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lovemesomerafael · 5 years ago

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El Amor Todo Lo Puede Chapter 51: Adrift In The Wasteland

Source: Barbaoutfits

Chapters 1-50

************* Important Note **************** Just a reminder: The happy ending for Rafael and Laura was in the last chapter. If you can’t live with a different ending, please accept my most sincere thanks for reading and take my advice: don’t read further.

*********************************

Rafael took a long, satisfying drink of coffee that was probably a little hotter than was good for him, but he didn’t want to wait. He felt good. He’d just won a trial that was the beginning of the end for a hate group that had intended to bomb the Mayor’s office. The three defendants he’d tried were all going to prison for years, which did not bode well for the other five people indicted in connection with the plot. It wasn’t the whole group, but it was a start.

He had to smile to himself, now that this first trial was successfully over. He would never have admitted it, but he’d been concerned about what Laura would say if he botched a trial based on evidence it had taken her and Carisi a month undercover to gather. Of course, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force had been working on the case for much, much longer. But he wasn’t concerned about answering to the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Rafael had never liked Laura going undercover. It was dangerous, unpredictable work without a net. He trusted her ability to think on her feet and defend herself if she had to – which she had, on more than one occasion. But he didn’t trust the situations the detectives put themselves into, and he damn sure didn’t trust the suspects.

But this assignment – working with the Joint Terrorism Task Force – had been by far the worst. He had hated the danger to her, he had hated their inability to communicate and, if he was being honest, he had hated having their home life disrupted. He didn’t mind long, irregular hours. He did mind sleeping alone for weeks at a time.

That actually caused him to smile into his coffee cup even more than he already had been. There had been a time when sleeping alone had been a point of pride with him. Now, after celebrating three anniversaries with Laura, he barely recognized his life or his priorities, and he wondered how he had survived the long, lonely years before she came into his life. That thought reminded him of the time, over a year ago now, when he had thought he would lose her to a bullet aimed at him. Once her hair had grown back, she hadn’t thought much about it. But he had. The anguish he’d felt then was a big part of why he had such a hard time when she went undercover now.

At least this assignment was over. He remembered the night she had come home. He had been laying on their bed, still in his dress shirt and slacks, reviewing reports on the case while Laura took a shower. He had just begun to feel the weight of responsibility for getting indictments and convictions after all the investigative work. But as Laura came out of the bathroom, her hair freshly dried and a short, silky robe loosely tied around her waist, he decided that responsibility could definitely wait at least another night. From her mischievous grin, and the way she crawled onto the bed and began kissing him, she’d missed him as much as he’d missed her.

“Let’s never do that again,” he said against her lips as he pulled the robe from her body.

“Amen,” she agreed.

“You have no idea how much I missed you.”

“Then why aren’t you helping me get these clothes off of you? I can’t get you naked fast enough...”

“We’ve been over this.”

“I swear, Harvard, if you say the word ‘structure’, I will…”

“Yes?” The smirk on his face was as enticing, and had the same effect on her, as the very first day they’d met.

“Probably do whatever you ask me to,” she sighed, smiling up at him. “Like always.”

Carmen came into Rafael’s office with a package, interrupting a very nice memory of what had happened afterward.

“This was just hand-delivered,” she said, holding the box out to him. “It’s heavy.”

Curious, Rafael took the package from her and began to open it. Carmen stayed by his desk, just to see what was inside.

They never felt a thing when it exploded.

***********

When Fin was very small, his Gran had lived in a building in the projects. He’d loved that building. He’d been too young to even see that the building was a ruin; to him, the building was a place where his Moms knew everyone and they all loved him, and where his Gran waited to spoil him with baking and overflowing love. And then, in the first tragedy of his young life, his Gran had died and, shortly thereafter, the building had been condemned. He’d watched in horrified fascination as the building had been gutted, first emptied of his Gran and all the people who had always smiled at him and made him feel welcome, then stripped of everything of any value. It had become an empty, sad, unbearably lonely shell echoing with the sounds of the lives that had once been lived there.

That building was the only thing Fin could think of that remotely came close to the way Laura looked. Her expression had been one of stunned horror since that very first, cursed moment in Liv’s office, and that hadn’t changed. But now there was absolutely nothing behind her eyes. He felt sure that if he could look inside of her, she’d be entirely hollow. Maybe with a freezing cold wind blowing a few scattered ashes around. Laura Parker was gone. She’d just… flickered out. He had watched it happen the moment she had finally accepted that Olivia was telling her the truth about the bombing.

And Rafael’s death.

Fin hated hysterics. He was the first to run the other way when someone got emotional. Especially when he, himself, was also feeling the full weight of that emotion. But now, today, he would have given everything he had to see his partner shed even one tear or, better yet, fly into a howling, sobbing, keening lamentation with an all-engulfing tsunami of tears. He wanted her to scream and rage and destroy things, hurl vile words and swear vengeance. Or even just weep a little. He just wanted her to do anything to let him know that she was still in there somewhere.

As it was, it looked like the squad had lost both of them. Rafael was dead, and Laura was… gone.

Fin was the only one who could get near her. With anyone else, everyone else, she was grim and silent, just gazing through them with that lost, broken stare, as though they were ghosts. Or she was. Only Fin could get a response from her, whispered and vague though it might be. She would say ‘yes’, or ‘no’, or ‘OK’. ‘I don’t know’ was beyond her; even saying that many words was too much effort. If he asked her something she couldn’t answer, she just remained silent, looking confused and indescribably lonely.

He had absolutely no fucking idea what he was supposed to do. Fin had thought that, once they’d become desperate enough to fly him out for a day, Dr. Charles would take over. He was the trauma expert. He was her psychiatrist. He was the one who had helped her reclaim herself after she’d endured an attack so vicious and devastating she still had night terrors as a result. Nothing. She hadn’t seen or heard Dr. Charles any more than she could see or hear her parents, or her brothers, or her friends. The best that Dr. Charles had been able to tell them was that there was a name for her condition – catatonia – and that she would probably find her way back. Probably.

In the meantime, the people who loved her kept her alive. They put food into her hand and told her to eat it. They held articles of clothing up to her and told her to put them on. Her mother led her into the shower and bathed her. They led her to her bed and told her to lie down. She would stare blindly at the ceiling until, at some point, her body’s basic needs would take over and she would sleep.

The only time she was remotely responsive was when she was asleep, and her family could only imagine what kind of hellscape she was responding to then. She moaned and thrashed, called out in terror, and would eventually wake herself up with her screams.

For whatever reason, that was the part that her older brother Steve found absolutely intolerable. He refused to leave her alone at night, and had moved into her apartment with her rather than stay in a hotel, as originally planned. Once he did, the rest of the family followed suit. It was the first time in many years that all five of them had lived together. Steve slept in a chair next to his little sister’s bed, ready to spring up whenever she screamed, which happened several times a night. When it did, he talked to her until she was calm enough to lay back down. Even as she shouted and screamed through the nightmares, she never said a word. And even then, she didn’t cry.

***************

The bomb had damaged two floors of the D.A.’s office building at One Hogan Place. It was a miracle there had been only two deaths, although quite a few people had been injured, some of them severely. All of them were expected to survive. Only Rafael and Carmen had not.

The FBI combed the wreckage and gathered evidence, although everyone knew who was responsible for the explosion. The remaining members of the group had decided to go through with the bombing, they’d just chosen a different target.

Randolph had pushed the plan to bomb Barba’s office, and he got wood every time he thought about it. Not only did they get rid of him, but they had also struck back at Kevin and Susie White – apparently really some fucking NYPD detectives named Carisi and Parker. Randolph very much enjoyed thinking about their pain at losing their husband and friend.

So far, Randolph had been able to keep entirely under the radar. No one in law enforcement had any idea he was the group’s leader. Most people in the group didn’t even know that.

********

“It’s fucked up, Pete. She just sits there. Doesn’t do anything, doesn’t talk. Except when she’s screaming at night, of course, which is the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever seen.”

Carol Parker looked up from what she was doing in the kitchen. “Steven, I don’t disagree with you, but can we please have a little variation in descriptions?”

“Sorry, Mom, but damn!”

Carol gave Steve a sympathetic look. This was a nightmare for all of them and, truth be told, she wouldn’t mind using a few choice descriptions herself. But she knew Peter Stone was having a rough time not being here in New York with Laura, and she didn’t think it would help having Steve’s feverish narration in his head.

“No, still only her partner,” Steve answered whatever Peter had asked. “The doc said they sometimes do that, latch onto one person they trust. But we’re talkin’ about ‘yes’ and ‘no’. It’s not like even he’s gettin’ conversation out of her. Today she, like, touched his arm, and you’d’a thought it was the fuckin’ Second Coming. It was the first spontaneous thing we’ve seen her do. Except, of course, the screaming…”

Steve listened some more.

“I don’t think so, dude. But don’t feel bad. They tried takin’ her to church, see if that would do something, but apparently she’s not even talkin’ to Jesus right now.” It was a weak joke, but he needed it.

“So, anyway, I called to tell you the funeral’s Friday. The Moms talked about it, and they have to go ahead, even though my sister’s a fuckin’ zombie. I mean, how long are they supposed to wait?”

At the other end of the phone, Peter asked another question.

“Who the fuck knows?” Steve answered. “Her partner told her the funeral’s Friday and she said ‘OK’. No way to know whether she even knew what he was talkin’ about.”

Carol could hear a very faint, tinny sound as Peter’s voice came through Steve’s phone as he held it to his ear.

“I know, right? It’s not like I got to know the guy very well, but he was really cool, and he for sure had her number. I’m still tryin’ to wrap my head around the whole thing. And my sister bein’ a fuckin’ vegetable is not helping.”

There was another pause while Peter said something.

“Yeah, bro, text me your flight. We’ll pick you up. Just… be ready. It’s hard lookin’ at her like this.”

*************

Some of her friends had made the oblique suggestion that Lucia Barba should be angry with her daughter-in-law for making her do all the work. Lucia didn’t see it that way. Rafi was hers. Always had been. Although it hurt worse than Lucia had known anything could, she was constantly remembering him as a baby, and a chubby little toddler extraordinarily pleased with himself when he learned to walk, and all through his life where he had been a constant source of comfort and happiness and overwhelming pride. Rafi was hers. They had a huge family, on both her side and Rafi’s father’s, but there had always been an element of the two of them together against the world, even when Mateo had been alive. Of course, Lucia had recognized the sizzling connection between her son and Laura, and the deep love that had even then already begun to grow, and she’d made sure it did. But she hadn’t done it for Laura, much as she liked her. She’d done it for Rafi. Because he was hers and, despite his stubborn insistence that he didn’t, he had wanted a wife. And Lucia had wanted him to have someone to take care of him. Her Rafi. Hers.

So making his funeral arrangements was something that Lucia, and no one else, should be doing. In the three years Rafi and Laura had been married, Lucia had become very close to Laura’s mother, and she appreciated that friendship more than ever right now. Carol understood. She had her own child to worry about, and all she had done was offer – once – to assist with the arrangements on Laura’s behalf. When Lucia had explained that this last opportunity to care for Rafi belonged to her alone, Carol had burst into tears born of her complete understanding. It was how she would feel if one of her own children had died.

Lucia was, of course, concerned about Laura. But that was a very distant second to the jagged, burning agony of losing Rafi. So she let Carol take care of Laura. One day, when Laura began to be able to tolerate feeling her own loss, she and Lucia would spend all the time in the world grieving together. Their losses had a lot in common; they’d both loved Rafi above all else. But Lucia selfishly appreciated that Laura was staying out of it for a while. Everyone wanted to comfort the widow; she’d be the center of attention. But Lucia knew that her loss was by far the greater.

*************

Rafael’s funeral was held at the church where he was baptized. The church where he had encountered God throughout most of his life, had received all of the sacraments, and had been an altar boy. Lucia had thought about St. Augustine’s, where Rafi had married his Laura and had occasionally attended Mass. But this was Rafi’s spiritual home, and this is where he would have chosen to be committed to his God had anyone known to ask him.

So many people had made the trip to the Bronx for Rafael’s funeral that there was a bit of a panic about there being enough space. But people had crowded together and made it work. Everyone watched Laura, wondering how she would appear. Naturally, one of the main questions people asked one another was how she was holding up. Those who didn’t already know learned from the general hubbub in the church that she wasn’t.

She sat between her mother and Rafael’s, blinking blankly and wearing that same shocked, devastated expression behind the filmy black veil Carol had decided she should wear. Carol wasn’t going to bother with makeup, and she understood the curiosity that would cause everyone to want to get a look at Laura’s face. Because her daughter wasn’t able to protect her own privacy right now, Carol had decided to do it for her by simply reverting to the old-fashioned tactic of having her wear a veil.

There didn’t seem to be a face in the church that didn’t wear some variation of Laura’s expression, anyway. The SVU squad, Olivia Benson in particular, looked blasted. Captain Tucker kept an arm around Olivia and had armed himself with all the tissues he could fit into the pockets of his suit. Fin didn’t do much to try to hide his tears, and Carisi and Rollins wept openly. Rafael’s friends and colleagues from the D.A.’s office were more discreet about their feelings, but then they had only know Rafael Barba’s prickly, snarky public persona. They had liked and respected him, but he wasn’t family to them as he was to the SVU squad. Rafael’s immense family, men and women alike, wore their grief plainly.

Peter Stone had declined the invitation to sit in the front pew with the family, but had staked out a place two rows behind them, where he could see Laura’s face. He watched her the entire time, a hideous snarl of emotions making him feel sick as it slithered around inside him. What he really wanted to do was go to her, pick her up and carry her away from this disaster, somewhere he could protect and care for her forever. The idea that she was in pain so overwhelming it had shut her down completely broke Peter’s heart. One of the emotions in the snarl was guilt. Guilt that his sorrow for Rafael Barba’s murder could only be that of a near-total stranger being saddened by a tragedy, whereas he felt a towering sorrow for Laura’s loss. He hadn’t been able to hold back tears any more than anyone else at the funeral, but all his tears were for Laura.

Maggie Lockwood was glad that she had called Peter and arranged for them to fly out together. She was a mess. She hadn’t known Rafael, having met him only once, but she and Laura had been extremely close since they met in Nursing school. Which meant that Maggie had been there when Peter and Laura met, and throughout their whole relationship. She knew Peter very well, and she knew what he must be feeling. It had been a very good idea to be on the same flight, so that they could share their mutual grief for what had happened to Laura. Not that Peter was particularly forthcoming about his feelings, of course, but Maggie didn’t need him to be. She could plainly see that he was as much a mess on the inside as she was on the outside.

Hank Voight had come from Chicago with Trudy Platt and her husband Randall McHolland, along with Kim Burgess and Kevin Atwater. Voight was going to be there for Parker no matter what. While Trudy didn’t love Laura as a daughter the way Voight did, she still felt she had to be there, and Randall – Mouch to his squad – had volunteered to go to represent the firefighters of Station 51. The Intelligence team had all wanted to be there for her, and had settled for pulling together enough money to send Kim and Kevin, who had been closest to Parker. Their grief was evident on all of their faces.

*****************

It had been an impulse born of cruelty for Randolph to stake out the funeral. He couldn’t help it. He wanted more of the glorious high he got thinking about how much pain he had caused. He wanted more confirmation of his immense power, and the fact that it was his to wield without consequence. He was invisible. Untouchable. And he loved seeing all the tears as people shuffled out of the church. He had especially been eager to see the widow’s grief. He was pissed that the little bitch had worn a veil so he couldn’t see her face, but he got a great deal of satisfaction seeing her being led around like a blind person.

She wasn’t blind. She was bewildered, and terrified, and in agony beyond endurance, but she wasn’t blind. She saw him. Something changed behind her veil.

*******************

The gathering in the hall next to the church was attended by just about everyone who came to the funeral. Lucia had stood alone at the door, a one-woman receiving line, and to her it felt right. Laura was nearby, at a table with her family and a few other people, but in no condition to do anything as complex as receive condolences. When people asked, Lucia tactfully told them that she was having a hard time, and just wasn’t up to talking to anyone.

The few people who tried to speak to Laura didn’t stay long. They would touch her on the shoulder or the hand and murmur their sympathy but, receiving no acknowledgement, would awkwardly step away. Laura’s family gracefully acknowledged their kindness while she simply sat, looking apparently into oblivion. The family had decided that she should be at the gathering for a little while, so that they could tell her she had been there. After that, Steve and Peter would take her home.

Until Hank Voight stepped up to her, and she saw him.

At first, she moved so slowly that those at the table didn’t even notice it happening. But as Hank introduced himself to her family, Laura looked up at him. When he leaned down to speak to her, he found that she looked him in the eye. It was perhaps less disconcerting to him than it would have been to anyone who had been with her over the past days, because he was used to her acknowledging him when he spoke to her. But he was aware of her condition and so recognized that something was happening.

He knelt down on the floor so that he was eye-to-eye with her and waited as she slowly, fumblingly, pulled the veil up from her face. She looked like a wraith, if wraiths themselves could be haunted.

“Hank,” she rasped.

“I’m here. I had to be here for you.”

“You could do it. You would help me.”

He had no idea what she meant, but he would do anything for her, so he just looked into her eyes and waited.

“Randolph. His name is Randolph.”

Hank looked up, scanning the table for a clue. He instantly saw the recognition in Carisi’s face.

“You know what she’s talking about?”

“Yeah, I do,” Carisi answered, looking around. “Maybe we should… go somewhere.”

Trying to swim back to the surface was painful and frightening for Laura, and it was a difficult, arduous task made more difficult by the fact that she didn’t want to get there. She would much have preferred staying where she’d been, where there was no sound, and no feelings, and she could watch the world from a million miles away. She knew what was waiting for her in that world. But she had to go back, now that she knew who had killed Rafael.

#law & order svu #law & order: special victims unit #rafael barba #raul esparza #chicago pd #chicago fire #chicago med #chicago justice #fin tutuola #hank voight

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verdigrisprowl · 6 years ago

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Mar 25 Dancitron Movie Night - Christopher Robin

While Winnie the Pooh played sweetly in the background, Soundwave and Swoop did their level best to beat the ever-loving shit out of each other.

It was a hell of a movie night.

Specs Yesterday at 7:40 PM ((FUCK but I hate rabbit rn)) Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 7:40 PM (( oh worm Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 7:40 PM ((Believe me, me too.)) Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 7:41 PM ((HEY JUST SO YALL KNOW:)) Specs Yesterday at 7:42 PM ((me: enters correct password rabbit: your password is incorrect! me: rechecks and re-enters password rabbit: your password is incorrect! me: resets password and then enters new password rabbit: your password is incorrect!)) Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 7:42 PM ((when you use asterisks * or underscores _ around a word, it auto-converts into formatting, like this or this. and if you copy/paste text from discord to somewhere else, it doesn't save the formatting OR the original symbols)) ((as your friendly neighborhood chat log keeper, it'd make my job a lot easier if y'all used something other than asterisks to indicate actions while we're in discord, so i don't have to manually go back and insert asterisks every where y'all used them.)) Specs Yesterday at 7:43 PM (( :thumbsup: )) Soundwave (Slenderwave) pinned a message to this channel. See all the pins. Yesterday at 7:43 PM Soundwave (Slenderwave) pinned a message to this channel. See all the pins. Yesterday at 7:43 PM Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 7:43 PM ((thanks!)) Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 7:43 PM (( how about we all use prose and "dialogue" ??? Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 7:44 PM ((agreed)) Soundwave (Slenderwave) pinned a message to this channel. See all the pins. Yesterday at 7:44 PM Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 7:44 PM Soundwave's ready to go tonight. He's got the sweetest movie he could possibly find, and he knows that that's the case because Zori's the one who recommended it. Anything from Zori has to be the softest, most adorable thing to watch ever. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 7:44 PM ((........................ jesus fuck)) ((i just tried to copy/paste the text that you dropped in rabbit, just to see)) ((and it copy/pasted the name & time just fine)) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 7:45 PM ((WHAT)) Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 7:45 PM ((YEAH)) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 7:45 PM ((it doesn't for me!!!!)) Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 7:45 PM ((in that case it's the modifications i made to the extension last time apparently)) ((which means it'll probably still do the OTHER thing that made it annoying, only allowing copy/paste of a small handful of messages at a time. so it's probably still better to be in here.)) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 7:46 PM ((yep)) Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 7:46 PM ((might be yeah)) Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 7:46 PM ((we can experiment with it another time though)) Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 7:47 PM ((Trying to think of what to do to denote action. Might just do lazy prose and quotes idk Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 7:47 PM ((also we're gonna start around 8:10)) Specs Yesterday at 7:48 PM ((what was the maximum amount of messages that it would copy, or was it a word-length thing?)) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 7:48 PM ((one screen's worth)) Specs Yesterday at 7:48 PM ((gotcha o7)) Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 7:48 PM ((little enough to make it annoying)) Chaoit Yesterday at 7:48 PM ((oh joy)) Windchill Yesterday at 7:48 PM (( I thought prose and quotes was a lot easier to write in anyway, might just be me being a weirdo though. )) (( ...actually that's probably because it forces everyone to slow down and makes it easier for chronic multitaskers like me to keep up with chat, so that's probably it. NEVER MIND. )) Specs Yesterday at 7:50 PM (( /me pats chill )) Windchill Yesterday at 7:51 PM (( Today we learned that I am actively creating my own problems as usual lol. )) Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 7:51 PM Prowl shows up for the first time in a few weeks; but almost immediately sits and focuses on the screen. And its... not very enthralling nature scenery. Fascinating. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 7:52 PM (( OOPS i took the remote Windchill Yesterday at 7:52 PM (( You're FIRED. )) Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 7:52 PM (( :fire: :fire: :fire: Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 7:52 PM ((I, Tarantulas, am now leader of dancitron)) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 7:53 PM Soundwave immediately twists to greet and ping Prowl. Usually they don't get much time before everyone rolls in. [[Good evening.]] Bee Yesterday at 7:53 PM (( quick, dance off with BOTH Soundwave and Blaster )) Chaoit Yesterday at 7:53 PM ((NEVER)) Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 7:53 PM He nods vaguely. "Evening." Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 7:54 PM (( oh man wow i forgot i have hair dye in my hair, GOTTA GO RINSE. tarantulas will be l8 Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 7:54 PM ((when tarantulas shows up, he's orange)) Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 7:54 PM (( i mean my hair is like orange pink i think so........ Chaoit Yesterday at 7:54 PM ((that'd be a sight Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 7:54 PM ((lucky guess! Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 7:55 PM [[You seem rather... intent, tonight.]] ((i see a new person! hello new person!)) MOTHMAN GF Yesterday at 7:56 PM Scoots in. Windchill Yesterday at 7:56 PM (( OH SHIT. )) Chaoit Yesterday at 7:56 PM ((annnd gimme a sec Windchill Yesterday at 7:56 PM (( Tormentor. )) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 7:57 PM Ah, and there's the other company, right on schedule. One day he really must have a Prowl-only showing just for them. Then they won't need to worry about packing everything in before the others arrive. [[Perceptor, is it?]] He nods toward the thing on the mech's shoulder. Not many of that going around. Lieu Yesterday at 7:57 PM (( Figured I'd bring the sociable one for once)) Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 7:57 PM "Hm? No, just—preoccupied. For the last couple of weeks." Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 7:57 PM Swoop flies a few laps around Dancitron before eventually living up to his name by swooping down. He transforms at the last possible moment so he can sliiiiiiide through the door. This Dinobot is all grins. Lieu Yesterday at 7:57 PM (( Promise not to punch Windchill! )) Chaoit Yesterday at 7:58 PM ((KIWI 20%wurmple Yesterday at 7:58 PM Swerve wanders in and drops into the closest seat. MOTHMAN GF Yesterday at 7:58 PM //sorry my WiFi is crapping out and won’t send the reply to slendey :sob: 20%wurmple Yesterday at 7:58 PM Slowly. And carefully, with his arms out feeling things so he doesn't walk into them. Windchill Yesterday at 7:58 PM (( Hmmm it's neutral ground so he'll settle for glaring across the room at all times. Might as well go post-fight on this. )) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 7:58 PM ((that's all right, just repost it and if it shows up twice nbd)) Lieu Yesterday at 7:59 PM (( Si si)) Specs Yesterday at 7:59 PM The dragon comes in with her cartful of treats- and something else! It's a very, very sizable box. Looks like you could fit a xenomorph queen in there without too much trouble, in fact. A very large label says "FOR BUZZSAW" on it. The glut of pterodactyl-shaped gummis in the treat cart are perhaps a way to assure the other sibling that she was not forgotten either. MOTHMAN GF Yesterday at 7:59 PM Perceptor has no idea who this mech is. “It is! I’m a little new to the multiverse so I thought I’d just... jump right into it.” Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 7:59 PM "Bird?" Swoop scampers around, head going this way and that. "Bird!" Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:00 PM [[Understandable.]] Curious head tilt. [[Is there - anything he can help you with?]] And Soundwave will bob his helm at Swerve, Swoop - nice job there - and the dragon. 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:00 PM //ugh, come ON chrome just load rabbit already u useless lump Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:00 PM Has arrived and--makes a beeline toward Swerve instead of going to the usual spot. "Are you all right?" 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:00 PM "Nnnno. My visor's on the fritz. Should be fixed soon." MOTHMAN GF Yesterday at 8:00 PM "Ah, no for now I think I'm gathering some good data on it by observation. However, I will definitely ask if there's anything I'd like more information on." Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:01 PM "Do you require assistance?" Specs Yesterday at 8:01 PM The dragon bobs her head and churrs right back at Soundwave. She's honestly not sure where to put Buzzsaw's box, so she's just kind of scooted it towards the stairs for now. That's good enough, right? Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:01 PM "Perceptor. Hello." A nod in his direction. "You've worked out multiversal travel?" Bee Yesterday at 8:01 PM Bee saunters in with a few packs of rust sticks. He places them on the bar, then makes his way to an empty spot. He doesn't know too many bots this time around, so he gives a little awkward wave. "Hi everyone." 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:01 PM "I might, not sure." MOTHMAN GF Yesterday at 8:01 PM "Somewhat! Mostly catching rides from other people until we can manage a safe way to travel through other verses." Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:01 PM Swoop hops on top of the bar. "Bird?" Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:02 PM Will offer an arm out for him to latch onto then. There's a joke here about the blind leading the blind, but Prowl's not funny enough to make it. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:02 PM }}Is it here? Is it here!?{{ Buzzsaw's going to circle the dragon like a vulture.

Soundwave had actually meant that question for Prowl, but it serves rather well for Perceptor too; he offers Perceptor a polite nod of agreement. He'll answer what he can without putting too many things at risk. [[There's no Bird tonight, Swoop.]] [[Welcome, Bumblebee. Thank you for the contribution.]] 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:02 PM He appreciates thr gesture enough to pat Prowl. "Thanks." Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:03 PM "Why?" He shuffles onto the very edge of the bar, holding on with his toes. "Me Swoop want to show her something! Video! Kehehhehehh! It good." Lieu Yesterday at 8:03 PM Tormentor hasn't been to any of these Multiverse gatherings before, and they're quite a sight. He only knows the fly-guy who spit on him and everyone else he recognizes are Autobots. He'll try to avoid them so as not to spur any multi-dimensional arguing. Windchill Yesterday at 8:03 PM Rebel trots in, nearly dragging Windchill by his giant hand in her excitement. The latter looks worse for wear, and is definitely too lazy to walk any faster despite Rebel's attempts at dragging him in. Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:03 PM Nods and they can both make their way to a nearby table together then. Chaoit Yesterday at 8:04 PM And he's made his way in. Still perpetually tired, but looks a bit more relived this time. "Hey, not late, am I?" Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:04 PM Prowl thought Soundwave's question was for him until Perceptor answered it; so he ends up answering with a vague shrug, so he can play it off like he's shrugging at nothing in particular in case it really wasn't for him. Windchill Yesterday at 8:04 PM Rebel points at the screen, practically bouncing in place once she's got her lazy bum of a dad through the door. "Earth!" Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:05 PM Rebel's shout drew his attention. Swoop's head snapped from Soundwave to her in an instant. "REBEL!" Specs Yesterday at 8:05 PM "It's here!" Oh thank the Goddess, Buzzsaw isn't off doing something, she can just drop this off with him. "Some assembly required, I'm afraid- I don't doubt you can figure that part out on your own, but there's a manual packed in there in case you have to ask other people to help you with the assembly part."

Sorry, Buzzsaw, but while the box has wheels for her to shove it around, she's only the size of a fox. She will not be helping you take it upstairs. It's heavy enough just to push around! 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:06 PM Swerve jerks in surprise when his fiddling finally fixes his stupid visor, blinking. "Huh. Okay, that fixed it. Thanks Prowl." Windchill Yesterday at 8:06 PM "Swoop!" She drops Windchill's hand to scamper over, but Swoop is up to high for a hug so she bounces in place some more. Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:07 PM Pulls her arm away as quickly and politely as she can. "You're welcome." Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:07 PM Swoop launches himself off the bar and onto Rebel without hesitation. "H!" Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:07 PM [[Because she is busy. Leave a copy of the video for her and she will see it later.]] Soundwave's busy watching everyone come in - oh, there's another one he doesn't recognize; expanding crowd tonight - and recording where they're all going so he knows who is seated where in the event something terrible happens. A fire, or what have you.

}}I shall take it upstairs at once! Here, move.{{ Buzzsaw will get his feelers around that and hoist it up like it's nothing. It doesn't weigh as much as a helicopter, after all. ((WE START IN TWO MINUTES and honestly i can't think of too many warnings if any off the top of my head because it's Christopher Robin. a nod to WWII happening, some insensitivity on the part of some board members near the end.)) Lieu Yesterday at 8:08 PM Tormentor can try to promise no fires. Windchill Yesterday at 8:09 PM This causes Rebel to windmill her arms in a futile attempt at staying upright, and for Windchill to squawk. Here he was going to sit down quietly, and already you two are causing a ruckus! 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:09 PM //oooh i watched this in theaters it's good Lieu Yesterday at 8:09 PM Tormentor, however, will not promise there won't be any smoking Windchill Yesterday at 8:09 PM (( I watched the first half last night but got pulled away so that works out pretty well lololol. )) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:10 PM [[You there - over to the right.]] He's thinking to Tormentor. [[Name and faction for the record, please.]]

As for that shrug... he doesn't know what to make of it, so he'll send Prowl an acknowledgment ping. All things in time, he supposes. Specs Yesterday at 8:10 PM The dragon watches in awe and admiration- after moving her furry butt out of Buzzsaw's way, of course. She's the luckiest dragon alive. She gets to watch all these amazing minicons and Soundwave do the coolest things she could think of. And the price of admission is making snacks.

Speaking of the snacks, she should probably get those unpacked before Swoop takes it into his head to sit in the cart like the world's stickiest nest. Hatchlings do that sort of thing. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:11 PM Swoop is in absolute stitches already. He's not afraid of the floor. Either she finds a way to support him or they both eat dirt. He's here either way. (Although his wings reflexively move to balance things.) Bee Yesterday at 8:11 PM Bee's apertures go as wide as he can. He knows exactly which movie this is. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:12 PM Soundwave motions for Ravage to lend the dragon a feeler while nobody's asking for snacks. There will be a spot open for her when she's ready to settle down and sit. Windchill Yesterday at 8:12 PM Nope. She lands on her butt, but (heh,) her cackling is enough to ease Windchill off of intervening. Close one. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:12 PM Hm. Looks like Bumblebee's interested in this one. Lieu Yesterday at 8:12 PM .... It's not everyday one hears the voice in your head so clearly. Tormentor was certain he had heard the last of it ages ago. "Ummm, sure, Decepticon Commander Tormentor of Tyrest." 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:12 PM Swerve pings Percy to come join him. MOTHMAN GF Yesterday at 8:12 PM Blinks! And comes over to sit next to Swerve. He knows this mech. They spoke once, he thinks. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:13 PM There's singing animals. Prowl watches them suspiciously. Are any of them... dogs. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:13 PM What a name. Soundwave wondered if they ever lived up to it. Not every mech did. Bloodrage flipped to pacifism early in the war. [[Tyrest. City or mech?]] 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:13 PM "Hey Percy!" He doesn't think any are dogs, but the Eeyore one has four legs and it's gray so maybe a wolf? Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:13 PM This Eeyore looks like a dog. Bee Yesterday at 8:14 PM He sends off a ping to Soundwave, only containing the :sob: emoji. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:14 PM With a minimal amount of twisting and wiggling, Swoop manages to end up sitting on Rebel's chest. He's light-weight but also scrawny enough to be pokey. How comfortable this is is debatable. But he's certainly looking pleased with himself. "Uncle?" MOTHMAN GF Yesterday at 8:14 PM "Hi Swerve! I haven't seen you in awhile." Bee Yesterday at 8:14 PM "...So. The real question here is who is more of a Tigger: Swoop or Swerve?" 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:14 PM "What?" Lieu Yesterday at 8:15 PM "Heh, I get that a lot: city. Never met the mech in my life." And Tormentor indeed has lived up to his name. All too well in his corner of the universe. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:15 PM [[A what?]] And what is this emoji? He thought Bee was interested, not sad. A ping of a single question mark back. Windchill Yesterday at 8:15 PM "Huh?" Rebel blinks, looking confused as all hell. "I have two uncles!" Bee Yesterday at 8:15 PM "The one who bounces a lot. That's Tigger. Who acts more like him?" Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:15 PM Soundwave looks to Prowl. He's looking rather suspicious of an innocent gathering of fuzzy Earth beasts. Expecting them to go wild and eat the human, is he? 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:15 PM "Swoop." Bee Yesterday at 8:15 PM "I think Prowl might be Owl." Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:16 PM "NO no, keheheh. Uncle means---" He looks towards his name. "What?" Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:16 PM "Huh?" He heard his name. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:16 PM [[Understood, Tormenter. Thank you. Note that this is a neutral zone; if you can keep to that, you are welcome to enjoy your stay.]] 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:16 PM "Nothing Swoop." Bee Yesterday at 8:17 PM Make no mistake, he's very interested in this movie. There's something a little melancholy about it that gets to him. Probably because it reminds him of Raf. :: It's like watching a friend grow up. You'll see. :: Windchill Yesterday at 8:17 PM Windchill snorts and sits down, only just now noticing Tormentor. Fantastic. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:17 PM [[And he supposes Swoop is more like Tigger. Swerve has been nothing but composed and responsible.]] Chaoit Yesterday at 8:17 PM And he's going to sit down, somewhere. Not sure where, but a free seat. To watch whatever's on the screen. Specs Yesterday at 8:18 PM The dragon takes her spot now that snacks are unloaded, and bites her tongue on any comments noting that Swoop is also the only Swoop. It it unwise to tempt the universe, and the thought of Multi-Swoop Drifting is to horrifying to comprehend. Lieu Yesterday at 8:18 PM "Given the mecha here, I figured as much." Tormentor taps at his head, "Don't you worry, Sub-conscious, we're not going to fight tonight." Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:18 PM Swoop remains firmly seated on Rebel's chest while this discussion goes on. "Wonderful thing about tiggers, kehehheh!" Okay, there might be a little bounce in his 'firm" seat. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:18 PM [[A sweet sentiment.]] And one he's suspicious of, after what Bee said. He'll nod to Blaster and keep himself glued to the screen. More or less. He's still very curious about this Owl creature just mentioned in comparison to Prowl. Is he a logical one? Soundwave huffs in amusement. Subconscious. He likes that. Windchill Yesterday at 8:20 PM Windchill squints as aggressively as a squint can be squinted, but offers no comment. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 8:20 PM Tarantulas isn't too l8! In he comes, then halts near the back, immediately wary of how terribly many people there are here tonight, several of which he hasn't met. Give him a moment to scope things out before sneaking to a seat. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:20 PM Swoop waves at Tarantulas from his seat on another poor soul's chest. Just a normal movie night. Windchill Yesterday at 8:20 PM "Swoop!" Rebel tries to push him off. "I can't see movie from down here!" Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:21 PM Prowl quietly leans against Soundwave. Windchill Yesterday at 8:21 PM She kicks her legs, in case it helps. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:21 PM Oh? Oh, that's nice. He'll lean back. Unexpected and nice. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:21 PM He has not yet noticed... the spide. Lieu Yesterday at 8:21 PM Tormentor can't help but glance up. He feels a squint but he's pretty sure Lieutenant isn't here so who-- Oh, it's the Spittaker 9000 Chaoit Yesterday at 8:21 PM Oh. Uniforms. That's not a good sign. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:21 PM [[Oh. He knows where this human is going. He did research since the movie about the Wondrous Woman.]] Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:21 PM "Oh!" He giggles and rolls off her with more pizzazz than entirely necessary. The tigger comment might explain the need to handspring back into a standing position. Lieu Yesterday at 8:22 PM No round 2 tonight, but Tormentor just stares back at Windchill. He sees you there. Chaoit Yesterday at 8:22 PM NOPE Windchill Yesterday at 8:22 PM Squint intensifies. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:22 PM ((All these squinting comments go well with your icon lol)) 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:22 PM Why do they have a room for cloaks? Chaoit Yesterday at 8:22 PM He's not liking this part of the movie at all Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:22 PM Accepts the visual feed finally, a little surprised that Soundwave still offered it considering the state of things between them. Just in time for war flashback. Lieu Yesterday at 8:22 PM EVEN MORE SQUINTING

...but it's behind a visor so it's useless Windchill Yesterday at 8:23 PM He still can't get the smell of burning paint out of his seams, and it's all your fault Tormentor. (( Lol. )) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:23 PM He's angry, not a poor host. Hmph. [[...He takes it by the state of the growth over the door that the Christopher Robin human has not returned yet.]] Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:24 PM He could have left it up to her alternate to provide visuals. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:24 PM Now that Swoop is standing up, he's got a much better view of the room. In particular, a certain someone who isn't looking this way.... Unsuspecting prey, if you will. He grins. Lieu Yesterday at 8:24 PM And he nearly blew up his own arm because of you! That's YouR FAULT Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:24 PM [[For him to have grown that tall, he has been away... at least five years.]] He's confident of that much. Human age is wiggly, but he's sure he's got that. Windchill Yesterday at 8:24 PM Rebel gets up and shakes herself, then reaches for Swoop's dinosaur hand to drag him along, too. That was a direct consequence of pulling on his wings! Lieu Yesterday at 8:24 PM ((Oh damn it's Mycroft from Sherlock!)) Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:25 PM "That human has never worked a day of manual labor in his life." Lieu Yesterday at 8:25 PM ((Love him)) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:25 PM [[That much is obvious.]] Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:25 PM "They very effectively made him very quickly dislikable." Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:26 PM Swoop squawks. Your ruined his bird of prey stare, Rebel! But he lets her drag him along towards the seats. After all, that means they walk right behind the sofa a certain communication's bot is lounging on. At the last possible second, Swoop pulls away from Rebel and throws himself at Soundwave, reaching around to try to touch his mouth. Or, more specifically, a tooth! Windchill Yesterday at 8:26 PM Rebel, in her great and newly forged wisdom, dives out of the way before she can get dragged into whatever hell is about to be unleashed. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:26 PM [[Yes. It's very clear that he knows nothing about the actual reality of the business he is hea--]] THERE ARE FINGERS COMING FROM AROUND HIS HEAD FOR HIS MOUTH. And now there are not. Because there are no fingers. Not until he spits them out on the floor, anyway. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:27 PM Prowl lurches upright at the sudden movement. "What the hell is—?!" Chaoit Yesterday at 8:27 PM "What a nasty human." Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:27 PM Soundwave is already standing up and turning around. He knows whose those were. [[OUTSIDE.]] Chaoit Yesterday at 8:27 PM !!!! Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 8:28 PM What a LOVELY time for Tarantulas to try and actually sit down near Prowl and Soundwave! He's leaping back to the shadows again before he gets dragged into anything. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:28 PM His first instinct is to bridge out the person who lunged. He tries to open a bridge under Swoop. No bridge opens. What in the. Lieu Yesterday at 8:28 PM "And in typical Cybertronian fashion, Neutral Zone doesn't even last a night." Windchill Yesterday at 8:28 PM And Windchill's on his feet, scooping up his wiggly adopted spawn before she can be blamed for anything. If she gets bridged, at least he goes too. He's a little paranoid, okay? Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:29 PM Swoop's optics go wide and bright. It takes a moment for the pain to register in his birdy brain. The shrill noise he lets out isn't entirely upset. His wings are fanned out and his stance widens as he looks from his missing digits to Soundwave. "You Soundwave wanna GO? Kehehhehh!" 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:29 PM Swerve's sighing into his hands as he realizes what just happened. Swoop, no. Bee Yesterday at 8:29 PM Bee munches on some rust sticks, more attentive to the chaos in the room rather than the movie. He offers his snack to whoever's closest. Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:30 PM Flinches at the sound of Soundwave chomping down on Swoop's fingers and the shrill noise that follows, hand going instinctively to a subspace pocket for a weapon--oh, it's Swoop. Will let Soundwave deal with that. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:30 PM "Sw— Sound—" Are those fingers. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:30 PM The bridge is off. The bridge is nonresponsive, because he was running something extra on it while everyone is upstairs and in no expected need of it. At least not THIS early.

[[YOU are going. OUT.]] He'll snatch at Swoop's front with intent to drag the big bird out by force if need be. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 8:30 PM First it was Smokescreen losing digits, now Swoop? Hmmph. At least Tarantulas won't have to fix Swoop's, he's got Ratchet and Wheeljack. Chaoit Yesterday at 8:30 PM Swoop. Swoop, no. Blaster's just going to sigh and bury his face in his hands. Specs Yesterday at 8:30 PM The dragon is going to curl up into a little puffball until the chaos dies down. The smaller she is, the less change of being squished, yes? MOTHMAN GF Yesterday at 8:30 PM "What the--" Perceptor looked away for about two seconds and there's chaos. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 8:30 PM He's in spider form climbing up the wall away from the action. He outie. Bee Yesterday at 8:31 PM And Bee's downed the first box of rust sticks. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:31 PM Swoop stands his ground and bats Soundwave's arm away. "Make me!" Windchill Yesterday at 8:31 PM "Swoop—" Windchill is cut off by a boot to the face. That's what he gets for holding Rebel upside-down. Lieu Yesterday at 8:32 PM Tormentor can't help but chuckle at Swoop's loss of a digit and stubbornness. Now THIS is the kind of thing he's into watching. Chaoit Yesterday at 8:33 PM Okay, he's going to stand and move away from the two. This may get messy. Bee Yesterday at 8:34 PM "How the frag-- ?" Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:34 PM Yes, Prowl, those are fingers. Neatly clipped off near the palm. Bleeding all over his nice, clean floor.

And this. This is IT. He has had. Enough. Of this. Dinobot. Soundwave's going to grab and wrap his ankles with both feelers, completely ignoring the energon dripping down his chin or the scene this is causing. He is going to drag Swoop outside and teach him manners if it KILLS him.

They're marching to the door. He doesn't care what Swoop claws on the way. 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:35 PM What a waste of good honey. Lieu Yesterday at 8:35 PM :popcorn: Chaoit Yesterday at 8:35 PM Oh dear. This isn't good. Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:35 PM "Are y--" doesn't bothering asking the question as Soundwave marches by hauling Swoop along with him. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:35 PM Swoop squawks indigently. This isn't a sweet walk up to a fight. He's scrambling and scratching grooves in the floor as he goes. A chair might be coming out with him. Everyone else should watch their ankles as he goes by. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 8:35 PM See? This is why Tarantulas isn't interfering. He told Swoop people didn't always want to give him his way. The dinobot hopefully would listen to Soundwave more effectively than he had Tarantulas. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:35 PM @P: [[He will be back.]] Bee Yesterday at 8:36 PM ............. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:36 PM Prowl immediately follows after. "Soundwave—!" And there goes his ankle under Swoop's claw. He trips and falls. Bee Yesterday at 8:36 PM "Well. That escalated quickly." MOTHMAN GF Yesterday at 8:36 PM "......well then." Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:36 PM FLING out goes Swoop once he gets to the red glass doors. It's unceremonious and harsh and that's the way we're doing things tonight.

@P: [[Are you all right?]] 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:36 PM Swerve leans over to offer a hand up. Windchill Yesterday at 8:36 PM Windchill rights his wiggly giggly spawn, setting her in a chair. Swoop's on his own for this one. Maybe he'll learn something. Maybe not. Specs Yesterday at 8:36 PM Actually, you know what? Tarantulas had the right idea. She's flying as high up as she can and clinging to something up there. Goddess save her from the pterodactyl. Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:36 PM Does definitely stand and move to help her alternate up from the floor. "Are you all right?" Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 8:37 PM OH NO. Ok, Tarantulas is coming back down to rescue his dear Prowl, basically the only thing to get him off the ceiling. Specs Yesterday at 8:37 PM Swapsies! Spide down, dragon up. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 8:37 PM "Prowl! Soundwave will be fine, let him - let him be." He's pulling Prowl back, away from the mess. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:38 PM "Yeah, f—" He's got TWO hands being offered. He looks between them indecisively. "... Fine." He takes his alternate's, gets up, and heads for the d— When did Tarantulas get here? Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:38 PM Joke's on Soundwave. Airborne is how Swoop likes things. He transforms so he can turn that fling into an arc, curving back Soundwave's way at increasing speeds. The pteranodon's battle cry can be heard for some distance as he transforms and rockets towards Soundwave. Windchill Yesterday at 8:38 PM That's when Rebel spots the blood and fingers, and gapes. She's never (knowingly,) seen detached body parts before! Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:38 PM Ravage, who is not concerned for his Boss in the least - why should he be, given Soundwave's former standing? - sits watching Christopher Robin, munching out of a bowl of tinsel fish. =Poor bear.= Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:38 PM ((u can keep those fingers rebel :wink: )) Windchill Yesterday at 8:39 PM (( Sure, just make it weird. )) Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:39 PM ((when has this not been weird)) Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 8:39 PM (( if she doesn't take them, tara will (( what a nice snack Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:39 PM ((y'all fight for them)) Windchill Yesterday at 8:39 PM (( It's Windchill the cannibal you'll have to fight, not Rebel. )) (( ...They can share. )) Chaoit Yesterday at 8:40 PM "....should someone get a medic?" 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:40 PM //keep being distracted and swerve'll throw them away Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:40 PM Will follow the Captain outside if he's not been distracted by Tarantulas. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 8:40 PM He BETTER be distracted by Tarantulas. Lieu Yesterday at 8:40 PM Tormentor is a little disappointed how fast everything ended. Movie is still going but the real entertainment is all gone now. Windchill Yesterday at 8:40 PM Windchill's staring at the fingers too, though it was more the smell that alerted him than anything. Hmm. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 8:41 PM (( hi stressed, i'm pooh Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:41 PM "Someone can call Frenzy if they'd like, Blaster." Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:41 PM He has, briefly, been distracted. But not for long. "... I can't." He hurries outside. Windchill Yesterday at 8:42 PM His head bobs low like that of the predatory bird that he is. Hmm. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 8:42 PM Aaaand Tarantulas scrambles after Prowl, perpetually positioning himself between Prowl and the action. Windchill can have those fingers. Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:43 PM Follows at a slightly less hurried pace. Out we all go then, I guess. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:43 PM "Tarantulas, let me—!" Huff. He's stopping just outside the door anyway, to survey the fight. 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:43 PM Pooh. Windchill Yesterday at 8:43 PM Bob, bob, bob, some very serious calculations are happening here. He always was terrible at math. Chaoit Yesterday at 8:43 PM "Ah, well, I meant for later, after the two were done outside." Specs Yesterday at 8:44 PM The dragon flies down and, bafflingly, acquires the fingers for herself. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:44 PM Soundwave is taken aback for a moment by the sight of Swoop rocketing back toward Dancitron - he wouldn't be THAT stupid, would he? - but he's a Dinobot. Yes. Yes, he would be.

He hurries the rest of the way and crouches. Swoop can come to tackle him if he wants. There's a surprise waiting should he do so. Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:44 PM No one is staying to block the door, so anyone can easily come watch the action happening outside. Windchill Yesterday at 8:44 PM Well, that settles that. Bee Yesterday at 8:44 PM "I don't know about you guys, but I relate so much to that bear." Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:44 PM =Unfortunate for you.= Windchill Yesterday at 8:45 PM Rebel swings her feet and watches the film. It doesn't even occur to her to be concerned for Swoop's health in general. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:45 PM BETTER GET THAT SURPRISE READY, because Swoop is going full speed ahead into Soundwave, talons first. Bee Yesterday at 8:45 PM Time to record the madness. Specs Yesterday at 8:45 PM Benefits of having her own bridge- the dragon has disappeared with the fingers. She'll be back, eventually. Windchill Yesterday at 8:45 PM "Ravage. You still got that mop behind the counter?" Windchill can either clean up the mess the proper way, or with his tongue. Your choice. MOTHMAN GF Yesterday at 8:45 PM Percy is just gonna... watch the movie. He thinks. Chaoit Yesterday at 8:46 PM Oh dear. 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:46 PM I love this bear. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:46 PM Those talons are about to clutch a set of Soundwave's own. Namely, the ones already sparking with electricity.

Ravage doesn't even look at the fingers, surprisingly. He already ate today. He just chucks the mop toward Windchill with his feeler tail. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:47 PM ... Without bridges, there's nothing Prowl can do to de-escalate the situation. He shouldn't get involved. The best thing he can do now is crowd control. Chaoit Yesterday at 8:47 PM Should he help? He has his way of travel, but...exact coordinate and all. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:47 PM Electricity might hurt. (Does hurt. It does hurt.) But it doesn't stop Swoop's momentum. Soundwave is going into a shrieking heap with this Dinobot whether he likes it or not. Specs Yesterday at 8:47 PM There's no fingers left! The dragon has stolen them for her own purposes. Bee Yesterday at 8:47 PM Pings Prowl. :: Anything we can do to help? :: :: This is...getting a little ridiculous. :: Windchill Yesterday at 8:48 PM He does manage to snatch the mop out of the air, demonstrating a smidgen of hand-optic coordination for once, and gets to work. Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:48 PM Nothing Prowl has on her would classify as de-escalation tools either, especially with the nearby bridge access down. The rockets on her shoulders most definitely would only make things worse. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:48 PM So he turns to the other people standing outside. "Nobody is getting any closer, nobody is getting involved! I don't want to see anybody more than five feet outside the door." Specs Yesterday at 8:49 PM ((actually, I'm gonna have to AFK for a bit- Naughty Girl will not stop biting me)) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:49 PM A shrieking heap is fine. He's been in plenty of shrieking heaps before. Pull the back spines in, roll, and reach for the beak with one hand. Gotta try to keep it shut this close up. Specs Yesterday at 8:49 PM ((which means she needs something)) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:49 PM ((naughty naughty girl! stop that)) Windchill Yesterday at 8:49 PM (( Precious baby needs attention! )) Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 8:50 PM Tarantulas has both hands on V-Prowl's shoulders, gripping a bit tighter than he needs to. He's hissing nervously. "Come back in. Come. Back. In. It's not your JOB to police mechs here, it's not your jurisdiction. Soundwave will be FINE." Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:50 PM Prowl shakes Tarantulas's hands off. "I know he will. Anyone who tries to get involve WON'T be, I'm staying out here as long as all of them are." Bee Yesterday at 8:51 PM (( OH MY GOD that was the first time I heard "That was one of my briefer naps." AND I'M DYING XDDDD )) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:51 PM ((heheheh)) ((pooh has such wonderful lines)) 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:51 PM "It's probably safer for them to come inside." Bee Yesterday at 8:51 PM And he immediately sits down. No need to face Prowl's wrath if he can avoid it. 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:51 PM //he does i loe this movie Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:51 PM Soundwave might have the leverage to keep Swoop's beak closed, but he can't keep it air tight. Swoop makes a bit of a show of inhaling before exhaling fire. It might not be able to go out in front of him, but it's going to go somewhere. Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:51 PM "It's Soundwave's jurisdiction. The best thing any of us can do is ensure they won't get too close to the building. Which I'm sure Soundwave is already going to do." Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:52 PM "I know it's safer f—" He leans in the door, "Everyone's outside NOW, I'm not going to shove them back in." Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:53 PM ((i do love the briefer naps line so much Windchill Yesterday at 8:53 PM Well, it's not perfect (cleaning is far from Windchill's area of expertise, he's so much better at the opposite,) but the floor is better. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 8:54 PM Rrrgh. Well, the best Tarantulas can do right now is keep the blasters still hidden in his frame at the ready, regardless of anything else. Chaoit Yesterday at 8:54 PM Oh. Look. Fire. "Are you sure we shouldn't help?" Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:55 PM "Yes." Windchill Yesterday at 8:55 PM (( I'm so confused right now. Is EVERYONE outside because I missed that part if so lol. )) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:56 PM How lucky he is that he has next to no feeling in the shielding arm presently getting toasted. It leaves him free to focus his attention on other things. Like moving to one knee and, if he can manage it, slicing up one of those flapping wings with a flattened hand turned blade. Keep Swoop on the ground. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:56 PM "The more people get in there, the more people are going to be injured." 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:56 PM //swerve's inside //i think percy too MOTHMAN GF Yesterday at 8:56 PM //ya Windchill Yesterday at 8:56 PM (( I assumed everyone that was not actively fighting or supporting had stayed in. )) Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:56 PM ((it was a hyperbolic "everyone")) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:56 PM =Oh, good. He enters.= Chaoit Yesterday at 8:57 PM "Right...okay..." still inside, just watching. Windchill Yesterday at 8:57 PM (( Okay thank you. )) Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:57 PM That said, he's resisting the urge to jump in in defense of Soundwave himself. Y'know. Protector instincts. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 8:58 PM If Soundwave had anything on his mind other than a) not dying, and b) keeping OTHER people from dying during a potential Dinobot rampage, he would appreciate it. 20%wurmple Yesterday at 8:58 PM He's wisely moving further from the door and pulling Percy along, just to be safe. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 8:58 PM He'll channel the urge into watching the fight and making sure nobody else tries to get in on it. MOTHMAN GF Yesterday at 8:59 PM Yep. He will allow himself to be Lead Along. Bee Yesterday at 8:59 PM Oh no, he remembers this part. He hugs a pillow to his chassis and very intently watches the screen. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 8:59 PM Swoop's optics go wide and he lets out an actual enraged howl. We were having such a good time, Soundwave. Why did you turn a game into an actual fight? Wing slices are a party fowl at best. Swoop's playful edge just turns into animal fury. He might not have much weight, but he has lots of length with his wingspan to get leverage in an wild, frantic thrashing. Chaoit Yesterday at 8:59 PM ((OUCH)) Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 8:59 PM Monitors the fight with her visor and doors up as high as they'll go on her back. If nothing else, she'll know exactly when calling in a real medic is necessary. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 8:59 PM Tarantulas, for one, does not appreciate V-Prowl's selfless instincts. He's keeping eight VERY close eyes on him, and as much physical contact as he can get away with. Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 9:00 PM Which might be about now. Welp. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:00 PM EXCUSE YOU. Tarantulas is a real medic. Kind of. Bee Yesterday at 9:00 PM (( I'm out after this scene, i'm falling asleep & lowkey dying. But I'm 100000% catching up on this Swoop v Soundwave omg )) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 9:00 PM ((see you next time hopefully <3)) Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 9:00 PM ((A battle like four years in the making)) Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 9:00 PM ((Night, bee-mun! Windchill Yesterday at 9:00 PM (( o7 )) Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 9:00 PM ((night!)) Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:00 PM (( nini! 20%wurmple Yesterday at 9:00 PM //nini Bee Yesterday at 9:01 PM (( g'night! Thanks for hosting Soundwave! )) Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:01 PM (( christopher robin is SO rude oh my god. you're hurting this poor childe bear's feelings 20%wurmple Yesterday at 9:01 PM //let pooh live Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 9:02 PM Now Prowl is the one grabbing Tarantulas's shoulder. He's holding himself back. He and his alternate have apparently the same thought at the same time, because he turns to her and asks, "Can you contact local medical services?" Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 9:02 PM Soundwave can't quite see what he's doing with one wing smacking him about the head when it's not smacking against the ground; he hisses as a solid blow cracks his visor across the side and leaves a portion missing. It forces him to let go and wipe shards away from his optic, giving Swoop a free moment. =What a noise this Heffalump has.= Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 9:03 PM ((you ARE the heffalump, christopher. it's you.)) 20%wurmple Yesterday at 9:03 PM //lmao Windchill Yesterday at 9:03 PM Hmm. How inappropriate would it be if he sucked the energon out of the mop? Would it taste of leftover floor cleaner? Best not. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 9:03 PM Swoop knows how to capitalize on a split second in a fight. He shoves Soundwave with all his dino-might to get enough wiggle room to transform. He comes into his robot mode all screams and claws. Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 9:04 PM Nods. Makes that call to Praxus now. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 9:04 PM Good. Swoop's bipedal and angry. This just got simpler. He'll let himself be shoved a couple of paces to buy himself time to think, then... stand and wait. Come on, then, Swoop. Come tire yourself out. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:06 PM "Leave local medical services out of this! This is - both of them have medics on their side and Primus forbid either of them face any OTHER consequences for this." Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 9:07 PM "No one in Praxus can charge them with anything." Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 9:07 PM Prowl's gaze is fixed on the battle, optics twitching minutely to follow the motions. "There's—this is outside any other jurisdiction, they're not going to have other consequences." Specs Yesterday at 9:07 PM (('m back! she was out of food)) Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:08 PM "Well then, PERSONAL consequences. Something like that. We don't need anyone else involved." He's still hissing nervously. Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 9:09 PM And Prowl isn't calling the main Praxian medical services anyway. Just the one medic in Praxus she knows Soundwave won't turn away and Swoop might actually listen to if he's not booted back to his own universe before they arrive. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 9:11 PM Swoop is hardly going to pass up a still target to wail on. The Dinobot is wild eyed and pushing himself to hit as fast and hard as he can. Even if all he's doing is taking chips out of Soundwave's heated up arms, he'll take it. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 9:13 PM He mumbles something dismissive about the personal consequences. He squeezes Tarantulas's shoulder harder. Soundwave's a gladiator, it's okay, it's fine. Chaoit Yesterday at 9:15 PM "Are you sure we shouldn't intervene?" Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 9:15 PM "I've done the math. Any one of us would make it worse." Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 9:15 PM "Agreed." Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:15 PM Quite frankly Tarantulas thinks it's silly that Prowl or anyone else would be worried about Soundwave of all mechs against Swoop the toddler, even if the toddler is a Dinobot - but he'll do his best to reassure Prowl anyhow. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 9:16 PM ((tara don't be a butt. swoop is a super cereal warrior ok)) Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 9:16 PM Soundwave's getting attacked and isn't attacking back, Prowl's going to be nervous even if all the calculations are in Soundwave's favor. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 9:16 PM Chips, dents, some sparking as wires get compressed or split. It's all good. It means just about nothing, though one thumb hurts a bit where the flame got to it. He'll take the first few hits he has to take while he learns Swoop's patterns and favored motions, and what signals in his mind equal which upcoming attacks.

Keep it coming, Dinobot. He's not done yet. He's had far, far worse than this. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:17 PM (( tara is the buttiest butt Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 9:18 PM The lack of noticeable pushback was somewhat enjoyable at first. But all this dancing around is getting annoying. None of these hits are really painful. Soundwave needs to do something if Swoop is going to get in there to get some real maiming going. "You. Soundwave." He snarls. "FIGHT!" Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:19 PM Suddenly Tarantulas chitters to himself, apparently amused. "Swoop got his wish though. He DID get to touch Soundwave's teeth, for the briefest second." Windchill Yesterday at 9:20 PM Windchill is going to finish dealing with the mop, put it back where it belongs, and consider making an escape before Rebel has to see something he'd rather she didn't. The problem is getting out the door. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 9:20 PM "Was—was THAT what he was doing?!" He hadn't even noticed how this started. Just a lunge and then missing fingers. He supposes that WOULD explain things. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:21 PM More chittering. "Yes, yes. Trivial, isn't it? I'm actually quite glad though." Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 9:21 PM Swoop gets his wish, though not quite the way he wants. Soundwave continues to dance this way and that, a spin here and a sharp push using Swoop's own swings to redirect or unbalance him there as he slowly guides Swoop toward more uneven territory. This is HIS home. He knows the terrain above and below ground so well he could travel it blind. And he's willing to bet his life on Swoop, noted AERIAL battler, being too angry to notice much about the metal beneath his clawed feet. Three or four hits make it to his chest instead of his arms. Whether it's an accident, a lure, or Soundwave tiring out is up in the air. Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 9:23 PM Prowl keeps her calculations of the fight's outcome to herself, pulling up what she knows of the surrounding area and trying to predict how this might end as quickly as she can. "That certainly explains why Swoop lost his fingers." Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 9:26 PM Raised in the dirt and built for the air, Swoop had very limited experiences fighting on a metal surface. The difference seemed negligible to the tiny part of his bird brain that was aware of anything other than the feeling of his claws on Soundwave and the burning energy in his own fuel lines. Swoop's optics narrow and grin widens when he manages to get at Soundwave's chest a few times. Adults get tired so easily. With a feral shriek, Swoop throws everything he's got at the communications mech. He's going to rip him to fucking shreds. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 9:26 PM =Tigger is disgraceful. Unworthy of cat status.= Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 9:27 PM ((ravage shhhh Windchill Yesterday at 9:29 PM Windchill sidles towards the door and peeks his owlish head out to check on his not-child. Has anyone died, yet? Chaoit Yesterday at 9:31 PM Blaster's about ready to call his medics at this rate. Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 9:33 PM Not necessary. Prowl's fairly certain she knows how this is going to end and currently has Praxus on standby. No sense making the old medic come all the way down here for nothing, after all. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:33 PM (( r u on the lemonade m8 Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 9:36 PM The surface Swoop moves to has been worn mostly smooth by countless pedes belonging to countless mechs visiting the club over half a decade. There's nothing to grip when losing one's footing but a sliding, shining curve. Soundwave takes another short series of blows, positioning them with care as he makes one last turn...

He snatches Swoop's ankles out from beneath the weedy Dinobot with one feeler and jumps forward as Swoop falls. One foot lands square on the middle of Swoop's back. The other feeler wraps itself around Swoop's neck and squeezes, leaving him unable to flail well in any direction without hurting himself.

Each hand quickly seizes a wing. The tattered one, he pulls back sharply, counting on the stretch to aggravate its wounds. The other twists round almost to snapping clean off.

[[You. Will. YIELD.]] Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 9:37 PM "Ah." Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 9:37 PM He squeezes Tarantulas tighter again. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:39 PM ...Suddenly Tarantulas isn't feeling so great about the situation. Yes, he figured Soundwave would have everything under control soon enough, but... he's finding himself surprising concerned about Swoop. Is he feeling protective? What? Of course not. He's wrapping a few limbs around Prowl as well and squeezing, definitely for Prowl's benefit. 20%wurmple Yesterday at 9:40 PM //that's what happens when u start momming dinobots tara Windchill Yesterday at 9:40 PM Chill's ruined wings flick anxiously; better to keep Rebel inside for now, after all. Still, there's nothing keeping him inside, not really. Rebel can be left with the movie for a few minutes, so long as he keeps an ear out for Tormentor. Right? Right. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 9:42 PM Swoop's frame moves fast - faster than his mind sometimes - but the unfamiliar terrain and preexisting damage send him crashing down. Any one of these moves independently wouldn't be enough to fell a Dinobot.

But once he's down, Soundwave is on top of him and a tearing pain is shooting down his wing and along is spine. Swoop thrashes and damages himself further. It's instinct.

His body freezes stiff. Energon's dripping down his wing and he's clawing at the ground, optics darting around. Is there something he can do? Can he get away?

Yield? All that gets is a snarl. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 9:44 PM The feeler around Swoop's neck shocks him. Light - less than before - but a warning. He will go higher next time. He can. Swoop knows that from earlier. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 9:45 PM Swoop inhales sharply. Ouch.

What can he...

How does...

...

Swoop goes completely slack. His hand taps the hard ground twice. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:47 PM (( ey ey, DO y'all have a medic lined up btw? Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 9:47 PM ((No. Is Tara game? Lol.)) Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:47 PM (( omfg..... yes i'm sure he would be (( give him an outlet for his protectiveness Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 9:48 PM ((I was gonna volunteer Ratchet, but Tara's much closer. Windchill Yesterday at 9:48 PM (( Windchill has Arms if they're needed to contain/hold wild dinobots. )) Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 9:48 PM ((Swoop would pick Ratchet if given the choice because Ratchet. But he's not in an arguing mood right now. He'll go with whoever.)) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 9:49 PM Good. That is what he wanted.

[[Now. He expects you to abide by the rules you and your brothers have set up as far as how you behave toward those who have beaten you. He will not replace Grimlock, but he expects you to treat him with respect.]]

[[You may go home and think about your defeat. He will allow you to return, but you will listen to what he tells you, when he tells you, or he will not be afraid to shame you in front of a crowd again and ban you permanently - and he will see to it that many more witness the fight next time. Ask anyone you trust how far and wide a Soundwave can send video footage if you doubt his word.]]

Soundwave keeps the hold three seconds longer just to stick the point in, then lets go. And offers Swoop a hand up. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 9:50 PM Prowl doesn't relax until Soundwave lets go. And then only partially. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:51 PM Tarantulas is battling something, and it's starting to show in his frame. Prowl might be relaxing a smidge, but Tarantulas grips again.

@SW: ::Can I intervene and tend to Swoop?:: Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 9:52 PM @T: [[If he wants it.]] Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 9:52 PM Swoop listens quietly. He doesn't need to nod. Soundwave knows he agrees. This is how the Dinobots roll after all.

When Soundwave lets him go, Swoop stays in place on the ground until he's offered a hand. The littlest Dinobot takes it without a word, getting up and looking quite subdued. His optics glance from Soundwave to the ground and his shoulders have a hunch to them.

He's not sure what to do, so he stays put. Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 9:54 PM @SW: [[Do you require medical attention? I have Ratchet on hold.]] Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:54 PM @SW: ::Keep an optic on him, I'm coming.::

Outwardly he doesn't give a sign before he's off down toward the mess, transforming into spider mode to aid with speed. He'll slow once he's close and keep wary around Swoop. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 9:54 PM Prowl's still not entirely sure the fight isn't going to break out again. There's always that three percent chance that— "Tarantulas!" Oh, and after TARANTULAS was telling PROWL not to get involved— Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 9:55 PM "What does he think he's doing?" Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 9:55 PM "I don't kn— Tarantulas, what do you think you're doing!" Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 9:56 PM [[Do what you need to do to care for yourself and go home, Swoop.]]

Soundwave slowly walks back toward both Prowls, Tarantulas, and the building full of guests it annoyed him he had not been able to spend time with tonight. He'll head inside, favoring the toasted arm, and bow to the lot.

[[His apologies - particularly to the newcomers. This has been an unusual night. We will not have such a disturbance next week; of that, you can be sure. Neutral zone rules are still in effect. No one needs fear a similar event unless they pose a serious threat to another during their visit.]] Chaoit Yesterday at 9:56 PM "Are you okay?" Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 9:56 PM [[And it should be noted that this is the first - preferably, the only.]] Windchill Yesterday at 9:57 PM Windchill moves away from the door so he's not blocking Soundwave, and flicks his wings again. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 9:57 PM He gives Tarantulas and Swoop an exasperated look, calls to Tarantulas, "Yell if he attacks," and stalks in with Soundwave. "How bad's your arm?" Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 9:57 PM Swoop's head bobbles in agreement. He looks down at his hand. The missing fingers were certainly not improved by repeatedly hitting against another person. Swoop licks some of the energon off. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 9:57 PM [[He will return to normal function in a few days. He hopes the film was entertaining in the meantime?]]

@SCP: [[No. Frenzy will tend to him. Ratchet has been.... tired, lately.]] Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:57 PM Ping ping to V-Prowl - ::I'm - no need to worry yourself, I'm simply snatching Swoop up. I'll - err, be in touch.:: Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 9:58 PM @T «Keep me updated. Let me know when you go home, please.» To make sure that Swoop didn't rip his head off in a burst of frustration. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 9:58 PM Turning to amica Prowl, now. [[He does not know. He cannot feel it very well.]] Pause. [[That is normal, by the way. Still: it moves. He doubts he will need to replace it.]] Repair it? Yes. Very yes. 20%wurmple Yesterday at 9:59 PM [snags an emoty cube off the bar and slides a cube of specialty energon hed been hoarding in subspace in Soundwave's general direction] You prooobably need a drink buddy. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 9:59 PM He nods stiffly. "... What about the rest of you?" The arm looked worst, but... Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 9:59 PM To Swoop: "Don't LICK yourself, you imbecile. Come here." And now there's a spider on him, ready to use web to restrain if need be. "You're coming with me, whether you like it or not." Windchill Yesterday at 10:00 PM Now that the movie's over Rebel bounds back out of her seat to grab her dad's hand, still bouncing around (maybe Tigger inspired, maybe not,) but raring to go to any place where there's not so much sitting. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 10:00 PM Swoop cocks his head at Tarantulas. But he doesn't argue. Just toddles over and gives the spider an expectant look that said what now? Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:01 PM A thin smile cuts across Soundwave's face. It looks particularly ghastly with the dried energon coming from it. He wiggles a feeler up beneath his chest armor, only struggling for room where Swoop dented it. [[He is not as wide as he lets himself look. Mostly armor damage.]]

And you know what? He's going to take that energon from Swerve and give it a solid look. [[...Yes. Tonight, he thinks he will have one. A small one.]] A victory celebration, like the old days. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 10:02 PM Prowl thought Soundwave doesn't like drinking. THAT kicks his concern back up. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:02 PM [[...Windchill, feel free to take something expensive from the bar tonight before you leave. He has not repaid your efforts to control Swoop as well as he should have.]] Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 10:02 PM What now? Getting carefully manhandled by a massive spider is what's happening now, Swoop. As soon as he has the pteranodon securely on his back, Tarantulas is bridging off to the Tor with him in tow. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 10:03 PM Swoop makes absolutely no attempt to stop this. Unless bleeding on Tarantulas counts as an attempt to deter him. But probably not. Off we go! Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:04 PM He doesn't. But he has not had a fight that ferocious in a while, and a quarter ration will not do much to him. That's what he meant by small. Windchill Yesterday at 10:04 PM Sorry, Chill was a little distracted with indecision and Rebel's bouncing around and jabbering about the movie. He looks up, confused, and frowns.

"That's okay. Floor's clean, dragon took the fingers." Sure, nobody did anything about the chair Swoop dragged out, but it was a start. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 10:04 PM Prowl's still worrying. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:04 PM ((one (1) whole shot)) Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 10:04 PM ((an shot)) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:05 PM [[Oh, the dragon - where is she? Not harmed in the rush to get out, he hopes...]] He's not worried about the fingers. He figured SOMEONE would scavenge them. Windchill Yesterday at 10:05 PM (( God you're reminding me of my verbal typo today. )) (( I only drink weed and miskey. )) Chaoit Yesterday at 10:05 PM Well, everything looks like it has been settled. Blaster's just...going to leave now. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:05 PM ((also public stream wrappin up at 10:30 for the record - and lol miskey)) Specs Yesterday at 10:05 PM The dragon never came back after absconding with the fingers. Probably safest that way. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:05 PM Soundwave will ping Blaster as he leaves. A better time next time, mech. [[Ah. Yes, probably.]] Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 10:05 PM (( omg isnt that, uhh, a spoonerism? Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 10:06 PM @SW: [[Of course.]] Tired hardly describes it, but it's a polite fiction everyone seems content to believe, so Prowl lets it be. She's relieved, if only because she knew Ratchet would have insisted on coming out her if it had been more serious, regardless of what other medics might have been in the area. Swoop can be left in Tarantulas' care and Prowl can finally go back inside, lingering in the doorway trying to decide if she shouldn't just head back to Praxus anyway. Windchill Yesterday at 10:06 PM A wise move on any dragon's part, to be certain. Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 10:06 PM (( DINGERS Specs Yesterday at 10:06 PM ((OH SHIT DINGERS)) MOTHMAN GF Yesterday at 10:06 PM Welllll this was certainly eventful. It's about time for Perceptor to uhhhh scoot on out. Specs Yesterday at 10:06 PM ((feexed)) Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 10:06 PM (( ive cemented the dingers in the chatlong even if you edit, muahah Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:06 PM ((i SWEAR it's not usually like this lmao)) 20%wurmple Yesterday at 10:06 PM Swerve slides off his chair. "I'll take Percy home. Don't want him getting lost." Specs Yesterday at 10:07 PM ((yes, you have, which is why I edited once I noticed)) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:07 PM ((much more ridiculous and chatty)) Windchill Yesterday at 10:07 PM (( Yes it is. I only drink mead and whiskey but I don't need to in order to mess that up lol. )) MOTHMAN GF Yesterday at 10:07 PM "Thank you Swerve!" Specs Yesterday at 10:07 PM ((otherwise I would have had to keep it :C )) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:07 PM [[Goodnight, Perceptor. Do come back.]] MOTHMAN GF Yesterday at 10:07 PM He waves as he heads out. 20%wurmple Yesterday at 10:07 PM "Sure thing. Night everyone, night Soundwave. Hopefully that lesson sticks." Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:07 PM [[Goodnight, Swerve. He hopes so as well.]] Windchill Yesterday at 10:07 PM Windchill shrugged. He's not picking up any dead organic smells, so she's probably fine. 20%wurmple Yesterday at 10:08 PM A wave and off he goes. Specs Yesterday at 10:09 PM ((I'm signing off for the night before I pass out)) Windchill Yesterday at 10:09 PM (( o7 good night! )) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:09 PM ((goodnight and i hope next week is more enjoyable / broadly fun)) Specs Yesterday at 10:09 PM ((ilu all, sorry that dragon bailed due to IRL cat + hoarding instinct that demands she keeps fingers)) Windchill Yesterday at 10:10 PM (( She deserved them most out of anyone who might have snatched them. )) Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 10:10 PM (( seconded Specs Yesterday at 10:10 PM (( :black_heart: )) Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 10:10 PM ((night night)) Windchill Yesterday at 10:10 PM (( 'Sides, it saved everyone from having to witness what happens when someone else does, so. )) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:10 PM ((lmao)) Caniko Yesterday at 10:11 PM ((totally missed movie night, sorry)) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:11 PM Soundwave moves to accept a bunt from Ravage, who keeps papping the counter for his attention. Yes, yes, he's fine. You knew he'd be fine. Don't be silly.

And now he's going to plop into a seat and roll the tiny, tiny glass between two fingers of his better hand. ((oh nooooo. next time!!)) Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 10:12 PM Prowl is sitting with Soundwave and—sort of just radiating worry in his direction. "Where's Frenzy?" Windchill Yesterday at 10:13 PM "We're going to go, and check on Swoop later." The last bit was more for Rebel's benefit than anything, but it really was getting late and past Windchill's bedtime. This kind of stress just isn't good for him. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:13 PM [[All right. He hopes the mech's wing is not too damaged. Goodnight, Windchill, Rebel.]] He can feel the worry. It's... soothing. To be worried about after a fight, instead of paraded and then put back in a cell. Still, he'd like not to have to do this again.

[[Upstairs.]] And more privately: @P: [[He told Frenzy to wait until the others have gone.]] Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 10:14 PM @VProwl: [[Goodnight, Captain.]] Going to dodge out without bothering to come fully back inside the building. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 10:14 PM @P «Evening, alternate.» Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:14 PM Soundwave will send a ping to his own timeline's Prowl. He still is mad at her about That Reveal, but she was ready to call Praxus, and that is something worth being thankful for. Windchill Yesterday at 10:15 PM Rebel waves back at the room as they head out, then at a distant Swoop once they're outside. Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 10:16 PM ((is the plan everyone leaving the server again?)) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:16 PM ((ye for cleanup purposes)) Prowl (beautyandthebadge) Yesterday at 10:16 PM That gives Prowl a moment's paused before she drops down into vehicle mode. She pings back just before taking off toward Praxus. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:17 PM ((sometimes i do stuff during the week to tinker and i don't want people to be getting weird boops)) Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 10:17 PM ((Cool! I can't wait to get this up on tumblr.)) ((gg)) Windchill Yesterday at 10:17 PM (( Also means that people who don't attend a given night aren't getting hit with it either, so it makes sense. )) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:17 PM ((ye)) Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 10:17 PM (( i thought that said EGG instead of gg (( smh@myself Swoop (medicalmurdersaurus) Yesterday at 10:17 PM ((lololol)) ((l8r)) Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 10:18 PM ((egg stands for extremely good game)) Windchill Yesterday at 10:18 PM (( o7 )) Tarantulas (aranea-mechanica) Yesterday at 10:19 PM (( l8r allig8or (( i'm off to bed too, tarantulas has swoop in his clutches now and will follow up accordingly! Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:19 PM ((gotcha! bye those goin!)) Windchill Yesterday at 10:20 PM (( Big fat mess to clean up lolololol good job Swoop. )) Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:20 PM Can Soundwave lean into Prowl? He'd like to lean into Prowl. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 10:20 PM He can, but in exchange Prowl is gently taking Soundwave's arm and examining the damage up close. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:23 PM Soundwave will let him, mostly because a) he figures it will soothe Prowl's worries a smidge if he at least gets to know for sure what's happened to it, and b) it's nice, being fretted over and checked on like that.

Oh so gently, in a way that notes appreciation but also reassurance: [[They were designed for the purpose of taking hits.]] Pause. [[He is surprised he didn't get more flame damage. Too angry, he supposes.]] And here comes Frenzy to park himself on the opposite side of the couch and get inspecting on that chest armor. He'll keep out of the way as much as possible. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 10:25 PM A jerky nod. "I suppose." He scoots away when Frenzy arrives, giving him more room to work. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:26 PM He's disappointed when Prowl moves away, but it makes some sense. [[You fell. Were you hurt, yourself...?]] Trying to lean over Frenzy to see Prowl's legs. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 10:26 PM I'm a hologram. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:29 PM Soundwave sits up and blinks the one optic that is peeking out of the broken visor. [[Oh. Yes, you are.]] Then he smiles, amused at himself. [[He tends to forget that, doesn't he.]]

[[He is glad for that. He did not want you hurt.]] Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 10:32 PM "Hm." Soundwave used to be unable to see Prowl's light frame as anything BUT a hologram. In any other situation, he'd be delighted at the change. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:33 PM [[...Is something wrong?]]

\YEAH, YOU KEEP MOVIN'. HOLD STILL.\

[[Not that. To you.]] A nod to Prowl. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 10:35 PM "Wh—? Yes! Obviously?!" He gestures at Soundwave's nearest battle damage. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:44 PM Soundwave looks down at it like he's only just seeing it for the first time and tilts his head. What's all the fuss about? [[He's had worse; you've seen that yourself. Besides, he can hardly feel most of it, and it is nothing Frenzy cannot finish repairing by tomorrow night. Swoop merely hit dead surfaces designed to be shields and armor with plenty of denting space beneath it - and not as hard as his brothers. They would have required a different approach. ]]

[[He promises you do not need to worry so, though he appreciates that you are. Your protectiveness is one of many things he values about you.]] Closer lean? ...It abruptly occurs to him that he has not scrubbed the energon off his mouth. He'll just. Stretch a feeler toward the bar for a rag and some cleanser so he can do that. Yes. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 10:46 PM The lean isn't returned. "It wasn't a fight that you should have had in the first place. YOU'RE damaged and HE'S mangled, and ALL of it would have been avoidable if—" HUFF. No. He's cutting himself off there. Change direction. "Why was the bridge off." Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:52 PM Oh. He's - there's an element of being in trouble to this, isn't there? That's another matter altogether. Oops.

Prowl rarely changes the subject of upset arguing like that, though. Soundwave quickly gets the idea it might be better not to mention that it'll be the only fight he'll have to have.

[[The bridge is off because he is finishing some final programming adjustments for a complex new modification and needed to be able to install them without interruptions. He had intended it to be finished before the usual time range in which it tends to be needed. Swoop changed those plans.]] [[He was not expecting a sneak attack on his mouth.]] As may be worked out by the fact that he severed Swoop's fingers and is presently scrubbing energon off his face while he thinks. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 10:55 PM Prowl's mouth tightens at the mention of Swoop, but he stays focused on the bridge. "What adjustments? Just an upgrade, or new functionality?" Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 10:56 PM Okay. Okay, don't mention Swoop at all. He can take that hint. He will take it and clutch it and not step on it again. He's in enough hot water tonight.

[[A little of both. He had been hoping to surprise you.]] Vent. So much for that. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 10:58 PM "Well. I was very surprised." Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 11:02 PM [[Not quite the way he wanted it to go.]]

Leans against the couch and eyes the tiny ration of highgrade. He doesn't know what to do with it now. This feels less like a victory than it did earlier.

[[Though he thinks you would still be stunned out of your plating if you could see the work yourself. And useful, too. He is not as skilled a mathematician; much of his programming and physical upgrading has relied on trial and error. He is not even certain these WILL prove to be the final adjustments.]] And a small huff. [[He's already thought that about this project thrice before.]] Ravage rumbles something unintelligible but in the vicinity of deeply displeased. Yes, he can attest to that. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 11:08 PM "... So you could use help with it." Well, it was math. And if it would get the space bridge back on faster... "What calculations do you need?" Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 11:14 PM [[He could.]] Soundwave had felt his tanks twinge when he'd admitted to hacking at the idea with a machete instead of a laser scalpel; tugging on Prowl's arm and outright requesting assistance was out of the question. Roundabout all the way. [[Do you remember the time you used multiple bridges to pinpoint a mech's location in another timeline?]] Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 11:16 PM "Of course. You're trying to make a program that does the same thing?" Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 11:25 PM [[....Not exactly.]] How to explain it without giving the whole game away? [[He has managed to update it to the point of being able to do the necessary calculations without any extra bridges by using a highly specialized process he - by using something he knows how to do. But he is having trouble forcing it to combine that AND the order to move the actual bridge a specific number of meters to one side. As of earlier tonight, it was unable to reliably adjust the position to the right point, let alone a safe side. You have less trouble with tracking the movements of celestial bodies than he does. He was wondering if that might be what keeps interfering - and whether he has got it right this time.]] Prowl made an effort to determine Unicron's path, once. Soundwave's kind of convinced this would be child's play for him. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 11:29 PM "... Hm." Well, Soundwave's very obvious efforts to try NOT to give the whole game away weren't going to give Prowl much to work with by way of figuring out what the problem was. He's getting the distinct impression that Soundwave doesn't want his help, even now that the "surprise" is ruined.

"Well. If you decide you want help, you know where I am." Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 11:29 PM [[What? No, he - he already decided that.]] Oh, ouch. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 11:30 PM "Oh." Prowl grimaces. Good job there, Prowl. Well done. "You're not telling me what you're doing. You want me to help without knowing what end result I'm supposed to be aiming for?" Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 11:34 PM ...Well, it sounded silly when Prowl put it like THAT.

[[It is supposed to - to be capable of identifying and opening a bridge to any given location almost as soon as communications contact is established.]]

=NOT OVERHEAD.=

[[Yes. But not overhead. Which is what it has been doing, when it isn't sending him Primus-knows-where for reasons he can't fathom. It won't be good for rescue work if it decides twenty-five meters from Dancitron is on the planet Vulcan.]] Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 11:36 PM Oh, now he's got Prowl's attention. "Communications contact. I assume you mean comms? Does it require the recipient to respond to pings, the way I did it? Or does it work through another mechanism? ... And can people who AREN'T telepathic use that method?" Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 11:42 PM [[Yes. Audio comms, at the moment. There is a bug of moderate size in the verbal comm protocols he has yet to fully remove.]] Hand wave. One step at a time. If he can work out one, he can use that to fix the other. Probably. [[The caller and the one creating the bridge must have sent and received one ping each - a hello and a response, let us say; the work is done after that. He is... REASONABLY certain non-telepaths will be able to use it. He is trying to design it that way.]] =For now, even telepaths cannot.= A rough chuckle.

[[Be helpful or be quiet.]] Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 11:43 PM Prowl opens his mouth, shuts his mouth, and frowns. "... Aren't audio comms and verbal comms the same thing?" Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 11:43 PM [[Written communications. Excuse him.]] Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 11:45 PM "Ah. Right. Okay." He nods, considering it. "... And you're having trouble making the endpoint show up where it should. You've tried anchoring it to a relative point from the comm unit being targeted rather than an absolute point in space?" Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 11:50 PM [[Not at first. It has gotten better since he made that adjustment, but not perfect.]] Something to do with how the comm unit itself is pinpointed, perhaps. He doesn't quite know. He'll have plenty of charts and diagrams on how it works if Prowl wants to take a look at them at some point.

[[We sent Laserbeak on three trips to Earth this weekend. The fourth did not go as planned.]] That may be why she isn't here tonight. Shh. [[She says that its moon is not a terrible place to be, though.]] Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 11:53 PM Prowl huffed. "If you're getting results that erratic, it sounds like some error in the calculations rather than a flaw in the methodology itself. It might just be a couple of misplaced digits. Can I see?" Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 11:56 PM [[Yes. But you cannot tell anyone what you see. Or where you will be. ... Except the Constructicons. He knows they will know everything. But if he finds them down there, they will not like what happens.]]

[[He hopes you are not claustrophobic. There is not much room to move in the basement.]]

He'll open a bridge for them to get into. A safe one, because it's the same coordinates he always uses, not calculated by comm. Prowl (verdigrisprowl) Yesterday at 11:59 PM "So, standard operating procedure."

Oh, NOW bridges are back on. "I can shrink if need be." He heads through the bridge down into the basement. Soundwave (Slenderwave) Yesterday at 11:59 PM Well, yes. He did say they were supposed to have finished by now. And off they go.

#chat

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threemoonsareshining · 7 years ago

Note

i read through all the 'get to know me uncomfortably well' questions and honestly i couldn't pick because i'd love your answers to any of them so idk just answer the ones you feel like answering? is that allowed in these ask games? idk i'm making it allowed (also have a great day!) xx

Hi!!!!!! Oh my god you’re blessing my night with this message because let’s say... I haven't had the best day today, and I’m sure that’s allowed in these ask things, i mean are there even rules? I do’t know how many i’ll be able to answer but I’m going all in so let’s go

2. How old are you? 19 such an ugly age let me tell you

4. What is your zodiac sign? taurus and i’m not really into astrology and stuff so i don’t know if i can relate to my sign or not

5. What is your favorite color? i really like earthy tones, and i’ve always loved dark colors but i’m trying to broaden my horizons in terms of colors, unsuccessfully this far

6. What's your lucky number? i’m not sure if it brings me luck but i’ve always loved the number 5, maybe bc it’s my birthday, i think it’s really nice overall

7. Do you have any pets? yes!! i have 2 cats, i love them so much even though they’re not the friendliest cats in the world you know. I used to have fish but they kept dying not matter how hard i tried! It makes me a little sad but in the end it was just too much work and if i wasn’t able to take care of them properly i’d rather have no fish honestly

8. Where are you from? i don’t like to say these things but i think it’s pretty obvious if you pay a little attention to what i post every once in a while

9. How tall are you?i’m 1.64 or so, which is like… 5.3-5.4??? I’d like to be a little taller tho

11. How many pairs of shoes do you own? I don’t own many, this year i bought some winter shoes but i just realised all my summer ones are either a little too used or i just don’t like their style anymore so yeah i should do some shopping (if only i had time to do that hah!)

12. What was your last dream about? i don’t remember very well but i think i saw my economics teacher riding a bike with no pants after i’d been fined by the police for having a water balloon war in the middle of the street, I wasn’t happy about that. I’ve had many dreams i was able to remember these last days, but they were more like nightmares i’d say, many of them about being kidnaped, other studies-related (i failed my math test again, i had to retake my college-access test… just terrible), and other were with people i actually know, which wasn’t the best thing ever honestly

15. Favorite song? Plant life by owl city, i’m going to paste the answer i wrote to explain why it’s my favorite (Plant Life by Owl City, that song just describes my soul at a spiritual level, like I could choose 1564 other songs by Owl City that describe me as well but this one is the one that I can relate to when i’m going through the worst times, but also gives me the hope that things will get better idk. And it’s funny because I still loved it before I had the level of English to understand the lyrics, and then I found out what they meant and i was like “woah this actually speaks to me in a way i can’t explain” it was a really weird feeling idk, that song is just me)

16. Favorite movie? billy elliot, actually it’s been a really long time since i last saw it. I remember i watched it like 7 times in a row in one week when i first saw it, i just loved it so much

17. Who would be your ideal partner? Just… someone that i’m 100% comfortable with, which should be a given, but apparently that isn’t that easy to find. Idk i’ve been thinking a lot about this lately basically because some of my coming decisions are going to be based on who i want as a partner, obviously not in a serious-for-life way, but in a way that i deserve right now. I’d like to have someone that doesn’t make me feel inadequate like almost everyone does, that doesn’t make me feel like a temporary asset in their life until they get want they want for me and just don’t care anymore. I don’t know, recent experiences have made me realise I need to figure out what I want and fight for it, not settle for someone just because it’s convenient, or because i don’t want to be alone... because in the end, if someone is making you feel like shit for being who you are and it’s acting like you are not important, even though they’re willing to be with you (even if it’s just for the physical part) that clearly makes you feel even more lonely

18. Do you want children? I’d say my #1 fear in life is getting accidentally pregnant (i know that shouldn’t worry me that much if i use protection and stuff), i meant a good reason i’m so wary of having sex is because i’d go crazy just considering the possibility that the condom failed or something. I think this answers the question, i really don’t want children, idk if i’d be able to take care of a kid, and above all, i don’t want to. Every time i see a kid in the street or in the public transport i pray he/she doesn’t interact with me because i just find it so so so difficult to be nice to them, basically because i don’t know how . Then i also look at their parents, their tired look, and don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they love their kids and all but I don’t think everyone can find happiness in having kids, and I don’t think I’m one of those people that won’t feel complete until they have kids or stuff. Furthermore, I’m not willing to sacrifice my body and to suffer the pain of giving birth, that doesn’t even cross my mind. So if I consider the possibility in the future i think I’d adopt.

20. Are you religious? I already answered this so I’ll just paste it I’m sorry this is so lazy (i was raised catholic and as a child i was really really devote, i truly believed in god. But you know, as years go by, then you find out you don’t agree with a lot of things the Church preaches (being in a catholic school doesn’t help, i will never forget the day i heard a priest telling literal 7-year-old girls that their only duty in life was to have children). My environment was really really conservative and I was lucky to somehow realise how fucking wrong some of the stuff they were teaching us was, sadly, i still see a lot of kids in my school being brainwashed… it’s crazy to see the way some families think. Anyways, that contributed to me getting distanced from everything religious-related. Now i could say i’m somewhere between agnostic and non-practicing. I still pray every once in a while but i’m not sure if i truly believe it or it’s just out of custom, i just feel too hopeless and detached from everything to believe there’s something greater than us… this question is too hard!)

24. Baths or showers? I used to hate taking showers just because I didn’t have the strength to go through all the process of taking a shower but I’ve been trying to fix this mainly because 1) Personal Hygiene and stuff 2) Even though i don’t have the willpower to do it, i always try to think about how nice it feels to be clean after a shower, or how relaxed you are (even if it’s for a short period of time) after taking a bath. So yeah I don’t like either of them but they’re obviously necessary

26. Have you ever been famous? I haven’t been famous but I’ve been mistaken for a famous people more than once. The first time i was very young and a man asked me if i was that girl (idk who) that was on tv and I said no, and the other was more recent, last year, when someone mistook me for a youtuber

28. What type of music do you like? I love instrumental music, specially orchestral but i also adore celtic themes. And i hate to admit it but i love electro pop, the owl city - type, even though many people (aka my dad) may think it’s not the Best Quality, but i mean who cares at least I enjoy it

33. What do you typically have for breakfast? I’m a mess so most of the time I have a coffee so I don’t die of tiredness throughout the day and if i have time i eat some fruit and cookies, not a lot honestly, which isn’t the most healthy thing to do but hey idc

34. Have you ever fired a gun? No. I really, really hate guns.

37. Favorite swear word? I never swear in public, just when I’m alone, I don’t think I can choose any word!

38. What's the longest you've ever gone without sleep? Maybe 24 hours, the thing is that i sleep very, very little, but i always end up sleeping anyway

41. Are you a good liar? Even when I’m actually telling the truth there are people who don’t believe me so yeah hah not really

42. Are you a good judge of character? i’m really good at getting the vibes of people, sometimes i think i’m just overreading everything but a high percentage of the time i end up being right, so yeah not only regarding people but also with other aspects of my life… i like to trust my gut. However, i don’t always say it bc i’m afraid i might be wrong, but when my suspicions are proven, I’m like yeah i was right how weird hahahahhhhhhhhh, i amaze myself in this aspect honestly

46. What is your personality type? i think i’m intj, but i remember retaking the test a few months later and getting another result but yeah i can relate to the architect type, introvert, cautelous, focused on analysing rather than acting blah blah all that stuff (i love this stuff)

49. Are you an innie or an outie? Innie 4 life, because I’ve tried to force myself to be more outie and let me tell you that didn’t go well

50. Left or right handed? left!!!

51. Are you scared of spiders? I’m really scared of them but i also cry every time i kill one bc i feel sorry for her (but it’s either my life or hers i’m sorry) although most of the time when i see i spider i face my fear and i put in in a box or something to release it outside

52. Favorite food? i’d eat ice cream every day of my life for every meal all the time just give me all the ice cream

58. Do you have much of an ego? My ego is so tiny sometimes i forget it exists and let people step on it like it’s nothing

61. Do you sing to yourself? I perform to myself, i love singing alone in my room. I used to care about my neighbour hearing me but you only live once right

62. Are you a good singer? i wouldn't say i’m a bad singer, nor a good one bc the problem is that my voice is not very strong, so it’s very hard to hear me. But yeah, i’ve been complimented for my singing in some occasions, and i really enjoy doing it on my own (i still don’y know how i was able to sing in public the only time i have done it)

63. Biggest Fear? that i’ll keep missing stuff due to my anxiety, oh that and having unwanted kids obviously

64. Are you a gossip? it’s always interesting to hear stuff and be aware of what happens around you but i‘ve always said that things would be better if everyone just… minded their own business a little bit more, you can’t get mad at someone if they don’t want to tell you something, it’s their life and they don’t owe you all the explanations after all

66. Do you like long or short hair? i have really long hair and i’d love it if it wasn’t so so so hard to maintain… i’m pretty tired of it honestly and i know i said i’d be cutting and donating it this year but… it’s such a part of my identity (which is so silly but it’s true, i’m introduced to some people as “the girl with really long hair”) and… i don’t know i think i’ve enough changes this year, so i’ll keep it for a little longer

70. Have you ever been scuba diving? i’m so scared of the sea i think i’d die

71. What makes you nervous? sadly, even the most insignificant stuff makes me nervous, and apparently, ignoring them doesn’t mae them disapear! so yeah i’m basically suffering at all times due to stupid stuff, i’ve just learned to ignore it enough so it doesn’t interfere with the rest of my life (most of the time it works but it’s mentally draining now that i think about it)

77. Have you ever drank underage? I’m one of those people that can say that never drank alcohol until it was legal for me to do it, I didn’t do it even when my mom offered me something at family gatherings… yeah i think that’s the reason i drink so much now

80. How many piercings do you have? I don’t like piercings for myself (i obviously don’t have a problem with other people having them) but i just think it’s an unnecessary way of mutilating yourself (i hate needles)

86. What are you allergic to? Ironically, I’m allergic to cats, even though i have 2. It comes and goes, and it’s not serious, i sneeze a lot, my eyes itch a little sometimes, but i’m willing to pay that price for my cats honestly

87. Do you keep a journal? I do, but it’s been months since i last wrote mainly because i always feel like shit after writing, so now i can’t bring myself to do it, that’s why i post so much about my personal life in here, because i’m not able to journal but i also don’t want to forget about what happens in my life

90. What makes you angry? Anger is a weird concept for me. I get angry very often, but I’m angry in general, not at anyone in particular, I just find myself unable to get mad at someone, the anger instantaneously turns into sadness, so I don’t know what’s worse. If I’m being mean to someone (most of the time my parents are the victims) it’s not because of them, I’m just angry for no reason and I just can’t keep being nice.

Hey congratualtions if you made it till the end, i was really bored so i answered a lot. Thanks for the message again 🐱🐱🐱🌳🌳🌳

#ask #mutuals #suspended-in-gaffa #long post #i'm so sorry these are all over the place #but ot was nice

1 note · View note

hgfstreamchats · 4 years ago

Text

New Boxyverse Footage

thenightetc 09:43 PM Hello hello!

highglossfinish 09:43 PM Hello there!

highglossfinish 09:43 PM Just waiting on our special guest to join us.

thenightetc 09:44 PM Special guest, eh? warwearymedic joined the party.

highglossfinish 09:44 PM Speak of the devil. thenightetc joined the party. warwearymedic joined the party. warwearymedic joined the party.

highglossfinish 09:45 PM Everything holding up?

warwearymedic 09:45 PM We've sorted out my connection, yes

thenightetc 09:45 PM Horribly, yes.

highglossfinish 09:46 PM Excellent.

highglossfinish 09:47 PM And off we go.

thenightetc 09:47 PM *settles in*

warwearymedic 09:49 PM What in the world am I looking at

highglossfinish 09:49 PM Looks to be the boxiest incarnation of the boxyverse yet.

warwearymedic 09:50 PM How are they moving with that much weight on their spinal struts

highglossfinish 09:50 PM I don't like their mouths.

thenightetc 09:50 PM My eye keeps sliding away from them.

warwearymedic 09:50 PM I'm trying very hard not to look

highglossfinish 09:51 PM Oh, to get Starscream's opinion on this one.

warwearymedic 09:51 PM I somehow think I can feel Bumblebee having a spark attack from here

thenightetc 09:52 PM Honestly, this seems like a great time for them to sneak off quietly.

thenightetc 09:52 PM Quietly, I said

warwearymedic 09:53 PM Nothing makes sense in the boxyverse, I've learned

highglossfinish 09:53 PM LIPS.

thenightetc 09:53 PM gah!

warwearymedic 09:53 PM I didn't need that

thenightetc 09:53 PM Everyone has such a poutuy mouth

thenightetc 09:53 PM *pouty

highglossfinish 09:54 PM That Megatron has absolutely appeared in a video somewhere in this world, sucking on someone's fingers.

thenightetc 09:54 PM Please, please don't link to it.

warwearymedic 09:55 PM Knock Out, this is an honest question. Do you think before you speak?

highglossfinish 09:55 PM I only say what we're all thinking.

warwearymedic 09:55 PM Are you referring to you and the scraplet on your shoulder, because I was certainly not thinking that

highglossfinish 09:57 PM That scraplet agrees with me, this Megatron's true calling is to look over his shoulder like he has a naughty little secret.

thenightetc 09:57 PM I'm distracted by the implication there was some kind of ramp that Optimus drove off of to come in like that

warwearymedic 10:05 PM Is that Red Alert?

highglossfinish 10:05 PM I'm pulling up old footage of Starscream after this, just to look at something aerodynamic.

thenightetc 10:05 PM Sounds like a plan!

highglossfinish 10:06 PM Dear sweet Unicron, does everyone in this universe speak and act like they're living in a cheap static vid?

highglossfinish 10:06 PM Especially their medic.

thenightetc 10:06 PM It's too early to judge, but... yes.

thenightetc 10:06 PM Absolutely.

highglossfinish 10:07 PM Typical Autobots.

warwearymedic 10:08 PM The first comment we've gotten that I've been asked to share: "Is that what I look like?"

highglossfinish 10:09 PM I mean comparatively speaking...

warwearymedic 10:09 PM Don't answer that

thenightetc 10:10 PM Hm.

thenightetc 10:12 PM Is that cloth? Where did he get cloth?

thenightetc 10:12 PM *squints*

highglossfinish 10:12 PM It's going to get caught in his fans or seams.

warwearymedic 10:12 PM The same place he apparently got the audacity

thenightetc 10:13 PM This is going to go well.

thenightetc 10:13 PM Are those Decepticon logo chairs?

highglossfinish 10:13 PM Everyone take a good last look at Ultra Magnus.

warwearymedic 10:13 PM Oh, we've left the room, apparently

warwearymedic 10:14 PM I did not mean warwearymedic joined the party. thenightetc joined the party.

warwearymedic 10:14 PM I meant he's walked away from the console

thenightetc 10:15 PM Oh, that's MUCH clearer

thenightetc 10:15 PM Is that a giant portrait of Megatron--

highglossfinish 10:15 PM It always shows up clear as day on my end, I wish I knew why it does that.

thenightetc 10:17 PM it's a d20!

warwearymedic 10:17 PM What in the world is Shockwave holding

highglossfinish 10:18 PM I do like how he types with his blaster.

warwearymedic 10:19 PM I do not

thenightetc 10:20 PM I like how he kind of sounds like he's doing a Starscream impression

warwearymedic 10:22 PM Soundwave sounds like that voice sound on that social media application the medbay eradicons have been tormenting me with

highglossfinish 10:22 PM Optimus sounds like some bot off the street doing a very rough impression of Optimus.

highglossfinish 10:22 PM Our Optimus. Thebes joined the party.

warwearymedic 10:23 PM I've been avoiding that

Thebes 10:23 PM hello!

highglossfinish 10:23 PM Hello there!

thenightetc 10:23 PM Hello! It's a whole new, unsettlingly boxy, universe.

highglossfinish 10:24 PM The boxes are thick and so are the lips. Thebes joined the party.

warwearymedic 10:25 PM I'm going to ask again, Knock Out, do you think before you speak

highglossfinish 10:25 PM Ahh, how I've missed having everyone together.

thenightetc 10:26 PM Yes, investigate the package.

Thebes joined the party.

highglossfinish 10:28 PM Everyone looks and sounds like everyone else.

Thebes 10:28 PM with varying levels of ANGRY1!1

warwearymedic 10:29 PM That sounded urgent

highglossfinish 10:29 PM You can tell the war's been harsh because everyone is mildly disgruntled and surly.

thenightetc 10:31 PM Megatron REALLY likes the self-portraits, huh.

warwearymedic 10:31 PM Why does "Spinster's" voice sound so familiar

highglossfinish 10:31 PM Ours absolutely hated having his picture taken.

highglossfinish 10:31 PM "Tell me or I'll give you such a pout!"

thenightetc 10:32 PM Tsk.

warwearymedic 10:32 PM Clear weather down there, is it?

highglossfinish 10:33 PM Oh, here we are!

warwearymedic 10:33 PM Oh is that what I look like?

highglossfinish 10:34 PM It's what the boxiestverse says you look like, so yes.

thenightetc 10:34 PM *leans back*

warwearymedic 10:34 PM This is jarring and I don't like it

warwearymedic 10:34 PM This is worse!

thenightetc 10:34 PM It is unsettling.

highglossfinish 10:35 PM On our Cybertron, they make you pay for this experience.

thenightetc 10:36 PM Ten dollars says he's dead soon.

highglossfinish 10:36 PM Ratchet, this you sounds like a younger Wheeljack.

warwearymedic 10:37 PM Saying that may be the worst thing you've ever done to me, and you've tried to cut my head off.

highglossfinish 10:37 PM Oh yes, I've definitely missed this.

highglossfinish 10:38 PM Oh, look who gets to go out and safely look up in the rain?

thenightetc 10:38 PM So is Megatron in charge of this Cybertron...?

warwearymedic 10:38 PM That's not very clear

Thebes 10:38 PM Are there any clear answers?

highglossfinish 10:40 PM /LIPS./ Thebes joined the party.

thenightetc 10:40 PM Look away from the lips.

warwearymedic 10:40 PM We can all see them. You don't need to point them out

highglossfinish 10:41 PM I can't look away. They're like a light show.

highglossfinish 10:41 PM Or a Seeker taking a dive into the ground.

thenightetc 10:42 PM He sound so shocked.

thenightetc 10:42 PM f

highglossfinish 10:42 PM F.

thenightetc 10:42 PM Those captions

warwearymedic 10:42 PM I looked away, what did I miss with the captions?

thenightetc 10:43 PM "[Jetfire panting] Lord Megatron..."

highglossfinish 10:43 PM Well, then!

warwearymedic 10:43 PM Ah

highglossfinish 10:44 PM Even Laserbeak is blunt and heavy.

highglossfinish 10:45 PM I never got to know our Skyfire, but if it's true that Starscream's found him, I hope they're getting along better than these two.

thenightetc 10:45 PM Yeah.

thenightetc 10:46 PM What *are* aerodynamics, anyway.

highglossfinish 10:47 PM None of that in this universe.

thenightetc 10:48 PM So he's... possessed? Possessed by Beardy?

highglossfinish 10:52 PM How terrifying it must be to live in a universe where that's a thing that can happen.

thenightetc 10:55 PM Look at him, he's having fun.

Thebes 10:55 PM now what's going to ruin everything for him

warwearymedic 10:56 PM Historically? Everything

highglossfinish 10:56 PM Historically, everything, up to and including Starscream himself.

thenightetc 10:56 PM You're not wrong.

Thebes 10:56 PM yeah, but are we talking at once or domino effect resulting in a screeching tantrum that finishes the job

warwearymedic 10:56 PM Old. Alright.

thenightetc 10:57 PM "Hmmm. Bold choice"

highglossfinish 10:58 PM I certainly hope nothing plants a great big Autobot insignia on that vast empty space on his chestplate.

thenightetc 10:58 PM Perish the thought.

highglossfinish 10:59 PM "Also, some organic grass is here too."

thenightetc 11:00 PM So it... tells the future??

warwearymedic 11:00 PM Can this divine projection only move one arm?

highglossfinish 11:00 PM Apparently.

highglossfinish 11:01 PM Did Prowl's voice just change completely?

warwearymedic 11:01 PM This Prowl sounds horribly inconsistent

thenightetc 11:01 PM What else is new.

warwearymedic 11:02 PM Just because you can walk through the screens does not mean you should

thenightetc 11:02 PM So is the code... magic?

thenightetc 11:02 PM Is there some reason it can't be copied?

highglossfinish 11:02 PM Absolutely none.

highglossfinish 11:02 PM "I have a virus."

highglossfinish 11:03 PM I thought he was just going to end it there.

thenightetc 11:03 PM Heh.

highglossfinish 11:05 PM "Not that?"

thenightetc 11:06 PM Honor. Yeah.

thenightetc 11:06 PM Trion seems to have a problem with sticking things in people.

warwearymedic 11:06 PM I've figured out why they're so jarring to look at: their plating is so textured but their faces are so smooth

highglossfinish 11:06 PM It's very uncanny.

thenightetc 11:06 PM They all polish their faces every day.

highglossfinish 11:07 PM Then they gather around to caress each other's smooth, smooth faces, as all Autobots do.

thenightetc 11:07 PM :(

thenightetc 11:08 PM Need I remind you that the Decepticons' faces are equally smooth.

warwearymedic 11:08 PM It cost you zero credits to say that

highglossfinish 11:08 PM And yet, here we are.

highglossfinish 11:08 PM The best things in life are free.

warwearymedic 11:09 PM I should have said "not to say that" but I was just too stunned

highglossfinish 11:09 PM Speaking of which, alternate you is losing that "young Wheeljack" note and just slipping straight into Wheeljack.

thenightetc 11:10 PM Did he need to phrase it like that

highglossfinish 11:10 PM He did not.

Thebes 11:10 PM God those lips are... disturbing? I think disturbing's the right word

highglossfinish 11:10 PM Now, I must have missed something...why does Ultra Magnus have a deadly virus inside him?

warwearymedic 11:11 PM All of us on this end would also like the answer to that

warwearymedic 11:11 PM Ah, I forgot Praxus did that

thenightetc 11:12 PM Ugh.

highglossfinish 11:12 PM Was it war related? Or did he just pick it up in a bathhouse somewhere?

thenightetc 11:13 PM ...Oh boy!

thenightetc 11:13 PM Oh

thenightetc 11:13 PM Oh boy! Stealing!

warwearymedic 11:14 PM I need you all to know that Leo murmured "a heist" very quietly under her breath and now she won't stop giggling

highglossfinish 11:14 PM Why are all Arcees save ours so ugly?

highglossfinish 11:14 PM Leo's there too?

thenightetc 11:14 PM One of those multiversal quirks, I'm sure.

warwearymedic 11:15 PM She's been popping in

thenightetc 11:16 PM Of all the things to happen, "Shockwave ties up Ultra Magnus's corpse and gives it a virus" wasn't one I expected.

highglossfinish 11:17 PM Concurred.

highglossfinish 11:17 PM Just let the storm have him.

thenightetc 11:17 PM Agreed.

warwearymedic 11:17 PM I can't say I disagree

thenightetc 11:18 PM Still, I guess Jetfire has something to prove.

highglossfinish 11:18 PM What's that little device again? I was busy commenting on Ultra Magnus and bathhouses.

warwearymedic 11:19 PM Which device, the core override?

thenightetc 11:19 PM The remote for the bomb in Jetfire's head.

highglossfinish 11:19 PM Charming.

thenightetc 11:19 PM Interesting logo.

warwearymedic 11:20 PM Fundamentally not how sparks work

highglossfinish 11:20 PM Nothing about the way this universe works is how anything works.

warwearymedic 11:21 PM But you would at least think they'd cover the basics

highglossfinish 11:22 PM A way to carry them out might have been a good idea.

thenightetc 11:22 PM What a great heist.

warwearymedic 11:23 PM How is she walking

highglossfinish 11:23 PM How are any of their hips not giving out under them?

thenightetc 11:24 PM :|

highglossfinish 11:24 PM Terrorcons. Ugh.

thenightetc 11:24 PM Oh good, saved by something unrelated to what they were doing.

highglossfinish 11:26 PM Goodbye, highly disposable member of our team.

warwearymedic 11:26 PM Ah, yes, Prowl, well-known to buy into myths and legends

thenightetc 11:27 PM So uh... is the presence of the Allspark responsible for the terrorcons?

thenightetc 11:27 PM Now roll it.

thenightetc 11:27 PM Please somebody roll it.

highglossfinish 11:27 PM "They just pulled off my arms and legs, which our species is built to survive. I'm fine...I'm not dead. Is anyone listening?" ~Moonracer.

thenightetc 11:29 PM Again, is this MAGIC code?

thenightetc 11:30 PM Are there backups somewhere?

warwearymedic 11:30 PM This Red Alert is not nearly paranoid enough to be Red Alert

highglossfinish 11:30 PM The same magic code that they apparently all injected when they split into political factions, just so they could have one more additional way to kill each other.

thenightetc 11:31 PM I guess Megatron doesn't join in on the face-polishing. Has other things to do.

highglossfinish 11:31 PM He polishes his lips and nothing else.

thenightetc 11:31 PM Or does he have someone polish his lips FOR him?

highglossfinish 11:32 PM He puckers his lip components and chases everyone around the base for an hour and whoever's left standing gets polish duty for that day.

warwearymedic 11:33 PM Every time you speak it gets worse

thenightetc 11:33 PM Speaking from experience, eh?

highglossfinish 11:34 PM Our Megatron's mouth is violently incompatible with lips.

thenightetc 11:35 PM Polished until there was nothing left.

thenightetc 11:35 PM Sounds like one of those cautionary tales.

warwearymedic 11:35 PM Gladiators were either known for excessive attention to appearance, or almost aggressive lack thereof

highglossfinish 11:36 PM They were fun that way. Rajkumar99salam joined the party.

Rajkumar99salam 11:38 PM hi

highglossfinish 11:38 PM Mysterious stranger.

thenightetc 11:38 PM And who could have seen that coming.

thenightetc 11:38 PM F.

thenightetc 11:39 PM Wait how did it land point-up?

thenightetc 11:39 PM :|

highglossfinish 11:40 PM This is a mess.

thenightetc 11:40 PM Once again, the Allspark is hurled randomly into space.

highglossfinish 11:42 PM Now who will patch up all their internal trauma with his lush, velvety voice?

highglossfinish 11:42 PM Fightin'.

thenightetc 11:42 PM Who indeed.

warwearymedic 11:43 PM Has Ironhide spoken at all

warwearymedic 11:43 PM Ours never managed to stop talking

thenightetc 11:44 PM "Died". Right.

highglossfinish 11:44 PM I would be up all night laughing if they'd all just died immediately on the ship.

thenightetc 11:45 PM You know they're fine.

highglossfinish 11:45 PM Yes, but it would be *funny.*

thenightetc 11:46 PM Oh boy!

thenightetc 11:49 PM Gun... orfices... :|

highglossfinish 11:49 PM Oh yes.

thenightetc 11:50 PM This sure is how everything works

highglossfinish 11:50 PM It certainly is that.

thenightetc 11:51 PM Nice.

Thebes 11:55 PM only the most rigorous scientific method around here

thenightetc 11:55 PM Just hollow out the entire planet.

highglossfinish 11:56 PM He's angered the gods.

thenightetc 11:57 PM Oh my

highglossfinish 11:58 PM Amazing.

thenightetc 12:00 AM I am in awe.

highglossfinish 12:00 AM I want to have his capacity to see opportunities.

highglossfinish 12:02 AM ....I've been given a suggestion for what we're closing the night on, and it's very short and it's needed.

thenightetc 12:02 AM Ooooo?

thenightetc 12:02 AM Sounds promising!

highglossfinish 12:02 AM You'll see!

thenightetc 12:07 AM I love it.

Thebes 12:07 AM I am reminded of Dwarf Fortress.

thenightetc 12:09 AM Dear lord.

highglossfinish 12:09 AM Here we go.

highglossfinish 12:11 AM Dear sweet Unicron.

thenightetc 12:12 AM Nice.

highglossfinish 12:13 AM Here comes boxiest Megatron!

Thebes 12:13 AM was not expecting things to end in nuclear armageddon!

thenightetc 12:13 AM *squints*

Thebes 12:13 AM OH NO

Thebes 12:13 AM THE TIM CURRY ORGAN?!

highglossfinish 12:13 AM OH YES INDEED!

thenightetc 12:14 AM Er

warwearymedic 12:14 AM It was decided that that's what he looks like

highglossfinish 12:14 AM Megatron before he set his sights on Cybertron.

thenightetc 12:15 AM My god

thenightetc 12:16 AM "If you're turned on, then just turn off"

highglossfinish 12:16 AM That certainly was a lyric.

thenightetc 12:16 AM It sure was.

highglossfinish 12:17 AM And that, dear friends and Ratchet, is where we close! KIMBERLY06 joined the party.

KIMBERLY06 12:18 AM hie

thenightetc 12:18 AM Well, thanks for hosting! It certainly was a trip.

warwearymedic 12:18 AM I suppose I should say it was a pleasure, but that's questionable

highglossfinish 12:18 AM Thank you for coming!

thenightetc 12:18 AM Goodnight!

highglossfinish 12:18 AM It was wretched. Thank you all for sharing the burden of it.

highglossfinish 12:18 AM Good night!

thenightetc 12:18 AM Ha.

0 notes

chaos-and-recover · 7 years ago

Note

ALL OF THE ASKS 🖤

EVERY TIME.

Alright let’s do this.

1: Favorite band?

AFI and/or July Talk

2: Favorite song?

Of all time? I think I realized recently that it is in fact Falling Slowly. The fact that I have like 7 different versions in my music library was a solid clue that I fucking love it.

3: What’s a band/artist you loved as a child but can barely listen to now?

My brother and I loved Kris Kross when we were little. That’s some cheeseball rap right there. Also when I was 12 I was super into Prodigy. But then, Firestarter is still a good fucking song.

4: Did you ever see a band/artist live?

Yes? A lot? Many times?

5: Are you going to any gigs soon?

I was supposed to go to Chicago next weekend to see my boys the Plain White T’s but they cancelled the show and I’m bummed.

I’m seeing Jimmy Eat World on December 5th and I’m stoked about it.

I’m also seeing July Talk three nights in a row on the 20th, 21st and 22nd because I have no self control and I love them.

6: Ever been to a festival?

Yes, several. I used to love them and now I’m too old for that shit and there’s too many of them and the bands are spread too thin and no one festival has enough bands I like to justify it lol.

8: A song with a number in the title?

Green Day - 21 Guns

9: A song that gets you through shit?

AFI - Narrative of Soul Against Soul

10: A good song for long bus rides?

Anberlin - Autobahn

11: A song you’d have sex to?

Take That - Pretty Things (I mean it’s kinda weird but uh I’m into it)

12: A song to shut everything out?

36 Crazyfists - Slit Wrist Theory (like 90% sure this song almost got me sent to therapy given how many times my 17 year old self blasted it)

13: A song for when you’re lonely?

The entire “Cities” album by Anberlin is my security blanket. I’ll saw The Unwinding Cable Car though.

14: A song that’s become a joke between you and your friends?

Jack’s Mannequin - Dark Blue ( @sinceubeenjon knows why)

15: A song to jam out to at 4AM?

The Used - The Taste Of Ink. Because it literally references 4:00 in the morning lol

16: An album you could listen to for days on end?

I’m pretty sure I did listen to Decemberunderground by AFI for days on end in 2006. And like… constantly ever since.

17: A song that punches you in the gut every single time?

Anberlin - Atonement. Fuuuuuuuck me :)

18: A song for when you’re crazy angry?

I wanna saw Slit Wrist Theory again but I’m also trying not to repeat songs so uhhhh The Used - Box Full Of Sharp Objects. I have a lot of angst apparently.

19: If you had to pick one song to represent what you’re feeling right now, what would it be?

It’s not actually Christmas but it is a holiday in the US and I have a cold so “It’s Christmas And I’m Sick” by MxPx. Honestly, I have nothing else. I have no feelings right now lol.

20: A song that calms you down?

The Used - Bllue & Yellow

21: A song that makes you feel alive?

Anberlin - Dismantle.Repair

22: A band with an insane fandom?

Are Twenty One Pilots fans still bonkers? That’s one. Or a certain segment of 1D fandom. You know the one (the Larries. Jesus christ people.)

23: What are some lyrics you love to pieces?

There are so many. Here are some of my favourites:

“It’s not about the money we makeIt’s about the passions that we ache forWhat makes your heart beat fasterTell me now what does your body long after?”-Time & Confusion by Anberlin

“And as the days go onThe love, the lust, the buzz that wasReduced to dust, could be becauseIt never was something moreThan just a void filling feeling”-FL,GA by The Rocket Summer

“I saw you every time I closed my eyesIn the Hughes film I had scored, produced and starred in in my mindI could recite you, well I’d written every lineBut you strayed far from the flawless script on which I’d spent a lifetime”-Veronica Sawyer Smokes by AFI

“I tried, but it rang and rang, I called all nightFrom a payphone, remember those? From another lifeIf everything I meant to youYou can’t lick and seal then fold in twoThen I’ve been so blind.”-Dizzy by Jimmy Eat World

“Let it out, let me in, take a hold of my handThere’s nothing like another soul that’s been cut up the sameAnd did you wanna drive without a word in between?I can understand, you need a minute to breatheAnd to sew up the seams after all this defeat.”-Handwritten by The Gaslight Anthem

I’m gonna stop there.

24: Would you ever get any song lyrics tattooed? If so which ones?

I have some! I have “Just point to the light that casts out the dark” from White Fireworks by The Rocket Summer in Bryce Avary’s handwriting and I’m pretty damn pleased with it. I’d probably get more. He also wrote “Be reckless, be bright” for me from The Rescuing Type that I wanna get done.

25: What’s a band/artist you’d addict your children to from an early age?

Kids? Gross. I’m gonna try to get my niece into some good shit. When is an appropriate age to get her into AFI?

26: A vocalist you love?

I’m perfectly neutral and rational about Davey Havok, tbh, I’ve never been extra about him a day in my life.

I also love me some Adam Lambert and have very strong opinions about him fronting Queen (they are all variations of “he’s great at it fight me.)

27: Has a band/artist ever inspired you to do something?

Yes, usually dumb shit, like travel across a country/continent/ocean to see them.

28: A band/artist you love but no longer exists?

MOTHERFUCKING ANBERLIN.

29: What was your favorite band/artist when you were 12?

The Backstreet Boys, lol.

30: A band/artist you can’t stand?

Twenty One goddamn Pilots. Also ask me how I feel about Metric some time. (I FUCKIN HATE METRIC.)

31: What’s your favorite genre?

I honestly don’t have one. The music I like is all over the goddamn map.

32: Can you play any instruments?

I played percussion for 6 years in school and was self-taught on bass, though I haven’t pulled mine out in literal years. (One day I’m gonna get it out again and learn Pink Eyes by AFI. It’s gonna happen.)

33: Do you sing?

Hahahahahahhahahaa not so anyone can hear me.

34: If you could be a member of any band for one show, who would it be?

I would Jordan Pundik from New Found Glory because I still maintain that he only has to sing like half of every song and the crowd does the rest.

35: Do you have a favorite piece of merch?

My current favourite merch item in the world is my 36 Crazyfists hoodie. It’s so soft, so warm, so comfy. My Anberlin carabiner has served me very well over the years too.

36: What’s the first album you ever bought with your own money?

I always tell people it was the first BSB album but it was actually a Raptors promo CD released ahead of their first season in the NBA. BSB just sounds more like it’s a real thing that existed.

37: Do you prefer buying physical copies of albums or do you download them on the internet?

Physical. Digital versions just… I don’t connect with them as well? I don’t know, I don’t feel like I really own them if I can’t touch ‘em.

38: CDs or vinyls?

Vinyl. Also, not to be a pedant, but the plural of vinyl is vinyl.

39: Do you play your music out loud or with headphones?

Headphones. Used to be out loud all the time back in the days of desktop computers when I’d be alone in a room on the computer and could do that without annoying everyone lol.

40: A band/artist a friend showed you?

I guess I can blame Raven for how much I love Eric Church, does that count?

41: A song that gives you the chills?

Anberlin - The Unwinding Cable Car, but like, a very specific recording of it. This one, in fact, starting at 3:08 when Stephen is singing the bridge and the crowd comes in with “this is the correlation between salvation and love” part completely unprompted and it builds up until he’s holding “heart” and we’re holding “dark” and it’s fucking magical and you know what’s not captured on the audio recording? The look on Christian’s goddamn face when that happened. That was a hell of a show.

42: A song to play at your funeral?

I mean, you could go ahead and play that version of Cable Car linked in the last answer because it’s probably what killed me anyway, but if you wanna be more cliche just bust out Hear You Me by Jimmy Eat World.

43: A band/artist with amazing an instrumental but really bad lyrics?

I listened to BedLIGHT for BlueEYES for the first time in a few years the other day so um. Them. The lyrics have not held up super well but my GOD they’re catchy. (Although “But I guess I shouldn’t hat you you, in fact I oughtta thank you for helping me write this song / If this album tops the Billboard I think I’ll save the quarter to call you and let you know” from Too Late still fucking kills though.)

44: A love song?

Any love song? 200,000 by my sweet baby boy The Rocket Summer, it’s the cutest fucking song in the world.

45: A song you love to sing to yourself?

I don’t sing to myself, that’s embarrassing (it’s probably like, Raise Your Glass by Pink or something, though)

46: What do you listen to when you go for a run?

When I did run more often it was to movie soundtracks. 127 Hours had some really good running tunes. Also there’s a song on the Inception soundtrack that was perfect for a good sprint.

47: A song that represents a deserted city at night?

The Taste of Ink by The Used kinda gives me that feeling, I guess.

48: A wild song?

Wild? How about Wild by AFI, is that good enough lol.

49: An upbeat song with grim lyrics?

Motion City Soundtrack - Everything Is Alright.

50: What are some song titles you love?

Okay so I can’t really think of any but it took me until entirely too recently to realize that “Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off” and “But It’s Better If You Do” by Panic! At The Disco fucking… they go together. They’re supposed to be read together. Years that took me. That album was my second most-played in iTunes and I didn’t… figure that out. I’m dumb as hell.

51: If your life ended today, what song would you chose to represent it?

One song, to represent my entire life? Hell if I know. Probably like, Tonight by NKOTB though, let’s be honest.

52: Can you give me a 5 song playlist on ___?

ON WHAT I NEED A TOPIC.

53: Do you listen to instrumental music?

Sometimes, sure.

54: Weirdest band/artist you know of?

Foxy Shazam were weird as hell. We put their album on at work years ago because the sticker… I can’t remember what the sticker compared them to now but it was a mix of bands that made us say “that can’t POSSIBLY be right” and then it was? (one of them was Queen, I remember that). They were fucking weirdos and I miss them TERRIBLY.

55: A song about drugs?

You know who I haven’t mentioned in this yet? Lucky Boys Confusion. They have a lot of songs about drugs. 40/80 comes to mind. What a jam. What a band.

56: A heart-wrenching song?

This might seem like an odd choice but 11.24.11 by 36 Crazyfists. It goes hard as hell but then “don’t plan to live forever but I wanted her to,” and it’s about his mother, it just fucking wrecks me.

57: A band/artist you’re proud of?

July Talk. They deserve to be bigger but they’re doing so well and I’m so proud of them and if they were any bigger I would absolutely be insufferable about it.

58: A band/artist who’s music could bring you back from the dead?

If I had been dead for like five years but you told me Lucky Boys Confusion were going on tour I would be up and at every single show in a snap, I want to see them again SO BADLY.

59: A band/artist with a sick aesthetic?

Listen, I fucking love July Talk’s black/white, light/dark, sweet/rough contrasting aesthetic. It is everything. It is so well-executed. Talk to me about the first album and how well they played into it. I love them. I love everything they choose to be. I FUCKING LOVE JULY TALK.

60: A song that has a lot of meaning to you?

Plain White T’s - Radios In Heaven is a bit of a thing for me.

#nikkihorrorxx #ALL THE ASKS #who's gonna read this nikki #this is so long #long post

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autumn-in-phandom · 7 years ago

Text

Dan and Phil play Dream Daddy

MEET DILDDY LESTOWELL

I loved this video! I was dying of laughter in the first fifteen minutes and just had to make timestamps. Very very long under the cut.

0:00 Phil is wearing his rainbow zebra shirt! Being his best self.

0:03 Wow was that second “daddies” necessary Phil? (Yes, it was.)

0:42 “Cause you know Dan and Phil they like to have the raw naked-”- Dan

0:45 “Immersion”- Phil

0:46 “They just like to go in-”- Dan

0:47 “Are you saying we’re going to have to be blurring some things-”- Phil

0:48 “Bare. What?”- Dan (what?)

0:58 “Give me that Daddiest graphics.”- Phil

1:00 “Oh it’s like Yuri on Ice.”- Dan

1:10 Phil will be a long haired vampire in ten years. Yes, something to look forward to.

1:25 “Phil, don’t do your chin like that, you’re fine.”- Dan (damn fine)

2:07 “Is that your best dad voice?”- Dan

2:14 “Do you wanna be Dad?”- Phil (sass)

2:15 “Phil, everyone wants you to be Dad.”- Dan (the honest truth)

2:34 “Moving house? Oh my god!”- Dan (omg!)

2:45 “Coordinating the headband with the nails.”- Dan (noticing the important stuff)

2:46 “Definitely.”- Phil

2:53 Phil’s yawn, wtf was that? Sounds like a dog.

2:55 “Are you American now?”- Dan

2:56 “I don’t knowww.”- Phil (poor frustrated Phil)

3:03 “Build that Dad!”- in sync

3:30 “Dilddy! No?”- Phil (Dan’s face)

3:36 “Yeah sure. Let’s not think about that anymore Phil.”- Dan

4:04 “Thor. We just made Thor by accident.”- Phil (always with the Thor)

4:07 “Ah the bun hair.”- Dan

4:08 “Man bun.”- Phil

4:09 “That’s very like modern dad aesthetic.”- Dan

4:12 “That’s quite Dil-y”- Phil

4:13 “That’s the most Dil-esque, I think.”- Dan

4:19 “Heart eyes.”- Phil

4:20 “SENPAI!!!”- Dan

4:30 “Can you just have heart eyes the entire game?”- Dan (are you asking for permission Dan?)

4:31 “The whole time.”- Phil

4:32 “Is that just going to ruin the game?”- Phil (no.)

4:33 “Would that be slightly distracting?”- Dan (well, yes.)

4:58 “Noman Rose.”- Phil (has a bit of a Roman nose)

5:10 They love the lips, sassy mouths

5:39 “He banged it on some kind of exercise equipment.”- Phil

5:40 “Wrestling another dad for territory.”- Dan (sure)

5:45 “Yes!”- Phil is excited by facial hair options (and I’m excited for him)

5:50 “More people should have black hair and blonde beards.”- justifying your ginger eyebrows Phil?

5:51 Dan has to think a second before agreeing

5:55 Hunger Games aesthetic, okay.

6:00 “I asked you yesterday if you’d grow a full beard. If you wanted to. Like what’s your answer to that question?”- Phil (I’m going to cry.)

6:04 “What in like twenty years?”- Dan

6:05 “Yeah.”- Phil

6:05 “Yeah, sure. I’ll give it a crack.”- Dan

6:06 “Do you think you’ll ever have a full beard?”- Phil

6:09 “Ever?”- D

6:10 “Ever.”- P

6:10 “Yeah, maybe in like ten years when I finish going through puberty.”- Dan

6:13 “I kinda wanna try.”- Phil wants to try a beard, people! And it might be a different color than his fringe. I see.

6:15 “This is the best part!”- Phil on clothing

6:19 “Can’t you just like have nothing?”- Phil (for underroos apparently)

6:22 “Captain America! Yes!”- Phil (nice six pointed star)

6:25 “Egg nips. I mean totally, I can see that.”- Dan

6:31 Phil saying “Daddy Dil” kills me

6:35 “Cats! With a suit jacket.”- Phil (we have a winner)

6:43 I agree with Dan about that pattern, it reminds me of party centers, roller rinks and tour busses. Phil with the Saved by the Bell reference.

7:00 “Goals. As the kids would say.”- Dan

7:26 “Be that dad. The dad you always dreamed to be.”- Dan

7:28 “Now do we get to date some dads?”- Phil Lester asking the important questions.

7:58 Phil’s second child syndrome

8:13 “No mum’s must exist in this universe!”- Dan (okay Dan, interesting justification)

8:35 “I was just given a bin bag and some sticky stars to say I was a ‘wizard’. Yeah.”- Phil (dang that’s cheap, Lesters)

8:43 “Princess Dragon!”- in sync

8:45 Dan would watch a scaley fairytale movie

9:05 “I wish I had a horse phase.”- Dan (I’m glad I did)

9:09 “Or a Horse Prince phase.”- Phil (he’s not over it)

9:11 “Oh we all had that.”- Dan

9:20 “Why aren’t we going to McFridayz?”- Phil

9:50 Adoption +1

10:00 Kangaroo existential crisis

10:19 “Hit me.”- Dan

10:25 “He knows what to do.”- Dan (getting really into it)

10:30 “Yeah. Then what?”- squeaky over dramatic Dan

10:35 “And then he ran away with a kangaroo.”- Phil (there are two types of people in this world)

10:44 “Just look him up on Facebook! Or did he die?”- Phil

11:02 “The old house!”- fake crying Dan

11:05 Hawaiian backstories, driving distraction

11:15 Hydration: “I can get behind this.”- Dan

11:22 Phil, waving your hands in the air where Dan sneezes is not going to keep the germs away. Maybe if you both actually covered.

11:33 Everyone does bicep curls in this Daddy themed universe

12:12 Dil Howlter house without the owl slide is no Dil Howlter house at all.

12:44 “Dogs!”- Phil

12:48 “CLICK!”- Dan

12:55 Dog to person ratio should be the highest thing on the agenda for any neighborhood

13:11 “Side quest!”- Dan

13:11 “Dog quest!”- Phil

13:12 “Dog time! I’m here for some cute drawn dogs.”- Dan

13:16 Woofing song to the tune of the Katamari theme!

13:27 “What is this idyllic pastel utopia that they’re living in right now? Honestly.”- Dan

13:30 “Where’s the diseased pigeons?”- Phil (London summarized by Phil)

13:47 “DOGS! (toddlers) NOT INTERESTED! (dogs) INTERESTED!”- Dan

13:52 Panting puppies D&P

14:05 “A corgi! Of all the dogs!”- Phil (this is the only reason Phil agreed to play this game)

14:14 “Delet this doggo.”- Dan

14:20 Second “Bork!”

14:26 “Oh god this is the cutest dog. Can we just do dog adoption simulator instead?”- Phil (I’m sure you could)

14:30 “Pet the dog!”- Phil

14:58 “Woah! Irish father of my children!”- Dan

15:13 Gruff and slightly offensive leprechaun

15:18 Puppy role play ;)

15:25 Phil saw the aubergines come out.

15:35 Phil apologizes for “Dilddy”

16:05 Dan loves the freckle representation.

16:22 “Oh my god it’s a Dad Child Proud Of Brag Off”- Dan (very Undertale)

17:33 “Bam. Amazing.”- Dan, “Slapped.”- Phil

19:55 “I’m torn though, cause he has a corgi.”- Phil

19:57 “He has a corgi, but-”- Dan

19:58 “Can we not just date him to hang out with the corgi?”- Phil

20:01 “Can we date him, adopt the corgi and then break up with him?”- Dan

20:04 “Yes!”- Phil (a good plan)

20:33 “I mean let’s just get our own corgi. Let’s adopt a corgi.”- Dan (a better plan)

21:07 Dan would read horse fan-fiction.

21:36 Chocolate coffee beans btw

22:11 “*Sigh* Why would people sit next to you, they always do that though don’t they?”- Dan

22:26 "Am I being helpful or am I cluttering up everyone’s life?“- Dan

22:44 "Oh my god!”- Dan

22:45 “Another Dad.”- Phil

22:46 “With the ta- the glasses, the hair, the piercing.”- Dan (tattoos)

22:49 “Good layering. On the outfit.”- Phil

22:51 “Definitely.”- Dan

23:00 Dan doesn’t like the “too cool” vibe.

23:13 Husky voice ;)

23:38 Dan would not be able to hold a conversation with this guy in real life. Probably because he sounds too much like himself.

23:48 Iced Tegan and Sara (yay!)

23:02 Phil got the pun!

24:49 Couches (Starbucks sofa)

24:50 “Okay Amanda, wow. Life isn’t all about listening to cool music. It’s about enjoying the music that you like.”- Dan

25:00 Good lumbar support is important. It’s comfier than their couch. *giggles*

25:48 “Okay I’m about this.”- Dan (feeding kink)

25:50 “He’s got food!”- Phil

25:53 “Yes. Tick that box.”- Phil

27:08 Phil likes Mat’s awkwardness

27:10 Dan is on the fence: “I don’t know how to feel. Runs a coffee shop, bit of a hipster, is socially awkward, gives you banana bread. I think it’s looking mostly good.”

27:27 “Ohhhh.”- in sync (using 'baby’ in flirting)

28:00 “Wow. Are we adults? Cause we just moved recently.”- Yes Dan, you are adults.

28:08 “Do I smell bad?”- Phil

28:09 “Noo.”- Dan with a quick sniff, barely leaning in, he clearly already knew the answer.

28:16 They agree that the dark and mysterious stranger is the most intriguing part of the story. Stupid look at camera.

28:30 Acknowledging that they still have boxes

28:42 Pink duck, succulents and XBox 360 “Nice”- Phil

28:56 “Get the hell out of my life!”- Dan

29:00 “He’s too perfect already.”- Phil

29:08 “Robot. Robot. Robot.”- Phil

29:36 “Guffaw.”- Dan

30:13 Yeah, just move again guys!

30:28 Phil feels bad for kangaroo jokes earlier.

31:11 Phil likes the do over, time flipping, reset thing.

31:33 Louise story mention.

32:18 “What is that wink?”- Dan

32:30 “All of these daddies are mixed bags.”- Dan desk slamming returns

32:40 “He’s a bloody angel. He’s an angel.”- Dan

32:42 “He’s got a dark secret.”- Phil

32:44 “But also angels are terrible. Stop feeling bad by comparing yourself to an angel.”- Dan

32:48 “Dark secret.”- Phil

33:07 “Plot twizzle.”- Dan

33:45 “They are definitely possessed. I told you, dark secret.”- Phil

34:05 “Christie, Christian and Chris. Wow.”- Dan

34:08 “Evil.”- Phil

34:09 “Definitely.”- Dan

34:28 Exorcist

34:34 “Time for the nappy ding dong.”- Dan

35:01 “Bro”- Dan "Bro"- Phil

35:20 That look

35:22 “Old college roommate.”- Phil

35:23 “Just sayin.”- Dan

35:35 “River. Oh my god.”- Dan (good name)

35:42 Nice baby gurgling Dan

35:51 “Survived that hazing together.”- Dan

36:00 Phil enjoying the matching eyebrows

36:06 “Maybe they got that scar together, doing something, as roommates.”- Dan

36:30 “Copacabana.”- Dan

36:50 “Clearly we didn’t have the American college experience. We did the Smirnoff Slam.”- Dan

37:05 Jogging with baby imitation

37:12 “Wow. Dilddy is just every person probably on the internet and YouTube, in the community watching this.”- Dan

37:25 “Wow. So relatable.”- Dan (shush Dan, #relatable is your schtick)

37:30 “How is he so ripped if he never jogs though?”- Phil (umm you selected that body type and said he works out.)

37:37 “Bro brunch.”- Phil, “A bro brunch?!”- Dan

“Why do we never have bro brunches?”- Dan, “I don’t know”-Phil

“What the hell is a bro brunch?”- Dan, “I don’t know.”- Phil

37:52 “Jog on, Craig.”- Phil, “Jog on, Craig? Jesus.”- Dan

38:18 “I mean, there’s like, stuff in that, isn’t there.”- Yes Dan, they’re tomatoes.

41:01 “The blonde guy.”- Phil

41:10 Phil likes coffee shop guy. Gee I wonder why. Dan is unsure, too cool.

41:30 Dan likes the blonde: confidence, wants to make you happy, “that’s who Dilddy needs in his life, at this important time.” (Dear god Dan can you not?)

Phil still thinks he’s a robot with satanic children. Yep.

41:51 Gee Phil you don’t seem into it. (probably just tired, maybe headache)

42:08 “Thumb it”, tickle, etc.

42:45 “Get a dog.”- Dan

#phan #d&p timestamps #dapgames #dnp games #dnp timestamps #dan and phil play dream daddy #dilddy lestowell

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suckitsurveys · 7 years ago

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1. What’s the last thing you ate? Overnight oats with peanut butter and banana.

2. What’s your favourite cheese? Goat and cheddar.

3. What’s your favourite fish? Catfish, if crab doesn’t count as a fish.

4. What’s your favourite fruit? Pomegranates, watermelon, pineapple, bananas.

5. When, if ever, did you start liking olives? I don’t remember? I never liked the Kalamamamamama olives they have in greek salads, but I love black olives and green olives with pimento. That was always on my dad’s go-to tray of appetizers when we’d have Christmas at our house. 3 kinds of olives, some cheese, and salami or whatever. I always ate the green and black olives from there. I also like green olives stuffed with other things too, like bleu cheese or garlic.

6. When, if ever, did you start liking beer? I only like some beers really. I think I’ve been conditioned to like it at baseball games because my dad does, haha.

7. When, if ever, did you start liking shellfish? My whole life dude. When my parents would go out to dinner with us when we were little, they always just gave us stuff from there plates to eat. So if someone had lobster or crab legs or shrimp I would too.

8. What was the best thing your mom/dad/guardian used to make? My dad makes KILLER bleu cheese dressing. I could eat that shit with a spoon it’s SO GOOD. He also makes amazing spaghetti sauce and is pretty good at getting popcorn perfect everytime. My mom used to make really good beef stew, and her famous potatoes and eggs fr dinner. She also made the BEST potato salad, and that recipe has been handed down to me. Everyone claims it’s amazing, but I still think she made it better.

9. What’s the native specialty of your hometown? Deep dish pizza, hot dogs, beef sandwiches, caramel and cheese popcorn.

10. What’s your comfort food? Everything.

11. What’s your favourite type of chocolate? Milk chocolate. With caramel. 12. How do you like your steak? Medium rare.

13. How do you like your burger? Medium rare.

14. How do you like your eggs? In omelet form.

15. How do you like your potatoes? I ain’t got no type.

16. How do you take your coffee? I don‘t, really.

17. How do you take your tea? Green.

18. What’s your favourite mug? The one I use most often is just a plain red one that I got from Home Goods because it came with a tea infuser.

19. What’s your biscuit or cookie of choice? Sugar cookies. My favorite ones are actually those Pillsbury pre-made-dough ones you break off and bake. I also love Oreos.

20. What’s your ideal breakfast? Lox and bagels.

21. What’s your ideal sandwich? ^. Or tuna on any bread.

22. What’s your ideal pizza: Very saucy, lightly cheesy, with pepperoni and black olives.

23. What’s your ideal pie (sweet or savoury)? Cheesecake. <– Same, and it’s been waaaay too long since I last had a good piece of cheesecake. <----CHEESECAKE IS NOT PIE YOU HEATHENS, IT’S CAKE. Anyway, pumpkin pie has been my go to since I was a baby.

24. What’s your ideal salad? I don’t really have an “ideal” salad, but I like spinach salads with various toppings.

25. What food do you always like to have in the fridge? Hmm. Eggs, soy milk, condiments and marinades, sriracha, pickles, olives, cheese, water.

26. What food do you always like to have in the freezer? Ice. :P And frozen dinners for Mark. We don’t buy a ton of frozen stuff.

27. What food do you always like to have in the cupboard? Oatmeal, Ramen and other soups, pasta, rice, flour, breadcrumbs, olive oil and other oils, tea.

28. What spices can you not live without? Celery salt, red pepper, and cilantro. And of course salt and pepper.

29. What sauces can you not live without? Sriracha.

30. Where do you buy most of your food? Jewel-Osco. We might start shopping at Aldi for boxed and bagged goods. I don’t trust meat and produce from there though.

31. How often do you go food shopping? Twice a week. Once on Sunday to get lunch things and snacks for the week and dinners for that night, Monday, and Tuesday, and then Wednesday just for dinner things for that night, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

33. What’s the most expensive piece of kitchen equipment you own? I mean, probably the fridge or stove? We don’t really own those though? Sooooo the food processor?

34. What’s the last piece of equipment you bought for your kitchen? It’s been a while since we’ve actuall bought something for the kitchen. A lot of our stuff is hand-me-downs or wedding gifts. So probably something from when we first moved in and needed basic things like plates and silverware.

35. What piece of kitchen equipment could you not live without? Probably most of them? Like we need the fridge and stove for obvious reasons, so I guess next to that, the microwave?

36. How many times a week/month do you cook from raw ingredients? We try to almost every night.

37. What’s the last thing you cooked from raw ingredients? Chicken and spinach last night, unless overnight oats count, which I made shortly after that to eat this morning.

38. What meats have you eaten besides cow, pig and poultry? I’ve had lamb, duck, goat, alligator, buffalo, and ostrich. Well I guess duck and ostrich are poultry?? Oh and a shit ton of seafood too since that wasn’t listed in the question. Way too much to name.

39. What’s the last time you ate something that had fallen on the floor? Yesterday. I ate a chip that fell in sand oops. Haha.

40. What’s the last time you ate something you’d picked in the wild? Uh, I mean, we have a veggie and herb garden in our yard. I packed some cucumbers and tomatoes from there for lunch today.

41. Arrange the following in order of preference: Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Sushi – Sushi, Thai, and Mexican are tied for first. Then Italian, Indian, Chinese.

42. Arrange the following in order of preference: Vodka, Whiskey, Brandy, Rum – Rum, Vodka, Whiskey, Brandy.

43. Arrange the following in order of preference: Garlic, Basil, Caramel, Lime, Mint, Ginger, Aniseed – I have no idea what aniseed is, but the rest are all tied.

44. Arrange the following in order of preference: Pineapple, Orange, Apple, Strawberry, Cherry, Watermelon, Banana. – Watermelon, pineapple, banana, strawberry, orange, apple, cherry.

45. Bread and spread: Um. My favorite bread is garlic bread, if that’s what you’re asking.

46. What’s your fast food restaurant of choice, and what do you usually order? Popeye’s. I get chicken strips and Cajun fries. If they are having some promotional thing with the strips I’ll probably get that.

47. Pick a city. What are the best dining experiences you’ve had in that city? Any city and any restaurant that has crab legs is a good dinning experience in my mind.

48. What’s your choice of tipple at the end of a long day? What the hell is a tipple?

49. What’s the next thing you’ll eat? Lunch. I made tuna and have cucumbers and tomatoes to eat with it. I brought bread too but I probably wont end up eating that.

50. Are you hungry now? I’m a little hungry.

51. Do you eat your breakfast everyday? Yes. I have oatmeal or cereal every day.

52. At what time do you have breakfast? When I work, it’s sometime after 7am. On weekends, it’s whenever I get up.

53. At what time do you have lunch? 11:30am on weekdays, whenever on weekened.

54. What do you have for lunch? I mentioned this above.

55. At what time do you have dinner? around 7.

56. What do you have for dinner? Obviously different things every night? Tonight’s dinner is up in the air because my cousin is coming in from Hawaii and we are staying with my dad so my he will most likely order takeout.

57. Do you light candles during dinner? No.

58. How many chairs are there in your dining room and who sits in the main chair? We don’t have a dining room in our apartment. We have a kick ass coffee table that pulls up to dining-table height and we eat on the couch at that.

59. Do you eat and drink using your right hand or the left one? I eat with my right and I don’t have a hand preference with my drinks.

61. Mention the veggies that you like most: Spinach, asparagus, zucchini, butternut squash.

62. What fruit and vegetable do you like the least? Apparently fennel is a vegetable, so that. And water chestnuts if that’s a veggie too. My least favorite fruit is blackberries and raspberries.

63. You like your fruit salad to have more: Watermelon.

64. You prefer your vegetable salad to contain more: Uh. Cucumbers, I guess? Is a vegetable salad just raw veggies thrown together?

65. What’s your favourite sandwich spread? Peanut butter, I guess?

66. What’s your favourite chocolate bar? Butterfingers.

67. What’s your favourite dessert? Brownies or cheesecake.

68. What’s your favourite drink? Root beer. Preferably Barq’s.

69. What’s your favourite snack? Chips and guac or salsa, popcorn, Goldfish crackers, Cheez-its, Chex mix.

70. What’s your favourite bubble gum flavour? WATERMELON BUBBLICIOUS. I haven’t had that in a hot minute.

71. What’s your favourite ice cream flavour? Salted Caramel Butter Pecan. Only one brand makes it. I haven’t seen it in a while though.

72. What’s your favourite potato chip flavour? Sour cream and cheddar.

73. What’s your favourite soup? Potato. Egg lemon. Lobster bisque.

74. What’s your favourite pizza? Deep dish from Lou’s, thin crust from Marie’s, and 8-corner pan pizza from Jet’s.

75. What’s your favourite type of dish? Seafood dishes.

76. What food do you hate? I’ve kinda mentioned these throughout this survey. There’s not much I dislike.

77. What’s your favourite restaurant? Any place with crab legs.

78. Do you eat homemade food, food delivered from outside? Both.

80. Who cooks at home? Mark usually.

81. What kind of diet (e.g. low-fat, high-fiber, high-carbohydrate, balanced diet etc.) do you have? I try to balance it.

82. How do you keep yourself fit? I work out every day. I’m by no means “fit” yet, but I am getting there.

#surveys #food

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cupcakesandhallmarkcards · 7 years ago

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Surprise 16 hour shift at work last night. I spent my regular 8 hours busting my butt to pack for the move only to have a representative from the old location show up 6 minutes before I was due to be off the clock to inform us the move was off and they’d canceled the movers due to an apparent miscommunication on the management level. As Mondays are the only day we could do the move we were looking at another week to 2 weeks at the old location. Everything was packed. Everything. I’d even disconnected and packed the phones - and why not, they’d been shut off! If the move was delayed it literally meant unpacking everything so we could continue to run the office until TPTB all got on the same page then packing it up again just to unpack it at the new location. Absolute insanity.

After a flurry of phone calls (not on company phones!), old location managed to obtain 4 of the 8 movers they had originally acquired and the move was back on (again...they’ve only been trying to get to this point since June of ‘16) and my exhausted behind was relieved to be getting ready to leave (after working super hard all night to finish up the packing/do my part as I was never planning on staying for the actual move because while literally everyone else involved in that shitshow was tucked into a nice warm bed I was up putting an already delayed Express shipment (and a few passengers) on a train only to be surprised by another 240lb Express shipment in the midst of having our own boxes EVERYWHERE, including 51 pounds of baggage tags (and those are just the ones we had on display) paper cutting every single one of my fingers as I pulled them out of their cubbies and packed them away. Etc. It was a rough night, but I was proud of what I’d accomplished. Not so proud, though, that I didn’t break down into tears when the boss informed us that the required training for the new people mover was scheduled for noon and I had to stay. We’d never agreed to that; it should NOT have been scheduled without a confirmation. Then the boss told me I should “take my emotions out of the equation” and I went off completely, walked away, made a phone call, came THISCLOSE to quitting on the spot. I cry when I’m stressed. I hate that about myself, but that’s my release and afterwards I move on. Being told not to be emotional, though? Yeah, that’s not going to help. This move has been stressing us out for months and every single time I thought I’d gotten something accomplished I was met with more bullshit to deal with. I’d just reached the breaking point.

Their justification for requiring me to stay for this scheduled training was that if they had to do another training it would cost $750 (if you had any idea how much money this company wastes you’d be as insulted as I was that they even brought that up). I asked about when they’re planning on training the 3rd person they’re planning to hire as new location requires more manpower and was informed that it can take up to 6 months to hire someone (which is no joke, I interviewed in December of ‘13 and started at the end of May ‘14). That’s all well and good (not really, but what can WE do about it?) but my current co-worker is going out on a medical (knee replacement) in September and we’ve known about the move/medical leave and have been telling them they need to hire someone for a year now. Boss says the previous boss dropped the ball and he should have done something about it. Not untrue, but also not my fault.

So...unless I bid to a different location I’m looking at doing the work of 3 people all by myself, 6 nights a week for at least 6 weeks. New jobs are supposedly being posted Wednesday. I’ve all but already started packing. I’ve been unhappy here for a long time for a lot of reasons, anyway. The plan was never to stay here long term. I’ll miss a few of the crew on our route a whole lot (I’m already devising plans to send them the occasional gift/goodies at the crew base; I’ve also got a multi-page goodbye/thank you letter in the works for the one that’s been my constant reassurance), but the truth is, beyond being afraid of change/the unknown (which I just need to suck it up and get over), I’ve been ready to leave this place since Paula retired last October. She’s the one that literally saved my life - the one that unknowingly prevented me from jumping in front of the train when my depression had one of the strongest holds on me that it’s ever had. She is a gift, an absolute blessing - one of the most beautiful souls I’ve ever met. There is a part of me that will always believe that the reason I was brought here in the first place was to cross paths with her. I couldn’t bring myself to leave while she was still around, regardless of whatever else was going on. But now... Paula sent me a text tonight to check in, tell me she was thinking about and praying for me. I love that lady so much...I also can’t help but feel that her reaching out tonight was yet another of ever increasing signs lately that I need to do what I need to do for me and the people that I care about most will still be there to support me in whatever form it happens to take if that’s what’s meant to happen.

On a positive, once I accepted staying for the move, I decided to make it worth my while. Generally, Monday is my “rest” day (despite the fact that I often get in 30 minutes of cardio working the train in the very early AM). Today, since I wasn’t going to be home resting, I made myself as useful as possible and took the stairs every chance I got. Might as well. Looks like one of the last days for this Fitbit (I have a new Alta HR sitting in a box - my reward to myself for hitting a goal weight...nearly 20 pound ago...but I finally ordered it! - arrived a few days ago but I haven’t had time to set it up...can’t imagine why...) will have been one of my most active days recorded.

Then I came home and ate EVERYTHING, including multiple slices of the pizza the boss gave us (he’s not all bad). Monday is also usually “cheat meal” (I hate that terminology, but that’s what it amount to) day, though, and I earned it this week!

#Fitbit #Accountability #Fitness #Personal

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davidedwardking · 5 years ago

Text

The Black Square

It was simply there on one humid morning about six weeks ago. I walked out of my house, looked right on the way to my car, and there it was: a black square in the middle of the street. I thought it was a strange box or something. Thinking nothing of it, I went off to get lunch.

But it was still there when I returned, and this time the neighborhood kids that usually collectively played in the yard to my house's left were now instead off to the right. Circled around the black square, they were talking, laughing, and poking at it with sticks. Something didn't seem right about the scene, so I got out of my car and stood for a moment watching. What was wrong here?

It hit me: they weren't poking at it. They were poking into it.

One of the local teenagers was sitting on the porch behind me, so I knew the kids were being looked after. If it was some strange prank or something, well, I'd hear about it later. I headed back inside and returned to writing that day's story.

Around eight in the evening, someone began knocking on our front door. Two of my roommates were in their rooms with the doors open, but we were all playing an online game together, so we ignored it and hoped the guy in the room downstairs would get it. He either didn't hear it or didn't care, so we sat there listening to the pounding and knocking for about fifteen minutes before one of my roommates logged off the game and stormed down to the front door. I heard, "What the HELL do you want? None of us are parked in your goddamn spot! We never park in your spot!"

That didn't sound good. I left my computer and slid down the hallway to see what was going on. They'd told me stories about Bill and how he insisted that one section of the sidewalk was for his food truck; apparently, he'd go around at literally any time of day or night knocking on every single door in the neighborhood until he found the 'offender.' This time, Bill was looking not for a car owner, but for the perpetrator of the black square prank.

After much arguing, he finally moved on to the next house, but I couldn't go back to playing our game. Instead, I wandered out under evening orange and headed down the street. The black square was odd; its angle seemed to be changing to match me, and I moved my head back and forth a few times rapidly to confirm that it always looked exactly square from any angle.

Anton was sitting in his open garage in a lawn chair as I approached. He handed a man a bag, pocketed a stack of cash, and coughed and leaned back. The stranger hurried away without looking at me. It was not an unusual sight.

Standing in Anton's driveway, which ran straight at the black square and Bill's house beyond, I asked, "Hey, what is this thing?"

"No idea man," he responded. "But it's got me on edge. It's just been there all day. I thought maybe somebody was scopin' me out, but it doesn't do nothin'."

I didn't want to get too close to it, so I picked up a stick. "Kids were messing with this earlier, right? Did anything happen?"

"Nah."

It was strange. There seemed to be some sort of scaling perspective at work. As I moved closer to the square, it grew larger in my sight than the change in distance warranted. Far away the effect had been imperceptible, but up close it was extremely unsettling. It felt almost as if the black square was looming up to encompass me, and might even leap out at any moment.

It was becoming increasingly obvious that this was no prank. The sides were exactly equal in length from what I could see, and absolutely nothing showed or reflected on its surface. I'd seen Vantablack nanofabric in person once before, and that superblack material had definitely left an impression on me. It had felt like staring into absolute void—and I had that same feeling now. The only difference was that my stick encountered no resistance as I moved it forward.

I took one step. The stick still moved freely ahead.

Was it past the threshold yet? It was disturbingly impossible to tell because the square always seemed to be facing me, so I couldn't tilt left or right and get a look from the side. The square also got bigger faster than it should have with each step, so I couldn't get a good idea of exactly where it began and ended. Worst of all, the forward perspective had no landmarks and no shadows. It felt as if I was inside a television show and reaching forward into a CGI background: the studio lights offscreen were still lighting the stick and I was reaching into something that didn't really exist.

I swung my branch left and right. There were no edges to strike, either. The pointed end traversed from ultrablack to the green of Bill's lawn and back with no resistance. It was then I truly understood that we were in trouble.

"Hey Anton?"

"What up?"

He was usually one to play it cool, but I could tell by his subtly concerned expression that I must have looked very strange standing in front of complete nothingness. "Let's, uh—" How to phrase it? "Let's make sure nobody goes near this."

He nodded and gave a nervous laugh.

We didn't have any sort of housing association or community building, so it would really be up to word of mouth. Bill was two houses past ours now, still knocking on doors, and he was doing a decent accidental job of warning everyone. A few neighbors had come out onto their lawns to stare at the thing, and I saw Idil emerging one lawn over. While studying the black square from afar, she shivered and pulled her headscarf a little closer. I smoothed down my shirt reflexively as she approached.

She stopped on the sidewalk just short of Anton's driveway. "What is the square?"

We just shook our heads.

"You call police?" she asked, looking at me.

Anton leaned back in his seat and watched me.

Put on the spot, all I could say was, "Um, I don't think so."

She was visibly confused. "Why not?"

Anton snickered. "Cops don't come here, girl."

"Police don't come this area?"

"Nah. They do, but trust me, you don't want 'em. They don't come here to help."

"Oh." She looked down at the ground, then over to the black square, and then to her front door. She departed without a word.

The rest of the neighbors began to emerge from their homes as Bill pissed them off in sequence, but we did not meet or talk beyond the distant glances of confusion and confirmation. I didn't like that strange square in the street, not one bit, but there wasn't much to do about it. A few people were taking pictures, so I went back inside and put my phone on the charger to do the same.

My roommates and I locked the house up tight that night. We couldn't see the black square from any of our windows, but the mere knowledge of its presence was like a chill in the air. I was the night owl of the four of us, and when the others went to bed, I quietly stacked boxes full of junk from the basement to block the windows—just in case. In the morning, nobody commented in approval of the boxes, but neither did they take them down.

I stepped outside to confirm that the anomaly was still there. This time, I took pictures.

I'd seen more than my share of movies and shows about creepy anomalies, but it was another thing having one actually show up outside my house. In person, there's a balance of risk versus curiosity, and there was nothing we could do about the square without endangering ourselves. We couldn't get too close to it, because who knew what would happen? And we certainly couldn't go inside it.

So it sat there, and, in large part, we ignored it in our day-to-day lives.

But there's also another kind of risk: the unknown, and the stress effects on your community and on your health. Each morning for a week I would look to my right at that eerie black square and wonder if I was being watched. Or, worse, was it some kind of hole from somewhere that might let in horrific entities beyond our understanding? Or hell, even just basic clawed creatures we could understand would be horrifying. A simple wolf or bear on the loose on our street would have been an emergency warranting help, and here we were with the possibility of literally anything appearing at any time.

On a random night that about eight people were over to play board games, Idil asked again if I would call somebody. This time, I agreed.

But who? And how?

I did find some numbers for two local news channels. I sent in my pictures, but they laughed at me and said they looked photoshopped. I insisted that no, it was literally just a black square, and they told me to call back when I had something scarier.

The military was an obvious answer too, but how does one 'call' the military? I didn't exactly have a phone number for 'the military.' Each night for a week, I waited on hold with various desks, bases, and institutions, repeating my story verbatim each time. "A strange anomaly has appeared in our neighborhood and I need somebody to come take a look at it."

Most secretaries hung up on me immediately, but I finally got one that laughed. He asked, "Watching some X-Files tonight?"

I sighed. "Look, I've been trying to contact someone about this for a week. Let's say, hypothetically, that I'm serious. Is there some sort of division or group for that?"

"Let me just call Area 51, buddy. They'll take care of you."

"Come on! There has to be some guy that takes weird phone calls and checks them out, right?"

"Aww, that's no fun. Fine, I'll give you the number."

I had it. Finally, I had it. The next conversation I had was promising, and a military jeep showed up the next morning. Idil texted me when she saw it park on the street, and I hurriedly went outside to greet—one man, apparently. He was only slightly older than me, and he stood staring at the black square with a haunted gaze. As I finally got his attention, he turned his head to look at me and said, "Motherfuck!"

"Right?" I pointed down the street at the black square. "That thing's been sitting there like that for a week and a half."

Finally prompted to move, he went to the back of his jeep, pulled out a tripod and a camera, and set it up facing the anomaly.

Watching him, I asked, "So you're going to call in the big guns, right? Someone will take care of this?"

His only answer was a glance, and then he got in his jeep and drove off, leaving the equipment running.

That was progress, I told myself. Somebody was aware of the issue now, and somebody was on it. Small consolation as the days wore on. One of the neighbors boarded up their windows—and then everyone did. Nobody asked the first house to do it if they had seen or heard something scary. We just did it. That day we went to the hardware store, endured the awkward process of explaining what we were doing to the overly-helpful employees, and then took our boxes of nails and stacks of wood and began hammering into the window frames.

I winced at the first one that went awry and damaged the wall, but I figured our security deposit was long gone anyway. We kept the curtain between the glass and the wood so that the landlord wouldn't notice on a casual driveby, although he would certainly see that the entire neighborhood had suddenly acquired bars and boards. If the area went to shit, would he lower our rent? Doubtful.

Then, my roommates and I got drunk together for the first time in months. The neighbors were doing the same thing in their boarded-up houses and on their lawns, and eventually we had a sort of block party going. It was an eerie thing all being connected and bonded by a common threat—but being unable to mention that threat even as it loomed in the distance at all times. There was nothing we could do about it, so mentioning it publicly was impolite.

As dusk deepened and someone started a bonfire in their back yard, I almost couldn't stand the pressure of what was happening. That thing might turn deadly and kill us all any time, but I wasn't even allowed to mention it without pissing people off! Boarding up our houses? We were all reacting to it! We were all aware it existed and we all knew everyone else knew too, but we couldn't talk about it?! A weird defensiveness was emerging among the conversations I overheard; this was our street and none of us could afford to move away, therefore the black square had to be harmless. There were even people talking about the idea that there was nothing wrong at all—and that talk was growing.

Agitated, I left the block party. I still wanted to drink, but angrily now, so I went to the nearest bar and sat. By pure chance, to my left was the soldier who'd set up the camera equipment. He was half-sloshed already, and he looked sidelong at me while holding the bar to keep himself up. He laughed darkly. "Oh, it's you."

It was almost a relief to see that he was still in town. "You guys going to do anything about the black square once you collect enough info?"

He sat taller and focused his bloodshot eyes on me. "Guys?"

"Yeah, your team or whoever."

"It's just me."

"Oh, well what about the higher ups?"

He downed another shot that had just been delivered. "Higher ups? My whole department got cleaned out by the new administration to 'cut costs' or something. I'm the only guy in my entire building."

My beer arrived, and I took a sip of it while trying to fully understand what he meant. "Like, temporarily? Are you waiting on new hires?"

He gave an exaggerated shrug. "It's been seven months, and nobody talks to me or tells me anything. I just get a paycheck automatically. No emails, no nothin'. I'm thinking maybe they just forgot to transfer me when they got the rest. I don't think anybody even knows I'm still there."

That was an off-putting thing to hear. "Then what do we do about the black square?"

He gave a long drunk belly laugh. "Brother, there are forty-seven anomalies in Ohio alone and I'm the only person in this state left in the department that handles that shit. Just be happy that yours isn't making people crazy or changing your muscle tissue into acid while you sleep."

"What? Does that happen?"

He stared forward at the venue's long mirrored back wall for a moment, unmoving except for the muscles in his jaw tightening as if he was grinding his teeth. After a tick, he suddenly reached over and clapped me on the back. "Nothin' so dramatic as all that. I'm just playin'." He got up, threw some cash on the bar, and began to stumble away.

"Wait!" I called after him. "What's your plan for the black square?"

"Plan?" he yelled back on his way out the door. "You are on your own brother."

I skirted through the crowd and pushed out into the night. "And what about the forty-six other anomalies?"

He just kept walking and soon became small in the distance.

Was it really possible that there was nobody manning the defenses for things like this? Were we simply open to danger with no one to respond? Was the only working plan to hope that nothing bad would happen? What the hell kind of plan was that? I returned home even more agitated than before.

It was about three weeks after the appearance of the anomaly that those that insisted the black square was harmless became the majority. We'd been able to complain about it, make jokes, and watch it fearfully before that afternoon, but the winds changed and I immediately found myself on the outside with no warning. If I glanced suspiciously at the black square, someone would deride me for it. If I tried to measure it to see if it was growing at all, someone would come out on their lawn and tell me to stop and that I was wasting my time. By the fourth week, those reactions became veiled threats.

Bill was standing out on the sidewalk the first day of that fourth week. I had just come home from playing a card game elsewhere, and he approached me rather angrily. "Stop causing trouble," he said without sugar-coating it.

"Me?" He was a large man in multiple ways, and I took a step back warily. "I'm just not willing to accept that the incredibly odd anomaly in the middle of our street is safe."

"The black square isn't causing any trouble," he growled. "You're the problem here. Pissing people off, going against the grain. People wanna sleep soundly and they can't do that if you fill their heads with nonsense dangers."

"If it's nonsense," I asked. "Then why are your windows boarded up?"

He balled a fist. "'Cause that's how it's always been around here. Everybody does it, and always has."

"The hell are you talking about? It was just last month that—"

He slugged me in the stomach.

I backed away. There was nothing left to say. I understood exactly what was happening.

He glared from the sidewalk until I went inside and closed the door behind me.

Two mornings later, screaming erupted from a few houses down. Nine of us rushed out of our houses with makeshift weapons—only to find that the danger had been the night before. Someone's window had been broken, and the wood beyond had been clawed mightily by something that had left traces of azure ichor behind.

I thought that certainly it would be undeniable now. It was obvious that something had come out of that black square and tried to get into a house. The only reason the single father and his two girls were alive: they'd boarded up their windows like everyone else.

"See?" I said to those gathered. "I told you it's dangerous!"

But the single father in question shook his head. "Of course you'd say that. How'd you do it?"

I began backing away almost instantly as all eyes turned on me. "What?"

Bill said, "Yeah, likely what happened. What tool did you use to make those marks? And what is that blue shit? Is it toxic? Did you put Ethan's girls in danger by throwing toxic blue sludge on their house?"

Ethan added, "And you'll pay for that window, too."

"The hell is wrong with you people?" I clutched my bat and continued moving backwards.

Idil came out of her house then, and asked some of the others in the group what was going on in Somali. They backed off, and Bill and Ethan shot me hateful glances.

On the way back to my place, Anton shook his head as I crossed his driveway. "Gonna get yourself killed boy."

Whispering, I asked, "What, by insisting that the physics-defying anomaly in our street is possibly dangerous?"

"Just sayin'. I sit in front of this thing all day every day and it freaks me the hell out, but I don't say nothin' to anyone else around here. Neighbors are more dangerous than that thing, get it? Keep your head down."

I mulled over his words for another few days while the attitude in the neighborhood became openly hostile. More claw marks and strange azure liquids appeared during each night, and Bill started enforcing what he called 'his right to open carry' by walking around on the sidewalks with an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder.

And then Ethan started doing it, too.

It made me tense as hell, but they'd often talked about gun responsibility, and part of me was glad to have weapons around given that something was probably coming out of the black square each night and trying to get into our houses.

At four in the morning on the first night of the fifth week, I heard loud banging on the front door. For twenty minutes I listened to someone pounding and yelling outside until one of my roommates shouted from his bed, "Fuck off, Bill! We don't have to answer the door for you! We're not parked in your goddamn spot!"

The knocking went silent. My other roommate called from his room, "That's the first time he's ever actually just gone away!"

At that, I sat up starkly in my bed. I knew. In that keening instant, I knew. Something had happened out there; some spark. Perhaps the unseen creature had finally gotten someone. Perhaps it had gotten one of the neighborhood children.

I grabbed my baseball bat and put on my tennis shoes. Other than that, I was only in shorts and a t-shirt, but there was no time. Running into the dark hallway that connected our rooms, I whispered, "Get your gun out."

"What?" my roommate asked.

"Get your goddamn gun ready," I practically hissed. "They're coming for us."

There was a crash of glass and the sound of boards being ripped off in the back of the house to punctuate what I'd said, and I heard my roommate jumping up and fumbling around with the case that held his gun. My other roommate just said quietly and fearfully, "They're not coming for us. They're coming for you." In the dark, I heard his door close and lock.

This was no movie situation. I knew this would end very quickly between untrained civilians, and I knew I was at a big disadvantage. If the windows hadn't been boarded up, I would have escaped that way, but I was forced into a corner. I only had knowledge of the terrain and the advantage of surprise. Using long steps to avoid the parts of the floor that creaked, I moved out into the board game room, and a big silhouette moving around the corner became a wide open target for my bat. I swung without restraint and as hard as I could. I'd never tried to kill anyone before, but I was amazed at how lethal my strength felt when the restraints were off.

The bat snapped in half on Bill's head, and he fell to the floor. He limply tried to resist, but I pulled at his rifle while screaming obscenities, and he gave it up while groaning on the floor and whimpering about his head bleeding. I'd won.

But, unfortunately, there were seven more silhouettes behind him.

Ethan was among them, and I saw his face by moonlight as they dragged me out into the street. "This asshole nearly killed Bill!" he shouted. "Proof positive he's the one behind the attacks!"

"You came into my house with guns!" I screamed at them. "You goddamn psychopaths!"

There were twenty other people out there already, many sticking to their own lawns. By the light of the full moon, they watched fearfully. Some of them asked if what I was saying was true.

Ethan yelled over me, "He'll say anything to trick people. Fake news!"

"Fake—?" They were still holding my arms, but I struggled. "This is ridiculous. You've all got guns and you literally just broke into my house in the middle of the night!"

"Fake, lies," Ethan insisted to the neighbors we passed as they kept pushing me and dragging me. As we passed Idil on her lawn, I realized where we were going.

She ran forward and kicked at Ethan. "I did not leave my country just for you to be the same!"

One of the men stayed behind to keep her restrained, and I nearly got away because of the distraction. Unfortunately, they caught me, and continued moving me toward the black square. Even by moonlight, it was starkly visible. "Why are you doing this?"

Ethan snarled, "You know, you monster. I can't let you live after what you did to my little girl."

I could see one of the wooden barricades among his windows had failed. Something had broken its way inside, and red blood was mixed with the azure pools usually left behind. "So you're going to try to kill me by throwing me inside the black square?" I asked loudly so that everyone around could hear. "How does that make any sense if you insist it's not dangerous? That I'm the one who somehow orchestrated these attacks in the night?"

One of the neighbors screamed, "Stop trying to get out of this. Fake news!" She turned and insisted to someone else that I was a liar. "Getting rid of him will stop the attacks."

They were lost. I'd known it, but it was only now that I truly accepted that I was not in a neighborhood surrounded by peers. I'd been living in hostile territory surrounded by enemies for weeks, and they'd become delusional because of their own fear. Living with fear every single day and being unable to do anything about it had turned their fear to anger, and now anger had become violence directed at the only target they could actually reach: their neighbor.

On that first night of the fifth week, they kicked me forward and pointed their guns at me, forcing me to walk into the black square; the unknown source of their fear. It had come to us from somewhere else, but it was now the desperate void at the center of our lives. It was our heart.

I'd never felt more sharp and aware. Adrenaline seared fire through my every nerve as I kept moving forward away from the guns at my back. The dark square expanded rapidly in my sight, but then grew more slowly as I came nearer than ever before. It asymptotically filled half of the sphere of what I could see; I kept waiting to pass the threshold like a door, to see the sides I'd tried to find with sticks and ropes over the last five weeks, but it never came. I kept pressing forward only to find myself still half in the world I knew and half in the darkness—until I turned around and saw Ethan and the others very far behind me. My brain struggled to process the shape or curve of what was happening, but I had the distinct sensation that I could keep walking forever and the black square would remain a giant sail pressed against half of me.

Except I knew there was an unseen dropoff, and perhaps that was the key. Perhaps the door was actually down, and the black square we could perceive was merely a higher-dimensional perspective on it.

I got down on my knees and hands and began to crawl. I couldn't afford to fall accidentally.

"Don't bother!" Ethan shouted in the distance. "You're going over. You're not getting out of this."

There it was. I could feel the edge. Here, the black square was almost exactly half of what I could see around me. Directly above, to the left, to the right, and down. The paved street far beyond Bill's and Anton's houses—part of the street I'd stood upon many times coming the other direction—now met sheer void.

But it wasn't dark.

Light had always been coming up from below. There'd just been nothing for it to reflect from so that we could see it. Light came up from below now, illuminating my face, my eyes, my mind. It was a ghastly light, certainly not ever a color that had graced our world before, and I could see everything by the cast of its deep glare. I'd never seen that color with the rods and cones in my eyes before, but I knew what it was. If you could open a door into the mind and observe the hues within, if you opened that door into the mind of a person being tortured with perfect and exacting skill, you would see the chroma of pain. Not just the feeling of it or the idea of it in thought, but the blood of the concept, the core, as a brushstroke on existence.

For some reason, I laughed—but I did not smile.

I stood and began to walk back.

Ethan held his assault rifle forward. "Don't you come back here. Don't you fuckin' do it!"

I just shook my head.

The other men behind him raised their guns, too, but they were waiting on him.

I didn't slow. I couldn't. As I moved toward Ethan, I told him, "You're human, Ethan. Fundamentally capable of good, or just neutrality, of cooperation, of peace." The words spilled directly from my raw brain and into the night air. "You are not like what's over that edge. Take a look for yourself. You'll understand."

The barrel of his weapon glimmered darkly by moonlight—but the square behind me was blacker.

"What do you mean?" he asked after a moment, the strain of oncoming terror dampening his tone. I think he saw the look in my eyes. Some small fraction of what I'd seen had to still have been lingering in my irises like a rotting reflection gone bad. "What's in there? What's over that edge?"

I couldn't really think at that moment. I put my forehead to the barrel of his rifle and grasped for the trigger under his hands. "Please."

He pulled away in fear. "You're crazy!"

They were no longer a threat now. I drifted past them and back to my house, where one of my roommates peered out his door and apologized and the other finally finished finding his ammunition. "Danger's past, don't bother," I murmured before going into my room and sitting on my bed.

It took six days for my brain to develop a coping mechanism. For six days, I sat and stared at any blank white wall I could find. It was eye bleach, in a way, because it had every color and none. After six days, I felt nothing, and that was my release. To scab and scar over what had happened to my mind, my brain had amputated my emotions.

And good for that. I would feel horrible at the loss of love and joy and friendship and companionship—but I can't.

And that's better than feeling what I witnessed over that edge.

Bill was back from the hospital by then, and feeling rather sheepish. A neighborhood watch had been set up and armed men were taking turns guarding the black square, around which they'd built a wall out of bricks and cement. They knew that nobody would be coming to help. No police, no military, no government. We were on our own, a fact which made Idil sad as she talked to me about the home she'd left, where it had been exactly the same in her village. "This is humans," I told her. "Sometimes we do better, for a little while. Sometimes we don't." She didn't have a chance to reply before Bill came up and sat carefully down next to me on my porch.

He rubbed his bandaged head and said, "Sorry about what happened last week."

I kept watching my armed neighbors around the black square. "It doesn't matter."

"It does, though," he muttered, looking downcast. "We coulda killed ya."

"It doesn't matter," I said again.

He swallowed audibly and then asked, "What'd ya see in there? Think the neighborhood'll go to shit now?"

"Now?" It amazed me that it was right there. It was right there just a hundred feet away. We were alive and standing here breathing air and eating food and having conversations just a hundred feet away from that. "It was always here, Bill. The only thing that changed six weeks ago is that we can see it now."

We don't talk much anymore. The neighborhood is quieter than before. We just sit and wait for the inevitable, each day and each night. The black pit is among us, lurking in open sight, and one day it will spill forth ungodly hordes I don't need to describe because you already know what they look like.

Sometimes we do better. Sometimes we don't.

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anxietycalling · 5 years ago

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... is this thing on?

HA. After like two months of trying to break into my own goddamn tumblr account, I finally figured out what password I used. So hi. Hello. Welcome back to the internet, self.

I mostly wanted to log in to give some updates about my life and start, you know, documenting it as there is some monumental stuff in the works for me this year. I’ll put the rest of it under a cut because I’m not a barbarian.

So one of the biggest changes for me since the last time I blogged reliably is that I got diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. That was, uh, two years ago? Somewhere in that general timeframe. It’s not really that surprising, given my mother’s extreme fastidiousness that she later admitted to me is untreated OCD. I’m the only person I know who can walk soundlessly in pitch dark and make entire meals without touching food with my hands because of that. But anyways, I guess the reason it didn’t get diagnosed sooner is because, as my wonderful psychologist puts it, “You’re too smart to fall for obvious compulsions because you’re aware of how they affect your public perception, so you get trapped in the ones that are more realistic.” In other words, I intellectualize my OCD too much. That’s not to say it doesn’t affect my life though! For... probably about a year, maybe more, I had a crippling fear of handling or preparing food for others because I had a persistent obsession that I would accidentally poison someone. At its worst it got so bad that I couldn’t touch plastic wrap or open packaging, either. Through cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure response prevention (ERP), my symptoms have decreased to the point where I’m able to cook for myself and others again. I still seek reassurance more than I should - which is another symptom of OCD - but I’m working on it. Baby steps! Most of my symptoms are manageable now, but I do still get ‘stuck’ sometimes. Like I said, I have a wonderful psychologist. She makes me do things I don’t want to do. She’s nice about it, but she’s a bit of a stickler for progress. Which is good! She’s very practical in a way that previous therapists of mine haven’t been. I don’t like the ooey-gooey “How does that make you feeeeeel? How does it relate to your tortured chiiiiildhood?” nonsense, so I’m glad we can skip that. For years I thought I was just bad at therapy, so I didn’t pursue it. Turns out that the right person with the right counselling philosophy can be a great asset in managing mental illness. Which leads me to the reason I sought out a therapist to begin with...

When I moved to Ottawa, I got a regular endocrinologist for the first time in my life. She’s wonderful and willing to work with her patients at their own level. My husband goes to the same endo (but more on him in a second...) and seeing the differences in the way she interacts with each of us is awesome. She takes time to answer my many questions and often has great practical advice about managing hormone replacement therapy. My testosterone levels have been stable for... three years now? Maybe a little more? Aside from one set of bloodwork where my hemoglobin was high, there haven’t been any major hiccups. And my endo said that it wasn’t necessarily concerning, just a precaution because we don’t know what the effects of heightened hemoglobin levels in transgender men are yet. Another thing my endocrinologist does is refer her patients to other relevant services. After my second or third appointment with her, she wrote my letter of recommendation to the government so I could change my gender designation on my birth certificate. She also did the paperwork for OHIP to cover my top surgery. I got the letter from the Ministry of Health a couple of weeks later, and started down the path to actually, you know, getting surgery. It’s more complicated than you think! She recommended me to the Montreal GRS clinic (Drs. Brassard, Belanger and Bensimon). There is a fair amount of paperwork that they request before your file even gets passed to the surgery team. One of those things was a letter of recommendation from a health professional that meets the WPATH standards of care. That’s when my endo recommended my therapist to me. The WPATH standards of care require at least 6 months of follow-up from the practitioner, so I sat down in that office once a month until I got my dang letter. And what a letter it was! Cori, my therapist, basically wrote a strongly worded letter that implies her disapproval over needing a letter at all. Why, you may ask? Because I already had years of documentation detailing my gender dysphoria and persistent desire for surgery. Literal years of it, dating back to... 2007 or so. But she wrote the letter, we continued on, and my brain is much healthier than it’s been for years.

Getting my IDs changed was a lot more work than I expected. Like, I knew that it would take a fair amount of paperwork, and I was prepared for that. I did my gender marker change first, which involved first getting the letter of recommendation notarized and sending it off to the government to get a shiny new birth certificate with an ‘M’ on it. It took about 4 months to get my first birth certificate. After that, back to city hall I went to change the gender on my driver’s license and health card. Getting the gender marker changed was inexpensive - I paid $35 for the new birth certificate plus postage. Ottawa city hall has services that will commission (notarize) your documents for free, so I didn’t pay for that, but normally in our city it costs between $15-20. Next I did my name change. The form itself is about 30 pages or so, and most of it is just checking boxes like “Hey, I’m not a criminal, I’m not hiding from any debts,” and then getting it notarized and mailing it off. The name change took the longest - I waited about 6 months for my new birth certificate. Changing the name on my IDs was easy. All I had to do was go back to city hall (again) and wait in line (again) and update my drivers’ license, health card and social insurance file. For about the first month after my name change, I had a folder I carried everywhere with me. You never really realize how many places you give your name to until you have to change it. The gym, doctor’s offices - despite having socialized healthcare and a (mostly) computerized system, you have to remember to change your name at every doctor’s office you visit separately. Now I have my updated IDs, so I can just show my driver’s license.

Now I’m going to talk about the path to getting a surgery date at GRS Montreal. Yes, I got the letter for my OHIP funding relatively quickly, but actually getting my file to the surgical team was a logistical disaster. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, by the way - I’m glad that they’re doing their due diligence and making sure everything is well documented. It’s just kind of hard when you’ve already waited for so long to stay patient. So, yes, I got my letter from Cori after 6 months. The reason I’m so irritated about it to this day is that a couple of months after they insisted they needed this letter, I got another email from the clinic saying they didn’t need it. And then they went back and forth on it another couple of times, so Cori and I just said fuck it and did it anyways, because I do not have the patience for that kind of back-and-forth. During the interim while I was getting regularly therapized, I also did all of the medical components they required. It was basically just a visit with my family doctor so he could sign a form and say “Hey, this guy is healthy enough for surgery and I am competent to handle any complications.” I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but having to fill out a million checkboxes and saying ‘No’ to a million health conditions I don’t have, multiple times, gets a bit tedious after a while. So I did all of that, and then I sat on my hands and waited. And waited. And waited some more. I prodded them occasionally via email, because I’m impatient at the best of times and am often bossy and direct with health professionals. Finally, after another 6 months, they passed my file on to the surgical team, who actually called me on the phone promptly to tell me the next steps. The surgical nurse literally emailed me an info packet on Jackson-Pratt drains while on the phone with me. They gave me my surgery date in September. And now we wait again. I’m leaving for Montreal on February 25th. At this point I’m just impatient and trying to keep busy. 51 more days. The closer it gets, the more time stands still.

My bio-dad died in... 2017? Something like that. I know, it sounds awful that I don’t remember when he died but also, he was just a shit person. He abused me, he let his girlfriend abuse me, and he continued being a terrible person even in death. There was money for me in some account he had (and had forgotten), apparently, and I spent almost a year trying to figure out how to get it with no luck. Seriously. Even my mom, who had long since divorced my bio-dad and remarried, tried - because the account manager said she had to be the one that accessed the account, even though it was in my name and I’m an adult... and my mother’s lawyer looked at the whole thing, figured out that it was super illegal, and the investment firm stopped returning my calls. What a fucking scam. And yes, I could pursue it legally if I wanted to, but I really don’t want to. I don’t have the patience or the money for lawyers. Everyone in my family is unequivocally mad at me for not going to the funeral. I mean, why would I? Why would I go to the funeral of a man who sexually abused me and chose alcohol over both of his kids? But my family tends to be very “But faaaaaaamily!”, therefore, most of them have stopped speaking to me. I’m not really upset by his dying, by the way. I kind of made peace with it in like 2013 or so the first time my mother called me sobbing to tell me he was on his deathbed. I wasn’t surprised then, either, that he had congestive heart failure due to alcoholism. He was so jaundiced the last time I saw him in person that he looked like a Simpsons character. He didn’t recognize me, either. My brother had to tell him that I was his own child. So that pretty much killed any kind of forgiveness I could have had for the man. To his credit, he maybe kind-of tried. If trying is calling me, on purpose, on my birthday every year to tell me what a woman I am and am becoming. Ugh. Gross. Grossgrossgross. Also, and this is a big Also, I could not have stomached that funeral when everyone was acting like his death was so Tragic and Could Not Have Been Foreseen. Like! I remember from childhood that that man could put away a 24-pack of beer in a day. One of my fondest childhood memories of him - if you can call them that - is bottle return day, where we would wait for my mom to leave for work and then sneak his empties out of the house to return for the deposit, which he would then use to buy more beer and buy KFC for lunch. And this is a secret that we kept from my mother for, like, years. I don’t think she really ever knew the extent of his drinking. Or mine, when I was still drinking. I wasn’t ever really bothered by his death. I had a breakdown about it, sure, but it was more about the finality of his having died without standing up for myself or demanding an explanation/apology for his behavior towards us, or for raping my brother’s girlfriend, or... anything.

I had a job with great pay, and I fucking quit it. No, seriously. I was making $18 an hour and I walked away from it because it was driving me to a nervous breakdown. I wasn’t sleeping, I was barely eating, and I couldn’t have a day off without obsessively thinking about work. I got promoted way too quickly and sort of lied-to way too often about how things would change, they never did, and finally in October I couldn’t handle it anymore. I saw Cori and she basically told me that I needed to quit or she’d make me. And I still feel kind of bad about that, because Ash and I fought about that for months beforehand. Literal months. It’s the only thing we’ve ever fought about. But I sat in that office in tears about the thought of ever going back to McDonald’s, and it was the right choice. The first month was really hard. Not financially - I had decent enough savings to float us for a couple months. But emotionally, I was devastated. I’ve always kind of vacillated my self-worth between pushing myself way too hard to try and force everyone to like me and crumbling under the pressure from that and turning inwards. I had no idea what to do with myself. I was sleeping at weird hours or not sleeping at all. The cats were glad I was home, and so was Ash, but I felt really sick not doing anything - or at least as much. Even with school, I felt kind of aimless. Online classes don’t really demand specific time frames. Yeah, there are due dates, but aside from that you’re really on your own. Now I’m glad that I quit when I did. From what my friends who still work there tell me, things have only gone downhill. It’s not surprising. They take anyone who’s halfway competent and seduce them with promises they have no intention of keeping to accept promotions and then never follow through. They push people way too hard and they’re not growing and changing with the economy and the demographic of people they’re able to hire for minimum wage. Like, I’m sorry, but once I’ve recovered from surgery there are way better jobs I can get that will keep my brain way healthier.

The husband. Well, to-be. We’re going to do it on paper at Halloween. Nothing flashy, just going to city hall and signing some papers and then it’s done. I’m not sure exactly where to start on this one because most of it happened so fast. I kind of dicked around with online dating for a bit and nothing really came of it; I had lost expectations around the time he messaged me. There was nothing that immediately said “Hey, you’re going to fall in love with this person!” but I took the leap anyways. I was having a hard time coming to terms with being gay and trans, so a low-stakes thing with less expectation seemed nice to me. ... And then we talked, and we both fell hard. I moved to Ottawa 2 months later, after a fairly tumultuous time going back and forth on the train pretty much every 4 or 5 days. I spent most of my money on traveling those months. It was extremely worth it. I knew I was in it for the long-haul when he called me while I was on the train home one day. I’d just left, much against my better judgment, and he had a doctor’s appointment that I’d wanted to go to. Ash is not great at asserting himself with doctors. Like I said, I’m bossy and controlling, so this one would’ve been good for me to be at. He called me basically in tears. Something was weird with his bloodwork, and not only could he not start testosterone as originally planned, but his doctors thought he had leukemia. In typical me fashion, I basically got home, worked a day or two and immediately turned around and came back. There were tests. There was bloodwork. Much of it is a blur, but the thrilling conclusion is that doctors often don’t know how to interpret Ash’s blood results because he doesn’t have a spleen, so his blood is shaped wrong. No cancer! Just weird blood and a crappy immune system. But that crystallized it for me. We moved into a friend’s place for a couple of months, and then, when we could, moved into our current apartment. And for a couple of months it was nice! Great, even! But our roommate’s girlfriend, who also lived with us, had a poorly managed personality disorder and was emotionally and sexually abusive to our wonderful roommate. It took months, but eventually we evicted her after having secret meetings away from the house to come up with a battle plan. In the end, she had to be removed by police and her parents had to come get her things. It’s something I hope I never have to do again, because it felt awful and the girl’s poor parents were clearly devastated. We parted ways with the roommate in June. Amicably, but a bit sad. Part of it was that we had outgrown having roommates, and part of it is that our roommate, while a wonderful person, has a serious hoarding disorder related to anxiety that clashed awfully with my OCD symptoms. They’re in a house with some wonderful people now, so hopefully it’s better with people who are able to be supportive in a more helpful way. All of this to say that I have a wonderful husband, who I love very much.

Which brings me to my next point. Jeez, this is turning into a novel. I’m so sorry. But anyways, I started university in September! It’s been tough what with the work stuff, but I’m doing pretty well. I’m majoring in psychology and desperately white-knuckling my way through introductory biology so I can take cognitive neuropsychology classes next year. Eventually I’d like to become a clinician, but I’m pretty sure I need to go to graduate school for that. I’m taking less classes than I’d like because of surgery, but I’m going to take summer classes to make up for it.

Also because Ash had to have emergency surgery before Christmas! We’d known something was wrong with his elbow for a while - it was an injury that he’d had since before we met. But over the course of 3 years, an injured elbow turned to a lump, and that lump lead to a loss of mobility. His family doctor didn’t seem overly concerned about it, and didn’t run the proper tests until this year. Thanks to a concerned sports medicine doctor who was way out of his depth, more tests were run. There’s nothing quite like the concerned, hushed tone of a doctor to strike fear into one’s heart. The diagnostic imaging showed a tumor had grown in Ash’s elbow. I named him Leopold. A non-cancerous, aggressive giant cell tumor. In his elbow. Literally eating away at the bone. Likely had been for a while. They called us on a Wednesday. Ash went to meet the surgeon on Thursday. The hospital called the same day to book him for surgery. Monday he went to meet with the anaesthesiologist. Tuesday we went to the hospital and they removed Leopold. And let me tell you, it was an absolute shit show. First of all, they expect a man who’s still drugged up from the anaesthesia to be able to decide if he can go home that night or not. They wouldn’t even let him call me before making him decide. Listen, this man is not great at taking decisive action in the best of circumstances sometimes. I actually ended up going home to feed the cats and going back before anyone even told me whether he was coming home or not! Then the post-operative nurses didn’t give clear directions on the aftercare, so I ended up calling the hospital multiple days in a row to figure out what was going on. They didn’t even tell me what type of stitches he had. I think the worst part was that the doctors didn’t actually check with us what kind of painkillers would be most appropriate. They just sent us home with a list, half of which wasn’t covered by insurance, and we had to white-knuckle it the first night with basically good intentions and fancy Tylenol before we could borrow the money for the rest of his painkillers the next morning. I honestly wasn’t sure we would survive that first night. Because the damage to the elbow was so severe, they put a nerve block into the arm that slowly started wearing off through the night. I never want to see anyone in that much pain. It was the kind of pain where you’re not even human anymore; you’re reduced down to an animal who’s scared and in pain, and all you want is for it to stop. I know it was necessary, what they did, to preserve motor function in the arm, but fuck, it was awful. I’m doing a bad job of explaining the technical side of this. It was an elbow resection with tumor removal and a bone graft. The bone graft actually might be the worst part. Because the tumor ate so much of the bone, we had to do the surgery pretty much immediately because any kind of impact could have shattered Ash’s remaining bone permanently. And they had to be so, so careful during the procedure because the tumor was resting on a nerve. To the surgeons’ credit, they did not sever the nerve. It’s less irritated now, and the arm actually looks quite good, but I wish they’d given us more information ahead of time. I was woefully unprepared for how much work I would be doing. You never realize how much work your hands do until they’re taken away from you. Also, something else people never talk about with surgery is how much painkillers mess with your mood. Opioids are by nature depressants, but all the textbooks downplay exactly how severe the mood symptoms can be. Of course being bedridden plays into it as well, but painkillers severely inhibit cognitive function. That first week or so was awful. There were so many goddamn medications and most of them were useless. We were like robots, with the fucking medication dispensing. I had alarms set every 4 hours so the pain couldn’t come back. We tried. We tried so fucking hard, only to get to the follow-up appointment and have a very nice medical student give us the good stuff: Tylenol # 3 and morphine. Did I mention she was a very nice med student?

So yes, that’s basically the state of my life at the moment. I haven’t really written anything since I left California, but I’m going to try this year to actually finish something. I’m going to post regularly, both because I kind of missed this place and because it’s nice to see concrete progress. Also, when I was looking for pictures of surgery results there wasn’t a lot to be found, so I’m trying to save someone else the same trouble.

Anyone who actually read to the end of this, you’re great and I’m very sorry I basically wrote a novel about my life. I know my descriptions are lacking in some places, so feel free to... ask follow-up questions, I guess? I dunno. It’s nice to be back.

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