#all the medical staff are working in emergency mode right now

[ghost-bxrd]

The tags deserve to be seen !!!

Also can we pls take a moment to imagine how Bruce would stare mournfully at Jason the entire time, trying to drink in every single detail for when the concussion inevitably fades away?

And Jason is just getting more and more freaked out because Bruce keeps staring at him like a lunatic. And when he tries to move out of his field of vision, the guy’s heart monitor starts going crazy

Prompt:

Brucie Wayne gets into a mild accident in public (read-got hit by a car). And Batman would just walk it off (“it’s barely a bruise”), but Brucie obviously… can’t.

So he has to suffer the ordeal of having civilians call paramedics, getting fussed over, and having-

Having his dead son get into the back of the ambulance with him.

Oh- oh no. He must have hit his head worse than he thought. He thought he was past this…

[rebelliousstories]

Sins of the Father

Relationship: Luke Alvez x Reader

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Request: No

Warnings: Angst, Violence, Fluff

Word Count: 4,992

Main Masterlist: Here

Criminal Minds Masterlist: Here

Summary: When the victim of a crime shows up to a hospital, she only has one name on her lips as she dazes in and out; Luke.

John F. Kennedy said, “Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.”

Racing inside of a hospital in the blistering cold, there were medics and emergency room staff working desperately on a woman in a stretcher. A small boy who was crying out for his mom from the back of the ambulance. An oxygen mask covered her mouth but she kept trying to speak.

“Get the OR prepped now!” A nurse yelled, running alongside the gurney.

“Luke. Luke!” The woman pulled her mask off and fought with her nurse that was trying to put it back on. People moved out of their way as they ran down the hallways. As they were doing that, a small boy was being led by an EMT to the waiting area to wait with him. A woman in a suit, and a man in a polo showed up to the nurses station and showed their credentials before being pointed over at the waiting room.

“Buddy, I know that you’re scared, but I’m gonna wait right here till the police can show up and help you. Do you want a water?” The EMT tried to get the boy to open up, but he just curled in on himself.

“Excuse me,” the woman gained the attention of the older man, “we’re agents Prentiss and Alvez. May we speak with you for a moment?”

The man went to nod, but his eyes drifted back to the small child next to him. Luke stepped forward and crouched down in front of the small boy. The boy hesitantly looked towards the older man, and looked at him with recognition that the agent did not understand.

“Hey there. I’m Luke. Do you mind if I wait here with you?” He asked softly, waiting for the boy to acknowledge him. But the boy said nothing. The medic was ushered away by Emily, but Luke still sat on the floor in front of the boy to not crowd him in.

“You’re the one who treated the woman that was just admitted?” Emily asked, already going into business mode.

“Yeah. She was in rough shape when we found her and her son. I’ve seen so many things in my years, but if I never saw one of these guys victims again it would be too soon.” He shook his head as he dropped his eyes.

“Can you tell us where you found her? We know there was a 9-1-1 call that led you to an abandoned factory. Was there anything unusual about it?” She pressed. Her feyes flickered over to where her friend was still sitting near the boy.

“Um, she was bound with tape and rope. Her kid was holed up in a closet down the hall.” The man responded.

“This is very important, did you remove anything from her hands? Stamps, coins, even bugs that have been preserved?” Prentiss got her phone ready to make a call with whatever the EMT said.

“Cards. We gave the police a queen of hearts, jack of diamonds, and a uh… oh what was it,” he was thinking hard about what the other card was. “Oh, a king of clubs as well.”

“Thank you. You’ve been a big help.” She let the medic go and turned to where Luke was still trying to get through to the woman’s son.

“Ready and willing for you, my fair lady.” The cheery voice of one Miss Penelope Garcia chimed through the phone.

“Hey girl. Listen, the collector left a set of cards this time. I’m gonna have the Virginia P.D. send them over. But he only left three this time. He didn’t complete the set.” The older agent continued to stare in confusion at the duo in front of her while the clacking of keys filled the other line.

“Why wouldn’t he have completed the set? That’s like his whole thing.” Penelope was also staring confused now.

“I don’t know, but we do know that the three previous victims all had something that they hid and never claimed. Look into our Jane Doe and see if anyone matching her description has gone missing that has a child.” Emily instructed, noticing the smile passing over Luke’s face as the child looked at him again. He still had not said a word but he was responding.

“Oh she has a child? That is awful. Why do bad guys do bad things? Okay, I will see if anyone has gone missing in a tri-state region matching her description that has a child. Farewell fair g-woman!” And the line clicked off. Prentiss smiled but kept her distance from the to men in front of her and just watched them.

“Can you tell me your name bud? If I know your name, I could find out how to better help your mom.” Luke gently pried, finally moving to the chair next to the boy.

“Liam. My mom has a picture of you.” The boy admitted, turning his body fully to the man to his left.

“Okay Liam, what do you mean your mom has a picture of me? Like from the T.V. or computer?” He pried again, confusion forming deep in his face.

“No. In her necklace and in the frame in her drawer. She thinks that I don’t know, but I do.” Liam looked down at his feet as he kicked lightly.

“You’re very smart Liam. Do you know where she got those pictures?” Now, Luke was going away from the main objective.

“She’s had them forever,” he shrugged, “she doesn’t like talking about it with me. Mom just cries late at night. I think that’s why the man gave me this.”

“Gave you what, Liam?” He did not know how that little brain was able to comprehend and process everything that was happening; Luke’s brain was having a difficult time by himself.

“This.” Liam pulled down his shirt and showed something stapled to the inside. Luke helped him flip the edge over to reveal a card. Whipping a glove out of his pocket, Luke was grabbing the card, careful not to cause harm to the child. The name “Luke” stared back at him, which just added more confusion to his mind. The agent looked back to Emily who was calling to get an evidence kit to collect the card. Once the card was collected and sent off to the BAU, Luke continued to sit with Liam as he did not want to leave the boys side.

At the headquarters, Reid stared at the three cards that he currently had and thanked the agent that delivered him the fourth. There was a reason the unsub did not pair all for cards together like he should have. He was known as The Collector; he should have put them all together out of compulsion.

He placed all four cards on a board and just stared at them. This unsub paired the stamps together with years consecutively apart. Coins were in the same pattern, just with earlier years. And the bugs were the oldest but the dates on the back of the frames were earlier, but all together.

“Garcia got a name on our Jane Doe- what are you doing?” JJ asked, walking in to the round table room where Reid was staring at the pictures of items that were found at the scenes of the crime. He did not give her an answer but instead turned to his friend instead.

“I know why he’s choosing what he’s choosing to display. Who’s the latest?” Spencer jumped from thought to thought with surprising speed. Jennifer told him her name, and placed her photo where it needed to go on the board.

“Great. We need to get the team together.” He left to go track down his fellow teammates while JJ just stood there, trying to see what he saw in the pictures. In just a moment, JJ and Spencer stood with Rossi, Lewis, Simmons and Garcia while Alvez and Prentiss were on a conference call.

“I didn’t see it until the card came in, but please indulge me for a moment.” Spencer began, gaining the attention of those around him.

“So, when we’re young, what’s something that we can easily get to collect? Especially young boys?”

“Bugs.” Lewis offered.

“Exactly,” his hands were running wild as he spoke, “then when we’re old enough to make or get money, you usually collect by date. When you’re old enough to write, you might send letters and if you have the collecting tendency, you collect stamps. Finally, when you’re old enough to start playing cards, you might collect cards based off their patterns and designs.” After his explanation, Spencer was looking around and just hoping he had not lost them.

“So he’s telling the story of his life through the collectibles he leaves.” Rossi pointed out, feeling like there was more to be discovered.

“Exactly, but this is where it get’s interesting.” Reid pulled down the cards and laid them on the desk.

“On the front, all four of these cards look similar, however,” the cards were flipped, “on the back, only the two hearts match. The two kings don’t match each other or the hearts. They have completely different appearances.”

The team stood around as they thought about the explanation. It was not until a nurse came by that Luke’s attention was drawn away. He let Emily know that he was going to her, and left the team.

“She’s resting right now. There was some extensive damage but she should make a full recovery. You can go see her now.” The nurse led the way down the hall to where the woman lay in her hospital bed. Alvez thanked the nurse, and she went on her way. He looked in through the glass at the beaten woman inside and felt his throat close. Her voice still ran through his head everyday, even after all this time.

Luke walked inside the room, and let out a shaky breath at he watched her just lying there. She was staring off into nothingness and barely registered that there was another person in the room. With a clearing of his through, the agent brought her attention to him.

“Luke.” She whimpered, tears welling up at the mere sight of him.

“Hey reina.” He whispered, coming over to the side of the bed. She said nothing for a minute, before she finally burst out crying. The pain in her face flared up, yet she could not help but cry.

“I’m sorry, Luke. I’m so sorry.” Her words caused the man to hold her hand delicately as she continued to cry.

“You have nothing to be sorry about, sweetie. You did nothing to deserve this treatment.” Alvez tried to reassure her but she just kept shaking her head and crying.

“It is all my fault. I did this. This is my fault, Luke. I set him off.” Her breathing was starting to pick up and Luke knew he needed to act fast. He had enough of his friends from the army that developed panic attacks after what they saw to know when one was starting.

“You gotta calm down, reina. Breathe, you gotta breathe. Follow me. In and out. There you go. Try it again. Good job. Let’s try it again.” Luke led her through several exercises to help stave off the attack, and was glad to see her heart beat finally calming back down. Once she was able to catch her breath, the woman looked around, and was about to be sent into another tizzy.

“My son. Where’s my son? Where’s Liam?” Even though she tried to get up, the agent did not let her.

“Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay. Lay back down. Liam is with my coworker, Emily. They’re just outside in the waiting room.” He reassured her once more. She nodded as she settled back into her bed with Luke at her side.

“So, where are you working now,” came her ask. Her voice was small and weak than he had ever known.

“The Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico.” He answered, sitting down in the chair beside her bed.

“BAU, huh? Would have never thought you would go from the FTF to a desk job.” She teased, causing them both to chuckle.

“Hey, don’t wanna hear nothing. Little miss work from home author.” Alvez sent right back, making them chuckle again. But once they died down, the man turned solemn. “I’ve gotta ask some tough questions that I’d much rather not have Liam present for, if that’s okay?”

She nodded and let her self get comfortable in her bed first. Luke readjusted in his seat as well before he began.

“Do you know the man who did this to you?” He asked, watching the woman closely for any sign of discomfort.

“Yeah. My ex-boyfriend, Santiago.” Her eyes shifted away as she answered.

“Wait, Santi did this? I thought he was still in New York.” Luke could not catch a break on the confusion.

“He followed me here. When I broke up with you, Luke, I didn’t want to. But he said he would kill you and my parents if I didn’t. I couldn’t take that chance. He knows where all of you live.” She pleaded, looking back with tears in her eyes.

“It’s fine. You were only doing what you thought was right. Even though, I would have had someone investigate his threats for you. But sweetheart, that was five years ago. What have you been doing all this time? And why would he do this now?” Luke pressed, holding her hand in his own.

“I was taking care of my son. But I was tired of being controlled. I found out that your number hadn’t changed. I guess he found out cause one minute I’m packing Liam’s bag, and the next I’m tied down to a table in an abandoned building.” Her words tumbled out of her mouth uncontrollably.

“When we found Liam in the waiting room, he had a card stapled to his shirt. Now, that’s just his signature, right. Leaving something on his victims that is a collectible. But the cards weren’t collectible. They were all different except for the queen and jack. Two different kings that did not match. Does that have anything to do with Liam?” Luke noticed how she chewed her lip between her teeth and picked at her nails unconsciously. That was always her tell that she was hiding something. Now just what that something was the question. He called her name, and she looked him in the eyes. The woman was wishing that she had not done that.

“Who is Liam’s father?”

A knock at the window caused the pair to pull away and look to the source of the noise. Emily had arrived with Liam, who ran to his mother. Luke helped the young boy up, and followed the agent out of the room to discuss.

“This woman had the most rage shown to her, but not the son. Whoever this guy is, he is getting closer to his end game. But I can’t help feeling like we’re missing something.” Prentiss lamented, noticing how distant Luke was after her little speech.

“What is it?” She pried.

“I know who this guy is. We need protection detail stationed at her door until we catch him. He’ll come back and finish off the job.”

The two agents raced back to Quantico while on the phone with the team to fill them in. Inside the SUV, the air was so thick with tension you could cut it with a knife. Prentiss was not sure what was going on with Luke since they left the hospital, but he was silently staring out of the window. The man was lost in his thoughts as he thought about everything that had happened in the last decade.

When they made their way up the elevator to the sixth floor, Luke was silent through all of that. His next words would not come until he had barged his way into Garcia’s lair. The technical analyst let out a shriek as she was startled by the loud noise.

“Oh hello to you too. What can I do for you mister with the very scary look on his face that tells me something bad is about to happen?” Her voice trailed off as Alvez came to rest his hand on the bak of her chair and look over her shoulder to gaze at the screen.

“Garcia, pull up anything and everything you can on a Santiago Domingo from the Bronx. We went to the same high school. Send it over to the main screen.” Luke left as soon and as fast as he had entered which left the woman to scramble to get his information. Making his way into the round table room, Emily met him in there with determination.

“I got your text. What’s going on that you don’t want to fill the team in about yet? Is this about the latest victim in the hospital?” She wasted no time, and got right down to business.

“Yes,” he admitted with a deep sigh. “I wanted to tell you first before bringing the team up to speed.”

“Floor is yours.” She prompted.

Down in the bull pen, the rest of the agents watched through the blinds as the unit chief spoke with her agent. They were all trying to figure out who this guy was, but was not able to. However, no one missed the DMV photo that was pulled up on the big screen.

“What do you think they’re talking about in there?” Lewis pondered, sipping her coffee. She had lost track as to what number cup she was on for the day.

“Whatever it is, it doesn’t look good.” JJ replied, popping a chip in her mouth as she was finally able to take a break to eat. A noise prompted the rest of the team to turn their heads to the resident genius who was still focusing on the cards that were collected from the scene.

“Your IQ is whining so much I want to give it some cheese. What do you have, Reid?” Rossi teased, prompting a few chuckles.

“The cards. The other mismatched king, the king of spades, that’s the one that had Luke’s name on it but why?” Spencer held a confused look on his face as he tried to piece the puzzle together.

“Maybe the unsub knows Luke and wanted to taunt him. Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.” Simmons pointed out, but Reid only shook his head.

“It’s got to be more than that. The queen and jack are from the same suit, and the same deck. But only the kings are different in suit and deck, and they don’t match any other card that was recovered.” He continued his explanation.

“What’s your point?” Rossi asked.

“I’m not sure.” Reid concluded.

“Guys,” Emily stepped out and called their attention, “you’re gonna want to get in here.”

The team shuffled into the room, and all stood around the table while Luke was right in front of the screen. His face was solemn and defeated; a look that did not suit Luke Alvez very well.

“The man we’re looking for was my best friend in high school, Santiago Domingo. We called him Santi. He was a bit of an odd guy, but harmless for the most part. Came from a broken home and was a typical kleptomaniac. Anything he could get his hands on, he took.” Luke took a break and casted his eyes to the table. Having to dig up old memories was hard for him.

“Halfway through senior year there was a girl who transferred to our school. She had all the same classes as me so I got assigned one morning to help her around. I really liked this girl, I mean she was the total package. Smart, pretty, great sense of humor, wanted to help people, already had a job and another more permanent one set up after high school. Well, as time went on and she would hang around me and Santi, I ended up falling for her. I didn’t realize that Santi was in the same boat I was in.’

‘Prom came around and as much as I wanted to ask this girl out, Santi was asking me for advice on how to do it himself. So I helped him. He was the happiest I had ever seen him when she said yes. They made a really lovely couple. After high school, they stayed together. And I saw less and less of her, and anytime I did see her, she was always within arm length of Santi. Then the bruises came.”

Pictures flashed on the screen, and the whole team had to hold their breath. The woman’s face was covered with scrapes and marks. Her arms, chest, legs, hands, and feet were all in the same horrid condition. Garcia averted her eyes as they continued, but everyone else kept watching the slides.

“She reached out to me about twelve years ago, wanting to get out of the relationship but felt like she couldn’t. I got her to go to the police, testify against him in court, and got Santi put away for ten years. Two years later, we started dating once she felt like she could and we were happy. I planned on proposing to her, but before I could, she broke up with me. Left all of her stuff in our apartment, and was gone in the middle of the night. According to prison records, Santi only served four of his ten. Got out on good behavior. According to her, she had to break things off with me, otherwise he would have killed her parents, then me.” Luke concluded. The room was so silent, you could hear everyone’s breathing. No one said anything for a while. They just stood there and stayed silent.

“So how can we help find Santiago?” Emily asked, which pulled everyone else from their stupors.

“Garcia, where was he staying in town? If he’s doing all these murders, he’s got to be staying somewhere isolated that he can plan and execute everything.” Matt directed.

“Right, um. So Domingo’s last known address was…” her face dropped once the search result came back, “an apartment downtown. He’s been living on the same floor as Luke for the past six years.”

“No matter how stupid this guy may be, he’s not stupid enough to keep her, with a child on the same floor as Luke. He’s got to have another spot that he was holding them.” JJ countered, but it all slipped away for Alvez. Six years Santiago had known where he was and knew the routine.

“Look for anything registered in her name. That’s going to be where they’ve been living since leaving Luke.” As soon as Spencer said the magic words, Garcia had her fingers racing across her keys. Another ding.

“Okay so I’ve got an address, also downtown, but about five miles from the apartment. It’s a house registered in her name. They’ve been there for five years.” Penelope looked up at Luke, but he was just staring that table into the ground. If looks could kill, that table would be taking a world of abuse.

“So we go to his house. He was interrupted with her. He’ll wanna regroup before going with his next strike.” Luke made the move to leave the room to get ready but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

“Look, Luke. You are far too close to this case. Let us handle it. We need him alive, and with your relationship to the victim, you’ll be a liability.” Rossi gently spoke, as if hushing a cornered animal. The agent turned around and leveled his unit chief with a look. A look that said, “you signing off on this right now?”

“Go stay at the hospital with her until we catch Santiago. You’ll be better suited for that than this.” Emily did not miss the look of indignation that came across Alvez’ face. Even less so when it was paired with the stomping of boots as he stormed away.

Luke obeyed the order though. He drove silently to the hospital, wishing that he was out in the field taking down this guy. Once he was parked and the vehicle was shut off, he hit the steering wheel a couple times to let out his anger at the situation. Scrubbing his hands over his face, Alvez left the vehicle and made his way into the hospital. His team was out there taking down his childhood best friend without him. If anyone should be able to make that arrest, it should be Luke.

He kept thinking about this all the way to her room. And then his mind drifted to her son, Liam. The kid was just five years old and had almost lost his mom thanks to that man. Arriving at her room, Alvez noticed that the blinds were drawn and immediately had a bad feeling in his gut. Placing a hand on his firearm, he went into the room as quietly as possible.

“Thought I wouldn’t notice yo slipping right back into Mr. Perfect’s arms, huh?” It was Santiago. He had found her. Luke should not have been too shocked; Santiago needed to complete the collection.

“Please, don’t hurt us more than you have. Okay? Liam loves you. Don’t do this in front of him.” She was trying to shield her son, but with her condition and being in a hospital bed, that was very difficult.

“Don’t lie to me. I know he isn’t mine.” Santiago growled, waving around a knife.

“Santiago, put it down.” The man in question turned around, but his face relaxed to be almost jovial upon seeing the agent in the room.

“Well, look who we have here. Luke Alvez. Big bad FBI agent who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about where he comes from.” Domingo moved closer to the mother and son in the bed while moving his knife closer and closer. This prompted Luke to draw his gun, and kept it trained on the man in front of him.

“Santi, I don’t want to hurt you but I will. Let them go and drop the knife.” He pleaded, shifting his eyes to her in reassurance.

“Has she even told you,” came the question. When no response was given from anyone, Santiago burst out laughing in his spot. “Oh, she hasn’t. This is too perfect. You’re so clueless man.”

“Santi, please.” She begged, but cowered when the knife came closer to her and her son.

“No! Don’t you think he has the right to know? I mean, you wouldn’t be so heartless as to keep that from him would you?” He was teasing her, and still waving a knife around her son.

“Go on, tell him. You’ll feel better.” Santiago kept repeating the prompt over and over again, but she refused. Instead, she held her son close and waited for the nightmare to be over.

“Tell him!” He shouted, yanking Liam from his mom’s grasp. Both people cried out and tried to get to the other, but Santiago had other plans. With a knife held menacingly over the boys stomach, he prompted the woman again. This time much gentler. “Tell Luke.”

She looked at her son, who had tears coming down his face. He looked just as confused as the agent that she laid her eyes on next. Her vision was obscured by the tears that were pouring down her face as she tried to figure a way to get her son back.

“Luke, when I left to go to Santi, I was pregnant. I told him for years that Liam was his, but when he started growing proper hair, I couldn’t lie anymore. Liam is your son, Luke. I’m so sorry I hid that from you.” Her wails were overshadowed by Santiago’s whoops in delight.

“Doesn’t that feel so much better. How about you Luke? Feel any better knowing the truth?” Santiago teased again. The agent kept his gun and eyes hardened on the man but was quietly processing the information.

“Now where were we?” He raised his knife up as if to swing, and Luke did not think about it another second. Landing a bullet in the man’s shoulder, the agent swooped in and kicked the knife away from him as he grabbed the boy and hoisted him up. Santiago was writhing in agony on the ground, blood steadily pouring out, but Luke did not care. He set the young boy on the bed, and called it in.

In just a few minutes, his entire team was there. Luke kept himself busy for the time being with giving a statement, getting Santiago out of the room and filling his unit chief in. Thirty minutes later, he finally caught a long enough break to go back into the room where mother and son rested. Even though they were lying down, neither was too terribly tired. When she heard the door click, she waved the man over to sit on the chair beside them. Keeping a hand on the boy, she reached her other hand out to hold Luke’s.

“Was that true? What you said earlier.” He asked, begging for confirmation.

“Every word. He’s yours, Luke. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but he wouldn’t let me reach out to you once we knew for certain.” Liam sat up and faced the adults talking.

“Hey buddy. I’m your dad.” Luke choked out as tears came to his eyes. Without another word, Liam launched himself into his awaiting arms as Alvez cried. Bringing her into the fold, they all sat there crying and finally being together as a family.

“Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.” Charles R. Swindoll

[benjinara]

There was a commotion in the Emergency Department. Some high-profile patients had been brought in, in critical condition, as I had heard. With the case of the Cannibals going rampant around the country, I would not have been surprised if it were some esteemed political figures that had been the target of the Cannibal Terrorists, that explained the media and journalists flocked around the hospital premises.

The numbness that had been in my body ever since three weeks ago prohibited me from giving a damn about the whole thing. The world had wronged me, the world had taken away what mattered most to me. I couldn’t care less about some damned politician dying. They deserved it. They all deserved it.  

But… something felt off.

Out of curiosity to what was happening, I finally took the flight mode off from my phone.

Immediately, my theory was proved wrong.

21 missed calls. Three from Mr. Ekanayaka, seven from my wife –

– and eleven from Troy Fernando. Followed by a message “Come to ED, found them.”

My blood ran cold.

I couldn’t feel the weight of my head at that moment, and the room seemed to be swimming. Couldn’t he have elaborated a bit more? Found who? In what condition? Where?

In the heat of the moment, I called him. The first call I had taken in two weeks. There was beeping, the suspenseful ticking of the clock in the OPD waiting room, the silence in the air. Then, unexpectedly, my call was answered.

On the other line there was noises, hushed panic, a muffled siren, frantic beeping of machines, an emergency. A second later, a voice spoke into the receiver.

“Hello?”

“What’s happening?” My breath was caught in my throat, I had already guessed the answer.

There was a pause on the other end, an awkward moment of silence that brought my attention to the fact that I was trembling. Finally, in an aggressive retort, he replied,

“Doc, we found your son. Come to the Emergency Department right now.”

A beep and the line cut off.

They found my son.

My dead son.

I had no idea what came over me, fear, disbelief, hope, anxiety, remorse – it was a complete mix of opposing emotions that I couldn’t discern one thing. I barely felt myself rush to the elevator, jam my finger onto the downward arrow. A long second passed before the doors opened, and I rushed in, ignoring the nurse who gave me a confused look, quickly heading to the ground floor. Then out of the building, to the Emergency department.

There were nurses, physicians, emergency responders, all frantically working towards stabilizing the group critical patients that had been brought in. I pushed my way through the crowd, the confused patients who had been waiting at the ED, the rushing medical staff, trying to work my way to the Treatment Bay.

But I was stopped on my way, when I came face to face with someone coming in the opposite direction. He pulled me aside, into a quieter corner.

“He’s not here.”

“Then why the hell did you call me here?!” I yell frantically.

“He was here a few minutes ago, He’s in the ICU now.”

My legs almost gave away, and I had to jab my arm out and hang onto the wall to steady myself.

“Why… why is he in the ICU?” the words were barely a whisper.

Troy gave me a dirty look. “You tell me, sir. You’re the doctor.”

“This is my son you’re talking about – ” I caught hold of his shoulders aggressively. “WHERE IS HE?”

“The ICU.”

“THEN TAKE ME THERE!”

“No.” The firmness caught me off guard. “They are not allowing anyone else to see him.”

“Why not?! I am hospital staff, I am family!”

He shook off my grip, taking a step back. “And you believed he was dead.”

I… I didn’t know how to respond to that. I didn’t know how to react to any of the things that was happening. It was all happening too fast. Just yesterday, I had moved on. Just yesterday, I had decided that beating myself over what was gone was not worth it.

But today, my dead son was alive.

“Is it critical?” was all I could ask, in a dead, muted voice.

“He was tortured.”

My lips trembled, “By whom?”

Troy broke my gaze, gave a snort, a sarcastic smile, and shook his head.

“Rodrigo.”

Ah shit. Rodrigo.

That was the final straw. I could no longer hold myself together, and collapsed onto one of the metal benches. He eyed me with indifference, as if mocking the way I was falling apart.

For three weeks, I had isolated myself from my family, from my colleagues, from the entire world. I had tried to cope, with my eldest son’s death. Abducted in broad daylight, held ransom, and executed in cold blood.

It was her fault.

She was too much of a coward to make her move. My son had given his life for an entire team, and she had been too weak and afraid to hand herself over to save her own comrades. The Government had done nothing make her surrender. They had watched on, as time ran out.

It was their fault.

Or so I had thought.

“Rodrigo?” I whispered. “You mean Sunil?”

Troy folded his arms. “You know exactly who I mean.”

“It was… him?”

“It was him all along.”

A moment of pause.

Tears rolled out of my eyes, and a sob escaped my mouth. “Is he going to die?”

“I… I don’t know.” For the first time, a look of sadness replaced the irritation on his face. “I hope not.”

I finally snapped, and let the sobs take over. I cried, cried like a coward. My hands over my face in shame. Troy eyed me for a second, but left soon after. Leaving me alone to my useless self.

For three weeks, I had tried to shift the blame onto the government, onto the Cannibals, onto The Organization, onto Benushki. I had done nothing but indulge in self-pity, while my friend had turned my son’s life into a living hell.

I had been too caught up in denial, even though I knew, deep down, I was the root of his pain. I was always the root of his pain.

And just as I had thought I could finally move on, I was about to lose my son all over again.

--- Written by Benjinara (24/12/2023)

Note : This is actually some lore about my OC Aryan from Power Force hehe 😅 You can find more about him and my other characters on my Instagram

[little-red-hunk]

Pliability - When Emily met Chuck, Trent and Orange for this first time.

Wrote this little thing up a few days ago. It’s silly and short. Now, back to working on Chapter 14. Enjoy!

If you haven’t seen or read the main thing, its here. Check it out if you wanna read a Orange/Original Female Character (that could be reader insert if you want) with some slow burn, some fluff, some comedy and a whole lot of smut. 

Dr. Sampson had led Emily to catering where several crew were hanging around. He explained that this was the most popular spot in regards to mingling with coworkers and just resting. Taking in the scene, she recognized several people from her research watching the show. She spotted a man with long, dark hair pulled back with a hair tie, wearing a bandana around his forehead and black tank top and knew that was Trent. Her stomach dropped when she noticed the man in a light denim jacket with blond hair sitting across from him. She barely even registered that the doctor had continued to talk. 

“...And honestly, Emily, if you can’t find someone, nine times out of ten they are gonna be near catering,” he said. “Obviously, it’ll look different every week depending on the arena but the set up is basically the same.”

Emily just nodded and jotted it down on her clipboard. 

He introduced her to two wrestlers who she vaguely remembered seeing in her research: Jack Evans and his tag partner Angelico. They both smiled and said hello and Emily was a little surprised to hear an accent from Angelico. Sampson explained what her role was and that if he or Doc Chris weren’t available to reach out to her. A production assistant popped up next to them, apologized for interrupting and asked the two men if they had a minute to go over a match. They stood up and Emily automatically took a step back, looking up at Angelico, who was at least a foot taller than her. His partner was not quite as tall, but still taller than her. Which wasn’t saying much, as the nurse was only 5’1. 

She met another referee and two more producers before Sampson finally started to walk toward the table she had been watching from the corner of her eye. They stopped at the end of it and all three men turned their attention to them. The one she knew to be Chuck, was grinning at her, the apples of his cheeks light pink and Emily immediately focused on his cute, prominent dimples. Trent, the one with the bandana, was also smiling but much more subdued. And then there was Orange. Much like every minute of footage she watched during her research, his expression was neutral, his eyes hidden behind his trademark sunglasses and she wondered if he looked like this even when he wasn’t at work. 

“Hey guys! I want to introduce you to Emily Harris, Nurse Practitioner.  She’s going to be with us full time and will act as a backup in case of any emergencies where myself or Doc Chris aren’t available,” Sampson explained. 

Emily cleared her throat and switched into professional mode. “It’s nice to meet you!” she said happily while sticking her hand out for a shake. To her surprise, Orange stood up straight, slipped his glasses off and grasped her hand firmly. 

“Nice to meet you, too. I’m Jim.”

“Pfft, of course you suck up to medical staff,” Chuck stood up with a roll of his eyes but without any real malice. “Dustin. Nice to meet you,” he said, taking her hand. She panicked for a split second at the size difference, irrationally worried he might accidentally break it, but he just gave a nice easy squeeze and released. 

Trent also stood and Emily shook his hand as well. “Greg. Sup.”

Radio chatter got her attention and Doc Sampson answered it. “Be right back,” he said, stepping several feet away to answer the call. Which left her standing a little awkwardly while all three men sat back down. Orange slid his glasses back on, sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. 

“So…” she started, unsure what to say. “Uh- Chuck Taylor, Trent and Orange Cassidy, right?”

“Uh oh. We got a nurse mark over here,” Chuck laughed. 

Emily looked confused. “...no? My name is Emily.”

Chuck laughed again and even Orange cracked a smile. Trent shook his head and asked “How much do you know about the business?”

Emily wasn’t expecting any questions about her qualifications but she was happy to answer them. “Well, I did my undergrad at University of Michigan. Finished my doctorate there before moving to Chicago for med school…”

“No, not-I meant wrestling,” Trent interrupted.

Emily froze, immediately forgetting everything she had researched. “Oh my god. I’ve forgotten everything I’ve learned this month.” She confessed. She then said the first thing that she could remember that had anything to do with wrestling. “Oh! Uh-well-um, I know the Rock was a wrestler?” 

Orange snorted suddenly and all three men were laughing and Emily’s cheeks burned.

Chuck kicked out the chair across from him, next to Orange.  “Have a seat, nurse. Let’s chat.”

She sat down, folded her hands on the table and started bouncing her legs. “Am I in trouble?” she asked with a nervous chuckle. “Have mercy, please. It’s my first day.”

“No, no. You said everything you learned ‘this month.’ Did you know anything before that?” Chuck asked. Emily shook her head no. “How did you even get this job?” Chuck asked. 

She shrugged. “I was qualified and I applied? I mean, it seemed like a great opportunity. Getting to travel. Work on a TV show. Sounded exciting, ya know?” Emily cleared her throat. “I got hired two weeks ago, so I’ve been doing some research. I’ve watched every AEW show that’s aired. So that I could recognize a lot of the talent. That’s how I knew your stage names.”

“You learn anything else?” Orange asked softly and Emily’s heart thumped in her chest. 

“I know that everything is predetermined. And that you should never, ever call it fake,” she said matter-of-factly. “I spent a whole night reading the history of professional wrestling. Started with Wikipedia of course. Then a couple dozen academic articles over the next few days. Oh and I put a few books on my kindle. I got the first book by-shit what is his name? Nick Foley? His auto-biography.”

“Mick,” Chuck corrected. 

“Oh, sorry. Yeah. Mick Foley. But I haven’t had a chance to read that yet.”

“Wait. Did you say ‘a couple dozen’ articles?” Trent asked. 

“Yeah. I mean I know that’s not much, but I couldn’t find any reputable ones. A lot of the content out there seems to be written by, uh, enthusiastic…fans? And not experts.”

“That sounds about right,” Chuck nodded. “We call those people marks.”

Emily added the note to her clipboard.

“What are you writing?” Orange asked.

“Notes. Just whatever I’ve been told that I think is important,” she said. “I wrote ‘enthusiastic fans are marks’. Right?”

Chuck guffawed. “I mean basically, yeah.”

Doc Sampson called Emily’s name and motioned for her to join him. She nodded and went to join him but remembered one more thing they needed to know. “So, I’m also going to be helping the PT staff. I have a doctorate in physical therapy and it was what I did before I decided to go back for nursing. So feel free to reach out if you need anything. Advice, spotting. Sports massage. I’ll be filling in with all of that if for some reason we don’t have any PT’s available on show days.”

“You got it, nurse,” Chuck said with a wink. Emily blushed and looked away from Chuck to Orange, who was smiling slightly, which just made her flush harder. She had to get control of herself before they branded her the shy, easily embarrassed new girl. 

Not wanting to come on too heavy, she wet her lips before looking between Chuck and Trent. “It was nice meeting you. I’m sure I’ll see you guys around later.” She turned her attention to Orange, looked him up and down quickly and despite the fact he had his glasses on, she just knew he was watching her. “I look forward to working with you,” she said before walking away. 

[supernaturallyobsessedchic]

Emergency! Part 2

Part 2 – Accidents

Summary: Dean and Cas of Squad 51 discover Dr. Kline involved in a car accident. The car accident killed another driver involved, but orphans the daughter. The Reader has to cancel her and Dean’s date night for her to go into work. Squad 51 is on the rescue again, a house fire. The night begins to calm down, Dean is off finally and heads to the reader’s house for much needed R n R.

Warnings: Smut (P in V, Protected and Unprotected sex (always use a condom)), Language, Dirty talk, Car accidents, scary situations, mild angst, fluff

Word Count: 1,925

Mobile Masterlist

Emergency! Masterlist

a/n: The timing of these is not a daily event, it can bee weeks/months apart. Sadly, I’m jumping it ahead, I just don’t know how far ahead. Joys of me being creative.

~

They sat on his couch, starting out watching Netflix. Then it turned into a make out session.

Their lips danced with one another, their tongues gliding across one another.

Her hands guided down his chest and stomach.

The mere contact caused a moan to escape his throat to which she swallowed down.

They pulled away finally for air, their lips plump and swollen.

“If we keep this up, I’m not gonna last.”

“Neither am I, Dean. I’m getting to the point I want you in me, and fuck me so hard…”

His lips crashed into hers once again, only kissing her harshly quick. He pulled away.

“Keep talking dirty like that sweetheart, and maybe I will.” He growled.

“Fuck me Dean, I want you in me, now.”

He picked her up, kissing her again. Her legs wrapped around his middle as he carried her to his room.

“As you wish sweetheart.” He says between kisses.

 Jack Kline, one of Rampart Emergency hospital’s youngest doctors. He does specialize in surgeries, baby deliveries, and even orthopedics. He does a little of everything at the hospital.

He drove down a residential street to get to work. He approached a four way stop. The intersection was pretty empty. He was the only one there. He looked both ways, despite cars parked on the curbs, and the summer season with the trees low branches fully bloomed of vibrant green leaves, he could see no car coming down from either direction. Determining it clear, he slowly accelerates. Only to be hit on the passenger side, the impact hard enough to knock him out.

 Dean slowly pulled out of her, her legs trembling from the sheer force of her climax slowly calming down.

“You okay sweetheart?” Dean asked.

“Oh yeah. More than okay.” She hums.

He smiles, and works out of the used condom to throw it away.

He heard her phone vibrate on the nightstand next to them.

She groaned.

“I got it for you.” He says. Getting up to get it. He hit answer.

“Y/N Y/L/N’s phone, Dean speaking.” He answered.

“Hi, my name is Dr. Singer, tell Ms. Y/L/N we need her to come in if possible.”

“Sure thing, I’ll let her know.”

The phone call ended quickly.

“Work?” she asked.

“Yeah, Dr. Singer, they need you to come in.”

“He didn’t say why?”

“No, because I’m not you.”

“Well, I’ll shower really quick and then I better go.”

 She gone into work, heading for Bobby’s office.

“What’s up Bobby?” she asked walking in.

“I called you in here because, one someone called in and two…Jack was involved in a car accident.”

“How is he?”

“Just some bumps, bruises, minor cuts. Nothing major. But the other car, the driver died on the scene, and orphaned a seven-year-old girl.”

“Does he know?”

“He doesn’t. I almost don’t want to tell him because he will beat himself up over it.”

“We all beat ourselves up over loss. It’s normal. But he needs to know the accident wasn’t his fault. My brother’s a cop, he said the accident wasn’t his fault. That driver ran a stop sign and caused a chain reaction.”

“Still, you know how Dr. Kline can be.”

She nods.

“Now, your just doing Nurse Ruby’s 6am-6pm shift. She was scheduled to be in the ICU working the Eastern halls, you better head up there.”

“Will do, see you later.”

Bobby waves her off with a kind smile.

 Back at Station 51 the very next day, Dean came in at his usual time. So far a quiet morning.

“So how are you settling at the new place Cas?”

“It’s great, closer to the station, it has extra room. My neighbors are pretty friendly. One of them, Meg, she happens to work with Y/N at the hospital.”

“Wow, small world.”

“Yeah. How about you? How’d your date with Y/N go last night?”

“She had to go into work, a nurse called in. She called me on her break letting me know that. But the date went well.”

“Think there’ll be another date for you guys?”

“She and I are planning on seeing a movie tomorrow night since I’m off two days.”

“You two, I swear are meant to be.”

“We’ve only had two dates Cas, slow down.” Dean chuckled.

The stations alarm going off.

“Station 51, Squad 51, Station 64 Squad 64, and station 72, structure fire. 623 North Lions street.” Said over the alarm’s intercom.

“Here we go, another one.” Cas says, jumping into action, running to the squad truck.

“Another one.” Dean says. Getting in the driver seat roaring the engine to life and everyone in the station left to the location.

 “Jack, it was not your fault.” Bobby tried to soothe the young doctor.

“But a girl is orphaned because of me.”

“Because of her dad driving recklessly. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Y/N pitched in. “My brother said he ran a stop sign according to eyewitnesses in the area. He was speeding, and ran a stop sign.”

“We can fix wounds as if they were nothing. But how can we fix this? How can I fix this?”

“You’re not gonna let this go are you?” Bobby groaned.

“Not until I know someone can take care of this girl.”

“I’ll go make calls, you go home Kline, you need to rest.” Bobby insisted firmly.

“But—”

“Jack, go home. We got this.” Y/N says.

“Fine, just, call me. Keep me in the loop. Please.”

“We will, no go home and rest man.” Y/N says as Bobby left the office.

Jack left with a slump in his shoulders, as he walked back out of the hospital to take a cab home.

“Who told him? I knew this would happen if he found out.” Bobby asked.

“Think it was Abaddon. Don’t think she was thinking it through, as always.”

“How’d she find out in the first place?”

“She stood outside your office when I saw you the other day. My guess she overheard.”

“I’m gonna have a talk with her, she needs to watch it, or it could lead to major HIPPA Violations.”

“Alright, well, my shift is technically over, and my three day weekend starts. Need me for anything before I go?”

“No, go home, rest up. have a great weekend.”

“Bye Bobby, see you Monday.”

But she couldn’t make it out the door fast enough when a squad brought in a familiar face.

“Cas?!”

“We had a fire, a back draft shot him across the property.”

“What are his vitals?” she asked, kicking back into nurse mode.

“BP 130 over 85, breathing labored and shallow,” Dean began reading off of his chart. “Head injury sustained, pupils uneven and dilated.”

The emergency medical staff managed to cut Cas out of his clothes. And she saw a bruise right around his ribs.

“Possible broken ribs, get him x-rayed, and lets get other scans to find any bleeding. Especially of his head. Stat, go.” Y/N ordered.

The medical team taking Cas to radiology to get scans necessary to find anything else wrong so they can work on fixing him up.

Y/N turned her attention to Dean.

“Dean, are you okay?”

“He knocked me out of the way, Gabe opened a door, we thought the fire was under control. And he knocked me out of the way just as the backdraft happened.”

“Dean, he’s fine. Just banged up. It could have been worse, but it’s not. He’s fine.”

“Son,” John says, tearing the couple’s attention.

He saw Dean’s distraught expression as his son turned to face him.

“Y/N, can you take him home. I can have Michael drive the squad back to the station. But I don’t want him alone tonight.”

She nods. “I can do that Mr. Winchester.”

“Please, call me John. And thank you.”

She managed to guide Dean to her car, and she drove them to Dean’s house.

 “Jack, I have good news.” Bobby says.

“What’s that?”

“That girl, she has an aunt that lives up north. She’s coming down to pick up her niece. She got full custody of her yesterday.”

“That’s good, at least she has family to take care of her.”

“It is.”

“’Scuse me.” A sweet girl’s voice was heard behind the doctors.

“Hi sweetie, how are you doing?”

“Good, I heard I’m gonna live with my aunt. I’m just so happy and I just want to say thank you.”

“Thank you? Really?” Jack asked.

“Yes, my dad wasn’t a good dad. He was mad at me for getting an D on my report card, he hit me a few times and we were going home.”

“Did everyone in your family know your dad abused you like that?”

“Yes, my aunt always threatened to take me away from daddy if he hit me again or hurt me again.”

“Then I’m glad to know you’re going to be safe from here on out.” Jack says with a smile.

The girl smiles back and gives the young doctor a hug.

“Thank you again doctor.” She says sweetly.

“It’s no problem sweetheart.”

 Just as Y/N and Dean turned in for the night, Dean lied down flat on his back, staring blankly at the ceiling.

“Dean,” she says quietly. “You okay?”

“That could have been me.” He says just above a whisper.

“But it wasn’t, and you know he’s going to be fine. Meg updated me and Cas is going to be okay.”

He nods.

She turned towards Dean, kissing him on his cheek, then down to his jaw line.

He closed his eyes to her giving him this attention.

Just as her lips pulled away, he turned his head to her meeting her lips with his in a sweet kiss.

Their lips moved in perfect sync with each other.

Dean moved, hovering over her, his hips between her legs, humping against her clothed core. Pulling a moan out of her.

“I need you sweetheart.” He says quietly.

“I’m here baby, you’ll always have me.” She says, bringing him down to kiss her more, deepening the kiss.

He worked his boxers off of him, she also worked out of her panties.

He lined at her entrance, and gave her a glance.

“I’m on the pill, you’re good.”

He slowly pushed the head of his half hard cock through her soaking folds until he was fully seated in her.

Their lips meet again in a loving kiss as they slowly moved against each other. His hips guiding him out slightly with each thrust. Hitting her sweet spot with calculated and angled thrusts.

She met up with his slow pace, a thin sheen of sweat building on both of their faces and bodies.

His pace began to speed up just as his breathing picked up as well.

Her hips were beginning to jump out of rhythm.

Their lips pulled away, but only slightly, just ghosting over the surface as their breathing began to pick up faster.

“Dean,” she whined.

“I’m almost there, I got you baby girl.”

With three more thrusts her walls clamped down hard around him, milking him of his release. Their thrusts slowing, getting them through their high.

His hips came to a stop, still fully seating in her as he rested on his elbows, brushing her hair from her sweaty face.

“You okay?” He asked.

“I’m so good, you?”

“Better, now that I’m with you.”

“Get some rest Winchester, I’m not going anywhere.” She says, holding him close. Feeling him relax in her hold as they cuddled.

“I love you, Y/N.”

“I love you too Dean.”

~

Dean Girls:

@pandazombie69, @luci-in-trenchcoats, @supernatural-jackles, @becs-bunker, @evansrogerskitten, @winchesters-favorite-girl, @mlovesstories, @jayankles, @jeaniespiehs20, @akshi8278, @lyarr24, @anotherspnfanfic​, @flamencodiva​, 

~

Copying and reposting someone else’s content is plagiarism and illegal. This work is property of supernaturallyobsessedchic. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. These works contain material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of these works may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. An electronic reference link to the original posted work may be provided for purposes of promotion or assistance of publication by the readers discretion, if proper credits are given to the author in the re-post. 3/20/2021

[thatsgay-writes]

Trini Kwan x Reader Part 2

Summary: You are the white ranger.

Warnings: Light cursing?

"What the actual fuck?" You cringe at Trini's sentence, this is going a lot worse than you thought. Everyone else stood still and Trini's outburst, still confused on how you two know each other. "Trini I can explain, I swear." You say desperately, wanting to diffuse the situation as fast as possible. Trini walks up to you with a look of anger and starts poking her finger against your chest hard. "You've been keeping this from me the whole time! Is there anything else you've been lying about!?" You visibly gulp in fear, "Well I don't have a job, this where I go when I say I have a shift." For some reason, that just makes Trini angrier. "I'm leaving." She says before storming over to the above head water. Before she can jump you grab her hand. "Trini wait! You have to understand! I was not allowed to tell anyone about this stuff, you can't either! Don't you see where I'm coming from? If I wasn't the white ranger would you have told me about the Power Rangers?"

Trini knows the answer and knows she wouldn't have told you. "I... I just need some time... please." Trini never said please, so you just nod your head and give her a kiss on the cheek. "Just know that no matter what, I love you." You say giving her a watery smile. Her heart soars at your confession but she's feeling to many things at once to respond. She just nods her head before leaving. You growl in frustration, anger, and sadness. "Alpha 5, 30 putties please." "But y/-" You cut Alpha 5 off, "30 putties." Alpha 5 just nods before spawning 5 putties and pulling the rangers away.

*Major Time Skip to the final battle, plus a scene that happened during the Time Skip*

(During the camp fire thing, when Zack asks Trini if she had boyfriend troubles and then girlfriend trouble, she gives you a pointed look. The both of you haven't really confirmed or denied your relationship to the others and you both haven't talked since you revealed yourself as the white ranger.)

"Guys we need our zords! I don't think we can beat Goldar without them!" you yelled after finishing off the last of the putties. Everyone else agreed and called their zords to them before hopping in. "Alright, Kimberly attack from the air, Billy, Trini, and Zack pick a side to fight from so we can surround and over power Goldar. Y/n make sure everyone gets to safety, we don't need anyone getting stuck in the battle zone." "Aye Aye captain!" you joked before running off to clear out the rest of the civilians. Clearing them out took longer than you expected and when you got back, the scene was not pretty. All of your teammates are being pushed towards a deep pit. "Guys!" you yell in fear before sending your zord right at Goldar. Your zord gets stopped by Rita, "White Ranger! I have heard about your updated coin! Fight me so I can see it." You didn't want to stop to fight her, but she was the only thing standing in between you and goldar.

Before hopping out to fight her, you set your zord in acceleration mode so it runs right at goldar. Goldar ends up just backhanding it away. You grit your teeth in worry before turning to Rita in a fighting stance. Rita comes at you full force swinger her staff at your head. You dodge and pull out your double sided detachable scythe.

(Like this)

"Well that is new." Rita says with weird excitement. You detach the scythe and start swinging them both at her. Rita just spends her time dodging, trying to tired you out. When you do finally pause to take a second, she attacks instantly putting you on the defensive. You finally get a second wind before getting in a powerful hit, pushing Rita on her back. You put your scythes up to her neck. "Give up Rita. It's over." "Is it?" Rita asks as she smirks and looks over at Goldar. You follow her line of sight, only to watch your friends get pushed into the lava pit. "NO!" You freeze as your heart breaks. Jason, Kimberly, Zack, Billy... Trini... You forget about Rita for a second, heart breaking more as you think about your friends and girlfriend who are probably dead now. Before you can get your senses back, Rita is already making a move. She grabs one of your scythes from your hand. You turn towards her to say something, mouth wide open, before feeling your own scythe plunge into your stomach. Your eyes widen, "What-" you fall to your knees in pain.

Rita just smiles in delight at everything that just happened. "It's okay, you tried your hardest. Don't worry, you can have a front row seat to me destroying the Zeo crystal. Goldar!" Goldar turns to you before picking you up and roughly dropping you against your zord that had powered down after it got hit by Goldar. All you could do was watch as Rita walked towards the destroyed Kripy Kreme to retrieve the Zeo crystal. "No..." You say in pain and defeat, you lost. Before Rita can reach Krispy Kreme, the ground starts shaking. You groan in pain at the shaking but look around in confusion before your eyes widen. Coming out of the lava pit that you watched your friends fall in, was them in megazord form. "Holy shit..."

*Time skip to after battle*

"We did it!" Billy yelled in excitement as they watched Rita fly into space. They all get out of their zords. "I can't believe it!" Jason exclaims in agreement. "That was crazy yo!" Zack says before wrapping his arms around Jason and Billy's shoulders. Kimberly just laughs and rolls her eyes at the guys excitement. She looks at Trini who is just looking around. "Trini?" Kimberly says in concern, which catches the guys attention. "Are you okay?" Kimberly asks as she puts a hand on Trini's shoulder. "I don't see y/n. They wouldn't have left us like that, so where are they?" Trini says getting more worried by the second. The rest of the group starts looking around. "Look there's their zord, maybe they're around there." Zack said pointing to your tiger zord that was laying on it's side.

Trini took off in a sprint to look around your zord. She just had this terrible feeling in her stomach that wouldn't go away. The other rangers went to check and make sure no civilians were injured or stuck anywhere. Trini got to the zord and was by its back. She scanned the area as the she walked around the zord. "Come on y/n. Where did you—" Trini cuts herself off after she finds you limp on the ground, with your scythe still sticking out your stomach. "No no no no!" She runs over to you and kneels at your side, trying to shake you awake. "Come one y/n, open your eyes for me!" Trini looks around in a panic, she knows she needs to get the scythe out of your stomach so she can wrap the wound so it won't get infected. But she's just surrounded by rocks, concrete, and building pieces. "Guys I need help! Y/n is down and unconscious. I need something to wrap their stomach to stop any bleeding that may occur." At the sudden urgency in Trini's voice, all the rangers take off from what they were doing and ran towards your location.

People wore confused looks when the Power Rangers suddenly took off running and walked over to see what had happened. Many let out gasps of surprise at the sight of the yellow ranger holding the white ranger up. "Please does anyone have anything I can use to wrap around their stomach?" Trini was getting desperate at this point, you wouldn't wake up and she had no idea what to do. Your parents pushed to the front of the crowd and immediately ran to your side. "Me and my wife are doctors, we can help." Your father says as your mom runs to get bandages from the car, that she always kept for emergencies. The Power rangers look concerned but your father leans in to Trini's ear to whisper. "I know that's y/n. I was the white ranger before them." Trini nods in understanding and gives the rest of the rangers a nod. Your mom gets back with the bandages and kneels on the opposite side of your body, across from your father. "Okay, your going to need to hold their head when I pull the scythe out. It will cause a lot of pain and probably wake them up. After we wrap it you need to take them to Alpha 5, before I passed the coin down I updated Alpha 5's medical directory and the medical room on the ship." Trini nodded in understanding and laid your head in her lap. Your father turns to the other rangers, "I would suggest backing the crowd up, this won't be pretty." The power rangers listen to him and start ushering the crowd back.

"Okay on 3... 1... 2... 3!" Your father yells and yanks the scythe out of your stomach. Your eyes shoot open and you yell out in pain. You try to sit up but get held down by Trini. "It's okay, it's okay, everything will be okay." Trini kept saying over and over again as you cried. "Okay, we wrapped it as best as we can, you should get them to Alpha 5 fast." Your mom said before standing up and grabbing the wrap. Trini nodded before calling the rangers back over and having Zack carry you to Kimberly's zord, it being the smoothest to ride in because it flies. When they get back, Zack picks you up and to Alpha 5, who leads him to the medical room. Alpha 5 kicks the group out before getting to work. The group stands outside the room for a few minutes in silence before Trini starts sobbing. Kimberly immediately hugs her, letting her cry on her shoulder and whispers reassurances. "It's not okay!" Trini sobs out, "I never even said it back to them!" The group looks a little confused at that. Trini sniffles before answering their confused faces. "Me and y/n are dating. We have been for 6 months and that day they showed that they were the white ranger, they told me they loved me and I didn't say it back." The rangers gave her a look of sympathy before having a group hug.

An hour or two past, it felt like eternity for Trini, before Alpha 5 exits the medical room. Everybody stands up, "How are they?" "Y/n will make a full recovery. You may go in the room but they will be asleep for a little while." The group lets out a collective sigh of relief before walking into your room. As time passes, the rangers leave one by one before it's just Trini left. The whole time, she sat next to you holding your hand. You slowly start to wake up with a groan. This causes Trini to immediately sit up and rush to get water for you. When your eyes finally get use to the lights, you looks to your side to see Trini with a giant smile and holding a cup of water. She hands you the cup before taking your hand in hers and squeeze it. You squeeze it back to affirm that your awake and okay. You go to ask what happened, when Trini cuts you off.

"I love you too."

[cloudbattrolls]

Just Come Home

Ullane Wistim || Crown Clinic || Some Nights Prior

At first everything had gone on as close to usual as it could. She’d taught Cheran to do a few of Thrixe’s duties, let Friday handle more of the lab work despite her anxieties (it had gone surprisingly well, if anything she was a bit jealous of the bee-fly troll’s efficiency), and changed the clinic’s listing to temporarily only accepting emergency cases.

Queenpin was right about needing more staff. The robots could only pick up so much slack, and given she and Thrixe were also expected to take care of local company interests outside the clinic, things were getting stretched - and she didn’t want to overwork her employees. Friday might be troublesome at times, but she deserved rest as much as anyone else, and Cheran couldn’t be pressed too hard given the limitations of his leg. She didn’t mind paying them for overtime, but obviously they had limits.

She’d hit more of her own than she cared to admit lately. 

Cheran’s frown had become a frequent companion, and she had sighed and made herself stop - briefly - to drink and eat and stretch when his silent disapproval was aimed her way. In return, she had encouraged him to take breaks - though she knew by now that he slept in hibernation mode or not at all, odd man.

She was at the reception desk catching up on medical records and medication inventory when the door bell jingled and it opened. She looked up -

And startled.

He wore a violet shirt with gold trim, and black pants. His glowspots were brighter than usual, their light visible even from several feet away.

He didn’t have his gloves on.

She stared at his naked hands, not even caring how obvious she was being. He’d even painted his claws jade - when had that happened? Recently? Or was she only seeing it now?

Was she only seeing him now?

He looked…normal. Thrixe looked disconcertingly normal, not like her bodyguard at all. Not like a man who had just become an abomination.

The seadweller coughed and she snapped back to reality.

“Hi.” He said, hands now in his pockets. He looked as awkward as she felt.

“Hello.” She said slowly, standing up and walking out from behind the desk. Her ears flicked, and his fins fluttered.

“Queenpin said you went full horrorterror.”

She couldn’t help it. The words bubbled out of her like water from a fountain, and she winced as she saw him recoil, then sigh.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” He said firmly. “You’re not going to make me, no matter what. I don’t care if you have questions, I’m - I’m not one of your indigobirds or your spiders, I’m not a construct for you to pick apart and put back together when you’re done with me.

Akalimiya made me realize, and when I got put in jail - when I got chained up - at least they had a reason. At least I’d actually done something wrong! Not that I wanted to, did she tell you that? Did Queenpin bother? Does she even know or care why it happened or is she just like you?”

Ullane took a shuddering breath. She put a hand on the desk for support. She made herself look into his eyes, his angry violet eyes full of hurt and spite and wondering why, why, why?

“I’m sorry, Thrixe.”

He blinked, his fins pinning back.

“You never call me that.”

“I never wanted to.” The mediculler admitted. “I wanted…I made bad choices. Shouldn’t have let her do that to you. I shouldn’t have done those things to you.”

“And?” He said, surprise becoming disdain as his eyebrows arched, arms crossed.

She gritted her teeth. Was he really going to drag this out? Then she felt like ID. No. She wouldn’t be like the other yellowblood, unable to admit when she’d done wrong, giving a half-baked weak-willed apology at best. She was better than that.

“And it was wrong because - because I was wrong about you. Turning into a horrorterror wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for me. I let Akalimiya hurt you. Treated you like a bomb waiting to go off, can only blame myself when you did. I hurt you in little ways…hundreds of times, thousands, because I was afraid of you. I’m right to be afraid. But can’t keep treating you this way. Fear…fear’s not an excuse.”

Her voice rasped, unused to speaking so much at one time. She trembled, wishing her lusus was here so he could comfort her. She brushed the thought away - she had to face this herself, just as Thrixe had had to face everything himself.

The basket star troll was silent, his face unreadable aside from the barest twitching of his fin tips as he studied her.

“You mean it.” He said after a long pause, his voice resigned. She felt a brief flare of exasperation; of course she meant it! She’d been nothing but honest.

“All the times you treated people with respect or compassion or at least some mercy, even when we were extorting or sabotaging them. All the hits I took for you. All that time you only said thank you like it hurt. Like you couldn’t believe you had to say it. Don’t I look troll enough, Ullane? Don’t I act troll enough?”

His voice was angry but it cracked and the desperation flowed through, the begging of a man trying to chase something he wasn’t sure he could find, or if he did that it might vanish, slipping through his fingers like sand.

“Not when you use your powers.” She said quietly. “Not when you grew tendrils to force people back or snap their necks, not when you regrew your limbs or your brain like you did that night. You’re so much stronger than me, Thrixe, so powerful. Sometimes I catch you looking at something I can’t see, or tilting your head like you’re listening to things I can never hear.”

His gaze flicked to the side, fins going down slightly.

“Yes, I’m strange in some ways.” He admitted the words like they were painful, clawing their way up his throat. “Aren’t we all? Is it my fault I was hatched this way? I hate it as much as you do. They offered to take it away from me, you know. But when they started it hurt like nothing I can describe. I screamed to stop. I know it would have killed me.”

Ullane opened and closed her mouth, her tongue dry. What did she say? What could she say?

“Thrixe.” She whispered. Using his first name still felt strange on her tongue. Varzim, always she called him Varzim to keep that distance between them. Employee and boss. A tool and its user, nothing more.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

He laughed, short and sharp and humorless. “Didn’t I? Or do you just say that because I’d be no use to you anymore without it?”

She flinched.

“I guess I can’t blame you.” He murmured, toying with the end of his braid. “I wouldn’t be any use without it. You don’t need an artist, or a star watcher. You need medical serums and protection. That’s just how the world is.”

“Yes, things’re harsh.” She admitted. “I need you…but I don’t want you to suffer like that. You’re not just your regeneration. I’m not just my psi.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Queenpin wouldn’t have any use for you without it.”

“Queenpin can go to hell.” She spat the words without thinking and Thrixe’s fins fluttered in alarm.

“What? What did she say to you? What happened?”

The concern in his voice choked her up with guilt.

“Nothing.” She said. “Nothing I can talk about. I want to. But you know her.” The yellowblood waved her hands helplessly.

Thrixe studied her again, but nodded, his face much less hostile now. He even showed a trace of sympathy in the twist of his lips, the angle of his fins.

What good would it do to tell him? She didn’t know details. She didn’t know anything, and she wouldn’t until it was too late to help him.

Help him. Yes. She owed him a debt, she realized.

It was terrible to owe someone a debt - even if they didn’t expect to collect it from you. Especially when she had no idea what she was going to do.

“I’m sleeping in the lounge, if you don’t mind.” He said, his tone making it clear he didn’t much care if she did mind, but he still paused after taking a few steps, looking back at her as if for approval. His bare hands were still such an odd sight, his new clothes also jarring.

She nodded.

“Rest. There’s sopor patches. Won’t wake you, nothing urgent tomorrow.”

Nothing urgent she couldn’t handle herself.

He nodded back and walked down the hallway to the lounge, shutting the door behind him. She heard it click distantly.

She let out a long breath, moving her shoulders up and down to try and release some of their tension. Her tail was practically rigid, and she played with its tuft in her fingers, trying to loosen it up.

At least he was back. She had another chance.

She didn’t intend to waste it.

[i-am-out-of-my-vulcan-mind]

To Forgive and Forget - Chapter 10

😱😱 Well here it is!

I’ve finally finished! It’s only taken me nearly a year. Thank you to everyone who has been patient and stuck with me for the duration of this fic. I’m sorry for any pain I may have caused 😂

Big massive thanks to @lurkingwhump. Without you I never would have managed to complete a fic like this. Thank you for the hours of research and plotting. I glove you. 

Please let me know what you think ❤️

It had been a week since Jane had woken up in the ICU, a fortnight since she had been shot. Her levels had remained steady, the doctors happy with her progress. She had slept most of the time, trying to rest as much as possible to regain her strength. She and Kurt had spoken a little more about their argument, trying to clear the air as best as possible. 

Kurt had said “clean slate” but Jane still worried that their insecurities would lead them to destruction. 

She apologized again for sleeping with Clem while she had been on the run. Knowing how badly she had hurt Kurt by cheating on him, she wanted nothing more than to heal his pain, especially when it had taken her a couple of years to actually say how sorry she was. 

It was morning, Jane sat up in bed, a pillow between her ribcage and elbow for support. She was picking at her breakfast, waiting for Doctor Thompson to come in on his morning rounds. 

Kurt sat next to her side, frowning at her lack of effort on the food in front of her. She was yet to regain her appetite, still complaining of nausea and stomach upset. She was on antiemetics four times a day, but they barely seemed to scrape the surface. 

The first time she had tried to eat anything, she had ended up in a vortex of pain and sickness, as her stomach rejected the food. She had never felt agony like that before, and she was too anxious to try again. 

Doctor Thompson entered the room at that point, his own face mirroring Kurt’s concerned expression. 

“How’s my favourite patient this morning?” he asked, sitting on the end of the bed. 

Jane shrugged, wincing slightly at the gesture. She was still in a lot of discomfort, especially when she made any sudden movements. 

“Still not eating?” the doctor asked kindly, yet rhetorically. 

Jane chewed on her bottom lip, before shaking her head softly. 

“Jane, you really need to eat to regain your strength. You’re not going to heal if your body doesn’t have the fuel it needs.”

Jane sighed, feeling defeated. She wanted to get better, truly, but she was so worried that her body would reject the food again. The severe onslaught of pain that had come with the vomiting, had lasted a couple of hours. She just wasn’t sure she could handle that again.  

“I’m still just feeling sick.” she said in a small voice. 

The doctor reached out and placed his hand on her shin. The three of them had grown quite friendly over the last week, so the gesture was acceptable.  

“Jane if you don’t start eating, I’m afraid I’m going to have to put you on a feeding tube.”

Jane grimaced at that. The thought of how intrusive that would be had her shuddering internally. 

“I had come here in the hopes you had gotten your appetite back… your levels are remaining strong… you are showing a remarkable recovery rate. I was hoping to kick you out to gen pop today.” the doctor joked. 

Jane’s eyes widened at that. She knew that she would be in hospital for a while yet, but she desperately wanted to get out of the ICU. She wanted to be able to go outside, maybe go for a short walk - have a fricken shower. 

The doctor looked at her plate expectantly. 

Jane sighed, before picking up a piece of dry toast, and bringing it tentatively to her mouth. 

“Your stomach is going to be irritated for a start.” Doctor Thompson warned. “The more you eat, the less unwell you will feel.”

Jane took a small bite, chewing slowly. The toast tasted like saw dust in her mouth. She swallowed thickly, allowing the food to hit her stomach before taking another small bite. She did this until she had finished a whole piece of toast. 

Her stomach grumbled unhappily at the sudden intrusion of substance. 

She let out a long breath of air, trying to control her sudden queasiness. 

“Have some water.” the doctor said, handing her the cup. “It will help.”

She took a couple of mouthfuls, before laying back against the pillows, one hand resting on her upset belly. 

“You ok baby?” Kurt murmured, holding her other hand. 

Jane didn’t answer for a moment, before nodding. 

“I don’t think it’s going to make a reappearance.” she said, her voice relieved. 

The doctor nodded and then smiled. 

“Good. If you manage to eat your lunch without any mishaps, then I’ll look at moving you into the Progressive Care Unit.”

Jane reached out and took another drink of water. 

“Thank you.” she whispered, her exhaustion taking over. 

“Get some rest.” Doctor Thompson instructed, patting her on the leg again. “I’ll be back to see you this afternoon.”

Kurt stood and shook the Doctor’s hand. 

“Thanks doc.” he said, relieved. No amount of coaxing had encouraged Jane to eat, so he was thankful the doctor had found a way. 

He sat back beside his wife, taking her hand.

“Do you feel a bit better now you’ve eaten?” he asked softly. 

Jane nodded. The initial queasiness of ingesting her first solid food in days, seemed to be passing. 

He smiled warmly at her, leaning forward to kiss her on the forehead. 

The nurse came by at that point to administer her pain relief, antibiotics and antiemetics. 

He watched her eyes grow heavy - as they always did after her medication. 

“Rest, Jane.” he said softly. “Hopefully when you wake you’ll be able to move out of here.”

Jane smiled at that, before allowing herself to fall into a healing sleep, feeling better than she had in days. 

0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°

Kurt watched his wife sleeping, feeling proud as punch. She had managed to eat a light lunch and Doctor Thompson had happily transferred her to the Progressive Care Unit. She no longer needed to be in the ICU, but she still wasn’t quite ready to be moved to a standard surgical ward. She still needed to be monitored closely, and any sudden change would land her straight back in the ICU. 

He couldn’t keep the smile off of his face as he watched the steady rise and fall of her chest. They had removed the humidified oxygen, switching it for a standard nasal cannula. She looked peaceful in her sleep, her expression one of relief. 

Kurt knew that being transferred from the ICU had lifted the weight off of her chest. She liked to be able to see progress and this was a positive step forward. 

He felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. Pulling it out he looked at the caller ID, before quickly leaving the room to allow his wife to sleep. 

“Patterson.” he answered the phone. “What have you got for me.”

“Hey Kurt.” she replied. “First off, how's Jane doing?”

“Better.” Kurt said, and couldn’t help it when the corners of his mouth started lifting again. “They’ve transferred her out of the ICU, and she managed to eat something.”

He heard Patterson’s sigh of relief. 

“That’s great news.” she said softly. 

Kurt heard her hesitate on the end of the line. 

“What is it?” he asked, going into agent mode.

“I know who did the cover up on Anna Lee.”

“Ok?” he asked. He didn’t like the nervousness in her voice. 

“It was Mayfair.”

Kurt’s eyebrows shot up. 

“Mayfair?” he asked incredulously. 

“It was because of Daylight. I speculated at the start and from the intel I’ve gathered, Mayfair was using Daylight to gather information on the Mob. She was trying to get one up on them.”

“So what happened?” Kurt asked, pacing up the hallway. 

“Well when Daylight went bust, all the information she had gathered on Anna Lee could no longer be used… she had to clean everything up, fast. The files got redacted and Anna Lee was set free.”

Kurt exhaled slowly, sitting on a chair in the hallway and hung his head sadly. 

“I honestly think it was just bad timing.” Patterson replied quietly, hearing his sigh. “The system went down before she had gained enough legitimate intel to pin anything on her.”

Kurt sighed. 

“Thank you for letting me know.”

“I thought you deserved the truth.” Patterson said softly. “Give my best to Jane.” she said, before hanging up. 

Kurt pocketed his phone, running his hand over the scruff of his face. He needed a shave. The toll of the last few weeks was beginning to show. He could feel the fatigue settling like lead in his muscles. 

He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. So it had been Mayfair all along. He knew when he had seen Patterson’s face that morning that something had been up. 

Shaking his head, he decided he would deal with those feelings later. Right now he needed to get back to Jane. 

He walked back up the corridor, his blood running cold as he entered her room. The bed was empty, the blood pressure cuff, nasal cannula and monitors strewn across the bed. 

“Jane?” he called, moving further into the room. When he received no answer he felt his heart rate start to pick up. “Jane?” he said again. He walked across to the adjoining bathroom, opening the door quickly. 

Jane was lying unconscious and unmoving on the cold tile floor. 

“Jane!” he yelled, rushing to her side. He hit the emergency button on the bathroom wall before collapsing to his knees beside her. 

He reached out and cupped her cheek, trying to elicit a response from her. 

“Jane.” he murmured, stroking her eyebrow. 

A team of medical staff came pouring into the room, Kurt moving out of the way to let them work. 

“I don’t know what happened. I left the room to make a call and when I came back she was like this.” he relayed. What the hell had she been thinking, getting out of bed for the first time without assistance?

The doctor leading the team shone his penlight in her eyes. 

“Pupils are even and reactive, let's turn her on her side and raise her legs.  I think she’s just fainted and is having a bit of trouble coming back to us.”

They turned her gently into the recovery position, being careful not to pull at the suture sights. A nurse crouched on the ground, elevating Jane’s legs. 

A couple of painstaking moments later, Jane’s face contorted in pain. She groaned, before her breathing accelerated and she let out a wail of anguish. 

“Push 10mg of morphine.” the doctor instructed. “Jane? Can you hear me?” the doctor asked, leaning over her. 

Jane squeezed her eyes shut, trying to curl in on herself as her abdomen pulsed with pain. She had fallen onto her suture sites, the impact sending tendrils of white hot agony up her side. 

The nurse injected the morphine into Jane’s upper arm.  Kurt watched in horror as she writhed on the floor, screams of anguish escaping through her clenched teeth. 

He ached to go to her, but didn’t want to get in the way of the medical staff. He saw the doctor leaning over her, urging her to slow her breathing down and try to relax. 

It was a few painstaking minutes later, that the morphine finally seemed to start taking effect. Her wails died down to whimpers, and her body seemed to calm down a little, her muscles not so rigid. 

“Ok let’s get a transfer sheet under her. I’m not comfortable with her standing again so soon.” the doctor instructed his team. 

Kurt stood back in the room, watching the staff roll Jane onto the sheet. 

“On my count.” the doctor said, coming to a standing position. “Three, two, one.”  

In unison they lifted Jane from the bathroom floor, before manoeuvring her back into her room. 

She cried out in pain at the movement, before her eyes squeezed shut, and her mouth opened in a silent scream. 

They lay her on the bed gently, shuffling the sheet out from under her. The nurse helped prop her up on the pillow, before tucking the blankets back over her. 

“Alright Jane, we’re gonna take some obs, ok? After that if your pain hasn’t calmed down, we can give you a little bit more morphine.”

Jane nodded, before finally opening her eyes. “Kurt!” she whimpered, her eyes begging him to come closer. 

Kurt took that as the opening he had been waiting for, rushing to her side. He stepped up to her face, smoothing her hair back gently. 

“I’m here… I’m here.” he soothed. 

One nurse got to work, taking her blood pressure and temperature, while the other hooked her back up to the monitors and inserted her nasal cannula back into her nose. 

“What were you thinking?” he asked softly. 

Jane’s chin wobbled slightly, her eyes wide and vulnerable. 

“I n-needed to use the bathroom.” she got out in a small voice. 

Kurt frowned at that. She had had her catheter removed before being transferred to the PCU, in the hopes her body would start performing normal functions again. 

“Why didn’t you call?” he asked tenderly, though he already knew the answer. 

“I didn’t want to call the nurse for something so trivial.”

Kurt shook his head. 

“Oh, Jane.” he whispered. “They’re there to help.”

One of the nurses nodded in agreement. “He’s right you know.” she said kindly. “Anything you need, you just need to ask.”

Jane sighed, before grimacing in pain again. A small sob escaped her throat, making Kurt’s heart constrict. 

“Your vitals are a little high.” the doctor told them. “No more unassisted trips Ms Doe, or you will end up back in the ICU.”

Jane agreed by silent communication, trying to breathe through the pain. She couldn’t speak, the agony in her side throbbing with every beat of her accelerated heart. 

“Do you feel you need the second dose?” the doctor asked. 

Jane nodded, making eye contact with Kurt. The expression on his face broke her heart. She had yet again caused him pain by her own stupid actions. 

The nurse injected another, smaller dose of morphine into her IV. 

“You’ll hopefully be able to sleep the brunt of the pain off with that many painkillers on board.” the nurse said kindly, before capping the needle and moving off. 

Once Jane seemed to have settled down, the doctor checked her heart rate again. 

“Good. It’s a little lower. You just rest. I’ll be back to check on you in a little while.” he said, before making eye contact with Kurt. “Call if you need anything.” he said, giving Jane a pointed look. 

Kurt nodded his thanks, before returning his attention to his wife.

Already, the second dose of painkillers seemed to be taking effect, her face still contorted in pain, but her eyelids heavy. 

Kurt sat gently on the bed, the adrenaline seeping from his body, leaving him feeling a bit shaky himself. He continued to stroke her hair off her forehead, hoping his ministrations were helping to relax her. 

Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, before she let out a long breath of air and drifted off to sleep. 

Kurt closed his eyes in exhaustion and concern. 

What the hell was he going to do with her? 

0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°

Jane slept through the rest of the afternoon and through the next night, her body completely exhausted from the faint. 

Kurt stayed by her side all night, managing to get a couple of hours sleep in the armchair next to her bed. After her ordeal with the bathroom floor, there was no way he was going to let her out of his sight, until he was confident she was actually going to ask for help. 

She woke up the next morning, blinking against the morning light. 

“Hey.” Kurt murmured, leaning forward to kiss her good morning. 

Jane grimaced, her body still tender from falling the day before, but she managed a smile for her husband’s benefit. 

“How are you feeling?” he asked, though he could already guess by her pale complexion and the drawn features to her face. 

“Sore.” she admitted, shuffling on the bed to try and get more comfortable. 

“You’ll be due your meds shortly.” Kurt informed her, looking at his wrist watch. “And then you really need to try and eat breakfast. You missed dinner last night.”

Jane groaned at the mere thought of food. Her insides had started churning again after the onset of pain, reminding her of the agony she had felt the first time she had eaten and vomited. 

“Jane… you need to try.” Kurt encouraged. “I know how badly you don’t want to end up back in the ICU.”

Jane sighed, before meeting his eye. 

“I’ll try.” she rasped quietly. Her throat was raw, her voice husky from screaming the day before. 

A nurse came round, administering her medication into her IV line. Jane exhaled in relief when the pain meds and antiemetics started working. 

Her breakfast came shortly after and Jane couldn’t help but pull a face at the food in front of her. Her belly lurched, sending her into a fit of panic. 

“I don’t think I can.” she admonished. She looked up at Kurt with big sorrowful eyes. 

Kurt sighed, before standing. 

“That’s it.” he murmured, before walking to the door. “I’ll be back soon.”

Jane sat in her bed feeling dumbfounded. Had he really just walked out on her? She knew that his patience was starting to wear thin, but she never thought he would actually leave because she felt too unwell to eat. She knew he wanted her to get better with all his soul, and she did too, but the thought of eating with her already unsettled stomach, and then possibly being sick… she shuddered. 

Jane sat staring at the TV, flipping through the channels for what felt like hours. She had kept her promise and notified the nurse when she needed to use the bathroom. To her horror, because her blood pressure was still low, the nurse had brought her in a bed pan. They didn’t want her walking with her vitals the way they were and potentially passing out again. 

But she breathed through the embarrassment, knowing that if she didn’t, Kurt would probably kill her himself. 

It was almost midday when he arrived back in her room. 

“Kurt… I…” she cut herself off when she saw the two little visitors traipsing in behind her husband. “Fletcher!” she beamed, grinning from ear to ear. His little face made her heart swell. Peeking out from behind Fletcher, was a little girl, one who she had only seen in photographs. “You must be Tyler.” she said gently. 

The little girl nodded, before smiling back at Jane. 

“I thought you could use a little cheering up.” Kurt admitted. 

Jane looked up at her husband, biting the inside of her cheek to stop herself from crying. “Thank you.” she mouthed, before turning back to her small visitors. 

“I gots you something.” Fletcher said proudly, before placing a takeaway mug on Jane’s bedside table. “Broth.” he said proudly. 

“Oh… Fletcher… thank you. Maybe I’ll have it in a little while.” she said before looking up at Kurt. “Low blow.” she muttered at her husband. The fact that he had used a six year old to get her to eat, had her both wanting to laugh and cringe at the same time. 

Fletcher shook his head. 

“No… Mr Kurt said you have to eat it all up while we are here. He said you’re sick…”

Jane sighed. Of course Kurt would have told him that. He was using all the ammunition at his disposal. 

“Yes… my tummy’s just feeling a bit yucky.” she said softly, directing her attention back to the little boy. 

Fletcher looked up at her thoughtfully. 

“My mommy always used to make me broth when I was sick too… she said that even if I didn’t feel like it, I needed to eat it… so I could get better.” He scratched his head. “You need to get better… so you need to eat the broth.”

Jane eyed her husband wearily, before picking up the takeaway mug. “Alright then…” How could she say no to that face? Though she was incredibly concerned that things may go pear shaped. She didn’t want to scare the children if her body was to reject the food and send her into a screaming fit of torment. 

She opened the lid with shaky hands, before bringing the mug to her mouth. She took a sip, before swallowing thickly, stifling a groan as the broth hit her stomach and started bubbling. 

“You have to drink more.” Tyler piped up for the first time. 

Jane sighed, bringing the mug back to her lips. “If this goes wrong, you need to get them out of here quickly.” she muttered to Kurt, before taking another sip.

“You’ll be fine, Jane.” Kurt murmured, raising his eyebrows at his wife. He felt guilty that he had used the kids as a form of blackmail, he knew Jane wouldn’t be able to deny them, but he couldn’t see her going backwards, not this far into her recovery. 

Jane managed to drain, half of the mug, before Kurt saw her face turn three shade paler, a green hue tingeing her cheeks. “Drink some water.” he told her gently, handing her the cup. 

She looked incredibly uncomfortable, breathing shallowly as she tried to keep the broth inside of her. 

She took a couple of sips of water, before laying back onto the pillows, her eyes closed. “I’m done for now.” she said gently, not wanting to scare the kids, but also letting Kurt know that in no way was she going to try and consume more of the broth with her belly roiling the way that it was. 

“Was it nice?” Fletcher asked, reaching out to touch Jane’s arm. He started tracing the tattoos on her skin, making her smile. She opened her eyes to look at him, her nausea momentarily forgotten. 

“The best I’ve had.” 

Both Fletcher and Tyler broke out into massive grins. 

“We helped make it!” Tyler beamed, jumping up and down excitedly. 

“You did?” Jane asked, with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. She was growing tired, but seeing these two, made her feel happier than she had in days. 

A nurse entered the room at that point, holding a kidney fish full of vials. 

“Just here for a bit of blood.” she told them. 

Fletcher looked worriedly up at Jane. 

“Do… do you want me to go first?” he asked hesitantly, remembering how Jane had gone first when he had to have a test. 

The corners of Jane’s mouth lifted, before she shook her head gently. 

“No it’s ok. Thank you though! You’re very sweet.”

Fletcher beamed, turning to Tyler and whispering something in her ear. 

She looked up at Jane with wide eyes. 

“The lady that looks after us, told me I have to say thank you.” she said gently. “But I can’t remember what for.”  

Jane felt a mound of tension, that she didn’t even know she was holding, release from her shoulders. So Tyler really was none the wiser. She had been treated well enough while she had been kidnapped, that she had just thought she was just in another foster home. She sighed softly, smiling gently at the little girl. 

“You are most welcome.” 

She eyed her husband wearily, indicating that she wasn’t going to be able to hold on for much longer. 

“I like Miss Rebecca.” Fletcher piped up. “I hope we get to stay with her forever!” he said, jumping excitedly. 

“Me too!” Tyler giggled. 

Fletcher returned to tracing the lines on Jane’s arms, still just intrigued by the “drawings” as he had been the first time. 

“How about we say goodbye now, hmm?” Kurt suggested, seeing his wife’s eyes starting to droop. 

“Aww.” They both whined. Jane smiled in amusement. The innocence on their faces was so refreshing. 

“How about you come and see me again in a few days?” she suggested, knowing that it was going to be their little faces that helped her get through her recovery. 

“Ok!” They both said eagerly. 

“Goodbye Miss Jane!” Fletcher said loudly, before Tyler followed suit. 

“Goodbye.” Jane replied softly, waving at them. “Thank you for the broth.”

Both children grinned back at her, before waiting by the door for Kurt. Kurt leant forward, giving his wife a quick kiss on the forehead. 

“Thank you.” Jane said sincerely. Their visit had truly managed to cheer her up. She watched them leave, laying back into the pillows with a contented sigh. 

She drifted off quickly, the anxiety in her belly finally calm. 

0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°0°

One week later. 

Jane and Kurt sat outside in the hospital gardens. She had slowly built up the strength to be able to walk around the hospital corridors, and today Kurt had surprised her by taking her outside for the first time in three weeks. 

They had walked out of the hospital slowly, Kurt pushing a wheelchair in case she got too tired. She had made it out to the garden without a hitch and was now sitting in complete content, with the sun on her face, the breeze running through her hair. 

She let out a peaceful sigh, before opening her eyes, to see her husband looking at her. 

“What?” she asked self consciously. 

“Nothing… you’re just really beautiful.”

Jane felt herself blush. Even after all these years, he could still get a rise out of her, just by paying her a simple compliment. 

“I’m so thankful that you are ok.” he added seriously. “I don’t… I don’t know what I would have done if…” he choked on the words, suddenly not able to speak. 

Jane reached out and took his hand. 

“But I didn’t.” she finished. “We are both ok… Fletcher and Tyler are ok… everything worked out.”

He took a shuddering breath in, before releasing it slowly. “I’ll never take anything for granted again.” he said gently. 

Jane hung her head. “I’ll never take you for granted again.”

Kurt cupped her chin, forcing her to look at him. 

“Clean slate remember. Forgive and forget.”

Jane smiled softly, bringing her hand up to rest against his own. 

“Forgive and forget.” she repeated, moving their hands down so they were covering her heart. “Now… when do I get to go home?”

Kurt chuckled at that. “Soon, my love. Soon.”

He pulled her against him, holding her close. He was so thankful he would get to take her home at all, that he wasn’t in a great rush to get her there. He needed her to rest and to heal, so they could continue their lives together. 

They needed to continue saving the world, by solving as many cases as possible and taking down one bad guy at a time. 

This was their second chance… and neither of them would forget it. 

fin

[liamrysandme]

Hurt

Part One

(I broke this up into a couple parts because I didn’t want this to be too long) 

A/N #1: I’m participating in @julychoiceschallenge. The prompt is: Hurt 

A/N #2: This is my first fic for Open Heart and just my second fic so far! 

A/N #3: I’m currently doing my second year of residency so I really wanted to write a medical oriented fic! 

All characters belong to Pixelberry 

Book: Open Heart 

Paring: Ethan x F!MC 

Word count: 1624 

Warnings: Head injury.

It was safe to say that the day had started off a little unusually. Casey had just needed to assist in sedating a patient who had become extremely violent, who was not only a danger to himself but the staff around him. Somewhere during the madness, he had managed to rip Casey’s badge off, and now she was currently searching for it.

“Something wrong?” Danny asked as he removed the pair of purple gloves and disposed of them in the trash. 

“My badge,” She explained, continuing to glance around the room but not seeing it anywhere. 

Danny quickly survived the room then pointed to it under the bed. “There. It’s under the bed. Do you see it?” 

“Yep,” She nodded. Danny hurriedly scurried out of the room when someone yelled for him. 

Casey walked over to the bed and got down onto her knees. She tried to reach her badge by it was too far under the bed and her arms were just too short. She got down onto her stomach and slid under the bed until she could grab hold of her ID. As she was sliding out Casey misjudged how far under the bed she had actually gone, thinking she was out she tried to get up and ended up banging her head on metal like bar under the bed. Casey grabbed hold of the back of her neck, cursing and groaning. 

“Ow! You little S-” 

“What are you doing?” Jackie interrupted. 

“Nothing,” Casey insisted as she slid out from under the back and back up to her feet. 

Jackie stepped forward as Casey stumbled slightly. She caught her balance by placing on hand on the bed the other over the sore spot on the back of her head- no doubt where a bruise was starting to form.

 “Are you okay?” 

Casey nodded, “Yep, I just stood up too quickly.” Casey let her hand back from her head back down to her side and gave Jackie a not so convincing smile. 

Jackie nodded and soon the two doctors went their own way. She felt fine, her head was still a little painful but that was it. It was just a little bump. 

For sometime after, Casey continued to treat patients and in that time met up with the rest of the diagnostic team to discuss a patient who was exhibiting some strange and unusual symptoms.

Soon Casey’s  break rolled round. She had noticed over the hours that she had started to have a headache. The fluorescent lights above her seemed blinding. It almost hurt her to look up as she made her way through the hospital corridors. 

She was just about to pass a storage closet when she felt like she was going to puke. She pushed the door open and slipped in, dropping down into her knees in front of a bucket just by the door.  She grabbed hold of the bucket to pull it closer as she emptied her stomach. Craning her neck over the bucket made her realise just how stiff it was. Maybe she somehow pulled a muscle. She put a hand to her neck to see if rubbing it would get rid of some of the resistance but it didn’t. She moved her hand up to the back of her head where she had bumped it earlier. She winced when her fingers made contact with the goose-egg shaped hematoma. 

Casey started thinking over her symptoms and anxiety pulsed through her veins. 

Vomiting. 

Headache. 

Sensitivity to light. 

Maybe, It’s a concussion, she thought to herself. Casey’s never felt this way before. The whole array of diagnoses definitely wasn't helping her building anxiety. 

The pain was getting worse and the almost pressure like feeling in her head was getting stronger. 

She wanted Ethan. 

Casey reached into her pocket in her scrubs and pulled out her phone. The light stung her eyes and made the aching feeling in her head worse. She turned the brightness down and searched through her contacts. Her finger hovered over her Ethan- her boyfriend's contact but she decided against it. He’s already stressed out and she didn’t want to cause any more unnecessary stress for him. Not trusting herself to speak and fearing that she’d puke again, Casey typed out a quick text to Bryce instead.

++

Bryce was standing by the nurse’s station taking with Sienna when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He took his phone out, eyebrows creasing in concern, and confused at the text from Casey asking him to go to a storage closet.

"Something serious?" Sienna inquired as she noted the change in Bryce’s demeanour.

"Uh, it's Case," he replied hesitantly. 

This was out of the ordinary behaviour for their friend which had them both on high alert. They were both able to sense each other’s worry. Without either of them needing to say another word, they took off to find their friend. Something is wrong- they both just knew it. 

++

Casey leaned back against a wall, sitting in pure darkness. The light hurt too much. The pain wasn’t relenting. It hurt so badly that she wanted to cry. 

She couldn't think of anything besides the deafening pain and  that she still felt sick. Casey scooted back toward the bucket and threw up. 

Just outside, Bryce and Sienna were able to her Casey gagging and retching and pushed the door open- the light that poured in only making her headache worsen. 

“Casey!” Sienna called. The pair come in, Sienna standing by the door to hold it open and Bryce kneeling in front of Casey as she stopped being sick. 

“Case?” Bryce asked. 

Casey’s hands came to rest on her head. Messaging her temple as an attempt to get the debilitating pain to go away but nothing helped. “M-my head...I-” 

Sienna and Bryce both took notice of the faraway look in her eyes and her slurring words. They were right- something is very, very wrong. 

Bryce turned to Sienna, “We need to get her to the ER.” Sienna nodded, “Can you go and grab a wheelchair?” 

Sienna nodded again. She used the puke filled bucket to prop the door open and took off in search of a wheelchair. 

"Case, we're gonna get you to the ER, okay?" Bryce explained. He got to his feet then helped Casey up. He could see how unsteady she is on her feet by how much she stumbled as they take a couple of steps. They just get into the doorway when she stops. “What’s wrong?” 

Her gaze looked distant and panicked. “Bry-” She tried but finding and forming words seemed more difficult than it used to be. “S-something’s wrong.” 

The way she was acting. The way she was slowly starting to grow less responsive and confused had Bryce panicking. He just didn’t understand what was going on and Casey was too out of it to explain to him that she’d hit her head, felt dizzy, and really weird. 

“Case, talk to me. How are you feeling?” 

"I hi-" Case started but suddenly stopped, her eyes wandering away from Bryce. Casey’s muscles tensed up and she started to fall. 

“Whoa! Whoa!” Bryce called as he leaped forward to grab her before she could fall. Just then, Sienna arrived back pushing a wheelchair that she quickly abandoned to rush to Casey’s side. Together, they slowly lowered her onto the floor. As they got her to the floor, laying down Casey started to jerk.

"She's seizing!" Sienna said in shock, pulling her onto her side with Bryce’s help. Bryce requested Sienna go and get some help and to page Ethan, so she dashed out of the room, leaving Bryce alone with his seizing friend.

What is going on? He thought to himself.  He wracked his brain. Come on, Bryce what are her symptoms? What have we got- Headaches, Vomiting, Confusion, Seizures, and an otherwise completely healthy young woman...

Bryce was now in full blown panic mode. He now understands why doctors aren’t allowed to treat friends and family- his judgement is clouded. 

Headache 

Confusion 

Vomiting 

Seizures 

Meningitis? 

Just then Sienna arrived back, a syringe in hand, a small group of nurses and a gurney behind her. She got back down onto her knees beside them both.“Can you hold her arm?” Sienna requested. Bryce gently held her arm in place, careful not to hurt her. “Okay, five of diazepam going in.” Sienna quickly administered the drug and within seconds, Casey’s body started to relax. 

Bryce, Sienna, and the band of nurses all made quick work of getting Casey on the gurney and toward the elevator. 

“Casey? Case?” Bryce called, trying to wake her. “Casey, can you hear me?” He gave her sternum a quick rub with his knuckles. She weakly tried to get away from him, confused, scared, and too out of it to understand what was happening. 

“She post-ictal,” Sienna mentioned once they entered the elevator. 

“Yeah,” Bryce agreed. He placed what was supposed to be a comforting hand on her shoulder but she took it a different way and tried to squirm away. Still not aware enough to understand what’s happening and who the person touching her is. “Casey, it's okay," Bryce comforted her quickly. "You're okay.”  

Casey grew drowsier and her eyes fluttered shut again. Bryce immediately took notice of her lack of consciousness. He shook her shoulder by got no response. “Casey?” Again, no response. 

Bryce turned to Sienna with a panicked filled gaze. “She’s not waking up,” he panicked.

 They both turn to the opening doors when the elevator dinged. They quickly push the gurney out of the elevator and into the emergency room. 

______________

Here’s a medical lowdown! I used a few different terms in this fic and I don’t wanna confuse anyone. 

Hematoma, aka bruise- Usually when some say  ‘hematoma’ instead of a bruise is because Hematomas are commonly associated with being a 3D bump- like an egg shape kinda thing. Hematomas appear frequently on the head because of the many, many blood vessels your brain has. All in all, it’s just a fancy way of saying a 3D bruise. 

The fluorescent lights above her seemed blinding. It hurt her to look up.  Sensitivity to light, (Photophobia)  is common after a head injury! 

Casey’s muscles tensed up and she started to fall. When someone has a syncopal episode (when someone faints) They fall with their eyes shut but that’s not what’s happening here. Casey’s body stiffens with her eyes open. That’s because she’s not having a syncopal episode but rather this is the first stage of a tonic-clonic seizure. Tonic- meaning stiffening and Clonic meaning jerking or shaking. 

Five of diazepam going in- Dizapam or lorazepam are commonly used to stop a seizure in high doses although sometimes Benzo’s are prescribed in lower doses for anxiety. 

Maybe meningitis? Bryce and Sienna suspect meningitis because of her worrying symptoms when combined together. 

Vomiting. 

Headache 

Seizures 

Confusion 

And others are symptoms of meningitis and because neither of them know that Casey has suffered a head injury it’s a logical, educated assumption. I’m sure I’d come to the same possible conclusion.

Sternum rub (sometimes referred to as a sternal rub) - If someone is unconscious painful stimuli can wake the person. A sternal rub really hurts and sometimes leaves a bruise. It just means rubbing your breastbone. 

Post-ictal- This is just the period after a seizure when the brain is trying to recover. People react very differently. In this case, Casey tries to fight against Bryce which is definitely normal. People are often combative during this period. 

[fallenfurther]

A drop into silence - Part 2

I’m lucky I had an idea on how I could fix Scott’s arm because apparently I can’t leave him pierced, broken and attached to a walkway with the possibility of losing his and and never flying again over his head. I’m also hoping this sticks to my current plan as I don’t need another multi-chapter WIP on my conscious. (I still have two others from @gumnut-logic‘s previous challenge to finish)  Part 1. Enjoy 

**********

Virgil clambered along the path following the point on his pad. The little robot beeped behind him as it towed the hoverstretcher. He'd had to wait for John to confirm the risk of another explosion was minimal. Scott had managed to cut off major areas of the site, so the debris was limited to building vicinity. His brother had saved countless lives by putting his own in harm’s way. John hadn't sounded too concerned about Scott, though the lack of any verbal response was worrying. It made Virgil more determined to get to his brother fast. The twisted metal of the building wasn't helping though. Virgil carefully cut through it. He was above the tank Scott was in. Shining his high beam through the gap, he quickly spotted the blue of his brother’s uniform. Virgil's heart stilled. Scott rarely sat still, let alone lie down to wait. Various medical conditions started flying through his head as he tried to assess the situation. He sidestepped, trying to get a better view. The gangway was torn and bent but it still looked sturdy. There was a larger hole of twisted metal behind him and Virgil cut some of the sharp edges away, leaving behind a crude ladder-like shape. Carefully he climbed onto the gangway, pushing his foot against it first to test its strength. The metal groaned as it took his weight. With gentle steps Virgil headed closer to the form of his brother. A glance reassured Virgil only for that reassurance to be shattered when Scott's left arm came into view.

"V-Virgil?

Scott's voice was a gasp and Virgil could hear the pain he was fighting. The fact that the stubborn man was conscious with such an injury was impressive. The rest of Scott's body appeared unharmed. He'd come remarkably close to being crushed, and Virgil noted that it was still a risk, but the reason Scott couldn't move was his arm. Virgil crouched as best he could next to his brother.

"I'm going to give you some pain relief."

A nod was all Virgil got in response. The laser cutter made light work of the material covering Scott's right arm, and his own nimble fingers had a cannula inserted safely into his brother's arm. Virgil had the strongest painkiller in his hand and carefully measured out the right dose for his brother. It helped that he had only done Scott's last physical examination last week. Gently pushing the drugs into Scott's system, it didn't take long for Scott to sag and release a sigh as it took effect. How much pain Scott had been tolerating, Virgil would never know.

With the painkillers getting to work, Virgil moved closer to Scott's left arm. The sad look in Scott's eyes gave away how he felt. Virgil could give no comfort or reassurances, knowing for Scott it was worse to lie. The arm had been impaled at multiple points, some spikes protruding all the way through, others going in an unknown depth. At least one closed fracture which Virgil needed to stabilise. He was going to have to be inventive.

"I'm going to cut you off the metal, then try get this as straight as possible. It might still hurt something awful."

"Just do what has to be done."

The grim response came with an air of resignation. Scott understood there might be a need to tourniquet the arm which would almost definitely lead to amputation. Virgil slipped the small cutting laser from his baldric and started cutting the metal prongs. They cut with ease, though supporting the arm was difficult from his current position. Once freed from the metal, Virgil held the arm to Scott's side, hoping his suit could withstand any sharp edges.

"I'm going to roll you in Three...Two...One."

With a swift sure movement and Scott was on his back. There was a small risk of spinal injury, so a spinal board was slipped under Scott and a brace secured around his neck. The lack of protest from the older man was unsettling. A cooperative Scott didn't bode well. Now on the board, Virgil slid Scott along the gangway to where it was more stable, and he could have easy access to Scott's arm. The sooner it was stabilised the better. There was no way a traditional splint was going to fit, but tight bindings would help stem the bleeding and help the arm stiff and reduce further damage.

"Scott, I'm going to manipulate your arm. This will hurt."

The blank expression and numb look in Scott's eyes as he nodded sent a chill down Virgil's spine. Turning his head to the task in hand, he took a deep breath and wrapped his gloves fingers around the arm. Another steady breath and Virgil manipulated the limb until the bones were as close to their original alignment as he could make them. Scott gasped but that was his only response. The pain medication was working. Some of the wounds were bleeding more readily now, and Virgil worked quickly to wrap bandages around them, stemming the bleeding and securing the metal for the journey. Placed the arm by Scott's side and strategically placed the strap to stop the arm from moving in transit. Virgil beckoned to Mini-MAX as he stepped back, allowing the robot to move the hoverstretcher to beside Scott's spinal board. With MAX at the other end, Scott was quickly moved and secured to the stretcher. Mini-MAX quickly grabbed it and started pulling it from the tank back the way they had come. Virgil was quick to follow, clambering up his rudimentary staircase, not wanting to lose sight of his older brother.

"Gordon, prepare Thunderbird Two for immediate launch. Radio the nearest trauma centre, Scott needs specialist attention."

"FAB."

The response was short and formal and to untrained ears would have sounded quite normal. But Virgil knew Gordon. He'd heard the short pause, heard the snap of his brothers back straightening as he slipped into his serious mode. Gordon's military training meant he was could put his emotions to one side and do what needed to be done under pressure. Soon the green Thunderbird was in view and Scott was secured in the pod in record time. As Virgil ran the medical scanner over Scott, knowing Grandma would be studying them on Tracy Island, he heard the familiar click of the pod reconnecting with the main body, followed by the rumble of igniting VTOL engines. Virgil took a seat and held Scott's undamaged hand. His brother strained his eyes to meet Virgil's gaze.

"It's bad, Virgil."

Scott's voice was sure and fatalist in a way that Virgil didn't think was possible for his brother. Scott never gave up. The sinking feeling in his stomach made him squeeze the hand he held. Virgil couldn't promise his brother anything. He wasn't even certain they could save the arm.  

"We'll get through this, Scott."

Scott eyes returned to continue staring at the ceiling, leaving Virgil to sit in silence for the whole journey to the hospital, though his eyes constantly checked the bandages. The thud of Thunderbird Two landing was a welcome sound and set Virgil into a flurry of activity. Virgil was standing at the pod hatch, stretcher at his side, ready to rush his brother into the Accident and Emergency department the second the metal touched the ground. The sight of medical staff waiting was a relief. They ran beside him and Virgil handed over his brother to their care, listing off every injury he knew about, the drugs in his system and when they were given. Virgil was held to the side by a nurse and watched as Scott was transferred to a hospital bed. The hoverstretcher was returned to him. His brother's blood spotted one side.

"Come this way, I'll show you to the room where you can wait in peace. We'll keep you updated, but your brother is in expert hands."

Virgil let her lead him, dragging the stretcher. She opened the door and he thanked her. She left but Virgil didn't step inside. Instead he returned to Thunderbird Two and cleaned the stretcher as a worried Gordon and Alan appeared. When he was finished, he walked towards them and wrapped an arm around each.

"Let's go sit inside and wait."

The pod closed behind him, Thunderbird Two safe where she was. Virgil led them to the room, and they sat their together, Alan leaning into Virgil. A nurse came in to inform them they were taking Scott to theatre to try to remove the spines and set the bones. They would try to save the arm, but there was a chance it could still die after surgery. That started their wait. John, Grandma and Kayo joined them promptly, bringing coffee. Grandma shoved them out the room after that to go get showered and changed in Thunderbird Two. Apparently, they couldn't stay in their sweaty, dirty uniforms. Returning via the canteen with cheese and ham sandwiches for all, the silent wait continued. Another hour passed before a doctor entered the room.

"The surgery went well, but there is significant damage to the arm. It's highly likely he will lose the hand and forearm or have no feeling in it. He's lost a considerable amount of blood but is doing well. He's unconscious in recovery, though we have to restrict it to one visitor until he's got his own room."

Everyone glanced around the room. Only one of them could go to Scott. They all wanted to see him, all wanted to be reassured that he would pull through. Grandma stood up and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"You go, Virgil."

No complaints came.

"Thank you."

Virgil followed the doctor, scrubbing his hands when asked, into the recovery area. There were multiple people lying in beds attached to beeping monitors, but Virgil's eye found Scott easily. He went straight to the bed, noting the blood transfusion still underway, the pale tone of his skin and his closed eyes.

"The anaesthetic still hasn't worn off yet."

Virgil nodded and sat in the chair next to his brother’s bed. There was a plastic cast strapped around his arm instead of plaster. They mustn’t want to cover us the various wounds just yet. There was only a fraction of the arm that wasn't covered in bandages. It was only the ends of Scott’s fingers that were uncovered. Virgil gently brushed his own fingers along them. They were warm and flushed, which meant there was blood flow, but what the doctor had said about nerve damage resonated inside Virgil. Was that why Scott was so resigned? Is that what he had suspected? Would those fingers ever move again? The what ifs fell over Virgil, weighing down his heart. Was Scott strong enough to survive this?

Part 3

[vagrantblvrd]

I’m like. @miss-ingno had the gall to plant an idea in my head regarding the androids in ~space AU, and then this? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Jeremy’s this promising soldier from one of the outer colony worlds, right? Got caught up in the fighting when it came to his home planet and when it moved on he went with it. (It’s how things work, when you sign on with the military.)

Left his family and friends behind – those that survived the years of fighting – and did his best not to look back.

His unit got sent into a fight they didn’t stand a chance of winning and he’s one of the few who made it out (mostly) alive.

Was going to be out of things for a while thanks to his injuries, necessary physical rehab if he hoped to regain his mobility and such and was brought to a facility.

Big shiny thing smack dab in the middle of nowhere, edge of an asteroid field or something like that. Minerals and such in the floating hunks of rock out there that played merry hell with sensor readings and the whole damn thing spread out across several hubs.

Weird that it looked like you could isolate entire sections, maybe jettison them from the main assembly if there was a safety issue/breach, you know?

But it’s an old science research hub that’s been repurposed under new management, so no need to worry about that

Really.

That said, they bring him and a handful of people in similar situations there because there’s a researcher there, you see, a Doctor.

Only one, they’re told. Everything else is used as a forward base/medical facility these days since it’s so far out. (Hand on heart.)

Can work miracles and paranoid about her work and too valuable not to humor, or so they’re told. She’s come up with incredible new techniques and therapies and whatever else that might get them back on their feet faster and since the military’s put so much money into Jeremy and his fellow soldiers as it is, makes sense to try to salvage what they can if possible.

He and the others signed a contract, you see, and several years left to it and a whole lot of money down the drain if they can’t fight for them anymore, so.

It checks out as far as Jeremy’s concerned, worried about being able to send money home to his family to help them rebuild what they’ve lost until their planet recovers financially. (Won’t be like it was, but better than it is and worst case scenario enough to move somewhere better, last resort and all.)

Some nights Jeremy gets restless, wanders the facility as far as his security clearance allows him. Recreational floors and viewing stations where he gets to stare out at the asteroid field, watch the cargo shuttles and ferries and whatnot beetle about between the hubs.

Workers out on maintenance checks and minor repairs, flitting here and there. Scuttling across the surface of the hubs and connecting access ways/tubes.

Goes down to the gym and trains with one of the generic robot frames. No personality to them, just core programs and protocols and impersonal as hell.

Great for the times you know what you’re doing and just need a sparring partner or spotter or whatever, and Jeremy jokes about having a favorite, right? This older model, scratched up paint job that looks like it might have been around since the place was commissioned. (Or maybe the facility was built around it, whichever.)

Anyway, one of those nights he runs across this guy, right?

Skinny fuck running around like he knows he shouldn’t be where he is and all that, and Jeremy is like !!! because he knows there are a lot of people out there unhappy with the situation with this war(s) and the military and all that. That this used to be a top sekrit, hush hush facility where Questionable Things took place.

But then the company behind it got a new CEO and so forth and so on – there was a whole Thing about it over the news and such – and they’ve moved in a new direction since then. Been transparent about things best they can and totally on the up and up now, cross their hearts and hope to die and all that.

Still a lot of suspicious people out there, though, you know?

Lot of cargo transports and all that in and out of the facility that one of those suspicious people might be lucky enough to sneak in on. Either pretend to be someone they aren’t or manage to stow away, however the hell they want to approach things.

(Shit happens, Jeremy should know.)

So he follows this guy for a while, just in case.

Ready to call on security if he proves to be a problem but from the way the guy’s acting he doesn’t think he will be?

Just.

Sort of wandering, keeps rubbing at his neck every once in a while, but he’s wearing layers and has this hooded sweatshirt on and Jeremy figures it’s a nervous habit of some kind. Self-soothing and all.

Realizes that for all the wandering the guy’s doing he knows the facility, might be support staff or something with a guilty conscience and a bout of insomnia. (Doesn’t go near restricted areas and such. Just the lounges set aside for staff and patients and so on.)

Jeremy’s about to give it up, go back to his rooms and call it a night (whatever), but that’s when the guy notices him?

Clearly startled by the yelp and way they almost fall on their ass. (Weird gesture as he flings his hand out in warding gesture before falling on his ass, coughing and choking and hissing? but whatever. Reflexes can be weird, weird things in moments like this.)

Jeremy just stares at the guy who has this annoyed look on their face and Jeremy tries not to laugh but the whole situation is ridiculous, right?

Still, he helps the guy up and introduces himself after he apologizes for startling him.

And Gavin – because of course it’s Gavin – introduces himself right back.

Kind of annoyed still, but amusement’s slowly creeping in and they laugh about it and kind of wander around a bit. Chat about nothing because it’s like being a kid again before the war hit his home planet and he used to sneak out with his friends to run around just for the fun of it.

Gavin proves he does indeed know the facility because he lets Jeremy in on a few secrets, little ones.

Conference room where they forget to clear out the pastries and whatever other baked goods are brought in for the duration because they always think someone else will get it and then just...forget because projects and vidcalls and all sorts of things.

How to get into That One lounge with the best view of space around them without setting off alarms or anything troubling like that. The one not cluttered up with asteroids where you can see forever. (Or as far as your eyesight will let you.)

Have to detour through this one maintenance hallway to do it, though, but it’s not a security breach because the area outside this part is monitored as hell and the only way to get there undetected is from the inside, which lucky they already are and don’t worry about it, security will get ‘round to fixing that blind spot one day. (They’ve been saying that for years though, always something more pressing to see to first.)

Other little things like that that baffle Jeremy because kind of a big security risk???

Gavin shrugs, odd little smile because he’s not wrong, Jeremy, but people here are more concerned about trouble coming from the outside rather than the other way around. (Something about the way he says that, twist of bitterness to it Jeremy doesn’t really get? But it’s there and gone before he can say anything and not his business anyway, so. Yeah.)

Eventually they have to part ways – Gavin looking a little !!! about it before he runs off like he’s got a curfew or something, and Jeremy more huh about it because weird?

Doesn’t think much of it for a while.

Runs into Gavin from time to time on the nights he can’t sleep, amused at the fact Gavin’s the only one in the facility he’s met that he actually looks forward to seeing, in a weird way?

Like.

The people in charge of his rehab are nice enough, but they’re careful to keep things professional and he does the same because otherwise awkward?

The other soldiers are caught up in their own stuff and some are friendlier than others sure, they’re just not friends.

Gavin, though.

Different.

More and more so as time goes on and Jeremy notices little things about him. Frustration and this bitterness/anger simmering under his skin that he’s so, so careful to hide most of the time?

But some nights he’s too...tired to hide it.

Looks pale and drawn, tired, and the handful of times Jeremy tries to ask him about it, be a shoulder to lean on the way Gavin’s been for him Gavin deflects. (Sometimes more skillfully than others, but he always deflects.)

Will, though.

Ask random questions. Weird as hell all of them, some troubling. (Usually just bizarre though.)

And then!

Something happens.

An accident, something, and one of those hubs that can be jettisoned?

Is.

Just.

Atmosphere vented and bulkheads sealing it off and Jeremy and some of his fellow soldiers get to watch it burn/implode/explode whatever on viewing screens or through the view-port in one of the lounges.

Alarms and klaxons and voices on the speakers directing everyone to remain calm and head to designated safe areas while the staff get everything on lock-down until the emergency passes.

One of the hubs where the seriously injured soldiers are taken to recover. Quieter and all that, not as much activity to agitate them while they heal. (No visitors allowed, because reasons and Jeremy and the others are weirdly, guiltily relieved about that for reasons they can’t quite admit to themselves.)

Except Jeremy, okay.

Something is weird, he fucking knows it.

Slips past his fellow soldiers doing as they’re told and runs to that one lounge Gavin showed him how to get to that first night, right? Perfect view of what’s going on and with everyone in crisis mode they won’t notice if anyone’s down there.

Gets to see it all and realizes something is...off.

Couldn’t say what, but it’s there in the back of his head as he heads back to where he’s supposed to be afterward. Gets strange looks from the others who noticed him running off, but again, whatever.

He goes wandering later that night. Back to the lounge he’s not supposed to be able to get into and Gavin’s there.

Staring out the view port, hand at his throat and this distant look on his face. Isn’t startled to see Jeremy there when he clears his throat in an effort not to startle him too badly, but it’s obvious Gavin knows he’s there.

Gives him this little smile – wrong – and asks if Jeremy saw, earlier. (Did he?)

Flashes of light that didn’t match up from what he knows of the kind of accidents like that. (Accidents, ships under fire, one and the same from a different point of view in war sometimes.)

Other things that got snagged on the way out of being dismissed at seeing just another tragedy out in the black, cost of going where they don’t belong because humanity as a whole is so goddamned stupid about that, aren’t they?

See something like the vast endlessness of space and think, challenge accepted, and watch us, and never give up because they’re so fucking curious and wild and reckless with it.

Gavin sighs when Jeremy doesn’t give him the answers he’s looking for – doesn’t know what those would be, but Jeremy’s still working through what he saw himself.

Gavin shrugs and changes the subject and it’s awkward and strange and something shifts that night Jeremy doesn’t realize at first.

He doesn’t see Gavin too much after that, and times he does Gavin’s always tired.

Out of it, and sometimes there are bruises, burns. Bandages. Gavin waves it off, tells Jeremy it’s just.

It’s the way things are – work, maybe? - and Jeremy’s too wary of annoying the only one here worth talking to into shutting him out to push too hard.

And then, and then.

Gavin stops showing up altogether.

Leaves this little hidden message for Jeremy he finds a few weeks too late.

Gavin telling him he’s being transferred or something, got a job to do and it was great to meet you. Take care of yourself and watch your back when they send you out to fight again because Jeremy’s improved in leaps and bounds, hasn’t he?

Good as new, or nearly there and ready to go back out and fight a war he doesn’t believe in any more than he did when he signed up but back then it was to protect his home, his loved ones, and now -

Well.

Now.

Jeremy stashes Gavin’s message away in his belongings and makes sure to bring it with him when he gets shipped out not too long afterwards.

Fights in battles across God knows how many planets for a while there, scrapes through somehow and barely notices when the fighting hollows him out bit by bit. Pares him down to the soldier they’ve made him into, killing machine and look at him go, would you?

Gun in his hands and armor on his back and indistinguishable from the men and women fighting at his side, on and on, look at them go.

But then there’s another unwinnable fight for him, land mine or mortar and on his back in the mud and muck, blood on the outside where it has no business being. (Doesn’t even hurt anymore, and God it’s so quiet. Cold.)

Stares up at stars he doesn’t recognize and waits to die, but no, no, not today. Rescue squad plucking him out of the line of fire and to a field hospital, and from there back to a facility somewhere.

(Swears, swears, he sees flames before they lift him out of that war zone. Strange, odd. Cold as anything and purple as they wash across the battlefield, aimed at the enemy refusing to give ground even now, but he’s lost so much blood by that point no chance any of it was real.)

Middle of nowhere in a system he doesn’t know the name of. (Lost track a few back, to be honest, but that’s fine because it’s not his business knowing as long as he knows which end of his gun to point at their enemies, pull the trigger, and repeat as necessary.)

“Didn’t think I’d see you again,” Gavin says, wry little smile and tired.

Probably here when he shouldn’t be, but there’s something in his eyes that says that’s a problem for later as he watches Jeremy.

Too tired, hurt, to be much of a conversational partner but Gavin doesn’t seem to be looking for that at the moment.

Just sits there, thinking and thinking and thinking.

Things he wants to say but never gets the chance to because this woman, the Doctor from that facility where the two of them met comes into Jeremy’s room.

(He saw her once, back then. No-nonsense. Brilliant, to be sure, for all things she’d done to help Jeremy and those like him, but. Cold.)

Studies him for a moment before she looks at Gavin who sighs, gets to his feet and follows her out without looking back. (No goodbye this time.)

Jeremy gets doctors in and out after that.

Headed for a full recovery, but he’ll be out the rest of his contract.

And then?

And then.

That Doctor comes back to see him.

Looks at him like he’s not what she was hoping for and has to make do, and offers him a...it’s not even a choice, just.

Something.

A program, and chance to be on his feet faster than conventional medicine might allow, think on it. (Clock’s running, tick, tick, tick.)

Jeremy thinks on it, pain from his injuries and rehab in his future. Another facility somewhere else, grueling rehab therapy sessions and no combat pay to any of it. (Scraps to send home instead of the scraps and a little more he was able to before.)

When she comes back a few days later he says yes, and doesn’t think about what he’s signing away when she brings in all these documents for him to sign, Gavin at her shoulder and eyes shuttered.

Gets loaded on the same transport they take back to that facility from way back when. Passed through security areas he was never allowed in before. (Missing section where that one hub was and Gavin’s eyes flicking towards it as they pass, steps faltering for just a moment.)

They put him in a room, nice and simple.

Plain.

Guard on the door – precautions, they tell him, but don’t tell him for what – but he’s still too tired to question it.

Days out of surgery and sleeps more often than not. Can’t do much with the program he’s signed up for until he’s healed enough to stay awake on his own longer than a few hours.

Gavin pops in once or twice, never long though. (Stolen moments, favors wheedled out of the guard on Jeremy’s door and things Jeremy can only guess at for the scant time they see one another.)

He sleeps through most of Gavin’s visits, guilty about it, but Gavin just smiles, laughs when he tries to apologize. Calls him ridiculous, and God’s sake, Jeremy, worry about yourself.

Eventually the Doctor comes to see him again, still displeased but she explains what he’s signed for, just a bit.

All this alien tech just laying about here and there all over the galaxy, you know? (Because of course.)

No knowing what happened to the aliens who created it, but goodness, there’s just so much.

All these applications if they can be reverse engineered – clumsy, stupid humans and that curiosity of theirs, wild and reckless – and sometimes they can.

Sometimes.

There are a few such things here in this modest little facility in the middle of nowhere, and Jeremy?

He’s their newest guinea pig.

He’ll need new augments and implants – small ones, nowhere near as invasive as the ones they gave him when he signed up to fight a war – to interact with them, though. (That’ll come later, once he’s medically cleared for the surgery to receive them.)

And then!

And then he gets to learn how to use them, figure out how they work.

Training rooms properly fitted to take the abuse, and she shows him this video, you see.

Gavin in one of them and these combat training frames. Big, bulky things with heavy armor, shiny factory finishes scorched and burned. Melted in places, and the Gavin on the screen holds his hand out in the same way he did that night they met.

Only this time a gout of flame shoots out of his palm.

Purple flames, so guess Jeremy wasn’t imagining it back there in his delirium as the dropship took off in the middle of a battle.

Back of Gavin’s palm lit up like circuity, glowing violent purple like his flames, and when he closes his hand in a fist the flames die down. Show the combat training frames twisted hunks of metal, floor around them alight with purple fire that slowly flicker and go out.

“What - “

See?

No worries about how reinforced the training facilities are here if they can handle that.

Jeremy doesn’t sleep well that night because what and how and what the actual fuck did he get himself into now?

The medical doctors give the all-clear for his augment/implant surgery a few weeks later and Jeremy swears he sees Gavin’s face before they put him under.

When he wakes up everything is different.

Well, probably not, but it feels like it.

The augments/implants they gave him are...different.

Majorly, massively different.

Like they’ve carved out this space in his head, cavernous like those places he saw in holovids where Things Lurked and they warned you to stay away from.

To allow him to interface with the Things he’ll be working with, and it’s.

Unnerving. Unsettling.

His hand itches, muscle and tendons and ligaments moving around the implants there – more, of course – because the Doctor and her people have made advancements since the early days of the program.

Back when test subjects didn’t directly interface with them, had to go about like primitive apes using sticks to poke at things.

He’s told he’ll be able to call up/project what they call abilities through it the way he saw Gavin do.

No telling what it will be because different people have different affinities, so that’s a bit terrifying, not knowing what to expect. (To be honest, all of this is terrifying, but too late now.)

He heals. Goes through rehab to get him to “healthy enough to undergo the rigors of the initial interface” and barely sees Gavin in that time period.

Sent out to handle conflicts and other problems that crop up that require his abilities or training, and no time to slip away to see Jeremy even for a moment.

And then, and then.

He gets discharged from medical, given a private set of rooms.

Bit more luxurious than the ones he had here before, but only just.

No guard on his door, but all this security around the place he’d wonder at if he didn’t know how borderline legal some of this is. He’s dumb, not stupid. (Maybe it’s the other way around?)

Either way.

They bring him to a lab, show him this gadget.

Looks like a little chip, card he might have slid into his old implants but...more. (Shinier, maybe.)

Click it into place and wait and welcome to hell new test subject, congratulations on that one.

Because all that? It goes just fine, doesn’t it.

So much so they toss him into one of those specially reinforced training rooms. Go down a long corridor and through airlocks and other such fun things, and did they mention? That can be jettisoned too, if things get ugly in there, have fun!

Jeremy looks down at his hands, one with the shiny ship, the other with the shiny implants and in for a penny in for a pound or some bullshit.

Quiet before the storm (ironic, that thought of his) before he clicks it into place.

Feels the implants and everything else they buried under skin and tissue warm up – imagination or something more – sees it light up.

Feels something eeling through his mind, an Intelligence to it, foreign and alien and curious. Confused. Alive, because the Doctor and her people didn’t so much reverse-engineer as butcher.

Took what was found and cut and shaved and carved until it fit (more or less) the shape they wanted it to be, became something they thought they understood. (Smarter than them, though. Hid itself and let them hack away until they were satisfied and learned to show them what they wanted to see.)

Quiet little voice in the back of his mind, whispering to him in a language he has no hope of understanding. (Yet.)

And curious, frustrated, it pokes and prods and finds those implants in Jeremy’s hand. Recognizes them, like you do things in a dream sometimes.

Jeremy lifts his arm, opens his hand and lightning shoots out of it and that’s the beginning of the end.

They have him in that training room day after day for hours.

Learning to use his new abilities, that he can fucking fly as well as shoot lightning from his hand and where this is supposed to take him next he’s afraid to think about. (That day on the battlefield and purple flames headed towards the enemy and what, he doesn’t think, what will they do with more people like them out there? What happens to them when the war comes to an end?)

Eventually Gavin comes back from where they sent him, and of course, of course, the Doctor and her people think it would be smart to pit them against one another.

Simple training exercise and Gavin’s expression twists at that, but he steps into the training room all the same.

Meets Jeremy’s gaze, eyebrows raised and Jeremy thinks about that voice in the back of his head, how that alien language sounds more and more familiar with each passing day, closer to English. (Or maybe not. He doesn’t know.)

Wonders if Gavin has a voice in the back of his head too, but then he doesn’t have time to think because there’s a gout of fire coming at him and Jeremy reacts instinctively.

They fight (spar) until the Doctor is satisfied and calls a halt to things.

Gavin and Jeremy both exhausted and pushed past their limits and no clear winner. (He’s sure Gavin was holding back, and God knows he was because – Because.)

Gavin gets brought in to help him train, and admits to Jeremy he sometimes has trouble controlling his abilities. Fire and its nature and maybe other factors but he shrugs uncomfortably and Jeremy knows, knows Gavin has something whispering to him too.

Neither of them mention it though. (To each other or the Doctor and her people.)

They get downtime in between too, and Jeremy.

He learns that Gavin’s parents were scientists too. Worked for this company, you see. Stumbled on these ruins, once upon a time. Found this.

Lab?

Something like it, and these devices and it’s a long story, but Gavin was a kid at the time. Went with them when they were stationed on the planet to learn what they could and this.

He calls it an incident, laughs this odd little laugh as he looks down at his hand, strange scar on his palm with a matching one on the back of his hand like something went straight through.

Idiot kid poking about where he shouldn’t have and alien tech and it’s a long story, Jeremy, you can probably guess at what happened though, yeah?

Because Gavin and the Doctor and this facility. The purple flames. Everything.

No mention of what happened with his parents, and Jeremy doesn’t ask. (...No.)

Anyway, anyway.

They train and train and train, and then send the two of them out to deal with a particularly troublesome conflict somewhere.

Jungle planet and rebels and resistance and enemy forces dug in and they’re supposed to uproot them.

And they do, because what choice do they have?

Get dropped behind enemy lines and it’s horrifically one-sided what happens out there, Gavin blank-faced through it all and Jeremy realizing why over and over again as they get sent here and there and everywhere.

After a few months of that they’re brought back to the facility just as Jeremy’s on the cusp of understanding the voice in the back of his head.

Military officials and executives and a presentation. (Mission briefing.)

Pair of rogue androids and this cover story that doesn’t add up, no matter how hard they try to make it.

Accounts in the files they’re given that don’t match the story they’re being told but it’s not theirs to question, is it?

Hunt them down, they’re told, or else.

(Because, because, because. Jeremy’s family and loved ones, and Gavin’s – Jeremy doesn’t know what they’re holding over his head, just that it’s enough for Gavin to go along with it.)

And anyway, he thinks, anyway.

They’re just androids.

Takes them almost a month to catch so much of a whisper of where the androids ran to after the bloody scuffle on some backwater planet/colony.

(Strange, you know. All that blood and enough bodies to account for it, but more leading to the hangar where there was a ship hidden away and all of their people accounted for, so where did that blood come from?)

Catch the combat android by surprise, and while its first reaction seems to be to engage them, it doesn’t.

Just.

Cuts and runs, drops the packages and parcels its holding and darts into the crowd in the marketplace they found it in.

Fast as hell and agile, but it’s an android.

Stands out no matter how well it passes, and they track it easily enough, run it to some dirty little alley because they had access to all this intel on the place and memorized routes and the whatnot.

It clearly couldn’t get access to an updated map of the area and took shortcuts and the whatnot that simply don’t exist anymore. (Construction and growth and all that.)

There’s...a fight.

Fast and brutal and Jeremy gags as Gavin heats his flames, the time the android gets Jeremy on the ground, metal fist under synthetic flesh aimed for his head and Gavin yelling Jeremy’s name in fear, and the android makes this noise that sounds like pain as Gavin hits it in the side,

Controlled burst, meant to knock it back, off Jeremy and dangerously close, but they heal fast these days, don’t they?

The android snarls and for a moment Jeremy thinks Gavin’s attack wasn’t enough, but it turns and runs when faced with both of them, and Gavin -

He checks on Jeremy instead of pursuing.

Brings him back to their ship to do what he can for him.

They lose the androids, get a dressing down when they report back about the incident.

And then they go hunting, again and again and again, and all these close calls and encounters that keeps them chasing after the androids.

Jeremy doesn’t ask Gavin why he pulls his hits, and Gavin doesn’t ask Jeremy the same.

Voices in their heads, Jeremy thinks, and all the things he’s being told because, because, these things they’ve got in their heads are old. Have seen so much and know corruption when they see it. Know evil deeds.

And did Jeremy know, did he, he’s not the first test subject to be given this particular device?

(There was one, not too long ago. Incompatible, or maybe just too scared about the voice in his head and an accident that wasn’t, entire hub filled with lightning and thunder and jettisoned and the crews that went in after. Cleaned the mess up and picked up this twisted lump of metal to extract a chip that sat in a lab until they found someone else to give it a try?)

Eventually, though, eventually Jeremy and Gavin talk.

Because only so long they can chase these androids running towards something without talking about why they’re not really trying to catch them, you know?

And Gavin.

He’s been with the program and the Doctor and her people for a long time. (Since he was a kid, the Incident.)

Raised in one lab or another (watching his parents work and then an object of study himself after the incident and the Doctor) and this voice in his head for years.

Friend, partner, whatever.

Helping him with his abilities but there’s only so much it can do because Gavin’s a special case, you know? None of this tampering the Doctor and her people did, no. He’s got the original in his head, under his skin and emotions play a major part in how he uses them.

He’s learned how to control it (mostly) but he slips, here and there.

Wasn’t much of a problem, but then he met this little idiot, you see.

Convalescing soldier he met one night, gave him a right fright and lucky Gavin didn’t hit him with a blast of flame from his hand or they might not be having this talk, so think on that, would you Jeremy?

And, see.

The Doctor is a bit ruthless in the pursuit of science, because science.

Knew she was losing her grip on Gavin, that he was getting ideas and all these abilities that would have made it easy for him to finally, finally escape, but then this little idiot in Jeremy.

Easy, Jeremy hears in his head. Listen.

So he does, because he owes Gavin that much, doesn’t he?

About Gavin and this little idiot he met, befriended. (Living, breathing weakness where Gavin hadn’t had one before, too perfect not to be exploited. And it was.)

Gavin sent to handle matter when the military ran into a situation it couldn’t handle without major loss of life on their side, but someone like Gavin?

Well.

Easy enough to send him in, isn’t it?

Over and over again and always that little idiot to think about.

And then Jeremy went back to war himself, none the wiser.

Gavin still got sent out to fight someone else's war, and it could have gone on like that forever until a certain planet and a certain battle and Jeremy bleeding out in the mud and muck.

An opportunity, for the Doctor and hers, and maybe, maybe, way to get back at Gavin for thinking he could escape so easily.

“Christ.”

Gavin’s bitter laugh, because yes.

And then, and then.

Jeremy and his device and the training and now this matter with the androids, and did Jeremy know, did he know?

Gavin hears his share of gossip, you know.

The Doctor’s people who think he doesn’t care about things like that but they get bored, restless, and they talk. The soldiers he’s surrounded by who don’t give him the time of day but talk to their fellow soldiers.

All those little secrets Gavin showed Jeremy about the facility and a lifetime in places like that. (His own life and the lies that go with it.)

Of course he wouldn’t trust blindly they were being told the truth about these androids, and Jeremy please, don’t tell Gavin you bought into it?

Because something is going on, and these androids are part of it and, oh, Jeremy, this is the chance of a lifetime.

Jeremy thinks about his family and loved ones, thinks about the Doctor and her people. The military officials and company executives and this horribly complicated mess and the goddamned androids they’re chasing after. (Voice in his head he’s learning to trust despite all logic because it hasn’t steered him wrong yet.)

“I. Need to do a thing first.”

Warn his family, loved ones and hope that’s enough, because Gavin’s right.

Too much going on to ignore it, when he knows about the program they’re caught in, that the Doctor and her people hope to expand things. Pull more people into it, mass produce the device they handed Jeremy somehow, and what then?

What then?

So.

He sends a message home, and they put in a good show of chasing the androids until he gets a message back.

Laughs, because this could go so badly wrong on him and he’d lose so much, but Gavin’s right, isn’t he?

They can’t pretend they don’t know, can’t do that anymore.

Chase after the androids, but now, now it’s for a different reason.

Fight and fight and fight because the androids are desperate and running scared, but eventually, they get the chance to talk.

A whole lot of a lack of trust, but that’s to be expected and they have to work to earn it, but at least they get that chance, you know?

Michael and Ryan paranoid and wary and Jeremy and Gavin accepting it as their due, and then Matt and the idiots he’s working with (for?) and it’s.

The chance he and Gavin were looking for, and maybe something good for all of them.

[bellboy905]

Trump now fancies himself a “wartime president.” How is his war going? By the end of March, the coronavirus had killed more Americans than the 9/11 attacks. By the first weekend in April, the virus had killed more Americans than any single battle of the Civil War... On the present trajectory, it will kill, by late April, more Americans than Vietnam. Having earlier promised that casualties could be held near zero, Trump now claims he will have done a “very good job” if the toll is held below 200,000 dead.

[...]

That the pandemic occurred is not Trump’s fault. The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault. The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault. That states are bidding against other states for equipment... is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too. Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. 

[...]

For three years, Trump has blathered and bluffed and bullied his way through an office for which he is utterly inadequate. But sooner or later, every president must face a supreme test... that cannot be evaded by blather and bluff and bullying. That test has overwhelmed Trump... He is failing. He will continue to fail. And Americans are paying for his failures.

The coronavirus emerged in China in late December. The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak on January 3. The first... person known to have succumbed to COVID-19... in the United States died on February 29. The 100th died on March 17. By March 20, New York City alone had confirmed 5,600 cases. Not until March 21, the day the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services placed its first large-scale order for N95 masks, did the White House begin marshaling a national supply chain to meet the threat in earnest. 

[...]

Those were the weeks when testing hardly happened, because there were no kits. Those were the weeks when tracing hardly happened, because there was little testing. Those were the weeks when isolation did not happen, because the president and his administration insisted that the virus was under control. Those were the weeks when supplies were not ordered, because nobody in the White House was home to order them. Those lost weeks placed the United States on the path to the worst outbreak of the coronavirus in the developed world.

[...]

Through the early weeks of the pandemic, when so much death and suffering could still have been prevented or mitigated, Trump... made two big wagers. He bet that the virus could somehow be prevented from entering the United States by travel restrictions. And he bet that, to the extent that the virus had already entered the United States, it would burn off as the weather warmed. Those two assumptions led him to conclude that not much else needed to be done. 

[...]

On January 18, Trump (on a golf excursion in Palm Beach, Florida) cut off his health secretary’s telephoned warning of gathering danger to launch into a lecture about vaping... Two days later, the first documented U.S. case was confirmed... Yet even at that late hour, Trump continued to think of the coronavirus as something external to the United States... In a January 22 interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box, he promised:

We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.

Trump would later complain that he had been deceived by the Chinese. “I wish they could have told us earlier about what was going on inside,” he said on March 21. “We didn’t know about it until it started coming out publicly.”

If Trump truly was so trustingly ignorant as late as January 22, the fault was again his own. The Trump administration had cut U.S. public-health staff operating inside China... from 47 in January 2017 to 14 by 2019, an important reason it found itself dependent on less-accurate information from the World Health Organization. In July 2019, the Trump administration defunded the position that embedded an epidemiologist inside China’s own disease-control administration, again obstructing the flow of information to the United States.

[...]

On January 31, the Trump administration at last did something: it announced restrictions on air travel to and from China by non-U.S. persons. This... has become Trump’s most commonly proffered defense of his actions. “We’ve done an incredible job because we closed early,” Trump said on February 27. “We closed those borders very early, against the advice of a lot of professionals, and we turned out to be right. I took a lot of heat for that,” he repeated on March 4. 

[...]

Because Trump puts so much emphasis on this point, it’s important to stress that none of this is true. Trump did not close the borders early. In fact, he did not truly close them at all... The ban applied only to foreign nationals who had been in China during the previous 14 days, and included 11 categories of exceptions. Since the restrictions took effect, nearly 40,000 passengers have entered the United States from China, subjected to inconsistent screenings.

[...]

A few days after the restrictions went into effect... Trump’s impeachment trial ended with his acquittal in the Senate. The president, though, turned his energy not to... the virus, but to the demands of his own ego. The president’s top priority through February... was to exact retribution from truth-tellers in the impeachment fight... Late on the evening of April 3, Trump fired... Michael Atkinson, the official who had forwarded the Ukraine whistleblower complaint to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, as the law required. 

[...]

Intentionally or not, Trump’s campaign of payback against his perceived enemies in the impeachment battle sent a warning to public-health officials: keep your mouth shut. If anybody missed the message, the firing of Captain Brett Crozier... for speaking honestly about the danger facing his sailors was a reminder... The president’s lies must not be contradicted. And because the president’s lies change constantly, it’s impossible to predict what might contradict him.

[...]

Throughout the crisis, the top priority of the president, and of everyone who works for the president, has been the protection of his ego. Americans have become sadly used to Trump’s blustery self-praise and his insatiable appetite for flattery. During the pandemic, this psychological deformity mutated into a deadly strategic vulnerability for the United States.

For three-quarters of his presidency, Trump has taken credit for the economic expansion that began under... Barack Obama in 2010. That expansion accelerated in 2014, just in time to deliver real prosperity over the past three years. The harm done by Trump’s own initiatives, and especially his trade wars, was masked by that continued growth. The economy Trump inherited became his all-purpose answer to his critics. Did he break laws, corrupt the Treasury, appoint cronies, and tell lies? So what? Unemployment was down, the stock market up.

Suddenly, in 2020, the rooster that had taken credit for the sunrise faced the reality of sunset. He could not bear it.

Underneath all the denial and self-congratulation, Trump seems to have glimpsed the truth. The clearest statement of that knowledge was expressed on February 28... at a rally in South Carolina... Somebody in his orbit seemed to already be projecting 35,000 to 40,000 deaths from the coronavirus... and his answer to that estimate was, “So far, we have lost nobody.” He conceded, “That doesn’t mean we won’t.” But he returned to his happy talk. “We are totally prepared.” And as always, it was the media's fault. “You hear 35 and 40,000 people and we’ve lost nobody and you wonder, the press is in hysteria mode.”

By February 28, it was too late to exclude the coronavirus from the United States. It was too late to test and trace, to isolate the first cases and halt their further spread... It was too late to refill the stockpiles that the Republican Congresses of the Tea Party years had refused to replenish, despite frantic pleas from the Obama administration. It was too late to produce sufficient ventilators in sufficient time.

But... it was still not too late to arrange an orderly distribution of medical supplies to the states, not too late to coordinate with U.S. allies, not too late to close the Florida beaches before spring break, not too late to bring passengers home from cruise lines, not too late to ensure that state unemployment-insurance offices were staffed and ready, not too late for local governments to get funds to food banks, not too late to begin social distancing fast and early. Stay-at-home orders could have been put into effect on March 1, not in late March and early April.

So much time had been wasted by the end of February. So many opportunities had been squandered. But even then, the shock could have been limited. Instead, Trump and his inner circle plunged deeper into two weeks of lies and denial, both about the disease and about the economy... As late as March 9, Trump was still arguing that the coronavirus would be no worse than the seasonal flu... But the facade of denial was already cracking... The overwhelmed president responded by doing what comes most naturally to him at moments of trouble: he shifted the blame to others.

The lack of testing equipment? On March 13, Trump passed that buck to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Obama administration. The White House had dissolved the directorate of the National Security Council responsible for planning for and responding to pandemics? Not me, Trump said... Maybe somebody else in the administration did it, but... “I don’t know anything about it.” Were ventilators desperately scarce? Obtaining medical equipment was the governors’ job... Did Trump delay action until it was far too late? That was the fault of the Chinese government for withholding information... On March 27, Trump attributed his own broken promises about ventilator production to General Motors... Masks, gowns, and gloves were running short only because hospital staff were stealing them, Trump suggested on March 29... Were New Yorkers dying? On April 2, Trump fired off a peevish letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer: 

If you spent less time on your ridiculous impeachment hoax, which went haplessly on forever and ended up going nowhere (except increasing my poll numbers), and instead focused on helping the people of New York, then New York would not have been so completely unprepared for the “invisible enemy.”

Trump’s instinct to dodge and blame had devastating consequences for Americans. Every governor and mayor who needed the federal government to take action, every science and medical adviser who hoped to prevent Trump from doing something stupid or crazy, had to reckon with Trump’s psychic needs as their single biggest problem.

[...]

The federal response has been dogged by suspicions of favoritism for political and personal allies of Trump. The District of Columbia has seen its requests denied, while Florida gets everything it asks for. The weeks of... denial and delay have triggered a desperate scramble among states. The Trump administration is allocating some supplies through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but has made the deliberate choice to allow large volumes of crucial supplies to continue to be distributed by commercial firms to their clients... In his panic, Trump is sacrificing U.S. alliances abroad, attempting to recoup his own failure by turning predator. German and French officials accuse the Trump administration of diverting supplies they had purchased to the United States. On April 3, the North American company 3M publicly rebuked the Trump administration for its attempt to embargo medical exports to Canada, where 3M has operated seven facilities for 70 years. Around the world, allies are registering that in an emergency, when it matters most, the United States has utterly failed to lead.

[...]

As the pandemic kills, as the economic depression tightens its grip, Donald Trump has consistently put his own needs first... He has never tried to be president of the whole United States, but at most 46 percent of it, to the extent that serving even the 46 percent has been consistent with his supreme concerns: stealing, loafing, and whining. Now he is not even serving the 46 percent. The people most victimized by his lies and fantasies are the people who trusted him... who harmed themselves to prove their loyalty to Trump. 

[...]

In the past, Americans could at least expect public spirit and civic concern from their presidents. Trump has mouthed the slogan “America first,” but he has never acted on it. It has always been “Trump first.” His business first. His excuses first. His pathetic vanity first.

[...]

He has taken so much that does not belong to him, that was unethical and even illegal for him to take. But responsibility? No, he will not take that. Yet responsibility falls upon Trump, whether he takes it or not. No matter how much he deflects and insults and snivels and whines, this American catastrophe is on his hands and on his head.

[prorevenge]

My friend's ex-wife gets his family's business shut down and burns their lives to the ground (not what you may think)

Sorry for the somewhat misleading title, but I couldn't resist.

This story isn't about me but two people I'm friends with. We'll call one Rae and one Justin. I'm posting this with Justin's permission, and he'll probably be reading the thread.

Pretty quickly after they moved, they decided to get amicably divorced, since they never wanted to be married anyway. They still lived together for a while, and basically became something between platonic roommates and each other's only family. Over time, they started dating other people. Some partners were scared off by the weird relationship between them, but most got it, and understood that Justin and Rae had basically bonded though mutual trauma. I also met both of them during this time, and we became close friends.

This whole time, both their families and other members of their community were relentlessly harassing them. People were showing up at their house at all hours, and they had reason to believe people were trying to steal their identities over the years, though they'd fortunately both put a freeze on their credit, so nothing ever came of it.

Then Justin had a bad accident. A really bad accident. He was on his bike and a car blew through a stop sign without slowing down and plowed right into him. He had to be rushed to the hospital and landed in the ICU. Rae was his emergency contact, and I was with her and some other friends when she got the call. I immediately drove her to the hospital with a couple of other people, and she was melting down (understandably). The hospital staff wouldn't let us all in when we got there, but they let Rae in. She came out periodically to let us know what was going on. Justin wasn't unconscious, but he was totally out of it and didn't seem to know she was there, probably from the painkillers, but she was convinced he had permanent dehabilitating brain damage and basically the group of us were just soothing her and reassuring her it would be fine. A friend of ours who worked at the hospital as an MRI tech was also stopping by when she could on her breaks and calming down Rae. We'd been there all night and part of the day at this point, and the medical staff was giving us reason to be hopeful.

But things got worse. To this day, no one knows how they found out, but 14 hours after Justin's accident, his parents, uncles, and grandfather showed up. They immediately had all of us removed from the ICU, Rae included. Unfortunately, as his ex-wife, she was no longer his legal next-of-kin and had no rights against his blood family.

At this point, she was absolutely hysterical and inconsolable. She was convinced Justin's family would hurt him. I'm ashamed to say all three of us that were there with her thought she was overreacting. We all knew Rae and Justin had left a fucked-up situation, but it wasn't like his own family would do anything to impede his recovery. She was getting angry with us for trying to calm her down, and tried to explain that according to their religion, she and Justin deserved punishment from God, and only the greatest suffering could prompt repenting and redemption. She said their families embraced this thinking and wanted them to suffer, because it would prove that they did the wrong thing by leaving, and suffering would drive them back to the fold. She said as long as Justin was with his family, he wouldn't be safe.

Our friend who worked for the hospital came and found Rae at that point. She made Rae swear up and down she wouldn't tell anyone she told her this, because she could get in deep trouble for releasing privileged information to someone unauthorized, but she'd caught wind that Justin's parents were aggressively demanding the hospital release him into their care, and they were involving lawyers. The hospital was currently refusing, because Justin wasn't stable enough to leave, but our friend warned Rae that as soon as Justin got to be stable, or the lawyers scared the hospital enough, it's possible the parents would be able to take Justin.

This shocked the rest of us. Realizing his parents were not only willing to remove Justin from the hospital that had saved his life in the condition he was still in, but were actively trying to do it made us really "get" for the first time why Rae was going out of her head with fear.

At this point, Rae snapped into do-or-die mode. Convinced that Justin was about to literally die if she didn't act, she decided she would do everything in her power to start a fire at home so that Justin's family would want to run back to put it out. And this wasn't too hard, because she had a lot of dirt on the whole community she came from. Like a madwoman, she started blowing the whistle all over Justin's family. She called the IRS's fraud hotline and detailed all the ways that the family business was committing tax fraud. She submitted an ATF tip about how that same family business was illegally selling firearms without a license and without following any of the proper protocols, and was knowingly selling guns to convicted felons. She reported one of Justin's uncles for owning several guns as a convicted felon. She also reported Justin's mom's unlicensed day care "business," which was apparently extremely shady, including having over 30 children packed into one house, with Justin's mom as the only adult and many of the childcare duties being farmed out to Justin's 12- and 14-year-old sisters. She called CPS on Justin's uncles and his parents for keeping their children out of school, and for physical abuse in one uncle's case. In all of these reports, she provided extensive details.

She finished her calls and emails, and then she waited. We all waited for several hours, and nothing happened. Then, miraculously, Justin become lucid enough to understand what was going on and make his own decisions, and he kicked his family out again. From there began a slow but steady path to recovery.

In all the relief and excitement to see Justin on the mend, we'd almost forgotten about Rae's campaign of desperation, until a couple of weeks later, when the screaming voicemails started pouring in to both of them. First, the business was being investigated by the IRS, then it was being investigated for illegal firearms dealing. Then the daycare was getting investigated. At first, Rae felt a little guilty, but then she was like, "You know what? No regrets. They would have killed Justin."

From what they've been able piece together in the year and a half since this happened, the business has gone under, and the daycare is shuttered. The uncle is six months into a new five-year prison sentence for firearm possession. CPS investigated, which scared the shit out of the family, but nothing really came of it, which is especially sad in the case of the cousins being physically abused. That said, the parents are now too scared to keep the kids home from school, and with the unlicensed daycare shut down, the mom's not exploiting her daughters' labor anyway, so she has no incentive to keep them home. So Justin's little siblings are at least getting their education.

Justin and Rae are both happy and thriving. Justin unfortunately will never fully recover from the accident. He has some permanent neurological damage that results in tremors. But he's pumped to be alive, he can work a full-time job, he can still be pretty physically active, and as far as I'm concerned, he wins.

TL;DR: Kooky abusive family tries to remove my friend from critical medical care because reasons (??), and his ex-wife hits the panic button that burns their lives to the ground.

(source) story by (/u/Throwawayallaway4)

[evien-stark]

✧I Need You✧ Chapter 107

Tony was more hurt than he let on, which meant you had yet another choice to make- or rather, a promise to honor. So it was Sam who led the charge on finding Steve who had gone completely radio silent as the last of the helicarriers plummeted into the river. You made a call ahead to Happy, while you were struggling in the uncertainty, to ask him to meet you at the hospital. And it was an hour later- a whole sixty excruciating minutes, when you had just loaded a battered, bruised, broken, bloody- and obviously concussed Tony into the back of an ambulance, out of his suit, that Sam finally spoke. 

“Found him. He’s on the riverbank a mile south.” 

The doors of the ambulance closed and you rode off, hand in Tony’s as he drifted, something in his IV for the pain. You put your other one to your ear. “Condition?” You knew every one of your teammates was listening in. You were just the first one to ask. 

“Rough. But. Not dead. His shield is missing, too. If that matters.” 

Tony murmured a response in a daze, “Probably at the… bottom of the river- we’ll have Damage Control fish it out-” 

Setting a hand over his forehead in a gentle caress, you tried to urge some peace over him. “It’s alright, just relax.” 

He eased almost immediately, eyes fluttering closed as a long breath escaped him. “I love you…” 

It was strategic- not petty (you told yourself) that you made sure the ambulance was taking you to a hospital outside of SHIELD’s network. Already your phone was blowing up- Ellis. Not a good sign. There was no telling what the other side of all of this was going to look like. It might have served you to not ignore him, but… Tony was more important. It was hard to focus on anything else. Especially yourself. You were damaged, too, and tired. Ready to lie down for a long ten hours in a dark room but… 

Tony needed you. That was what really mattered. So you waved off the EMTs and told them to stay focused on him. As he fell further into a light doze just as they took him off the stretcher and into the hospital, you coordinated with the team to get everyone down to the same place, while they stitched and bandaged him up. There was no doubt in your mind that everyone needed some sort of medical attention- Steve most of all, it seemed like. 

Sam had said rough, but when you finally saw him in his own private hospital room, he looked like he’d been beaten nearly to death. In his unconsciousness, as you stood in the doorway, you felt the tremors of deep sorrow. Pain that went beyond physical. It was hard to face him. Hard to look at him. What had stopped that monster from killing him, you wondered. Clearly he’d been seconds from doing it. Maybe it was a simple explosion that took the whole helicarrier down. Maybe he’d beaten Steve into unconsciousness and assumed throwing him into a large body of water would finish him off.

...maybe Steve had hung in there and not died long enough to prove his point. Who could say. All you knew was something drastic had become of all of this. Steve had some different deep facet of him now that had had you two quarreling. It might not have been the best for you to hang around.

Sam was sitting at his bedside, the entire time that he’d been brought in, even as you stood there, and you knew he’d continue to sit there, still, until Steve regained consciousness. “You’re okay here?” Asking as you crossed your arms. Defensively. Feeling a sense of unease looking at the man lying in that bed. 

“Yeah. Don’t worry about him. Go do your thing.” 

Steve attracted all manner of good people to him. He was lucky, in that way. Otherwise it might have been wrong to ask someone you’d only met- was it… yesterday? ...in too short a time, anyway, to look after him in this condition. “Yeah. Thanks.” Turning to go away, a quick thought occurred and you looked back at him. “If you need them to look at you- Stark Industries is taking care of the bills so-” 

He waved you off. “Don’t worry about all of that right now. You seem like you got a lot on your plate.” 

Your phone buzzed in your pocket. President still waiting for you to answer. “And a lot more coming.” Their private rooms were separated- not on purpose, but Tony’s was a few doors down. You peeked in, seeing him still asleep, and decided not to wait. It would only get worse from here. “Yes, Mr. President. What can I do for you?” Voice tired and bitter. 

“Do for me? You’re out of your mind. What your people just did- what’s on the internet right now- we’re in full meltdown mode over here. Congress is having an emergency meeting- and you- how are you gonna clean this up? There’s so much damage from this- lasting damage- they wanna… they wanna make an example out of SHIELD.” 

You tried not to collapse into a chair outside Tony’s room, but your knees gave out all the same as you sat, curved in on yourself, and put a hand to your forehead. “To save their own asses, I know. You don’t have to tell me.” The United State government was never going to let anything come for them, no matter the mistakes they made. No matter that SHIELD was a government organization. They were a secret one, and now that the cat was out of the bag, they’d do whatever they could to downplay their involvement. 

And make martyrs of you all. Because it would be expected that the Avengers- that SHIELD’s people would come and defend it. Die on that sword. No matter the cost. You’d have to defend yourselves, right? Your actions? 

“They’re going to serve subpoenas. There’s going to be hearings for months. They’re talking about jail time. Life sentences.” 

“And what about you, Matthew. What are you talking about? What are you going to do?” His name would no doubt appear in more unredacted debriefing reports with your name labeled next to his. Times when he called to ask you- to ask Stark Industries and SHIELD- and the Avengers for help. What were his plans? 

“You tell me what your plan is. And then I’ll figure out where we’re going from here. We have a small window to make a statement. Get ahead of this- well. Not ahead. Your people saw to that.” He sounded pretty angry. 

And if you weren’t so drained, you might have been, too. At him. Down the corridor you saw Happy walking briskly, two laptops under his arm. “We did what we had to do. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken a history class in your life, but Hydra personnel had to be weeded out.” 

“I’ve taken many history and politics classes in my life. I’ll remind you I’m the President. I know who Hydra are. Don’t talk down to me.” It was a rare occurrence, to hear Ellis with bite in his voice. Threatened, perhaps? 

A headache was coming on. You tried to stay level. Fighting with him would yield no good results. “Well, then, sir, here’s what I suggest you do. Since you’re asking. I’ll start my staff on a pull protocol, and I suggest you do the same. Names are out there in flashing lights now. People will start to flee, and I’ve no doubt you have more than one rat on your sinking ship. Hydra are traitors to the nation. Lock them up. Make a scene. We’re all on the same side, here. SHIELD will only be collateral damage if you let them get away. An organization like that with nothing left to lose is full of very dangerous and desperate people.” 

There was a long pause on the other end of the line- strangely silent. Clearly indicative that he had you on mute while he barked orders at the staffers around him. When his voice returned, “Again- which is why- if you had this information- we should have worked together to-” 

“It wasn’t in my fucking back pocket, Matthew. They killed Nick Fury and then it all sort of spilled out from there while I was dodging fraudulent murder charges. You’ll have to excuse the sudden drop. It was the only thing we could do. And it had to be done. You’re not getting an apology out of me.” Hand holding a little tighter over your eyes as Happy came to a stop in front of you, you bit back tears. Now was no time to crumble. “I was glad… that your name wasn’t on that roster, sir.” President Ellis was still your ally. You had to keep him that way. 

He huffed out a strange noise. “Yeah. Me, too.” A resigned breath of air that might have been a laugh escaped you. “You’ve had a hell of a first term. Aliens threatening New York. Your VP tried to assassinate you. Now this… you’ve got more balls than anyone out there right now, sir. You can come out clean on the other side. Second term no problem.” 

“Yeah... I wonder… you ever thought about running for office? Lots of unprecedented shit happening right now. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. You were built for this stuff. ...I might need a real VP next term. Someone I can trust.” 

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told the last man that asked me to run his kingdom for him: no.” 

“Who was that?” “Tony Stark.” “Ah.”

“I paid you a compliment, you paid me one. We’re done here.” He sighed. “Alright. I’ll get to work. You do, too. And I’ll… I expect I’ll call you again soon.” 

“Yes, sir. I expect so, too.” The phone hung on that mutual quiet until he disconnected the call. You let your phone slowly down to your lap and then looked up at Happy who was gazing sadly back at you, although he lifted one of the  laptops in a small gesture. “Thanks. Here- I need you to pair with JARVIS and run the Hydra leak list. Any Stark employees on it need to be rounded up. I need you to secure the suit and load it on the jet- jet needs to be prepped for departure. ...preferably soon. And… keep an eye out, here. Badges on. Easier to see names that way.” Weakly smiling up at him. It was a long and tough to-do list, but if anyone could do it, it was Happy.

He couldn’t return the smile. Instead he gave a slow nod. “I’ll get to work. You can count on me.” 

“I know I can. Thank you, Happy.” 

A beaten but tough looking blonde woman was charging down the hall loudly, and the both of you turned to look at her. Happy immediately put his arm up to stop her in her tracks. “Hey- private hall. ID? You got a name?” 

“Sharon Carter. Check it. Is Rogers- he’s alive- right?” 

Taking no chances after all this, you activated your visor. “LUNA- check database on Sharon Carter.” 

A compiled list ran through your vision, but as her picture ran back, a green check stamped over it. “She’s clean, ma’am.” 

You nodded with a drop of your head after, giving her a weak wave through. “He’s alive. Two doors down on your right.” She didn’t even look at you as she moved around Happy to continue on her way, quietly you called to her- “Hey- if you need medical attention- stay in this wing. Stark Industries will cover you.” Former SHIELD employee. Probably needed a new health care provider. 

She barely stopped, hand on the handle of Steve’s room. Meeting your eyes for all of two seconds, nodding, and then disappearing into the room. More pressing things to worry about, you supposed. 

Looking up, you caught Happy peering through the window to Tony’s room. Checking on him. When he got caught he held his hand out to you. Without thought you put yours in his and he hoisted you up. “Go. Be with him. Rest. You look pretty beaten up, too. I’ve got this.” 

While you wanted to at least thank him with a smile, you couldn’t even muster that anymore. Instead just a weak pat on the shoulder before turning around to go into Tony’s room, closing the door quietly behind you. He was still deeply asleep on the bed, and you stayed there in the middle of the room, looking at him for probably a little too long. 

The twinge of white-hot pain in your chest prompted your feet to move, turning towards the bathroom after discarding the laptop on the table by his bed. Taking off your shirt, you were greeted with the sight of soaked through bandages, wet and red, wound no doubt open, and probably had been for a little while now. It was almost a little bit of a relief to know that your sudden drop in energy wasn’t from a sense of soon to be defeat, or the prospect of cleaning all this mess up. 

No it was just blood loss. Well that was something, right? Taking them off in one painful strip after the next, and the half dissolved gauze and pulled stitching over the bullet wound, you were left with rough patches of blood covering your chest, welts, and bruising- and the bullet hole. So near to your heart. Just oozing steadily. 

Bending forward, clutching the sink, your head dropped, and breathing became a little harder for the next few minutes. Trying to keep it all together. When you were able to look up into your reflection again, something dark was staring back at you. A shadow of yourself, behind which was that vast plane of unknown space that tethered you to the only thing that really qualified you to be here. 

And now- perhaps- that very thing was being exposed to a billion strangers at once. What would this do to Stark Industries? To Tony? Now that the world could see you… what would you do? What would you have to do? 

This thing inside of you, that let you look inside everyone else… that was the reason you’d ended up in this exact spot, wasn’t it? SHIELD had found out about you because of it- and you’d used it to get the very job that had ended you up helplessly and painfully in love with the man sleeping in the bed outside. 

The face looking back at you seemed so different from your own. Was that even you? What did you even know of yourself? How had you come into contact with this piece of the unknown? Why had it laid dormant inside you until you were old enough to know the exact right and wrong ways to use it- and still used it to end a man’s life- vile though he was. Wasn’t that where this started? Was it just a penance? A price you were paying? Staring into those unrecognizable eyes you saw that glow. Briefly. It fought off the wisps of black. Breaking through the shadows that had covered your face until you were standing there. Just… looking at you. 

Facing yourself. And everything you’d become. You saw something strange in your own eyes. Something unfamiliar. Something lurking there. Something you just didn’t know. 

How much more of yourself could you expand? How much more would you find out? If you continued to train, to hone, to use these powers, whatever they were, what would happen to you? What would you turn into? What would you be able to do? 

Who were you? 

A groan in the room ahead cut your attention. You were so unimportant in all this. And in the next moment, you saw yourself sitting beside Tony’s bed. Just waiting for him. Hands cradling his. Holding him steady. Comforting him, while he dreamed. 

It was where you blinked yourself back into awareness. No telling how you’d gotten there or how long you’d been sitting there for. When you’d put your clothes back and if you’d even repatched yourself. Just holding out for him. A soft knock at the door drew your attention, and Happy leaned in to place a stack of clothes on the chair by the door. “Thought you two would need something to change into. ...the press is gathering outside. They’re looking for a statement. I can have the cops come but- they’re kinda busy. Won’t be for a while.” 

“Thank you.” Murmuring, finding your voice a little lost. “Just let them stew. I’ll talk to them when I’m ready.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

You let go of Tony only long enough to change into the zip up Stark Industries hoodie and black jeans that Happy had left. It was nice to have a fresh change of clothes. Tony had something similar waiting for him, whenever he was up and ready to go. Part of you almost wanted to ask Happy to get something a little more upscale- since you’d be addressing the media as soon as you stepped outside but… 

Maybe this was okay. It was okay to see you battle-worn and tired. You might have been Avengers but you were still people. Maybe it would help your case, to appear a little more common. Not like battle was no big deal. Not like none of this mattered. It did matter, and you were bruised. You weren’t gods- well. Except for Thor. The rest of you were mostly just people. Enhanced or not. 

The light of the laptop as you sat down at Tony’s bedside again was practically blinding. The room was in the lowest possible lighting allowed so that he could rest, and the sun had gone down a little while ago. While it only made the headache worse, it made you ultimately feel better to be able to give him this small amount of time. Emails were piling up- as always. Your first point of attention was gathering up a subsection of Damage Control. They’d need to be on this- probably a few hours ago was when they should have started. 

So. Already late. There was now SHIELD tech in the river and on the highway that would need to be cleaned up wholesale and stored. Probably destroyed. Which presented another problem. Control’s storage capacity was nearing max, so you then had to reallocated a hefty amount of funds to okay a new set of units. Eventually you’d have to go down there and see what was going on. Find out what needed to be stay and what could be discarded. Because god knew no one could do anything right without you around. Considering what was in those units… probably for the better that you handled it personally. 

Next was setting up a hospital fund for your team- and the SHIELD employees who now found themselves shit out of luck due to current events. With the way Ellis was talking, it was pretty clear they were about to dissolve SHIELD at best. And at worst, try to start handing out jail time to everyone who worked there. That was a lot of talent to waste, and a lot of lives to ruin. Which is exactly why they were going to do it. And exactly why you couldn’t let that happen. 

So you started drafting a SHIELD to Stark Industries Open Arms Transfer initiative email. Funny, how a few months ago you were badgered by Fury over stealing one of his employees. Now you’d have almost all of them. Pending their allegiance. Which begged the next to-do… what of the people who still flew Hydra’s banners? You supposed that was up for the government to decide. Technically everything they’d done was treason. This effort would be time sensitive… maybe it would be in everyone’s best interests to wait until you got word back from Ellis how bad the fallout would be. 

So the OAT initiative went into a secure email to you, Tony, and a few other trusted individuals for review and processing. Pending the result to all this madness. 

It was in the middle of writing up notes for the inevitable press briefing that would have to come- sooner rather than later- that you felt your attention growing short and your eyes getting heavy. Head back, sitting uncomfortably cross-legged in the chair next to Tony’s bed, you were dragged into an uneasy and unwilling sleep. 

Deep down under you were called closer by the light of Tony’s distant, warm dreaming. And far away you sensed the looming dark clouds of Steve’s nightmares. One name, repeated over and over- Bucky. Louder and louder until it threatened the small well of peacefulness you found in sheltering by Tony’s side. So much so that you imagined yourself covering your ears and willing it to stop. He was in pain and it was killing you. Slowly. Like twisting a knife- 

It was the pain in your chest that woke you first, followed swiftly by the sharp call that indicated Tony had said this a few times prior, “Honey.” When you came to you were drenched in sweat, breathing heavy. And he was sitting up in his hospital bed staring at you. Worried down to his core. “I’m- I was just… having a nightmare. I think…” Trying desperately to catch your breath. “I just need a minute…” Feeling the shiver of panic receding a little too slowly. 

He reached out, setting a hand over yours. Comfort was close. “Take your time.” 

That was exactly what you did, excusing yourself to the small bathroom to splash some water on your face- check that you hadn’t started bleeding again. Instead hoping for the alternative- healing would have been nice. But it didn’t feel like that was happening. Stress related? Running on empty? Who the hell knew. There was so much about yourself you didn’t understand yet-

And you couldn’t risk going into that spiral again. So you simply didn’t. Instead you finished your little alone time and came back into the room to see Tony on his feet, putting on the clothes Happy brought. It would have been standard to tell him to slow down. He’d gotten the crap kicked out of him, had been fired on by multitudes of heavy machinery, and had been knocked unconscious and fallen out of the sky, but… it was a little beyond that at this point, telling him to slow down. He wouldn’t, and more importantly, couldn’t. Same as you. 

Instead you just walked over to him and wrapped your arms around his middle, burying your face in his chest. He returned the embrace, strong arms coming around you, head resting atop yours. Another close call. Another few scrapes with… not death but… best not to think about it. This week had been pretty much hell. Like all the big ones before it. When this shit happened, it was always in such a small span of time. No rest. No breaks. Just nonstop carnage and running until it was over and the two of you- and your team- were lucky to be out alive on your feet. 

When more than a few minutes had passed, and the two of you were still clinging to each other, you had to be the one strong enough to interrupt the only good part of your life at that moment. “Press is outside. I issued a briefing on the schedule in the media room for tomorrow.” 

“Good. I wanted to go home, anyway.” 

“I set up a couple of things- funds for the team and the SHIELD agents who got hurt…” 

“I trust you.” 

“So we just need to check out, get into a car and not take questions.” 

“Sounds easy enough.” 

Which meant it was anything but. Hospital staff gave the both of you a stern talking to, something neither of you were listening to. There was just no time to be lying around in a hospital bed right now, democracy was kind of falling apart. Though you made a promise to yourself that you would have Tony in bed tonight, and the night after- if you could help it. He needed to take it easy. And he’d have to have his hand held in order to do it. 

But after you signed just the right amount of documentation in order to be let go, and Happy escorted you from the hall and outside, regardless of the early morning hour, the press had camped outside. Waiting for this moment. They all called. Screamed. Took pictures. Waved recorders and microphones. Happy parted the bodies like a break in the sea, and held the door open for the both of you to the waiting car. 

In unusual order, you helped Tony in first, and almost allowed yourself to feel a sense of relief, knees practically about to give out so that you could sit next to him. But- you at least had to hold up a hand. “We’re issuing a statement tomorrow at Stark Industries. Ten AM. You’ll get everything there-” 

And, as with all things, something bad had to happen. Right then. To you. To Tony. Christine Everhart and her pleasant smile- cameraman pushing people out of the way as she stumbled up to you and held a microphone up. “WhIH news- would you care to comment on the coordinated government cover up of Obadiah Stane’s murder so that you could assume control of Stark Industries?” 

Shock rode threw the crowd heavily and very suddenly all eyes were on you and every other voice in the area died. Waiting. Waiting to hear what you had to say. It wasn’t a good look, to be caught like that. Kind of like a smack broadside to your face. It left you standing there wide-eyed with no air in your lungs. “What- what did you just say to me?” 

“We’re live- by the way- and our viewers want to know how you and Tony Stark got away with murdering Obadiah Stane so that you could take control of the company- and why the government was involved- what do you have to say? Is it true that he and Stane had animosity towards each other that led to the murder?” 

There were few options here. You could tell her that you would address it tomorrow. You could deny it. You could say nothing at all. But after everything, after all this time- and especially right in that moment-

You let the heat of anger ravage you. “That’s outrageous.” When Tony’s voice lit up behind you, you held a hand up to stop him and turned fully, your back to him, to cover him. Shield him. Not this. They would not take him on this. But you? She could have you. And you’d make her regret it. And when she tried to counter you started in, “No- shut- just shut up, Christine.” The shock riding the people surrounding the area was of a much different color then. 

That debriefing report, so long ago now… you’d only read it once. But you knew of its existence. And of course that was the very first thing she’d picked to fixate on. 

You narrowed your eyes at her. “If you had even bothered to read the twenty other pages sandwiched between the buzzwords you skimmed for your headline, you’d know that Stane was a traitor. He was selling weapons to terrorists- for years- the same terrorists he paid to kidnap and kill Tony. And when that didn’t work, when Tony built a defense suit to get out of there, Obi smiled and laughed and played it off. Meanwhile trying to rebuild that suit so that he could sell those, too.” 

When she opened her mouth you held up a finger to her, “I’m not finished. Since you couldn’t be bothered to do the reading, we’re not done with the re-education yet. When he couldn’t figure out the power source, he tried to murder  Tony in his own house- and then when I, along with a few government agents, came to arrest him on our property, he tried to murder us, too. Ten people. He went after us, he hurt civilians on the highway, and tried to kill Tony. A third time. 

He wouldn’t have stopped there. So look me in the eyes right now and listen to me when I say this- because you want me to say it, right? I flipped the switch that was responsible for Obadiah Stane’s death. I did it. And I’m not sorry.” Waiting, catching you breath before finishing. “I was acting not only in self defense, but in the defense of others. In defense of this country. He was a war profiteer, a tyrant, and a treasonous snake. And, again, if you’d bothered to do any reading that didn’t just suit your own interests, you’d know that neither Tony nor I were working for SHIELD at that point. They pulled the cover-story. We had no say in the matter.” 

You leveled the hardest look you could manage and expelled the last on a stern tone. “You keep coming after me so much over matters like this it makes me wonder whose side you’re really on. But let me tell you this, don’t you dare insinuate Tony threw Obi under the bus for me. Tony did what he had to- to protect people- like he always does. And I did what I had to, to end it. And I don’t regret any of it. We’ve met a lot of men who just want to crush everyone beneath them. And we’ll never stop protecting people who are innocent in all this. No matter the cost.” As the crowd started murmuring, you held a hand up. “We’re done here.” 

The calls for attention were so much louder now it was almost deafening. You just barely kept  from collapsing into the car, holding steady until Happy closed the door and then got in on the other side to drive off. In that time, Tony’s hand had found yours, holding tightly, eyes ahead. 

His voice was low, when he found it. “You didn’t have to do that.” 

“There’s gonna be a lot of things I don’t have to do in the coming months. But I will.” That report was out now- something you hadn’t even given thought to. Only worrying about yourself and your powers. Strange, that she hadn’t brought that up. Then again, murdering Obi to take over the company was a little more interesting, you supposed. “I’m not gonna let her say whatever the hell she wants- I’m not gonna let them try and destroy what you’ve done- what you’re doing.” 

Tony was a good man. He might not always have been, but he was trying, now. You saw him on his worst days. And his best ones. You saw him trying. Always trying. Always thinking, always working. 

His free hand lifted up, tucking a stray piece of hair behind your ear before cupping your chin in his palm and directing your face his way. The two of you shared a look. “Don’t let her get you upset over me.” 

“Not over you, for you. I’ll say whatever I have to say- do whatever I have to do- to defend you. To make it right.” Almost begging for him to understand a concept that you knew he was intimately familiar with. You would protect this man until your dying breath. You would defend him. Leaning forward, you rested your forehead against his. “I will always pick you.” 

The two of you were a team. Recent events had cemented that more than ever. You were on his team. You were on his side. Always. And you found peace in that. 

The corner of his lips quirked, and his hand slid from your face to tangle in the back of your hair, holding you steady there against him. “Does it help that I kind of loved listening to you tear her apart?” Joking, as always, in a tense moment. It at least encouraged a small breath of a laugh, a flutter of your eyes. His voice was quiet and warm when he spoke again. “I love you. And… if I could pick anyone to be in my corner… yeah. It’s you. It’s always been you.” Whether when you were just starting out ten years ago. 

Or five minutes ago telling Christine Everhart to go fuck herself. Yeah. It was always you. 

“I love you, too. We have each other’s backs. I’m never worried about you being on my side or not. And you shouldn’t be worried about which one I’m coming out on, either.” 

“For the record- I wasn’t. I’m just- ...it’s weird for me to be the one saying this, but there are moments where delicacy could be employed a little more…” Grinning lightly. 

“It was time for me to put delicacy aside. They don’t listen to that. But… I need help work shopping how I’m going to answer the inevitable questions about my powers- I’m worried- about the company-” The Board might feel different, knowing they had a literal manipulator working for them. Sister companies, investors, subsidiaries- there was no end to people who would have a problem with someone they thought  could control them. “I think… I might have to step back-”

“Don’t worry about that.” Said like he had not a care in the world over such a divisive topic. 

“I have to.” 

Settling back, he put his arm around your shoulder, and eased you to rest against him. An easy thing to do, despite the oncoming frightening future prospects. “I deleted those files, remember? Only ones who know about that are you, me, the agent that wrote it and-” 

“Yeah but what about all the other debriefs? What about the assessments? What about-”

“Gone. There’s nothing there.” It shouldn’t have stunned you, but it did. At least a little. When you stared at him a little too long, waiting for him to expand, he seemed to get a little uncomfortable. “I… had a deal. With Fury. Before any of this. If he wanted us to keep working for him, he had to purge all mentions of that stuff. You worry about me- and I’ll worry about you.” 

“Tony…” How were you supposed to feel about this? That you got off- alright, well, not scot-free, considering the massive blowout you’d just had, but… he’d had to go and ask Nick Fury for that. Probably from a position of weakness. But he’d done it anyway. To save you.

“No nightmare scenarios, remember? Not over that.” His arm curled around you a little tighter. “It’s my job to protect you. Until you want that out there, that’s nobody else’s decision.” Perhaps a wise move, although such an ironic thing to say, coming from Mr. I Am Iron Man. 

Curling in, you moved to rest your hand over his heart and closed your eyes. You were protected. Something you already knew, but… in such turbulent times, it was a newly and massively comforting thought. Because you believed it so strongly. Tony was watching out for you. And you would watch out for him. “I love you.” 

“I love you, too. We’ll get through this.” 

He was probably the only person on earth that you could make you believe that. 

[schalaasha]

Top 20 Games of the Decade

Hi, I felt like writing about my top 20 games of the decade because I kept thinking about it. This is a semi-ranked list, but I decided not to throw numbers into the mix since, really, outside of the top 2, I can’t think of how to rank the games prior to them. I also commissioned hyiroaerak (@/HRAK__S2 on twitter, https://hyiroaerak.weebly.com/work.html) for art to commemorate this occasion.  Our characters are cosplaying as characters from our games of the decade!

Mega Man 10

I actually like Mega Man 10 more than Mega Man 9 out of the two platformer revival games in this series. Though a bit of background on this: Mega Man 4 is my favourite, and I prefer the games that are not 2, 6, 7, or 11, so I suppose that contextualises this for others.         Either way, despite it not having weapons that were as useful as Mega Man 9’s, I felt like 10’s level design and pacing worked more for me in my favour. Though I’m saying that as someone who liked the double fortress design in earlier games so that might invalidate how I feel.

 Time Attack mode from Mega Man 9 returns as well as Proto Man (but he’s unlockable right off the bat). It also has a proper Challenge Mode compared to Mega Man 9’s challenges, whereby challenges for certain levels or bosses are unlocked when you actually do it in the main game. Being able to play as Proto Man off the bat allows for the fluidity Mega Man had in 3 and beyond by letting you slide and use charged shots. I personally liked being able to play as Proto Man off the bat as while he has the 3 and beyond advantages for his moveset, he is a glass cannon and you still have to watch where you’re going.

 I feel like the levels were a little better designed and if I needed more of a challenge, Hard Mode was still there to cut my teeth on. I liked the colour schemes throughout the level maps a lot more than 9’s as well. The bosses felt particularly gripping and trading blows with them fit into a nice rhythm.

 It has more content than Mega Man 9 and I had a lot more fun with 10 than I did with either 9 or 11. The formula itself is pretty static compared to other Mega Man games, but I like simple things. Why fix what isn’t broken? It’s just a nice piece of cake at the end of the day and that’s all I really want.

  Trauma Team / HOSPITAL: 6人の医師

When I started university for the first time in 2006, I was pre-med.  I eventually got sick and tired of the politics and people in the program (ie: folks saying they only wanted to go to med school so they can get rich or make friends with pharma reps who might give them perks), and I left the program to pursue program majors and a minor to prepare me for speech-language pathology instead.

 We had a Wii in our student lounge. My main university campus wasn’t exactly big and a lot of the people who hung out in the student center were kind of cliquey. I think I had the benefit of being really good friends with one of the guys who was the biggest social butterflies at the school so I got to meet a lot of people or get involved with stuff if I felt like it. So that meant I got to play with other students in games or wi-fi sessions during classes or after classes if I didn’t have to commute home right away.

 Because almost everyone I knew at my school wanted to go into medicine, everyone played the Trauma series. Some kids played Under the Knife during class. Some kids played Second Opinion on the Wii in the student lounge. Some kids played New Blood. This was before like… Farmville took over everyone’s computers at the time.

 Trauma Team came out way after that, and some of us were either graduating or staying in school an extra year because we didn’t know what to do after the recession or knew what to do but needed extra courses for graduate school.  So the Wii was free to use.  I don’t think people hooked it up as often anymore anyway. By 2010, a lot of us who had met each other in first year decided to go our separate ways, not even in the same majors or programs anymore. A lot of us either branched out into research, psychology, neurology (like me), kinesiology, epidemiology, forensics, genetics, etc. So Trauma Team for the rest of us who were still there was a good fit.

 Trauma Team took some influences from the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic considering that was when the development phase occurred. Now, I live in Canada, and Canada was one of the focal points for the 2003 SARS outbreak. This was when health bodies in the country decided to make some changes to how they respond to potential pandemics. A lot of things they tell medical students or any students studying health policy (like I was at the time) emphasized how different parts of the hospital or medical or health care staff need to work together in order to care for a patient. I actually find the different professions involved in Trauma Team useful and a reflection of what my class of 2010/2011 became later on (a lot of us graduated in 2011 and took an extra year).

 Diagnostics and Forensics were what I was really interested in since they don’t play the same as surgery/emergency medicine since they played out like a point-and-click. Later on in life, I had to look at so many medical reports and radiology reports and file them but by then I realised what my patients had but I can’t tell them myself since I’m not a doctor. But Trauma Team gave me a chance to do so and practice my terminology as a student. A friend of mine, who ended up becoming a doctor at a hospital in Toronto, really enjoyed endoscopy since it merely involved using the Wiimote as an endoscope and the nunchuk to steer. A lot of us played co-op too.

 The difficulty in Trauma Team, I felt, was decreased from previous games. But that doesn’t really spoil it. It was a varied game and it looks fantastic. It’s a shame that the game style hasn’t been replicated or given a sequel in later years, because while I’m older and my classmates are doing completely different things and I haven’t seen some of them in years, I’d love to take a stab at these types of games with a well-practiced laboratory technologist’s hand.

  Sonic Colours

I think it goes without saying. My first community when I joined the old forum was the Sonic community. Just a bunch of people who were interested in talking about Sonic so much in almost every thread that we ended up making a community thread together. I don’t post in the new forum everyone is at but I still talk to mostly everyone via different social mediums.

 I wasn’t around when Sonic Colours came out but I think I remember reading the joy everyone felt when nearly universally everyone in that thread seemed to really like Sonic Colours. I remember the thread title still. I preordered Sonic Colours because apparently previews were saying it was… good? I didn’t bother playing Sonic Unleashed until after I’d joined the forum, but hearing Sonic Colours would be a return to form since I was one of those people who didn’t adjust well to the 3D games made me interested.

 Sonic Colours is everything I wanted from a 3D Sonic game. Or rather, a 3D version of a platformer. I didn’t really like where 3D platformers were going because they were hard to look at, hard for me to pay attention to, and to be honest I got dizzy while playing a lot of them since you’re expected to work in a 3D space as opposed to a 2D space so it was really hard for me to process. I really like the hybrid nature of the level designs that’s where Sonic Colours got me.

 Sonic Colours isn’t without its hangups: some of the levels are really short; existing mostly for ranking/getting red rings. Sonic’s jump is pretty floaty. The script is fairly short even if the jokes can be funny. Bosses are reused. Sonic Colours is not a perfect game, but the attempts it made were fantastic enough in its own right.

 The music continues to be great, but the areas are visual spectacles. Whatever you think of the series, it’s fairly undeniable that the games try to have style. From the lighting, to posing, to setpieces, to colours used in assets in the level design – Sonic has always had really great ideas.  Sonic Colours is no exception – areas like Aquarium Park, Planet Wisp, and Sweet Mountain have a variety of neat level ideas and they look good trying to execute it. From popcorn on the floor to one of the best darned water levels in all of video games due to the drill wisp, to a fresh take on a grassy knoll with beautiful music, Sonic Colours can bring tears to your eyes because of what it attempts. Terminal Velocity Act 2 is also one of my favourite parts of the Uncolourations games partially because it’s a well-executed setpiece, but it also showed me that maybe those 3D racing bits aren’t that bad.

 The bosses may be really easy, and the final boss ends far sooner than it should before it could perfectly execute its Kamen Rider reference, but I think the point was to fully enjoy the theme park that Sonic Team threw at you this time.

 In 2020 I like to say that out of all of the Uncolourations games, Sonic Unleashed is my favourite due to the balance it struck and its presentation/artstyle, and basically having one of the best soundtracks of the previous decade. But I recognise everything that Sonic Colours brought to the table. If it wasn’t for Sonic Colours, I wouldn’t be friends or acquaintances with so many people that I am with now.

  Kirby’s Epic Yarn

Have you ever played a game that made you feel warm and toasty? Canadian winters can be really cold, you know.

 When I lived at my old run-down house, my old room didn’t have good insulation. Whenever it got cold, my room got really cold. I had my own personal heater because we didn’t really have a good heating system in my room either. So I only wore flannel pyjamas, wrapped myself in faux-wool blankets all the time, and went to sleep covered in at least four quilts or comforters (which is something I still do out of habit sorry). I used to make hot choco every day because it was just so cold in my room.

 I love Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Kirby’s Epic Yarn makes me feel warm and toasty inside because I think of being wrapped up in yarn and sheets and scarves and I just feel so happy. There are so many pastels used in KEY’s earlier stages that I can’t help but to feel toasty and happy when I’m playing it. It’s not the most challenging game. The game is really easy and all you mostly do is collect furniture, music, beads, and parts of the results wheel in every level, but I don’t think that’s the point of it. The point is just to have fun. Watching Kirby turn into a car to sprint, watching him turn into a little parachute or transform during those vehicle bits, you just can’t help but to feel so enveloped by the cute.

 Being able to interact with cloth by pulling a loose button and releasing something, taking off tags, pulling on stray thread, spin balls of yarn… it feels so fulfilling because it’s a clever use of the medium. It’s exactly what you’d do if you’re stitching or knitting. Placing furniture around Kirby’s little apartment makes the Animal Crossing fan in me so happy.

 I appreciate the lengths Good-Feel went to producing the level designs. They took photos of the fabric they bought and created the graphics that way. The music is calm and relaxing, with lots of woodwind and piano and lighter sounding instruments. The entire game feels so soft and sweet. It’s a visually-impressive game since everything animates incredibly fluidly.

  Cuphead

Like anyone my age or older, I grew up watching a lot of older cartoons by Max Fleischer with watercolour backgrounds, hand-drawn characters with a lot of focus on expressions, rotoscoping, etc Lots of slapstick and musical scores out of that decade.  I would have never believed I’d play a video game that looks like that but here we are playing Cuphead this decade.

 Cuphead is a blend of that artstyle with older run and gun style games. It combines a gunning experience with puzzles, reflexive actions, and dying… and dying a lot. And learning. Underneath it’s cartoony and child-friendly veneer lies a game that is unrelentingly difficult. There aren’t really any checkpoints in the game save for one. You can’t regain lost health. It’s just you versus the game. You may spend hours on one single level learning everything about it. And you can’t beat the game until you finish off every other level on regular difficulty.

 Different levels have different forms: they can be run and guns á la Contra, which are actually, oddly enough, breathing room levels. They’re probably the “easiest” levels in the game. Other types of levels can be straight up shmup-like boss fights where you’re flying in a plane. They can be hard as a regular shmup.

 The best crafted types of levels are the ones that include platforming as part of their boss battles because they use the artstyle and ideas involved in the art piece as interesting platforming mechanics. You have a more limited control scheme but the scenario you’re involved in is really interesting and unique. You fight a woman in a play and the setpieces in the play change according to how far you are in the boss fight, for example. The game also has a parry mechanic whereby you can double-jump off of anything that’s coloured pink and fill your super meter in order to kill bosses faster. The parry cues change per boss so it’s really cool to see what they look like every time you encounter something new.

 I think while Cuphead can be utterly unforgiving, I think it should be experienced at least once for how much work was put into making things look so fluid and how creative every boss and level can be. It’s what I wanted the UBIart framework to eventually evolve into. I think the game’s aesthetics and sound are its own reward in addition to that feeling when you finally conquer That One Boss.

  Asura’s Wrath

Asura’s Wrath was a game I was incredibly iffy on even buying at all. I heard about how the ending was part of paid DLC, that the game didn’t have a lot of gameplay, and that it was incredibly unremarkable. I don’t think I had a remarkably low bar or anything for this, but I decided to purchase it on the cheap.

 Asura’s Wrath definitely isn’t a game for everyone, and I feel as though it’s an acquired taste. The main character’s art might not jive well with everyone, the lack of ‘play’ will probably deter some folks, and its episodic nature/final chapter unlock sequence would probably get on people’s nerves. With that said, at first, it seems to be an action-cinematic game without necessarily expanding on the “action” part. A lot of it at first seems to be a bunch of QTEs to move the narrative along, with the narrative not necessarily being that strong in the first place. I think that’s due in part to the game’s structure initially. The first few chapters and the first act truly don’t seem very remarkable. The Buddhist and Hindu aspects of the game are very obvious and very central to the game’s plot, but at the same time, they don’t seem to be specifically mentioned whenever someone talks about the game to me. The Asuras were not one singular character or a god, but a race of warlike beings exhibiting wrath and pride. They were incorporated into Hinduism and Buddhism through their mention in The Rigveda. With that said, I was continually impressed by how many references—whether it was mere mention of regular terms/concepts/people, the artstyle and inclusions of things like lacquer skin, mandorlas, Vajras and Pretas, and also Siddham script—was included in this game. Asura’s Wrath ended up feeling incredibly natural and a nice way of shedding some light on non-Judeo-Christian religions.

 Anyway, I genuinely liked that the game felt like a playable anime. I don’t feel like the game would be as effective if it were put into another genre, or were less cinematic. It ends up getting its message across with its carefully-researched artstyle, great scene direction, well-composed music, and penchant for feeling like it was a fantastic shounen anime. I also feel like the game has more combo-based gameplay than people give it credit for. A lot of the complexities come to the forefront on Hard mode, and going for S-ranks and finding ways to do that quickly and effectively on higher difficulty modes is always an interesting affair.

  Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

I finished marathoning all of the Ace Attorney games in 2010. I don’t recall if I was doing it before Ghost Trick but I think what enticed me to get the game was its amazing animation. I hadn’t seen 2D sprites move that fluidly in a very long time. Characters have exaggerated movements, exaggerated dances (ie: the panic dance), and they have big flashy gestures to show off the game’s animation engine.

 You’re introduced to all sorts of eccentric characters, many of whom don’t overstay their welcome (Circus case from AA2, I’m looking at you). You have a desk lamp, a doggo, a dancing detective, a little girl who’s the focal point for one episode, etc. Everyone’s dialogue is relatively snappy, their expressions and animations make them stand out from others, and due to how everything is presented right down to the character art portraits, everything just jumps off the screen.

 Because you’re a spirit with amnesia, you’re given the ability to go through time, and also the ability to through environments by hopping from object to object and possessing them in order to influence what happens in the past to save people in the present.  This is just a path to trying to figure out who you really are or to find who or what killed you. A lot of the gameplay revolves around trying to figure out which objects to manipulate and when in order to influence an outcome. It makes the game partially point and click, but also partially a physics puzzler. I don’t think I remember a single object in the puzzle segments that was wasted. In other circumstances, you must manipulate time in order to save someone in their last four minutes.

 If anything, I feel like Ghost Trick is a necessary inclusion simply because of its style and attention to detail, as well as its sort but sweet story where nothing overstays its welcome. Its soundtrack also feels similar. The game is fairly consistent and nothing really changes in terms of progression over most of the game. But I see that as a plus as opposed to a minus for the most part. It helps to bring the game to a compelling and surprising conclusion.

  Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

I marathoned all of the Assassin’s Creed games in one year prior to Assassin’s Creed III since I wanted to see what the deal was with the series because the first game wasn’t that great from a play perspective for me. The thing that resonates the most with respect to Assassin’s Creed for me is marshmallow-flavoured birthday cake and a bag of regular Bugles. I started this marathon on one of my birthdays that decade.

 Assassin’s Creed II is one of my favourite games out there, but Brotherhood adds so much to the formula despite its middling storyline compared to its predecessor. But that’s because most of Ezio’s growth happened in the previous game. He is a middle-aged man searching for the Apple of Eden, and while the story does not carry as much emotional impact, that isn’t exactly what I’m looking for with respect to the earlier AC games.

 One of the things I absolutely love about the earlier AC games is its attention to detail even if it isn’t necessarily completely accurate. At first I missed the fact that I could explore many different towns like I could in AC2. But then I realised how big Rome and its surrounding area is. Rome is gigantic, and it has so much attention to detail with historical buildings everywhere (which you need to pay to rebuild), old tapestries from the era, citizens dancing in the streets, lovers flirting with each other behind pillars, etc. There are more roofs and buildings to parkour over and between. The game adds towards that require you to take over them before you can use them to gain access to vendors and things to renovate. You can also find the glyphs (much like the ones from the previous game) to solve puzzles in order to gain access to more lore.

 I genuinely love the renovation aspect of this game. It’s more involved and a lot better than what the previous game tried to do with its economy. You renovate in order to gain access to shops, which in-turn generates income for you, and then you can renovate other stuff based on the income that you generate. It’s something that I’ve come to miss in later AC games. It felt a lot like a Suikoden game in some aspects.

 Platforming missions return in the form of finding parts of a cult and cutting the beginnings of a conspiracy off by its limbs. They’re faster paced than AC2’s tombs and there is more variety in terms of what you platform through. I like both types equally since one allows you to marvel at the beauty of a cathedral, while the other allows you to clock a few folks while making your way through a lair.

 In addition to the lairs, there are different types of missions for each faction that you forge alliances with, there are Da Vinci missions that involve new war toys and blowing things up in a scripted way. Assassin missions can vary in terms of how you carry out the assassins (albeit still scripted; improvisation was not a thing until ACUnity).

 The crux of AC: Brotherhood is being able to recruit assassins to your cause. Random citizens throughout Rome may be under attack by Borgia soldiers, and once you save them, they are recruited to join your cause. You level them up, send them out on missions, improve their gear, and ask for their help when you can and when they’re available. This feature gets expanded upon in later AC games but it gets a very good start here.

 Brotherhood is so full of content and a lot of little things that playing it for me makes it feel like comfort food for me. It may not have the best story and it certainly isn’t as memorable in that sense as its predecessor. But it’s so fun that I can’t help but to feel satisfied every time I turn it on.

  Pac-Man Championship Edition DX

I played the original Pac-Man CE on 360 years ago at my cousin’s house, where they added a timer and a morphing maze to the base original game. I thought it was a neat novel thing at the time but didn’t think further.

 Pac-Man CE DX adds more mazes and more mechanics and more modes to the championship edition base. It added sleeping ghosts where, if Pac-Man moves near them, they wake up and they chase him around the maze in a line until you can finally eat them all and rack up a huge score. You can also elect to use a bomb at a small expense in order to save yourself and send ghosts to the middle of the maze again. These changes assist in maintaining the game’s flow and it never makes a score attack daunting or boring.

 Devouring big long conga lines of ghosts following you is so satisfying while you’re listening to a bumpin’ soundtrack and chilling out looking at the cool lights on the maze. Really and truly, while at its core, PMCEDX is a score attack game, it makes for a beautiful loving chill sensory experience and I couldn’t ask anything more from it.

  Deadly Premonition / レッドシーズプロファイル

I think I, like a lot of people, was introduced to this game via the GB series. I didn’t have an Xbox 360 so I eventually imported the Japanese version for the PS3. The game’s dub was already in English; the text was in Japanese and it was pretty easy and reasonable to get through. Deadly Premonition actually the Guinness World Record winner for most critically polarizing horror video game since the reviews at the time were so all over the place. And yes, I will contend that Deadly Premonition is definitely not for everyone.

 I am not the type of person to play shooters. I actually hate them a lot. I don’t like gushing blood in video games, and I don’t really like the act of murdering someone in a game. I used to play a lot of survival horror games when I was younger on the PS1 and PS2, but a lot of the time you’re dealing with the undead or oddball things going on around you so it’s not nearly as bad I think. It’s funny; I deal with people’s bodily fluids and body parts all the time in real life as part of my job (ie: I’ve had to help dissect someone’s stomach before fresh out of the operating room), and it doesn’t bother me. But the mere act of seeing it done or doing it, makes me feel squeamish. I don’t like it. I don’t even like watching blood being drawn from me or needles being stuck into me, even though I’ve done it to other people as part of my work.

 For the most part, inexplicably, in Deadly Premonition, you’re dealing with the undead anyhow. I’m not the best person at shooters, but I certainly know what’s a good one and what isn’t.  Deadly Premonition is not a very good shooter. It’s really janky. Some of the weapons don’t make sense in terms of how balanced they are. The controls are also really janky. This is not really a surprise considering the game’s strength wasn’t supposed to be its shooter aspects. In fact, those parts weren’t even supposed to be there.

 Deadly Premonition is often cited as an artistic piece or a good game simply because of its story and character writing.  It has an excellent main character who was cast almost perfectly. It has a lot of eccentric characters filling the town of Greenvale to help you solve the murder mystery or help obstruct it. The end result of having an unreliable narrator works out in the game’s favour. It helped sprout pop culture references, weird humour, quirky dialogue and more. I have certainly never watched Twin Peaks but I got the allusions either way since the show was so big. Slowly uncovering how every cast member lives their lives throughout the town and every day makes you more emotionally connected with them.

 Greenvale is more of a sandbox than just a place where a crime is committed. You can play darts. You can race cars. You can do a ton of sidequests somewhere that will reward you elsewhere. You can collect trading cards??? You can carry some lady holding a pot everywhere? You can taste-test for one of your coworkers? You can do a lot of stuff that makes zero sense but I still end up enjoying it all anyway.

 It looks like a PS2 or Dreamcast game or something and I almost found that utterly endearing in the era in which it was released. The soundtrack itself is so dissonant and doesn’t always fit the situation. Sometimes the sound mixing is so all over the place that it often results in making a scene more hilarious than it should be. There’s a song that’s just… American Idiot… on the soundtrack for some reason. Along the way, you start wondering “is this game real? Am I real? Is this really happening right now?” and yes, yes it is.

 In the end, because of its cult success and getting people talking, it allowed Swery 65 to make more games. Deadly Premonition was lightning in a bottle for him. He followed up with D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die (unfortunately in limbo). He cowrote Lord of Arcana and Lord of Apocalypse. He recently released The Missing. If anything, I’m more interested in what he makes. I’m eagerly looking forward to The Good Life.

  999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

Text/Puzzle-adventures, rather than pure visual novels, became a staple of some players’ libraries due in part of the popular Ace Attorney series, Professor Layton series, and whatever Mystery Case File games that were published by Nintendo. 999 is not a pure visual novel. It’s a puzzle adventure game with visual novel elements. With art by Kinu Nishimura and a story written by Kotaro Uchikoshi (who had a few visual novels under his belt), it was difficult for me to ignore this game. I was also at a point where I really wanted to get into a lot of the games that Aksys published so it was a natural choice to buy.

 A lot of the localization and language in this game was edited so that while it stays true to the spirit of the original language, a lot of care was put into making the dialogue and writing sound natural in the English language versus going line by line exactly. It worked out in the game’s favour because the script was fairly large. Based on Uchikoshi’s past games, he likes to ask a question and generally incorporate some pseudoscience in his narratives. 999’s version of pseudoscience ended up being morphogenetic fields (see: Rupert Sheldrake). This theory ended up the basis for a few characters and it is the way the story unravels. He also took inspiration from another older game of Chunsoft’s: Banshee’s Last Cry where the player is put into an unsettling position right off the bat. Indeed, 999 starts the player in media res, but the player is already in trouble when you begin to control the main character.

 The puzzles were added to the game so that it would be received well by a wider audience than just visual novel readers. They were naturally and seamlessly integrated into the experience that the game became almost wholly about the puzzle rooms and whatever flavour dialogue occurred during the puzzle rooms. A lot of inspiration seems to have been taken from browser-based escape games like the Crimson Room from 2004. Escape the Room games were a subgenre of point and click adventure games and it was nice seeing the concept integrated in a narrative experience that wasn’t Myst (see: http://www.fasco-cs.net/ for more information). Due to the puzzles being a fundamental part of the game’s story, with them getting more and more difficult, the final puzzle for the entire game at the end of the true route is both a relief and also incredibly impactful due to using both of the DS screens and also revealing a lot to the player about the narrative.

 If I had criticism for the game, I feel like it would be having to play the game repeatedly, doing the same puzzles repeatedly in order to unlock another prerequisite ending for the true ending. I did not play the later port which rectifies this but I’m not entirely sure that being able to see the branches would be great for the game either. I also feel like, just like a lot of Uchikoshi’s writing and previous games, that when the characters start cracking jokes when they have to urgently do things to not die, the tone feels a little off.

 With that said, 999 is one of the more compelling text/puzzle-adventures from last decade, and it uses its native platform to its advantage. There weren’t a lot of games that used the DS screens to convey a narrative properly but when you are faced with the revelation that the game was using the two screens for a remarkable reason, you feel like the game is a natural and powerful addition to any DS library and gives significance for the dual screens.

  Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

The funniest thing about Metal Gear Rising was that I actually disliked it at the beginning when I first started playing it. I didn’t know what I was doing half the time, and I didn’t ‘get’ the parry mechanic. At first, I guess I was playing it for the sake of playing it? It definitely took me a while to even warm up to it. The camera was obnoxious (and still gets to be obnoxious in some places), and I felt incredibly nauseous while playing it sometimes.

 It wasn’t until I got to the Mistral boss that I finally … found what I was looking for… I’m sorry. I’m serious, though. Metal Gear Rising truly shines during the boss battles. When I finished that particular boss battle, I’d reflected that I was smiling like an idiot the entire way through. I don’t think I’d fought satisfying boss battles in years prior to that. Returning to previous chapters told me that Platinum really likes to frame and teach players via trial by fire. Learn to parry yourself, here’s a test to see if you can parry well and you can get a trophy for it, here’s the final test to see if you can even parry (Monsoon). I loved that Metal Gear Rising threw a lot of what we knew about Metal Gear Solid out of the window, with a significantly interesting score, boss battles that centre around the climax of a battle (expertly done via excellent sound design as I noted in my SotY writeup this year), and a more interesting and personable version of Raiden. It relies far more on offense than defense and stealth, and that’s okay to me. It ends up separating Raiden even more from Snake.

 The final boss is a love-it-or-hate-it sort of affair, and I ended up loving every single part of it. I felt like it was one of the best final bosses in years. Don’t know how to parry? You’re fucked. Don’t know how to use the game’s other offensive rush tactics like Defensive Offense and running? Good luck. The game makes sure you try to know how to do these things before even bothering to attempt the boss, with the major roadblock being Monsoon. And if you can’t parry by then, the game brutally tells you that you aren’t doing it right by making the boss battles ramp up to significantly require you to use one of the game’s core mechanics for elegant combat. This isn’t the most elegantly-designed game whatsoever. In fact, it can be really sloppy. With that said, it’s one of the better action games I played all decade.

  Papers, Please!

Papers, Please is work. It feels like work because it is work. You can grant freedom and admittance to people, or you can just take their freedom away or not permit them to cross the border. Everything you do is controlled by the government, or by rules and regulations. If you do something wrong, you’re written up. Do enough wrong, and your pay is cut. Do enough wrong and your pay is cut multiple times, and you can’t provide enough for your family. Everything about the game just feels like work. Even right down to the end of the day when the whole thing feels like a budget calculation and spreadsheets. Everything about the game’s UI feels a lot like work. Where do you allocate space to do your job? How much money do you allocate to heat/food/medicine? It ends up feeling very tedious, but somehow fulfilling.

 You are an immigration officer in a fictional Soviet state. The interesting part of the game is that it doesn’t only feel like a job, but it also feels like government and self-evaluation. You end up studying why the government keeps regulating the border the way they do, and thinking about how mundane the job can be. You know that people’s livelihood and family lives hinge on whether or not they cross the border, and sometimes your penchant for following the rules and disallowing people across the border may be called into question when people plead with you to go through. Do you accept docked pay so you can reunite people or save people from slavery, or do you do as you’re told and live with the consequences of your actions. In a small way, your ethics are called into question. It’s a nice reminder that a lot of things, despite people being people and having their own stories, generally seem to come down to bureaucracy and pieces of paper as opposed to a full understanding of humanity or extenuating circumstances.

 I’d also like to add that Jorji is one of the best characters of 2013 to me. I think his glass half-full philosophy / if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again philosophy is something to look forward to whenever I encounter him in-game.

 In many ways, Papers, Please feels a lot like the Milgram experiment. Are you going to make cruel judgement calls to separate a family, or keep people in slavery because the authorities and higher-ups essentially tell you to do your job so you can keep your family healthy? Papers, Please in many ways is written incredibly well. It doesn’t use reams of text to make you understand the overall premise of the game but through your actions, you’re also helping to tell the story. That’s the sort of weird and wonky player “agency” that I find interesting.

  World of Final Fantasy

The Final Fantasy series had a better decade than the last decade, I feel, considering the quantity of releases increase from the previous decade.  However, it had a lot of growing pains to deal with at the beginning of the decade. Final Fantasy games sell well all the time, and more people playing games than ever, it makes sense that sales numbers continuously increase. Attach rates aren’t as large.  Final Fantasy XIV came out in 2010 and it was not a good game at all to the point of having to be structured for its 2013 re-release. Final Fantasy XIII had mixed reviews, as well as its subsequent direct sequels.  Final Fantasy All the Bravest wasn’t exactly the best mobile debut for the series. The brand also suffered from dilution – the Final Fantasy name was attached to almost anything and everything for the sake of sales, and numerous spinoffs were released and the quality varied.

 Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII, originally planned to be part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis setting with Final Fantasy XIII were renamed and rebranded/redesigned to be their own titles: Final Fantasy XV and Final Fantasy Type-0. Both games also had mixed reviews and multiple delays. If anything, I can probably say that this decade was the most divisive for Final Fantasy fans.

 World of Final Fantasy came out during the same year Final Fantasy XV. I think I’ve made my feelings about Final Fantasy XV fairly well-known.  Perhaps my feelings about that game influenced how I felt about World of Final Fantasy but as someone who has played this series for decades (for reference: the first game is one year older than I am, and my first Final Fantasy was the first game), I felt like World of Final Fantasy was a love letter written to fans like me. I am a long-standing fan of the series over the course of decades and have been through its up and downs, and while I don’t like every game in the series (we all know how I feel about half of the games in the series, after all), I can still look at them for their influence on the rest of the series.  I also like the newer games equally as the older games and dislike and like games from all of the eras, so I don’t really have issues with how the series is represented in general unless the games are really bad.

 World of Final Fantasy feels like a Kingdom Hearts-esque exploration of the Final Fantasy games while throwing Pokemon into the mix. It involves a lot of older references as well as bringing new references in and throwing it into a presentation mode that fans of all ages can enjoy. The main characters are chibi which fits right into how the older games represented characters, but they can also grow taller to represent how the newer games are represented. You can create stacks of party members according to their height and balance well accordingly out of classic Final Fantasy enemies and characters in order to battle against other classic Final Fantasy characters, villains, and monsters.

 The game is exactly what I wanted a mainline Final Fantasy to look. It retains a cartoony look, embracing stylization while adding so much detail to the areas’ setpieces so that they also stand out while the characters move around on the map. I also felt like the score was also a brilliant blend of old and new: with Masashi Hamauzu composing the score but also remixing older Uematsu themes to fit within the context of the score. The score was loftier compared to Hamauzu’s older works and the strings, synth, and piano works incredibly well to bring the game’s world to life.

 The idea for WoFF was to try to bring younger fans into the fold, hence the Pokemon-like influence for using and rearing many classic FF enemies so that children could start to recognise them. The loftier script was also written in-mind taking into account both lighter storytelling from older FF titles and some darker bits taking into account newer Final Fantasy games. I’m not too sure that SE was very successful with bringing younger fans into the fold, but the way the game was written fit well with what I remember liking about FF for the first few games I had played. I also enjoyed that characters were chosen for their involvement to the plot versus them simply picking the most popular ones. This is why we got characters like Eiko and Shelke as well as regular FF mainstays. All of the characters were woven into the story well, as citizens of Grymoire as opposed to characters who just have their regular identities transported into Grymoire instead.

 I felt like the Pokemon mechanic was handled well. I even loved it enough to have the idea commissioned in combination with our FFXIV characters.  I liked that it changed up whatever skills you had access to, it influenced your stats, and it looked adorable to boot.

 I would absolutely love to see a mainline game made by this team because I felt like the loose style of storytelling and worldbuilding made for a very good Final Fantasy game, and in essence, WoFF was the real Final Fantasy XV to me. It felt more “Final Fantasy” than a lot of the games released in the same decade, or even compared to ones released in the previous decade. It was a nice step and touch to demonstrating that there were staff members who remembered what Final Fantasy is to older fans.

  Va-11 Hall-A

I’m too young to have a big attachment to older PC games like the ones on the MSX or the PC-88/98. But I’ve always had a fondness for their graphics and their music, like sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong time or something. It’s one of the reasons why I gravitated hard to the PC Engine—I felt like it was a way for me to finally experience stuff like that.

 Valhalla is supposed to be a bartending simulator but in reality, mixing drinks is a bit of a break and distraction between the visual novel bits. Usually if you’re stuck in a futuristic landscape akin to Bubblegum Crisis or Blade Runner, you’re asked to investigate a mystery or explore it. But nope, you’re a bartender making drinks and making enough to scrape by and pay your rent. You hear a lot about the world from various clientele while you serve them drinks but you don’t necessarily have to do anything with the information they give you.

 I worked as a medical administrator for a few years and over that time, I got to hear a lot of stories, meet some famous people (like been on TV people or youtubers or people who got paid to do things for celebrities), and just meet a lot of neat and interesting regular people. I got to hear stories about people’s health or their personal lives or witness people falling in or out of love. You don’t necessarily have to do anything with that information (in fact you can’t due to patient confidentiality), but the stories become sealed in your head. I can’t help but to think of some of these people I met for those few years or where they are now. I actually run into some of them at my current lab so I keep getting to see some of their stories. You eventually learn how quickly icebreak in situations like these to make people feel at ease or find a topic of conversation while they’re waiting. I even used my phone to gauge news because a lot of the time when I got home, I was too tired to do anything or getting news in the palm of my hand was incredibly easy to do.

 In this sense, I understood Valhalla. It may look dull and it doesn’t look special but you’re the one who makes it so that it doesn’t have a dull moment in the bar. You’re the one who has to make it enjoyable even if your pay sucks. Because you don’t want to be miserable either. It’s through the conversations with others that you learn about Jill because she has to add commentary too. Everyone has a different way of requesting something and it’s up to you to figure out how to decipher it. It’s a lot of like practice in being in the service industry.  You need to consistently gauge a conversation in order to actually give the client what they want to unlock more conversation.

 The pacing in this game may be a little slow, but it doesn’t feel like a hindrance because the writing is really good. Something always happens to keep you interested or you have to mix drinks to keep yourself on your toes. The humour comes across well, and nothing really falls flat. Part of the reason why I feel like the writing is genuine is because the game’s developers wanted to write something that reflected how they live in Venezuela, akin to laughter in the middle of despair according to the developers. The writing is balanced well with the music and the visuals which makes the whole package a wonderful experience.

 This game also has Rad Shiba so it belongs on the list by default.  

  El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

I had gone to Catholic Schools all my life. I was even in a nursery school operated by nuns when I was a toddler, and they always tried to get me to write with my right hand instead of my left (which left me ambidextrous for some things lol).  Because of my experiences with religion growing up, I absolutely had questions and doubts and concerns with metaphysics, theology, and epistemology. Every Catholic, I think, as they grow up and have to take religion classes, and having to take what the province mandates as metaphysics are somehow inserted into math and biology syllabi without even being mentioned in the coursework at all, questions it. And that’s okay. You should. The best religion and philosophy teacher I ever had growing up always said we should question everything we learn including what he taught us.

 Going through school, though, and reading the Bible and having Bible study, my friends and I always sorta wondered what it’d be like if a game was made about this stuff?  I know it may be a little sacrilegious but there are so many stories in there that would fit a game. Throughout my life, as I became acquainted with others from different branches of Christianity or other western religions, I talked with others who played games who… surprisingly had the same ideas and desires?  It probably won’t ever be done. El Shaddai is inspired by the Book of Enoch and while it is considered as non-canon in most Christian and Jewish sects, I guess it might come close to what some of us wanted.

 El Shaddai was a game that I picked up mostly because I bought almost every niche game back then. I just looked at some of the trailers, thought it looked just okay, and picked it up because I felt like Ignition was going out of business and it would be a novelty item. Ignition did not have the best reputation among the people I talked to back then. I played Lux-Pain whose localization left a lot to be desired. Nostalgia was a middling RPG. Arc Rise Fantasia’s localization left a lot to be desired despite being a good game. Deadly Premonition had an English dub already but the text localization wasn’t that great. I felt like El Shaddai was the most polished game that Ignition released. They got incredibly great voice actors, including Jason Isaacs. They developed a score attack combo ranking system for replayability. They had a fantastic art director and background art. They made two bishounen that screamed for female audiences to pay attention.

 All of it didn’t exactly work out for the time the game came out, and I always contended that the game was released before its time. Unfortunately, all the effort put into El Shaddai didn’t exactly save Ignition. I feel like if El Shaddai were released in the later half of the decade, it would have been accepted. However, I also feel like its marketing was mishandled. It doesn’t feel like a Devil May Cry successor. It shifts between genres continuously. It is very much like Nier in this regard: it is not for everyone and it has its own unique feel that sets it apart from other games.  It is also a score attack action game, not a hard character action game.

 One thing I really enjoyed about El Shaddai was that all of the setpieces aren’t exactly the same. It ranges from a watercolour painting to abstraction to 2D children art to more abstraction to Final Fantasy VII and keep going like that. It references rhythm games, 2D Platformers, racing games, action games, Devil May Cry (with its own brand of Devil Trigger to boot), and other genres to create something that syncs up very well with the rest of the game due to lore reasons: different enemies prefer different things so that’s why each environment looks different or the gameplay styles may be a little different. I’m okay with this because it shakes things up per chapter and the game doesn’t feel stale at all. You’re expected to adjust to new mechanics per area.

 The combat is a lot like Rock-Paper-Scissors, where certain weapons beat other weapons, or some bosses change which weapons they’re weak against (and the game gives you other weapons so you can adjust accordingly during fights). The weapon you wield also modify your platforming abilities (ex: one allows Enoch to dash, one weighs him down, etc), and they also vary in terms of character strength. In order to obtain G-rankings for each stage, the player needs to analyse which weapon would be the most useful for certain enemies and combo while guarding, guard-breaking, and stealing enemies’ weapons.

 I am putting El Shaddai on this list because I really enjoyed it for what it was. It’s a brilliant score attack action game with a fantastic soundtrack and fantastic art design. It made for a pleasant sensory experience and made some religious figures fairly compelling with good character designs. It’s definitely one of the most rewarding and prettiest score attack games I’ve played this decade.

  To the Moon

Everyone goes through life with regrets. I’m in my thirties now and I think I’ve done things I’ve regretted, or I didn’t other to do something and I’ve regretted that. Kan Gao was inspired by his grandfather’s illness when he was writing and making To the Moon, he’s noted that when he gets old and when his time would come, he might end up regretting some decision he’d made throughout his entire life.  Everyone goes through that when faced with introspection. You can have the courage to love, you can feel pain, you can live your life fully, or not live it enough. To the Moon explores this, and while the writing isn’t the best and can be a little messy (this gets improved on in Gao’s later sequels to this game: A Bird Story and Finding Paradise), I understand what To the Moon was trying to accomplish. To the Moon is an exploration of everything that life throws at us, and the results of the decisions made throughout our lives that touches everyone and everything around us until our time passes.

 Eventually you build up so many wishes and have a big bucket list but eventually there will come a time where you won’t remember why half of those things are on those lists.  To the Moon relates the story of Johnny Wyles, an elderly man on his deathbed with one wish: to go to the moon. The problem is that he could not remember why. The general flow of Gao’s games have involved two scientists from Sigmund Corp, specialising in wish fulfillment at the end of someone’s life, creating memories for people in their final moments to generate comfort for the patient. How ever you may feel about the moral implications of generating false memories for someone prior to their end of life, this is merely a set up for traveling through time to understand what the patient had wanted and what they’d accomplished.  

 Johnny’s character revolves around another character with an ASD. I will also note that my brother has autism (compounded with a multisystem syndrome). While the central focus was on Asperger’s Syndrome (Tony Attwood books being mentioned in the game), I’m a little happy that ASDs are being brought up in games and the game truly hit home for me. The writing may not be stellar, but I felt that the theme of the impact of medical disorders was communicated well. Particularly the theme of why communication and connections with others is so difficult for those with ASDs and those who take care of those who have ASDs. It’s easy to sympathize with the characters trying to express what they mean to each other.

 The game itself is relatively short. Regardless of its length, players must confront some uncomfortable situations and emotions that people struggle with daily or even at different points in our lives. I’m older now and I appreciate this game a little more since I’ve come to experience more of what the game had been trying to tell me a decade ago. The writing may not be the best, and it can be a little messy at times with respect to how it’s presented and written, but a lot of its messages come across as utterly genuine. Slowly unraveling the reasoning behind Johnny’s desire to go to the moon is beautiful. This game is quite human and I appreciate all three games that are a part of this subseries that came out this decade.  I am looking forward to more.

  Nier Gestalt

If you’ve played a Drakengard game or the first Nier game at all, you kind of know what you’re getting into.  Not the best graphics of the decade, plays pretty janky, having bosses that can be difficult to manage, etc.  So going into Nier Gestalt in 2010, I knew what I was getting into. Not a lot of people bothered playing this game since I don’t think it got as much promotion considering it came out during the same year a mainline Final Fantasy game got localized.  Nier also got a little scrutiny since the west got a different protagonist from the Japanese version.  I will say that this worked out in its favour, since the protagonist being one of the central character’s father versus her brother makes for a better, more interesting story than having yet another shounen protagonist.

 I will support the case that, like the Drakengard games before it, Nier Gestalt was difficult to get into. The gameplay is jank.  Easy is too easy.  Normal doesn’t drop enough stuff to warrant playing on the mode. Hard can be a little hard but eventually it evens out. I generally used spears for the charge portion of the combo but in the end it doesn’t necessarily matter what weapon type you use. It doesn’t even matter if you use magic or not unless the game prompts you to do so. It’s either broken or not and the game doesn’t have a set balance for anything. Combos are boring and you’re essentially mashing a button. Even playing through the Nightmare DLC for extra drops, it continues being like this. I was used to playing shmups so it wasn’t necessarily revolutionary that AoE attacks looked as though they were spat out from a shmup either.

 I wasn’t quite understanding why game started acquiring a cult following, because what I’d played of it was pretty boring and standard. “It’s just a regular ARPG starring an older character versus a young protagonist,” I said to myself. I guess that was the reason.  I didn’t quite understand why, even past acquiring Kaine, because I guess I accepted that there weren’t a lot of NPCs and certain towns were the way they were due to, what I surmised were, RPG conventions. It wasn’t until I finished the questline for the brothers, where their mother tried to run away with a man and abandon her children, that I finally started to understand.

 Within every substory, there was something that resonated with someone.  I couldn’t fathom why someone would want to abandon their responsibilities, and at the same time I understood. Sometimes you just want to take care of yourself. With the way the older brother sort of understood why even through his anger and disappointment, it resonated with me. I finally ‘got’ the story, so I wanted to play more. This became one of those rare games where I played only for the story and lore and abandoned any hopes of the gameplay getting better.  I fished, I upgraded weapons, I did enough sidequests for the trophies. I almost platinumed this game, but since the drop rates are so terrible for this game, I didn’t.

 I started enjoying the game for what it was. It was genuinely a fun romp where it feels like everyone taking part in the game’s design contributed something unique and something they were fond of.  If you read any interview from Emi Evans from this time period, you’d realise language is something she’s particularly fond of, so much of the composition and lyrical content of every song was a phoneme from any language that would make it sound like an evolved or a sort of Esperanto version of a current language. This came into play with the game’s lore, and many of the interviews were interesting to read from back then.

 Many of the game’s stages borrowed from different genres of video games. There were the obvious shmup references, the rail shooter reference, the visual novel reference, the Resident Evil/fixed angle horror game reference, the Shadow of the Colossus references, the 2D platformer references, the Zelda references, the top-down puzzle game references, etc. For what the game lacked with respect to its combat, the game excelled at reliving genres and putting maps together in such a way that it felt like an ode to other games and genres that inspired it. The City of Façade’s language being a loose phoneme reconstruction of Japanese felt right at home with the dungeon’s Zelda references complete with Zelda fanfare for me. The Forest of Myth being one long visual novel was so hilarious and unique at the same time.  

 Playing more of the game and opening up the lore with every playthrough was neat. I don’t particularly like when games waste my time, but Nier made each new playthrough worth it. Killing bosses quickly for a trophy, redoing dungeons to see the enemies’ perspectives, and unlocking more of the story and learning more about the world that came from a Drakengard ending felt satisfying. As someone who was studying linguistics at the time, constructing nonsense words from drops out of different morphemes to act as accessories or armour was really amazing for me.

 Much of Nier felt organically put together, from characters’ writing and what they wanted from each other, to the dungeon design, to maybe even the combat design… it felt like a truly special game made from the heart with as much lore as it could possibly include. I had purchased the Nightmare DLC primarily to get weapon drops and while it isn’t nearly as interesting as the rest of the game, it has some implications for the lore. The music and resulting soundscape lends so much to the worldbuilding and includes many peoples’ languages from the area with French, Japanese, English, German, etc phonemes thrown around to sound utterly organic and special.

 At the end of this, I have come to realise that despite saying to myself that I never played this game for the game… I’ve been lying to myself this entire time. I actually did play the game for its game parts. Those are the bits I remember the most about it, and they’re the reasons why I genuinely loved the game. It’s unforgettable for me and it’s why it’s one of my favourites in general.

  Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

I did not care about MMOs in my late 20s because I was far more focused on finishing school and actually working hard in my field. I think by the end of university, I barely played games because I literally didn’t have time for them. I probably stressed myself out a lot. I threw myself into a semester where I had what felt like 500 evaluations, had to study a lot, had to write papers, and I ended up breaking up with my ex-boyfriend amicably. I was on my own a lot and to be honest, I think I felt okay that way. I think maybe others thought I was unapproachable.

 My best friend now turned fiancé had been begging me to start playing Final Fantasy XIV for a really long time, since he was in the beta prior to its 2.0 release. I made excuses and said I won’t play until a speedster class was implemented since nothing really stuck out at me. In reality, I was mostly busy. Well, Ninja got implemented late 2014, so I ran out of excuses. I got a copy of ARR but to be honest, I didn’t have time for it and I didn’t play it much so I didn’t bother to try harder since my focus was elsewhere.

 Luckily, I got into a semester where I didn’t have that much coursework to think about so I ended up playing XIV more. I caught up during ARR and really my intention was to only play through ARR and finish the story and quit. But my fiancé’s friends were so nice and welcoming to me. When the servers shut down for Heavensward maintainance and I’d finished the ARR storyline literally that night, I made the conscious decision to buy Heavensward. By that time, I was falling a little too hard for my best friend and I really liked my newfound friends. I wasn’t ready to leave Eorzea yet.

 Of course, I had some quests to finish up during Early Access so I didn’t get the opportunity to play with anyone I knew during the main storyline for Heavensward. Heavensward was leaps and bounds above anything I experienced in ARR. The story was well-written, the English voices were recast and given better direction, character deaths were meaningful, a smaller cast made for good character building, the environments were large and you could only assume things happened in each area eventually (they didn’t in the long run), each area was different, it reminded me of Canada… Heavensward made me feel at home.

 Almost every job felt built on, since nothing was really truly culled. A lot of what you got felt like an extension of what you already did. The three new jobs didn’t start out too well or too balanced. Machinist was a mess. Astrologian felt weird. Dark Knight had some growing pains but probably performed the best out of the three once the Alexander raid was implemented given that its specialty at the time centered on magic defense. I was one of the five people who really liked bowmage since it required you to think before you cast but you still did a lot of damage if you thought before firing. I swapped to an omnihealer main officially halfway through the patches because my fiancé requested it.

 Heavensward had a lot of growing pains. For all the team did for the base game, they took a six-month vacation to recharge. 3.1 wasn’t really worth the wait and a lot of people quit the game or stopped playing because nothing really meaningful was added to the game other than a faceroll raid, poorly-tuned exploration missions, and two dungeons. Gordias earlier in the expansion nearly killed the raiding community as a whole.  3.2 didn’t fare too much better, though it did add the best raid tier that has yet to be topped. 3.3 was when FFXIV solidified itself as an MMO with a grand story to tell, with one of the best conclusions a Final Fantasy game had seen in almost a decade. The sound design was near-perfect for this patch, and it was when a lot of us genuinely felt comfortable with the game and its future. Heavensward wasn’t perfect; it still had its missteps and balancing issues, but it was the most comfortable and profoundly skilled I’d ever felt with the game.

 Final Fantasy XIV may not be what it used to be.  I feel old and I feel like I’ve played the game for a really long time.  Now while it’s riding the wave of success, currently having the best story Final Fantasy has seen in a very long time, I can’t help but to remember Heavensward when we finally felt assured about the game and it felt like a cohesive gift to players who were active at that time.  I got to know so many people during Heavensward, and now I’m engaged to my best friend partially due to our experiences together playing at that time.

  Undertale

The late half of 2015 was a really bad year for me. The first half was really great. I started playing FFXIV often, I finished the hardest year I’ve ever had of my 9 years of university so far with high grades and was going full-on hard into my residency year, I fell in love with my best friend.  I was pretty happy since I finally felt very successful.

 If anyone can recall (or this may be new to the person who is reading this), towards the end of 2015 my dad was falsely accused by our neighbour of possession of a weapon (it was a gardening tool), and he had a restraining order put against him so he couldn’t live with us anymore.  My little brother is severely disabled so that’s why I still lived at home so I could help out.  Without my dad around, it was so much harder.  I came home from my days at the hospital every day after a 12-hour day, had to babysit my brother since my mom still cooked food to carry for my dad who had to live at my aunt’s, somehow had to find time to study for my licensing exam and do some work for school and my thesis, had to find time to socialise a tiny bit otherwise I’d go crazy, maybe had to take my brother to his appointments by coming home a little early, and then had to find whatever time I had left to sleep.  I stopped posting on message boards because I literally had no time to do so and I wouldn’t have anything of value to contribute to discussions either.  

 I detached myself from a lot of people. It was actually kind of lonely. It was really hard. I lashed out at people when I shouldn’t have. I don’t look back on those days other than the bright spots with fondness at all.

 Before that, everyone was telling me to play Undertale but I sort of didn’t want to? I felt like the fanbase was sort of making the game unapproachable around the time it came out. By the end of the year, I was so out of the loop about games that I didn’t give a hoot.  A friend of mine, Shadow Hog, bought the game for me on Steam. I still have the e-mail message for it.

 My now-fiancé got his own copy so we could play it together because at that point I didn’t want to do much of anything alone. I was actually sinking deeper into depression and verging on a mental breakdown. I was not mentally sound and every single week it felt like someone had to save me from doing something stupid.

 I started Undertale and I didn’t really think much of it at the start.  I can’t remember when it started clicking with me but maybe it was around the time I got into a battle with Tsunderplane and Vulkin and got to Hotland that I gave up and started having fun with it because it was just… silly. It was time to let down your hair and have some fun for once and not feel completely guilty about it.

 The idea of having to win and achieving a certain ending by sparing your enemy isn’t necessarily new – SMT’s demon negotiation, Silent Hill 2’s morality system, and MGS3’s fight with the Sorrow have some sort of sparing mechanic. The hybrid of a turn-based battle system with enemy negotiation, as well as dodge system inspired by a shmup makes every encounter both strategic (ie: having to avoid bullets while also sparing enemies in a set order per battle) and consistently active.  Unless you are going for a certain other ending, you cannot just sit there and hold down the attack button and expect to win.  That said, this makes a lot of encounters a little longer than a standard RPG battle, but the flavour text for each uniquely-designed enemy makes many of the battle worth it. Undertale isn’t a hard game unless you’re playing on a certain route. But I don’t necessarily think the gameplay part of Undertale speaks properly for it. The dungeon maps are relatively simple. They all have their little gimmicks. The battle system is relatively easy to understand.

 The reason why Undertale has such a prolific fanbase is primarily because of its character writing and ability to make and use memes properly enough that they catch on. Many of the characters are easily encountered early, are easy to draw (propels a lot of fanart), and understand due to the character writing. What also helps is that the game is 4-6 hours long, and it came out at the right time with the right kind of word of mouth.  Undertale could have easily fallen into the sea like so many other RPGs before it but it didn’t.  My fiancé and I were shopping for work clothes one day at a store that sells business clothing, construction clothing, and scrubs. He was wearing a shirt with the Delta Rune on it since he loves game shirts that are relatively subtle. Even then, one of the sales clerks pointed it out and was pretty excited to see it.  It was pretty crazy to both of us how popular Undertale had gotten.  I don’t think the popularity was unwarranted. I think it’s a fantastic game, helped by a considerably lengthy varied and catchy soundtrack. Granted, I was not as exposed to how explosive its popularity was when it came out. But I understood why so many people liked it. It wasn’t for its gameplay.

 As I progressed through Undertale, instead of thinking of the lore (which was well-written), I was thinking of how the monsters treated your character with respect and love because you treated them that way.  They didn’t go out of their way to fear you, and welcomed you as one of their own.  In the end, they were hesitant to even kill you, and you were hesitant to kill them.  Even then you still had the spare/save commands.

 At the very end, you only had the Save command.

 And that’s how I felt. When Hopes and Dreams started playing, I couldn’t help but to cry. When I was repeatedly nudged to press the Save command, I didn’t actually feel like the game nudged me to do so. That was something I wanted to do. Just remembering how depressed I was when I started playing this game and then progressing to its true end with Hopes and Dreams and SAVE the World playing, I couldn’t help but to feel like my hopes and dreams were still alive.

 Even if I was going through a really hard time in my life, hope was still there as long as I had people around me that supported me all the way through. That was the time in my life that I realised who my real friends were. And in the end, I felt like Undertale told me my friends saved me and that my dreams weren’t crushed, now matter what threw at me.

 And that’s why it’s my game of the decade. It may not be the most perfect game that came out this decade or the objectively best-crafted, but it did so much for me. When I was prompted for my game of the decade, Undertale was the first thing that popped into my head. I didn’t question it. I just knew. I don’t think we’ll get another Undertale again in my lifetime, but I’m glad to say that I gave it a shot and I love it for what it is.

[easyfoodnetwork]

How One Chef Is Feeding LA’s Hospital Workers, 100 Enchiladas at a Time

The idea of comfort food has become a cliche, but for those working the front lines at hospitals, a well-prepared meal makes all the difference

One afternoon in late March, the chef Josef Centeno made 100 enchiladas. First, he simmered 10 pounds of chicken thighs in an improvised Japanese-style curry made with chorizo spice, yuzu kosho, dried chile powder, and dashi, while on the side, he grilled bolting cauliflower from a local farm. Then he warmed corn tortillas in hot oil and became a one-man assembly line, filling them with the curry and laying them seam-side down on the full-sized sheet pan. Finally, a blanket of fontina and Tex-Mex cheese turned the enchiladas brown and crispy in the oven.

This motherlode of enchiladas was handed off to some friends who took them to a doctor at Cedars-Sinai. There were 61 new cases of the novel coronavirus reported in Los Angeles County that day; the hospital had just set up a triage tent outside. “It’s gonna start getting bad I’m afraid,” Centeno texted me. The things he was hearing made him want to help, so he did the thing he knew how to do: cook.

Centeno was one of the first chefs in Los Angeles to close down entirely after the city ordered restaurants to shift to takeout and delivery only. While operating in takeout mode, he returned again and again to the question of the virus, and how easily it was spreading — it was safe for the people ordering, but less safe for the staff making their way to work every day. “I would feel terrible for the rest of my life if I was having people work, even though everyone wanted to work, if they went home and got their grandmother sick or son who has asthma sick,” he says. “I told everyone to file for unemployment [right then], because by [the following] week, it was going to be a shitshow.” Many of his employees were able to get unemployment, before, yes, everything became a shitshow. “Every day, we find out a little more, and it’s a little bit worse.”

The day after he decided to close, he gave away produce and extra cooked food to staff and friends, first from his restaurant Amacita in Culver City, and later from his four restaurants clustered in downtown Los Angeles around a corner he’d remade starting in 2011. Centeno was already cooking big batches of his ranchero chicken to give away, and when he heard about the doctors, nurses, and staff working endless shifts as they treated COVID patients and prepared for the oncoming wave, he wanted to provide food that could, even for a moment, transport hospital workers out of the crisis they were facing. “Restaurants have always been an escape, and that’s what I know how to do.”

After that first batch of enchiladas, Centeno started cooking by himself twice a week with a nonprofit called Dine11, one of the many charities that have popped up to feed hospital workers in Los Angeles. Dine11 was started by longtime friends and collaborators, actor Lola Glaudini and costume supervisor Brooke Thatawat, who had friends in the restaurant and hospital world and saw they both needed help.

Centeno’s prep work for a batch of meals designated for hospital workers

Unlike some of the bigger nonprofits, which are sending massive meal orders to the city’s best-known hospitals, Dine 11 doesn’t work with chains or big restaurateurs. Instead, its focus helps mom-and-pop restaurants and some smaller restaurant groups bring in enough money to survive the citywide shutdown, while sending food to the smaller hospitals in Los Angeles that are missing out on larger charities’ attentions. Dine11 uses the money it’s raised to place a takeout order at a small local restaurant, which boxes it up according to hospital safety protocols. The restaurant puts the food in the trunk of a volunteer driver, who takes it to the hospital. Then, the volunteer texts their contact at the hospital, who picks it up from the truck without any contact.

Glaudini says restaurants are finding Dine11 organically; she’s getting 20 to 30 emails a day from people who want to be involved. For many smaller restaurants, the kind run by families or people who would call themselves cooks, not chefs, closing down doesn’t feel like an option. Dine11 can’t keep them in business long term, but it can give them a lifeline of another week. And every restaurant Dine11 works with is required to adhere to safety standards (masks, gloves, frequent wiping down of containers and surfaces) that help keep workers safer, too.

Centeno cooks meals for Dine11 in between designing face masks for friends and family and custom-dyeing garments he’s selling to raise money to keep his workers on their health insurance. He uses donated vegetables from Thao Family Farms, his own dwindling stock of ingredients (like an order of eight 22-pound bags of rice he placed right before the pandemic hit), and whatever else he can get his hands on. He cooks alone, because he believes that’s the only safe option right now. “It’s been kind of Zen,” he says. “I’m just by myself, listening to music.” Centeno isn’t taking money from Dine11 for himself or to cover ingredients; the founders say he’s asked them to donate the money directly to the GoFundMe he set up for his employees. To cover the restaurants’ last payroll, Centeno dipped into his personal savings fund, which he is relying on as long as his restaurants remain closed.

For the takeout meals, Centeno is mixing Japanese and Tex-Mex flavors, which he says work surprisingly well together. A recent rice bowl came together like this: ground beef from the freezer, which he stewed with dashi to make a picadillo, plus mustard greens and kale from Thao Farms cooked with Peads & Barnetts bacon, served over brown rice. Centeno topped the bowls with shaved fennel and pistachio dry salsa. Even though he was working by himself, and not in the rush of service, he still has been running behind. “I did a lot better than the week before, when I was like an hour late.”

The idea of comfort food has become a cliche, but the emotional succor a well-prepared meal can offer is real, especially in times of true need. Medical workers need to eat, but what they really need is to feel supported, and that’s a role meals made with precision and creativity like Centeno’s can play. “Our responsibility as culinarians is to take care of people,” Centeno says.

Katy Kinsella is an emergency physician at Kaiser in Panorama City and a friend of Dine11’s co-founder Thatawat; her hospital has received several deliveries from Dine11. At the hospital, according to Kinsella, workers are anxiously waiting for the pandemic’s peak to hit in Los Angeles. Kinsella’s hospital is seeing COVID-19 patients on a daily basis, anywhere from four to 18 a day, many of whom come in very sick. “It can tax the lungs and they end up getting pneumonia; once they end up with a breathing tube, they don’t do well,” Kinsella says. “There’s no infectious disease that we’ve had here in the United States that’s felt anything like this. You can’t help but think, that could be me.” Friends at hospitals in New York and Detroit are completely overwhelmed. Kinsella worries for them, and for herself; she worries she might carry the virus home to her family. The food that comes from Dine11 fuels a long and harrowing shift, but its emotional impact is much more important. “It’s just nice to know that people care and recognize what we’re doing.”

The fear of what the pandemic might bring doesn’t stop Kinsella from showing up every day; she’s proud to do her job. What a meal prepared by a chef or local restaurant does is create a sense of normalcy — that care that Centeno wants to convey. “When we have to give people bad news, we feel it too. Having a meal and feeling the support of our community makes us feel like we’re not in it alone.”

Kinsella says she likes getting food from Dine11 because they’re building a model to support local restaurants, which she knows are hurting. “Food is my favorite thing in the world, and it’s weird to have all these restaurants closed,” she says. “We were trying to support local restaurants with takeout, but it’s not the same thing.” Glaudini and Thatawat believe that boosting the morale of health care workers is essential, but they know there are lots of groups out there feeding hospitals right now. They’re trying to focus on making sure the efforts help restaurants, too, whether that’s by partnering with places that are really in need or having delivery volunteers so the restaurants can keep all of the money, rather than giving a delivery service a cut. “We want to spend our money where the need is greatest,” Thatawat says. “And that’s the smaller businesses and local businesses that we love.”

Centeno does not know if the cooking is helping him cope with the collapse of his industry, but he does find meaning in feeding those who are putting their lives on the line. He knows he’s not alone in struggling right now — he sees it happening to every single one of his peers. Like a lot of other chefs who own a small enough number of restaurants where they occasionally still find themselves washing dishes or hopping on the line, he’s not used to standing still.

“I guess I’m in bulldozer mode,” he says. “Every day, I can’t believe the restaurant industry is gone; it’s vanished, and what is it going to come back as? I’m trying to figure out how to readjust, because the whole model has been turned upside down and put in the recycling machine. I worked 30 years and lost it all in 24 hours.”

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/34JRzQn https://ift.tt/3adfJ74

The idea of comfort food has become a cliche, but for those working the front lines at hospitals, a well-prepared meal makes all the difference

One afternoon in late March, the chef Josef Centeno made 100 enchiladas. First, he simmered 10 pounds of chicken thighs in an improvised Japanese-style curry made with chorizo spice, yuzu kosho, dried chile powder, and dashi, while on the side, he grilled bolting cauliflower from a local farm. Then he warmed corn tortillas in hot oil and became a one-man assembly line, filling them with the curry and laying them seam-side down on the full-sized sheet pan. Finally, a blanket of fontina and Tex-Mex cheese turned the enchiladas brown and crispy in the oven.

This motherlode of enchiladas was handed off to some friends who took them to a doctor at Cedars-Sinai. There were 61 new cases of the novel coronavirus reported in Los Angeles County that day; the hospital had just set up a triage tent outside. “It’s gonna start getting bad I’m afraid,” Centeno texted me. The things he was hearing made him want to help, so he did the thing he knew how to do: cook.

Centeno was one of the first chefs in Los Angeles to close down entirely after the city ordered restaurants to shift to takeout and delivery only. While operating in takeout mode, he returned again and again to the question of the virus, and how easily it was spreading — it was safe for the people ordering, but less safe for the staff making their way to work every day. “I would feel terrible for the rest of my life if I was having people work, even though everyone wanted to work, if they went home and got their grandmother sick or son who has asthma sick,” he says. “I told everyone to file for unemployment [right then], because by [the following] week, it was going to be a shitshow.” Many of his employees were able to get unemployment, before, yes, everything became a shitshow. “Every day, we find out a little more, and it’s a little bit worse.”

The day after he decided to close, he gave away produce and extra cooked food to staff and friends, first from his restaurant Amacita in Culver City, and later from his four restaurants clustered in downtown Los Angeles around a corner he’d remade starting in 2011. Centeno was already cooking big batches of his ranchero chicken to give away, and when he heard about the doctors, nurses, and staff working endless shifts as they treated COVID patients and prepared for the oncoming wave, he wanted to provide food that could, even for a moment, transport hospital workers out of the crisis they were facing. “Restaurants have always been an escape, and that’s what I know how to do.”

After that first batch of enchiladas, Centeno started cooking by himself twice a week with a nonprofit called Dine11, one of the many charities that have popped up to feed hospital workers in Los Angeles. Dine11 was started by longtime friends and collaborators, actor Lola Glaudini and costume supervisor Brooke Thatawat, who had friends in the restaurant and hospital world and saw they both needed help.

Centeno’s prep work for a batch of meals designated for hospital workers

Unlike some of the bigger nonprofits, which are sending massive meal orders to the city’s best-known hospitals, Dine 11 doesn’t work with chains or big restaurateurs. Instead, its focus helps mom-and-pop restaurants and some smaller restaurant groups bring in enough money to survive the citywide shutdown, while sending food to the smaller hospitals in Los Angeles that are missing out on larger charities’ attentions. Dine11 uses the money it’s raised to place a takeout order at a small local restaurant, which boxes it up according to hospital safety protocols. The restaurant puts the food in the trunk of a volunteer driver, who takes it to the hospital. Then, the volunteer texts their contact at the hospital, who picks it up from the truck without any contact.

Glaudini says restaurants are finding Dine11 organically; she’s getting 20 to 30 emails a day from people who want to be involved. For many smaller restaurants, the kind run by families or people who would call themselves cooks, not chefs, closing down doesn’t feel like an option. Dine11 can’t keep them in business long term, but it can give them a lifeline of another week. And every restaurant Dine11 works with is required to adhere to safety standards (masks, gloves, frequent wiping down of containers and surfaces) that help keep workers safer, too.

Centeno cooks meals for Dine11 in between designing face masks for friends and family and custom-dyeing garments he’s selling to raise money to keep his workers on their health insurance. He uses donated vegetables from Thao Family Farms, his own dwindling stock of ingredients (like an order of eight 22-pound bags of rice he placed right before the pandemic hit), and whatever else he can get his hands on. He cooks alone, because he believes that’s the only safe option right now. “It’s been kind of Zen,” he says. “I’m just by myself, listening to music.” Centeno isn’t taking money from Dine11 for himself or to cover ingredients; the founders say he’s asked them to donate the money directly to the GoFundMe he set up for his employees. To cover the restaurants’ last payroll, Centeno dipped into his personal savings fund, which he is relying on as long as his restaurants remain closed.

For the takeout meals, Centeno is mixing Japanese and Tex-Mex flavors, which he says work surprisingly well together. A recent rice bowl came together like this: ground beef from the freezer, which he stewed with dashi to make a picadillo, plus mustard greens and kale from Thao Farms cooked with Peads & Barnetts bacon, served over brown rice. Centeno topped the bowls with shaved fennel and pistachio dry salsa. Even though he was working by himself, and not in the rush of service, he still has been running behind. “I did a lot better than the week before, when I was like an hour late.”

The idea of comfort food has become a cliche, but the emotional succor a well-prepared meal can offer is real, especially in times of true need. Medical workers need to eat, but what they really need is to feel supported, and that’s a role meals made with precision and creativity like Centeno’s can play. “Our responsibility as culinarians is to take care of people,” Centeno says.

Katy Kinsella is an emergency physician at Kaiser in Panorama City and a friend of Dine11’s co-founder Thatawat; her hospital has received several deliveries from Dine11. At the hospital, according to Kinsella, workers are anxiously waiting for the pandemic’s peak to hit in Los Angeles. Kinsella’s hospital is seeing COVID-19 patients on a daily basis, anywhere from four to 18 a day, many of whom come in very sick. “It can tax the lungs and they end up getting pneumonia; once they end up with a breathing tube, they don’t do well,” Kinsella says. “There’s no infectious disease that we’ve had here in the United States that’s felt anything like this. You can’t help but think, that could be me.” Friends at hospitals in New York and Detroit are completely overwhelmed. Kinsella worries for them, and for herself; she worries she might carry the virus home to her family. The food that comes from Dine11 fuels a long and harrowing shift, but its emotional impact is much more important. “It’s just nice to know that people care and recognize what we’re doing.”

The fear of what the pandemic might bring doesn’t stop Kinsella from showing up every day; she’s proud to do her job. What a meal prepared by a chef or local restaurant does is create a sense of normalcy — that care that Centeno wants to convey. “When we have to give people bad news, we feel it too. Having a meal and feeling the support of our community makes us feel like we’re not in it alone.”

Kinsella says she likes getting food from Dine11 because they’re building a model to support local restaurants, which she knows are hurting. “Food is my favorite thing in the world, and it’s weird to have all these restaurants closed,” she says. “We were trying to support local restaurants with takeout, but it’s not the same thing.” Glaudini and Thatawat believe that boosting the morale of health care workers is essential, but they know there are lots of groups out there feeding hospitals right now. They’re trying to focus on making sure the efforts help restaurants, too, whether that’s by partnering with places that are really in need or having delivery volunteers so the restaurants can keep all of the money, rather than giving a delivery service a cut. “We want to spend our money where the need is greatest,” Thatawat says. “And that’s the smaller businesses and local businesses that we love.”

Centeno does not know if the cooking is helping him cope with the collapse of his industry, but he does find meaning in feeding those who are putting their lives on the line. He knows he’s not alone in struggling right now — he sees it happening to every single one of his peers. Like a lot of other chefs who own a small enough number of restaurants where they occasionally still find themselves washing dishes or hopping on the line, he’s not used to standing still.

“I guess I’m in bulldozer mode,” he says. “Every day, I can’t believe the restaurant industry is gone; it’s vanished, and what is it going to come back as? I’m trying to figure out how to readjust, because the whole model has been turned upside down and put in the recycling machine. I worked 30 years and lost it all in 24 hours.”

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