols or identifiers; instead it was covered in writing that not one of them could recognize. Nate picked up his remote and enlarged the picture, focused on that spot.

A small number on the bottom of the screen began to inch up, and the screen let out a quiet little beep, no louder than a microwave. Hardison lunged forward, snatched the remote out of Nate's hand and turned off the screen altogether, leaving the mastermind blinking. "No! Nuh-uh. You're not blowing up another one of my screens!"

"I wasn't gonna -!"

"I am a man of science, Nate. You know that, everyone knows that, right? And that," Hardison pointed at the black screen, "is how it's begun every time. We focus on something, someone, and the tech actually cannot keep up. Two screens, Nate!"

"Fedorov blew up three," Sophie murmured.

"What?!"

"And two rigs."

"WHAT?!"

"It can't be just because of a picture -"

"I don't care what it is," Hardison declared impatiently. "I care what it's doing, and that would be overclocking my systems until they literally explode. My systems, Nate. Hacking into the Pentagon didn't overclock them. Hacking into the Interpol databases didn't overclock them."

"You hacked Interpol?" Eliot looked pleasantly surprised at this news.

"Incidental!" the hacker exclaimed. "I don't believe…!" He took a deep breath and spoke in a less irritated tone. "Nate, I don't believe in hinky stuff. You know that. I believe in what's real, what's here. I know something's doing this to my gear. I don't know what it is, yet. I just know it's there. Until I figure out what it is, and how to bypass it, this is what I can do."

Nate stared at the hacker, who looked levelly back at him.

"Why can't it just be magic?" Parker asked sedately.

"Magic's just science that no one's explained yet, Parker," Hardison replied gently. "That's the problem. You can't fight a rocket with a rock. I need to know what it is, I need to understand what it is, before I can work around it."

The team watched her take in those words and then nod thoughtfully.

Nate rubbed at his face. "Magic." The word was loaded with all the scorn a rational man could load upon it.

"Nate, do you have a problem with the concept or with the fact none of us is a, a…. a 'magic' specialist?" Sophie asked with utmost calm.

"Both," he admitted, then glanced at Hardison. "Though a paradigm shift helps a little with the first."

Hardison shrugged. "Hey, man. Big old monolith was just a computer."

"I've been involved in too much weird stuff," Eliot said carefully, "not to accept that there's things going on on this rock that I can't explain. Doesn't mean there isn't an explanation, just that I don't know it yet."

Sophie gestured elegantly. "I do magic on a daily basis," she said mildly. "I've been accused of that a few times, every time I'm done with a mark. That aside, wouldn't it be nice, wouldn't it be fun, to know there's a little bit of something wild and dangerous and unique in the world, like magic?"

"It would help," Nate burst out with tight control, "if we didn't keep calling it that."

"But it's Baba Yaga!" Parker protested. "That's magic, isn't it?"

"It's - Parker, why are you so hung up on this Baba Yaga thing?"

She blinked at him. "Who wouldn't be? A grandma that gives you gifts and prizes for being clever and tricky and mischievous? Who eats bad guys? That sounds like an awesome grandma."

Nate didn't sputter, but it was a close thing. Sophie and Eliot grinned.

"Parker, she eats people," Hardison protested.

Parker was polishing up her food. "There's people who deserve to get eaten," she shot back pragmatically.

Nate put his hands out. "Are we taking the job?"

The room went silent.

"They came after us, Nate." Eliot's voice was frighteningly even. "I do not like it when people come after us, even if it's by accident."

"They came after my museum," Parker muttered.

"I am dying to know how they keep blowing up my screens," Hardison admitted.

Nate looked at Sophie, who nodded minutely. He drew in a deep breath.

Magic's just science that no one's explained yet.

"Ok. We can't leap ahead, so we're going back. Eliot, Parker, we need that cylinder. Hardison, see if hard copy explodes, too. Print out the info, we'll just have to slog through it the old-fashioned way. Sophie." He ground his teeth minutely before sighing in defeat. "Do you know any 'magic' specialists?"

"No," she admitted readily. "But I know of one. He's even for hire." When Nate scoffed, her tone sharpened. "Nate, if you want the help, you're going to have to respect that the man's probably a professional in his field, just like we are. I don't know if he's the real thing, but he might be all we've got."

"Fine, fine," he grumbled. "Call him up."

"I can't, I don't know the man, I just know of him, and I don't feel comfortable chatting about Baba Yaga with a stranger over the phone."

"What, do you want to go talk to him in person?"

"Yes!" She gestured pointedly at the black screen.

Nate drew in a vast breath, held it, hissed it out. "Fine. Where is he?"

"Chicago."

"Alright. Let's go hire us a wizard."

[insurancenewsx]

Admiral Travel Insurance vs. Competitors: Which One Truly Has Your Back?

In this article, we will compare Admiral Travel Insurance with its competitors to determine which one truly has your back during your travels. When planning a trip, it’s essential to consider travel insurance to safeguard yourself against unexpected events. With numerous options available in the market, it can be overwhelming to choose the right travel insurance provider. Understanding the…

[rabbitcruiser]

Skyscraper Appreciation Day

Take a trip to the grandest skyscraper in your area and appreciate the architectural marvel, or appreciate an entire skyline from just outside a city.

Climb to the highest of man-made heights in observance and celebration of Skyscraper Appreciation Day!

History of Skyscraper Appreciation Day

Skyscraper Appreciation Day was initiated and founded by Dr. Tom Stevens. Interestingly, it was created so that the general public could admire the structural and architectural brilliance of skyscrapers. Furthermore, it also celebrates the triumph of reason, as well as man’s ability to construct industrial masterpieces that go far beyond expectations.

This important day is situated on the anniversary of the birth of one of architecture’s most important and famous names, William Van Alen. Back in 1883, this native of Brooklyn, New York was born and, after studying in Paris, Van Alen would eventually go on to design the famous, art-deco style Chrysler Building, which is one of New York City’s most iconic and well-known landmarks.

In today’s world, skyscrapers continue to push the limits of architecture, offering a wide range of features. For instance, Taipei 101, is the world’s tallest and largest green and sustainable building, while The Shard in London has a unique layout of a “vertical city”, where a person could theoretically live and never leave!

Skyscraper Appreciation Day offers a wide range of opportunities to learn more, join in on events, and generally have a soaring celebration in honor of these architectural feats!

How to Celebrate Skyscraper Appreciation Day

It might be a whole lot of fun to celebrate Skyscraper Appreciation Day by undertaking one or more of the following activities:

Visit a Skyscraper

In honor of Skyscraper Appreciation Day, an interesting activity would be to venture to a skyscraper, whether close to where you live or far away, and marvel at its architectural beauty. Cities all over the world can be visited in celebration of the day, giving a nod of appreciation to these feats of architectural mastery. Consider visiting one of these famous skyscrapers from around the globe:

Burj Khalifa, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Built in 2010, this one will stand as the tallest building in the world for more than a decade, at 2722 feet, holding at least 19 records.

One World Trade Center, New York City, USA. Officially the tallest building in the western hemisphere, this one was built in 2014 and stands at 1776 feet, as a nod to the year that the US gained her independence.

The Petronas Tower, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Not just a single, but a double, this one holds the record for the tallest twin tower in the world, joined by a skybridge at the 41st and 42nd floors.

Gran Torre Santiago, Santiago, Chile. The tallest building in South America was opened in 2013 and offers a postmodern style for its 62 floors.

Host a Skyscraper Themed Party

Have a skyscraper themed day where friends, family members or coworkers are encouraged to dress up as famous skyscrapers from around the world. This type of event is likely to get off the ground more for those who work at an architectural firm or with building contractors, but people with regular jobs can certainly try it out as well!

Learn Fun Facts About Skyscrapers

A super way to pay honor and respect on Skyscraper Appreciation Day would be to learn some fun facts to share in raising awareness for the day. Kids and adults alike will be interested in these bits of trivia about skyscrapers:

The world’s first skyscraper is considered to be the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, built in 1885.

The world’s fastest skyscraper elevator is located in the Shanghai Tower in China.

Certain skyscrapers can actually affect the weather, creating wind tunnels when multiple skyscrapers are built near each other.

Create a Skyscraper Themed Photo Collection

Folks who are avid travelers to cities, or who are photographers, might want to take this opportunity to sort through all of those favorite skyscraper photos and add them to the “Photos” section of the Skyscraper Appreciation Day Facebook page.

Source

[irctcofficial]

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[binicarsmenorca]

Scooter Rental in Menorca: The Best Way to Explore the Island on Two Wheels

Menorca, a Mediterranean gem, is known for its stunning beaches, charming villages, and scenic landscapes. While there are many ways to explore this beautiful island, scooter rental in Menorca stands out as one of the most convenient and exciting options. Riding a scooter allows you to navigate narrow streets, reach hidden gems, and experience the island’s beauty in an up-close and personal way.

Why Choose Scooter Rental in Menorca?

Opting for a scooter rental in Menorca comes with several advantages:

Ease of Access Scooters make it easy to access places where cars might struggle, such as narrow village lanes and off-the-beaten-path spots.

Cost-Effective Travel Renting a scooter is often more affordable than hiring a car, making it a budget-friendly choice for solo travelers and couples.

Flexibility and Freedom With a scooter, you can create your itinerary, take spontaneous detours, and explore areas that public transport doesn’t reach.

Eco-Friendly Option Scooters consume less fuel, making them a more sustainable way to travel around the island.

Best Places to Visit with a Scooter in Menorca

When you rent a scooter in Menorca, the possibilities for exploration are endless. Here are some must-visit destinations:

Cala Macarella and Cala Mitjana These iconic beaches are easier to reach with a scooter, offering turquoise waters and pristine sands.

Ciutadella Old Town Glide through the narrow cobbled streets, admire historic architecture, and enjoy a coffee at one of the quaint cafes.

Monte Toro Ride up to the highest point in Menorca for breathtaking panoramic views of the island.

Fornells A charming fishing village famous for its lobster stew and picturesque harbor.

Binibeca Vell Explore this whitewashed village, a photographer’s paradise, with ease on your scooter.

Tips for Renting a Scooter in Menorca

Before you start your two-wheeled adventure, keep these tips in mind:

Book in Advance During peak tourist season, scooter rentals in Menorca are in high demand. Reserve early to secure your ride.

Check the Insurance Ensure your rental includes insurance coverage for peace of mind during your travels.

Carry Essential Gear A helmet is mandatory, and wearing sunglasses and sunscreen will protect you from the sun and wind.

Know the Rules Familiarize yourself with local traffic laws and always park in designated areas to avoid fines.

Choose the Right Scooter Depending on your needs, opt for a scooter with enough power to handle longer rides and hilly terrains.

Where to Find Scooter Rentals in Menorca

Menorca offers plenty of options for scooter rentals, from Mahon to Ciutadella. Local rental shops provide flexible packages, ranging from hourly rates to full-day rentals. Many companies even offer delivery to your accommodation for added convenience.

Experience Menorca Like Never Before

Renting a scooter in Menorca lets you experience the island’s charm from a unique perspective. Feel the breeze as you ride along coastal roads, stop at secluded beaches, and immerse yourself in the vibrant local culture. Whether you're exploring solo or with a companion, a scooter is your ticket to a memorable Menorca adventure.

[abhiramiabii]

Hit the Road in Kochi: Exploring the City with Self-Drive Cars

Kochi, the "Queen of the Arabian Sea," is a vibrant city with a rich history and a unique blend of cultures. Exploring this beautiful city at your own pace offers a unique travel experience. Kochi self drive cars provide the ultimate freedom and flexibility to discover hidden gems, enjoy scenic routes, and create unforgettable memories.

Why Choose Self-Drive in Kochi?

Flexibility and Freedom: Plan your own itinerary, explore at your own pace, and deviate from the beaten path whenever you desire.

Convenience: Avoid the hassle of public transportation schedules and enjoy the comfort of your own vehicle.

Accessibility: Reach remote locations and off-the-beaten-path destinations that may not be easily accessible by public transport.

Enjoy the Scenic Route: Drive along the coast, explore the backwaters, and soak in the breathtaking views of the Kerala countryside.

Cost-Effective: For larger groups or families, self-driving can often be more cost-effective than hiring multiple taxis or relying on tour packages.

Tips for Self-Driving in Kochi:

Plan Your Route: Research your destinations beforehand and plan your route accordingly. Consider traffic conditions and potential road closures.

Familiarize Yourself with Local Traffic Rules: Be aware of local traffic rules and regulations, especially regarding parking and one-way streets.

Carry Essential Documents: Ensure you have all necessary documents, including your driver's license, vehicle registration, and insurance.

Stay Hydrated and Take Breaks: Drive safely and responsibly. Take regular breaks to avoid fatigue and stay hydrated, especially during the warmer months.

Respect Local Customs: Be mindful of local customs and traditions. Drive courteously and be considerate of other road users.

Choose the Right Vehicle: Select a vehicle that suits your needs and preferences. Consider factors like size, fuel efficiency, and ground clearance.

Popular Self-Drive Destinations Near Kochi:

Fort Kochi: Explore the historic streets, admire the Portuguese architecture, and visit the iconic Chinese fishing nets.

Mattancherry: Discover the vibrant Jewish Quarter and explore the stunning murals at the Mattancherry Palace.

Kumarakom: Escape to the serene backwaters and enjoy a relaxing houseboat cruise.

Munnar: Embark on a scenic drive through the breathtaking hills and enjoy the panoramic views of the tea plantations.

Self-Drive Car Rentals in Kochi:

Several reputable car rental companies operate in Kochi, offering a wide range of vehicles to choose from.

[bayinsurancefl]

5 Reasons To Enroll in Medical Supplement Plans in Cape Coral and St. Petersburg, FL

Buying an original Medicare plan after age 65 is common enough. Indeed, hundreds of retired people find Medicare a cost-effective healthcare plan to ensure a healthy and worry-free life post-retirement. Unfortunately, Medicare does not cover all the needs, forcing many individuals to dig into their pockets when the time comes to obtain healthcare as needed. Spending money on appropriate healthcare can be enormously expensive for seniors. There is a way out, though. Older people covered by the original Medicare plan may buy additional coverage as needed by enrolling in the most suitable medical supplement plans in Cape Coral and St. Petersburg, FL. ​ Knowing about the plan before deciding to be covered by it is crucial. Well, it is essential to know that Medicare Supplement Insurance, also known as Medigap, may be purchased in addition to the original Medicare Plans by contacting a private insurance company. It can enable one to afford the out-of-pocket costs related to the original Medicare Plan.

Enrolling in the original Medicare plans, such as Part A (Hospital Insurance) and Part B (Medical Insurance), is essential.  The person intending to buy Medigap is well advised to check various factors and be convinced before being enrolled for Medicare Supplement. Some of the facts that need to be kept in mind include the following: -

1. Filing the Gaps- While enrolling in the original Medicare Plan is a cost-effective way to obtain health care as and when needed, it is essential to cover the gaps in the plan that result in additional expenses. Medigap covers such gaps admirably, with the required out-of-pocket expenses being taken care of. The copayments, coinsurance, and deductibles are covered by Medicare Supplement, with the necessary outpatient services, skilled nursing care, and hospitalization costs also covered by the plan.

2. Insurance Providers- A Medigap Plan ensures receiving healthcare services from all doctors or facilities that accept Medicare Plans in the region. This is a massive plus for the insured persons with flexibility being ensured, unlike the Medicare Advantage, that have many network restrictions.

3. Standardized Plans- The plans may be varied, but they are standardized, with each plan identified by the letters of the alphabet A through F. Each plan includes diverse types of coverage, with the associated benefits remaining unaltered across all insurance carriers operating in the nation.

4. Renewability- The Medicare Supplement Plan remains valid if the premiums are paid in time. The insurance company does not have the power to cancel a policy in any circumstances. The enrolled individual continues to enjoy the benefits even if the health condition deteriorates with time. This aspect is regarded as advantageous due to the long-term security it provides.

5. Foreign Travel—Some Medigap Plans also include emergency healthcare services during foreign travel. This is unique coverage not provided by the original Medicare Plan.

The elderly groups find it difficult to get healthcare services due to the related expenses. Connecting with a company that provides cost-effective health insurance in Lakeland and Bradenton, FL, enables them to pick and choose the right plan and ensure they live a long and healthy life despite the escalating medical costs.